Funding

AI chip startup Etched emerges with a $5 billion valuation and $1 billion in contracted sales, backed by Jane Street, challenging Nvidia's inference dominance.

Airwallex secures $320M in Series H funding to build financial infrastructure for a world where AI agents handle business payments.

Menlo Ventures announced a $3 billion fundraise — its largest in 50 years — driven by outsized returns from its early AI portfolio, particularly its bet on Anthropic.

Groq confirms a $650 million funding round and begins re-staffing following Nvidia's $20 billion not-acqui-hire deal, leaning into its neocloud business.

Defense AI startup Shield AI secured $2 billion in funding at a $12.7 billion valuation, as military AI investment accelerates in 2026.

Respond.io, which uses AI agents to handle high-volume customer inquiries with per-conversation pricing, has raised $62.5M and is targeting acquisitions in North America and Europe.

Startup NewCore has raised $66M to tackle the next enterprise security challenge: managing AI agents as employees, not just people, with verifiable digital identities.

Prometheus, a physical AI startup backed by Jeff Bezos, raised $12B at a $41B valuation to automate heavy engineering and drug design.

Hark, founded by Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock, raised more than $700 million for a secretive AI-powered device and interface push.

Anduril raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation, highlighting investor demand for AI-backed defense technology.

Kodiak AI disclosed a $100 million raise at a steep discount, sending its shares lower after hours.

OpenAI is reportedly set to commit up to $1.5 billion to a new $10 billion joint venture with private equity firms to scale enterprise AI.

AI research startup NeoCognition has raised a $40 million seed round to develop AI agents capable of becoming experts in any domain through human-like learning.

Jeff Bezos' stealth AI startup, Project Prometheus, is close to raising $10 billion in a new funding round at a $38 billion valuation, per the Financial Times.

AI chip startups challenging Nvidia raised $8.3 billion globally in 2026, with new rounds for Euclyd, Fractile, Axelera, and Olix signaling intense competition.

Sequoia Capital's new leaders have raised a $7 billion fund, the firm's largest, to deepen investments in AI giants including OpenAI and emerging startups.

Some of OpenAI's own backers are questioning the company's $852 billion valuation as it shifts focus to enterprise markets to fend off growing competition.

Nvidia-backed Firmus Technologies raises $505 million in a Coatue-led round, valuing the Australian AI data center builder at $5.5 billion.

AI cloud firm CoreWeave has raised $8.5B in a GPU-backed loan facility supported by a Meta deal, funding a major expansion of its compute capacity.

OpenAI has completed the largest private funding round in Silicon Valley history, raising $122B at an $852B valuation ahead of an expected IPO.