This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

This week was not an exceptionally busy one for large funding deals, though we saw sizable rounds in a lively mix of sectors ranging from AI to fintech to quantum computing and cybersecurity. The biggest raise was for AI world-model developer, which secured a $310 million Series B. Venture investors also put money into AI infrastructure and AI models for biotech.

1. , $310M, artificial intelligence: Menlo Park, California-based Odyssey raised $310 million at a $1.45 billion valuation in a Series B round led by . Other investors included ,,,, and . Odyssey develops AI world models that create multimodal simulations of real-world environments. The startup has now raised $337 million in funding to date, .

2. , $140M, fintech: New York-based Chronograph secured a $140 million private equity round led by . The company provides portfolio monitoring, reporting and diligence software for private capital investors, an increasingly important market as private assets continue to grow. The new raise, which it describes as growth capital, brings its total funding to date to $160 million, according to .

3. (tied) , $100M, AI infrastructure: Boulder, Colorado-based Hydra Host raised a massive $100 million Series A led by . A of other investors joined, including ,, , and . The company operates a bare-metal GPU platform that connects customers to distributed AI computing infrastructure. With the latest investment, it has raised just under $119 million to date.

3. (tied) , $100M, cybersecurity: Startups that promise to protect companies in the AI era are also raising massive sums right out of the gate. This week, Santa Clara, California-based Ent.AI emerged from stealth and said it has raised $100 million in seed funding led by. Other investors included,, 1,, and. The company, founded by former executives and members of the Security Copilot team, offers an AI-powered workspace security platform that it says can analyze user and AI-agent behavior in real time to proactively prevent cyber threats.

3. (tied) , $100M, cybersecurity, defense: Arlington, Virginia-based Twenty Technologies secured a $100 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by, with participation from, and. The company develops AI-enabled cyber warfare systems for the U.S. military and intelligence community, helping automate and accelerate offensive cyber operations at scale. Founded by former cyber operators and defense technologists, Twenty Technologies has now raised $138 million to date,. It鈥檚 part of a growing wave of venture-backed startups building software for military and national security purposes.

3. (tied) , $100M, quantum computing: Berkeley, California-based Atom Computing raised a $100 million Series C led by that brings its total private investment to date to just over $191 million, . and also backed its latest round. Along with the venture money, Atom also received a $100 million Letter of Intent from the under the CHIPS and Science Act that gives the startup additional public backing in exchange for a minority government stake. The company develops neutral-atom quantum computers, one of several competing architectures seeking to commercialize quantum computing. It is one of several quantum startups to receive sizable funding deals this year, following a record-breaking venture investment year for the sector in 2025.

7. , $65M, biotechnology: Watertown, Massachusetts-based Triveni Bio raised a $65 million Series C co-led by and. Additional participation came from. The company develops antibody-based therapeutics for immunological and inflammatory diseases. It has now raised $272 million total from investors, .

8. (tied) , $52M, semiconductor infrastructure: Menlo Park, California-based AttoTude secured a $52 million Series C led by. Other investors included ,,,, 2, and. The startup develops high-speed interconnect technology for AI and hyperscale data centers and has raised $142 million to date, according to . It comes amid robust funding for semiconductor startups this year.

8. (tied) , $52M, digital media: Beverly Hills, California-based Richard Roths Media raised a $52 million venture round led by . The company says it delivered AI-driven marketing and advertising services for 鈥渉igh trust鈥� industries such as banking, law and healthcare. The investment appears to be its first outside capital, per 91精品.

10. (tied) , $50M, artificial intelligence: San Francisco-based Bland AI raised a $50 million Series C led by . The of other investors includes , , founder , and others. The company develops AI-powered voice agents that automate inbound and outbound phone conversations for enterprises, a category that has seen growing adoption as businesses look to replace traditional call-center workflows. It has raised $106 million to date, according to .

10. (tied) , $50M, fintech: Brooklyn-based Interchecks secured a $50 million Series C led by,, and. The company operates a payments platform that allows businesses to manage deposits and payouts through a single API, reflecting continued investor interest in infrastructure that simplifies financial operations. It has now raised just under $79 million to date.

10. (tied) , $50M, artificial intelligence, biotechnology: Menlo Park, California-based Radical Numerics emerged from stealth and said it has raised a $50 million seed round led by, with participation from , and . The startup is developing AI models designed to simulate and predict biological systems, with the goal of accelerating drug discovery and advancing precision medicine.

Large non-US deals:

• The largest startup deal outside of the U.S. this week was very large indeed, and also very unusual. , the Chinese AI chatbot startup that briefly roiled public AI-related stocks in early 2025, reportedly took its first outside financing, worth roughly $7.4 billion. The Series A deal, however, comes with a lot of atypical caveats, notably that investors in the deal didn鈥檛 actually receive a stake in DeepSeek, but rather in an LLC controlled by founder , per . Those investors also reportedly face a five-year lockup and receive no voting rights.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the 91精品 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of June 13-18. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

“Silicon Valley has done very well with software, but while software was eating the world, they forgot about silicon,” Barrett told 91精品 News in an interview.

The firm recently closed a $475 million fund focused on investing in deep-tech startups at seed and Series A. In the decade-plus since its founding, it has built its investment thesis around the idea that breakthroughs in science and engineering 鈥� not just software 鈥� would create the next generation of valuable companies.

With demand surging for compute, semiconductors and energy, Barrett argues the rest of the industry is now catching up. “We’ve been at it for more than a decade,” he said. “In recent years, as AI is eating software, people are scrambling back to recognize that the energy, semiconductors and infrastructure they operate on all need capital too. We’ve been operating in that regime for a very long time.”

Barrett is originally from Australia and came to Silicon Valley in the 1980s. He’s been coding for 50 years, he said, after developing an early and deep respect for science and engineering as the child of two engineers. His childhood was steeped in punch cards, draftsmen and drawings of control systems and machinery, he said.

鈥淪cience lets you follow breadcrumbs from prehistoric plumage to semiconductors. One principle can be applied somewhere orthogonal and create extraordinary value,鈥� Barrett said in a lengthy interview with 91精品 News.

Barrett went on to found video game developer , joined to build the entertainment browser acquired by , and was subsequently CTO at prior to co-founding Playground Global in 2015.

Playground Global operates a lab in the former Palo Alto Research Building in Palo Alto, California. The location hosts 350 people, including those working at its portfolio companies and others with adjacencies working from the lab.

On a recent visit to the warehouse, I saw various models of robots, materials for aerospace construction, and a model of building powerful lasers to increase the speed of semiconductor manufacturing. The quantum computing startup , a Playground portfolio company, moved in when it had three employees and moved out when it reached 90.

The firm has four general partners. Along with Barrett, they are , the former CEO of and who architected CPUs at Intel that helped computing take off at scale, and who joined the Playground team last year as a general partner specializing in semiconductors; , who has made many investments in biotech, including ; and co-founder , who led the investment in .

What follows are highlights from a wide-ranging interview with Barrett that covered topics including sovereign technology, the need to invest in companies that operate on the physical plane, and why he believes putting data centers in space is stupid.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Gen茅 Teare: What is the thesis for Playground Global?

Peter Barrett: It is about reducing new results in science and engineering into commercial and societal value. That means operating at the boundary between computation and the physical world. We are very interested in new capabilities of computation driving civilization forward, and that inevitably means operating in the same physical plane that we live in.

We’re seeing in our data a huge amount of funding going into space, semiconductors and robotics. It seems as if the whole venture industry has pivoted to this much broader array of companies. Do you see that as a good thing?

Barrett: We lost a lot when people weren’t investing in things that strike us as important. It is good that there is capital chasing the things we care about and that have real consequence.

You can鈥檛 spin up a deep-tech practice overnight. You still need domain expertise. You still need to understand why investing in nuclear reactors is good, and why data centers in space are preposterous.

Silicon Valley hasn’t been very efficient with much of the capital it’s deployed over the past decade or so. But I do think it’s good that people recognize that software may be eating the world, but you can’t eat software. We have to operate in the physical layer.

Do you think Silicon Valley gets more efficient?

Barrett: We need to do the work. You develop the instincts and the platform to deploy capital efficiently into these places.

It’s important that people recognize there’s this unprecedented funnel of technical change. AI is an early indicator of it, but we have technologies like quantum. We know how to produce computation using things beyond transistors and semiconductors.

We’re scratching the surface in terms of AI models. We’re right at the beginning of an explosion and renaissance in materials science driven by things like quantum computing.

Now would be the time 鈥� and candidly, I feel the imperative 鈥� that anywhere there is science and capital, it needs to be turned into value, especially in liberal democracies, because the despots are doing a pretty good job of it. It’s incumbent on us to stay ahead.

We’re in the DOS age of AI. We’re scratching the surface, both in terms of the models we make and the hardware we run them on.

Now would be the time for people to write checks into things that are sensible and valuable. We spent a lot of time on NFTs. How are we doing with cancer? How are we doing with our most difficult challenges in terms of healing and feeding the world?

There are lots of new degrees of freedom that could take capital and turn it into value.

Do you think deep tech fits the venture thesis, despite the long time horizons and the amount of capital it requires?

Barrett: The long time horizons certainly exist. If you’re building PsiQuantum, we’re building million-qubit quantum machines. That takes billions of dollars and a decadal effort.

The corollary is that we’ve had hardware exits in two years. The timelines for hardware aren’t necessarily that different from software.

Therapeutics naturally take a longer time, because of clinical trials. But we’ve also seen exits there. One of our companies tested half a million drugs in a single animal and created a new corpus of AI input for building models to create therapeutics. That’s not a decadal effort 鈥� that’s a handful of years before exit.

We try to craft a portfolio that’s a mix of tactical and strategic. Some of these companies get to hundreds of millions in revenue within a few years. Others, like PsiQuantum or , may take a decade to reach full entitlement. That’s part of portfolio construction.

The biology company you mentioned 鈥斕齱hat’s its name?

Barrett: . It did the largest pharma deal of its kind last year with . The deal could be worth $2 billion on the back end.

It’s a unique mechanism to create giant AI training sets by using physical systems 鈥� using animals and in vivo testing to create that dataset. It affords the ChatGPT and biology moment, where you can have large enough training sets to build big models.

You describe the firm as investing somewhere between improbable and impossible. Are there companies that really fit that thesis when you first met them?

Barrett: When we first met PsiQuantum, they were talking about building a machine which was 10,000x the state of the art. Using then-current technologies, it would have been the size of the Sierra Nevadas.

They required exponential improvements in both hardware and software, and they’ve achieved both. It’s the size of a warehouse, not a laptop.

The work we’re doing in biology, materials, quantum algorithms and superconducting logic 鈥� which will replace transistors and semiconductors 鈥� all of these things sound like science fiction, but they’re much closer to improbable. In many cases they’re entirely practical before we invest; they just seem improbable to those unfamiliar with the domain.

There are things that are not impossible but are still really dumb 鈥� data centers in space, small modular reactors (SMRs), or fusion. The physics may work, but the economics don’t, or the timelines don’t align.

I’m disappointed we haven’t invested in anything that turned out to be more impossible than we thought. None of our portfolio companies failed because the technology didn’t work.

We’ve had capitalization failures. We flew hydrogen planes. We’ve built things that were thought to be virtually impossible that turned out to be straightforward. They may have missed their market or may have been unable to raise the capital to continue.

I want to do something where the technology doesn’t work, and we鈥檝e yet to do one of those.

Is there a company you missed out on where it looked impossible and you wish you’d invested?

Barrett: I wish I hadn’t taken ‘s word for it when was a non-profit.

We haven鈥檛 missed many. As the roadmap developed, we wish we had been earlier in a couple of categories that are really interesting. But overall, we haven’t missed too many.

In which sectors or companies have you invested where the time horizons have shortened due to AI?

Barrett: Adding Pat Gelsinger to the team reflects an interest in scaling semiconductors along various dimensions, including energy efficiency and how power is delivered.

We do everything from nuclear reactors all the way through to transmission, energy conversion outside the data center, inside the data center, under the chip, what kinds of chips you鈥檙e running, what models run on top of those chips, what architectures those chips are made from, and what materials those chips are made from.

At every layer of the infrastructure 鈥� optical interconnects, memory systems 鈥� we have a best-in-class company at every point. We built the first AI accelerator a decade ago, and we鈥檝e broadened that to encompass the entire ecosystem, from the creation of electrons to how they expend themselves doing useful software work.

There are bubbly aspects of the current AI moment, but the bubble is being modulated to some degree by the unavailability of energy.

We鈥檙e in the DOS age of AI. LLMs are embarrassingly incompetent compared to what comes next, but we believe in the durability and growth of AI, and are making investments in model architectures and the ways AIs are trained. We see demand for compute, energy and infrastructure continuing to grow.

We have technologies that can reduce general-purpose compute workloads by 100x to 1,000x over state of the art. We believe we know how to make the energy and deliver it. We know how to connect these systems.

So quixotic pursuits like putting data centers in space are unnecessary.

Talking privately to hyperscalers and Fortune 50 companies, they all say there is way more demand for AI in its future incarnation than exists today. It鈥檚 incumbent on us to figure out how to do it 100x, 1,000x or 10,000x more efficiently, because that demand turns into GDP growth and better solutions to our hardest problems.

What are the companies in energy and semiconductors that you are betting on?

Barrett: One example is the wild superconducting logic company . We can make things that are post-semiconductor and post-transistor, with devices that switch five orders of magnitude more efficiently than transistors.

They operate at cryogenic temperatures, but quantum computers do that, and our extreme ultraviolet lithography system does that. The future of computation is cryogenic. Even after you pay to make it cold, you鈥檙e still 100x to 1,000x more energy-efficient on compute.

This technology has been around since last century, but it鈥檚 mainly been used for secure signals intelligence and radar applications. We鈥檙e generalizing it for compute.

Another example is . People talk about SMRs, which are a physics solution to a financial problem, or fusion, which is still decades away. Alva instead uprates the existing nuclear fleet to get hundreds of megawatts out of each unit by replacing 1970s steam generators with a 2020 steam generator.

We can deliver power in a handful of years. No new fuel, no new regulatory path, and a business model that makes sense for operators. We can put gigawatts onto the grid without moving a fence line of an existing reactor and without upgrades to the electricity grid.

We know how to make AI training wildly more efficient. We know how to train different kinds of AI models that we鈥檝e been unable to train.

The last supercomputer at uses something unlike a CPU or GPU to run existing software. We鈥檝e been running software the same way for 70 years, but there are other ways, with dataflow architectures. We have a company doing that 鈥� [].

The degrees of freedom from materials, systems, code and models have never been greater. We鈥檙e exploring all of them. But most require rolling your sleeves up in the physical world.

LLMs feel like brute-forcing something 鈥� like a drunk looking for keys under the streetlight. We鈥檙e pushing more and more into that, and I think that鈥檚 a dead end. We know other ways of moving forward.

Are you seeing new model companies, separate from LLMs, that are going to solve things?

Barrett: Our brains are not LLMs. They鈥檙e not transformers. Transformers are effective, but they are one of a long line of soon-to-be-extinct models that get replaced by something that works better.

That millionfold gap between our brains and GPUs is an architectural gap. Meat is much worse at computation than hardware can be, so biology shouldn鈥檛 be better.

Physics allows a million times a million more efficiency, and we should start chipping away at that.

Intelligence is useful and can be pressed into service against basic things like photosynthesis. Plants were invented by accident of evolution 3 billion years ago. They鈥檙e pretty, but not efficient. They shouldn鈥檛 be green; they should be black. We know how to make photosynthesis twice as efficient, and probably 5x more efficient.

We鈥檙e not stuck with the physical constraints of our technology or of nature. Nature is beautiful, but cobbled together by a process that we can have agency over.

All the materials that operate our civilization are discovered, not designed, because we can鈥檛 design things we can鈥檛 simulate. Our best computers cannot simulate the quantum nature of nature. That鈥檚 about to change.

We鈥檙e stumbling around in the dark, relying on serendipity and the occasional magical material. Whereas we can construct any number of materials with magical properties that are currently hidden from us by our inability to simulate the quantum mechanical processes that animate chemistry.

We are right on that threshold of unlocking all of these dimensions. And at the same time, we鈥檙e putting money into NFTs, the metaverse and other things that will come and go, without anybody ever caring.

Are you talking about the mix of quantum with biology and model-focused companies?

Barrett: Quantum allows us to directly design materials, directly explore the method of action of drugs, and directly design drugs.

AI has a role to play in biology and understanding structures we can measure. We think there are quantum wet labs where we can measure the performance of small-molecule drugs against models of nature and then verify in nature.

We don鈥檛 know how many things that animate our industry actually work. We don鈥檛 know how Tylenol works. We don鈥檛 know how the Type II superconductors we鈥檙e building fusion reactors out of work. We know that if you take iron and nitrogen and arrange them in a certain way, they produce magnets stronger than rare earth magnets, but we don鈥檛 know why.

There are mysterious things we鈥檝e stumbled across that hint at an Aladdin鈥檚 cave locked behind a wall of computation. That wall is coming down.

Which sectors do you think are going to take a lot longer to come to fruition?

Barrett: Civilization will operate on fusion eventually, but right now the only reactor that works using gravimetric confinement is the sun. I think that鈥檚 a long way off.

Data centers in space are stupid. You can鈥檛 operate a gigawatt data center in a thermos. We have terrestrial answers to those questions that we should pursue.

I鈥檝e always been a detractor of self-driving cars, which are starting to work. Now we need an economic model that makes them sensible and doesn鈥檛 drown our cities. The problem with transportation in cities is not the degree of autonomy. If we cared about traffic deaths, we鈥檇 worry about roundabouts.

There鈥檚 also nonsense with NFTs and the metaverse which have sopped up enormous amounts of capital. Small amounts of capital using these tools against our most difficult diseases would yield results. Small modular reactors are an unwarranted innovation.

There are lots of things that, at first blush, seem good and valuable, but there are far better solutions that are simpler and more imminent. We need to be practical about where the money goes.

There was a company that just joined the 91精品, valued over $1 billion this past month, doing orbital data centers. Are you saying this whole category doesn鈥檛 make sense?

Barrett: To his credit, will show you a picture of what a 100-kilowatt data center looks like, and it鈥檚 bigger than Starship. A 100-kilowatt is a small rack from that is human-sized.

The arguments are that there are a lot of renewables in space. But there are a lot of renewables on the ground too. North Western Australia has solar and wind that are 70% naturally firm, and on the ground, so you can build things on it.

Put a data center in North Western Australia, which we are doing. We have a renewable site 35x the size of Manhattan.

Energy generation and compute in space is a nonstarter because space is not cold. You鈥檙e building things in a thermos and need to get rid of heat. A single human-sized rack is 100 kilowatts, which is about the size of the International Space Station鈥檚 radiators and solar panels.

Starship has yet to actually put anything in orbit. It鈥檚 made some fireworks, which are pretty, and it鈥檚 a beautiful thing. is an amazing company because of Falcon 9 and Starlink. But data centers and power generation in space makes no sense.

We know how to build arbitrary amounts of energy generation on the ground with very safe, very large nuclear reactors. We鈥檝e been doing it for decades.

For all the talent and genius rattling around the Valley, we do spend money on silly things.

Do you think now is the most exciting time to be investing, or have some of those investments already been made and are going to come to fruition?

Barrett: We鈥檝e already made investments in things on a really steep trajectory.

Snowcap will take a decade before we鈥檙e building GPUs with that technology, but we鈥檒l have commercial product from them next year. We鈥檙e getting better at early, undeniable signals.

PsiQuantum is a long journey, but some things just take that amount of time.

X-Lite seems like a ridiculously long journey, although we鈥檙e building the prototype facility now, and it received the first money from the new CHIPS Act.

Some hardware companies making silicon or systems are getting significant revenue in a handful of years.

There鈥檚 a sleeper in Fund I. Its first trick was to make MRI machines 100,000x more sensitive, and they鈥檙e shipping those. In the background they鈥檝e also been developing that core physics to build a new quantum computing modality. So we actually have two quantum computing companies in Fund I.

Even though that鈥檚 a 10-year-old company, there are about to be two companies, one of which will be a unicorn virtually overnight.

There are wild things bubbling under the surface that people are going to wonder where they came from.

Companies like 鈥� the only co-packaged optics on TSMC 鈥� we鈥檝e been working on that for a long time. Now people are waking up to silicon photonics and co-packaged optics.

There are also stealth companies that are indistinguishable from magic. Some of those will come out of stealth this summer.

Is there anything we haven鈥檛 chatted about that you think is worth noting?

Barrett: It鈥檚 a sobering note, but globally there is a need and desire for sovereign capability in tech 鈥� in Western Europe, Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

There are extraordinary pools of capital, pension funds and Australia鈥檚 superannuation fund. Given the things we can invest in, globally the West needs to do a better job translating that capital into societal and economic value.

The safety and durability of liberal democracies depends on creating wealth and staying ahead.

We see a resurgent desire to do that in Europe and Australia. Around those pools of capital, there鈥檚 ambition. We need to drive that ecosystem globally, not just in the U.S.

The pace of innovation in Ukraine, driven by need, is indicative of changes that can be made in parts of the world less friendly to the tenets we hold dear in liberal democracies.

We can鈥檛 operate under the assumption that everybody clever lives in Palo Alto or that we can only invest in things we can drive to. We need to deploy capital globally, and we do. We鈥檙e going to do more of that.

Do you feel encouraged by the amount of infrastructure build-out that鈥檚 going to happen over the next few years? It feels like it will create a boom in all sorts of technologies because the drive for efficiency will become much stronger.

Barrett: LLMs are not the end. We鈥檒l run LLMs on these data centers initially, but we鈥檒l run their descendants and other more useful things on these machines and on quantum machines.

It鈥檚 going to be hard to overbuild because computation is incredibly useful. There鈥檚 no upper bound. We鈥檙e not in a Malthusian zero-sum game for resources.

We know how to make everything more productive. We know how to grow GDP arbitrarily large. But we need food, energy and medicine there, and we need to normalize the distribution of wealth.

There is unbounded abundance we can unlock if we spend capital on the right things. We know how to do much more of that than people suspect.

The fact that sensible people are considering data centers in space indicates they鈥檙e not paying attention to the things we already have in hand that can move the needle.

We do need compute in space. We need AIs in space, sensing in space, and Starlink is great. But we need to use technologies that make sense, not try to make skyscrapers out of toothpicks.

91精品 queries:

Related reading:

• Sector Snapshot: Quantum Computing Startup Investment Slows In 2026 While Public Markets Hold Strong
• Sector Snapshot: Semiconductor Startup Funding Still Running Hot

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

Big fundraising deals did not take a pause for summer this week. In the U.S., the largest financings went to enterprise software company and blockchain technology provider . The largest deals of the week, however, were for European companies, with Germany鈥檚 pulling in $1.4 billion and Finnish space tech company landing $520 million.

1. , $400M, enterprise software: NinjaOne, provider of an IT operations and endpoint management platform, raised over $400 million in Series C extension funding at a $12.3 billion valuation. The Austin-based company said it grew revenue over 70% in 2025 and posted a profit in the first quarter of this year.

2. , $355M, blockchain technology: Digital Asset, a provider of blockchain technology geared for financial institutions, secured $355 million in a later-stage financing led by 鈥檚 crypto fund, . Founded in 2014, the New York-based company has raised at least $847 million in known funding to date, per .

3. , $350M, AI cloud infrastructure: Las Vegas-based TensorWave, an AMD AI cloud technology provider for training and inference workloads, closed on $350 million in Series B funding. and led the financing.

4. , $300M, biotech: Beren Therapeutics, a developer of therapeutics for conditions characterized by defective cholesterol trafficking, raised $300 million in equity and debt funding. The financing for the Thousand Oaks, California-based company includes $165 million in debt funding from as well as $135 million in equity investment.

5. , $200M, robotics: Standard Bots, a manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots, picked up $200 million in Series C funding. and were lead investors in the round, which set a $1 billion valuation for the New York-based company.

6. , $125M, genetic medicines: SonoThera, developer of an ultrasound-mediated genetic medicine platform, secured $125 million in Series B funding. led the financing for the San Francisco-based company.

7. (tied) , $100M, medical devices: Tempe, Arizona-based GT Medical Technologies, developer of a form of radiation therapy called GammaTile that is used at the time of brain tumor removal surgery, picked up $100 million in Series E funding led by .

7. (tied) (aka Genspark), $100M, agentic AI: MainFunc, the company behind Genspark, a developer of agentic AI tools for the workplace, reportedly $100 million in Series B extension funding at a $2.6 billion valuation. Investors reportedly included , and South Korea’s .

9. , $99.5M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based City Therapeutics, a developer of RNA interference (RNAi)-based medicines, closed on $99.5 million in Series B funding from backers including new investors and .

10. , $85M, tools for the deaf and hearing-impaired: Rylo, developer of an app for hearing-impaired people, raised $85 million in growth funding from , and existing investors.

Outside the US

, $1.4B, robotics: Germany鈥檚 Neura Robotics, a developer of AI infrastructure for robots to learn, collaborate and operate across real-world environments, says it secured up to $1.4 billion in Series C funding.

, $520M, space tech: Helsinki-based Iceye, operator of a satellite constellation for monitoring conditions on Earth, raised $520 million in a Series F funding round led by , at a valuation of over $12 billion.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the 91精品 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of June 6-12. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

and each launched multibillion-dollar deployment ventures staffed with forward-deployed engineers, while a long list of startups building AI infrastructure, autonomous software and robotics also reached unicorn status. Together, the new entrants point to where investors increasingly see value creation: turning AI advances into real-world applications and pairing software intelligence with physical automation.

Beyond AI, new unicorns were minted across many sectors including healthcare, quantum, aerospace, financial services, manufacturing, e-commerce and energy.听

China dominated in the robotics sector, while Canada did so in quantum. The single new legaltech unicorn last month was from Brazil. also joined the board this past month, as the adult creator content company raised its first external financing.听

Of the new unicorns, 17 are U.S-based, while four each are based in China and the UK. Two new unicorns joined the board from Canada, as one each from India and Brazil.听

Unicorn IPOs

The board鈥檚 total value is undergoing rapid fluctuations amid lofty new valuations for some of the largest new unicorns, as well as high-profile exits to the public markets.

The 91精品 reached $9.9 trillion in value in May, as Anthropic moved ahead of OpenAI to become the second most valued private company after . On the heels of the funding, Anthropic privately filed for an IPO, followed shortly thereafter by OpenAI’s .听

SpaceX is expected to list this Friday, in what would be the largest-ever IPO. Its listing will erase more than one-tenth of value from the board as the the -led company exits the private markets.听

Chip company went public in May in a blockbuster IPO that valued the company at $56.4 billion,听well above its last private valuation of $23 billion just three months earlier in February.听

New unicorns in May

Here are May鈥檚 new unicorn companies, including 10 companies that are less than 3-years old:听

AI deployment

• San Francisco-based raised a $4 billion private equity round led by with co-leads , and . The new company is majority owned by with partnerships with 19 investment firms and consultancies. OpenAI acquired , with its 150 forward-deployed engineers to support enterprises in this effort. The less than 1-year-old-based company was valued at $14 billion in the new funding, which it said will be used to scale operations and acquire companies.听
• raised a $1.5 billion private equity funding to build an AI services company to work with companies to bring Claude into their operations. Each of the co-leads 鈥� , private equity investor and legal firm 鈥斕齣nvested $300 million into the round. and also invested in the joint venture. The less than 1-year-old-based, San Francisco-based company鈥檚 valuation was not disclosed.
• , a company building search for AI agents, raised a $250 million Series C led by . The 5-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $2.2 billion and is used by coding agents, go-to-market agents and chat agents.听
• Boston-based autonomous AI software developer raised a $200 million Series A led by . Blitzy鈥檚 platform reverse engineers existing code bases to build a knowledge graph and thereby enable autonomous development of software projects over days or weeks that can re-engineer and test complicated systems and deal with technical debt. The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.4 billion and is said to be used by dozens of global 2,000 companies.听
• , a routing technology for applications to select from 400-plus models, raised a $113 million Series B led by Alphabet鈥檚 . Investors in the round included a host of corporate venture firms including , , , and . The 3-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1.3 billion.

搁辞产辞迟颈肠蝉听

• raised a $700 million Series A led by . The company plans to build personalized robotics developing its own models, training and hardware. The 1-year-old San Jose, California-based company was valued at $6 billion. It was founded by CEO , founder of humanoid robotics unicorn .
• Guangdong, China-based , a dual arm robotics developer, raised a $147 million Series B led by and . It said its new funding will be used for R&D, production and a global sales network. The 10-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.听

• Shanghai-based has raised four funding rounds since it was spun out of in January, and reached a valuation of $1 billion. Agilink is focused on dexterous hand technology. The funding will be used for model development, data and hardware with the spinout able to license to the broader robotics market.听
• , a robot leasing and rental platform, raised a Series A funding. The less than 1-year-old Pudong, China-based company was valued at $1 billion. It is looking to expand from event rentals to warehousing, logistics and park operations.听

贬别补濒迟丑肠补谤别听

• , a treatment provider for cardiovascular and orthopedic disease, raised a $1.5 billion corporate round led by . Boston Scientific has an option to acquire its heart valve technology. The 10-year-old Georgia, U.S.-based company was valued at $4.4 billion.听
• , a longevity biotech company, seeking to extend human life by a decade, with therapeutics targeting age related disease raised the initial close of funding round led by . The 5-year-old Redwood City, California-based company was valued at a pre-money valuation of $1.8 billion.听
• , launched a suite of AI agents for healthcare built from its clinical data, raised $146 million in equity and secondary funding led by . The 15-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.

Quantum computing

• Vancouver-based , a quantum computing company that combines silicon-based qubits with native photonic interconnects, raised a $70 million extension funding led by Luxembourg-based . Photonic raised $130 million in January. The 9-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• Quebec-based , which says it addresses quantum error correction in each qubit, raised a $30 million funding. The company has raised a mix of government grants and venture capital. The 6-year-old company was valued at $1.4 billion.

础别谤辞蝉辫补肠别听

• , a builder of rockets to deploy data centers in space, raised a $305 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old San Carlos, California-based company, formerly called Aetherflux, was valued at $2 billion. The company plans to launch its first satellite later this year. Its technology entails using the upper stage of the rocket as a low-earth orbit satellite that uses solar energy to create 1-megawatt data centers in space.听
• Hyderabad, India-based , a rocket company that delivers satellites into space, raised a $60 million funding led by Singapore-based and Menlo Park, California-based . Skyroot is planning the maiden voyage of Vikram-1 in June. The 7-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Financial services听

• , an AI insurance provider for startups, raised a $160 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.3 billion and plans to go after the trucking industry next.听
• Intelligent wealth management platform raised a $150 million Series D led by . With in recruited assets, it is built to create an all in one system for advisors. The 7-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1 billion.

惭补苍耻蹿补肠迟耻谤颈苍驳听

• , a manufacturer of aerospace and defense components, raised a $300 million Series B led by . The 1-year-old El Segundo, California-based company, which aims to strengthen America鈥檚 industrial base, operates six factories across the U.S. and was valued at $1 billion.
• , likewise says it is building out American manufacturing with a rapid custom manufacturing software to production platform. It raised its first institutional funding of $110 million led by , and founders and . The 7-year-old Reno, Nevada-based company supports small-scale inventors to large-scale enterprises and has shipped 30 million parts to 300,000 customers. The company was valued at $1 billion.

E-commerce

• , a real-time inventory management platform, raised a $170 million Series B led by and . Its sensor technology tracks items and its precise location and movement in the store. Retail customers include and . The 13-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1 billion.

• London-based , a booking service for hair salons, beauty experts and wellness salons raised a $80 million Series C led by . The 11-year-old London-based company was valued at $1 billion.

贰苍别谤驳测听

• , a nuclear fusion startup spun out of Tsinghua University, raised a $74 million Series A funding. The 4-year-old China-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a provider of fast charging batteries, raised a $60 million Series C led by strategic investor . The batteries are used in data centers, robotics, electric vehicles and grid infrastructure. The 7-year-old Cambridge, UK-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Social media听

• Creator platform raised its first external funding, a $535 million private equity round led by , which now owns around 16% of the company. The 10-year-old London-based adult content platform was valued at $3.2 billion. Its CEO noted the company has paid out since 2016.

Data center听

• Modular data center builder raised a $230 million Series B led by , and. In partnership with the company plans to build capacity for secure data centers useful for military and remote manufacturing environments. The 3-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $2.2 billion. Customer booking for fiscal year 2026 was up 540% from 2025.听

尝别驳补濒迟别肠丑听

• S茫o Paulo-based , a Brazilian AI legal platform to manage company litigation, raised a $100 million Series B led by that valued the 2-year-old company at $1.2 billion. Enter counts , and among its customers, who use its technology along with law firms to handle litigation paperwork and settlements. Around have been managed through the platform. led the Series A.

颁谤测辫迟辞肠耻谤谤别苍肠测听

• , a digital asset trader, raised a $150 million funding led by , UK bank Standard Charter鈥檚 fintech arm. The deal brings digital assets into banking and represents GSRs first strategic external investor. The 12-year-old London-based company was valued at $1 billion.听

厂别肠耻谤颈迟测听

• , a security platform built for an open-source automated coding environment, raised a $60 million Series C led by . The platform is adopted by companies including Anthropic, , , , and and supports 27,000 organizations. Its socket firewall product is free to block malicious packages. The 6-year-old Stanford, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Related 91精品 unicorn lists:听

• (1,785)
• (619)
• (160)
• (189)
• (118)
• (102)
• (921)
• (525)
• (241)
• (39)
• (486)

Related reading:

• Anthropic Files Confidentially For IPO听
• Active Startup Investors Didn鈥檛 Hold Back In May
• Anthropic Funding Pushed Startup Investment To Near-Record Levels In May As Exit Market Reopened听听

Methodology

The 91精品 91精品 is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on 91精品 data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.听

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations 鈥� such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options 鈥� as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.听

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .听

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.听

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. 91精品 converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to 91精品 long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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A grab bag of funded startups caught our attention this past month, from a previously bootstrapped custom metal manufacturer that got its first outside funding from big-name Silicon Valley backers, to a startup that aims to provide geothermal energy from underwater volcanoes to small island nations. Let鈥檚 take a look.

$110M for on-demand custom manufacturing

First, let鈥檚 start with a refreshingly non-AI round, and a sizable one at that.

Reno, Nevada-based said last month that it has raised $110 million in funding led by brothers and founders and , along with and , at a $1 billion valuation.

The company operates an on-demand manufacturing platform specializing in custom-cut metal and fabrication. The round is its first venture investment, and apparently came only after Sequoia’s flew to Reno to woo SendCutSend CEO into accepting Silicon Valley backing. Previously, Belosic had bootstrapped the company, founded in 2018, with personal savings, bank loans and credit cards, he told .

He held little interest in taking cash from startup investors until SendCutSend started to be flooded earlier this year with orders from AI-driven industries including robotics and data centers, and Belosic said he realized the business needed outside investment to grow.

Investor of Paradigm told WSJ that underlying SendCutSend鈥檚 booming business is intense demand for rapid, on-demand sheet metal and custom parts. 鈥淚f you think about the entire frontier of robots, defense companies, rocket companies, electric-car companies, they all need very fast turn prototyping,鈥� he said.

The investment is Paradigm鈥檚 first into the manufacturing sector, he noted.

Related 91精品 query:

$100M for insurance-covered metabolic health counseling

GLP-1 weight-loss drugs may be booming, but a well-funded startup is betting that medication alone isn鈥檛 enough to solve the chronic disease crisis.

, a New York-based metabolic health startup that combines dietitians, AI tools and GLP-1 medication management, last month said that it raised a $100 million Series C round led by . , , and a long list of other investors also backed the round, which brings the company鈥檚 total funding to date to just over $213 million, .

Founded in 2021, Nourish operates what it describes as the country鈥檚 largest dietitian-led metabolic health clinic, pairing more than 10,000 registered dietitians with AI coaching, lab testing and virtual care. The company has increasingly expanded into GLP-1 prescribing and medication management as demand for drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy continues to surge.

Nourish said it has partnered with hundreds of health insurers in the U.S. and that its service is covered by most plans.

Its pitch is that the next phase of the GLP-1 boom will require more than prescriptions. While the drugs have transformed obesity treatment, many patients struggle to stay on them long term or maintain results after stopping, according to the company. Nourish is positioning itself as a broader metabolic health platform focused on nutrition, behavior change and ongoing clinical support alongside medication.

鈥淐hronic disease is the central failure of U.S. healthcare 鈥� nearly 200 million Americans affected, trillions spent, and outcomes that still don’t move,鈥� Menlo Ventures partner said in a statement. 鈥淲hat Nourish has built in four years is remarkable: a care model that actually bends the cost curve, with 10,000 dietitians, deep payer relationships, and clinical outcomes patients stick with.鈥�

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$58M for Gen Z group travel adventures

Group travel startups are having a moment as younger travelers increasingly look for ways to meet people while exploring new destinations.

, a Milan-based startup that organizes group travel experiences for millennials and Gen Z travelers, raised a 鈧�50 million (roughly $58 million) Series C funding round as it looks to expand further across Europe and enter the U.S. market. The round was led by .

Founded in 2017, WeRoad operates a platform that connects solo travelers and small groups through curated multiday trips led by coordinators. The company says it has served more than 300,000 travelers across over 1,000 itineraries, with offerings ranging from adventure travel and cultural experiences to outdoor excursions. Participants are typically grouped with strangers in similar age ranges, turning the trips into a hybrid of travel booking and social networking.

鈥淲e live in a time when artificial intelligence and social media are reshaping the way we connect with each other. And amid all this digital connection, real human connection has become increasingly rare. Around 30% of young adults say they feel lonely every day. In the United States, this phenomenon is especially significant,鈥� the company said in a statement. 鈥淲e believe we have an answer. Not the only one, not a perfect one, but a real one: putting people in a room together (or on a quad bike in Morocco, in a canoe in Vietnam, or in front of a sunset in Patagonia) and letting whatever is meant to happen, happen.鈥�

Related 91精品 query:

$26M to keep AI data centers cooler

AI may be driving the data center boom, but keeping those facilities cool is becoming a business opportunity in its own right.

, a U.K.-based startup developing precision liquid cooling systems for AI infrastructure, said last month that it raised a $26 million Series B as demand surges for technologies that can manage the growing heat and power requirements of next-generation AI data centers. The round was led by and and brings Iceotope鈥檚 total funding to date to just under $100 million, .

Founded in 2005, Iceotope has developed a chassis-based liquid cooling approach designed to replace traditional air cooling and cool entire systems rather than individual chips. The company says it now holds 219 granted and pending patents. It said it will use the new funding to expand product and engineering development, grow its patent portfolio and accelerate partnerships that bring its cooling technology to market.

The raise comes as AI workloads create mounting challenges for conventional cooling systems. Iceotope argues its technology can reduce energy consumption and water use while supporting high-density AI and high-performance computing deployments in both data centers and edge environments.

Related 91精品 query:

$25M for geothermal energy from subsea volcanoes

As AI companies scramble for more electricity, investors are increasingly willing to fund some unconventional ideas for generating it. One of those is , a Seattle-based startup developing subsea geothermal power systems designed to tap into heat generated by subsea volcanic activity.

The company recently raised between $25 million and $30 million in a seed round led by , sources familiar with the matter .

Founded just last year, Endurance Energy is targeting island nations 鈥� where it says electricity can cost almost 7x as much as in the U.S. 鈥� industrial sites and eventually hyperscale data centers that need large amounts of reliable power.

Unlike solar and wind, geothermal energy carries the promise of round-the-clock, renewable baseload electricity, a feature that has become increasingly attractive as AI infrastructure drives soaring power demand.

Endurance says its seafloor geothermal generators could deliver gigawatts of power from hydrothermal systems along tectonic plate boundaries and volcanic regions. It is , where about 80% of electricity generation still relies on imported diesel fuel.

Earlier this year, the company signed an agreement with the Tongan government and launched a pilot project aimed at harnessing geothermal heat generated by subsea volcanic activity around the island nation.

鈥淐lean geothermal power will enable us to substitute most of our diesel base load power and further insulate ourselves from future external shocks caused by geopolitical conflicts and global economic impacts,鈥� Tongan Prime Minister Lord Fakaf膩nua said in a statement.

Related 91精品 query:

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So far this year, investors have put about $7.8 billion into Boston-area startups, per 91精品 That puts the region on track for a moderate annual gain and the strongest tally in about four years, as charted below.

Invidious comparison

Under normal circumstances, such numbers might be celebrated as pretty strong. But many Bostonians don鈥檛 see it that way.

鈥淔or the first time, startups in Texas raised more VC money than those in Massachusetts,鈥� one headline this spring. Earlier this year, another correspondent concerns from local startup backers and builders that the tech startup scene is thinning out.

At root, the issue may not be that Bostonians are delivering so little investable startup talent, but rather that other places are swimming in unprecedented capital. This kind of invidious comparison is particularly stark in the AI realm.

Overall, North America venture funding hit a record high in the first quarter of this year, surging to $252 billion. Of that, more than 87% went to companies in 91精品 AI-related categories.

Few of those AI mega-fundraisers were in Massachusetts. The biggest, most heavily funded names in generative AI, like , and others, are predominantly headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. That means Boston didn鈥檛 get a slice of history鈥檚 largest startup funding rounds.

By contrast, biotech, a traditional area of strength for the Boston area, hasn鈥檛 been on a funding tear. True, there鈥檚 no dramatic slump. But in a time when a single venture-backed AI company can snag $122 billion in a , biotech round sizes can鈥檛 compete for scale.

Standout rounds

Still, by pre-AI standards of venture funding, Boston has been scaling some heavy hitters.

Per 91精品 , at least 12 companies in the greater metro area听1 raised rounds of $200 million or more this year, listed below.

The largest round went to , a provider of wearable fitness technology and a subscription platform that raised $575 million in Series G funding at a $10.1 billion valuation in March. The company says it is powered by more than 24 billion hours of physiological data and purpose-built AI models to provide predictive, personalized health insights.

, a provider of consumer privacy and security tools, came in second. It secured $375 million in Series B funding in March led by and .

Next on the list is , which provides healthcare plans to seniors on Medicare. The 9-year-old company disclosed in January that it had closed on $366 million across two Series F funding tranches.

Biotech startups, meanwhile, didn鈥檛 make the top 3 but were heavily represented on the list. Overall, more than half of funded startups in the list are focused on biotech or healthcare.

Why compare?

Boston isn鈥檛 the San Francisco Bay Area, and it certainly isn鈥檛 Texas. So it鈥檚 worth asking: What is the point of comparing startup ecosystems? Is a metro area flailing if it doesn鈥檛 keep up with a particular major innovation cycle, even if it maintains core areas of strength?

At risk of over-generalizing, we鈥檇 conclude that competitive rank still matters. A metro area can retain its crown as a startup innovation hub only if it continues to produce transformative companies.

For Boston, there鈥檚 no indication the region is losing its edge in biotech and other sectors where it鈥檚 long been an established powerhouse. However, in the generative AI era, it鈥檚 also evident that the region has not produced one of the most high-valuation players in the space, and that鈥檚 put some ding in the city鈥檚 reputation as a leading innovation hub.

Related 91精品 queries:

Related reading:

• North America Q1 Funding Surges Across Stages To Record Level
• Whoop鈥檚 Wearable Fitness Tech Lands $575M From Athletes, Celebrities, Institutional Investors To Reach $10.1B Valuation

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

Venture funding has always been a world of haves and have nots. And these days, the haves are having more than ever. Case in point this week was . The 5-year-old generative AI giant secured $65 billion in Series H funding this week, pushing its post-money valuation to a mind-blowing $965 billion.

After that, the next-biggest financing was a $1 billion round for AI software development tool maker , lifting its valuation to $26 billion. Companies in a range of other sectors also managed to secure sizable though smaller rounds, in areas including commerce logistics, developer AI, insurtech, fusion and more.

1. , $65B, foundational AI: Generative AI company Anthropic raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, more than doubling its post-money valuation to a staggering $965 billion. San Francisco-based Anthropic said , , and led the financing, and that , , , , and co-led the investment.

2. , $1B, AI software development: Cognition, developer of AI software engineer Devin, has closed on over $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation. , , and 1听led the financing for the San Francisco-based company.

3. , $250M, logistics: Atlanta-based Stord, developer of a fulfillment network, software and AI tools for independent brands, secured $250 million in Series F funding. The round set a $3 billion valuation for the 11-year-old company.

4. , $113M, AI for developers: OpenRouter, a marketplace for AI models, secured $113 million in Series B funding. led the financing for the New York-based startup.

5. , $106M, insurtech: San Francisco-based Corgi Insurance, developer of an AI-native insurance platform for startups, picked up $106 million in Series B1 funding led by . The financing, which set a $2.6 billion valuation, comes just three weeks after Corgi $160 million in Series B funding at a $1.3 billion valuation.

6. (tied) , $100M, fusion energy: Kearny, New Jersey-based Thea Energy, a developer of technology for fusion energy systems, raised $100 million in Series B funding led by . Thea says the funding will go toward manufacturing infrastructure.

6. (tied) , $100M, healthcare data: Garner Health, a platform for finding healthcare providers, closed on $100 million in Series E funding led by . The financing set a $2.74 billion for the New York-based company.

8. , $90M, space tech: Observable Space, a space tech startup that develops and builds advanced optical systems, says it raised $90 million in Series A funding led by to scale manufacturing and develop its technology. The Santa Monica, California-based company also announced that it secured a $94 million contract with the.

9. , $59M, AI video: Reactor, a San Francisco-based developer platform for real-time generative video, emerged from stealth with $59 million in funding led by .

10. , $52M, cancer detection: San Diego-based ClearNote Health, a developer of early detection and monitoring tests for multiple forms of cancer, picked up $52 million in Series D financing. Founding investor led the round.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the 91精品 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of May 23-29. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

Physical tech is back, at least judging by this week鈥檚 largest U.S. funding deals. The biggest of all was a $1.5 billion corporate round for a medical device company that develops implants and treatment systems for musculoskeletal disorders. It was followed by an enormous Series A round, backed by a bevy of big-name investors, for , a 1-year-old artificial intelligence startup that says it’s developing personalized AI devices. Along with the usual heavy dose of AI, this week鈥檚 list also includes large deals for aerospace and defense, fintech, and retail technology. Let鈥檚 dive in.

1. $1.5B, healthcare: MiRus raised a massive $1.5 billion corporate round led by as strategic investors continue betting on next-generation orthopedic and spinal technologies. The Marietta, Georgia-based company has now raised $1.6 billion to date, . The deal comes with a 34% equity stake for Boston Scientific.

2. , $700M, artificial intelligence: AI startup Hark landed a huge $700 million Series A led by, with participation from a of investors including chip giants , , and , as well as ,, , 1听and . The San Jose, California-based company it鈥檚 building 鈥渁dvanced personalized intelligence and next-generation hardware鈥� and plans to release some kind of product later this summer.

3. , $355M, AI infrastructure and developer tools: New York-based Modal Labs raised $355 million in a Series C round led by and , with participation from and . The company provides serverless cloud computing tools and GPU access for running AI models and testing AI-generated code. Its latest round is at a $4.65 billion valuation. CEO 鈥媡old Reuters that Modal鈥檚 ARR has soared to $300 million, up from about $60 million in September, as enterprise AI coding becomes widespread.

4. (tied) , $300M, artificial intelligence: Frontier lab Decart raised $300 million in a round led by that reportedly values it at nearly $4 billion. The deal also received backing from including venture firms and, AI researcher and corporate investors Nvidia, and . The startup, based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, develops generative AI models and infrastructure, and has now raised roughly $456 million to date as investors continue pouring capital into foundational AI technologies.

4. (tied) , $300M, aerospace and defense: El Segundo, California-based Amca raised $300 million in a Series B led by, alongside investors including and. The company focuses on aerospace manufacturing and supply-chain technologies, an area drawing increased venture interest amid renewed defense-tech spending. Amca has raised $376.5 million overall, . Its latest round reportedly comes at a $1 billion-plus valuation.

6. , $250M, search and generative AI: AI search startup Exa secured $250 million at a $2.2 billion valuation in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Based in San Francisco, the company develops AI-native search infrastructure designed for agents and large language model applications. The latest raise brings Exa鈥檚 total funding to $357 million and comes as competition intensifies around AI retrieval and search tools.

7. , $230M, edge computing and AI infrastructure: Armada raised $230 million in fresh funding at a $2.2 billion valuation. The Series B deal was led by , and, with participation from other investors including and . The San Francisco-based company develops edge computing and AI infrastructure systems designed for remote and industrial environments. The round brings its total funding to $469 million, .

8. , $200M, fintech: Mercury raised $200 million at a $5.2 billion valuation in a Series D round led by . Returning backers Andreessen Horowitz, , , , and also participated. The San Francisco-based company provides banking and financial workflow software for companies and has now raised about $657 million to date. Its latest round comes amid a broader uptick in fintech funding, including strong investor interest in digital banking platforms serving startups and businesses.

9. , $170M, retail technology: New York-based Radar secured $170 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. The Series B round was led by and, with participating. The company develops AI technology for brick-and-mortar stores that uses overhead RFID sensors, software and analytics to give retailers real-time inventory visibility with item-level tracking accuracy. The company said its platform is deployed in more than 1,400 stores for customers including and . It has raised nearly $310 million to date, .

10. , $150M, wealth management: Farther raised a $150 million Series D led by as investors continue backing platforms modernizing financial advisory services. The San Francisco-based company provides technology-enabled wealth management tools and has raised approximately $268 million to date. Farther didn鈥檛 reveal its valuation with the latest raise, only that it is 鈥渘ow a unicorn.鈥�

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the 91精品 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of May 18-22. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration:

When and his wife were navigating the complex world of fertility treatment, the process was marked by stress and financial strain. But after finally achieving a successful outcome, AlSalim recognized how different his experience was from many others in his position.

Despite the ordeal, he noted, having a child afterward “is much better than a load of people who don’t have anything to show for it.”

The experience sparked a business idea to help others in the same situation his wife and he were in. “My son was 1 week old,” he said, recalling the exact moment the concept took hold.

AlSalim officially registered the company name, , in 2019, but the business’ true inception came later, as the founder refined the idea and sought investors.

Gaia is working on building what AlSalim believes is a fundamentally new category in the . The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning 鈥� trained on millions of anonymized historical data points and fertility outcomes 鈥� to better understand risk and probability for fertility treatment.

The platform analyzes variables such as age, hormone levels, ovarian response, treatment protocols, embryo development and clinical outcomes to direct patients to 鈥渙ptimal鈥� clinics based on their data profiles, and to generate personalized forecasts around fertility success. It also uses AI and machine learning to underwrite personalized outcome-based 鈥渇lexible鈥� financing plans for IVF, egg freezing and embryo transfer procedures.

鈥淲e tell you where to go, we protect your path, we finance your treatment, we support you,鈥� AlSalim said in an interview with 91精品 News. 鈥淣o one else today bundles care, capital and financial protection into a single product.”

And today, the New York-based startup 鈥� led by AlSalim as its sole founder 鈥� tells 91精品 News exclusively that it has secured a $100 million debt facility from to scale its operations across the United States.

The credit facility follows a $14 million Series A round raised in January 2025, led by , that brought Gaia鈥檚 total equity funding to $37 million across three rounds. Other backers include and .

Fertility remains a relatively niche area for healthcare startup investment. Last year, venture investors put $194.8 million toward startups in 91精品鈥檚 fertility categories. Since the peak year of 2021, when $229.6 million went to fertility-related startups globally, annual investment in the sector has ranged between about $100 million and roughly $200 million, .

Treatment with 鈥榦utcome protections built in鈥�

Today, the fertility industry operates almost entirely on a “fee-for-service” model. Patients pay thousands of dollars per individual procedure, regardless of whether that procedure actually results in a baby. If a cycle fails, the patient is left with heartbreak and a depleted bank account.

Gaia flips this dynamic on its head by pricing the probability of success rather than the number of procedures, its founder said.

鈥淲e are not just a financing company,鈥� AlSalim told 91精品 News. 鈥淲e use data in order to create unique plans that are individualized with outcome protections built in.鈥�

For an IVF cycle, which has a nationwide median cost of $22,000, Gaia says it offers complete predictability. If a member’s first IVF cycle fails, Gaia covers the next cycle at no extra cost. For embryo transfers, the plan includes unlimited transfers until a live birth is achieved.

The model works across other endpoints, too. For example, if a 30-year-old woman wants to freeze her eggs, Gaia uses its predictive engine to guarantee a target number of retrieved eggs based on her specific biomarkers. If she does not hit that number in the first round, Gaia funds a second cycle at no extra cost. Patients can choose to pay the fixed cost upfront or use Gaia’s financing to spread the cost over five years with monthly payments.

Closed-loop model

By owning the data and the risk from initial consultation to live birth, Gaia aims to build a closed-loop data asset that it believes will serve as a massive competitive moat.

Its model is resonating. Over the past 15 to 16 months, Gaia has experienced a significant growth inflection, according to AlSalim. The company has surpassed 1,100 memberships, with over 1,000 active members in the U.S., and has partnered with 200 clinic locations across 40 states.

The founder declined to provide hard revenue figures when asked about growth, saying that the company is 鈥渘ow developing a baby every 18 hours鈥� while maintaining a of 85, which is considered 鈥渆xceptional鈥� in the healthcare industry by , creator of the customer loyalty benchmark.

Building a village

To sustain this velocity, Gaia has expanded its distribution channels beyond direct-to-consumer marketing to include local partnerships with acupuncturists and pharmaceutical companies, as well as direct clinic integrations.

Last year, the company launched an enterprise benefit product, marketing and selling directly to employers who want to offer comprehensive, risk-insulated fertility coverage to their workforce.

The corporate product has scaled rapidly, said AlSalim. Gaia鈥檚 enterprise client roster spans diverse sectors 鈥� from tech professionals in Silicon Valley to blue-collar manufacturing workers in Denver.

, managing director and head of U.S. Investments at Viola Credit, said his firm was drawn to Gaia because it believes the startup is addressing 鈥渁 deeply important and underserved problem鈥� with a model that is 鈥渂oth commercially compelling and mission-driven.鈥�

Chen believes that Gaia stands out also because it is not 鈥渟imply a financing product.鈥�

Its approach, he said, 鈥渁ligns incentives across patients, clinics, and financing in a way that feels genuinely differentiated,鈥� he wrote via e-mail, 鈥渁nd we believe it can meaningfully improve access to fertility care.鈥�

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

Defense tech unicorn led the fundraising lineup in a week heavy with rounds for companies focused on applications in the physical world. Anduril鈥檚 $5 billion financing was by far the biggest. Other large rounds went to companies focused on supplying data power, robotics, space tech, biotech, and even strawberries.

1.听, $5B, defense tech: Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries raised another $5 billion in funding at a $61 billion valuation 鈥� double the valuation of $30.5 billion it received less than a year ago. The Series H round, led by and , brings the Costa Mesa, California-based company鈥檚 total raised to date to $11.4 billion, .听听

2.听, $775M, energy: Houston-based VoltaGrid, a provider of mobile natural gas generators for data centers, microgrids and industrial applications, secured $1 billion in strategic investment from and . The investment includes $775 million in capital funding and a $225 million secondary purchase from existing investors.

3.听, $400M, robotics: Palo Alto, California-based Mind Robotics, developer of an AI-enabled industrial robotics platform, picked up $400 million in new financing led by . The round brings total funding to date to more than $1 billion for the startup, which launched in 2025 as a spinout of .

4.听, $275M, space tech: Cowboy Space, a developer of rockets and satellite infrastructure to power and run AI compute in space, closed on $275 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation. led the financing for the San Carlos, California-based startup, which was founded by co-founder .听

5.听, $150M, indoor farming: Oishii, operator of highly automated indoor farms for growing strawberries, raised $150 million in Series C funding led by . Founded in 2016, the Jersey City, New Jersey-headquartered startup has raised $370 million in total funding to date.

6.听, $125M, cybersecurity: San Jose-based Exaforce, developer of an AI-native security operations platform, secured $125 million in Series B funding from backers including , , , 听and听 .

7.听, $122M, biotech: Create Medicines, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup focused on in vivo immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer, closed on $122 million in Series B funding. , , and led the financing.

8.听, $100M, autonomy: Providence, Rhode Island-based HavocAI, a provider of tools for developing military and commercial-grade autonomous systems across sea, air and land, secured $100 million in Series A funding. The round brings total funding to date for the 2-year-old company to $200 million.

9.听, $65M, space tech: Star Catcher, a startup that says it is building the first power grid in space by beaming concentrated solar energy on demand to satellites, picked up $65 million in Series A funding. , and led the financing for the Jacksonville, Florida-based company, which was founded less than two years ago.

10.听, $64M, data center power: GridCare, developer of technology to more efficiently provide power to AI data centers, raised $64 million in Series A funding. led the financing for the Redwood City, California-based startup.听

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• Anduril Raises Another $5B As Defense Tech Startups Shatter Funding Records听

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