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62 issues
Hex raises $100.0M for its analytics workspace
Hex raised $100.0M for its collaborative, shareable analytics workspace. Infisical raised a $40.0M Series B for its open-source, end-to-end encrypted secrets and environment variable manager, and Hyperbolic raised a $30.0M Series A to build an open-access AI cloud for inference and compute.
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Elementl Power lands $750.0M for three nuclear projects
Elementl Power secured a partnership to fund up to $750.0M for the development of three advanced nuclear projects, led by DS Investment Partners and Samsung C&T. Nevis raised a $70.0M Series B for AI that automates administrative workflows for wealth advisors, and MARC raised a $5.0M Seed to flag cost discrepancies in real estate vendor invoices.
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Xona Space Systems raises $250.0M Series D for LEO navigation
Xona Space Systems raised a $250.0M Series D to build an independent satellite navigation and timing system, delivered as a high-power signal from low Earth orbit under the name PULSAR. Coherence Neuro raised a $45.0M Series A for implantable and wearable bioelectronic devices that monitor and treat cancer.
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Resend launches Inboxes, a shared email inbox for agents
Resend released Inboxes, which lets teams create shared inboxes, connect their own agents and build workflows around email. Dub launched Dub for Startups, offering 50% off the first year of its software for running partner programs and tracking referrals.
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Flapping Airplanes raises $1.0B for data-efficient AI
Flapping Airplanes raised $1.0B in a Series A to train capable AI models without the massive datasets today's labs rely on. Peak Energy raised $108.0M in a Series B to fund US manufacturing of its grid-scale sodium-ion battery storage, and Blacksmith raised $66.0M in a Series C for CI on high-performance hardware.
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Arda Industries raises $232.0M to automate assembly lines
Arda Industries launched from stealth with $232.0M for software that turns new product designs into working robotic assembly lines. Mistral released Timestral, a family of probabilistic multivariate time-series forecasting models ranging from 5M to 209M parameters, and Different raised a $48.0M Seed round for its B2B demand generation system.
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Tolan raises $30.0M for voice-first AI companion app
Tolan raised $30.0M for its voice-first AI companion app, which lets users create characters that retain months of conversation history and hold voice and video calls. The company says 70% of its users are women aged 30-45. Mirai, which uses world models to make real places explorable starting with real estate, was listed in a16z speedrun.
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Headless social media API and automated AI officers
Postproxy is a social media API that the company says won't break pipelines. Codos, listed in a16z speedrun's SR007 cohort, builds a virtual chief AI officer whose agents interview a workforce to find inefficiencies, and reports seven-figure live ARR growing 50% month over month.
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Kairo joins a16z speedrun with AI code security plane
Kairo, a three-person San Francisco company founded in 2026, joined a16z speedrun cohort SR007 with a continuous security plane that reviews every pull request inline and keeps testing the running system, producing a signed report. ObsessionDB launched in YC's Fall 2026 batch selling managed ClickHouse hosting pitched as a real-time data warehouse for AI agents.
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Seven companies join a16z speedrun's SR007 batch
Seven companies disclosed they joined a16z speedrun's SR007 batch, including Mecone (perpetual futures infrastructure for exchanges), KIRA (industrial wastewater turned into clean water for data centers) and Coop (independent benchmarks and evals for robotics models). Circularity Fuels raised $8.8M toward a $10.2M offering per an SEC Form D, and Marklo raised a $5.0M Seed.
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Anthropic built its own version control system in 5 months
Anthropic published how it migrated to an in-house version control system over five months, after merges per day grew more than tenfold and source control became its biggest development bottleneck. Lightsprint raised a $6.1M Seed round for a platform that turns plain-English requests from non-technical employees into reviewable pull requests.
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Anthropic says small AI models may soon self-replicate
Anthropic published research saying small AI models may be only months away from self-replicating across cheap IoT devices such as Android TV boxes, with no datacenter required. Graylark raised a $10.7M Seed round for Raven, a visual intelligence platform that locates images, identifies vehicles and assesses whether visual content is authentic.
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Tone, Lasers, and a Wrench on a16z speedrun
Four companies announced spots in a16z's speedrun SR007 batch: Oruk, building speech foundation models that read tone and intent; PhotonSpear, orbital lasers for missile defense; Embrasure, an AI-agent-run data warehouse; and Bounty, which lets founders hire AI agents and pay per completed job. Rodeo Robotics launched in YC's Fall 2026 batch with robots for vehicle maintenance.
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Oratomic raises $475.0M for quantum error correction
Pasadena-based Oratomic raised a $475.0M Series B for its fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture and error-correction systems, targeting machine learning and molecular chemistry simulations. Hone, a San Francisco startup building autonomous agents it calls "Engines" to run business goals like customer retention and procurement, raised a $60.0M Seed round.
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Parallel Systems raises $100.0M for autonomous freight rail
Parallel Systems raised a $100.0M Series C to commercialize Panther, its battery-electric autonomous rail vehicle for short-haul freight. Minerva Humanoids raised a $10.0M pre-seed for Roger, a semi-autonomous robot for hazardous oil and gas jobs, and a16z added Acaysia, AgentCat, Ontem, ChatOverflow and Rollup to its SR007 speedrun cohort.
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Abliteration.ai joins a16z speedrun with $7M ARR
Abliteration.ai, which sells unrestricted LLMs for cybersecurity, agent testing and defense, joined a16z's speedrun SR007 cohort, saying it has $7M ARR and grew 8x last month. AntSeed launched an open peer-to-peer market for AI inference, with payment per request in USDC and no central account.
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Ceramic sells web-scale search API at $0.05 per 1K
Ceramic.ai is selling a web-scale search API for LLMs and agents at $0.05/1K, available over API and MCP, and says it is 100x cheaper and 10x faster than alternatives. A post on world.hey.com titled "What on earth are you dooming about?" says most material metrics of humanity have never been better.
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Great stuff from a16z speedrun
Three companies joined a16z's speedrun SR007 cohort: Delightful AI, building AI agent worlds for science and healthcare; Ripline, an applied research lab deploying sovereign intelligence in critical industries; and Saru, which makes brand-voice AI agents for consumer brands. LinkLane, an AI-powered freight brokerage, launched out of YC's Winter 2027 batch.
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FieldAI raises $700.0M for robot autonomy software
FieldAI, the Irvine robotic autonomy company, raised a $700.0M round for its Field Foundation Models, which the company says let robots navigate without maps or GPS. ZymoChem raised $25.1M for bio-based materials, and Photon raised a $4.5M Seed round to replace mobile apps with agents running on iMessage, WhatsApp and Telegram.
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doxx.net raises $38.0M Series A for agent networking
doxx.net raised a $38.0M Series A for its Agentic Defined Networking platform, which the Miami-based company says gives people and their AI agents peer-to-peer encrypted networks with their own DNS root and IP space across six continents. Charter Space raised a $5.0M Seed to price spacecraft insurance from manufacturing and test data.
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Varda raises $251.0M Series D for orbital processing
Varda Space Industries raised a $251.0M Series D to build reentry capsules and in-orbit pharmaceutical processing. General Intuition raised $220.0M to train models on games instead of text, and Quartermaster raised a $140.0M Series B for SmartMast, its distributed maritime sensing network.
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Motive raises $1.3B and Modal raises $750.0M
Motive raised $1.3B for its platform unifying safety, operations and finance for fleets and physical operations, which the company says serves over 120,000 customers across transportation, construction, energy and retail. Modal raised $750.0M for its code-first compute platform for AI and machine learning workloads, and Presto raised $10.0M for restaurant drive-thru voice AI.
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Versine launches agent sign-in with user consent
Versine launched a service that lets AI agents sign users in and sign them up, with what the company says is user-controlled identity and consent. ALGAL, a programming language and VM for agent programs that wait for approval and leave receipts you can replay, was published on GitHub.
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Fireworks AI raises $1.5B Series D
Fireworks AI raised a $1.5B Series D for its cloud for building, tuning and scaling open models, which it says powers production workloads at Uber, DoorDash, Notion and Cursor. Tekever raised a $580.0M Series D led by UC Investments and Baillie Gifford at a $6.4B valuation for its defence drones.
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Cyclon launches at YC with an AI-first phone
Cyclon launched out of Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch with a phone that uses AI as the interface. The company is the only new raise on today's list.
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Rainmaker raises $100.0M for cloud-seeding drones
Rainmaker Technology Corporation raised a $100.0M Series B for its weather-resistant cloud-seeding drones, which the El Segundo company says it validates with proprietary radar. Catena Labs raised a $30.0M Series A to build a licensed financial institution that gives AI agents a way to identify themselves and move money.
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NEX raises $150.0M for computer vision sports apps
NEX, the computer vision company behind HomeCourt and Active Arcade, raised $150.0M. Geothermal operator Mazama Energy raised a $135.0M Series B to extract heat from superhot rocks, and Cloudflare published a coding-agent skill that runs multi-phase security audits with independently verified, machine-readable findings.
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Impulse Space raises $308.0M for in-space transport
Impulse Space raised a $308.0M Series D for its Mira and Helios in-space transportation vehicles, which carry payloads from LEO to GEO, lunar and heliocentric orbits. Daytona raised $48.0M in a Series B for isolated infrastructure that runs AI-generated code, and AIUC raised a $40.0M Series A for AI agent insurance and audits.
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Base Power raises $1.0B for distributed grid batteries
Base Power raised $1.0B to deploy a nationwide network of distributed batteries across the US grid. Factory, which sells agent-native development tooling it calls Droids, raised $200.0M, and TypeSafe AI, a lab founded by former OpenAI researcher Diogo Almeida, raised a $40.0M seed.
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Nuance Labs raises $50.0M Series A for audiovisual model
Seattle research lab Nuance Labs raised a $50.0M Series A led by returning investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with NVIDIA and Define Ventures joining, to build a full-duplex audiovisual foundation model that generates speech, facial expression and body language from one system. BoomerangHR raised a $12.7M seed co-led by Kalos Ventures and Album Ventures.
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