ElevenLabs Closes $500M at $11B Valuation to Expand Voice AI Into Multimodal Agents
ElevenLabs announced a $500 million financing round led by Sequoia Capital, lifting its valuation to $11 billion—more than triple the level a year earlier. The round also brought Sequoia partner Andrew Reed onto the board and saw existing investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ increase their stakes. The capital will back accelerated AI research, new product development, and a global expansion into markets including India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico. A key strategic focus is extending the platform beyond pure voice into multimodal and video‑enabled AI agents.
No Agent List Announces $10M in Private Investment to Launch AI-Powered Platform Redefining the Real Estate Space
No Agent List has secured $10 million in private investment ahead of its Spring 2026 launch, positioning the startup to introduce an AI‑driven real‑estate platform. Founded by Richie Delao, the service will give buyers, sellers and vendors direct access to property listings,...
Machina Labs Raises $124M to Scale Manufacturing Infrastructure for Defense and Advanced Mobility
Machina Labs closed a $124 million Series C round to build its first large‑scale Intelligent Factory in the United States. The 200,000‑square‑foot facility will host up to 50 RoboCraftsman robotic cells, enabling rapid, software‑defined production of complex metal structures. Investors include Lockheed...
Hesai and Grab Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate LiDAR Deployment Across Southeast Asia
Hesai Technology and Grab announced a strategic cooperation making Grab the exclusive distributor of Hesai’s LiDAR sensors across Southeast Asia. The deal gives Hesai access to Grab’s extensive sales, support and marketing network, while securing a reliable LiDAR supply for...
Berkeley SkyDeck And UC Berkeley Announce Second Year of Mayfield AI Garage, Expanding Opportunities for Student and Alumni Entrepreneurs
Berkeley SkyDeck and UC Berkeley’s College of Computing have launched the second year of the Mayfield AI Garage, extending the program to recent alumni and idea‑stage founders. The initiative provides non‑dilutive stipends of $25,000 per founder—up to $50,000 per team—alongside...
HighRes and Opentrons Announce Partnership to Launch AI Agent-to-Agent Lab Automation Workflow
HighRes and Opentrons have formed a strategic partnership to create the industry’s first AI agent‑to‑agent laboratory automation workflow, linking software‑driven experiment design directly to physical execution. The integration combines Opentrons’ modular robotic platforms and AI‑enabled protocol tools with HighRes’ orchestration...
U.S. Senate Hearing on Autonomous Vehicles to Include Testimony From Tesla, Waymo
The Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on autonomous vehicles, featuring testimony from Tesla and Waymo executives, the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association chief, and a transportation law professor. Lawmakers aim to address the fragmented state‑by‑state regulatory...
Tensor Ventures And Others Invest $4 Million US in London-Based AppFactor
Tensor Ventures led a $4 million seed round in London‑based AppFactor, joined by Begin Capital and Adara Ventures. The startup’s platform monitors and modernizes legacy enterprise applications in‑operation, eliminating downtime for end users. Deployments are already live at a major UK...
Aya Data Closes $900K Seed Round to Scale AI Products for African Markets
Aya Data secured a $900,000 seed round led by 54Collective, bringing its total financing to $1.15 million. The funding will accelerate AyaGrow, an AI‑driven precision‑agriculture platform, and AyaSpeech, a speech‑to‑speech system for African languages. Founded in 2021, the company already supplies...
Automata Secures $45M Series C to Build the Operating System for AI-Ready Labs
Automata announced a $45 million Series C round led by Dimension, with participation from Danaher Ventures and other investors, and a strategic partnership with Danaher Corporation. The company’s platform combines modular robotics, orchestration software, and a unified data layer to create autonomous,...
SunRobi Becomes First Certified Operator of Cosmic Robotics’ Autonomous Solar Installation Systems
SunRobi, Sunstall’s robotic‑assisted construction arm, became the first certified operator of Cosmic Robotics’ autonomous module‑installation system, Cosmic‑1A, after multiple live utility‑scale deployments across the United States. The certification confirms SunRobi’s ability to embed the robot into end‑to‑end EPC workflows, delivering...
Neuroscale AI and Carahsoft Partner to Modernize Federal Hiring With Secure, AI-Driven Talent Management Solutions
Neuroscale AI has partnered with Carahsoft Technology Corp. to distribute its AI‑driven talent management platforms—ARBI, Athena and Aurora—through SEWP V and ITES‑SW2 contracts to U.S. federal agencies. The collaboration aligns with Executive Order 14170 and the OPM Merit‑Based Hiring Plan,...
University of Ottawa Launches Hub Focused on Medical AI
The University of Ottawa has launched the Ottawa Medical Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (OMARI) to unify research, education, and commercialization of medical AI. Led by Canada Research Chair Khaled El Emam, the institute will connect clinicians, researchers, students, and partner hospitals to...
Death Clock Launches ‘Life Lab’: An AI Health Concierge Democratizing Private-Doctor Level Care For The Mass Market
Death Clock has introduced Life Lab, an AI‑driven health concierge that combines lab testing, medical records, and longevity research to move care from reactive treatment to proactive prevention. The platform partners with more than 4,800 Labcorp, Quest and BioReference locations,...
Outtake Closes $40M Series B Led by ICONIQ to Build the Unified Platform for Digital Trust in the AI Era
Outtake announced a $40 million Series B round led by ICONIQ, with participation from CRV, S32 and a slate of high‑profile tech executives. The funding will accelerate its unified digital‑trust platform that protects enterprises from AI‑driven impersonation and identity abuse. Outtake reported...
China’s LimX Dynamics Raises $200M in Series B Funding for Real-World Embodied Robots
LimX Dynamics announced a $200 million Series B round, drawing institutional and strategic backers such as JD, NIO Capital and SAIC‑linked investors. The capital will accelerate its full‑stack robot strategy, focusing on humanoid hardware, motion‑control foundation models, and the proprietary COSA operating...
Zocks Closes $45M Series B to Accelerate AI-Powered Automation for Financial Advisors
Zocks announced a $45 million Series B round co‑led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and QED Investors, lifting its total capital to $65 million since the March 2025 Series A. The funding will accelerate the rollout of its privacy‑first, agentic AI platform beyond routine admin automation...
Robbyant Open-Sources LingBot-VLA as a “Universal Brain” For Robots
Ant Group’s embodied‑AI unit Robbyant has open‑sourced LingBot‑VLA, a vision‑language‑action model designed as a universal brain for robots. The model, trained on over 20,000 hours of real‑world interaction data, can be adapted to diverse platforms—including Galaxea Dynamics and AgileX robots—with...
Summize Raises $50M for Global Expansion and Advance AI Contract Intelligence
Summize announced a $50 million financing round to accelerate its global expansion and AI‑driven contract lifecycle management platform. The Manchester‑based firm has posted five straight years of over 100% ARR growth, with bookings up 92% and ARR up 97% year‑over‑year in...
NVIDIA and CoreWeave Strengthen Collaboration to Accelerate Buildout of AI Factories
NVIDIA announced a $2 billion investment in CoreWeave to accelerate the construction of more than 5 gigawatts of AI factories by 2030. The partnership deepens alignment across infrastructure, software, and platform layers, with CoreWeave adopting NVIDIA’s upcoming Rubin GPUs, Vera CPUs, and...
Yolando Launches Competitive Intelligence and GEO Platform With $8.5M in Total Cumulative Funding From Drive Capital
Yolando launched commercially with $8.5 million led by Drive Capital, introducing a platform that blends competitive intelligence with Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The service helps brands monitor AI‑generated answer visibility and respond with on‑brand content. Built inside BirdseyePost, the tool reportedly...
Lianhe Sowell International Group Ltd Announces $200M Plan for Industry Robotics Headquarters in the UAE
Lianhe Sowell International Group (Nasdaq:LHSW) announced a $200 million plan to build a specialized industry robotics headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. The facility will combine R&D, manufacturing and global sales, targeting applications such as automotive spray‑painting, hazardous environments, underwater operations...
AI Leaders Diverge on Monetization and Personalization Strategies as Chatbots Evolve
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis cautioned against the rapid rollout of advertising in AI assistants after confirming OpenAI is testing ads within its chatbot. Hassabis said the move surprised him and raised trust concerns....
Deep33 Emerges From Stealth With $150M to Back AI Infrastructure, Quantum and Deep Tech
Deep33 Ventures has emerged from stealth with a $150 million deep‑tech fund, securing a $100 million first close to back AI infrastructure, energy systems, autonomous robotics, and quantum computing. The firm’s thesis centers on physical constraints—power, compute, and data‑center capacity—that increasingly limit...
Robo.ai Partners with The Ghazi Group to Power AI Compute Infrastructure Growth in MENA and Southeast Asia
Robo.ai Inc. has signed a three‑year Gold Reseller agreement with The Ghazi Group to distribute edge inference servers, CPU/GPU systems and AI infrastructure across MENA and selected Southeast Asian markets. The partnership targets the fast‑growing edge AI markets, which analysts...
Study Finds Today’s AI Systems Almost Certainly Lack Consciousness — But The Door Is Not Fully Closed
A new study by Rethink Priorities introduces a Bayesian Digital Consciousness Model that evaluates subjective experience across systems. Applying it to modern large language models, humans, chickens, and the 1960s ELIZA chatbot, the researchers find strong evidence for consciousness in...
H2O.ai Partners with Singapore’s Certis to Deploy AI for Security and Operations
H2O.ai and Singapore’s Certis Group have signed a memorandum of understanding to scale predictive and agentic AI across Certis’ operational environments. The deal merges H2O.ai’s sovereign AI platform with Certis’ Mozart AI orchestration system to deliver real‑time situational awareness, risk...
Dam Secure Announces $4M in Funding to Secure AI-Generated Code for Enterprises
Dam Secure announced a $4 million seed round led by Paladin Capital Group to address security risks from AI‑generated code. The startup’s AI‑native platform detects logic flaws that traditional scanners miss and lets organizations enforce security policies in plain English. Funding...
Following Rapid Growth, Mave Raises $5M to Become the Trusted AI Partner for the Real Estate Industry
Mave, a Canadian AI platform for real‑estate brokerages, closed a $5 million seed round led by Staircase Ventures, with participation from Relay Ventures, N49P and Alate Partners. The capital will fund engineering, product expansion, and the addition of board members and...
Formulary Financial Emerges From Stealth to Reinvent Fund Administration
Formulary Financial has emerged from stealth with a $4.6 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures and backed by several other investors. The startup offers an AI-native fund administration platform that consolidates data, automates workflows, and delivers real‑time reporting across the...
Zipline Surpasses 2 Million Deliveries, Raises More than $600M to Power Next Phase of Growth, and Expands Operations to Houston...
Zipline announced it has completed over two million commercial drone deliveries and secured more than $600 million in new financing, valuing the company at $7.6 billion. The capital will fund autonomous delivery rollouts in Houston and Phoenix in early 2026, with plans...
AI Legal Tech Startup Ivo Raises $55M Series B for Contract Intelligence
Ivo, an AI‑powered contract intelligence startup, closed a $55 million Series B round led by Blackbird, with participation from Costanoa Ventures, Uncork Capital, Fika Ventures, GD1 and Icehouse Ventures. The funding follows a year of explosive growth, including 500% ARR expansion and...
HD Hyundai and Palantir Expand Group-Wide Strategic Partnership
HD Hyundai and Palantir have deepened their alliance, extending the Foundry and Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) across the entire HD Hyundai conglomerate. The partnership, which started in 2021 with HD Hyundai Oilbank, has already produced measurable gains in refinery optimization,...
Week Ahead in AI: GTM Challenges Killing Vertical AI Startups, OpenAI Addresses ‘Capacity Overhang’, Moxi Marlinspike’s AI Privacy-First Chatbot, Plus...
The week ahead spotlights structural pressures on AI firms, from go‑to‑market missteps that threaten vertical AI startups to OpenAI’s warning about a growing capability‑overhang. Thought leaders at the World Economic Forum argue that the next AI super‑cycle will demand distributed,...
Guest Post: Three GTM Challenges Killing Vertical AI Startups in 2026—And Why Market Shaping GTM Solves All of Them
Vertical AI startups face a paradox in 2026: funding exploded 85% to $211 billion while enterprise IT budgets barely grow 2% and consolidate vendors. Traditional SaaS GTM tactics—outbound blasts, demo‑first pitches, and volume‑driven pipelines—no longer win because buyers pick a preliminary...
Conversational AI Functionality Gives Healthcare Providers Easy Access to Patient Feedback Data and Trends
rater8 has introduced AI Insights, a conversational AI feature within its raVE platform, allowing healthcare providers to query patient feedback data using natural language and receive real‑time insights. The tool surfaces sentiment trends, operational risks, performance gaps, and marketing‑ready testimonials...
What Are The Remaining Bottlenecks For Humanoid Robotics? A Physical AI Study Finds The Limits Are Physical, Not Cognitive
A new Physical AI study reveals that humanoid robotics is limited more by physical constraints than by artificial intelligence. The research highlights data scarcity, the sim‑to‑real gap, energy and latency limits, and safety verification as the primary bottlenecks. It argues...
AiMOGA Deploys Robotic Traffic Police Unit at Intersection in China
AiMOGA Robotics has placed its Intelligent Police Unit R001, a humanoid traffic‑policing robot, at a busy intersection in Wuhu, China, transitioning from pilot trials to routine urban use. The robot performs standardized hand signals and behavioral reminders for non‑motorized traffic...
China’s Zoomlion Integrating AI and Embodied-Intelligence Robotics for Intelligent Manufacturing
Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology is rolling out a full‑chain AI system that links construction machinery, smart factories and humanoid robots. The company now operates 12 smart factories and more than 300 production lines, enabling high‑mix, small‑batch output with...
Spain-Based DAO Xmaquina Raises $10M for Early-Stage Robotics Investments
Spain-based DAO Xmaquina has raised more than $10 million through its on‑chain Genesis Auction model, attracting nearly 2,000 contributors ranging from crypto‑focused venture funds to strategic angels. The auctions used uniform pricing and open participation, removing preferential terms typical of traditional...
Bain & Company Launches AI-Focused Venture Ecosystem With Leading Global VC Firms
Bain & Company announced the creation of an AI‑focused venture ecosystem in partnership with several leading global venture‑capital firms. The initiative will combine Bain’s strategic consulting expertise with VC capital to back early‑stage artificial‑intelligence startups. By establishing a dedicated pipeline,...
DataMesh Launches DataMesh Robotics to Enable Industrial Embodied AI Training with Executable Digital Twins
DataMesh has introduced DataMesh Robotics, an embodied AI data product built on its executable industrial digital twin platform. The solution lets robot OEMs train, validate and evaluate robots in dynamic, process‑driven virtual factories, producing synthetic data and measurable reward signals....
Realbotix Demonstrates First Public Embedded AI Conversation Between Two Humanoid Robots
Realbotix Corp. showcased two fully autonomous humanoid robots, Aria and David, holding an unscripted, on‑device conversation for more than two hours at CES 2026. The dialogue spanned English, Spanish, French and German, demonstrating the company’s embedded multilingual AI models without cloud...
AI4Eyes Closes $6.5M CAD in Funding to Advance AI-Driven Eye Care Innovation
AI4Eyes announced the closing of CAD 6.5 million in new capital, comprising a CAD 3.7 million internal financing round and CAD 2.8 million in non‑dilutive funding. The proceeds will fund regulatory approval efforts in Canada and the United States, expand clinical programs, and accelerate product development....
Tuya Smart Launches Aura, an AI Companion Robot Designed for Pets
Tuya Smart introduced Aura, an AI‑powered pet companion robot, at CES 2026, extending its AI cloud and physical AI roadmap. The device blends autonomous navigation, computer vision, sound recognition and generative AI to monitor behavior, infer emotional states and interact through...
1X Says New World Model Allows Humanoid Robot Neo to Learn On Its Own
1X unveiled an updated world model for its humanoid robot Neo, enabling it to translate natural-language prompts into physical actions without task-specific programming. The video-based AI combines internet-scale video data, onboard perception, and an internal dynamics system to plan movements...
Applied Brain Research Closes Seed Funding Round to Accelerate Edge AI Voice Processing
Applied Brain Research (ABR) closed an oversubscribed seed round led by Two Small Fish Ventures, bringing new capital to scale its TSP1 state‑space accelerator chip and edge AI software. The TSP1 delivers full‑vocabulary speech‑to‑text and text‑to‑speech on‑device using less than...
Apella Closes $80M in Series B to Transform the Hospital with Ambient AI and Computer Vision
Apella announced an $80 million Series B round, led by HighlandX and joined by existing and new healthcare investors including Houston Methodist. The capital will fund enterprise‑scale deployments of its ambient AI and computer‑vision platform that automates surgical event tracking and EHR...
Cloudforce Secures $10M Series A From Owl Ventures and Microsoft to Democratize Safe, Equitable AI in Education, Healthcare, and Beyond
Cloudforce announced a $10 million Series A round led by Owl Ventures with strategic participation from Microsoft’s M12 fund. The capital will accelerate scaling of its Azure‑native AI platform nebulaONE, which already supports over 3 million users across more than 90 universities, hospitals...
Chinese Companies Pony.ai and BAIC BJEV Deepen Partnership for Robotaxi Development and Commercialization
Chinese autonomous driving firm Pony.ai and BAIC’s electric‑vehicle arm BJEV have upgraded their strategic partnership to accelerate mass production and commercialization of Level‑4 robotaxi services. The agreement deepens collaboration on vehicle design, fleet operations and lifecycle management, leveraging BAIC BJEV’s...