Today's Venture Capital Pulse
Sarvam secures $234M Series B, becoming India’s newest AI unicorn
Sarvam announced a $234 million Series B raise that values the Bengaluru‑based startup at $1.5 billion, earning it AI unicorn status. HCLTech led the round with a $150 million strategic investment, while Bessemer Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners also participated.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Sygaldry Technologies raises $139M in seed and Series A round
Kiwi Fund Administration Fintech Caruso Banks $9.3 Million Series A
Caruso, a New Zealand‑born AI‑driven fund‑administration platform, closed a $9.3 million Series A round, valuing the company at $80 million. The round was led by Icehouse Ventures and GD1, with participation from Balmain, a customer‑credit fund manager. The capital will accelerate product development, expand AI‑agent capabilities, and grow the team to over 80 staff across Sydney, Auckland and Dallas. Caruso already powers 80 fund managers overseeing 900 funds and roughly $80 billion in assets.
Anthropic's Check Size Forces VCs to Scale up Funds
Don't see many people talking about this, but basically every venture firm of consequence has had to decide whether they should increase their fund size to meet the minimum check size on the latest Anthropic rounds. May end up as...
Anthropics Rejects Investor Funding at High Valuation
News with squad: @nmasc_ @BTLipschultz @RebeccaTorrenc5 @shiringhaffary Anthropics investors are basically very hopeful of giving them more money at very big valuation and theyre like: no we aren’t in to that right now
Dwelling Platform Dwelly Acquires Eden Harper, Adding 250 London Units
Dwelly, the UK‑based property‑management platform, announced the acquisition of Eden Harper, a south‑west London lettings agency, adding roughly 250 fully managed units to its portfolio. The deal follows Dwelly’s recent £69 million ($87.6 million) funding round and marks the firm’s first entry...
Deteqt Secures AUD 5 Million Seed Funding to Build Chip‑Scale Quantum Magnetometer
Sydney‑based Deteqt closed a AUD 5 million seed round led by Main Sequence, with participation from ATP Fund, BOKA Capital and others, to accelerate its chip‑scale quantum magnetometer. The funding will fund product development, diamond chip manufacturing and hiring, positioning the firm...
Helical Secures $10 Million Seed Round to Launch Virtual AI Lab for Pharma
Helical Ltd., a biotech AI startup, closed a $10 million seed round led by Redalpine Venture Partners, with participation from Gradient, BoxGroup, Frst Capital and several AI CEOs. The funding will accelerate deployment of its virtual AI lab that turns foundation...
Anthropic Attracts Investor Offers at an $800 Billion Valuation
Anthropic PBC is fielding investor overtures that could push its valuation to roughly $800 billion, far above the $350 billion pre‑money figure tied to its February $30 billion fundraising round. The offers, which the company has so far rebuffed, would more than double...
Antes Raises $4.6M to Bridge Legal and Engineering Software
AI startup Antes announced a $4.6 million Series A funding round to develop software that links legal and engineering data for manufacturers. The capital, led by XYZ Ventures with participation from ABC Capital, will accelerate the rollout of its AI‑driven...
Y Combinator Completes Stablecoin Investment in Prediction Markets Startup Totalis
Y Combinator has made its first venture investment entirely in a stablecoin, sending $500,000 USDC to prediction‑market startup Totalis via the Solana blockchain. The on‑chain transfer, executed through Ramp, settled instantly without any banking intermediaries. Totalis builds multi‑leg parlays that...
AI Data Center Startup Fluidstack in Talks for $1B Round at $18B Valuation Months After Hitting $7.5B, Says Report
Fluidstack is in talks to raise a $1 billion round that would value the AI‑focused data‑center startup at $18 billion, more than double its $7.5 billion valuation from months earlier. The company recently secured a $50 billion contract with Anthropic to build custom AI...
British Business Bank Ups Pace for Emerging VC Funds
The British Business Bank announced that its Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) programme will double the speed of capital commitments to emerging venture‑capital funds over the next few years. Mark Sims, head of development equity funds, said the acceleration aims to...
Adcendo Raises $75M to Advance Cancer Drug Pipeline
Adcendo, a Copenhagen‑Boston biotech focused on antibody‑drug conjugates (ADCs), announced a $75 million Series C financing led by Jeito Capital. The capital will accelerate Phase 1 trials for three lead ADC candidates targeting tissue factor, uPARAP, and a preclinical asset. The round attracted...
Lockheed Martin Boosts Venture Fund to $1 B to Accelerate Defense Tech
Lockheed Martin announced a 250% increase in its venture capital arm, raising the fund capacity from $400 million to $1 billion. The expansion is aimed at fast‑tracking emerging technologies such as quantum computing, autonomy and directed energy into the Defense Industrial Base....
OpenAI’s $852 B Valuation Faces Backer Scrutiny as It Shifts Toward Enterprise
OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation is being questioned by several of its early investors as the company redirects its focus to enterprise customers to fend off Anthropic. The debate follows a $122 billion funding round, the largest in Silicon Valley history, and comes...
Rork Announces $15M Seed Round
Rork, an AI-driven platform that lets users create iOS and Android apps via natural language, announced a $15 million seed round. The financing was led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Peak XV, True Ventures, Goodwater, and existing backer a16z...
Bluefish Scoops Up $43M Series B Round
Bluefish, an Agentic Marketing Platform serving Fortune 500 brands, closed a $43 million Series B round, bringing its total financing to $68 million. The round was co‑led by Threshold Ventures and NEA, with participation from Amex Ventures, TIAA Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Bloomberg Beta and...
A $750M Fabless Chip Company, and the Foundry That Makes the Chips
Credo Technology announced a $750 million cash acquisition of Israeli silicon‑photonic fabless startup DustPhotonics, with an earn‑out that could lift total consideration to about $1.3 billion. DustPhotonics’ proprietary L3C (Low‑Loss Laser Coupling) technology remains opaque, as no public loss figures or peer‑reviewed...
OpenGradient Raises $9.5M
OpenGradient announced a $9.5 million funding round to accelerate its decentralized AI compute network. The round was led by a16z crypto with participation from Coinbase Ventures, SV Angel, and a slate of crypto‑focused angels such as Balaji Srinivasan and Illia Polosukhin. OpenGradient’s platform...
nEye.ai Raises $80M to Scale AI Optical Switching
nEye.ai announced an $80 million Series C round, bringing its total capital to $152 million. The funding, led by Sutter Hill Ventures and joined by CapitalG, M12, Micron and others, will fuel a massive scale‑up of its patented SuperSwitch optical circuit switch chip....
Networked Conviction 006
The latest edition of Networked Conviction, an investing journal for paying subscribers, is a curated round‑up of the author’s recent high‑level conversations. Topics span biotech organ‑transplant research, first‑principles manufacturing, AI business‑model tensions, and the premium placed on founder charisma. The...
![Volume 25 [Members Edition]](/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,quality=75,format=auto,fit=cover/https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!P_CJ!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fthecollectivecommunity.substack.com%2Fimg%2Fsubstack.png)
Volume 25 [Members Edition]
The latest Volume 25 members edition spotlights a wave of AI‑focused initiatives and market moves. Anthropic and Andreessen Horowitz unveiled joint fellowships to nurture next‑generation talent, while OpenAI announced the shutdown of its Sora video‑generation model. Notion made headlines by purchasing...
5 Patterns From Two Years of NYC VC Interviews
Lynx’s two‑year Inside VC series distilled five repeatable patterns from dozens of New York‑area venture partners. Founders learn that fundraising is a relationship‑driven, long‑game process, not a one‑off pitch, and that each firm sticks rigidly to its investment thesis. Success...
Financial Risk Management Platform Pillar Raises $20M Seed in Round Led by A16z
Pillar, a financial risk‑management platform for commodity‑driven firms, announced a $20 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total funding to $23 million. The AI‑powered solution automates hedging by ingesting contracts, ERP data, spreadsheets and even WhatsApp messages to continuously...
Pitch Crypto Startup at Vegas Conference for $1M
We’re heading to Las Vegas. On April 27, during Bitcoin Conference week, I’ll be filming Meet the Drapers in partnership with BitGo. This is a chance to pitch on a global stage, get in front of top investors, and compete for up...
The 10 Most Active NYC Venture Capital Firms in Q1 2026
AlleyWatch identified the ten most active New York‑based venture capital firms in Q1 2026, ranking them by the sheer number of investments made in NYC‑headquartered startups. The analysis, current through April 13, excludes accelerators, syndicates and undisclosed rounds, focusing solely on quantity...
Primepoint Closes $10M Seed Round to Advance Intelligence Platform that Reads and Understands Construction Drawings
Primepoint announced a $10 million seed round to scale its AI‑driven construction intelligence platform. The funding came in two tranches—$4 million co‑led by Penny Jar Capital and NextView Ventures, and $6 million led by Navitas Capital with participation from several other investors, including...
AI Triggers SaaS Re‑Rating, Not Collapse – Reassess Now
A lot of software founders are understandably rattled by AI right now. The headlines are loud, buyers are asking different questions, and the criteria for what makes a fundable or sellable business has shifted in a short period of time....
Final Results
Foresight VCT plc reported flat performance for 2025, with a NAV total return of 0.1% and a dividend yield of 16% including a special interim payout. The portfolio’s NAV fell from 82.0p to 71.6p per share after distributing £31.7m in...
Joining Union Square Ventures
The author, a former Anchor founder who sold the podcast platform to Spotify, announces his new role at Union Square Ventures (USV) after years as a friend and limited partner. He highlights USV’s distinctive culture of constant conversation, thesis‑driven investing,...
Modern Relay Raises $3M to Build Shared Infrastructure Layer for AI Agents in the Enterprise
Modern Relay announced a $3 million seed round backed by Point Nine, Emerge, Amino Collective, Common Magic and notable angels. The San‑Francisco‑Barcelona startup is building a shared infrastructure layer that consolidates people, policies, data and decisions so AI agents can operate...
Nava Raises $8.3 Million in Seed Funding to Keep AI Financial Agents From Going Off the Rails
Nava, a startup focused on securing autonomous AI-driven payments, closed an $8.3 million seed round led by Polychain and Archetype. The company proposes an escrow‑based verification layer that holds funds until an AI agent’s proposed transaction aligns with the user’s intent,...
Report: Hospitality Tech Startups Raised More than $1B in the Last Year
Hospitality tech startups raised over $1 billion across 40 companies between April 2025 and March 2026, with property‑management systems (PMS) and AI‑driven platforms attracting the most capital. A three‑month surge from December 2025 to February 2026 produced three mega‑raises—Mews’s $300 million round, Kindred’s $125 million dual rounds,...
Synera Raises $40M to Bring Agentic AI Into Engineering Workflows at NASA, BMW, Airbus, and Hyundai
Synera, a Bremen‑based startup, closed a $40 million Series B round led by Revaia, with Capgemini joining via ISAI Cap Venture. The funding will fuel U.S. expansion and deepen deployments of its agentic AI platform at NASA, BMW, Airbus, Hyundai and other industrial leaders....
Prefix Raises $7.5M to Scale AI-Driven Facility Management Platform
Prefix Maintenance Inc. announced a $7.5 million seed round to expand its AI‑driven facility‑management platform. The startup, founded in 2022, already supports nearly 2,000 locations across 50 restaurant and retail brands, delivering threefold efficiency gains and over 15% cost savings. Funding,...
Canadian Retirement Startup Raises $12 Million
Canadian fintech Common Wealth secured a CAD$12 million (~US$8.8 million) Series A round to accelerate its retirement‑plan platform. The raise builds on a prior CAD$15 million (~US$11 million) venture‑debt facility and targets the 10 million+ private‑sector workers lacking employer‑sponsored plans. By expanding services to small and...
Defense Tech Under Legal Scrutiny: How Regulation Is Reshaping Startup Investments in Europe
European defense technology is experiencing a rapid funding surge, now representing 6.2% of the continent’s venture‑capital market and attracting more than €1 billion (about $1.1 billion) in capital. New EU export‑control rules, the NIS2 directive and the upcoming Cyber Resilience Act have...
Sapient Perception Raises €2M to Give Drones a Wider View
Sapient Perception, a Danish AI sensor startup, secured €2 million (about $2.2 million) in pre‑seed funding led by Balnord and FORWARD.one. The company’s 10K sensor platform captures up to 100 times more ground area than conventional drone cameras while preserving detail, processing data...
AI Satellite Constellation Startup Orbital Gets Funded by A16z to Verify Space-Based Data Center Concept
Orbital Inc., an AI satellite‑constellation startup, closed an undisclosed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Speedrun. The capital will finance its first test mission, Orbital‑1, slated for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in April 2027. The company aims to prove...
U.S. Lost Uranium Enrichment, Needs Domestic Revival
.@ScottNolan started his career as employee 30 at SpaceX. He left to join Founders Fund after Peter Thiel recruited him personally in 2011, and spent the next 12 years backing companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Radiant, and Crusoe Energy. The through line...
Crucible Backs Three College Trading Teams to Launch Startups
random fact - Crucible has backed 3 co-founding teams that bonded over trading in college - @kaledora + @contrarianmarco, Harvard -> @OstiumLabs - @bavaria_kush + @wayne_nelmz, MIT -> @OrnnExchange - @harshavramesh + @cdeshpande17, Vanderbilt -> @PillarHQ LOVE OF THE GAME
Helical Secures $10M to Advance Virtual AI Lab for Pharma Research
Helical, a biotech startup founded in early 2024, announced a $10 million seed round led by redalpine with participation from Gradient, BoxGroup, Frst and AI industry angels. The company’s virtual AI lab combines foundation model outputs with biological validation to create...
Contracted ARR Definitions Vary Wildly Across Startup Pitches
A lot of "Contracted ARR" is being thrown at me in startup pitches these days. And it seems highly inconsistent in definition among founders...
Seeing Friends Profit From Your Startup Bets Feels Amazing
Been investing in startups for ~9 years now Occasionally convinced friends to co-invest alongside me Today I helped one of them get real liquidity from one of those bets I like building & investing, but seeing someone I really care about benefit from...
Primepoint Raises $10M to Scale Construction Intelligence Platform
Primepoint announced a $10 million seed round, split into an initial $4 million and a follow‑on $6 million, led by Penny Jar Capital, NextView Ventures and Navitas Capital. The capital will accelerate its AI‑driven construction intelligence platform that reads drawings, links them to...
Backing PillarHQ to Embed Hedging Across All Organizations
ANOTHER ONE proud to back @PillarHQ as they embed hedging into orgs of all size @harshavramesh @cdeshpande17 are the third team of founders who bonded trading together that we've backed from our Fund I (which is also how @kellyjgreer and i met) financial...
Fluidstack Seeks $1B Raise at $18B Valuation
Fluidstack is in talks to raise about $1B at a target valuation of $18B. Jane Street and former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness in talks about co-leading. SCOOP with @DavidPan_1 @RebeccaTorrenc5 @KatLeighDoherty https://t.co/cNNq2DtVHM
Global Capital Shifts Beyond Silicon Valley – and SA Benefits
Global investors are moving capital beyond traditional US tech hubs, with South Africa emerging as a key destination. The country secured $715 million in venture funding in 2025, the second‑largest in Africa, and total deal volume rose 25% YoY to $4.1 billion...
Half of VC‑Backed Startups Deliver No Investor Returns
“Harvard University released a study in 2012 of venture-backed firms that raised at least $1 million dollars… Fifteen hundred of the businesses failed to deliver any return to the investors.” –Smarter than a #Startup (2019) https://t.co/l2EObkfURN #smallbiz https://t.co/yj75V7id8v
Family Wealth Fuels Speculative Startup Funding
“He just put together a small fund and went to his family… If you’re coming from a family situation where they can afford to cut you a check for a few million dollars for something speculative, then that’s absolutely going...
‘The Next Big Thing’: Newfund Raises €60m to Back Brain Technologies
Paris‑based early‑stage venture capital firm Newfund has closed a €60 million ($65 million) fund dedicated to brain technologies, aiming to back up to 25 European startups with seed‑stage checks of $1‑3 million. The fund is the first Europe‑only VC focused exclusively on neuro‑tech,...