The Word Cloud Is in Our Name Glenn Weinstein, CEO Cloudsmith
Cloudsmith, a Belfast‑based software‑artifact management platform, announced an oversubscribed Series B round in March, raising £18 million (approximately $23 million) from prominent investors. The funding will support the company’s expansion of its fully‑managed solution that secures, stores, and distributes software packages across cloud environments. CEO Glenn Weinstein highlighted the firm’s role in strengthening the software supply chain and its commitment to leveraging Belfast’s growing tech ecosystem. Cloudsmith’s growth underscores the city’s emergence as a European startup hub.
Stipple Launches with $100M for Novel Oncology Targets
Stipple, a new biotech focused on oncology, announced a $100 million Series A financing round to pursue novel, historically undruggable cancer targets. The round was led by top‑tier venture firms and includes strategic commitments from several large pharmaceutical partners. Stipple’s founding team...
Starfish Closes $100M+ Series B
Starfish Space announced a Series B round exceeding $100 million, led by Point72 Ventures and co‑led by Activate Capital and Shield Capital, with participation from several other investors. The capital will fund the company’s first full‑scale Otter mission, expand production capacity,...
Two Boxes Raises $3.2M to Scale AI Returns Platform
Two Boxes, an AI‑powered returns platform, secured $3.2 million in new financing led by Assembly Ventures, bringing its total capital to $13 million. The funding will accelerate product development and push the company deeper into enterprise retail, direct‑to‑consumer and B2B...
Starfish Space Raises More than $100 Million
Starfish Space announced a Series B round that raised over $100 million, led by Point72 Ventures and co‑led by Activate Capital and Shield Capital. The capital will be used to scale production of its Otter line of satellite‑servicing spacecraft and to hire...
Natter Raises $23M to Replace Enterprise Surveys with AI-Moderated Video Conversations
London‑based Natter announced a $23 million Series A round led by Renegade Partners to accelerate its AI‑moderated video conversation platform. The technology replaces traditional employee surveys with seven‑minute video sessions that generate over 1,000 words of structured insight, compared with roughly ten...
Britain’s Innovators Backed with Around £100m of New Investment
The UK government has launched a £100 million (≈ $127 million) annual investment boost by expanding the Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) scheme and doubling limits for the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Venture Capital Trusts (VCT). The reforms quadruple EMI’s asset ceiling to...
GLAAS Raises $5M From Co-Founder Devesh Sachdev
GLAAS, an embedded credit infrastructure platform for MSMEs, secured a $5 million investment from Devesh Sachdev, who also joined as co‑founder and managing director. Sachdev, former founder of Fusion Finance, will help strengthen GLAAS’s in‑house NBFC, Gromor Finance, and expand co‑lending...
Ambienta Backs Plant-Based Dairy Producer The Bridge to Accelerate European Growth
Ambienta has acquired a majority stake in Italian plant‑based dairy specialist The Bridge, marking its second investment from the Small Cap Fund. The Bridge, founded in 1994, generates about 80% of revenue from international markets and operates a fully vertical,...
GridBank Raises $6-Million Seed Round to Monetize the Videos in Your Camera Roll
GridBank, a Montreal‑based startup, closed a $6 million seed round led by StandUp Ventures to build a marketplace for user‑generated video clips. The app lets smartphone owners upload authentic short videos, which brands and ad agencies purchase for organic‑looking marketing campaigns....
Felix Raises $1.7M to Build Hyperautomation for Professional Services
Felix, an AI workflow platform for professional services, announced a $1.7 million pre‑seed round led by XYZ Venture Capital. The funding will accelerate product development for legal, finance and insurance firms. Felix’s deterministic automation helped a New York risk‑management firm clear a...
Liquidity Meets Reality
Claire Madden of Connection Capital says the surge in private‑market secondaries reflects both structural maturation and a cyclical response to constrained exits. She positions secondaries as a portfolio‑management tool that enables rebalancing and exposure to high‑quality assets, but not a...
R230-Million in the Bag for Endeavor’s Third Harvest Fund
Endeavor South Africa closed its Harvest Fund III at R230 million (≈ $12.4 million), after a R190 million (≈ $10.3 million) first close in October 2024. The rules‑based co‑investment vehicle targets Series B and later‑stage technology firms across South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya, deploying capital alongside qualified lead...
Washington Bullish on Spark, Sees ‘Almost Uncapped Upside’ for Venture
Washington’s large public pension system, overseeing more than $230 billion in assets, has completed a three‑year due‑diligence process and announced a bullish stance on Spark, a venture‑capital manager. The fund believes Spark can navigate today’s challenging investment environment and deliver what...
NFuse Raises $2M as Messaging Overtakes B2B Ordering Apps
nFuse, an AI‑driven B2B ordering platform that lets retailers order via WhatsApp, Viber or SMS, secured $2 million from Eleven Ventures and LAUNCHub. The startup claims over 70 percent adoption among enterprise clients, cutting deployment time to eight weeks and driving order...
Kandou AI Raises $225M in Series A Funding
Swiss fabless startup Kandou AI secured a $225 million Series A round led by Maverick Silicon, with SoftBank, Synopsys, Cadence and Alchip participating. The funding will accelerate production of its Copper MIMO (chord signaling) chips that aim to double data‑rate capacity while slashing...
AI Data Centre Startup Firmus Eyes Off Another $725 Million Raise as It Readies to IPO on the ASX
Sydney‑born Firmus Technologies announced a $505 million USD (A$725 million) strategic equity raise led by Coatue with Nvidia participation, lifting its post‑money valuation to roughly $5.3 billion USD (A$8 billion). The funding will accelerate the rollout of its "green AI factories" across the Asia‑Pacific...
Former Tenstorrent Execs Launch AI& to Build Japan’s Full-Stack AI Infrastructure
Former Tenstorrent executives David Bennett and Shimpei Hara have launched AI&, a vertically‑integrated Japanese AI company. The startup secured $50 million in seed funding and $2 billion in infrastructure capital to build a full‑stack AI platform, including data centers, orchestration software, models...
LPs Go Direct for GP Stakes
Institutional limited partners are increasingly interested in bypassing traditional fund vehicles to acquire direct stakes in private‑equity general partners. This trend could reshape the nascent GP‑stakes market by creating a new class of shareholders who own a slice of the...
Emerging Managers Serve up Stakes
Emerging private‑equity managers are increasingly offering ownership stakes in their firms to secure anchor limited‑partner commitments. By selling a minority GP stake, new GPs provide investors with direct exposure to management fees and carried interest. Anchor investors, in turn, gain...
Tradie AI Receptionist Startup Banks $900,000 in Pre-Seed
Australian startup Chime Labs secured $900,000 AUD (~$600,000 USD) in a pre‑seed round led by 500 Global and supported by angel investors. Founded by former Googlers Alexis Griveau and Mathew Pretel, the company offers an AI‑powered receptionist that answers calls...
Fintech VC Triple Bubble Nails $10 Million First Close on Its $50m Fund
Fintech venture fund Triple Bubble announced a $10 million Australian‑dollar first close (≈$6.6 million USD), anchored by Commonwealth Bank’s x15ventures. The fund, founded by Dom Pym, Brian Collins and Judy Anderson‑Firth, targets a $50 million Australian‑dollar final close (≈$33 million USD) by Easter 2028, drawing commitments from fintech founders...
OpenAI Alums Have Been Quietly Investing From a New, Potentially $100M Fund
Zero Shot, a venture fund founded by former OpenAI engineers and prompt experts, closed its first $20 million on a $100 million target. The team—Evan Morikawa, Andrew Mayde, Shawn Jain, Kelly Kovacs and Brett Rounsaville—has already written checks to AI‑focused startups such...
IVWorks Secures $4.5M Funding to Expand ‘reGaN’ Technology Into RF and AI Power Semiconductor Markets
IVWorks announced a $4.5 million financing round, bringing its total capital raised to $33 million, to accelerate deployment of its proprietary reGaN technology. The company will use the funds to scale mass‑production infrastructure and secure its supply chain for GaN epitaxial wafers...
The $4B Bifurcation: Why Digital Health Funding Is Consolidating Around the Mega-Deal
U.S. digital health funding surged to $4.0 billion in Q1 2025, spread across 110 deals with an average size of $36.7 million, the highest since late 2021. Nearly 60% of that capital was captured by just 12 companies securing $100 million‑plus mega deals, including Whoop’s...
ALSO Closes $200M Round
ALSO, a small electric‑vehicle maker, closed a $200 million Series C round and announced a strategic partnership with DoorDash. DoorDash is investing in the round and signed a multi‑year commercial agreement to co‑develop autonomous last‑mile delivery solutions. The financing was led by...
NeuBird AI Secures $19.3 Million
NeuBird AI, a San Francisco‑based developer of agentic AI platforms for production operations, announced an oversubscribed $19.3 million financing round. The round was led by new backer Xora Innovation and featured existing investors Mayfield, StepStone Group, Prosperity7 Ventures, and Microsoft’s M12...
2026 Perspectives in Private Equity: GP Stakes Investing in a Maturing Market
GP‑stake and GP‑M&A activity hit record levels in 2025, with deal volume up 40% year‑on‑year and 164 transactions versus 117 in 2024. Managers are using stake sales to fund seed capital, technology upgrades, talent hires, and to increase their own...
Xoople Raises $130M to Build AI Earth Data Layer
Xoople announced a $130 million Series B round, bringing its total financing to $225 million and cementing its position as the most funded player in the nascent physical‑world intelligence space. After seven years of stealth development, the company will begin commercializing its AI‑ready...
NeuBird AI Closes $19.3M Round Led by Xora Innovation
NeuBird AI announced an oversubscribed $19.3 million funding round led by Xora Innovation, with participation from Mayfield, StepStone Group, Prosperity7 Ventures and Microsoft’s M12 fund. The capital will accelerate product development, global go‑to‑market expansion and broaden access for DevOps, SRE and...
Harshita Arora Joins YC as General Partner
Y Combinator announced that Harshita Arora is joining as a General Partner, after serving as the youngest visiting partner in the accelerator's history. Arora began coding at 13, created the Apple‑featured Crypto Price Tracker app, and later co‑founded AtoB, a...
AI Fundings Double VC Deal Value to $267.2B in Q1 Thanks to OpenAI and Others | Pitchbook/NVCA
In Q1 2026 U.S. venture capital deal value surged to $267.2 billion, nearly doubling the previous quarter’s total. The increase is driven almost entirely by artificial‑intelligence investments, with OpenAI and other generative‑AI firms leading multi‑billion‑dollar rounds. Pitchbook and the NVCA report that...
Spain’s Xoople Raises $130 Million Series B to Map the Earth for AI
Spanish startup Xoople secured $130 million in Series B funding, led by Nazca Capital, to build a satellite constellation delivering high‑precision ground‑truth data for AI models. The company partnered with U.S. defense contractor L3Harris to develop advanced optical sensors for its planned...
China's Syneron Raises $150M for Peptides, Adding to Last Year's $100M
Chinese biotech Syneron Bio announced a $150 million Series B financing round, bringing its total capital raised to $250 million after a $100 million round last year. The funds will be allocated to advance its peptide therapeutic platform, a drug...
Exclusive: Everstone and Others Inject $150 Mn Fresh Capital Into Wingify
Singapore‑based Everstone Capital and existing minority investors have injected roughly $150 million (Rs 1,381 crore) into Wingify through a rights issue, issuing 1.6 million shares at Rs 8,590 each. Everstone, which acquired a majority stake in January 2025, led the round with $135 million, while other...
European Tech Weekly Recap: More than 60 Tech Funding Deals Worth over €1.2B
Last week European tech markets saw more than 60 funding rounds, collectively raising over €1.2 billion (approximately $1.3 billion). Artificial intelligence led the pack with €733.5 million ($800 million) in capital, followed by fintech (€232.6 million) and food tech (€73.7 million). France emerged as the top‑funded...
STACKUP: The Stack's Weekly Tech Startups and Funding Wrap
The Stack’s weekly roundup spotlights a staggering $122 billion capital infusion into OpenAI, dwarfing even late‑stage Series G rounds. Smaller AI‑focused startups—AI SOC, orchestration platforms, and code‑review tools—also made headlines. Additionally, AI development platform Coder announced a $90 million Series C to accelerate growth....
Spacetech Startup SatLeo Labs Raises $2.2 Mn in Seed Round
SatLeo Labs, a spacetech startup focused on thermal satellite data, secured a $2.2 million seed round led by Unicorn India Ventures, bringing its total funding to $5.5 million. The capital will accelerate the development of its TAPAS‑1 thermal payload and expand its...
Exclusive: GoSats Bags $5 Mn To Scale Its Rewards Platform
GoSats, a Bitcoin‑backed rewards startup, secured a $5 million Series A round led by Konvoy, with participation from Y Combinator and Taisu Ventures. The funding will fuel a push to grow its user base from roughly 150,000 to 1 million and broaden its product...
Pinnacle Medicines Adds $89M for Oral Peptides With Properties of Injectable Biologics
Pinnacle Medicines announced an $89 million Series B financing, bringing its total capital to $134 million, to advance an AI‑driven platform that designs orally bioavailable peptide drugs. The startup aims to launch its lead asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease program in human...
OpenAI Is Making Microsoft and Ashton Kutcher Incredibly Rich
Microsoft now owns a 26.79% stake in OpenAI, valued at about $228 billion, after investing $23 billion since 2019. The leaked cap table shows CEO Sam Altman holds no equity, while actor Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures controls a 0.15% share worth roughly $400 million....
OpenAI Secures New Financing
OpenAI closed a massive financing round of $122 billion, valuing the company at $852 billion. The round was anchored by Amazon with a $50 billion commitment, while Nvidia and SoftBank each contributed $30 billion. Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw, MGX, TPG and T. Rowe...
Embattled Startup Delve Has ‘Parted Ways’ with Y Combinator
Delve, a compliance‑automation startup, has been removed from Y Combinator’s portfolio and its page taken down from the accelerator’s website. The split follows a wave of criticism, including an anonymous Substack post accusing Delve of misleading clients and using open‑source...
Nexus Secures $4.3M Seed Round to Scale Enterprise AI Agent Deployment
Nexus, an enterprise AI agent startup, raised $4.3 million in a seed round led by General Catalyst. The funding will help scale its platform that lets non‑technical teams deploy autonomous agents across more than 4,000 tools. Early customers such as Orange...
The AI Gold Rush Is Real — but Great Companies Don’t Need to Mine It
Artificial intelligence now dominates venture capital, accounting for roughly two‑thirds of U.S. VC dollars in 2025, up from about ten percent a decade ago. The surge reflects belief that AI will reshape productivity and competitive dynamics across the economy. Yet...
Chinese Robotics Startup Galaxea AI Raises $290M USD in Series B+ Funding, Valued at $29B USD
Chinese embodied‑intelligence startup Galaxea AI secured roughly $290 million in a Series B+ round, pushing its valuation to about $29 billion. The financing, sourced from industrial investors, long‑term funds and state‑backed capital, follows a $140 million round in February. Galaxea will channel the cash...
AccuQuant Secures $20 Million To Advance AI Infrastructure
AccuQuant announced a $20 million financing round to speed up its AI‑driven financial infrastructure. The capital will fund enhancements to its data‑analysis engines, low‑latency trading execution, and overall platform scalability. Backed by investors experienced in digital assets and fintech, the...
4 Notable Health Tech Funding Announcements in March
In March, four health‑tech firms announced sizable funding rounds, underscoring the sector’s rapid growth. Miami‑based eMed secured $200 million Series A to scale its AI‑driven GLP‑1 program for employers, while New York’s Nitra raised $187 million to enhance AI‑powered administrative automation for practices. Grow...
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Largest Financings Went To Defense, Wearables, Energy And Security
The week’s top U.S. funding rounds featured a $1.75 billion Series D for autonomous‑vessel startup Saronic, pushing its valuation to $9.25 billion. Wearable fitness leader Whoop secured $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation, while nuclear‑energy pioneer Valar Atomics raised $450 million, valuing it at $2 billion....
Moonbounce Launches with $12M to Give Organizations Real-Time Control Over AI Behavior
Moonbounce, an AI control engine founded by a former Meta trust‑and‑safety leader, launched with $12 million in seed funding from Amplify Partners, StepStone Group and angel investors. The platform converts content policies into real‑time, predictable AI behavior, processing over 1 trillion tokens...
