NEWSLETTER | PODCAST | NEW MEDIA
Hey readers,
Welcome back to your weekly tech digest, a quick look at the biggest stories shaping the tech world this past week.
Marvell agreed to acquire Lumentum for $115B in an all-stock deal, a bet that AI data centers are moving from copper to optical. It landed in the same week OpenAI closed $11B of a round at a $1.25T valuation, which could reach $20B in total, and Thinking Machines Lab reportedly neared a $5B raise at a $40B valuation.
On the funding front, Shield AI raised $2.5B at a $28.8B valuation, more than double its March price, and agreed to buy radar maker Echodyne for $5.3B. Zipline raised $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation, fal raised a $1.3B Series F at $16B, and CesiumAstro added a $730M Series D at $4.5B.
In Europe, Sequoia is closing its London office, while Creandum closed its largest fund to date at $750M to back AI-driven founders.
This edition covers:
👀 The latest AI news
💰 Top startup news & funding rounds
💸 Latest VC funds
🤝 Acquisitions
🎤 Must-watch interviews from our podcast show
and much more.
👀 The latest AI news
Revolut, the digital bank, closed a secondary share sale at a $115B valuation, led by Glade Brook, Coatue, Durable, T. Rowe Price and Baillie Gifford.
Sequoia announced it would be closing its London office.
Thinking Machines Lab is reportedly closing in on a $5B round at a $40B valuation.
OpenAI closed $11B of a round at a $1.25T valuation, which could reach $20B in total.
Meta bought Conductor, which runs multiple coding agents at once and has over 100,000 users.
OpenAI acquired Pierre Computer to build its Code Storage tool into Codex.
💰 Top startup news & funding rounds
Zipline, the drone delivery company, raised $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation, led by Layer Global, Paradigm and WCM.
fal, the platform for running generative media models, raised a $1.3B Series F at a $16B valuation, led by Bessemer, with NVIDIA.
Shield AI, the AI pilot for military aircraft, raised $2.5B at a $28.8B valuation and agreed to buy Echodyne for $5.3B.
CesiumAstro, the satellite and space-communications maker, raised a $730M Series D at a $4.5B valuation, led by Janus Henderson.
Nooks, the AI sales platform, raised a $500M growth round led by General Catalyst.
Northwood, the ground-station network for space missions, raised a $375M Series C at a $2B valuation, led by a16z and DFJ Growth.
Applied Compute, which helps companies train their own AI models, raised a $350M Series C at a $3.25B valuation, led by Elad Gil.
Onodrim Industries, which buys and scales European defense suppliers, raised a $300M Series A at a $1.3B valuation, led by Lux Capital.
Harbinger, the electric commercial truck maker, raised a $240M Series D led by Tiger Global, Capricorn and Ridgeline.
Sand.ai, the AI video-and-audio generation model, raised a $200M Series A extension at a $1B valuation, led by CoStone Capital.
Laza Medical, which makes ultrasound imaging for heart procedures, raised up to $160M in a Series B led by GE HealthCare.
T-Therapeutics, the cancer and autoimmune drug developer, raised a $133M Series B led by Advent Life Sciences, with Eli Lilly.
Traversal, the AI engineer that fixes production outages, raised a $120M Series B at a $1B valuation, led by Khosla, Kleiner and Redpoint.
Hypersonica, the German hypersonic defense startup, raised a ~$112M Series B led by General Catalyst and Lightspeed.
Ocient, the data platform for very large-scale analytics and AI agents, raised a $100M Series C led by BOKA Capital and OCA Ventures.
Alethio Therapeutics, the blood cancer drug developer, raised a $90M Series A led by RA Capital and Sofinnova.
Future Secure AI, the maker of AI co-workers for companies, raised $80M in convertible notes at a $1.2B valuation from Macquarie.
Pliant, the B2B payments platform, raised an $80M Series C led by Seaya and Speedinvest.
Eloelo, the Indian-language short-drama platform, raised an $80M Series C at a $500M valuation, led by NBCUniversal.
💸 Latest VC funds
Creandum closed its largest fund to date, €668M (about $750M), to back AI-driven founders from pre-seed to Series A.
Flashpoint closed its fourth venture growth fund at $116M to back B2B vertical AI companies from Europe and Israel that are scaling into the US.
NeoSci Ventures raised $54.7M for biotech at the intersection of biology, AI and data.
Evertrue Capital raised $17M for early-stage AI and fintech in the UK and Europe.
Steel Atlas raised $16M for industrial tech, including critical minerals, supply chains and infrastructure.
Robin Capital closed a €15M second fund (about $16.5M) to back AI, robotics and space startups.
🤝 Acquisitions
Marvell agreed to acquire Lumentum for $115B in an all-stock deal at a 23.9% premium, pairing its chips with Lumentum’s lasers and optical transceivers as AI data centers move from copper to optical.
Shield AI agreed to buy radar maker Echodyne for $5.3B, alongside a $2.5B raise that values Shield AI at $28.8B, more than double its March valuation.
Palo Alto Networks is reportedly in talks to buy AI agent security startup Clutch Security for about $500M in cash.
Dropbox agreed to buy Tigris Data for $350M, its biggest acquisition since 2007, to sell S3-compatible storage to AI developers.
🎤 Must-watch interviews from our podcast show
Jim VandeHei, Co-Founder and CEO of Axios and Co-Founder of Politico, joins us to explain why he believes the open web will largely die within 2 to 5 years as LLMs become the main way people get their information, why unique, human-created content will soar in value once everyone has access to Einstein-level AI, and how his Simplify framework helps people delete the busy work that eats up roughly 25% of every week.
Previous episodes include:
Fiverr CEO: The New Rules to Stay Employed in the AI Economy | Micha Kaufman.
Fireworks CEO: AI Startups Are Scaling Into Bankruptcy (And How to Fix It) | Lin Qiao.
Coinbase CTO: The Strategy to Achieve 99% AI Written Code | Rob Witoff.
Canva Co-Founder: AI Is Useless Without This 1 Skill | Cam Adams.
Base44 Founder: The Strategy Behind Building a Million Dollar Company Solo | Maor Shlomo (Base44) & Mark Tluszcz (Wix).
See all previous episodes here 👉
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The Marvell-Lumentum deal landing the same week as Nvidia's board news is quite the pairing. Do you think founders raising this winter will feel the Nvidia story at all, or does it stay a public-markets thing? I'm Shrey, co-founder of CambrianEdge.ai. I write about the product side of AI.