The 10 Biggest Funding Rounds This Week (Oct 19-26, 2026)

DeepSeek's reported round of about $15 billion, relayed by TechCrunch from a Bloomberg report on October 22, 2026, was the biggest funding round Value Add VC tracked between October 19 and October 26, 2026 — and Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E and Flapping Airplanes' $1 billion Series A were the next two.

This ranks the ten largest funding rounds in the Value Add VC intelligence store dated October 19 through October 26, 2026. It covers equity and equity-like financings for private companies and excludes rumored rounds, debt facilities, acquisitions, IPOs and public-company raises. Each amount below links to the article or press release it came from, and a round is dropped from the ranking if its amount has no cited source.

The 10 Biggest Funding Rounds of October 19-26, 2026, Ranked by Amount

DeepSeek's reported $15 billion is first, followed by Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E and Flapping Airplanes' $1 billion Series A. Seven more rounds of $200 million to $550 million fill out the list. Lead investors and valuations appear only where the linked source states them.

Computed from the Value Add VC intelligence store on 2026-10-26: private-company funding rounds announced October 19-26, 2026, ranked by amount, with all ten re-opened and checked against the linked source on 2026-10-27. Round 10 is a four-way tie at $200 million, broken by the highest disclosed valuation.

Value Add VC intelligence store, as of 2026-10-26; each round's source is linked in the table above.

Data

Funding Rounds 2-10, Oct 19-26, 2026 ($M, DeepSeek's $15B omitted for scale)

Item	Value
Tenstorrent	$1.5B
Flapping Airplanes	$1B
Legora	$550M
ASI	$325M
Otter.ai	$320M
Pigment	$250M
Pathos AI	$237M
Warp Sciences	$215M
Whop	$200M

What Was the Biggest Funding Round of the Week of October 19, 2026?

DeepSeek's reported round of about $15 billion, roughly 100 billion yuan, was the largest. TechCrunch relayed the figure from a Bloomberg report two days after the U.S. ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek's technology from their systems. The report named Chinese battery maker CATL and Tencent as potential investors, and the TechCrunch item does not state a valuation for this round.

The same TechCrunch item puts the new figure in context: DeepSeek raised more than $7 billion at a $50 billion valuation in June 2026 and was reportedly seeking another $1.5 billion at a valuation of around $71 billion in July. Because DeepSeek has not announced the round, Value Add VC treats the $15 billion as reported and not confirmed, and the table labels it that way.

Which Funding Rounds This Week Set Valuations Above $5 Billion?

Four rounds in the ranking carried a valuation above $5 billion. Legora's $550 million Series E, announced October 21, valued the legal AI company at $8.8 billion and was led by Atreides Management. TechCrunch notes that Legora's annual recurring revenue now stands above $200 million, up from $100 million when it raised its Series D, and that rival Harvey announced a $550 million raise at a $15.5 billion valuation a month earlier. Our deeper look is in the Legora valuation breakdown.

Flapping Airplanes' $1 billion Series A, co-led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital, was reported at a $6 billion valuation. TechCrunch says the round arrived nine months after the lab's $180 million seed at a $1.5 billion valuation, which means the valuation quadrupled. The Flapping Airplanes valuation post covers the cap table.

Tenstorrent's $1.5 billion Series E, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, carried a $6.2 billion post-money valuation in a Reuters report carried by Investing.com, and Whop's $200 million Series D, led by Sequoia Capital and Shopify Ventures, set a $5.1 billion valuation per Pulse 2.0. Below that tier, Pigment set a $2.3 billion valuation with its $250 million Series E, led by the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, according to the company's release, while ASI and Pathos AI each set $3 billion valuations.

Why Is Otter.ai's $320 Million Not a Typical Equity Round?

Otter.ai took its $320 million from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund, which TechCrunch describes as capital for startups that does not dilute equity and earns its return on the results of marketing spend. That makes the deal a growth-financing arrangement rather than a priced equity round, and no valuation was stated.

The ranking still includes Otter.ai because the money is new capital for the company, but the table marks it non-dilutive so the figure is not compared one-for-one with Series E rounds. TechCrunch also reports, citing PitchBook, that Otter.ai had raised $50 million in total funding before this deal, with its last round in 2021.

Which Rounds Tied at $200 Million This Week?

Four companies announced $200 million rounds between October 19 and October 26, 2026, so the tenth spot is a tie. Whop's $200 million Series D at a $5.1 billion valuation takes the slot because it set the highest valuation of the four. doubleAI raised a $200 million Series A co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, with Dell Technologies Capital and NVIDIA participating, and Calcalist reports the round values the company at more than $1 billion.

Warhound, a Texas defense-technology company conceived by Ben Lamm and Palmer Luckey, emerged from stealth on October 24 with a $200 million seed round, backed by In-Q-Tel, Sequoia Capital, ARK Invest, Franklin Templeton, 8VC and Lux Capital, among others. Pulse 2.0 does not name a lead or a valuation.

Star Therapeutics, a South San Francisco biotech company, raised $200 million in private financing on October 23, co-led by OrbiMed and Janus Henderson Investors, with no valuation stated. With no disclosed valuation, Warhound and Star Therapeutics rank behind Whop and doubleAI.

What Did This Week's Funding Ranking Leave Out?

Arda Industries' $232 million is not on the list because it is a total, not a round. Pulse 2.0 reported that Arda emerged from stealth with $232 million in total funding, made up of a $160 million Series A at a $1.5 billion valuation, co-led by Altimeter, Accel and Khosla Ventures, plus an earlier $72 million seed. The Series A alone is below the cutoff for this week.

The ranking also leaves out acquisitions, IPO filings, debt facilities, rumored raises and financings by public companies such as Nebius and Oracle, even where the dollar figures are larger than anything listed above. The Value Add VC intelligence store holds funding-round records for 83 companies dated October 19-26, 2026, and the full list sits on the funding tracker.

How We Built This Weekly Funding Ranking

The ranking starts from every round in the Value Add VC intelligence store with an announcement date from October 19 through October 26, 2026. We keep funding rounds with a stated amount, remove public-company raises, debt, acquisitions, IPOs and rumored rounds, collapse duplicate records of the same deal, and sort by amount. For all ten we re-opened the cited article or press release on October 27, 2026 and confirmed the amount, round, valuation and lead investors against its text.

Two rows carry a caveat. DeepSeek's figure is a reported number that the company has not announced; TechCrunch says DeepSeek did not respond to its request for comment. Tenstorrent's figures come from a Reuters report as carried by Investing.com, because Reuters' own page was not reachable from our fetcher and we did not find a Tenstorrent press release, so that row rests on one outlet. Dates follow the linked source: ASI's article is dated October 20, one day earlier than the date in our store.

Value Add VC also publishes hand-reconciled Q3 2026 venture-funding figures and a ranked list of 2026 AI rounds. A weekly list like this one is a slice of what the store tracked, not a market total.

What the headline misses

A list ranked by amount mixes very different kinds of disclosure. DeepSeek's $15 billion is a media report with no valuation, Otter.ai's $320 million is non-dilutive growth capital, and Flapping Airplanes' $6 billion valuation is itself labeled reported by TechCrunch. Read the Round and Valuation columns before comparing any two rows, and treat the $19.6 billion combined figure as a sum of the ten rows above, which is mostly DeepSeek's reported round.