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Funding & Deals

6 stories

FUNDING$308M ext. / $5.6B valuation

Impulse Space Adds $308M, Valuation Jumps To $5.6B

Impulse Space Adds $308M, Valuation Jumps To $5.6B

Impulse Space closed a $308 million Series D extension at a $5.6 billion valuation, growing its Series D to $808 million total as demand for in-space transportation outpaces the company's launch manifest.

The extension prices Impulse Space at $5.6B, up from $4.26B for the original $500M Series D in June -- a roughly 31% markup in three months without a new lead investor changing the round.

FUNDING$114M Series D / $1.18B valuation

Manufacturing AI Startup CADDi Reaches Unicorn Status

Manufacturing AI Startup CADDi Reaches Unicorn Status

CADDi raised $114 million in a Series D round that values the Chicago- and Tokyo-based manufacturing data platform at $1.18 billion, officially making it a unicorn as it pushes further into North America.

CADDi's dual Chicago-Tokyo headquarters structure and Salesforce Ventures' participation signal the company is positioning for a North American enterprise push, not just serving its original Japanese manufacturing base.

Sling Banks $123M To Push Oral Thyroid Eye Disease Pill

FUNDING$123M Series C

Sling Banks $123M To Push Oral Thyroid Eye Disease Pill

Sling Therapeutics closed a $123 million Series C led by Forbion to fund a Phase 3 trial of linsitinib, an oral pill positioned as a more convenient alternative to injectable treatments for thyroid eye disease.

Linsitinib would be the first oral small-molecule IGF-1R inhibitor for thyroid eye disease, competing against an entirely injectable/IV standard of care -- a genuine convenience differentiation, not just a me-too formulation.

FUNDING$53M extension / $85M total

Vishal Sikka's Hang Ten Adds $53M, $85M Total In 4 Months

Vishal Sikka's Hang Ten Adds $53M, $85M Total In 4 Months

Vishal Sikka's four-month-old enterprise AI startup Hang Ten Systems has raised $85 million total after a $53 million extension led by Temasek's Xora.

Hang Ten Systems, founded four months ago by former Infosys and SAP CEO Vishal Sikka, raised another $53 million just five weeks after its initial $32 million seed, bringing total funding to $85 million.

FUNDING· Sep 17, 2026

D-Robotics Closes $400M Series C For Robot Chips

FUNDING$400M Series C

D-Robotics Closes $400M Series C For Robot Chips

Hong Kong-based D-Robotics closed a $400 million Series C led by Mirae Asset to expand its Sunrise chip line and software platform for AI robots.

D-Robotics closed a $400 million Series C led by Mirae Asset, with Meituan and a mix of strategic, government-backed and financial investors participating.

FUNDING· Sep 17, 2026

OpenAI, Anthropic Add Nearly $3 Trillion In One Week

FUNDING

OpenAI, Anthropic Add Nearly $3 Trillion In One Week

OpenAI's prospective $1.5T round and Anthropic's prospective $2T IPO would together add close to $1.7 trillion in paper valuation versus their last priced rounds -- in the same week.

OpenAI is negotiating a private round at up to $1.5 trillion, up from $730 billion in March -- a $770 billion jump in six months.

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AI & Technology

6 stories

OpenAI Starts Testing Ads-As-Agents Inside ChatGPT

OpenAI began piloting 'Sponsored Agents' in ChatGPT, letting users click an ad and continue chatting with a business-run agent inside the same conversation, with Angi among the first advertisers testing it.

This is OpenAI's most concrete monetization mechanism beyond subscriptions and API revenue to date, converting ChatGPT's conversational interface itself into ad inventory rather than bolting banner ads onto results.

Ex-OpenAI Researcher's TypeSafe AI Exits Stealth With $40M

AI$40M seed

Ex-OpenAI Researcher's TypeSafe AI Exits Stealth With $40M

TypeSafe AI emerged from stealth with $40 million in seed funding led by DCVC, founded by a co-inventor of RLHF building machine-native, composable AI meant to be embedded directly into software rather than accessed as a chat interface.

Founder Diogo Almeida co-invented RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback), the core technique behind ChatGPT's alignment approach, giving the new lab unusually strong technical credibility for a seed-stage company.

AI$290M / $1.5B valuation

ByteDance Spins Out AI Drug Unit Anew Labs At $1.5B

ByteDance Spins Out AI Drug Unit Anew Labs At $1.5B

ByteDance closed a $290 million funding round for Anew Labs, its newly spun-off AI drug discovery unit, at a $1.5 billion valuation, with the TikTok parent retaining 56% ownership.

ByteDance retaining 56% ownership after the round shows this is a strategic spin-out designed to bring in outside capital and expertise while keeping the parent company in control, not a clean divestiture.

Anthropic Merges Claude Chat And Cowork Into 'One Claude'

Anthropic began rolling out a unified 'one Claude' interface that merges chat, Cowork and Claude Design into a single product, alongside new Claude Docs and Claude Slides tools that take direct aim at Google Workspace.

Merging chat, Cowork and Design into one interface removes the mode-switching friction that has been a common complaint about agentic AI products, betting that automatic routing beats manual tool selection.

Google Opens Smart Homes To Claude And Other AI Agents

Google is rolling out Home MCP, letting any AI agent that supports Model Context Protocol -- including Anthropic's Claude -- control devices and camera history in Google Home.

AIAscend 960DT, Q1 2027 launch

Google Home now supports Model Context Protocol, letting third-party AI agents -- including Anthropic's Claude, open-source agents OpenClaw and Hermes, and Google's own Antigravity coding platform -- access and control connected devices.

AI· Sep 17, 2026

Huawei Speeds Up AI Chip Launch To Challenge Nvidia

Huawei Speeds Up AI Chip Launch To Challenge Nvidia

Huawei pulled forward the launch of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip to early 2027, three quarters ahead of schedule, as China pushes to close the AI compute gap with Nvidia.

Huawei moved the launch of its next-generation Ascend 960DT AI chip up to Q1 2027 from a planned Q3 2027, announced Thursday at its Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai.

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IPO Watch

6 stories

Dow Sheds 630 Points On Fed Hike, Futures Rally Next Day

IPODow -630 pts / -1.2%

Dow Sheds 630 Points On Fed Hike, Futures Rally Next Day

The Dow fell more than 630 points and the S&P 500 slipped 0.5% the day the Fed hiked rates, before futures pointed to a rebound the following morning -- a whipsaw that left AI and chip stocks especially exposed.

Financial-services names led the Dow's decline, a sector especially sensitive to the path of rates, while the Nasdaq's roughly flat close shows tech investors had already partly priced in Wednesday's hike.

IPO>5%, highest since July 2007

10-Year Treasury Yield Tops 5%, Highest Since 2007

10-Year Treasury Yield Tops 5%, Highest Since 2007

The 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 5% ahead of the Fed's rate decision, its highest level since July 2007, as a global bond selloff intensified on energy prices, inflation risk and fiscal concerns.

A 10-year yield above 5% directly raises the discount rate used to value any startup's or public company's future cash flows, compressing multiples most for long-duration growth and pre-revenue AI names.

SpaceX Targets Sept 22 For Starship's First Orbital Flight

IPO

SpaceX Targets Sept 22 For Starship's First Orbital Flight

SpaceX has set September 22 for Starship's first full orbital flight attempt, the newly public company's highest-stakes technical milestone since its record-breaking June IPO.

This is Starship's first attempt at a genuine orbital flight rather than the earlier suborbital test-flight program, a substantially higher technical bar involving orbital insertion, on-orbit operations and reentry.

AI Trade Whipsaws As Amodei Essay, Fed Hike Collide In One Week

IPO

AI Trade Whipsaws As Amodei Essay, Fed Hike Collide In One Week

Chip and data-center stocks fell after Amodei's AI-slowdown essay Monday, then again after Wednesday's Fed hike, even as individual names like Semtech and AMD posted double-digit gains on company-specific earnings news.

Two unrelated shocks -- an AI-safety essay and a monetary-policy decision -- hit the same basket of stocks within five trading days, making it unusually hard to attribute any single move to a specific cause.

2026's IPO Count Trails 2025, But Mega-Deals Dominate

IPO238 IPOs YTD, -4% YoY

2026's IPO Count Trails 2025, But Mega-Deals Dominate

238 IPOs have priced on U.S. markets in 2026 through mid-September, down about 4% from the same point in 2025 -- even as SpaceX's $2.1 trillion listing alone outraised the last two years of U.S. IPOs combined.

A falling deal count alongside record dollar volume means 2026's IPO market is increasingly winner-take-most -- a handful of mega-deals are generating headlines while the broader listing pipeline stays thinner than 2025's.

IPONVDA +106% YoY revenue

Nvidia, Oracle Earnings Show AI Infrastructure Demand Intact

Nvidia, Oracle Earnings Show AI Infrastructure Demand Intact

Nvidia's Q2 revenue jumped 106% and Oracle's cloud infrastructure revenue grew 121% with GPU utilization near 98% -- the clearest evidence yet that AI infrastructure spending hasn't slowed despite a volatile week for the stocks.