Every venture round we've covered on Value Add Pulse -- seed through mega-rounds, with the VC take on each.
AIR, founded by two Israeli Unit 8200 veterans, raised $50 million across two seed rounds led by Sequoia and Greenoaks to build a platform that discovers and vets the skills and add-ons AI agents pull into enterprise environments.
AIR, founded by two Israeli intelligence veterans, raised $50 million across two seed rounds to build a firewall that vets the skills and tools AI agents pull from, after finding 17,800 public add-ons linked to untrusted sources.
Polymarket is closing roughly $1 billion in new funding at a $21 billion valuation, with Donald Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital putting in $300 million on top of an earlier $200 million check and Trump Jr. joining the company's advisory board.
Félix, a Miami-based WhatsApp remittance platform for Latino immigrants, raised $200 million -- $87M in equity led by a16z and $113M in debt from General Catalyst -- with its valuation tripling since last year's Series B.
Miami-based WhatsApp remittance platform Felix raised $200 million -- $87 million in equity led by a16z and General Catalyst, plus $113 million in debt -- tripling its valuation into unicorn territory.
Andreessen Horowitz expanded its fifth Growth fund to $8.5 billion just three days after closing a separate $1.1 billion fund dedicated to AI hardware -- roughly $9.6 billion in fresh capital disclosed in a single week.
Proptech venture funding reached $4.53 billion across 231 disclosed rounds in H1 2026 -- still well below pre-pandemic peaks, but investors are increasingly concentrating checks on AI-driven construction and real estate tools.
Empirik, spun out of a 2023 Sequoia incubation, raised $21 million to sell AI-driven infrastructure observability that predicts and prevents outages before they happen, already serving S&P Global and Guardant Health.
Bitcoin surged roughly 23% last week to the $80,000 range on nearly $2 billion of spot ETF inflows -- its strongest week in more than three years, with Solana and XRP posting even bigger gains.
Nvidia's $500B Wall Street platform and TSMC's $64B capex budget together outweigh all global VC raised in H1 2026 -- a scale mismatch that shows where AI's real money is flowing.
One slow fintech week doesn't erase a year where physical AI alone raised $47.4B and global VC hit a record $510B in H1 -- the 'funding is slowing' narrative confuses one category's rough week with the whole market's direction.
Clipto, a profitable AI-powered local file search startup, raised $15 million at a $250 million valuation after reaching $15 million in annual recurring revenue.
Clay, the AI-powered sales and marketing platform, has inked a new round led by Wellington Management at a $7 billion pre-money valuation -- up from $5 billion in January and $3.1 billion a year ago.
Bolt is raising up to $27 million in punitive pay-to-play bridge financing to survive after its valuation collapsed 97% from an $11 billion peak.
Nvidia paused deals under its $36 billion AI Compute Partnership after employees flagged antitrust concerns -- a retreat that says as much about how AI infrastructure gets financed next as the $500B platform it announced weeks earlier.
Physical AI raised $47.4B across 521 deals in H1, defense tech hit $35.6B YTD (+40%), and robotics topped $18.8B YTD -- three category totals that together explain where 2026's record VC wave is actually landing.
Indian startups have raised $8.91 billion across 620-plus rounds in 2026, even as US VC funding overall is up 113.6% year over year -- a reminder India's boom is real but still small next to where AI capital is concentrating.
Boston-based Blue Voice raised $6 million from SignalFire and Las Olas VC for an AI assistant that answers officers' legal and procedural questions against their own department's rules, now deployed across 225 county agencies in 25 states.
Only $389 million closed across 12 fintech deals last week, the slowest pace in over a month -- and WealthTech, the one bright spot, is quietly absorbing a sector-wide funding contraction happening everywhere else in fintech.
Bullish just put $100 million behind a protocol that lends against GPUs the way a bank lends against real estate -- one small piece of a much larger shift toward treating compute capacity itself as collateral.
A16Z's new $1.1 billion Machine Age Fund isn't a diversification bet -- hardware now makes up more than a fifth of the firm's deal flow, and this fund formalizes a shift that's been building for two years.
Anduril at $61 billion, Castelion at $13 billion, True Anomaly at $600 million raised -- the named rounds behind defense tech's $35.6 billion year explain what's actually driving the category better than the aggregate number does.
Global biotech startup investment is tracking to its usual $36 billion to $40 billion range in 2026 despite the AI capital surge, with more than $6 billion of that going to AI-native drug discovery companies.
Icon raised $30 million led by Founders Fund to scale its human-creator ad production platform, with OpenAI and DeepMind executives and NFL running back Saquon Barkley among the angels in the round.
Named August rounds for chips, energy and defense hardware -- Castelion, Etched, Groq and Base Power -- total more than $3.2 billion, versus roughly $1.1 billion for consumer and enterprise AI application startups covered on Pulse the same month.
Nvidia's pause on financing smaller AI clouds, alongside a16z's new $1.1B hardware fund, shows two separate capital markets now underwriting AI: equity chasing the model layer, debt absorbing the risk of the physical buildout.
SoftBank is seeking another $10 billion loan against its OpenAI stake, just three weeks after its first margin loan closed, pushing its OpenAI-linked borrowing past $50 billion for the year.
AI cloud provider Lambda raised $1 billion in short-dated private debt arranged by JP Morgan to purchase chips it will lease to Microsoft, its third nine-figure financing this year ahead of a reported pre-IPO round.
Retro, a friends-only photo sharing app built by two former Instagram engineers, raised a $21 million Series A led by Thrive Capital after roughly 7 million downloads and a subscription-only model.
Rhode Island-based Regent closed a $120 million Series B led by Mare Liberum and AE Industrial Partners to commercialize its all-electric seaglider, a wing-in-ground-effect vessel for coastal routes.
Emerald AI raised an oversubscribed $150 million Series A at a $1.05 billion valuation co-led by Energize Capital and DCVC for software that throttles data center power in response to grid conditions.
Autonomous trucking company Gatik closed a $200 million Series D led by the Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, bringing total funding to roughly $500 million as it targets 100-plus driverless trucks.
Owner, the AI platform that runs websites, ordering, marketing and phone support for restaurants, raised $240 million led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives at a $2.3 billion valuation.
Instinct, a personal AI assistant still in private testing, raised a $250 million Series B led by Index Ventures and Benchmark at a $2.5 billion valuation, up from roughly $50 million four months ago.
Andreessen Horowitz has closed a $1.1 billion Machine Age fund dedicated to chips, memory, cooling, power and robotics -- the hardware underneath AI rather than the software on top of it.
Andreessen Horowitz raised $1.1 billion for the Machine Age Fund, its first vehicle dedicated to AI hardware and infrastructure, targeting chips, memory, networking, robotics and data centers.
Identity-verification company Socure raised $156 million led by Summit Partners at a $5.2 billion valuation and acquired agentic AI startup Fravity, disclosing $364 million of annual recurring revenue growing 63% year over year.
Stability AI raised $76 million in a Series B backed by Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group and Electronic Arts -- the rights holders that spent three years suing generative AI companies now funding one.
Unrivaled, the Miami-based 3-on-3 women's basketball league founded by Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, closed an oversubscribed Series C that pushed its valuation to $650 million ahead of its third season.
Enterprise AI assistant Town is raising at roughly a $1 billion valuation in a round led by Index Ventures, the second personal-assistant startup to reach a billion-dollar mark in a week.
Wrtn Technologies, a Seoul-based AI entertainment and companion-app startup, raised roughly $72 million in a Series C round that values the company north of $870 million, the first Korean AI service startup to cross that mark.
CivilGrid, founded by a former PG&E engineer, raised a $26 million Series A led by Spark Capital to aggregate underground utility, property and environmental data into one map for excavation planning.
Yardstik raised a $30 million Series B led by Harbert Growth Partners to extend identity and fraud checks past the point of hire, bringing its total funding to $65 million.
Instinct, the personal AI assistant built by 23-year-old founder Noah Shinn, has raised $350 million in total including a $250 million Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark at a $2.5 billion valuation.
Legato emerged from stealth with $12 million from Neotribe Ventures, Listen and Village Global to build eyewear with hearing assistance built into the arms, aimed at mild to moderate hearing loss.
AusperBio Therapeutics raised a $120 million Series C led by a strategic investor with RA Capital joining, bringing total funding to $360 million as its lead hepatitis B therapy enters Phase 3.
Capital F closed a $17 million debut fund led by former Credo Beauty CEO Dawn Dobras and founder Margaret Coblentz, writing $250K-$1M checks into women's health, digital commerce and AI trust and safety.
Identity-verification firm Socure raised $156 million at a $5.2 billion valuation and simultaneously acquired agentic fraud-investigation startup Fravity, folding its technology into a new RiskOS_Agents product line.
Breedr raised a $27 million Series B led by Partech's impact fund to expand its cattle-tracking platform, which now covers more than 2 million animals across the US, UK and Australia.
Fashion startup Atorie raised a $9.5 million seed round to sell handbags and apparel made in the same factories as luxury brands at a fraction of the price, betting on dupe culture and post-pandemic sticker shock.
Runable raised a $21 million Series A co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners at a $65 million valuation, betting AI agents should grow businesses rather than just generate software.
SoftBank is in talks to buy a majority stake in 1X Technologies, the OpenAI-backed humanoid robot maker, at a $6 billion valuation, extending Masayoshi Son's robotics buying spree following its Boston Dynamics exit.
A holding company tied to UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan owns 49% of the entity behind World Liberty Financial's planned bank, while the venture seeks a federal charter under the Trump administration.
Transfyr launched with $25 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst to build an observability layer that captures the practical, undocumented details of scientific lab work.
Instinct, a four-month-old AI assistant startup led by 23-year-old Noah Shinn, raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, up fivefold from $500 million just weeks earlier.
Legal tech startups have pulled in more than $7 billion in venture funding over the past two years, and 2026 dealmaking is easing only slightly from an all-time high as Legora and Harvey both go on acquisition sprees.
Datadog shares rose 2.9% after a report that Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora explored acquiring the observability company in spring 2025 when it was valued above $40 billion, talks that never advanced.
Anthropic agreed to pay Nscale $45 billion over six years for AI computing power from a West Virginia data center running Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, its fourth major compute commitment in recent months ahead of a planned IPO.
Capital F, an all-female-led VC firm co-founded by Margaret Coblentz and Dawn Dobras, closed a $17 million debut fund targeting women's health, digital commerce and AI tools, with women making up nearly 85% of its LP base.
Runable, a 15-person Bengaluru startup, raised a $21 million Series A at a $65 million valuation to build AI agents that find customers and run marketing for small businesses after they've built a product.
