Startups

Mantic Raises $25M After Beating Human Forecasters

London AI startup Mantic raised $25 million in seed funding led by Radical Ventures, with Microsoft’s M12, after its judgmental forecasting system beat all human forecasters at the Metaculus Cup, signaling strong demand from hedge funds, corporates, and governments for medium-term risk and scenario planning. Founded in 2024 by Toby Shevlane and Ben Day, Mantic blends human-style reasoning with backtested historical data to predict geopolitical, economic, and strategic events, targeting scenarios where traditional models struggle.

Factory Raises $200M at $5B Valuation

Factory raised $200M at a $5B valuation on Sept. 15, 2026—more than triple its $1.5B mark from five months earlier—for AI agents across the full software lifecycle.

Impulse Space raises $308M in Series D extension round

Impulse Space raised an additional $308 million in its Series D extension, bringing the round total to $808 million to fund expanded team, manufacturing, and continued development of its in-space mobility systems. The funding, along with recent government contracts, signals growing demand for post-launch spacecraft movement across commercial, civil, and defense customers.

Delos Data raises over $100 million to cut AI data center bottlenecks

Delos Data raised over $100 million on Sep 15, 2026; CEO Ed Doe calls a GPU waiting on the network the most expensive idle asset in a data center.

Temporal valuation more than doubles to $12.55 billion after $550 million round

Temporal raised $550 million at a $12.55 billion valuation, more than doubling from about $5 billion in February, with revenue run rate above $250 million.

Axelera AI Launches Europa, Secures AI Factory Contracts

Axelera AI unveiled Europa, its second-generation AI Processing Unit aimed at enterprise servers and AI factories, and has already secured tens of millions in contracts while building a broad ecosystem with partners like Dell and Supermicro. The company touts a growing 600-plus customer base, strong performance-per-watt, and a strategy to enable production AI in controlled, secure environments amid rising cloud costs and the demand for secure data sovereignty.

Discovery Loop Reportedly Seeks $50 Billion Valuation Weeks After $10 Billion Round

Discovery Loop, the AI startup founded by ex-Google researchers including Jeff Dean, is pursuing a new funding round at about $50 billion valuation, a rapid leap from roughly $10 billion earlier this year as investor demand surges. Terms are not yet confirmed, and there is no guarantee the deal will close at that valuation, with the company operating as a public-benefit corporation.

Pentagon Weighs $5 Billion Fluidstack Loan

The Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital is weighing a roughly $5 billion loan to Fluidstack to bolster the U.S. data-center supply chain and domestic manufacturing for AI infrastructure, rather than funding new data centers, signaling AI computing power as a national-security asset. While terms are not finalized, the move follows executive actions restricting foreign equipment in critical grids and reflects a broader shift toward treating AI infrastructure as strategic defense-capability investment.

Positron AI Raises $875M at $5B Valuation

Positron AI raised $875 million in a two‑tranche Series C that values the company at $5 billion and will fund the tapeout of its Asimov memory‑first chip and the production ramp of Titan, as well as expanding manufacturing for its Atlas system deployed at Oracle Cloud. The round, co-led by NEA, Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Andra Capital, SemiAnalysis Capital, and Jim Clark, will also add new board members and accelerate LPDDR5X‑based memory bandwidth‑focused inference hardware designed for air‑ and liquid‑cooled data centers.

Boring Company Raises $3B, Valuation Hits $23B

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D led by UAE-affiliated investors, valuing the tunnel builder at $23 billion, to accelerate large-scale underground transport deployment in the UAE, including more than 150 kilometers of tunnels as part of the Dubai Loop, with funding also supporting projects in Las Vegas and beyond. Major co-investors include Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Temasek and others, signaling strong strategic backing to convert prototypes into production infrastructure.

DOJ Investigates Nvidia Groq Licensing Deal Over Antitrust Evasion

The U.S. Department of Justice is examining whether Nvidia structured its Groq licensing deal to avoid antitrust review, a probe that follows broader regulatory scrutiny of licensing arrangements in the AI chip sector. The roughly $17–20 billion deal, which included executive hires from Groq, is under scrutiny as regulators weigh whether such licenses functionally imitate acquisitions without triggering merger reviews.

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon who co-founded Ms. magazine, dies at 92

Gloria Steinem, feminist icon and Ms. magazine co-founder, dies at 92

Apple alleges former engineer stole trade secrets for OpenAI, tried to destroy evidence

Apple alleges that Chang Liu downloaded a confidential Apple circuit schematic after leaving for OpenAI, used it to run LTspice simulations, and attempted to destroy evidence, with new forensic findings submitted ahead of expedited discovery in the Northern District of California. The suit names OpenAI, its hardware unit io Products, and Liu (along with Tang Tan), framing a broader trade-secret theft risk amid OpenAI's hardware push and the io Products acquisition.

Canada Funds Xanadu Quantum Manufacturing Initiative

Canada committed CAD 195 million from the Strategic Response Fund to Xanadu Quantum Technologies for Project OPTIMISM to establish advanced quantum-manufacturing capabilities in Canada, including a new 158,000-square-foot facility and potential creation of hundreds of jobs as part of building utility-scale photonic quantum computers; the investment aims to localize production, support a future data center in Toronto, and strengthen national quantum competitiveness with broader industry partnerships.

SoftBank in talks to acquire 1X stake

SoftBank is in talks to acquire a majority stake in humanoid robot maker 1X Technologies at a valuation of about $6 billion, underscoring its ongoing push into AI-enabled home robotics despite earlier funding gaps. The reports from The Information and Reuters, along with context on 1X's NEO product and OpenAI ties, indicate SoftBank’s strategy to broaden its robotics portfolio amid a rising appetite for humanoid tech.

RedBird nears Puck stake, $250M valuation

Puck is in advanced talks with RedBird Capital Partners for a strategic recapitalization valued at about $250 million, with RedBird set to become the leading investor and buy out institutional backers while founders and staff retain their equity and editorial control. The deal aims to accelerate Puck’s growth across politics, entertainment, finance and fashion, following recent expansions such as acquiring Air Mail and amid a backdrop of investor activity in digital news media including Semafor’s funding.

Wrtn Reported Unicorn, Raises 100 Billion Won

Wrtn Technologies raised about 100 billion won ($72 million) in a Series C, valuing the South Korean AI services platform at over 1 trillion won and accelerating its plans for global expansion across its OOC and Crack services, while implementing stronger safeguards for teenage users. The company is seeing rapid overseas revenue growth, with OOC generating substantial monthly income and expectations of 2026 revenue around 200 billion won, underscoring its push toward a global footprint.

River AI Raises $1.1B for Open-Weight AI Full Stack

River AI has raised about $1.1 billion in seed and Series A funding led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC, with strategic investment from NVIDIA and AMD Ventures, and is aiming to create AI that belongs to users rather than labs. Its River API enables LoRA fine-tuning and reinforcement learning on frontier open-weight models, allowing developers to train and deploy personal, continually improving AI while highlighting a multi-billion-dollar valuation in coverage of the round.

Pinewood.AI Reports Possible £545m Offer

Ridgeview Partners’ Ridgeview Bidco has made a non-binding cash offer of £4.48 per Pinewood.AI share (valuing the group at about £545 million) with an optional rollover alternative, and Pinewood’s board has indicated it would be minded to recommend the offer if a firm intention is announced. The deal is being pursued under the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, with significant investor support already expressed through letters of intent, though a firm offer has yet to be confirmed.

Anduril Near $100B Valuation in Talks

Anduril is in early discussions for a new funding round that could push its valuation to about $100 billion, potentially via a two-stage process with a second round at a higher valuation within a year, following a $61 billion round in May 2026 and rapid growth in drones, software, and missiles amid U.S. conflicts. The talks reflect growing investor appetite for defense-tech startups and could place Anduril near Lockheed Martin in value, with company spokespeople noting that no financing decisions have yet been made.

Bain Capital Plans to Acquire Vitabiotics, UK Operations, Meyer Organics Across India, Africa

Bain Capital has agreed to acquire Vitabiotics, including the VB Group with Meyer Organics in India and operations in Africa and Egypt, in a deal reported to range around $850 million to over $1 billion, with the UK business remaining central and no immediate changes to day-to-day operations. The investment will be led by Bain’s Asia Private Equity team to accelerate international growth in markets such as MENA and China, and founder Kartar Lalvani will become Chairman Emeritus on completion.

Etched raises $300M Series C at $10.3B valuation

Etched, a San Jose-based AI chip startup building GPU-free inference processors, raised $300 million in a Series C at a $10.3 billion post-money valuation led by Sequoia with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, SK Hynix, Jane Street, and Diffusion, doubling its previous valuation and signaling rapid scale. The company plans to expand production, deploy facilities near its headquarters, and commercialize its inference hardware to challenge Nvidia in transformer-based AI workloads, with over $1 billion in orders already booked.

Revolut Hits $115B Valuation in Secondary Sale

Revolut’s secondary share sale values the London fintech at about $115 billion, with shares priced at $2,017 and the valuation more than 50% higher than last year, cementing its status as Europe’s most valuable startup. The move follows a full UK banking license, rapid user growth to over 70 million, and continued investor confidence across multiple markets.