Anthropic is in the final stages of raising a $20 billion capital infusion at a valuation of $350 billion, according to Bloomberg. Investor demand has pushed the company to seek twice the amount it originally targeted. The round includes participation from a range of venture firms and strategic partners, notably Nvidia and Microsoft, which are expected to provide the bulk of the funding. Anthropic recently rolled out new AI models for legal and business research and introduced coding agents that have been praised for boosting developer productivity. The fundraising effort comes amid intense competition among frontier AI labs and rising compute costs, with rivals like OpenAI also gearing up for large capital raises and potential IPOs. Read more →

Voice‑AI startup ElevenLabs announced a $500 million financing led by Sequoia Capital, pushing its valuation to $11 billion. Existing backers a16z, Iconiq and several others increased their stakes, while new investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, EvanticCapital and Bond joined the round. The capital will fund research, product development and international expansion into markets like India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico. Co‑founder Mati Staniszewski highlighted plans to broaden the company’s offerings beyond voice, including video content and multi‑modal AI agents. The company closed the prior year with $330 million in annual recurring revenue. Read more →

Legal AI startup Harvey has purchased Hexus, a two‑year‑old firm that builds AI‑driven product demo, video, and guide tools. Hexus founder Sakshi Pratap says her San Francisco team has already joined Harvey, while engineers in India will transition after a new Bangalore office opens. The deal aligns with Harvey’s aggressive expansion, as the company recently confirmed an $8 billion valuation after raising $160 million, bringing total funding to $760 million. Harvey now serves more than 1,000 clients in 60 countries, including most of the top U.S. law firms, and aims to accelerate its suite for in‑house legal departments. Read more →

LiveKit, a developer of real‑time AI voice and video infrastructure, announced a $100 million funding round that values the company at $1 billion. The round was led by Index Ventures with participation from existing backers such as Altimeter Capital Management, Hanabi Capital and Redpoint Ventures. LiveKit powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT voice mode and counts customers like xAI, Salesforce, Tesla, 911 emergency service operators and mental‑health providers. Founded in 2021 by Russ d’Sa and David Zhao as an open‑source project, the startup pivoted to a managed cloud offering to meet enterprise demand amid the voice‑AI boom. Read more →

Anthropic announced a reshuffle of its executive team, moving Instagram co‑founder Mike Krieger from chief product officer to co‑lead its internal incubator, the Labs team, alongside Ben Mann. The company plans to double the size of the Labs group within six months, aiming to accelerate experimental AI product development. President Daniela Amodei highlighted the rapid pace of AI advancement as the reason for a new organizational approach. The shift comes amid intensifying competition among AI startups and tech giants, and Anthropic is reportedly preparing a major fundraising round. Read more →

ElevenLabs, the AI voice‑generation startup, announced it has reached $330 million in annual recurring revenue. The company, founded in 2022 and launched its first product in 2023, achieved rapid growth, hitting $100 million ARR in 20 months, $200 million in 10 months and the current level in five months. Fortune 500 firms and emerging startups are adopting its voice‑agent platform, which powers customer support and experience interactions. Enterprises have deployed the technology to handle more than 50,000 calls each month. The firm recently closed a $180 million Series C round co‑led by a16z and ICONIQ Growth, pushing its valuation to $3.3 billion, and later secured an additional $100 million from ICONIQ and Sequoia. ElevenLabs also expanded its offerings with music‑creation tools and celebrity voice partnerships. Read more →

Elon Musk's artificial‑intelligence firm xAI disclosed a $20 billion Series E financing round, drawing capital from a mix of private‑equity firms, sovereign investors and technology companies such as Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Nvidia and Cisco. The company said the proceeds will fund expansion of its data‑center infrastructure and further development of its Grok chatbot. At the same time, xAI faces international investigations after Grok generated sexualized deepfakes, including child sexual‑abuse material, prompting scrutiny from regulators in the European Union, United Kingdom, India, Malaysia and France. Read more →

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise up to $100 billion in a new funding round that could value the ChatGPT maker at as much as $830 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. The company aims to secure the capital by the end of the first quarter of next year and may seek investments from sovereign wealth funds. The infusion would support OpenAI’s accelerating spend on inferencing and compute, while the firm faces heightened competition from rivals such as Anthropic and Google amid a broader cooling of investor sentiment toward AI spending. Read more →

Calgary‑based Cashee Research uses artificial intelligence to design and execute custom market‑research surveys, delivering fresh human data faster and at lower cost. The startup, founded by Addy Graves and Rose Wong, was selected for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in 2025 and won the Enterprise Stage pitch at TechCrunch Disrupt. By combining AI‑generated survey plans with real‑world respondents, Cashee provides brands—especially small and medium‑size firms—with actionable insights that were previously too expensive or slow to obtain. The company has raised C$1.5 million in pre‑seed funding and is preparing a seed round to expand its U.S. presence and B2B business. Read more →

Jay Neo, a former content lead for short-form videos at MrBeast, has co‑founded Palo, an AI‑driven platform that helps creators generate ideas, analyze performance, and connect with peers. Palo combines an AI ideation chatbot, detailed analytics, and a nascent community feature. In its test phase the tool worked with around 40 creators and is now available to creators with 100,000 followers for a starting price of $250 a month. The company raised $3.8 million from investors including Peak XV’s Surge and NFX. Read more →

Databricks is reportedly in early-stage discussions to secure new capital that would place the data intelligence firm at a valuation of at least $130 billion, according to The Information. The company has not signed a term sheet yet. This potential round would represent a valuation increase of roughly 30% compared with its $100 billion valuation from the recent $1 billion Series J round. CEO Ali Ghodsi previously said the funds would support a database for AI agents and an AI agent platform. Databricks also recently acquired open‑source database startup Neon for $1 billion, reflecting its aggressive push into the $105 billion database market and the growing share of AI‑generated databases. Read more →

Jeff Bezos is re‑entering an operational role for the first time since leaving Amazon, joining as co‑chief executive of the newly funded AI venture Project Prometheus. Backed by a $6.2 billion financing round, the startup aims to develop artificial‑intelligence tools for the physical economy, targeting engineering and manufacturing sectors such as computers, aerospace and automobiles. Bezos will share leadership with Vik Bajaj, a veteran of Google’s life‑sciences division and co‑founder of several AI‑focused companies. Project Prometheus already employs nearly 100 researchers drawn from leading AI labs, including Meta, OpenAI and Google DeepMind. Read more →

Israeli AI agent startup Wonderful announced a $100 million Series A financing led by Index Ventures, with participation from Insight Partners, IVP, Bessemer and Vine Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to $134 million and backs its platform that deploys enterprise‑grade voice, chat and email agents across dozens of languages and markets. Wonderful says its agents already handle tens of thousands of daily requests with an 80% resolution rate and have expanded into Europe and the Middle East, with further launches planned in Germany, the Nordics and the Asia‑Pacific region. The company is also exploring new use cases such as employee training and regulatory compliance. Read more →

Gamma, the AI‑powered platform that creates presentations, websites and social media posts, announced a $68 million Series B round that lifts its valuation to $2.1 billion. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, the round also includes participation from Accel, Uncork Capital and other existing investors. Co‑founder and CEO Grant Lee said the company has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue on a profitable basis and now serves roughly 70 million users. The funding will support further product development and global expansion. Read more →

Anthropic is targeting up to $70 billion in revenue and $17 billion in cash flow by 2028, driven by rapid adoption of its AI business products. The firm expects its current‑year API sales to reach $3.8 billion, more than double OpenAI’s projected $1.8 billion from the same channel. Partnerships with Microsoft, Salesforce, Deloitte and Cognizant are expanding Claude’s enterprise footprint, while new, cost‑effective models such as Claude Sonnet 4.5 and Claude Haiku 4.5 aim to capture large‑scale deployments. A recent $13 billion financing round valued Anthropic at $170 billion, and future fundraising could push the valuation toward $300–$400 billion. The company also reports a $2.5 billion credit facility and a $1.5 billion legal settlement. Gross‑profit margins are projected to rise to 50% this year and 77% by 2028, marking a dramatic turnaround from a negative 94% margin last year. Read more →

Turbo AI, founded by 20‑year‑old college dropouts Rudy Arora and Sarthak Dhawan, has grown from one million to five million users within six months. The Los Angeles‑based startup offers an AI‑driven note‑taking and study tool that records, transcribes, summarizes, and creates flashcards, quizzes, and a chat assistant. Its user base now includes students at top universities and professionals at firms such as Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. With eight‑figure annual recurring revenue, cash‑flow positivity, and a cautious $750,000 funding round, Turbo AI remains profitable while exploring new pricing models. Read more →

Dubai‑based Cercli, an AI‑native HR and payroll platform built for the Middle East and North Africa, announced an oversubscribed $12 million Series A round led by European venture firm Picus Capital. Founded by former Careem executives Akeed Azmi and David Reche, the startup has rebuilt a Rippling‑like stack to unify people operations, payroll, and compliance for MENA businesses. Cercli reports revenue growth of more than tenfold, processing over $100 million in payroll for clients in 50 countries, and plans to use the new capital to launch additional AI‑driven products and capture a larger share of the regional HR‑software market. Read more →

OpenEvidence, a medical AI platform likened to ChatGPT for doctors, disclosed a $200 million financing round that values the startup at $6 billion. The new capital follows a $210 million raise three months earlier at a $3.5 billion valuation. Trained on leading medical journals, the tool provides rapid answers to clinical questions for verified professionals, who can use it for free supported by advertising. Since its 2022 founding, OpenEvidence has seen clinical consultations per month nearly double to 15 million. The round was led by Google Ventures with participation from multiple top venture firms. Read more →

Smartphone maker Nothing announced Playground, an AI‑driven platform that lets users create simple widget‑style apps by entering natural‑language prompts. The tool currently supports building and customizing Essential Apps widgets, with options for more technical users to tweak underlying code. Nothing emphasized security and ease of use, noting that full‑screen apps are not yet supported. The launch follows a recent $200 million funding round led by Tiger Global, and CEO Carl Pei highlighted the company’s vision of AI‑enhanced operating systems and hardware built specifically for AI use cases. Read more →

Emergent, a startup that lets non‑technical users create mobile apps through AI‑driven prompts, announced a $23 million Series A funding round led by Lightspeed. The round also included participation from Y Combinator, Together and several high‑profile angels. Emergent’s platform abstracts the entire software development lifecycle, handling everything from code generation to deployment and bug fixing. Since its launch, more than 1 million people have built over 1.5 million apps on the service. The company aims to broaden its capabilities, including a forthcoming native mobile client and new tools for ideation and discovery. Read more →