Modal Labs, an AI inference infrastructure startup, is in early discussions with venture capital firms about a new financing round that could value the company at roughly $2.5 billion. If completed, the round would more than double the $1.1 billion valuation reported less than five months earlier. The company’s annualized revenue run rate is about $50 million. Co‑founder and CEO Erik Bernhardsson said the conversations are general and not an active fundraising effort. Existing backers include Lux Capital and Redpoint Ventures, while General Catalyst is reportedly considering leading the round. Read more →

Resolve AI, a startup that automates system reliability engineering, announced a $125 million Series A round that values the company at $1 billion. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and included existing investors Greylock Partners, Unusual Ventures, Artisanal Ventures, and A*. Co‑founders Spiros Xanthos and Mayank Agarwal, former Splunk executives, bring experience from their earlier venture Omnition, which Splunk acquired in 2019. The funding positions Resolve AI at the forefront of the emerging AI SRE category, alongside peers such as Traversal. Read more →

Modelence, a California‑based startup that offers an all‑in‑one framework for building AI‑enhanced applications, announced a $3 million seed investment led by Y Combinator. The funding will support the company’s effort to simplify the complex web of services—authentication, databases, hosting, and LLM observability—that developers must stitch together when using generative AI tools. Modelence’s toolkit, built on TypeScript, aims to reduce friction by handling core infrastructure tasks and providing a low‑code app builder, positioning the firm to capture a growing market of developers seeking smoother, more reliable AI‑driven development pipelines. Read more →

LMArena, a crowdsourced AI comparison platform, secured $150 million in a Series A round, valuing the company at $1.7 billion. Backed by Felicis, UC Investments and leading venture firms, the funding will expand its commercial AI Evaluation service, which provides enterprises with real‑world, human‑anchored model rankings. By letting users compare anonymized responses and vote for the better answer, LMArena offers a dynamic alternative to static benchmarks. The approach has attracted both praise for delivering trust signals and criticism over potential bias and manipulation, highlighting the growing demand for richer AI assessment tools as models proliferate. Read more →

SoftBank Group and Nvidia are reportedly negotiating a joint investment exceeding $1 billion in Skild AI, a robotics‑software startup valued at $14 billion. The company, which last raised $500 million at a $4.7 billion valuation, focuses on a robot‑agnostic foundation model rather than proprietary hardware. Skild AI recently unveiled its general‑purpose robot model, Skild Brain, and has secured partnerships with LG CNS and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. The move reflects growing investor interest in AI‑driven robotics, following large funding rounds for peers such as Physical Intelligence, Figure, and 1X. Read more →

Amazon Web Services announced a program that gives qualified early‑stage startups a free year of credits for its AI coding assistant, Kiro Pro+. The offer, unveiled by AWS CEO Matt Garman at the re:Invent conference, targets U.S. startups that have secured funding from pre‑seed to Series B and meet specific geographic criteria. Eligible companies can request credits for up to 100 users, with applications due by the end of the year. Read more →

Europe’s AI startups are losing ground to the United States as venture capital in the EU remains a modest share of global funding. Despite strong household savings, European investors are cautious, slow, and risk‑averse, often spending weeks on diligence and hesitating when valuations rise. This conservatism, cultural vacation gaps, and a lack of deep‑tech expertise have left European AI firms under‑funded, turning the continent into a feeder market for U.S. companies. Industry voices call for more agile, angel‑like investment approaches to retain talent and capitalize on Europe’s research base. Read more →

Swedish AI coding startup Lovable announced that its annual recurring revenue has reached $200 million, a figure it achieved within four months of surpassing $100 million. CEO Anton Osika credited the decision to remain in Europe, rather than relocate to Silicon Valley, as a key factor in the company’s rapid growth. The firm leveraged strong European talent, recruited engineers from Silicon Valley firms, and benefited from an active open‑source community. Lovable’s latest $200 million Series A round, led by Accel, valued the company at $1.8 billion, underscoring investor confidence in its European‑centric strategy. Read more →

WisdomAI, the AI data analytics startup founded by former Rubrik executives, has closed a $50 million Series A funding round led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from Nvidia’s venture arm. The company’s platform lets business users ask natural‑language questions of structured, unstructured, and “dirty” data, using large language models only to generate database queries. Since its launch, WisdomAI has added roughly 40 enterprise customers—including Descope, ConocoPhillips, Cisco and Patreon—and introduced an agentic feature that proactively notifies users of important data changes. Read more →

California startup Subtle Computing has developed a compact, low‑latency voice‑isolation model that dramatically improves speech recognition for AI applications in noisy settings. By tailoring models to specific device acoustics and preserving user voice characteristics, the company claims an order‑of‑magnitude performance gain over generic solutions. The technology runs on devices with just a few megabytes of memory and 100 ms latency, and it has earned a spot in Qualcomm’s voice and music extension program. Backed by $6 million in seed funding, Subtle Computing is positioning itself as a key enabler for consumer, automotive, and hardware partners seeking reliable voice AI experiences. Read more →

Mappa, founded by Sarah Lucena, uses AI to analyze voice patterns and assess candidate traits such as communication style, empathy, and confidence. The startup, which has raised a seed round led by Tim Draper’s firm, reports that hires made through its platform have a turnover rate of just 2%, far below the industry average. With more than 130 U.S. customers and over 3,000 hires, Mappa is a top‑20 finalist in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, showcasing its technology to investors and enterprises alike. Read more →

AI startup Mem0 has raised $24 million in a funding round led by Basis Set Ventures, with participation from Peak XV, Y Combinator, and other investors. The company offers a model‑agnostic memory framework that lets developers store, retrieve, and evolve user data across large language models and applications. Mem0’s open‑source API has garnered over 41,000 GitHub stars and more than 13 million Python package downloads, while its cloud service serves over 80,000 developers and processes hundreds of millions of API calls. The startup positions itself as a neutral, interoperable memory layer for the growing AI ecosystem. Read more →

Startup Anything, founded by former Google engineers Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, announced an $11 million financing round that values the company at $100 million. The San Francisco‑based firm offers an AI‑driven platform that lets non‑technical users create complete web and mobile applications, handling everything from databases to payment processing. Within two weeks of launch the service recorded $2 million in annualized run rate, and early adopters have already published functional apps to the App Store, some of which are generating revenue. Investors include Footwork, Uncork, Bessemer Venture Partners and M13, reflecting strong confidence in the company’s end‑to‑end approach to vibe‑coding. Read more →

Eight venture capital and private equity firms from the United States and India—including Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, and Premji Invest—have formed a coalition called the India Deep Tech Investment Alliance. The group pledged more than $1 billion over the next decade to back Indian‑domiciled deep‑tech startups, aligning with the Indian government’s new research, development and innovation (RDI) scheme. Members will provide capital, mentorship and network access while coordinating on pipeline development and co‑investment opportunities. The alliance aims to strengthen U.S.–India tech ties and accelerate growth in sectors such as AI, semiconductors, space, quantum, robotics, biotech, energy and climate tech. Read more →

Replit announced a $250 million financing round that lifts its valuation to $3 billion. The round was led by Prysm Capital with participation from Amex Ventures and Google’s AI Futures Fund, while earlier backers such as Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and Coatue also took part. The company reports an annualized revenue surge from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year, surpassing the $100 million ARR reported in June. Replit’s deep ties to Google Cloud and its recent inclusion on Microsoft Azure highlight its expanding platform ecosystem. Read more →

Venture capitalists are pouring record funding into robotics startups, with investors committing $6 billion in the first seven months of 2025. The surge follows key catalysts such as Amazon’s 2013 acquisition of Kiva Systems, declining hardware costs, and advances in AI. Partners at firms like Eclipse Ventures, Bee Partners, and Cybernetix Ventures highlight how a decade of trial and error has clarified market demand across manufacturing, warehousing, construction, healthcare, and elder‑care. While consumer‑focused robots remain a challenge, investors see strong growth potential in industrial and vertical‑specific applications. Read more →

Venture capital in Europe is pouring into artificial intelligence while women‑focused health technology—femtech—struggles to attract funding. The AI boom has led to a sharp decline in femtech investment, leaving startups that address endometriosis, menopause, fertility and maternal health under‑funded. Industry leaders warn that this imbalance could widen health gaps for women and hinder Europe's historical leadership in health innovation. Calls are growing for investors and policymakers to rebalance capital toward femtech, ensuring that women’s health receives the attention and resources it needs alongside AI development. Read more →

MicroFactory, a San Francisco startup founded by Igor Kulakov and Viktor Petrenko, has introduced a compact, tabletop manufacturing system that fits in a dog‑crate‑sized enclosure. The device houses two robotic arms and can be taught tasks through direct human guidance as well as AI‑driven learning. The founders, drawing on their experience running a lighting‑equipment business, designed the system to simplify precision work such as circuit‑board assembly and cable routing. With hundreds of pre‑orders, a $1.5 million pre‑seed round that values the company at $30 million, and plans to ship units within months, MicroFactory aims to scale production dramatically in its first year. Read more →

Investors who once rushed into any startup that mentioned artificial intelligence are now scrutinizing claims more closely. The practice of exaggerating AI capabilities—known as AI‑washing—is prompting venture capitalists to seek concrete proof of product performance and market fit. Companies that demonstrate real value, especially in tightly regulated sectors, are attracting capital despite a broader slowdown in AI‑driven funding. Gradient Labs, a customer‑service platform built for regulated industries, illustrates how focused product development and strong investor relationships can secure a successful Series A round without relying on hype. Read more →

Eight venture capital and private equity firms from the United States and India—including Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, and Premji Invest—have formed a coalition called the India Deep Tech Investment Alliance. The group pledged more than $1 billion over the next decade to back Indian‑domiciled deep‑tech startups, aligning with the Indian government’s new research, development and innovation (RDI) scheme. Members will provide capital, mentorship and network access while coordinating on pipeline development and co‑investment opportunities. The alliance aims to strengthen U.S.–India tech ties and accelerate growth in sectors such as AI, semiconductors, space, quantum, robotics, biotech, energy and climate tech. Read more →