Corporate venture arm TDK Ventures chief Nicolas Sauvage is doubling down on the less glamorous side of artificial intelligence. The French executive, who launched the fund in 2019, has already steered $500 million into inference chips, specialized robots and emerging battery chemistries. His most visible win, Groq’s $6.9 billion‑valued inference processor, exemplifies a strategy that looks four years ahead to bottlenecks and backs founders already solving them. Sauvage now watches CPUs, Chinese “vibe manufacturing” and the quest for dexterous machines as the next sources of competitive advantage. Read more →

Anthropic announced Monday that it is forming a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Goldman Sachs to market its AI tools to corporate clients. Hours later, OpenAI disclosed a parallel effort, the Development Company, backed by $4 billion from 19 investors and valued at $10 billion. Both initiatives aim to give alternative asset managers preferred access to AI contracts while providing the labs with capital to expand engineering teams and embed technology directly into customer workflows. Read more →

Sierra, the AI startup founded by former Salesforce co‑CEO Bret Taylor, announced a $950 million financing round led by Tiger Global and GV. The infusion lifts the company’s post‑money valuation above $15 billion and gives it more than $1 billion to pursue its goal of becoming the global standard for AI‑powered customer experiences. Sierra now serves over 40% of the Fortune 50, claims its agents handle billions of interactions, and has accelerated its annual recurring revenue from $100 million to $150 million in just a few months. Read more →

Cerebras Systems announced plans to sell 28 million shares at $115 to $125 each, seeking to raise roughly $3.5 billion and achieve a market valuation of up to $26.6 billion. The AI‑chipmaker’s filing lists a roster of high‑profile investors—including OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, Fidelity, and Tiger Global—many of whom stand to profit from a successful debut. A $1 billion loan from OpenAI, secured by warrants on over 33 million shares, underscores the deep ties between the two firms. If demand holds, the offering could become the largest tech IPO of 2026. Read more →

OpenAI president Greg Brockman told attendees at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent 2026 conference that artificial intelligence now writes roughly 80 percent of the firm’s code. Brockman qualified the number, noting it’s hard to pinpoint the exact share that isn’t AI‑generated. The remark adds to a growing chorus of AI lab leaders citing high productivity numbers, while independent studies question whether such claims translate into measurable gains for software engineering teams. Read more →

Anthropic has given investors just 48 hours to commit to its next fundraising round, which insiders say could bring in about $50 billion and close within two weeks. The company is aiming for a valuation near $900 billion—potentially higher—while gearing up for an IPO later this year. Early backers who invested in 2024 or earlier are sitting out, hoping to cash out when the stock debuts. The capital will fund Anthropic’s expanding compute infrastructure as its revenue run rate climbs toward $40 billion. Read more →

Legora, the Swedish‑born legal‑tech startup, announced a $50 million Series D extension that pushes its post‑money valuation to $5.6 billion. The round, led by Nvidia’s corporate venture arm NVentures, follows a $550 million Series D completed a month earlier and comes as the company reports $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Legora’s rapid growth pits it against rival Harvey, which recently posted an $11 billion valuation, sparking a high‑stakes battle for market share among law firms worldwide. Read more →

SoftBank's $40 billion unsecured bridge loan, used to fund its $30 billion OpenAI investment, is expanding as three major European banks—HSBC, BNP Paribas and Intesa Sanpaolo—enter the syndicate as sub‑underwriters. The loan, originally underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui and MUFG, now has eight committed lenders. With a 12‑month maturity slated for March 2027, the financing underscores creditor confidence in SoftBank’s AI push and the anticipated OpenAI IPO later this year. Read more →

Artificial‑intelligence startup Anthropic is fielding preemptive bids to raise as much as $50 billion, potentially valuing the company at $850‑$900 billion. Sources say the round could total $40‑$50 billion and that investors are eager to commit, even before the firm decides at a May board meeting. Anthropic’s revenue run rate has surged past $30 billion, driven by its Claude coding tools, prompting investors to see untapped growth in sectors like finance and healthcare. The company has not commented on the fundraising talks. Read more →

Redpine, a Stockholm‑based AI data infrastructure startup, announced a €6.8 million funding round led by NordicNinja, bringing its total capital to €9 million. The seed financing, which includes investors from OpenAI, Perplexity, Spotify and other tech founders, will fund Redpine’s expansion into new markets and the growth of its exclusive data partnerships. The company’s headless API lets AI agents access premium, licensed datasets on a token‑based model, positioning it as a potential “Spotify for data” amid rising legal pressure on scraped training material. Read more →

Former DeepMind researcher David Silver has launched Ineffable Intelligence, a new AI startup focused on reinforcement‑learning “superlearners.” The company secured $1.1 billion in seed financing at a $5.1 billion valuation, backed by Lightspeed Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Silver, who built AlphaGo, says the firm will train agents inside simulations to achieve general intelligence without relying on human‑generated data. Investors see the approach as a fresh path amid a market dominated by large‑language models, while Silver stresses safety and alignment as core design goals. Read more →

British AI start‑up Ineffable Intelligence announced a $1.1 billion funding round that values the company at $5.1 billion. Founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, the lab aims to create a “superlearner” that can acquire knowledge and skills through reinforcement learning alone, without relying on human‑generated data. The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners and included investors such as Index Ventures, Google, Nvidia, the British Business Bank and the U.K.’s sovereign AI fund. Silver says any profits will fund high‑impact charities. Read more →

China’s decision to halt Meta’s purchase of AI firm Manus has thrown the deal into limbo, raising fresh uncertainty for both companies’ artificial‑intelligence plans. Manus founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao had already moved most of their staff to Meta’s Singapore office and stripped the startup of Chinese ties. The cancellation could prevent Manus from using Anthropic’s Claude models and marks a setback for Meta’s pivot toward AI after years of investing in the metaverse. Industry observers say the move underscores the growing tech rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Read more →

ComfyUI, the node‑based platform that gives creators fine‑grained control over diffusion‑model outputs, closed a $30 million Series B round led by Craft Ventures. The funding lifts the startup’s valuation to $500 million and brings new investors Pace Capital, Chemistry, and TruArrow on board. Founded as an open‑source project in 2023, ComfyUI now boasts more than four million users across visual effects, advertising, animation and industrial design, positioning it as a critical tool for technical artists seeking precision beyond traditional prompt‑based generators. Read more →