A decade ago, Espahbodi co-founded aerospace and defense startup accelerator and moved back to the U.S. to expand it. On the advice of friends at , he opened an office in El Segundo, California, near , just as more alumni of that company were leaving to launch hard-tech startups of their own and next-generation defense startups including were emerging.

Espahbodi eventually sold his stake in Starburst and launched , which invests in companies spanning industrial infrastructure, manufacturing, energy and water desalination. The firm has backed 14 companies since making its first investment in January 2023.

He also advises federal agencies on working with nontraditional, venture-backed companies. In an interview with ���ϳԹ� News, he discusses how AI is changing hardware economics, why software investors are rushing into industrial technology, and what he believes many of them misunderstand about the sector.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

���ϳԹ� News: What led you to leave Starburst and launch Generational Partners?

Espahbodi: About four years ago, I noticed that my friends from SpaceX were leaving the space vertical and moving horizontally across physical industries. I reached an inflection point: I didn’t want to remain locked into the space sector. I wanted to follow my friends.

I sold my equity in the accelerator, and part of the investment team left with me to start Generational Partners. For the past four years, we’ve invested in what you might call the SpaceX-mafia and hard-tech sectors — anything involving industrial infrastructure, manufacturing, energy or water desalination.

We made our first investment in January 2023, in a North Dakota-based drone company. It was a trial by fire and an opportunity to prove the thesis. We’ve invested in 14 companies since then.

You were already investing in physical, safety-critical industries before the generative AI boom. Has AI materially changed where you invest, or has it mainly reinforced your existing thesis?

Espahbodi: I tend to arrive earlier than others. I embraced the idea that hardware does not have to be capital-intensive. People often confuse hard tech with deep tech, but nomenclature aside, you don’t need to invest in science to win in these categories.

AI has dramatically changed that narrative and encouraged more people to get on board. I’m not looking to invest in science. I don’t necessarily see opportunities in quantum computing, nuclear fusion or other technologies being spun out of laboratories.

People who worked at companies such as SpaceX, and laid their companies’ foundations digitally. AI has significantly improved that augmentation and performance, enabling these companies to tackle legacy industries more aggressively and, more importantly, with new business models.

Another major component of the AI question is that frontier labs have become more expensive and capital-intensive than traditional hardware companies. The success of frontier AI labs, combined with the SpaceX IPO becoming an enormous wealth-creation event, creates a new environment. It raises questions about what is truly capital-intensive, what makes a product or its intellectual property defensible, and where companies are reengineering products around different business models.

Hardware has historically been capital-intensive, slower to commercialize and difficult to scale. Under what conditions does its technical defensibility compensate for those challenges?

Espahbodi: Fundamentally, it comes down to the business model. I look for creative software talent combined with commoditized hardware, significant customer demand and a new business model.

One of our portfolio companies was founded by the team that built the factory for user terminals. When you buy a retail Starlink antenna, these people built and scaled the assembly line that produced it at high volume.

While deploying those terminals globally to provide internet access, they observed that poverty often stemmed from a lack of access to clean water. They asked whether they could replicate the proliferated satellite-and-user-terminal architecture for edge water desalination.

Rather than investing in multibillion-dollar, nation-state infrastructure like that used by Gulf countries, they wanted to mass-produce every component in a vertically integrated stack. Their goal was to produce a cooler-sized device that could clean water at the point of need.

used a digital, software-based approach to build the bill of materials needed for mass manufacturing. AI is part of its business and operations, but the company’s real innovation was inverting the infrastructure model and scaling it.

I helped Vital Lyfe win its first customers within the and . Those organizations can use its devices in the field rather than shipping pallets of bottled water by air freight. That created a signal for overseas partnerships and nonprofit humanitarian-aid applications. It showed that there could be a different way to provide clean water.

Those are the kinds of unique business models that excite me.

What other companies founded by SpaceX alumni demonstrate how hardware businesses can overcome the traditional challenges of the sector? What can these founders build today that would have been difficult five years ago?

Espahbodi: Another example is the team SpaceX recruited to build the autonomous drone ships that catch boosters in the middle of the ocean. The team included former Coast Guard personnel and oil-and-gas technicians.

At SpaceX, they had the freedom to use software and AI tools to automate station-keeping — the ability of those drone ships to position and navigate themselves and reach the right location.

That team spun out and brought in many former colleagues to change commercial maritime shipping. They retrofit legacy boats operating in harbors and waterways and move supply-chain goods.

They brought a digital-first foundation to automating the controls on tugboats and barges. That had never existed before because the communications link to those ships didn’t exist. Starlink changed the concept of operations. The company can use its software expertise to change how physical devices operate aboard these boats and allow their sensors to send signals anywhere in the world.

That makes it possible to retrofit and overhaul how legacy shipping vessels navigate harbors and waterways in the U.S. It’s another example of SpaceX alumni applying the playbook and technologies they learned at SpaceX to a much broader commercial industry.

You’ve said AI is eroding traditional software moats. What evidence are you seeing that investors are responding by moving into hardware and industrial technology?

Espahbodi: I meet many software investors who feel they’re missing out on hardware but don’t necessarily understand it. I’ve met beauty investors who now say they’re defense-tech investors.

Los Angeles is a hotbed of firms that historically invested in software, media or consumer packaged goods. But people forget that Southern California, particularly El Segundo, is the aerospace capital of the world and has the largest concentration of mechanical-engineering talent.

Across the region — from China Lake to San Diego — technicians, builders and vocational talent are intersecting with the democratization of software and access to AI tools. Many local VCs have never taken advantage of the hardware talent located around them, so they’re being thrown for a loop.

Ironically, Bay Area VCs have been among those leaning most heavily into this. But it’s happening everywhere. I’m in Washington, D.C., now, and one of the first investors in , the hypersonic missile company, was in Virginia — before and others became involved.

Los Angeles VCs in particular know there is a talent war underway and that many people are leaving established companies to launch new businesses in these categories. But they struggle to underwrite those deals. They don’t know how to distinguish a strong opportunity from fear of missing out or something merely cosmetic.

So investors’ lack of experience in the space isn’t deterring them from writing checks or competing for deals?

Espahbodi: You have to ask why. The answer is their limited partners.

Sophisticated allocators, such as endowments, foundations and pension funds, along with more FOMO-driven family offices and high-net-worth investors, are watching this wave of SpaceX, and Anduril alumni create new companies and raise extraordinary rounds.

Many of those companies are no longer raising solely to pursue intellectual property. They’re building war chests to acquire other companies. The lines between private equity and venture capital are blurring. VC-backed companies are doing private equity-style buyouts, while venture deals are bringing in private equity checks.

That leaves LPs pushing for more. The success of the frontier AI labs has also perpetuated a fear of a “SaaS apocalypse,” which I don’t think is real — although I sometimes question ’s 1��stock price for fun.

It creates what venture does best: tourists and FOMO. LPs ask why their managers aren’t investing in the same companies and how they can participate, raise more money and show that they aren’t missing out. That’s how I’ve seen investors unfamiliar with these sectors enter the market.

Some of the largest Silicon Valley firms … missed this dynamism wave. Now they’re leaning in hard, sometimes at ridiculous valuations for companies that have yet to produce anything.

If more venture funding continues to flow into defense, aerospace and industrial technology, what prevents hardware from developing the same problems software experienced, including too many competing companies?

Espahbodi: Bring it on — hard and fast, and as much as possible.

Venture as a category exists because it was always about hardware. I would argue that the SaaS era, from the dot-com boom until now, was a blip compared with what venture was originally intended to underwrite.

I would move away from the hardware-vs.-software distinction and ask who is reframing the business model. Is there a way to reengineer a combination of software and hardware to unlock customer value? That’s the more important question.

How important is geography for these startups? Does locating near a major government customer help a company win contracts, and how do startups navigate procurement if they aren’t based near Washington, D.C.?

Espahbodi: It’s a common misconception that Washington is where the money is. The Los Angeles Air Force Base houses , which is another way of saying it holds ’s wallet. El Segundo makes the purchasing decisions for the fastest-growing portion of the military budget.

Washington is a place of considerable activity that needs to be influenced. Venture has never had this degree of influence on an administration and its executive orders. We’re also seeing portfolio companies backed by influential investors win government contracts worth as much as $1 billion at a time. That’s extraordinary.

Geographically, companies need to be where the talent is as much as where the customers are. Government customers should signal what matters, but companies shouldn’t organize themselves entirely around the government.

My catchphrase is that I want everyone to be commercially focused but mission-aware. I don’t want them to be mission-focused on the government. I want government to signal what it cares about while companies remain commercially focused.

The talent war for this convergence of hardware and digital technology is centered in Southern California. If you aren’t building and recruiting there, you’re falling behind. I like that the Bay Area is trying to attract more hardware talent and capitalize on the automotive and humanoid-robotics markets.

But I think the talent base for the factory of the future starts in Southern California and can then be used as a model for expansion into other places, as companies such as Anduril have done in Ohio and Louisiana.

We invested in a company founded by people from SpaceX and . They immediately moved to Austin to build a smart factory for raw-material processing. They wanted to automate the process at its source.

The largest concentration of cotton farming is around Lubbock in the Texas Panhandle. The company is building automated factories from the ground up to mill cotton into yarn and then complete the digital, vertically integrated stack by producing textiles at prices that beat outsourcing to China, Vietnam and other countries.

It sounds crazy, but the founder is determined to do it. If you can prove the model in textiles, you can apply it to copper. If you can do it with copper, you can do it in pharmaceuticals. From there, it could go in any direction.

Do startups located near Space Systems Command have an advantage?

Espahbodi: Not for that reason alone. The advantage is that they’re part of the ecosystem and geography. They’re spending time in the same bars and restaurants, and their children attend the same schools. They’re witnessing the same velocity.

Space Force itself is facing greater demand than ever to protect assets in space. Whatever happens with funding for individual programs, it remains the fastest-growing portion of the Pentagon budget.

I don’t think startups should locate there solely to be close to the customer. They should be there for the talent they need to build.

Related ���ϳԹ� queries:

Related reading:

• Sector Snapshot: Space Tech Startup Funding Orbits New Highs
• Sector Snapshot: Defense Startup Funding Hits An All-Time Record As VCs Begin To Eye Exits

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U.S. venture-backed technology��1 companies have secured nearly $90 billion in domestic public offerings this year, per ���ϳԹ� data. That’s already the second-highest annual tally on record, and we’ve still got a few months to go.

However, virtually all the money went to two companies. alone accounted for 83% of the $90 billion raised this year, while AI infrastructure company scooped up another 6%. A potential offering from , meanwhile, could be even bigger.

The remaining field is comparatively modest. Just 21 other venture-backed technology companies went public this year in sizable or offerings 2, per ���ϳԹ� data. Collectively, their offerings, which include traditional IPOs and SPAC deals, pulled in less than $10 billion.

This small cohort is intriguing for what it excludes as well as what it includes. Enterprise software, long a staple industry among venture-backed IPOs, was essentially a no-show this year. Energy, defense and space tech, by contrast, were well-represented. We also saw smaller offerings from other sectors, including medical devices and consumer-facing startups.

Here are some of the key findings in more detail:

Energy powers the most IPOs: About a quarter of this year’s tech startup offerings hail from the energy sector. The largest of these was from geothermal energy provider . Several nuclear power-focused startups also made their debuts, including and , developers of small modular nuclear reactors, as well as , focused on advanced nuclear fuel.

A dash of quantum, defense, aerospace, devices and consumer: Beyond energy, quantum computing company delivered one of the year’s larger debuts, as did equipment rental platform . Defense tech and aerospace were also strong performers, with offerings from satellite intelligence provider and spacecraft developer . And on the consumer front, e-bike and scooter platform finally made its market entrance, albeit at a valuation below its one-time .

An IPO SaaS-pocalipse: But what about SaaS? Mostly MIA. The paucity of enterprise software offerings this year isn’t entirely surprising given the impact of AI on the sector. VCs are pouring capital into a newer generation of AI-first platforms in legal tech, accounting and other enterprise software sectors. Existing SaaS unicorns are also moving fast to incorporate more AI in their offerings.

One end result is there are an awful lot of SaaS unicorns and former unicorns that have concluded this year is not the time to pursue an IPO.

Winner-takes-almost-all

Another end result is that investment returns are looking more concentrated than ever.

Of course, winning big or not at all is far from a new thing in the startup world. Tech venture returns have always been propped up largely by a few enormous wins, with the remainder of portfolio companies producing either losses or smaller profitable exits. But lately, the winner-take-almost-all-the-IPO-proceeds tilt is more pronounced than ever.

The pipeline of tech companies that have filed for future IPOs doesn’t offer much consolation that this pattern will change. Giant potential market debuts from Anthropic and still dominate IPO chatter. Enterprise SaaS offerings do not.

Related ���ϳԹ� query:

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s Top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

It was a monster week for U.S. startup funding, with four companies each raising $1 billion or more. ’s tunnel-drilling company led with a $3 billion Series D, followed by AI coding startup at $2 billion. Joining them near the top was , which landed $1.3 billion for its AI platform for physical operations, while reusable rocket developer raised another $1 billion.

Big checks also flowed to U.S. solar manufacturing, defense tech, legal AI and companies building the chips and networking infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence.

1. , $3B, transportation and infrastructure: Musk’s Bastrop, Texas-based tunneling company raised a $3 billion Series D led by the, with participation from investors including, and. The company is developing underground tunnel networks designed to move passengers and vehicles while reducing surface traffic, and already operates its Vegas Loop system beneath Las Vegas. The latest deal values it at $23 billion and brings its total funding to nearly $3.9 billion, .

2. , $2B, artificial intelligence: San Francisco-based Cognition raised a $2 billion Series E led by,,, and. The company is best known for Devin, its autonomous software-engineering agent, and is part of a highly funded crop of startups betting AI agents will take over increasingly complex coding and development work. Cognition has raised nearly $3.9 billion to date and was valued at $48 billion in the latest round, our shows.

3. , $1.3B, AI for physical operations: San Francisco-based Motive raised $1.3 billion in private equity funding led by. The company, formerly known as KeepTruckin, has an AI-driven platform used by trucking, construction and other physical-economy businesses to manage fleets, monitor driver safety, and automate operations and spending. The latest deal brings Motive’s total funding to just over $2 billion, according to .

4. , $1B, aerospace: Kent, Washington-based Stoke Space raised a $1 billion Series E co-led by and, with among the additional investors. The company is developing fully reusable rockets, including its Nova launch vehicle, as it looks to lower the cost of transporting satellites and other payloads to orbit. The latest round values Stoke at $10 billion and brings total funding to . Its raise adds to the already record-setting sums for space tech startup investment this year.

5. , $835M, solar energy: Norcross, Georgia-based Suniva raised $835 million from investors including, and. The longtime U.S. solar manufacturer produces high-efficiency solar cells and plans to use new capital to expand domestic production, including a new South Carolina facility that would more than quadruple its manufacturing capacity. Suniva has raised nearly .

6. , $600M, defense tech: Huntington Beach, California-based Mach Industries raised a $600 million Series C from investors including and. Founded in 2022, the defense manufacturer develops unmanned aircraft, long-range weapons, propulsion technology and the infrastructure needed to produce defense systems at scale. Mach is part of a broader surge in venture investment into defense companies looking to bring Silicon Valley-style development and manufacturing speeds to military hardware. The latest round values the company at $3.7 billion and brings its total funding to .

7. , $550M, legal AI: San Francisco-based Harvey raised a $550 million Series H co-led by and, with investors including and also participating. Harvey builds generative AI tools for lawyers and other professional-services workers, with products for legal research, document analysis and contract work. The company was valued at $15.5 billion in the latest deal, which brings its total funding to date to nearly . That makes it one of the most well-funded players in the legal tech space, which has seen robust investment this year, though slightly lower than last year’s all-time high.

8. (tied) , $500M, semiconductors: Fab2 raised a $500 million Series A led by, with among the other investors. Formerly known as Atomic Semi, Fab2 is trying to rethink semiconductor manufacturing by designing its own fabrication tools, components and software with the goal of building smaller chip factories faster and more cheaply. The funding is the first disclosed round for the company, which maintains headquarters in California and Kentucky, and values it at $3.7 billion.

8. (tied) , $500M, AI infrastructure: Reno, Nevada-based Positron raised a $500 million Series C led by and, with among its other investors. The startup develops purpose-built hardware for AI inference, where models actually process queries after they have been trained, and is one of a growing crop of chip companies challenging GPUs in particular AI workloads. The latest financing values Positron at $5 billion and brings its total funding to nearly $1.2 billion, .

10. (tied) , $275M, AI networking infrastructure: Laguna Beach, California-based Celero Communications raised a $275 million Series C led by, and. Celero develops coherent digital signal processor technology that helps move enormous quantities of data between chips and data centers while using less power, an increasingly critical bottleneck as AI clusters grow. The round values the company at $3 billion and brings total funding to roughly , according to ���ϳԹ�.

10. (tied) , $275M, biotechnology: South San Francisco, California-based Encoded Therapeutics raised a $275 million Series F led by, with investors including, and also participating. The clinical-stage biotech develops precision genetic medicines for severe neurological disorders, with its lead therapy targeting Dravet syndrome, a rare genetic epilepsy. Encoded has raised $514.1 million to date, .

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the ���ϳԹ� database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Sept. 5-11, 2026. Although most announced rounds are in the database, there may be a small time lag, as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Related reading:

• Sector Snapshot: Space Tech Startup Funding Orbits New Highs��
• Anduril Raises Another $5B As Defense Tech Startups Shatter Funding Records
• Sector Snapshot: Legal Tech Funding Down Slightly From All-Time High��
• Sector Snapshot: Semiconductor Startup Funding Still Running Hot

Illustration:

The highest-valued new entrants were China-based humanoid robotics business , valued at more than $6.3 billion; San Jose, California-based photonics company , valued at $5.5 billion; and Palo Alto, California-based AI model platform , and San Francisco’s semiconductor manufacturing startup , both valued at $5 billion.

AI software featured prominently across model training, assistants, agentic and enterprise workflow automation, coding and voice transcription.

Semiconductors was the second-largest sector, with five new unicorns. Robotics and financial services each added three, while data centers, security and energy each added two.

The U.S. accounted for 16 of August’s new unicorns. China followed with four. South Korea, India, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey each added one. Nigeria and Indonesia also each added one new unicorn — for both, their first new unicorn of the year.

Nine companies exited the ���ϳԹ� in August, per ���ϳԹ� data: Three that went public — the most notable being — and six via acquisition, including , and .

New unicorns in August

Here are August’s new unicorn companies:

AI and software

• , a Palo Alto, California-based platform for training, fine-tuning and deploying custom AI models based on proprietary data, announced $1.1 billion in funding led by and . The less-than-1-year-old company, founded by former co-founder , was valued.
• San Francisco-based , an AI assistant that executes personal tasks, raised a $250 million Series B led by and . The 1-year-old company was valued at $2.5 billion.
• Shanghai-based , a builder of agents for digital and physical environments, raised a $220 million seed round led by and . The less-than-1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion. Its founder, , a researcher, left earlier this year.
• San Francisco-based , which builds AI-powered voice-writing and meeting-transcription tools, raised a $280 million Series B led by , who also led its Series A in 2025. The 5-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
• San Francisco-based , which provides AI-powered code review and change-management tools, raised a $143 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation. and co-led the round. The 3-year-old company said it would commit more than $10 million to keep its tools free for open-source projects over the next year.
• San Francisco-based , which deploys AI agents across calls, email, documents and enterprise systems, raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion post-money valuation. and led the round. The company is 4 years old, started in logistics and has expanded to insurance, energy, telecommunications and airlines among others and counts 150 enterprise customers.
• Turkey-based , a developer of consumer mobile applications, raised a $50 million Series A led by . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1.25 billion. Its apps include AI chatbot Nova, diagnosing plants with PlantApp, and art generator DaVinci.

Semiconductors

• , a San Jose, California-based developer of photonic interconnects for AI computing infrastructure, raised a $700 million Series C at a $5.5 billion valuation. , , , and led the round. The 2-year-old company is already deployed within data centers.
• raised $400 million in funding led by hedge fund . The 1-year-old company was valued at $5 billion. The San Francisco-based company creates tooling for semiconductor manufacturing and was founded by researchers.
• South Korea-based , which develops edge AI processors for on-device inference, raised about $29 million in the first tranche of its Series D funding from existing investors. The 8-year-old company targeting robotics and electronics was valued at about $2.2 billion.
• Shanghai-based , an AI chip startup for inference, raised a Series A led by local state capital investors and . The 4-year-old company was valued at about $1.5 billion with plans to ship its product in Q4 2026.
• Santa Clara, California-based , which develops low-power silicon and software for AI data centers and physical AI, raised a $110 million Series A led by . The 4-year old company was valued at more than $1 billion.

Robotics

• China-based , which is building the general-purpose IRON humanoid robot, raised more than $900 million in its first outside financing at a post-money valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. led the round, with participation from and support from and Alibaba Group. The company, a subsidiary of public smart electric vehicle company , is 10 years old.
• Singapore-based , which develops robots to operate in real-world environments, raised about $669 million in funding. The 2-year-old company was valued at about $3.3 billion and is set to deploy robots in a Dairy Queen in Shanghai to handle the entire 55-step process of taking orders, preparing the food and handing it to a customer.
• Zurich-based , which develops autonomous technology for heavy construction machinery, raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion and works across multiple construction brands.

Financial services

• Bengaluru-based , a financial-services company spanning payment, lending and insurance, raised $100 million in funding led by . The 7-year-old company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• Berlin-based , a finance AI platform for European mid-sized businesses to�� manage spend, card issuing and expenses, raised a $40 million Series C led by and . The 7-year-old company was valued at around $1.15 billion. The company says it has 5,000 businesses that use the service to give finance teams control.
• Palo Alto, California-based , an AI-native enterprise resource planning platform for accounting, raised a $100 million Series C led by . The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Aerospace and defense

• Los Angeles-based , a manufacturer of autonomous military drones and counter-drone systems, raised a $250 million Series C at a $2.5 billion post-money valuation. and the co-led the round. The company is 3 years old. Neros has contracts with the U.S. military as well as half a dozen allied countries.
• Mountain View, California-based , which builds and operates satellite constellations for national security, civil and commercial customers, raised a $250 million Series C led by . The 5-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Data centers

• Palo Alto, California-based , a vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform, raised a $300 million Series A led by , , and . The less-than-1-year-old company was valued at $2.4 billion. Alongside the equity, Volta secured $5 billion in debt to fund data center buildouts.
• , a full-stack AI infrastructure and neocloud platform, received led by Doha-based broadband provider , which holds a 49% stake. Jakarta-based Zankore is less than 1-year-old and is valued at $1.6 billion. The platform is targeting 1 gigawatt of AI computing capacity.

Security

• San Francisco-based , an AI-native security company that provides autonomous penetration testing, raised a $250 million Series E led by and . The 7-year-old company was valued at $2 billion and is used by 7,000 organizations including defense, Fortune 10, banks and healthcare companies among others.
• Palo Alto, California-based , which provides security for AI agents and third-party applications, raised an $85 million Series D led by . The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Energy

• China-based , a nuclear fusion company developing small modular reactors, raised about $179 million in seed funding. The 1-year-old company was valued at about $1.5 billion.
• Washington, D.C.-based , which develops software that adjusts AI data-center workloads based on power-grid demands, raised a $150 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation. and co-led the round. The 2-year-old company says the round brings total funding to more than $220 million.

Transportation

• Nigeria-based , a vehicle financing and autonomous fleet management infrastructure, raised a $250 million Series C led by , and . The 7-year-old company was valued at $2.1 billion. It operates a fleet of 42,000 vehicles — both human-driven and autonomous — across 29 cities, with annual recurring revenue of $420 million.��

Critical minerals

• Houston-based , which builds mines and refineries using its MarianaOS software platform, raised a $310 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Web3

• Dubai-based , an AI-enabled stablecoin neobanking platform for cross-border payments and tokenized assets, raised a $68 million Series C led by Tokyo-based at a $1 billion valuation. The 7-year-old company says it processes more than $40 billion in annualized transaction volume.

Related ���ϳԹ� unicorn lists:

• (1,862)
• (658)
• (276)
• (195)
• (119)
• (102)
• (961)
• (547)
• (254)
• (39)
• (489)

Related reading:

• Global Venture Funding Jumps 122% In August As Streak Of Billion-Dollar Deals Continues
• Which Investors Have Backed The Most 2026 Unicorns?
• 40 Companies Joined The ���ϳԹ� In July, The Highest Count In 4 Years

Methodology

The ���ϳԹ� ���ϳԹ� is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on ���ϳԹ� data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.��

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.��

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .��

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.��

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. ���ϳԹ� converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to ���ϳԹ� long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Illustration:

This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

Most of this week’s largest funding recipients were AI-focused startups, with , a developer of AI assistants, pulling in the biggest round. Other sizable financings went to companies in areas including business software, physical AI, autonomous transport and even sea gliders. Overall, rounds skewed smaller than in recent past weeks.

1. , $250M, AI assistants: Instinct, a startup developing and beta testing an AI assistant, is raising $250 million in a Series B valuing the San Francisco company at $2.5 billion, according to a from citing founder . Lead backers include and .

2. , $240M, small business AI tools: Owner, a provider of AI tools for local businesses to automate things like building websites, online and phone ordering, mobile apps, and customer support, picked up $240 million in new funding. led the financing, valuing the 8-year-old San Francisco company at $2.3 billion.

3. (tied) , $200M, physical AI: San Francisco-based Generalist AI, a startup developing an AI foundation model that can work with a variety of robots, secured $200 million in fresh financing. The investment, an extension of its $400 million Series B in June, is reportedly led by 1.

3. (tied) , $200M, autonomous trucking: Gatik, an operator of driverless trucks, closed on $200 million in Series D funding. and led the round for the 9-year-old, Santa Clara, California-based company.

5. , $156M, predictive analytics: Socure, a provider of identity, risk and compliance tools, picked up $156 million in growth funding and acquired , an agentic platform for fraud and compliance operations. led the round, valuing the Incline Village, Nevada-based company at $5.2 billion.

6. , $150M, data center energy management: Emerald AI, a software platform that balances AI computational workloads and available energy resources, raised $150 million in Series A funding. The financing, led by and , set the Washington, D.C.-based company’s valuation at $1.05 billion.

7. (tied) , $120M, sea gliders: Rhode Island-based Regent Craft, a developer of high-speed winged sea vessels, closed on $120 million in Series B equity funding led by and . It also secured $120 million in debt funding from .

7. (tied) , $120M, biopharma: AusperBio, a San Francisco startup developing therapeutics for chronic hepatitis B and other diseases, picked up $120 million in Series C funding backed by new and existing investors. The funding will support clinical trials for its lead therapeutic.

9. , $76M, AI for creatives: Los Angeles-based Stability AI, a developer of AI products for professional creatives across music, gaming and entertainment, announced a Series B fundraise of $76 million backed by a long list of venture and strategic investors.

10. , $75M, coffee: Brooklyn-based coffee and matcha drink chain Blank Street has raised $75 million in fresh funding from investors including as it plans a West Coast expansion. The company also raised $30 million in secondary market transactions.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the ���ϳԹ� database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Aug. 22-28. Although most announced rounds are in the database, there may be a small time lag, as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

Startup investors were busily closing on big rounds this week, with AI and defense among their favored target sectors. The biggest financing went to , a defense tech startup developing a hypersonic missile. Other sizable rounds went to companies developing AI inference technology, a video-creation platform, data centers and voice-to-text tools.

1. , $800M, defense tech: Castelion, a defense tech startup developing a hypersonic strike missile, raised new Series C funding consisting of $800 million in equity capital along with $250 million in debt financing. , and led the equity financing, which set a $13 billion valuation for the Torrance, California-based company.

2. , $700M, semiconductors: San Jose, California-based Etched, a developer of inference clusters to accelerate AI computing, secured $700 million in a new funding round led by and joined by a long list of prominent investors. The financing set a $21 billion valuation for the 4-year-old company.

3. , $400M, AI video tools: AI video- and image-creation platform Higgsfield closed on $400 million in Series B financing at a $5.4 billion valuation. led the round for the San Francisco-based company, with the financing drawing at least 18 investors.

4. , $350M, data centers: Groq, an operator of 13 data centers across the globe, pulled in $350 million in a new fundraise led by , with planned participation from .The fundraise, which values the San Francisco-based company at $3.5 billion, comes on the heels of a $650 million in June.

5. , $280M, voice-to-text AI: Wispr Flow, a provider of an AI-powered voice-to-text tool called Flow, picked up $280 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation. led the financing, joined by a long list of new and existing investors.

6. , $250M, satellites: Muon Space, a designer, builder and operator of satellite constellations, closed on $250 million in Series C funding led by . The Mountain View, California-based company also recently opened a manufacturing facility in San Jose, California, designed to produce up to 500 satellites annually by 2027.

7. , $150M, micromobility:�� Also, a spinout that makes electric bikes and small four-wheeled micromobility vehicles, secured $150 million in Series D funding led by . The Palo Alto, California-based startup said the financing will go in part toward accelerating development of its autonomous vehicle platform.

8. , $110M, AI computing: Velaura AI, a developer of AI compute infrastructure focused on ultra-low-power silicon and software technologies, picked up $110 million in Series A funding. led the financing, which set a valuation of over $1 billion for the Silicon Valley-based startup.

9. , $100M, agentic finance: Rillet, a developer of AI-powered enterprise resource planning tools, landed $100 million in Series C funding led by . The round, which sets a $1 billion valuation for the San Francisco company, is Rillet’s third financing in the past year.

10. , $75M, sleep testing: Happy Health, and Austin-based developer of a ring device for diagnosis and treatment of sleep apnea, raised $75 million from and .

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the ���ϳԹ� database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Aug. 15-21. Although most announced rounds are in the database, there may be a small time lag, as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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led the raise, which brings the Austin-based startup’s total funding to $40 million since its 2022 inception. Returning backers , , and also participated in the round. ClearJet’s earlier investors include , formerly JetBlue Ventures, and .

ClearJet’s model is straightforward. Rather than build its own fleet of planes or trucks, it connects shippers with unused cargo capacity on commercial flights already traveling between U.S. cities to move e-commerce packages around the U.S. Customers include major multibillion-dollar retailers, e-commerce platforms, 3PLs and marketplaces.

In just three years, the startup has built what founder and CEO calls a “super carrier,” a network that now spans 95 U.S. airports and connects retailers with major U.S. airlines and multiple final-mile delivery providers. This network gives retailers a way to ship packages so that they travel directly between cities on passenger planes already in the air rather than through the traditional networks used by major parcel carriers.

Unlike a traditional parcel carrier, ClearJet doesn’t own the planes transporting those packages. Instead, its asset-light “Uber for cargo” model taps available capacity on flights that are already traveling between cities. The startup says its approach can cut shipping costs by as much as 35% while speeding deliveries by one to three days.

“We’re basically connecting with the already moving aircraft,” Guggenheim told ���ϳԹ� News in an interview. “These flights are going from A to B city. We’re taking those same routes, and that’s just why we’re so fast. That’s also why we’re so cost efficient.”

The approach appears to be working. ClearJet is profitable, its revenue has more than tripled year over year, and it is approaching nine figures in top-line revenue, according to Guggenheim.

The market opportunity is still large. The startup says it moves more than 30 million packages annually, which is still a fraction of the roughly 1.8 billion U.S. parcels it considers eligible to move by air.

Global funding to supply chain management and logistics startups has reached $8.4 billion in 2026 so far, per ���ϳԹ� . This puts this year on pace to top 2025’s total of $9 billion considering we have over four months left in the year.

How it works

Retailers connect to ClearJet through an API and can generate a two-day shipping label. ClearJet picks up the packages, takes them to an airport, handles sorting and screening, places them on commercial flights, and then injects them into final-mile networks at their destination. Those providers can include , the , , , and , Guggenheim said.

“We call it the super carrier because it truly is that, and it gives all the power back to the retailer,” Guggenheim said in an interview with ���ϳԹ� News.

One of ClearJet’s first large retail customers had previously relied on FedEx for goods arriving from Asia, with deliveries taking seven days from factory to customer, according to Guggenheim. Under ClearJet’s model, products arrive at Los Angeles International Airport, where the company takes possession of the cargo, sorts it and flies it into 14 different airports before handing the packages to final-mile carriers.

The result, Guggenheim said, was a reduction in delivery time from seven days to five — and $35 million in cost savings for the customers.

That combination of time and cost savings was what caught Edison Partners’ attention.

, who leads the firm’s vertical SaaS and AI practice, told ���ϳԹ� News that Edison had spent years looking at ways to use excess capacity in supply chains without requiring companies to make massive investments in physical infrastructure.

“We looked at a few supply chain businesses over the years,” Ziegler said. “Candidly, most of them went bankrupt because they took an asset-heavy approach to the middle mile.”

ClearJet took the asset-light approach. And the company’s airline relationships, regional sortation infrastructure, regulatory license and technology architecture make it difficult to copy its model, according to Ziegler.

“When you think about what they built, it is a very unique aviation infrastructure platform, and it’s difficult to replicate,” he said. “He’s [Guggenheim] proven the business model, and the unit economics work.”

Backstory

The idea for ClearJet grew out of Guggenheim’s own frustrations as a longtime e-commerce entrepreneur.

He started his first company in 1997 after meeting and his family and building direct-to-fan e-commerce businesses for them. Guggenheim later worked with a range of music and sports clients, including helping launch the first beyonce.com. His company went on to support more than 2,000 Plus stores with over $1 billion in GMV, he said.

Along the way, logistics became one of his biggest headaches.

Shipping had become the second-largest cost of goods outside of the product itself for his business, he said. And in 2019, after spending $55 million with , Guggenheim said he received an email giving him five days’ notice that his account was being canceled because it wasn’t profitable enough.

“And so I said, ‘there has to be a better way,’ ” he said.

Guggenheim began thinking about the thousands of domestic passenger flights traveling around the U.S. every day and wondering whether their unused cargo space could become part of an alternative parcel network.

He had no connections with the airlines, he said, so he began cold-emailing executives until he reached the president of . At a cargo industry event, Guggenheim got about five minutes to pitch his idea in what he now calls his “Shark Tank moment.”

“I said, ‘I want to start flying packages from LA to New York. Do you have any flights?’” Guggenheim recalled. “And he put his arm around me and said, ‘You and I are going to be best friends.’”

Guggenheim went on to build relationships with , , , and , the latter of which participated in an earlier ClearJet financing. He also began recruiting people from the airline and parcel industries and building the technology underpinning the network. ClearJet formally launched in May 2023.

One logistical obstacle was the aircraft themselves. Guggenheim said most U.S. passenger aircraft are narrow-body planes whose cargo doors are too small to accommodate the pallets typically moved by freight forwarders.

ClearJet addressed this by designing its own overpack bags specifically for e-commerce parcels. Those bags can travel through airports much like passenger luggage before being unloaded and handed to the appropriate delivery company.

AI component

ClearJet’s AI models choose each parcel’s path based on cost, speed and geography across its network. AI is also built into how ClearJet routes packages. Its models choose a parcel’s path based on factors including cost, speed and geography.

The company is also developing AI agents to automate more of the operational work around those shipments.

For example, ClearJet is creating AI agents to handle tasks such as rating, booking, tracking and managing delivery problems, according to Guggenheim.

This includes features such as responding to weather disruptions by moving packages onto a different flight or through a different city, something ClearJet can do because it isn’t tied to just one airline.

“We’re building an entire agent team, an army of agents that do everything that the humans were doing,” Guggenheim said.

ClearJet raised its seed round in early 2023 and $13.4 million in a Series A in 2024, according to Guggenheim. He declined to disclose the company’s valuation but described the Series B as a significant step-up from its previous financing.

Next, ClearJet plans to expand into returns and international shipping, and expand its network of airports. Guggenheim also wants to give consumers much more detailed visibility into where packages are during their journeys, similar to the real-time experience they have become accustomed to with services such as DoorDash.

“We have a really big appetite for giving consumers a better visual experience with their packages,” he said.

For Ziegler, the bigger bet is that ClearJet can become infrastructure for a delivery market increasingly built around getting products directly to individual consumers.

“We saw this as an opportunity to actually create a category-defining business,” he said.

ClearJet has just under 50 full-time employees and hundreds of contractors operating seven days a week.

Related ���ϳԹ� query:

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That was the intent of our latest ���ϳԹ� News data dive into seed-stage trends. For this installment, we focused on mid-sized rounds of between $5 million and $10 million, analyzing around 800 global seed financings that closed this year.��

Why this range? In a startup investment climate characterized by the ascendance of megarounds, the idea was to focus on rounds more representative of the classic seed deal: a risky bet on unproven founders, technologies or business models.

Using this methodology we identified multiple popular investment themes and zeroed in on five. The first — cybersecurity — we tackled in a separate piece. Here we delve into the other four: proptech, cancer therapeutics, space tech and robotics.

No. 1: Proptech

Real estate is the world’s most valuable asset class, providing startups a huge and varied addressable market. By one estimate a few years ago, real estate accounted for a staggering two-thirds of global net worth.

Given the size of the space, actual venture investment tied to real estate and construction looks comparatively meager. Last year, per ���ϳԹ� analysis, proptech startup investment totaled just over $10 billion, far below peaks hit several years ago.

Seed investors seem to believe there’s a good case for startup driven growth ahead. In particular, they’re funding a lot of rounds in the $5 million to $10 million range for companies looking to add efficiencies to the planning and building process, streamline rental operations, reduce building power consumption, and more.

To illustrate, below we put together a sample set of 15 companies that closed seed rounds in our target range this year:

A few standouts include , an AI-powered home management system, , a developer of software to support real estate decarbonization, and , an AI-enabled construction supply chain platform.��

No. 2: Cancer treatments

Startup founders don’t need persuasive superpowers to convince investors that cancer is a sufficiently serious area to address. Today, it’s that 39% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives. Cancer also ranks as the second leading , behind heart disease.��

Seed-stage companies aren’t expected to bring down numbers in the near term, but as they progress, it’s increasingly plausible. That’s the apparent mindset for investors at this stage, who’ve backed a good-sized number of rounds in the $5 million to $10 million range this year for developers of cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, charted below:

Three California startups secured $10 million, the largest financing in our sample set. They include: , which is working on AI-driven discovery of undetected cancer targets, , a developer of targeted therapies for solid tumors, and , which is focused on cancer diagnostics.

No. 3: Space and satellite tech

This year’s most attention-getting event in space tech finance was obviously the IPO of sector pioneer . But while that debut may have dominated headlines, quite a few smaller, earlier, lower-profile deals were also getting done.

Per ���ϳԹ� data, space tech was a popular area for seed financings in the $5 million to $10 million range. To illustrate, below we put together a sample set of nine such companies that raised rounds this year:

The largest fundraiser in our target range was , which is focused on developing reusable satellites. Next was , focused, as its name implies, on in-space propulsion systems, followed by , developer of an ML-native operations platform for satellite fleets.

No. 4: Robotics

Robotics is a perennial favorite in our seed-funding data dives, including the last one, focused on AI. This time, the sector made the ranking again, thanks to a bevy of intriguing seed-stage companies that met our parameters.

Turns out, you can jumpstart some highly ambitious ventures on a $5 million to $10 million seed round. To illustrate, below we aggregated a sample of 18 funded this year:

Robotics was also the most geographically dispersed sector in our lineup, with startups hailing from Asia, North America, Europe and Australia. A few that stood out include , a developer of what it calls “intimacy robots,” , a maker of autonomous underwater robots, and , focused on robots for greenhouse harvesting.

Big picture: Midsized seed rounds for outsized ambitions

Overall, seed funding trends reviewed above may tell us more about the kinds of companies investors are willing to bet on than about the sectors attracting interest, which are already well-established.

Clearly, startup investors still believe that small, modestly funded teams with grand missions remain a worthwhile and viable wager. That’s particularly encouraging these days, when the venture and seed financings we most commonly hear about tend to be the largest ones.

That’s not to diss large rounds. Startups that are led by prominent serial entrepreneurs or have established traction hold obvious appeal, even at pricier terms. But for those of us who enjoy rooting for the underdog, it’s encouraging to see lower-profile companies with outsized ambitions are still in the game.

Related ���ϳԹ� lists:��

Related reading:

• AI Seed Investors Flock To Cybersecurity��
• In Charts: Seed Deals Keep Getting Bigger As Odds Of Reaching Series A Fall Dramatically��
• AI Seed Trends: More Multimedia, Backend Automation, Agentic Security, And Yes, Robots

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and co-led the financing, which included participation from and former U.S. Commerce Secretary . With its latest capital injection, San Francisco-based Freehand has now raised $100 million.

While Freehand declined to reveal its valuation, CEO and co-founder said it was “a significant step up” from the startup’s $25 million Series A that was raised in March 2024.

The deal comes as tariffs, taxes, and immigration policy strain the outsourcing model that ran supply chains for decades. Freehand’s fundraise also lands amid an uptick in venture funding to supply chain and logistics-related startups, with 2026 on pace to deliver the strongest year since 2022, , with $6.2 billion raised by such companies in the first half of this year across 350 deals.

Logistics roots

Freehand was founded in February 2024 by Jayakrishnan and , two enterprise logistics veterans who previously co-founded and recently sold , a SaaS transportation management system (TMS) and procure-to-pay system of record for large enterprise logistics.

In early 2024, as AI transformation accelerated, Jayakrishnan and Manohar stepped away from operational roles at Pando, moving to board positions, to launch Freehand as an independent entity focused entirely on agentic AI.

Pando continued operating under a newly appointed executive team before being sold to a strategic buyer in early 2026, marking a complete shareholder exit for the founders.

Their experience building enterprise supply chain software convinced them that existing back-office paradigms were ripe for disruption.

“We had been in this fairly archaic dinosaur of an industry for the last six to eight years,” Jayakrishnan told ���ϳԹ� News in an interview. “Instead of trying to catch them up to a technology paradigm that was sunsetting, we thought we could leapfrog them into a technology paradigm that was just rising.”

Beyond corporate cards

While spend management platforms like focus on corporate cards, employee travel expenses, and bill payments, Freehand targets complex supply chain operations. That means that instead of processing standard receipts and routine approvals, its AI agents manage non-standard spending across logistics, raw materials, parts, and labor.��

The software operates inside existing company systems, performing tasks like reading contracts, policies, emails, and internal data to verify bills, track operational milestones, and handle vendor negotiations.

Automating complex financial governance

For large, global businesses, keeping track of supplier bills across complex shipping routes like the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz is difficult. Contracts are detailed, and checking whether large bills match actual work has historically required big back-office teams.

“When eventually rubber hits the road, when you get an invoice from a supplier saying, ‘Hey, you owe me $16.948 million for everything that I’ve done for you in the last six months,’ there aren’t a lot of proof points to figure out whether you know if that number is right or wrong,” Jayakrishnan noted. “And so there are large teams that have gotten built over the course of the last decade or so, whose job it is to check these invoices, negotiate these contracts, and figure out whether service obligations from global suppliers are in alignment with contract governance overall.”

When billing discrepancies arise, Freehand’s AI agents negotiate adjustments directly with suppliers while maintaining strategic vendor relationships.

“If it is not, then negotiating with the supplier becomes, ‘’you should have charged me $16.4 million instead of charging me $16.9 million and here’s why I’m not going to pay you the difference,’ and going back and forth without… losing the sensitivity towards that relationship itself,” Jayakrishnan said. “Taking those business calls, which have historically been done through tribal knowledge… and truly automating the process to the point of no human intervention is effectively what Freehand does.”

Measurable ROI for Fortune 500 spend

By shifting from manual oversight to agentic automation, Freehand believes it allows enterprises to reduce their reliance on third-party offshore outsourcing and give internal employees more room to perform higher-value strategic work.

Freehand counts some 50 customers, including ,��, and . Its platform autonomously processes billions in payments across 60 to 70 countries and hundreds of currencies without human supervision, per the company.

Some of the benefits of its technology, according to Jayakrishnan, include recovering 5% to 10% of total spend across a number of categories; completing “complex” operational workflows 5x to 7x faster; and reducing overall procure-to-pay cycle times by more than 70%.

“We are, for a lot of companies, their first global rollout of AI deployments at scale that impacts daily transactions and daily operations at global scale,” Jayakrishnan said. “Our ask of the enterprise … is to allow us to give AI a free hand to run supply chain finance for your business.”

, general partner at Battery Ventures, noted that while supply chain and logistics management is a massive sector, it predominantly “still runs on manual labor and repetitive workflows that are begging to be automated.”

“And that’s before you account for the turmoil: tariffs, shifting geopolitics, disrupted trade routes,” he wrote via email. “Meanwhile, technology spending is a rounding error at just over $20 billion, which tells us AI has enormous room to drive efficiency, starting with the most mission-critical but repetitive workflows like freight audits and payments.”

Thakker said his firm did deep research on supply chain AI across its global offices and found Freehand to stand out on multiple fronts, including founder market-fit, a focus on the largest Fortune 500 shippers “rather than the intermediaries everyone else chases, and clear, measurable business outcomes.”

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While financings of a few million haven’t gone away, today most venture capital actually goes to rounds of a billion dollars or more. Moreover, it looks like a rising trend.

So far this year, 60% of global startup funding across stages��1 ��— around $320 billion — went to rounds of $1 billion or more, per ���ϳԹ� data. Such rounds were instrumental in pushing global funding for the first half of the year to record levels.

The U.S. funding tallies are even more tilted to megadeals this year, with 73% of funding going to billion-dollar-plus rounds. Of the $290 billion invested in these deals, just two rounds for AI leaders and account for more than half the total.

As you can see, the notion of billion-dollar-plus rounds accounted for a minority of funding before this year. The lone exception was the first quarter of 2025, when OpenAI closed a $40 billion financing.

Not just bigger deals, more of them too

Giant rounds aren’t just getting more ginormous. They’re happening with greater frequency too.

So far this year, U.S. startups have closed 23 known rounds of $1 billion or more, per ���ϳԹ� data. That puts 2026 already on par with 2025, a record-setting year, and we’ve still got about five months left.

Not surprisingly, these megarounds are generally later-stage rounds or corporate financings. Only two of this year’s billion-dollar-plus rounds — and — were seed or early-stage rounds, per ���ϳԹ� data.

Lessons from the first crop of billion-plus financings

In the history of startups, meanwhile, the billion-dollar-plus venture funding round is a fairly contemporary phenomenon.

The first American example, per ���ϳԹ� data, was ’s $1.2 billion Series D, in 2014. Over the next three years, a handful of others pulled in 10-figure rounds as well, including , , , , , , , and .

Most of those companies went on to go public and reach valuations that well-exceeded levels set for prior megarounds. SpaceX ($1.6 trillion recent market cap), Uber ($148 billion) and Airbnb ($87 billion) were the standout success stories.

Two of the megafund recipients — Argo AI and WeWork — did not fare so well, while a third, cancer diagnostics provider Grail, has been up and down. Fanatics, meanwhile, remained private and is still thriving.

If these early billion-plus fundings taught investors anything, it was that pouring unusually large sums into well-regarded unicorns can be quite lucrative but is far from a sure bet.

Uncharted territory

In the current funding cycle, it’s not enough to ask whether billion-dollar rounds have potential for high returns. With Anthropic and OpenAI, the question now applies to rounds in the tens of billions or even over $100 billion. As both have already filed confidentially to go public, it may not take us long to find out.

Related ���ϳԹ� query:

Related reading:

• ���ϳԹ� Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And Exits
• ���ϳԹ� Data: Q2 Brought The Most Billion-Dollar Startup Exits Since 2021
• The $100M+ Round Is Now Just Your Typical Late-Stage Financing

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