25 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $17.6B Last Week

Happy Monday!

💰 The Largest Merger in History — The merger between SpaceX and xAI, valued at $1.25 trillion, marks the largest in history (68X the AOL Time Warner merger in 2000). There appears to be little rationale for the move beyond Elon’s wish to integrate xAI into SpaceX. AI data centers in space may soon become a reality.

Read on WSJ.

💰 The Largest Autonomous Vehicle Investment in History — Waymo's $16B Round is the largest funding round within the mobility space, and values the company at $126 billion.

Read on Waymo.

💰 Prediction Market Gold Rush — Crypto.com has launched its own platform, OG, last week and other major players including Coinbase, Robinhood, Gemini, Fanatics, and FanDuel are also entering the space. They also just bought the domain AI.com for…wait for it: $70M - which is now the priciest domain in history. They paid a cheap $15M for Crypto.com back in 2018.

Read on TechCrunch.

⭐ AI Agents Have Their Own Facebook — was the most viral app in Silicon Valley this past week. Moltbook is a social network for AI Agents created by Matt Schlicht, has reached 1.8M AI agents and 1.5M human users. Are you on Moltbook?

Read on MIT.

📚 Reading on the Edge — “Edge: Turning Adversity into Advantage” by Laura Huang is a great read for founders. This quote particularly resonant: “Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but how to play a poor hand well.”

Get it on Amazon.

P.S. I’m excited to host my friend Vishal Harnal (Global Managing Partner at 500 Global) for a live FoundersHK session later today. Join us 🎙️

Last week a total of 25 startups raised $17.6B in funding, 3 exits:

• $661.1M goes to 10 Enterprise startups

• $15.8M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $70M goes to 1 Blockchain startup

• $94.2M goes to 2 Consumer startups

• $350M goes to 1 Hardware startup

• $16B goes to 1 Autonomous Vehicle startup

• $270M goes to 1 Robotics startup

• $116M goes to 3 Energy Management startups

• $35M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $18.2M goes to 2 BioTech startups

• $26.3M goes to 1 GovTech startup

• $6M goes to 1 Manufacturing startup

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Edith
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Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• Fundamental (predictive intelligence from enterprise data) raised $225M Series A led by Oak HC/FT

• Goodfire (AI interpretability research lab) raised $150M Series B led by B Capital

• Fieldguide (AI platform for audit and advisory) raised $75M Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives

• Gruve (inference infrastructure services) raised $50M Series A led by Xora Innovation

• Adaption Labs (adaptive AI) raised $50M Seed led by Emergence Capital

• RapidFort (software supply chain security platform) raised $42M Series A led by Blue Cloud Ventures, Forgepoint Capital

• Turnstile (AI-first quote-to-cash platform for sales) raised $29M Series A from First Round, OMERS Ventures, Illuminate Financial

• Day AI (AI CRM) raised $20M Series A led by Sequoia Capital

• Loop AI (delivery intelligence platform for restaurants and retail) raised $14M Series A led by Nyca Partners

• Airrived (agentic OS for enterprise security and IT) raised $6.1M Seed led by Cannage Capital

FinTech

• Sapiom (payment infrastructure for AI agents) raised $15.8M Seed led by Accel

Blockchain

• TRM Labs (blockchain analytics software) raised $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital

Consumer App

• Kindred (members-only home swapping platform) raised $85M Series C led by Index Ventures

• Ditto AI (iMessage dating for college students) raised $9.2M Seed led by Peak XV Partners

Healthcare

• Lotus AI (AI doctor) raised $35M Series A led by CRV, Kleiner Perkins

BioTech

• Phylo (AI-native biology lab) raised $13.5M Seed led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures

• Expert Intelligence (AI decision layer for analytical labs) raised $4.7M Seed led by Sierra Ventures

Hardware

• SambaNova (AI chipset) raised $350M Series E led by Vista Equity Partners and Intel

Robotics

• Bedrock Robotics (autonomous construction technology) raised $270M Series B led by CapitalG, Valor Atreides AI Fund

Autonomous Vehicle

• Waymo (driverless taxicabs) raised $16B Series D led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, Sequoia Capital

Energy Management

• Lunar Energy (home battery systems and virtual power plant software) raised $102M Series D led by B Capital, Prelude Ventures

• Derapi (software infrastructure for distributed energy) raised $7M Seed led by Earthshot Ventures

• Powerline (battery portfolio intelligence) raised $7M Seed led by MaC Venture Capital

GovTech

• Forerunner (geospatial platform for government operations) raised $26.3M Series B led by Welington Management

Manufacturing

• Uptool (AI manufacturing software) raised $6M seed from Khosla Ventures, Eclipse, Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins

IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)  

• SpaceX acquires xAI for $250B

• GCM Global acquires Kettmann Machining (manufacturer of precision‑machined plastic and metal parts)

• Zscaler acquires SquareX (zero trust browser security)

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