14 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $1.5B Last Week

Happy Monday and welcome to the Year of the Fire Horse especially those readers of the newsletter that are you are turning 24 (my youngest reader), 36, 48, 60 and 72 (my oldest reader) years old! 🔥🐴

Here are 5 things I enjoyed learning this past week:

🇮🇳 Silicon Valley Deals in India
Besides the fact that Sam Altman and Dario Amodei cannot hold hands in front of an audience in New Delhi, the announcements at the India AI Summit include:

• Reliance: $110 billion pledge for AI data centers and services.

• Adani Group: $100 billion pledge for data centers by 2035.

• Microsoft: $17.5 billion investment in AI infrastructure.

• Google: $15 billion investment in AI infrastructure.

• Blackstone: $1B investment into Neysa AI infrastructure.

• OpenAI & Tata Consulting Services: Data center partnership.

• Anthropic & Infosys: Enterprise service partnership.

Read more on NY Times.

💰 World Labs Closes $1B Investment
Autodesk’s involvement highlights the commercial potential of their first world model, Marble. I used the platform to create a 3D environment of Silicon Valley in 2100, though it interestingly reminds me of modern-day Shenzhen 😅.
Check out Marble for yourself.

🏳️‍🌈 Inside the Gay Tech Mafia
Another world in Silicon Valley, but you have to be fit.

“I’ve found it hard to break into this group myself,” one gay investor tells me. “I probably need to lose 20 pounds.”

Read on Wired.

🇨🇳 China’s Kung Fu Robots at Spring Festival Gala
Leading Chinese humanoid companies like Unitree are hoping to maintain that lead into this year. The start-up, whose robots were prominently featured at the Spring Festival Gala, expects between 10,000 and 20,000 shipments in 2026.
Read more on CNBC.

💡 Black Mirror Ideas
After Academy Award winning actor Matthew McConaughey trademarked his likeness to fight AI videos of himself, and TikTok superstar Khaby Lame sold his digital likeness to a Hong Kong public company for nearly $1B; AI non-human founders are now pitching VC and humans can now get paid when agents need someone in the real world.

Last week a total of 13 startups raised $547.7M in funding, 1 exit:

• $1.4B goes to 9 Enterprise startups

• $7.1M goes to 1 FinTech startup

• $15M goes to 1 Healthcare startup

• $13.8M goes to 1 Mobile startup

• $140M goes to 1 Energy Management startup

• $14.3M goes to 1 NonProfits startup

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Edith
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Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)

Enterprise

• World Labs (spatial intelligence) raised $1 billion from AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity Management & Research Company, NVIDIA, and Sea

• Render (cloud for AI native software) raised $100M Series C led by Georgian

• ZaiNar (foundation layer for physical AI) raised $100M Series B

• Braintrust (observability layer for production AI) raised $80M Series B led by ICONIQ

• Cogent Security (agentic AI for security) raised $42M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures

• Kana (AI agents for marketers) raised $15M seed led by Mayfield Fund

• Portkey (unified control plane for production AI) raised $15M Series A led by Elevation Capital

• Autosana (agentic QA platform) raised $3.2M seed from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Phosphor Capital, DeVC, 468 Capital

• Epic (AI agent management platform) raised $2.3M seed led by Anthemis

FinTech

• Sphinx (browser-native compliance agents for financial institutions) raised $7.1M Seed led by Cherry Ventures

Healthcare

• Rainfall Health (AI-driven healthcare compliance and reimbursement platform) raised $15M Series A led by Two Bear Capital

Mobile

• Badge (mobile wallet infrastructure) raised $13.8M Series A led by TTV Capital

Energy Management

• Heron Power (power grid) raised $140M Series B led by a16z American Dynamism Fund and Breakthrough Energy Ventures

Non-Profit Tech

• Dataro (fundraising platform for charities) raised $14.3M Series A led by Blueprint Equity

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

• Fulcrum acquired Wildnote (environmental consulting platform)

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