StrictlyVC’s Los Angeles event is coming up in a few short weeks, featuring Ethan Thornton of Mach Industries (who’s in the news today, see below), Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund, and more. Come spend the night out with us; more details to come.

Anthropic has confidentially filed for an IPO, potentially putting the $965 billion AI company on track to go public this fall as it races OpenAI and SpaceX to tap public markets after its revenue run rate jumped to more than $47 billion from $9 billion at the end of 2025. TechCrunch has more here.

Florida has filed suit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, alleging ChatGPT is an unsafe product that the company knowingly released despite risks to minors, mental health, critical thinking, and public safety, following an earlier criminal investigation into the chatbot’s role in a Florida State University mass shooting. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Alphabet plans to raise $80 billion to help fund its AI infrastructure buildout, including $10 billion in stock sales to Berkshire Hathaway, as Google’s parent says demand for its AI products is exceeding available supply and it prepares to spend as much as $190 billion on capex this year. TechCrunch has more here.

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By Julie Bort

Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday.

The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures.

The round was led by deep tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, known for fintech and lately in hot deals everywhere — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe.

Since building autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively fundraising a couple of months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly discovered that the round would be popular with investors.

“We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We’re still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,” Thornton said of the fundraising efforts.

Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for a few reasons. Other than AI, defense tech is a hot area for investment right now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone defense systems prove themselves in battle in Ukraine.

Mach has also become prolific in its short time. The Huntington Beach, California-based company now has five autonomous vehicles in development: Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider capable of launching weapons; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, a low-cost counter-drone interceptor; and Pike, intended for launching long-range munitions. Production is expected to begin next year on at least three of these systems, the company says.

DriveNets, a 10-year-old Israeli company that develops software for scaling AI infrastructure, telecom networks, and cloud systems, raised a $410 million round at an $8.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Atreides Management, with additional support from AMD and Red Dot Capital Partners as well as previous investors Pitango and D1 Capital Partners. The company has raised a total of approximately $1 billion. CTech has more here.

Endra, a two-year-old Stockholm startup that automates mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design work for building projects by using AI to place systems, route circuits, and optimize layouts inside tools like Revit, raised a $50 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Notion Capital and Norrsken VC also participating. StartupHub.ai has more here.

Fonoa, a seven-year-old Dublin startup that manages indirect tax compliance for global businesses, including tax ID validation, tax calculation, e-invoicing, compliance reporting, filing, and returns across multiple jurisdictions, raised a $110 million Series C round led by Headline, with Eurazeo and Forestay Capital as well as previous investors Index Ventures, OMERS, Coatue, and Dawn Capital also taking part. Fonoa also acquired PwC’s Indirect Tax Edge platform. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Mecka, a two-year-old New York startup that collects human movement data from body sensors and iPhones to train AI models for robots, raised $60 million consisting of a $25 million Series A and a $35 million follow-on investment. The investment was led by Framework Ventures, with Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures also pitching in. Fortune has more here.

Spiro, a four-year-old Dubai startup that operates electric motorcycles and battery-swapping infrastructure across Africa, raised $215 million in equity financing from investors including Impact Fund Denmark. The Associated Press has more here.

Vast, a three-year-old Beijing startup that turns text and image prompts into 3D models for creators, studios, and companies building games, visual content, and other interactive media, raised a $200 million round led by China Life Insurance, with Genesis Capital as well as previous investors Eminence Ventures and Primavera Venture Partners also stepping up. Bloomberg has more here.

Gradient Labs, a three-year-old London startup that automates customer support, KYC checks, lending workflows, dispute resolution, and other customer operations for banks and fintech companies using AI agents built for regulated financial services, raised a $13 million Series A extension. Investors included Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures as well as prior backers Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital. Tech Funding News has more here.

Invisix, a one-year-old startup based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, that develops soft x-ray measurement systems that help chipmakers inspect buried 3D structures in advanced logic and memory chips without destroying them, raised a $23.2 million seed round. Investors included Hitachi Ventures, Transition Ventures, imec.xpand, Doosan Investment, and a tier-1 semiconductor manufacturer. EU-Startups has more here.

Sekai, a two-year-old startup based in Sunnyvale, CA, that lets consumers create and share mini-apps from text prompts, including games, utilities, and social tools, through a TikTok-style feed, raised a total of $26 million in seed and Series A financing co-led by Khosla Ventures and Connect Ventures, with 359 Capital, Parable VC, 645 Ventures, Mayfield, Andreessen Horowitz, A*, and MVP Ventures also engaging. The company has raised a total of $30 million. More here.

Unastella, a four-year-old Seoul startup that develops small-satellite launch vehicles and rocket engines, with a longer-term goal of crewed suborbital spaceflight, raised a $24 million Series B round led by Altos Ventures, with Korea Development Bank, Strong Ventures, and Hana Ventures also digging in. The company has raised a total of $44 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Return Helper, a seven-year-old Hong Kong startup that manages cross-border ecommerce returns for merchants and marketplaces through returns portals, warehouse software, carrier integrations, and AI tools that help resell returned inventory, raised a $4 million Series A round. Investors included Cathay Venture, MLC Ventures, Jun Yue Investment, and Pegatron Venture Capital as well as previous investor Colopl Next. More here.

Alfred, a nine-month-old startup based in Hawthorne, CA, that is developing software to help engineers build robots, cars, and other machines faster, is raising an undisclosed amount at a $40 million valuation from investors including Sam Altman’s Hydrazine Capital, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, and Chapter One. Business Insider has more here.

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Gigascale Capital, a three-year-old Palo Alto venture firm founded by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, closed its first institutional fund with $250 million to back early-stage startups working on clean energy, grid infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, supply chains, and AI for physical systems. TechCrunch has more here.

Salesforce is acquiring Contentful, a CMS provider used by more than 4,800 brands, to add a native content layer to Customer 360 and Agentforce. The price is reportedly between $1 billion and $1.5 billion, a steep discount to Contentful’s $3 billion valuation in 2021. The Information has more here.

Quantinuum, the Honeywell-backed quantum computing company, increased its planned IPO to as much as $1.46 billion after investor demand reportedly reached double-digit multiples of the shares available, targeting a $14.3 billion valuation despite generating just $30.9 million in 2025 revenue. The Next Web has more here.

SpaceX plans to reserve up to 5% of its IPO shares for employees and other people chosen by its executives, but in a departure from typical practice, these shares will not be subject to lockup restrictions. Quartz has more here.

Senator Bernie Sanders says he will introduce legislation that would give the public a 50% ownership stake in major AI companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI, arguing that because AI is built on humanity’s collective knowledge, its wealth should flow into a sovereign wealth fund that benefits ordinary Americans rather than a handful of tech billionaires. The New York Times has more here.

Benchmark VC Bill Gurley said that Anthropic has become a “mystery” to him, arguing that the company is unusually outspoken about the dangers of the technology it is racing to build. After initially viewing its posture as a regulatory-capture strategy, Gurley now says he sees a “Dr. Frankenstein” dynamic, with Anthropic acting less like a software company than a group that believes it is “midwifing a deity.” The All-In Podcast has more here.

Yikes. Corgi cofounder Nico Laqua says he works seven days a week, often sleeps three to four hours a night, and keeps a mattress in the office of the AI insurance startup, which recently doubled its valuation to $2.6 billion in just three weeks. Employees who take every Saturday and Sunday off “will not have a place at Corgi,” he warns. Business Insider has more here.

Bill Gates’s carefully cultivated image as a mild-mannered global philanthropist is under fresh strain as newly released Jeffrey Epstein files reveal deeper ties than previously acknowledged, including multiple meetings, communications involving close advisers, and Epstein’s knowledge of Gates’s extramarital affairs, prompting internal unrest at the Gates Foundation and renewed scrutiny from Congress. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Michael Saylor’s Strategy sold 32 bitcoin for about $2.5 million to fund preferred-stock dividends, marking what appears to be the company’s first disclosed standalone reduction of its bitcoin holdings after years of publicly advocating a buy-and-hold-forever strategy. CoinDesk has more here.

Chinese AI developer MiniMax says its new M3 model approaches Claude Opus 4.7-level performance while costing roughly 40x less per million input tokens. The Information has more here.

Nvidia is pushing into consumer PCs with RTX Spark, a new chip for laptops and desktops from Dell, HP, Microsoft, Lenovo, and others that is designed to run AI agents locally, giving Nvidia a shot at challenging Apple’s appeal with AI developers while extending its reach beyond data-center chips. The New York Times has more here.

New York venture firms are looking well beyond their home turf as San Francisco’s AI boom pulls more capital west, with Bay Area startups raising $9.1 billion in seed funding last year, up 72%, while New York’s seed-deal count fell for the third straight year. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

AI is crushing a generation of pre-ChatGPT startups. PitchBook estimates that more than 220 former unicorns have fallen below $1 billion in value and that nearly half of America’s 857 unicorns have not raised fresh funding in three years, as capital flows toward AI-native companies and investors reassess older software businesses built for a pre-AI world. CNBC has more here.

Google wants to release 32 million mosquitoes in Florida and California. Wait … wha?! Fast Company has more here.

More than 1,000 Marilyn Monroe fans dressed as the screen legend gathered today beneath the “Forever Marilyn” statue in downtown Palm Springs to celebrate what would have been her 100th birthday, setting a Guinness World Record.

Club Med’s first South African resort is set to open in July on a stretch of Indian Ocean coastline known for dangerous sharks, but no one can agree on how to keep the sharks at bay.

How flesh-eating bacteria is invading the Hamptons.

Hermès is turning its home line into another arena for status goods with the new Stadium d’Hermès table, a marble showpiece unveiled at Milan Design Week whose figure-eight tabletop is meant to evoke a horse’s back or racetrack and whose price is available only on request.

Snake watch.

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