Pictures from our event yesterday in Athens and also a quick reminder that our next StrictlyVC event is coming up on Thursday night, June 18, in L.A., courtesy of our co-hosts in the evening, Aerospace Corp. We’ll have more details on this one in the coming weeks; in the meantime, don’t wait too long to nab your seat!

Blue Origin lost a New Glenn rocket in a massive launchpad explosion near Cape Canaveral, FL, sending an enormous fireball into the night sky while the company was preparing for a coming mission. Jeff Bezos said all personnel were accounted for and safe, but the incident is expected to delay upcoming flights because the damaged pad is the only site from which Blue Origin can launch New Glenn. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Anthropic has surpassed OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup after raising $65 billion at a $900 billion pre-money valuation – nearly two and a half times its valuation three months ago – as its coding-focused Claude products have helped push the company above a $47 billion revenue run rate. TechCrunch has more here.

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Insurance tech Corgi on Thursday announced a $106 million Series B1 raise, valuing the company at $2.6 billion, just three weeks after announcing a $160 million Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation and four months after its $108 million Series A. The company offers insurance, working specifically with startups in areas like tech, cyber, and general liability; it counts Deel and Artisan among its customers. 

Even in the current go-go dealmaking environment, that sequencing is remarkable. While startups raising back-to-back rounds at steep step-ups have become almost routine, a company whose valuation doubles in three weeks is unusual enough to raise questions, particularly given the investor set in both rounds is the same.

Asked what material event justified that kind of jump in such a short window, investor Kanyi Maqubela of Kindred Ventures cited the company’s momentum. It’s an explanation that may satisfy some, but the practice more generally is starting to attract scrutiny in LP circles. “There’s growing distrust of internal markups,” said one LP who backs numerous venture funds and asked not to be named. Said this person of exit mechanisms specifically, “[I]f a company [is] just getting re-priced upward with no real liquidity event, LPs notice.”

The specific concern is that a fund that invests at one valuation, then marks it up three weeks later can make portfolio performance look stronger on paper than the underlying business may justify.

In this case, Maqubela suggested, that’s not an issue for Kindred’s limited partners, nor for Corgi’s other investors, which include Prime Capital, Leblon Capital, Alumni Ventures, and Y Combinator.

“LPs really like exits above all,” Maqubela said in a message to TechCrunch. “They discount the value of markups since those aren’t always reflective of reality.” He added that in this case, revenue growth rationalized the new round.

Airwallex, a 10-year-old San Francisco payments company that provides cross-border payments, spend management, billing, and accounting tools for businesses, raised new funding led by Addition at roughly a $12 billion valuation, a 50% increase from the Series G round it raised in December at an $8 billion valuation. Axios has the scoop here.

ClearNote Health, a 10-year-old San Diego startup that develops blood-based cancer detection tests and epigenomics software designed to identify cancers earlier using multiomic analysis and machine learning, raised a $52 million Series D round led by Mattias Westman. The company has raised a total of $185+ million. More here.

Groq, a 10-year-old AI chip company based in Mountain View, CA, that is shifting toward inference infrastructure for running trained AI models, is reportedly raising up to $650 million from previous investors after signing a $17 billion licensing deal with Nvidia. Reuters has more here.

Inherent, a one-year-old London startup that develops AI systems for scientific research and discovery, raised a $50 million seed round led by Index Ventures, with Radical Ventures also participating. More here.

Orbital Industries, a three-year-old London startup that uses AI models to discover and manufacture advanced materials for data center equipment rather than licensing the underlying chemistry to other companies, raised a $50 million Series B round led by Plural, with NVentures as well as previous investors Radical Ventures, Compound, and Fly Ventures also digging in. Fortune has more here.

Reactor, a one-year-old San Francisco startup founded by former Apple engineers that claims it can produce gen-AI video in real-time, raised a $59 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with WndrCo, Amplify Partners, Sky9 Capital, and FPV Ventures also anteing up. Variety has more here.

Canals, a four-year-old startup based in Coral Gables, FL, that builds AI software that automates order processing, invoicing, and other workflows for wholesale distributors handling suppliers, customers, and purchase orders, raised a $35 million Series A round. Base10 Partners led the transaction. Refresh Miami has more here.

Caudal Energy, a two-year-old startup that creates fin-based tidal energy systems that generate electricity in mid-flow tidal sites where conventional tidal turbines are not economically viable, raised a $5.8 million round co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Empirical Ventures, with Kibo Invest and Oxford Innovation Finance as well as previous investors Zero Carbon Capital and Creator Fund also contributing. Tech Funding News has more here.

Daloopa, a seven-year-old New York startup that structures financial data from public-company filings so investment firms and AI tools can use source-linked data for valuation, earnings analysis, portfolio modeling, and research workflows, raised a $47 million Series C round led by Brighton Park Capital, with Squarepoint Capital, Touring Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners also engaging. More here.

Ember LifeSciences, a four-year-old Los Angeles startup that makes reusable, temperature-controlled shipping containers with real-time monitoring and cloud tracking for transporting medicines and vaccines, raised a $10.5 million Series A extension. Investors included Amgen Ventures and TDF Ventures. More here.

Geordie AI, a one-year-old London startup that monitors how AI agents behave inside enterprise systems so security teams can see what data and tools they can access, detect risky activity, and limit agent actions without blocking deployment, raised a $30 million Series A round at an approximately $180 million post-money valuation. The deal was led by Balderton Capital, with Crosspoint Capital as well as previous investors General Catalyst and Ten Eleven Ventures also stepping up. The company has raised a total of $36.5 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Gray Swan, a three-year-old Pittsburgh startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon University that develops tools for testing and protecting AI models and agents from unsafe behavior, raised a $40 million Series A round co-led by Wing Venture Capital and Madrona, with Obvious Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Hudson River Trading, and Samsung Next as well as previous investor Magarac Venture Partners also participating. More here.

H1, a nine-year-old New York startup that provides information about physicians to pharma companies, hospital systems, and health insurers, raised a $40 million round led by CVS Health Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Itera, a two-year-old startup based in California City, CA, that enables electronics engineers to test hardware changes on liquid-metal circuit substrates that can be modified in under a minute, raised a $12 million seed round co-led by Upfront Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, and Colle Capital. More here.

LightTable, a two-year-old Denver startup that helps pre-construction teams review project documents, catch design issues earlier, and manage QA/QC workflows with AI-assisted collaboration tools, raised a $22 million Series A round led by Innovation Endeavors and including Blackhorn Ventures, DivcoWest Ventures, and 9Yards Capital as well as previous investors Primary Venture Partners, MetaProp, and Banter Capital. Proptech Connect has more here.

Pax, a two-year-old São Paulo startup that develops AI-powered public safety software for connecting camera feeds, police records, and criminal databases, raised a $40 million seed round co-led by Greenoaks and Benchmark. More here.

Saris, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that automates lending, compliance, and operations workflows for banks and credit unions using AI agents trained on each institution’s existing systems and processes, raised a $28.8 million Series A round led by 8VC, with Audacious Ventures, Homebrew, Btech Consortium, and Service Ventures also participating. More here.

Slamcore, a 10-year-old London company that uses stereo cameras and visual AI to track industrial vehicles inside factories and warehouses, helping operators monitor fleet location, utilization, driver behavior, and safety risks, raised a $14 million round. Investors included ROKStar Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Interwoven Ventures, MMC Ventures, Amadeus Capital Partners, and IP Group. The company has raised a total of $40 million. Robotics & Automation News has more here.

Solstice, a four-year-old New York startup that automates pharmaceutical marketing content creation and regulatory review workflows, helping life sciences companies generate compliant campaigns, physician communications, patient engagement materials, and ads, raised a $21 million Series A round led by Transformation Capital, with Twelve Below and Virtue Ventures also anteing up. The company has raised a total of approximately $25 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

StrainX Bioworks, a three-year-old startup based in Bhopal, India, that develops precision-fermented food and nutritional ingredients using synthetic biology, with an initial focus on alternative proteins, raised a $13 million round co-led by Prime Venture Partners and Leo Capital, with Good Startup, Sparrow Capital, Sun Icon Ventures, Dholakia Ventures, and WindT Angels also opting in. Green Queen Media has more here.

Waypoint Bio, a five-year-old New York startup that uses AI and in vivo screening to design cancer therapies that program immune cells to attack solid tumors, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Amplify Partners, with General Catalyst, Time BioVentures, Lux Capital, and Mitsui & Co. Global Investment as well as previous investors including Hummingbird Ventures also contributing. More here.

Byron, a nine-month-old San Francisco startup that develops AI agents that automate business tax preparation workflows for accounting firms by integrating with existing CPA software and Excel-based processes, raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Square Peg, with Sorenson Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Correlation Ventures also participating. Capital Brief has more here.

Capchase, a six-year-old New York startup that provides B2B financing software that lets technology vendors offer installment payment terms to customers while receiving upfront payment, using AI to automate underwriting, approvals, and financing workflows, raised a $26 million round led by 01 Advisors, with Caffeinated Capital, Thomvest Ventures, Scifi VC, Bling Capital, and Invesco also taking part. Crunchbase News has more here.

Cypher AI, a one-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that aims to unify experiment design, lab execution, vendor coordination, and data analysis for biotech research teams using AI-driven workflow tools, raised a $2 million seed round led by MaC Venture Capital, with Epsilon Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Sparta Group, and LiquidMetal Ventures also investing. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Endurance Energy, a one-year-old Seattle startup that pursues undersea geothermal energy projects designed to generate round-the-clock clean power from heat beneath the ocean floor, raised between $25 million and $30 million in a round led by Founders Fund. Dealroom has more here.

Mykor, a five-year-old startup based in Bristol, UK, that grows mycelium-based insulation panels from agricultural and industrial waste for use as lower-carbon alternatives to petroleum-based building materials, raised a $5.4 million round led by Clean Growth Fund, with the British Business Bank and Green Angel Ventures also chiming in. The company has raised a total of $10.1 million. The Next Web has more here.

Pacifico Biolabs, a four-year-old Berlin startup that runs mycelium fermentation in idle brewery tanks to produce meat-alternative ingredients for food manufacturers, consumer brands, and grocery retailers, raised an $8.2 million Series A round. Investors included Stray Dog Capital, TGFS, Sprout & About Ventures, Simon Capital, FoodLabs, and a regional brewery partner. Tech Funding News has more here.

Sond, a four-year-old Boston startup that makes sleep earbuds that track physiological signals and use an AI sleep coach to adjust audio programs in real-time, raised a $7 million round. Investors included E14 Fund, Crosslink Capital, Ubiquity Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and Meach Cove Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Replit, a 10-year-old San Francisco startup that helps developers build and deploy software using natural-language prompts, received an undisclosed investment from Visa, which is also exploring ways to integrate its payment products into Replit so developers and AI agents can accept payments directly through the platform. TechCrunch has more here.

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Lightning Capital, a Miami- and San Francisco-based investment firm focused on early-stage startups building around AI’s impact on infrastructure, workflows, labor, and new markets, is raising a $100 million second venture fund and has named former Andreessen Horowitz partner Michele Griffin as general partner and COO after merging with her go-to-market advisory firm, Premier GTM. More here.

Autodesk agreed to acquire MaintainX, a maintenance and operations software startup, for about $3.6 billion in cash, its largest acquisition ever, as the design software company pushes deeper into factory, facility, and asset operations and looks to use real-world maintenance data to support industrial AI products. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Asana has purchased StackAI, a no-code tool for building AI agents, for $75 million, as the workplace software company tries to recast itself around “human-agent” workflows and deepen its AI automation capabilities. TechCrunch has more here.

FalconX, a California-based crypto prime broker last valued at $8 billion in 2022, has confidentially filed draft IPO paperwork with the SEC and hired Cantor and other bankers to advise on a potential listing, though the offering is not expected until later this year amid weaker trading volumes and cooler investor sentiment toward crypto IPOs. The company has raised over $477 million from VC backers like Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global Management, Capital Group, Coinbase Ventures, American Express Ventures, Thoma Bravo, and Wellington Management. CoinDesk has more here.

Elon Musk tweeted today that SpaceX’s compute deal with Anthropic is only a 180-day lease with mutual 90-day cancellation rights afterward. However, TechCrunch notes that SpaceX’s S-1 repeatedly describes Anthropic as agreeing to pay $1.25 billion a month through May 2029, raising questions about the actual duration of one of SpaceX’s largest AI infrastructure contracts. More here.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss appear to have won a major crypto-regulatory fight after the CFTC moved to vacate a Biden-era enforcement action against Gemini, the twins’ crypto exchange, following their lobbying campaign arguing that the $5 million settlement was the product of years of “lawfare.” The Wall Street Journal has more here.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league is moving toward using automated camera-based systems to handle out-of-bounds and other “objective” calls, arguing that AI could make those decisions instantaneous while freeing referees to focus on judgment calls like contact and flopping. Futurism has more here.

Wix is laying off roughly 20% of its workforce, or just over 1,000 employees, after CEO Avishai Abrahami said the fast evolution of AI is forcing the Israel-based web development company to rethink how it operates, with currency pressure from the stronger shekel also weighing on costs. CNBC has more here.

U.S. Central Command says adversaries have used commercially available location data to track or surveil American troops, highlighting how phone and computer data collected through the ad ecosystem and sold by brokers can become a battlefield risk. In response, Senator Ron Wyden told Reuters that the adtech industry should be treated as a national security threat. TechCrunch has more here.

Waymo has begun offering select riders in Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco free rides in Ojai, its new Chinese-made electric robotaxi, as the Alphabet-owned company tries to lower the cost of building and operating its fleet and move closer to large-scale deployment. TechCrunch has more here.

1517 Fund, an early-stage VC firm based in Colorado, sued California’s financial regulator over the state’s new venture capital diversity-disclosure law, arguing that requiring firms to collect and publicly report demographic data about portfolio company founders violates the Constitution. Pitchbook News has more here.

New York Times writer Nicole Stock traces the rise of “mog,” a Gen Alpha slang term meaning to outshine or outdo someone, usually in looks or status, that has spread from incel and looksmaxxing forums into more ironic, mainstream use on TikTok, Instagram, and X.

Wealthy retirees who left New York are buying “med-à-terres,” second homes that give them easy access to longtime doctors and elite medical centers.

Ressence’s new $48,500 Type 7 watch uses the brand’s oil-filled display system to make its rotating hour, minute, and GMT indicators appear pressed directly against the crystal, with the oil also creating a dial color shift as the temperature changes.

Artist Johnny DeFeo turned his wildlife paintings into a rentable 550-square-foot, one-bedroom house shaped like a coyote’s head in the high desert near Taos, NM, after winning a $100,000 Airbnb contest and ultimately spending about $350,000 to build the surrealist casita.

Todd Snyder and Sperry have released a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood-inspired collection built around Fred Rogers’ understated style, including canvas CVO sneakers, neighborhood-themed T-shirts, and a red zip sweater that pays homage to his signature cardigan.

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