Meta has repeatedly delayed broad developer access to Muse Spark, its first closed AI model, though the company says it is testing the API with early partners and expects to release it this month. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

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By Julie Bort

If Alphabet’s record-breaking $85 billion stock sale signals investor appetite for AI-related offerings — and it does — we can safely say that investors are voracious.

Google’s parent company had initially intended to sell a first tranche of $40 billion worth of various equity instruments — two different classes of shares, plus smaller “depositary shares” priced to be accessible to a broader range of investors. But the offering was so oversubscribed that it raised $45 billion instead, CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X on Monday. Among the buyers: Berkshire Hathaway, still known for its love of value investing, picked up $10 billion worth.

Alphabet plans to sell another $40 billion worth next quarter, for $85 billion total.

Even $80 billion would have topped the record for equity offerings previously set by Brazilian oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, which raised $70 billion in 2010, Bloomberg reports.

Now, it’s true that these investors are buying shares of Alphabet, not shares in a younger, possibly debt-riddled AI startup. Alphabet is a very healthy business: $110 billion in revenue (with high profit margins) in Q1 alone, up 22% year-over-year.

Still, the money from this stock sale is earmarked for AI. “Part of our multi-year investment strategy to meet the AI opportunity ahead and support the demand we’re seeing from enterprises and consumers,” as Pichai described it. At Google I/O last month, he said the company expects to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion on capital expenditures — largely on AI infrastructure and data centers — before the year is out.

The timing matters beyond Alphabet itself. As Anthropic gets ready to go public, this enormously successful stock sale is a very good sign for the broader AI IPO pipeline. It indicates that public investors, particularly the deep-pocketed institutional ones, are ready to pony up.

Adaptive Innovation, a two-year-old New York and Dallas startup that develops systems that automate medical intake, scheduling, clinical documentation, and compliance billing for home healthcare visits, raised a $50 million Series A round led by Felicis, with Bain Capital Ventures, Optum Ventures, Sunflower Capital, BoxGroup, Dorm Room Fund, Constellation, and SV Angel also participating. The company has raised a total of $60 million. More here.

AlphaSense, a 15-year-old New York company that helps financial-services firms and other large companies search, analyze, and extract insights from earnings transcripts, filings, broker research, expert-call transcripts, and other business data using AI, raised a $350 million Series G round at a $7.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Vitruvian Partners, Accenture Ventures, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with D. E. Shaw Ventures and Pinegrove Opportunity Partners as well as previous investors CapitalG, Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Viking Global Investors also piling on. The company has raised a total of $1+ billion. More here.

Collate, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI tools to automate life sciences documentation for regulatory filings, clinical trials, and product development, raised a $95 million round at a nearly $1 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Redpoint Ventures. The company has raised a total of $125 million. Forbes has more here.

Coralogix, a 12-year-old Boston and Israeli company that collects and analyzes logs, metrics, and traces to help companies monitor software performance, detect outages, investigate incidents, and maintain reliability across applications and systems, raised a $200 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation. The deal was co-led by Advent International and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, with Greenfield and Brighton Park Capital also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $550 million. TechCrunch has more here.

DeepSeek, a three-year-old Chinese startup that develops open-source AI models, is reportedly set to raise about $7.4 billion at a $52 billion to $59 billion post-money valuation. Purported investors include Tencent, CATL, China’s national AI fund, NetEase, JD.com, IDG Capital, and Monolith Management, with founder Liang Wenfeng set to commit approximately $3 billion of his own money. Reuters has more here.

Factorial, a 10-year-old Barcelona company that provides SMBs with tools to manage payroll, time tracking, absence, and employee records, and uses agents to apply company policies and execute HR, finance, and IT tasks for employees, raised a $150 million Series D round at a $2.5 billion valuation. The deal was led by General Catalyst, with previous investors Atomico and Four Rivers also chiming in. Tech Funding News has more here.

FirstClub, a two-year-old Bengaluru startup that operates a curated online grocery platform focused on higher-quality products rather than faster delivery, raised a $55 million Series B round at a $255 million post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Peak XV Partners and Sofina, with previous investors Accel, RTP Global, and Paramark Ventures also writing checks. The company has raised a total of $86 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Oxford Quantum Circuits, a nine-year-old startup based in Reading, UK, that develops superconducting quantum computers and provides cloud access to businesses and governments via data centers to run research and commercial computations beyond classical computing limits, raised a $349.3 million Series C round led by Bullhound Capital, with British Business Bank, Fynveur, Cofides, Alpha Edison, Fulcrum Asset Management, Pentland Ventures, and Magdalen College Oxford as well as previous investors Oxford Science Enterprises, SBI, and Chevron Technology Ventures also participating. Data Center Dynamics has more here.

Quobly, a four-year-old startup based in Grenoble, France, that designs quantum chips using silicon spin qubits, with plans to manufacture them through STMicroelectronics and ship its first commercial quantum computer by the end of 2026, raised a $133.6 million Series A round co-led by Bpifrance, SEALSQ, and STMicroelectronics. The company has raised a total of approximately $180 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Suno, a four-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that generates music from text prompts for professional musicians and everyday users, has raised a $400 million Series D round at a $5.4 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Bond Capital, with IVP, Forerunner, Union Square Ventures, Alkeon Capital Management and Quiet as well as previous investors Matrix, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, and Schroders Capital also stepping up. TechCrunch has more here.

Town, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that acts as a personalized AI assistant across inboxes, calendars, Slack, docs, and other work tools, learning users’ voice, relationships, routines, and priorities to manage follow-ups, briefings, scheduling, and administrative tasks, raised a $55 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Forerunner Ventures as well as previous investors First Round, Alt Capital, and Conviction also anteing up. More here.

Wordsmith AI, a two-year-old Edinburgh startup that helps in-house legal teams handle more work internally by drafting contracts, answering legal questions, routing requests from email and Slack, and managing legal workflows, raised a $70 million Series B round co-led by Highland Europe and Index Ventures. Business Insider has more here.

Advanced NanoTherapies, an eight-year-old startup based in Santa Clara, CA, that develops dual-drug coated balloon devices for coronary and peripheral artery disease treatment, raised a $31 million Series B round co-led by S3 Ventures and an undisclosed strategic investor, with T45 Fund also taking part. More here.

Apoha, a five-year-old London startup that measures how molecules and materials behave in liquid samples to generate behavioral data that helps pharmaceutical, food, and materials companies identify high-risk candidates before costly testing, raised a $36 million round led by Singular, with Draper Associates, Redalpine, Seedcamp, Wilbe, and Nucleus also investing. Tech Funding News has more here.

Arpio, an eight-year-old startup based in Durham, NC, that automates disaster recovery, failover testing, and restoration of cloud workloads across AWS, Azure, and other environments, raised a $15 million Series A round co-led by S3 Ventures and Paladin Capital, with Draper Associates, Uncorrelated, Valor Ventures, CreativeCo Capital, and Lookout Ventures also engaging. More here.

Centrical, a 13-year-old New York and Israeli company that helps large enterprises manage, train, engage, and evaluate the performance of sales and customer service employees and AI agents, raised a $39 million Series D round at a valuation of "several hundred million dollars." The deal was co-led by Leeds Illuminate and Kingfisher Investment, with JVP also digging in. The company has raised a total of approximately $100 million. CTech has more here.

Findigs, an eight-year-old New York startup that automates rental application screening and leasing decisions for property managers and landlords, raised a $32 million Series C round led by RPM Ventures, with previous investors Nyca Partners, Frontier Venture Capital, and Western Technology Investment also stepping up. The company has raised a total of $80 million. More here.

Flok Health, a four-year-old startup based in Cambridge, UK, that provides an AI-operated physiotherapy service that diagnoses, triages, treats, and discharges musculoskeletal patients via mobile consultations for healthcare systems, raised a $12.5 million Series A round led by Albion VC and including Mercia Ventures as well as previous investors Eka Ventures and Form Ventures. Tech Funding News has more here.

Forage, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that enables retailers and e-commerce platforms to accept SNAP, WIC, HSA, and FSA payments and provides a mobile app for users to manage benefits and find grocery savings, raised a $40 million Series B round led by Mouro Capital, with Nyca Partners, PayPal Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Intuit Ventures, NextLadder Ventures, Pivotal Ventures, and FJ Labs also anteing up. More here.

Gigaton, a five-year-old London startup that simulates industrial process behavior and autonomously adjusts plant control parameters to improve operations and reduce fuel use and emissions for cement, steel, glass, and chemical producers, raised a $26 million Series A round led by Plural, with additional support from 2150 and Semapa Next as well as previous investors Planet A Ventures, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, UCL Technology Fund, and Clean Growth Fund. The company has raised a total of $35 million. UKTN has more here.

Lassie, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI software to automate administrative work for dental practices, raised a $35 million Series A round at an approximately $250 million post-money valuation. The deal was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Night Capital, Gokul Rajaram, and Dr. Edward Zuckerberg also participating. Upstarts has more here.

Tavo Biotherapeutics, a two-year-old startup based in Laguna Beach, CA, that develops drug candidates for glaucoma and retinal diseases, including a topical therapy targeting neuroinflammation and a bispecific antibody for age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, raised a $17 million Series A round led by Pureos Bioventures and including Polaris Partners as well as previous investor Tau Capital. More here.

Terra AI, a three-year-old Palo Alto startup that develops generative geological modeling software for mineral and energy developers, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures, with BHP Ventures also (no pun intended) digging in. More here.

AethexAI, a one-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that develops voice AI models for customer support in Africa and the Middle East, raised a $3 million pre-seed round led by 4DX Ventures, with Enza Capital, Dorm Room Fund, Mojo Ventures, and Stanford GSB 26 Fund also engaging. TechCrunch has more here.

Alitheon, a nine-year-old startup based in Bellevue, WA, that captures surface characteristics of physical objects to generate unique digital identities that enable item-level authentication and tracking through camera scans without labels or tags, raised an $8 million round led by Emerald Technology Ventures, with eBay Ventures also contributing. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

HLRBO, an 11-year-old Minneapolis company that operates an online marketplace that connects private landowners with vetted hunters to lease hunting land, handling listings, search, payments, contracts, and insurance across the U.S. and Canada, raised a $2.5 million round led by Mairs & Power Venture Capital. More here.

Molfar Defence Technologies, a startup founded this year based in Ukraine and Poland that develops tactical radar systems that detect, locate, and track small low-flying drones for military units operating in complex battlefield and electromagnetic environments, raised a $2.3 million round. Front Ventures was the deal lead. More here.

NP Company, a one-year-old Paris startup that develops physics simulation models pre-trained on industrial data to generate high-fidelity engineering results in seconds for aerospace, automotive, and semiconductor design workflows, raised a $7 million pre-seed round led by Partech, with the Peugeot family office also taking part. Tech Funding News has more here.

StratusGrid, a 13-year-old Chattanooga company that deploys AI agents to analyze cloud infrastructure usage, identify cost savings, simulate policy impacts, and execute updates, raised a $3 million seed round led by Dogwood Ventures, with Market Square Ventures, LaunchTN, VentureSouth, and Service Provider Capital also chiming in. More here.

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Benchmark is breaking with decades of small-fund discipline, raising $2 billion across two new vehicles including its first-ever growth fund as the AI boom pushes the storied venture firm beyond its traditional $425 million fund size and early-stage-only playbook. TechCrunch has more here.

Nvidia has acquired Kumo AI, a five-year-old startup that helps companies use predictive AI on enterprise data, for more than $400 million, according to The Information. PitchBook says Kumo last raised $37 million in 2022 at a $250 million valuation. The Information has more here.

Quantinuum raised $1.68 billion in an upsized IPO, selling 28 million shares at $60 each – above its marketed range of $53 to $55 – and valuing the Honeywell-backed quantum computing company at $15.6 billion as investor enthusiasm for quantum technology accelerates. Bloomberg has more here.

More than 1,000 current and former SpaceX employees have reportedly banded together ahead of the company’s IPO to negotiate lower wealth-management fees and access to tax-saving tools for their expected windfalls. Bloomberg has more here.

The Financial Times profiles Alexandr Wang’s effort to revive Meta’s AI operation, reporting that the former Scale AI CEO has built a secretive 100-person research group inside Meta, launched the company’s Muse Spark model, and gained unusual influence with Mark Zuckerberg. More here.

AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says Microsoft wants to become one of the world’s top frontier AI labs, using the company’s Build conference to unveil in-house reasoning, coding, image, voice, and cybersecurity models as it tries to prove it can build advanced AI “from the ground up” rather than rely on OpenAI or other outside labs. The Verge has more here.

Revolut CEO Nikolay Storonsky’s pay package could hand him roughly $76 billion in stock if the fintech reaches a nearly $200 billion IPO valuation, an Elon Musk-like moonshot structure that would grant him more than 12 million additional incentive shares on top of his existing stake if he can more than double Revolut’s current $75 billion valuation. Bloomberg has more here.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has staged a dramatic comeback after a run of disastrous Vision Fund bets – including WeWork, DiDi, robot pizza, and dog-walking startups – left him in “despair” three years ago and cut SoftBank’s stock in half. Now on an AI buying spree, including a $64 billion OpenAI bet and massive data-center plans, he has made SoftBank Japan’s most valuable company and lifted his personal stake to roughly $100 billion. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

GitLab, the public software-development platform best known for code hosting and DevOps tools, is cutting 350 employees, or 14% of its workforce, and exiting 22 countries as part of an AI-focused restructuring. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

A new Entertainment Software Association report says 212.3 million Americans between ages 5 and 90 now play video games for at least an hour each week, up 3% from last year, with the average player age rising to 37. Variety has more here.

University of Toronto researchers say they built an isolated prototype of an AI-powered computer worm that can spread across a test network without human intervention by tailoring attacks to each machine it encounters, raising fears that increasingly powerful open-weight AI models could let hackers automate attacks across known software flaws. The New York Times has more here.

The Financial Times examines the race to build “recursive self-improving” AI, or systems that can help create more powerful successors with little human input, a prospect that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and startups are pursuing as a possible path to superintelligence even as safety researchers warn that no one knows how to keep such systems reliably under human control. More here.

New York Magazine looks at the billionaire logistics machine around the Knicks’ first NBA Finals run in 27 years, with elite fans paying up to $500,000 per courtside seat, chartering private jets and helicopters between New York and San Antonio, and turning Madison Square Garden’s VIP rooms into what one luxury fixer calls “Knicks Couture.”

Gwyneth Paltrow’s claim that arugula can work as a dairy substitute in Goop Kitchen meatballs has gone viral, first as another oddball Goop food hack and then as a meme about workers fearing replacement by everything from AI to peppery greens.

A rare look at Michael Jordan’s private golf club.

Leica’s new $1,995 Cine Compact 1 projector turns nearly any surface into a screen of up to 220 inches, using 360-degree rotation, automatic zoom, autofocus, and keystone correction to project 4K video from almost any angle, with Dolby Vision, built-in Netflix, Disney+, Prime, Wi-Fi, AirPlay, and HDMI.

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