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Startups

🔥 DeepSeek Asked for $7 Billion. The Checks Came Back at $12 Billion.

DeepSeek went out for about $7 billion and investors came back with at least $12 billion, in a Tencent- and CATL-led round ahead of a planned 2027 IPO.

Cybersecurity

🔥 Kevin Mandia Points 26,000 AI Hackers at Your Network — and Just Raised $255.5 Million to Do It

Kevin Mandia sold Mandiant to Google for $5.4B. His new startup Armadin just raised $255.5M at a $2.5B valuation to point swarms of AI agents at your own network, before real attackers do.

Biotech

🔥 The Brain Chip That Doesn't Drill Just Raised $250 Million

Precision Neuroscience closed an oversubscribed $250M Series D at a ~$1B valuation, betting its surface brain implant beats drilling into tissue.

🔥 Snorkel AI Just Tripled to $3.5 Billion Because the Models Ran Out of Homework

Snorkel AI closed a $350M Series E at a $3.5B valuation, tripling in 16 months on a $375M revenue run rate. The bottleneck in AI is no longer compute, it's data hard enough to make models smarter.

🔥 Island Just Hit $6.4 Billion Selling Companies a Web Browser

Island just raised a $400M Series F at a $6.4B valuation for its enterprise browser — as AI agents turn the humble tab into the place companies police their software.

🔥 Snorkel AI Grew 18x in a Year Selling the One Thing AI Labs Can't Get Enough Of

Snorkel AI raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation after its revenue jumped ~18x in a year selling the expert training data, rubrics, and RL environments AI labs are starved for.

Climate Tech

🔥 Rainmaker Raised $100 Million to Fly Drones Into Clouds and Squeeze Out Rain

Rainmaker raised a $100M Series B to scale drone-based cloud seeding across the American West — and pitch data centers on offsetting their water use.

Space

🔥 Impulse Space's 2028 Flights Are Already Sold Out. So It Grabbed Another $308 Million.

Impulse Space reopened its Series D with a $308M extension, pushing the round to $808M at a ~$5.4B valuation as its 2028 rideshare flights sell out.

AI Search

🔥 Profound Raised $180 Million to Get Your Brand Into the AI's Answer

Profound just raised $180M at a $1.8B valuation to get brands named inside AI answers - the new SEO for a world where people ask a chatbot instead of clicking blue links.

Climate Tech

🔥 Mazama Raised $135 Million to Pull Firm Power Out of 400°C Rock

Mazama Energy raised an oversubscribed $135M Series B to chase superhot geothermal power at 400°C — aiming for 10x the output from a fifth of the wells.

AI Infrastructure

🔥 Crusoe Tripled to $30.9 Billion in Ten Months by Selling Electrons, Not Just GPUs

Crusoe closed a $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B valuation — roughly triple its worth ten months ago — by owning the whole chain from power plant to GPU. The scarce input in AI stopped being chips and became electricity.

Fintech

🔥 Asset Managers Juggle Up to Nine Back-Office Systems. Ridgeline Raised $250 Million to Replace Them With One.

Dave Duffield built PeopleSoft and Workday. His third act, Ridgeline, just raised $250M at a $1.425B valuation to replace the six-to-nine legacy systems running the back office of asset managers with one AI-native platform.