Startups
Varda Grows Drugs in Orbit, Parachutes Them Home — and Just Priced That at $1.6 Billion
Varda Space raised a $250M Series D at a $1.6B valuation to scale pharmaceutical manufacturing in orbit.
Topic
Startups
The latest Startups news and analysis from Tech Arcade.
Startups
VoyaBear Launches on iOS and Android
VoyaBear, the AI travel app that learns how you like to travel and plans group trips around everyone's interests, is now on the App Store and Google Play.
AI
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.
AI
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.
Cybersecurity
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.
AI
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.
Robotics
20 Robot Makers Buy the Same Chip. D-Robotics Just Raised $400 Million Making It.
D-Robotics closed a $400M Series C — the day's biggest raise — selling the chips and software inside 20+ rival robot makers, with 8M+ Sunrise chips already shipped.
Startups
CADDi Hit a $1.2 Billion Valuation by Reading the Factory Drawings Nobody Else Could
CADDi's $114M Series D values the Tokyo-and-Chicago manufacturing-AI startup at $1.2 billion — a bet that factories' lost drawings are worth a fortune.
AI
ByteDance Spun Its Drug Lab Into a $1.5 Billion Startup. It Hasn't Dosed a Single Patient.
ByteDance spun its in-house AI-for-science team into Anew Labs, which raised $290M at a $1.5B valuation with the TikTok owner keeping 56% — four drug programs, none yet in human trials.
AI
Profound Went From $1B to $1.8B in Seven Months by Selling Brands a Seat Inside AI Answers
Profound raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation to get brands named inside ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answers — the AI-era rewrite of SEO.
AI
Nobody Would Insure a Rogue AI Agent. AIUC Just Raised $40 Million to Do It Anyway.
AIUC raised a $40M Series A led by Ribbit Capital to certify and insure AI agents, running ~5,000 adversarial tests per audit. The barrier to enterprise AI isn't intelligence, it's liability.
Space
Open Cosmos Raised €300 Million to Give Europe Its Own Eyes in Orbit
Open Cosmos raised a €300M Series C — about $348M — to reach unicorn status and give Europe its own sovereign satellite infrastructure, one satellite a day.
AI
Cognition Doubled to $48 Billion in Four Months. Its Revenue Multiple Didn't Budge.
Cognition's valuation leapt from $26B to $48B in four months on a $2B Series E, yet its revenue multiple stayed pinned near 53x. Here's what that flat number reveals about the AI-coding boom.
Robotics
The Apple Car Team Gave Up on Cars. Now They Build Warehouse Robots — and Just Raised $100M.
An ex-Apple car engineer's startup, Maven Robotics, exits stealth with a $100M Series A to build wheeled warehouse robots that stack boxes — no legs required.
Startups
A Company That Digs Holes Is Now Worth $23 Billion. The UAE Just Wrote the Check.
Elon Musk's tunnel startup just raised $3 billion at a $23 billion valuation, led by the UAE, which is also its biggest customer. Here's why concrete is suddenly worth more than most chatbots.
AI
Positron Skipped the Priciest Part of an AI Chip. Investors Just Valued It at $5 Billion.
Reno chip startup Positron just raised $875 million at a $5 billion valuation on a bet against high-bandwidth memory the priciest, scarcest part of an AI chip.