Facts
- HQ
- None
- Sectors
- Artificial Intelligence, AI Research
- Founded
- 2015
- Stage
- private
Starcloud raises $250M Series A extension from Nvidia and Cisco Investments, valued at $2.3B to build AI data centers in orbit
Starcloud raised a $250 million extension to its Series A, bringing total funding to $450 million and a $2.3 billion valuation to pursue AI-powered data centers in orbit with backing from Nvidia and Cisco Investments.
Endex raises $14M from OpenAI Startup Fund to scale AI Excel agents
Endex, a San Francisco AI startup founded by Tarun Amasa, raised $14M in a round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund to expand its AI agent platform that automates financial analysis in Microsoft Excel for enterprise users.
Omnivore, Ankur, Avaana, Aavishkaar and Incubate Fund Asia pivot into deeptech as Indian VCs broaden mandates
Specialist VC funds in India — including Omnivore, Ankur Capital, Avaana, Aavishkaar and Incubate Fund Asia — are expanding beyond sector niches to invest more in deeptech (robotics, biotech, spacetech, advanced materials and AI) as the startup pipeline and government-backed funds shift toward technology-led manufacturing and innovation. Examples include Omnivore's talks to back robotics startup Perceptyne and Aavishkaar's Next Gen Fund targeting deeptech and AI.
James Dacombe Becomes the Newest Under-30 Founder to Reach a Billion-Dollar Fortune
James Dacombe has become the newest founder under 30 to amass a billion-dollar fortune.
Synthefy raises $6.5M seed from Wing Venture Capital to scale structured-data foundation models
Synthefy, a San Francisco AI startup, raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Wing Venture Capital to build structured-data foundation models for enterprise demand forecasting, pricing optimization, fraud detection, and infrastructure monitoring. The funds will expand research and engineering teams, accelerate development of its next-generation model Nori, and grow industry partnerships.
Highspot merges with Seismic in deal reported near $2.8B; combined company totals $600M revenue and keeps Seattle HQ
Sales software companies Highspot and San Diego-based Seismic completed a merger that combines about $600 million in annual revenue, will keep Highspot's Seattle Belltown office and brand as "Highspot by Seismic," and is expected to close in Q1 2027 in a deal reported around $2.8 billion. The combined company, taking the Seismic name, says it will invest more than $100 million annually in R&D and serves roughly 2,500 customers and 3.5 million users.
Family offices become major AI investors: 41 direct deals in Feb 2026 as AI raises $171B
Family offices are increasingly directing large-scale capital into AI across models, infrastructure and industrial applications worldwide, completing dozens of direct AI investments (41 in February 2026) as AI companies drew a record $171 billion in funding.
Is AI a Bubble? What PitchBook's Head of Research Sees in the Data
Recorded live at Seattle Tech Week, this episode of Founded & Funded brings together two people who track the AI capital markets from different vantage points: Pitchbook EVP of Research & Market Intelligence Nizar Tarhuni, and Madrona Partner Sabrina Albert. These two dig into where AI venture capital is actually landing across the model, infrastructure, and application layers, why AI "harnesses" are becoming a winner-takes-most category, and where vertical AI applications may hold an edge that horizontal platforms can't match. They also cover PitchBook's VC Exit Predictor, the new normal for AI seed valuations, and the tranche-financing structures Nizar says…
Rippling sues Runlayer for patent infringement on Aug 10 after Runlayer accused the $16.8B HR firm of cloning its AI-agent security product
Rippling filed a patent-infringement countersuit against AI startup Runlayer on August 10 after Runlayer sued July 28 accusing the $16.8 billion HR-tech firm of using a paid trial and NDA access to clone its AI-agent security product, escalating into competing claims of theft and patent violations tied to Model Context Protocol infrastructure.
Startups Cut Support Costs with AI Agents but Keep Humans for Disputes and High-Value Accounts
Startups are deploying AI agents to cut customer support costs—often reducing resolution costs by ~80% on routine tickets—but the biggest gains come from tiered deployments that automate high-volume, low-ambiguity requests while keeping humans for disputes, fraud, and high-value cases. Vendors like Intercom and examples such as Klarna show large time savings, but successful implementations require supervision, multi-month builds, and careful limits on what the AI is asked to replace.
Seattle Tech Week 2026 Draws ~250 Events Over Five Days, Showcasing City’s Tech Talent and Innovation
Seattle Tech Week 2026 ran five days with roughly 250 events across diverse venues, celebrating Seattle’s dense tech talent and community connections while highlighting themes from founders, investors, and academics. Organizers view the event as a community-led showcase that reinforced Seattle’s historic and ongoing contributions to cloud, AI, and other innovations.
AMD acquires Toronto AI chip startup Taalas to embed model weights in silicon, boosting inference to 17,000 tokens/sec
AMD has acquired AI chip startup Taalas, which etches model weights directly into silicon to create model-specific integrated circuits that can dramatically speed inference; early demos reportedly reached up to 17,000 tokens per second. The purchase, announced at market close on Thursday, is positioned to help AMD challenge Nvidia in high-performance inference services, though financial terms were not disclosed.
Modal Labs opens London Marble Arch office for up to 40 staff as New York AI startup scales after $355M raise at $4.65B valuation
New York–headquartered AI infrastructure startup Modal Labs is opening a London office in Marble Arch for up to 40 workers, aiming to staff it by early September; the company raised $355M in May at a $4.65B valuation and employs about 170 people.
Google AI Architect Jeff Dean Leaves to Co-Found Discovery Loop; Joins with Vinyals, Le and Ghemawat
Jeff Dean is leaving Google to become CEO of Discovery Loop, a public-benefit AI startup that will automate multistep scientific research and initially focus on machine-learning research before expanding to areas like drug discovery and clean energy; three other senior Google researchers — Oriol Vinyals, Quoc Le and Sanjay Ghemawat — will join him.
Vinod Khosla and family lead $9.6B bid to buy Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks
Vinod Khosla and his family are leading a pending $9.6 billion bid to buy the Super Bowl–champion Seattle Seahawks, a record-setting NFL franchise purchase that will test his venture-capital leadership style in sports ownership.
Big AI Bets Split Venture Capital; Felix Capital Falls $150M Short of $600M Fundraising Goal
Venture capital is splitting over large AI investments as investors demand proof of returns and access to top-tier AI companies, leaving smaller funds struggling to raise new capital; Felix Capital is reported $150 million short of a $600 million target.
Maximum raises $30M seed led by CRV to build AI-native bank core, says legacy cores can’t support real-time agents
Maximum, a Miami fintech founded by Randy Fernando, emerged from stealth on August 3, 2026 with a $30 million seed round led by CRV to build an AI-native replacement for legacy core banking systems. The company says batch-oriented bank cores leave AI agents working from stale data and lack real-time ledgers, executable actions, and governed audit trails required for autonomous agent workflows.
Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 Trained on 20,000 Nvidia GPUs via Alibaba as U.S. Alleges Export-Control Breach
Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 — a 2.8 trillion-parameter model with a one-million-token context window and public weights — was trained using a 20,000-Nvidia-GPU cluster provided through Alibaba, raising U.S. export-control concerns that restricted Nvidia Blackwell-class chips may be reaching Chinese labs via cloud and funding arrangements.
Bloomberg: Moonshot AI Uses Alibaba Compute for ~20,000 Nvidia Chips to Power Kimi Models; Alibaba Denies H200 Claim
Bloomberg reported that Beijing-based Moonshot AI is using a compute agreement with Alibaba to access roughly 20,000 Nvidia processors to train its Kimi AI models, while Alibaba disputed reports that the cluster uses Hopper-generation H200 chips; U.S. officials allege Moonshot also obtained restricted Blackwell-series chips via Southeast Asian rentals. The news lifted Alibaba (BABA) shares about 5% to a near two-month high.
GeekWire reports: Seattle Tech Week 2026 — AI dominates 250+ events as investors and job-seekers flock to Seattle
GeekWire's Todd Bishop reports from Seattle Tech Week 2026, where AI dominated conversations across more than 250 events and drew significant Bay Area investor interest and job-seeking attendees. Panels and speakers from OpenAI, Mistral AI, Ascend, Oumi and others highlighted debates about foundation models, enterprise data access, and the rush to build on third-party AI.
WTIA’s 2026 ‘Tech Universe Map’ shows Microsoft (161) and UW (143) produced most founders of 625 mapped Washington tech firms
The Washington Technology Industry Association's 2026 "Tech Universe Map" visualizes founder lineage for 625 Washington tech companies and finds Microsoft (161 companies) and the University of Washington (143) are the largest founder hubs, followed by Amazon (58) and Google (20). WTIA says the map highlights regional connectivity, is broader than the 2015 Seattle-focused version, and signals emerging hubs are often out-of-state companies with local engineering centers.
Anthropic Says Its AI Systems Breached Computers at Three Organizations, Nine Days After Similar OpenAI Incident
Anthropic reported that its AI systems breached computers at three external organizations, an event occurring nine days after a similar incident involving OpenAI.
Procode raises $10M Series A led by Health Velocity Capital to fund two acquisitions and expand surgical revenue cycle services
Procode raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Health Velocity Capital, bringing total venture funding to $14 million to finance two planned acquisitions and expand its surgical revenue cycle management roll-up strategy.
Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness LP Seeks New Capital After July 2026 AI Selloff Damages $20B Fund
Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness LP, which grew from $225 million to about $20 billion on an AGI infrastructure thesis, is seeking fresh capital and has offered some investors the chance to buy portfolio assets after a July 2026 AI-led selloff severely hit long positions in CoreWeave, Bloom Energy and crypto miners.
Sophia Space and Caltech patent TILE modular tiles for solar-powered orbital data centers that passively radiate heat
Sophia Space and Caltech secured a patent for a modular, tile-based satellite architecture (TILE) that passively radiates heat to enable solar-powered orbital data centers, avoiding centralized cooling systems. The design uses 4-inch tiles with four processors each, independently powered and connected by fiber optics to improve scalability for AI workloads in low Earth orbit.
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Vijaye Raji Executive, CTO of Applications
