MENLO TIMES

ClickHouse , a leader in real-time analytics, data warehousing, observability, and AI/ML, led by Aaron Katz, Alexey Milovidov, and Yury Izrailevsky, has announced the close of its Series D financing, raising $400 million, led by Dragoneer Investment Group , with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners , GIC, Index Ventures , Khosla Ventures , Lightspeed Venture Partners , accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and WCM Investment Management . ClickHouse conti

Parloa , the premier provider of AI agents elevating enterprise customer experience, led by Malte Kosub, Stefan Ostwald, Latane Conant, Csaba Tamas, Chris Silver, and Tino Mittelmeier, has announced  $350 million in Series D funding led by General Catalyst , with strong continued support from Parloa’s existing investors, including EQT Ventures , Altimeter Capital , Durable Capital Partners , and Mosaic Ventures , bringing its valuation to $3 billion. Closing just seven months

WitnessAI , a platform that helps enterprises protect and accelerate their AI journey across the rapidly evolving AI tech stacks, led by Rick Caccia, Gil Spencer, Stephanie Gilliam, and others, has secured  strategic funding of $58 million led by Sound Ventures , with participation from Fin Capital , Qualcomm Ventures , Samsung Ventures, and Forgepoint Capital Partners . The company also unveiled expanded agentic AI governance capabilities that bring observability to global e

Skild AI , building omni-bodied intelligence, led by Deepak Pathak and Abhinav Gupta, has raised  $1.4 billion in Series C funding, led by SoftBank  with participation from NVentures  (NVIDIA), Macquarie Capital  (entities administered by Macquarie Capital), and Jeff Bezos(via Bezos Expeditions ), valuing the company at over $14 Billion. Lightspeed , Felicis , Coatue , and Sequoia Capital  have doubled down on their investments. Several strategic investors have also come on b

depthfirst , an applied AI Lab solving security’s AI-era problems, led by Daniele Perito, Qasim Mithani, and Andrea Michi, has secured $40M Series A round, led by Accel  with participation from Alt Capital , BoxGroup , Liquid 2 Ventures , Mantis VC , SV Angel , and notable angel investors including Jeff Dean, Kirsten Green, Colin Evans, Logan Kilpatrick, and Julian Schrittwieser. depthfirst’s General Security Intelligence platform introduces a unified AI system that detects,

VoiceRun , building a secure, reliable voice infrastructure for enterprises, led by Derek Caneja and Nicholas Leonard, has secured  $5.5 million in funding.  In the near future, AI-powered voice agents will be able to communicate anytime, anywhere, and in any language, with billions expected to run on VoiceRun. Advances in real-time voice understanding and generation from companies like ElevenLabs, Deepgram, and Fish Audio, combined with intelligence from models by OpenAI, Ge

Cerebras , the world’s fastest AI inference and training platform, led by Andrew Feldman and others, has signed  a multi-year agreement with OpenAI  to deploy 750 megawatts of Cerebras wafer-scale systems to serve OpenAI customers. This deployment will roll out in multiple stages beginning in 2026, making it the largest high-speed AI inference deployment in the world. A decade of parallel ambition brought OpenAI and Cerebras together, two companies founded at the same time wi

Sandstone , the home for AI-native legal departments, led by Nick Fleisher , Liam Germain , and Jarryd Strydom , has announced its launch with a $10 million seed round led by Sequoia , with participation from an incredible group of additional investors as well as over 20 GCs, law firm partners, and customers. Experience in fast-growing B2B companies and legal tech consulting revealed a critical gap: in-house legal teams face inefficiencies from scattered knowledge and outdate

Deepgram, enabling human-machine interactions with voice AI, led by Scott Stephenson , Adam Sypniewski , Shadi Baqleh , and others, has secured $130 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation, led by AVP . All major existing investors joined the round, including Alkeon , In-Q-Tel, Madrona , Tiger, Wing , Y Combinator , and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Several new investors, including Alumni Ventures  and Princeville Capital , participated in the round

Diffraqtion , an MIT and University of Maryland spinout building the next generation of visual AI hardware and software to make satellites and machines see further and think faster, led by Johannes Galatsanos, Christine Yi-Ting Wang, Saikat Guha, Mark Michael, and others, has raised its pre-seed funding round, led by QDNL Participations , with participation from milemark•capital , Aether VC , ADIN, Offline Ventures , and a non-dilutive DARPA SBIR Direct-to-Phase 2 contract su

Boltz , helping every scientist reshape biology, led by Gabriele Corso, Jeremy Wohlwend, and Saro Passaro, announced  its launch with $28 Million Seed Round from Zetta , Amplify , a16z , and strategic angels, including Clement Delangue (CEO of Hugging Face), Factorial Capital , and Obvious Ventures . AI-powered molecular modeling is advancing rapidly, offering the potential to make biology programmable, digitize experiments, and accelerate drug development. However, emerging

Protege , building the data layer for AI training, led by Bobby Samuels, Travis May, Engy Ziedan, and Richard Ho, has announced a $30 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz ( a16z ). The financing expands the company’s $25 million Series A from August 2025 and brings total funding to $65 million since the company’s founding in 2024. Returning investors include Footwork , CRV , Bloomberg Beta , Flex Capital, Shaper Capital , and more. Bobby Samuels, CEO and co-found

Luxury Presence , the growth platform for real estate’s top performers, led by Malte Kramer, has raised  $37 million in new capital to accelerate the launch of Presence® CRM and deepen the data and intelligence layer that feeds our platform, including $22 million in Series C equity, led for the third time by Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners , with participation from NextEquity Partners , GSBackers , a Stanford alumni fund, including Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff,

Unusual , surveys AI models to discover how they see your brand, and then creates content to shape their view, led by Will Jack and Keller Maloney, has secured  $3.6 million seed round, led by BoxGroup , Long Journey Ventures , Y Combinator , Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital . AI models now influence a significant share of buying decisions, yet most brands have little insight into how these systems describe them, or how to correct inaccuracies. Gartner es

Lyte , an end-to-end integrated perception company for robotics and Physical AI, led by Alexander Shpunt, Dr. Arman Hajati, and Dr. Yuval Gerson, has emerged  from stealth with $107 million in aggregate funding from some of the industry's premier investors, including Avigdor Willenz's group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Atreides Management , Exor Ventures , Key1 Capital , and Venture Tech Alliance . Based in Mountain View, California, Lyte was founded by Alexander

Boston Dynamics , which develops practical robotics solutions designed to tackle today's and tomorrow's toughest automation challenges, and Google DeepMind , the world’s premier AI Lab, have formed  a new AI partnership aimed at bringing a new era of artificial intelligence to humanoid robots. Announced at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the two teams aim to integrate cutting-edge Gemini Robotics AI foundation models with Boston Dynamics’ new  Atlas ® robots. The strategic partnership

Manus , building general AI agents as the Action Engine for life, led by Red Xiao (Xiao Hong), Yichao "Peak" Ji, Tao Zhang, and others, has joined  Meta. Manus launched to develop a general-purpose AI agent capable of handling research, automation, and complex workflows. Ongoing product iteration has strengthened reliability and expanded applicability across an increasing number of real-world scenarios. Within a few months, the system has processed more than 147 trillion toke

Dazzle AI , a new company founded by entrepreneur, executive, and technologist Marissa Mayer, has raised  $8 million in seed funding at a $35 million post-money valuation, led by Kirsten Green of Forerunner  with participation from Kleiner Perkins , Greycroft , Offline Ventures , Slow Ventures , Bling Capital , Amino Capital , and the Acquired Wisdom Fund . Founded in 2025 by Marissa Mayer, Dazzle AI aims to bridge the gap between human intent and AI capability by building pr

Nabla , one of the most advanced AI assistants in clinical care, led by Alexandre Lebrun, Delphine Groll, Martin Raison, Laurent Landowski, and others, has announced  an exclusive strategic partnership with Advanced Machine Intelligence, the new AI research company founded by Professor Yann LeCun. This next chapter builds on LeCun’s early belief in Nabla’s mission and his continued confidence in the company’s technical vision. As part of a board-supported transition, Nabla co

Neural Concept , revolutionizing how customers design their products by speeding up R&D cycles, augmenting product performance and solving their next engineering challenges, led by Dr Pierre Baqué, Théophile Allard, Dr Jonathan Donier, Thomas von Tschammer, and Philippe Cuendet, has raised  a $100 million Series C funding round led by Growth Equity  at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from existing investors Forestay Capital , Alven , HTGF , D. E. Shaw Ventures