MENLO TIMES

Mirendil, democratizing frontier AI R&D to accelerate science and technology, led by Behnam Neyshabur, Harsh Mehta, Shayan Salehian, and Tara Rezaei, announced a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud to power the next generation of self-accelerating AI. Mirendil will scale its training, inference, and AI research workloads on Google Cloud’s AI Hypercomputer, drawing on both Google Cloud TPUs and full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure. Removing the Bottleneck in AI Progress. A

Andromeda Surgical, building the intelligence layer for surgery, led by Nick Damiano and Kartik Tiwari, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Standard Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Vox Capital, Lingotto Innovation, Alumni Ventures, WestWave Capital, and others. Pioneer Fund has backed the company twice, starting at seed. Urologists in three countries have used the company’s system to perform holmium laser enucleation of the prostate (HoLEP) in more than 40

Wordsmith, an AI for in-house legal teams led by Ross McNairn, Robbie Falkenthal, and Volodymyr Giginiak, has announced a $14 million extension to their Series B, led by new investment from Intact Private Capital alongside existing investors Highland Europe and Index Ventures. FT Ventures has also become a shareholder in Wordsmith. The additional investment follows a period of rapid growth for Wordsmith, with revenue increasing 14x year over year and the platform now used by

Neuraspace, leading the way for Space Domain Awareness, AI, and Safety, led by Chiara Manfletti and the team, has announced €15.6 million in new financing, combining strategic private investment from Lince Capital, Explorer Investments, and Armilar Venture Partners together with funding awarded under Portugal's Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRRP), reflecting strong private and public confidence in the company's growth strategy. The funding will accelerate Neuraspace’s expansi

HappyRobot, powering the systems that run the world, led by Pablo Palafox, Luis Paarup, and Javier Palafox, has raised $150 million in Series C funding, led by Prysm Capital and co-led by Eurazeo. Existing investors a16z, Base10, and Y Combinator are doubling down, joined by strategics including Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), Kfund, Orange, T.Capital (Deutsche Telekom), Bankinter, Endeavor Catalyst, and Wave-X. The round values the company at $1.2 billion post-money, bri

Made, the AI platform developed by RHEI to amplify human creativity and scale content production, led by Shahrzad Rafati and Lewis Ball, is publicly debuting Made for Music, an agentic platform designed for artists, labels, and distributors. Built for the realities of today’s music industry, Made for Music enables teams to create, package, distribute, and promote releases across relevant platforms, providing a faster and more scalable way to turn a single track into a full-sc

OLIX, building the infrastructure for frontier AI, led by James Dacombe and the team, has raised a $312m Series B financing round at a $3.3bn valuation, two years after it was founded. The round included Fundomo, Arm and Hudson River Trading, alongside angel investors including Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, with existing investors all increasing their commitments. Existing investors Hummingbird Ventures, Crane, Plural, Creandum, Phoenix Court, and Transition all i

Rebellions, a global leader in AI inference infrastructure led by Sunghyun Park and the team, has successfully run SK Telecom’s sovereign AI foundation model ‘A.X K1’ (hereinafter K1) on its own server infrastructure and demonstrated an agent service capable of handling concurrent requests from multiple users on top of it. The milestone demonstrates how a domestic large language model paired with a high-performance Korean NPU can power real-world AI services, advancing the c

Ellis, the AI-native operations platform for private credit, led by Ryan Williams, has launched today with more than $10 million in seed funding closed. First Round Capital led the financing with participation from a group of prominent operators and investors, including Kearny Jackson, 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Khosla Ventures, Slow Ventures, Wilshire Lane, Westbound, Collide Capital, Gallery Ventures, Ariel Alternatives CEO Mellody Hobson, Thrive Capital Founder Josh Kus

Intropy, the AI-native platform automating inventory, led by Franziska Kirschner and YihKai Teh, has announced that it has raised $11 million in seed financing. The seed round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Quiet Capital and early investors General Catalyst and firstminute capital. Applying AI to Spare Parts Operations. Founded in 2024 by Franziska Kirschner and YihKai Teh, Intropy is developing AI-powered tools to help spare parts distributors, manufacture

inforcer, a unified Microsoft security and AI management platform built for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), led by Jamie Daum and the team, has announced a $50 million Series C funding round led by global software investor Insight Partners. Rising Demand Drives Rapid Growth. Inforcer has experienced rapid growth over the past two years as managed service providers (MSPs) increasingly seek scalable tools to manage Microsoft 365 security, compliance, and AI services. The comp

Xsight Labs, a fabless semiconductor company providing intelligent connectivity solutions for next-generation hyperscale, edge, and AI data center networks led by Yossi Meyouhas, Gal Malach, and the team, has announced the closing of a $300+ million funding round, establishing a $2.8 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures,

Polar, the AI browser that actually does work for you, led by Kevin Jiang and Howard Zhong, has announced its launch with a $5.7 million seed round led by Madrona, with support from angels, including Thomas Dohmke (former CEO of GitHub), Erik Bernhardsson (Modal), Robert Yang (Fundamental), Nico (Fundamental), and many more. Building an AI Browser for Autonomous Workflows. Modern work is often divided between tasks that require human expertise, such as decision-making, creati

ChipAgents, the category leader in agentic AI platforms for semiconductor design, led by William Wang and the team, has announced an additional $60 million in Series A2 financing, bringing the expanded round to $134 million just six months after its initial Series A close. The financing reflects continued investor confidence in the company’s commercial momentum, with new investor B Capital joining Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, Ericsson, ScOp, and other existing

Qureight, developing enterprise-grade imaging and precision endpoints for clinical trials, led by Dr Muhunthan Thillai and the team, has raised $20 million in a Series B financing, led by Molten Ventures. Existing investors Hargreave Hale AIM VCT, XTX Ventures, Guinness Ventures, Meltwind, and Ascension also participated in the round. The new funding will support the expansion of the company’s 3D deep learning imaging platform and accelerate commercial growth across new thera

Fish Audio, the most expressive, emotionally controllable real-time voice model, led by Rissa Cao, Shijia Liao, and Jiahua Liu, has announced $52 million in seed funding on its first anniversary, led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today with participation from 359 Capital, Play Time, HF0, 645 Ventures, Parable, Carya Venture Partners, Alphaist Partners, and angels. Traditional text-to-speech systems have focused on generating accurate words but often fail to capture natural

Spur Intelligence, transforming obfuscation into evidence so you can stop threats hiding behind VPNs, proxies, and other anonymization infrastructure, led by Kevin Hickey, Ethan Smith, Riley Kilmer, and the team, has raised a $200 million investment from Insight Partners. The investment highlights Insight’s confidence in the growing IP Intelligence market and Spur’s position as a leading platform in the space. The funding will support expansion across the business, helping ac

Perceptual Robotics, revolutionising Predictive Maintenance with AI-Powered Technology, led by Kostas Karachalios, Dimitris Nikolaidis, and Kevin Driscoll-Lind, has raised over £4 million in funding so far this year. The funding combines investment from new and existing shareholders (Investing for Purpose, Loggerhead Ventures and One Planet Capital) alongside support co-funded by Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The new funding will support Perceptual R

Weave, the engineering-intelligence layer for the AI era, led by Adam Cohen and Andrew Churchill, has raised a $13.5 million Series A led by Standard Capital, along with Y Combinator, Moonfire, Burst Capital, IrregEx, and the Agent Fund. Weave develops machine learning and reinforcement learning models that analyze engineering workflows, helping organizations optimize the use of both AI and human effort. The new funding will support its goal of becoming the system of record f

Multiverse Computing, the global leader in efficient AI, led by Enrique Lizaso, Román Orús, Samuel Mugel, and the team, has announced a $570 million (€500M) Series C funding round at a $1.7 billion (€1.5B) pre-money valuation, a 5x step-up from its Series B. The round is co-led by Forgepoint Capital International, BNPP SIVF, and Bullhound Capital, with additional commitments to date from investors including Santander Alternative Investments, Tikehau Capital, HP Inc., Orange V