MENLO TIMES

Agentio , the AI-native platform for creator advertising, led by Jonathan Meyers , Arthur Leopold , Catherine Etter Bailey , Hilary Anne Hyman , and others, has raised a $40 million Series B led by Forerunner, with continued backing from Benchmark , Craft Ventures , AlleyCorp  and other leading investors, bringing the total funds raised to $56 million and valuing the company at $340 million, just 2 years after launching the platform and following 5x year-over-year growth. Cre

Guardio , protecting your entire digital world by securing every account and interaction, led by Amos Peled, Michael Vainshtein, Daniel Sirota, Meital Baruch, Sharon Cohen, and others, has raised  $80 million in a funding   round led by ION Crossover Partners , with participation from existing investors, including Union Tech Ventures , Vintage Investment Partners , and Emerge . The funding follows Guardio’s recent partnership with Lovable , the fast-growing AI software compan

Quindar , bringing cloud-native thinking to space operations, led by Nate Hamet, Sunny Bhagavathula, David Lawrence, Zach Meza, Shaishav Parekh, and Matt Regan, has secured $18M in Series A funding led by  Washington Harbour Partners  with continued investment from  Booz Allen Ventures , FUSE , FCVC , and Y Combinator . The new funding will support the development of a state-of-the-art classified facility in the Denver area, expand commercial integrations, and grow the workfo

Sphere , the AI-native cross-border compliance engine, led by Nicholas Rudder, has raised $21 million in Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Y Combinator  and Felicis Ventures . The raise reflects rising demand for scalable tax solutions as companies globalize earlier and face increasing regulatory complexity. Regulators are tightening enforcement, EU authorities now require platforms like Stripe and Adyen to report tax evasion, and many countries a

Cellbyte , AI agents for pharmaceutical drug launches, led by Felix Steinbrenner , Daniel Moreira , and Samuel M. , has secured   $2.75 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures , with participation from Y Combinator , Pace Ventures , Saras Capital , and Springboard Health Angels .  Fragmented data slows drug launches, leaving patients waiting over a year for life-saving treatments. Market Access teams spend a huge amount of time and money assembling regulatory, prici

Infracost , enabling engineers to proactively find and fix cloud cost issues, led by Hassan Khajeh-Hosseini, Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, and Alistair Scott, has raised a $15 million Series A, led by Pruven Capital  with participation from Y Combinator , Sequoia Capital , Mango Capital, Alumni Ventures , TIAA Ventures  (a strategic investment from TIAA’s venture arm), and angel investors Paul Copplestone (co-founder of Supabase) and Timothy Chen (Essence VC).  Sudip Chakrabarti  has

Pionix , making EV charging reliable, interoperable, and future-ready for everyone, led by Dr. Marco Möller, Johanna Claussen, Cornelius Claussen, Markus Juhr-De Benedetti, and Tim Valbert, has raised  over €8 million led by Ascend Capital Partners , with participation from Start-up BW Seed Fonds , managed by MBG Baden-Württemberg , Pale blue dot , Vireo Ventures , Axeleo Ventures , and further investors. Despite major progress in e-mobility, EV charging remains fragmented du

Peec AI , the marketing platform built for the age of AI search, led by Marius Meiners, Tobias Siwonia, and Daniel Drabo, Peec AI has raised  a $21 million in Series A, led by European VC firm Singular , with participation from Antler , Combination VC , identity.vc , and S20. The round follows the seed financing led by 20VC in July 2025 and brings total funding to $29 million, marking one of the largest Series A financings in AI search to date. AI search is becoming the new d

Leanspace , a European satellite operations technology provider, led by Guillaume Tanier, Alvaro Alonso Ruiz, and Gert Villemos, has raised  €10 million in Series A funding from new strategic investors: ISAI Cap Venture , Capgemini’s corporate venture arm, Qwaltec, 42CAP , Karista , and Arnaud Guérin, co-founder of military AI platform Preligens. Additional non-dilutive funding comes from Caisse d’Epargne and Bpifrance via the France 2030 strategic investment plan. The space

Luminal , compiling AI models to give you the fastest, highest throughput inference cloud in the world, led by Joe Fioti, Matthew Gunton, and Jake Stevens, has secured  a $5.3 million seed round led by Felicis Ventures , with incredible angels like Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and many more. Compute demand is soaring, and chips are advancing faster than ever. But software isn’t keeping pace, leaving large portions of modern accelerators underutilized. Reaching peak performan

Artios Pharma Limited , a biopharmaceutical company committed to realizing the therapeutic power of targeting the DNA damage response (“DDR”) in cancer, led by Michael T. Andriole, Christine Silverstein, Graeme Smith, Ian Smith, and others, has announced  the successful close of an oversubscribed $115 million Series D financing, co-led by founding investor SV Health Investors  and new investor RA Capital Management , with participation from new investor Janus Henderson Invest

Sakana AI , building a world-class AI research lab in Tokyo, led by David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito, has raised 20 Billion Yen (135 million US Dollars) from new and existing investors, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group  (MUFG), Khosla Ventures , Factorial, Macquarie Capital , Fundomo , Mouro Capital , New Enterprise Associates , Geodesic Capital , Lux Capital , Ora Global , MPower Partners , Shikoku Electric Power , and In-Q-Tel (IQT) . Record levels of capital are

Hummink , developer of High Precision Printing for Advanced Electronics and a spin-off of the prestigious physics lab of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and PSL University, led by Amin M'BARKI, Pascal Boncenne, Pr. Lydéric Bocquet, Alessandro Siria, Antoine Niguès, and Christophe Bureau, has secured  €15 million to expand the deployment of their patented High-Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) technology, co-led by  KBC Focus Fund ,  Cap Horn , and  Bpifrance , with foll

Catalyx Space , a space infrastructure company providing turnkey solutions for orbital missions across industries, led by Rifath Shaarook, Clinton Antony, Keerthan Chand Aluvala, Saqib Hussain, Niharika Naveen, and Thaneem Rayan, has secured  $5.4 million in seed funding led by venture capital firm Outlander VC , with participation from Arka Venture Labs , Lex Reddy, KDX Management LLC , Together Fund , Higher Life Ventures , Nivesha Ventures , Prana Tech Ventures , Bria, HF0

Forterra , defining the next domain of operations creating an ecosystem where intelligent systems coordinate and prevail across the battlefield, led by Josh Araujo, Joseph Putney, Scott Sanders, Colin Chisholm, Taylor Smith Baisey, and Alberto Lacaze, has announced  a $238 million Series C comprised of both equity and debt led by Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from new investors Salesforce Ventures , Franklin Templeton , Balyasny Asset Management , 645 Ventures ,

Netic , the complete AI-growth engine for service enterprises, led by Melisa Tokmak, has secured $23 million in a Series B funding round led by Founders Fund , valuing the company at $450 million. Its seed round was led by Greylock Partners with Founders Fund participating, and its Series A was led by Founders Fund with participation from Greylock , Hanabi Capital , Day One Ventures , SV Angel , and several angel investors. Netic is equipping regional businesses, home service

Zilch , the consumer payments platform powering the future of commerce, led by Philip Belamant, Hugh Courtney, Desmond McNamara, Kirsty Spickett, Ryan Mendy, Sean Hederman, Boriana Tchobanova, and others, has secured  over USD $175 million ($176.7m) in debt and equity led by KKCG  with participation from BNF Capital , and several other strategic investors. The raise also includes the expansion of its securitization led by Deutsche Bank . The successful raise follows the launc

Litmus , simplifying Industrial Data complexity and making it more accessible, led by Vatsal Shah, John Younes, Sacha Sawaya, Vishvesh Shah, Parth Desai, and others, has secured  additional strategic investment led by Insight Partners , with participation from Munich Re Ventures . Manufacturers are striving to move from AI pilots to large-scale, multi-site deployment, but progress is limited by data, not models. Machine data is often siloed, inconsistent across plants, and ha

Backed VC , a London-based venture capital fund, led by Andre de Haes, Alex Brunicki, Tom Hopkins, Clare Hunter, and others, has closed its third fund, Backed 3, at its $100 million cap, alongside making its 100th investment.  Backed partners with outlier founders building generational frontier technology companies rooted in fundamental technological or conceptual breakthroughs. After two high-performing funds, including a top-decile first fund, Backed is expanding with Backe

CommerceClarity , building AI agents that turn raw data into intelligent retail automation, led by Alessandro Angelini, Daniele Vella, Federico Sargenti, and Michele Sampieri, has secured  a €2.7 million ($3.1M) oversubscribed pre-seed round, led by  IFF (Italian Founders Fund)  and  Entourage , with participation from  Euregio+ (Alpine VC) ,  Redstone ,  Vento (Exor) ,  Ithaca Investment , and Vesper Holding . The funding will accelerate the growth of the AI-driven e-commerc