MENLO TIMES

Upvest , enabling businesses to build great investment experiences for their end users, seamless, secure, and across international borders, led by Martin Kassing, Tobias Auferoth, Dr. Til Rochow, and the team, has announced  a $125 million financing round to accelerate the modernization of legacy banking systems across Europe and the UK. The $90 million equity round is led by Sapphire Ventures  and Tencent , with strong backing from existing investors including Bessemer Ventu

Gecko Robotics , combining advanced robotics and AI-powered software to build, operate, and modernize the world’s most critical infrastructure, has been awarded  a five-year IDIQ contract from the U.S. Navy and GSA with a $71 million ceiling to deploy artificial intelligence and robotics to assess and maintain the health of military assets. Gecko will start work with 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet with the initial award worth up to $54m over a five-year period. Customers

Mistral AI , making frontier AI accessible to everyone, has introduced  Forge, a system for enterprises to build frontier-grade AI models grounded in their proprietary knowledge. Most AI models today are trained on public data and optimized for general-purpose tasks, while enterprises rely on deeply embedded internal knowledge, ranging from engineering standards to operational workflows. Forge bridges this gap by enabling organizations to train AI models on proprietary data,

Fuse , the AI-native loan origination and account opening platform trusted by more than 100 financial institutions, led by Andres Klaric and Marc Escapa, has announced  the Fuse Rescue Fund: a $5 million initiative to liberate credit unions from long-term contracts with legacy technology vendors. The company also announced that it has raised a $25 million in Series A led by Footwork , Primary Venture Partners , NextView Ventures , and Commerce Ventures . The first 50 qualifyi

Memories.ai , an Al company dedicated to reshaping machine perception and interaction, led by Dr. Shawn Shen and Enmin (Ben) Zhou, has announced  a collaboration with semiconductor giant Nvidia to let Memories.ai use Nvidia’s Cosmos-Reason 2, a reasoning vision language model, and Nvidia Metropolis, an application for video search and summarization, to continue to develop its visual memory technology. Shen and Ben conceived the company while developing the AI system behind M

Qdrant , helping you build the AI retrieval you want, led by André Zayarni and Andrey Vasnetsov, has raised  $50 million in Series B funding, led by AVP , with participation from Bosch Ventures , Unusual Ventures , Spark Capital , and 42CAP . Retrieval Is on the Critical Path of AI AI workloads such as RAG, agents, and multimodal search depend on reliable data retrieval under real production constraints. Many teams encounter issues at scale, slow writes, inefficient filtering

Neuramancer AI Solutions GmbH , unmasking deception, ensuring media integrity, led by Anatol Maier and Anika Gruner, has raised €1.7 million led by Vanagon Ventures , investing together with Bayern Kapital  and a consortium of additional VCs and business angels. Deepfakes and AI-driven manipulation are emerging as systemic risks. The German Insurance Association estimates insurance fraud causes billions in annual damages, a problem accelerated by generative AI. Neuramancer ha

Elaia , backing ambitious tech entrepreneurs with capital and care, has closed its third deep tech seed fund (DTS3) at €134 million, double the size of its previous deep tech seed funds. Developed in partnership with leading European research institutions, including PSL , INRIA , CNRS , the Barcelona Supercomputing Center , and also the Max Planck Foundation , DTS3 reflects strong investor confidence in Europe's growing deep tech ecosystem.     Since its first close of €60 mi

Bliss , building culturally intelligent AI infrastructure for online therapy, led by Jona Doda and the team, has raised $270,000 in angel funding led by Keiretsu Forum , Finest Love VC , and Plug and Play . The round combines angel investment and non-dilutive grants and marks the first Albanian-Finnish startup investment for Keiretsu Forum, Finest Love VC, and Plug and Play. Bliss addresses a challenge often overlooked in mental health: culture. More than 800 million people l

Nexthop AI , the leading pioneer of highly efficient AI Networking, led by Anshul Sadana and the team, has announced  the successful closure of an oversubscribed $500 Million Series B funding round, catapulting the company’s valuation to $4.2 Billion. This round was spearheaded by Lightspeed Venture Partners , with Andreessen Horowitz  joining as a major investor, and participation from Altimeter  and all existing investors. “AI’s rapid growth is reshaping data center network

Rhoda AI , redefining robotic intelligence, led by Jagdeep Singh, Eric Chan, Gordon Wetzstein, Andrew Wooten, Changan Chen, Steve Tirado, Alex Bergman, and Vincent Clerc, has announced  its public launch after 18 months in stealth, unveiling FutureVision, a new approach to robotic intelligence based on video-predictive control and designed to operate beyond controlled laboratory demonstrations and into real-world environments. The company also announced it has raised $450 mil

Plurio , a San Francisco-based MarTech startup, led by Seva Ustinov, Kirill Kasimskiy, and the team, has announced a $3.5 million round backed by Altair , DVC , Yellow Rocks , Finom co-founder Kos Stiskin, ManyChat co-founder Mike Yan, and other funds and angels. The funding will accelerate the rollout of Plurio, the first AI agent that acts across channels as a full-fledged performance marketer. Global advertising spend is projected to surpass $1.04 trillion in 2026, while t

Juicebox , the AI recruiting platform that understands who you're looking for, led by David Paffenholz , Ishan Gupta , and the team, has raised  $80M Series B led by DST Global , with participation from Sequoia Capital , Verified Capital , Committed Capital , NFDG, Coatue , and Y Combinator . The round values Juicebox at $850M, and brings the total capital raised to $116M. Three years ago, Juicebox introduced an AI-native search platform for recruiting, built on the belief th

Elva , redefining the future of global mobility, led by Antonia Eneh , Mengyang Chen , Zechen Ma , Elias Lankinen , and the team, has raised €1.3M in pre-seed funding led by Lifeline Ventures , with participation from Tiny VC , Wave Ventures, and First Fellow Partners , as well as angel investors including Slack co-founder Cal Henderson. European startups increasingly hire globally, but cross-border relocation remains complex. Elva has launched a platform designed to simplify

Qevlar , shifting security operations from reactive firefighting to proactive defense, led by Ahmed Achchak , Hamza Sayah , and the team, has raised  $30 million in funding for its autonomous AI SOC platform, led by Partech  and  Forgepoint Capital International , with participation from EQT Ventures . The development follows a period of strong growth, with the company expanding its global customer base to include enterprises such as Mercedes-Benz and Sodexo, alongside leadin

Saltz , a fast-growing chef-marketplace connecting professional kitchens with over 100 trusted suppliers across 20 countries, led by Tomas Slimas , Reinis Strodahs , Andrius Slimas , and the team, has raised €20 million in Series A funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development  (EBRD), Inovo , Lifeline Ventures , and Change Ventures , with participation from Mantas Mikuckas (founder of Vinted), Miki Kuusi (founder of Wolt), several Shopify executives, and

City Detect , revolutionizing the way local governments understand and interact with their built environment, led by Gavin Baum-Blake, Bjorn Hansen, Jonathan Richardson, Comer Jennings, and the team, has announced  a $13 million Series A funding round led by Prudence , with continued participation from Las Olas Venture Capital , Zeal Capital , Knoll Ventures , Atlanta Seed Co , and others. The investment will support expansion into public works departments, deepen integration

ICEYE , building actionable intelligence for resilience, readiness & response, led by Rafal Modrzewski, Pekka Laurila, and Eric Jensen, has launched  its deforestation monitoring solution . The technology enables law enforcement agencies, government officials, and conservation groups to monitor forest loss in near real time, including in regions frequently obscured by cloud cover. The launch comes amid ongoing pressure to protect the Amazon rainforest. According to Global For

Cotool AI , scaling defensive security with tokens, led by Max Pollard, Logan Carmody, Eddie Conk, and Josh Pachter, has announced  a $7.4 Million Seed round, led by Andreessen Horowitz  with participation from WndrCo  and an exceptional group of angel investors. Advances in AI are rapidly scaling cyber offense. Research from Anthropic revealed that a state-sponsored group used its model Claude to support cyber-intrusion operations such as reconnaissance, scripting, and plann

FIRSTPICK , a first-check VC fund for Baltic founders, led by Partners Jonė Vaitulevičiūtė, Dmitrij Sosunov, Andra Bagdonaitė, Marijus Andrijauskas, and the team, has launched  a new €25 million fund to invest in early-stage Baltic startups, focusing on founders who may be overlooked by traditional VC criteria. Some early and successful investments include Samphire Neuroscience by Emile Radyte, Copla by Aurimas Bakas, and Holo. Backed by local entrepreneurs and private invest