MENLO TIMES

Dedalus Labs , building an infrastructure layer for shipping AI agents at a rocket-fast speed, led by Catherine Di and Windsor Nguyen, has raised  $11 million in seed funding co-led by   Kindred Ventures  and  Saga Ventures , with participation from  E14 Fund , Emergence Capital ,  Sunshine Lake ,  Transpose Platform ,  Liquid 2 Ventures ,  FPV Ventures ,  Twenty Two Ventures ,  Telescope Foundation ,  Spot VC ,  Operator Partners , and  Y Combinator . Dedalus Labs is also ba

Liberate , harnessing technology to help insurers and agents deliver fast, led by Amrish Singh, Ryan Eldridge, Jason St. Pierre, and others, has secured  a $50 million Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures , with participation from new investor Canapi Ventures  and returning backers Redpoint Ventures , Eclipse Ventures , and Commerce Ventures , bringing the total funding to $72 million. Battery General Partner Marcus Ryu, the co-founder and former CEO of Guidewire So

LuxQuanta , enabling a new age of security in telecommunications with Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems, led by Vanesa Diaz, Ernest López, Dr. Sebastian Etcheverry, and others, has secured  €8 million Series A funding round. Led by  Big Sur Ventures , and with support of A&G as the main investor, the round also includes new investors  GMV ,  Wayra , and the  EIC Fund , alongside renewed commitments from existing investors  Corning  and  GTD . The funding marks LuxQuanta’

Tubulis , reimagining antibody drug conjugates, led by Dr. Dominik Schumacher, Dr. Jonas Helma-Smets, Dr. Ingo Lehrke, Dr. Günter Fingerle-Rowson, MD, Dr. Björn Hock, Dr. Matthew Norkunas, and others, has secured  €308 million (USD 361 million) financing. The round was led by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners  with participation from additional new investors Wellington Management  and Ascenta Capital . Existing investors who supported the Series C include Nextech Invest , E

Ploy , an AI Native identity, governance, and security platform, led by Harry Lucas and Jacob Prime, has raised  £2.5 million led by Osney Capital , with participation from Superseed , Tiny.vc  and Rule30 , alongside notable angels including Johnathan Scudder (co-founder of ForgeRock), Alastair Paterson and James Chappell (co-founders of Digital Shadows), Mark Ryan (VP of Product Management at ZScaler), Jonathan Tom (VP of GTM Enablement at Rapid7), Tony Pepper and Neil Larki

Impulse Space , developing the in-space mobility infrastructure to accelerate our future beyond Earth, led by renowned propulsion expert Tom Mueller, Eric Romo, Kevin Miller, and others, has announced  a Helios and Impulse-made lander combination, estimated to deliver up to 6 tons of payload mass to the Moon (across two missions) per year starting in 2028 at a cost-effective price point. The Space Race once promised a bold future beyond Earth, inspiring generations with rapid

Enspired , Europe’s leading optimizer for battery energy storage systems (BESS), led by Jürgen Mayerhofer, Wolfgang Eichberger, Cornelia Habetler, Jürgen Pfalzer, Johann Schütz, and Christoph Schreiber, has secured  EUR 40 million in Series B funding. The round brings in Future Energy Ventures  as a new partner, alongside renewed commitments from Zouk Capital , EnBW New Ventures , Banpu NEXT , PUSH VC , and 360 Capital , following enspired’s rapid expansion into multiple new

CybaVerse , transforming security for SMEs and MSPs, led by Oliver Spence, Gemma Blake, Juliette Hudson, Simon Phillips, and others, has secured   £5 million in investment co-led by Pembroke VCT  and Airbridge Equity Partners , with participation from Haatch .  Founded in 2018, the company has grown from a boutique consultancy into a leading UK cybersecurity vendor with nearly 40 employees and a rapidly growing customer base. The funding will accelerate sales and marketing, e

Dexory , the leading provider of real-time warehouse intelligence, led by Andrei Danescu, Adrian Negoita, Oana Jinga, Kristen Shannon, and others, has secured  $165 million. Eurazeo , through its Growth team, led the $100M Series C round, with participation from LTS Growth and Endeavor Catalys t, alongside existing investors DTCP , Atomico , Lakestar , Elaia , Latitude Ventures, Wave-X , and others. In addition, Bootstrap Europe expanded the existing growth debt facility.  Si

Nabla Bio , making drug development designable with generative AI, led by Surge Biswas, Frances Anastassacos, Rose Harrison, and others, announced  a new, multi-year research collaboration with Takeda. Under the agreement, Nabla Bio will receive double-digit millions in upfront and research payments, with potential success-based payments exceeding $1 billion. The collaboration will deploy Nabla Bio’s Joint Atomic Model (JAM) platform across Takeda’s early-stage programs, incl

FleetWorks , an always-on dispatcher that calls, emails, or texts you when high-paying loads match your truck, led by Paul Singer and Quang Tran, has secured  $17 million in funding led by First Round Capital  with participation from Y Combinator , Saga Ventures , and LFX Venture Partners . In the U.S., over 200,000 truckloads are coordinated daily, yet 80% are still booked manually via phone, email, and text. Carriers, especially small operators, waste hours chasing loads, w

SiC Systems , developer of Industrial Agentic AI, led by Christopher Savoie and Christopher Brown, has secured  €2 million led by Dutch quantum investment fund  QDNL Participations , with additional backing from Propagator Ventures , Plug and Play , and Wavepeak Ventures. The company is a spinout from the Technical University of Denmark  (DTU).  SiC Systems develops intelligent, adaptive AI agents designed to orchestrate complex physical systems in real time. Its proprietary

Exa , the search engine built for AI, led by Will Bryk, Jeff Wang, and others, has introduced  Exa 2.0, the next generation of search endpoints. Specifically, Exa 2.0 includes three major updates: Exa Fast:  the fastest search API in the world at sub350ms Exa Auto:  the default search type is now much higher quality Exa Deep:  a new search type that agentically retrieves the highest quality results Exa’s mission is to build the perfect search engine, one that delivers exactly

Oura , maker of the most trusted smart ring, Oura Ring, led by Tom Hale, Michael Chapp, Sean Brecker, Judy Gilbert, Holly Shelton, Doug Sweeny, and others, has secured  over $900 million in funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with significant participation from new investor ICONIQ and contributions from Whale Rock and Atreides, valuing the company at around $11 billion. ŌURA announced David Shuman, founder of Lateralus Holdings and Oura board member since 20

Reducto , offering robust and reliable document ingestion for any workflow, led by Adit Abraham and Raunak Chowdhuri, has secured  a new $75M Series B led by a16z , alongside existing investors Benchmark , First Round Capital , Y Combinator , and BoxGroup . Less than two years after launching the first Parse API that combined traditional computer vision with Vision-Language Models (VLMs), Reducto has set a new benchmark for transforming complex documents into LLM-ready data w

Maia Ventures , a Milan-based early-stage VC backing the next generation of entrepreneurs in agrifoodtech, led by David Bassani, Andrea Galassi, Alice De Porcellinis, and Giancarlo Addario, has launched  €55 million to back 20–25 companies, with initial tickets ranging from €0.5 million to €1.5 million. The fund has already made 6 investments, including Foreverland, Exolab Italia, Biorsaf, Lembas, Cappellini Veg Lab, and GenoGra. Limited partners include institutional investo

Clove , a wealth-tech platform, led by Christian Owens and Alex Loizou, has secured  £10m ($14m) in pre-seed funding, led by Accel  with participation from Kindred, Air Street , and a group of incredible angel investors. Despite advances in consumer technology, financial guidance has barely evolved. While products exist to move money or invest, few help answer critical questions about timing, trade-offs, and future planning. Moreover, the financial advice industry largely ser

Afori , a new AI platform specifically for insurance brokers, led by Fabian Wesemann and Sergi Baños, has emerged from stealth mode with a €4 million pre-seed funding round led by  General Catalyst , with participation from Yellow  and  Booom . Individual backers include industry leaders Christopher Lohmann (founder of Mulberry Ventures, former CEO of HDI and Gothaer), Chris Leifeld (founder of Thinksurance), and Garrett Koehn (CIO, CRC), as well as AI pioneers Mustafa Suleym

Arbio , an AI-powered property manager for vacation rentals, led by Paul Bäumler, Constantin Schröder, Lukas Gittinger, Marco Dingler, Elodie Baro, and Sebastian Bentele, has secured  $36 million Series A funding round led by Eurazeo , bringing the company's total funding to over $45 million. London-based AI-focused VC OpenOcean  and previous investors Atlantic Labs  and leading angels Philipp Freise and Justin Reizes (KKR), Johannes Reck and Tao Tao (GetYourGuide), and Din B

Isentroniq , enabling quantum computing at scale through cutting-edge wiring solutions for solid-state quantum computers, led by Paul Magnard  and Théodore Amar , has secured  a €7.5 million funding round led by Heartcore with participation from OVNI Capital, Kima Ventures, iXcore, Better Angle, Epsilon VC, as well as the support from Bpifrance and the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the France 2030 program. The funding will help the company advance its breakthrou