MENLO TIMES

Aampere, a Munich-based e-mobility startup, led by Florian Reister, and the team, has raised €4.2 million to expand its fully digital resale platform for used electric cars across Europe. The round is led by Estonian VC Trind Ventures. Joining the round is Vend Marketplaces ASA, the Nordic family of marketplaces behind FINN.no, Blocket and Bilbasen, which joins as a minority investor. Also newly on board is G-FUND, an investor focused on major consumer trends. The existing in

TidalSense, the respiratory intelligence company, led by Dr Ameera Patel, Dr Julian Carter, and the team, has announced a $19 million funding round to accelerate commercialisation in the UK and support globalisation of the technology, including to the USA. The round includes investment from new investor Cross-Border Impact Ventures (a North American health tech impact fund), and returning investors BGF (the UK's most active growth capital investor), Airstream Capital, and For

Etched, building frontier inference clusters, led by Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, and Chris Zhu, has raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation, led by Sequoia Capital alongside Andreessen Horowitz, Jane Street, Diffusion, Argo, and SK Hynix. The mission is to build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI inference. Frontier models require a new generation of computing systems, from custom chips and advanced packaging to optimized interconnects and cooling, designed end-to-end

Kausable, putting science at the core of AI, led by Johannes Haux, Dr. Benjamin Herdeanu, and Gregor Ramien, has raised €12 million in a seed funding round led by UVC Partners and Entourage, with follow-on from the German investors HTGF and Mätch VC. Kausable is also backed by various private angel investors from the AI industry and academia working at Black Forest Labs, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Noxtua, and the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).

telli, an AI voice platform for agents that sell, support, and operate - across millions of calls led by Finn zur Mühlen, Philipp Baumanns, and Seb Hapte-Selassie, has raised $15M seed round led by redalpine with participation from strategic investors, Mutschler, and key angels like Marc Bitzer (CEO Whirlpool; supervisory board member BMW), Alexa von Bismarck (Adyen), Martin Koehler (Investor and former director at Flixbus & Lufthansa), Krischan von Moeller (Paragon Partners)

Augustus, the global dollar bank led by Ferdinand Dabitz, Joshua Becker, Simon Wimmer, Peter Mosebjane Lieck, announced a $180 million Series B at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Hummingbird, QED, existing investors, and the founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle, and Deel. The round also received backing from leading fintech and AI founders, including David Velez (Nubank), Karim Atiyeh (Ramp), Sean Neville (Circle), Alex Bouaziz (

Genius AI, building technology that makes every business the smartest version of itself, led by Danielle Cohen-Shohet & Leah Cohen-Shohet, has announced its Series D at a $1.15 billion valuation, bringing the total capital raised to more than $125 million. The round was led by Lux Capital, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Imaginary Ventures, 2048 Ventures, L Catterton Growth Fund, and StepStone Private Ventures. The company is also introducing Genius AI as i

Science Corp, a clinical-stage medical technology company led by Max Hodak and the team, has announced the European commercial launch of PRIMA, the first and only treatment shown in clinical trials to restore functional central vision to patients with geographic atrophy (GA) caused by age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness. PRIMA has received a CE (Conformité Européenne) mark under the European Union Medical Device Regulation from DEKRA, authoriz

Atoms, building physical automation to transform industry and move the world, led by Travis Kalanick, has announced a $1.7B equity investment with lead investor a16z and Ben Horowitz joining the board. As part of this investment, the various businesses were consolidated into a single Atoms equity structure. Marc and Ben have shared a long-standing relationship, and a partnership at Uber came remarkably close in 2011. Responsibility for the missed opportunity has long been deb

Cascade, the AI pursuit platform for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms led by Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, has raised $3.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Ada Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, Indico Capital, shuckerVC, G2C Ventures, and Snowball VC. In construction, some of the biggest opportunities are often identified long before a formal request for proposals (RFP) is issued. By the time projects become publicly available, key decisions m

Glow, the endpoint AI company led by Roi Tiger, Omer Singer, Ophir Arie, and the team, has announced its launch with $180M in funding, led by Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Holly Ventures, Operator Collective, and Lux Capital. Traditional endpoint security has long forced organizations to choose between reacting after threats emerge or restricting business operations to reduce risk. As AI

SuperCharger Ventures, the global ecosystem for EdTech startups led by Janos Barberis and the team, has announced the launch of Fund I. It will invest in EdTech and Future-of-Work companies worldwide, with a focus on pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Initial investments in selected startups will be up to €250,000, with follow-on funding ranging from €500,000 to €1.5 million. The fund is backed by family offices and high-net-worth investors, with 90% of first-close commitments

Gritt, AI that does the hardest work in the hardest places, led by Puneet Puri and Vishal Dugar, has launched with $32.4M in pre-seed and Series A funding. The $26M Series A was led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures and Active Impact Investments, and support from previous investors First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, and VSC Ventures. Gritt’s robotic arms and AI systems integrate with existing jobsite equipment, including skid

Sila, building and scaling next-gen battery materials, led by Gene Berdichevsky, Gleb Yushin, and the team, has secured $300 million in a private equity round led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures. The round is joined by 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc, and other existing and new investors. The raise will accelerate U.S. production of Sila’s silicon-carbon (Si/C) anode technology, Titan

Bluecore Energy, democratizing access to clean energy, led by Kofi Asante and the team, has emerged from stealth with a new approach to meeting the growing energy demands of the near future. As cities, ports, hospitals, data centers, and industry place increasing demands on the grid, building new energy generation infrastructure can take over a decade. The company has raised approximately $10 million in an oversubscribed financing round to accelerate technology development an

Humanoid, a UK-based AI and robotics company building industrial humanoid robots led by Artem Sokolov and the team, announced a $152 million Series A financing at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation. This funding brings the total amount raised to date to $270 million. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures. The investment marks a significant milestone for the European techn

Infinity, developing a generative optimization engine that automatically improves computational kernels to accelerate AI training and inference, led by Jeremy Nixon, has raised $15 million in seed funding at a $100 million post-money valuation. The round included significant participation from Touring Capital, along with Principal VC, executives at major chip companies, researchers from OpenAI and Anthropic, and other prominent angel investors. The funding will support the ex

Natural, powering agentic payments, led by Kahlil Lalji, Eric Wang, and Walt Leung, has raised a $30M Series A led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner, with continued participation by all major investors. The round was raised when the company was 193 days old and brings Natural’s total funding to over $40M. The round was supported by Human Capital, Abstract, Genius Ventures, Torch Capital, Restive, SV Angel, Darragh Buckley (CEO of Increase), Pablo Palafox (CEO of HappyRobot), Pau

Neo, building real-time protection for the agentic enterprise, led by Nicholas Warner, Shlomi Salem, and Eran Shirazi, has emerged from stealth with $100M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures. Neo was founded by former executives and engineers from SentinelOne, Wiz and Palo Alto Networks. The company's platform provides security operations (SecOps) teams with inventory management, posture

Skyfall AI, a neolab building systems for the first autonomous enterprise led by Sam Pasupalak, Kaheer Suleman, and Sumit Pasupalak, has emerged from stealth with an undisclosed amount of funding from Fidelity, Inovia Capital, Touring Capital, M13, NextView Ventures, and Garage Capital. Skyfall was founded by the team behind Maluuba, the deep learning research lab acquired by Microsoft in 2017. The company aims to move beyond the limitations of today's Large Language Models (