MENLO TIMES

Deepgram, enabling human-machine interactions with voice AI, led by Scott Stephenson , Adam Sypniewski , Shadi Baqleh , and others, has secured $130 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation, led by AVP . All major existing investors joined the round, including Alkeon , In-Q-Tel, Madrona , Tiger, Wing , Y Combinator , and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Several new investors, including Alumni Ventures  and Princeville Capital , participated in the round

Diffraqtion , an MIT and University of Maryland spinout building the next generation of visual AI hardware and software to make satellites and machines see further and think faster, led by Johannes Galatsanos, Christine Yi-Ting Wang, Saikat Guha, Mark Michael, and others, has raised its pre-seed funding round, led by QDNL Participations , with participation from milemark•capital , Aether VC , ADIN, Offline Ventures , and a non-dilutive DARPA SBIR Direct-to-Phase 2 contract su

Nuclera , the biotechnology company accelerating drug discovery by providing rapid, easy access to functional proteins through its benchtop eProtein Discovery™ System, led by Michael Chen, Gordon Mcinroy, and others, announced  a USD $12 million financing extension, bringing the Company’s total Series C funding to USD $87 million, led by  Elevage Medical Technologies  and Jonathan Milner, joined by existing investors British Business Bank  and GK Goh . The investment will acc

Avenue Biosciences , the protein engineering platform enhancing production yield and the quality of your end product, led by Tero-Pekka Alastalo, Katja Rosti, Veli-Pekka Jaakola, Juulia Simonen, and Anton Klavus, has secured  $5.7M in seed extension funding round co-led by Balnord  and  Tesi , with support from existing investors  Voima Ventures , Inventure ,  University of Helsinki , and Dimerent, to scale a high-throughput protein engineering technology that accelerates the

Bluecopa , the unified finance operations management platform, led by Satya Prakash, Nilotpal Chanda, and Raghavendra Reddy, has secured  $7.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Singapore-based Analog Partners , with participation from existing investors Blume Ventures  and Dallas Venture Capital , bringing the total funding to $11.6 million. “This funding fast-tracks our vision of autonomous finance, where routine processes run themselves, and teams focus on strategy

Harmattan AI , building the future of autonomous warfare, with speed and intelligence, led by Mouad M'Ghari, Martin de Gourcuff , Jean-Christophe Charlaix , Edouard Rosset , Jean-Patrice Coste , and others, has secured  $200 million in a Series B funding round led by Dassault Aviation. The two companies have announced a strategic partnership to accelerate the integration of controlled autonomy and AI technologies into combat aviation systems. Harmattan AI, awarded multiple Pr

Torq , the AI security platform, led by Ofer Smadari, Leonid Belkind, Eldad Livni, and others, has secured  a massive $140 million Series D funding round led by Merlin Ventures  with participation from all existing investors, including Evolution Equity Partners , Notable Capital , Bessemer Venture Partners , Insight Ventures Partners , and Greenfield Partners , propelling its valuation to $1.2 billion and total funding to $332M. Torq is transforming Security Operations Center

Rain , the enterprise-grade infrastructure for stablecoin-powered payments, led by Farooq Malik and Charles Naut, has secured  a $250 million Series C funding round led by ICONIQ , with participation from Sapphire Ventures , Dragonfly , Bessemer Venture Partners , Galaxy Ventures , FirstMark , Lightspeed , Norwest , and Endeavor Catalyst , bringing the total funding to $338 million and valuing the company at $1.95 Billion. Stablecoins have shifted from a speculative niche to

Cyera , the AI-native data security platform, led by Yotam Segev, Tamar Bar-Ilan, and others, has secured  $400 million in funding. AI now demands a new security model. Public data powered the first wave; proprietary data will drive the next. As agentic AI spreads across enterprises, automated systems generate massive volumes of actions and decisions, expanding exposure. The real challenge is securing this ecosystem. Legacy security tools cannot see or control the data AI dep

Boltz , helping every scientist reshape biology, led by Gabriele Corso, Jeremy Wohlwend, and Saro Passaro, announced  its launch with $28 Million Seed Round from Zetta , Amplify , a16z , and strategic angels, including Clement Delangue (CEO of Hugging Face), Factorial Capital , and Obvious Ventures . AI-powered molecular modeling is advancing rapidly, offering the potential to make biology programmable, digitize experiments, and accelerate drug development. However, emerging

Protege , building the data layer for AI training, led by Bobby Samuels, Travis May, Engy Ziedan, and Richard Ho, has announced a $30 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz ( a16z ). The financing expands the company’s $25 million Series A from August 2025 and brings total funding to $65 million since the company’s founding in 2024. Returning investors include Footwork , CRV , Bloomberg Beta , Flex Capital, Shaper Capital , and more. Bobby Samuels, CEO and co-found

Luxury Presence , the growth platform for real estate’s top performers, led by Malte Kramer, has raised  $37 million in new capital to accelerate the launch of Presence® CRM and deepen the data and intelligence layer that feeds our platform, including $22 million in Series C equity, led for the third time by Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners , with participation from NextEquity Partners , GSBackers , a Stanford alumni fund, including Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff,

Lux Capital , a Venture Capital Firm, started in 2000, investing in opportunities at the frontier of science and technology that others find too hard, too early, or too confusing, led by Peter Hebert, Josh Wolfe, and others, has announced  its largest fund to date, Lux Ventures IX, a $1.5B commitment to investing in the people turning sci-fi into sci-fact.  Entire sectors, from aerospace and biotech to defense and industrials, are being rebuilt by a bold new generation of sci

Aegis Aerospace Inc. , a leader in space and defense technology led by Stephanie Murphy , and others, has announced  a groundbreaking partnership with United Semiconductors LLC to pioneer semiconductor manufacturing in space. This collaboration follows Aegis Aerospace’s recent grant from the Texas Space Commission to develop an in-space manufacturing platform for advanced materials in low Earth orbit (LEO). “We’re excited to partner with United Semiconductors,” said Stephanie

Biographica , developing cutting-edge deep learning and knowledge graph technology to identify and prioritise high-value targets for crop gene-editing, led by Cecily Price and Dominic Hall, PhD, has raised £7 million in a funding round led by  Faber VC , with participation from SuperSeed , Cardumen Capital , The Helm , EQT Foundation , and Sie Ventures . The round also included existing investors Chalfen Ventures , Entrepreneurs First , Nucleus Capital , Dhyan Ventures , Sara

Commonwealth Fusion Systems , an MIT spin-out fusion energy company, led by Bob Mumgaard, Dan Brunner, Brandon Sorbom, and Zach Hartwig, has completed  and delivered its first cutting-edge, superstrong magnet — a culmination of years of work to develop and manufacture the foundational technology to  bring fusion energy to the grid .   A 24-ton steel-clad toroidal field magnet was transported to the SPARC facility in Devens, Massachusetts, marking the first of 18 magnets neede

Unusual , surveys AI models to discover how they see your brand, and then creates content to shape their view, led by Will Jack and Keller Maloney, has secured  $3.6 million seed round, led by BoxGroup , Long Journey Ventures , Y Combinator , Instacart co-founder Max Mullen, and Phosphor Capital . AI models now influence a significant share of buying decisions, yet most brands have little insight into how these systems describe them, or how to correct inaccuracies. Gartner es

Even Healthcare , a healthcare company based out of Bengaluru that offers comprehensive health covers for individuals and businesses, led by Mayank Banerjee, Matilde Giglio, and Alessandro Ialongo, has secured  $20 Mn (INR 180.5 Cr) in a fresh funding round from existing investors like Lachy Groom and Alpha Wave , as well as new investor Sharrp Ventures , among others. The startup plans to use the new capital to expand its hospital presence in Bengaluru following the launch o

Lyte , an end-to-end integrated perception company for robotics and Physical AI, led by Alexander Shpunt, Dr. Arman Hajati, and Dr. Yuval Gerson, has emerged  from stealth with $107 million in aggregate funding from some of the industry's premier investors, including Avigdor Willenz's group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Atreides Management , Exor Ventures , Key1 Capital , and Venture Tech Alliance . Based in Mountain View, California, Lyte was founded by Alexander

Boston Dynamics , which develops practical robotics solutions designed to tackle today's and tomorrow's toughest automation challenges, and Google DeepMind , the world’s premier AI Lab, have formed  a new AI partnership aimed at bringing a new era of artificial intelligence to humanoid robots. Announced at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, the two teams aim to integrate cutting-edge Gemini Robotics AI foundation models with Boston Dynamics’ new  Atlas ® robots. The strategic partnership