MENLO TIMES

Grotto AI , an AI that supercharges leasing teams in the moments that matter most, led by Nick Deveau and Ben Epstein, has raised  a $10 million seed round led by  ICONIQ . Advisors and angel investors also include industry veterans David Dear (BILT, formerly Equity Residential), Caren Maio (Co-founder, Get100 and Funnel Leasing), and Avi Dorfman (Co-founder, Compass), with participation from Asymmetric Capital Partners . While many industries attempt to replace frontline wor

Stacks , helping reinvent the financial close, led by Albert Malikov  and the team, has raised  $23M Series A led by Lightspeed , with EQT Ventures , General Catalyst , and S16VC  doubling down. The round comes less than a year after Stacks’ $12 million seed financing led by General Catalyst, underscoring the company’s rapid traction and momentum. Finance is becoming the next major enterprise function to be rebuilt with AI, following multibillion-dollar transformations in cus

Flinn , leading the way in medtech compliance, led by Markus Mueller, Bastian Krapinger-Ruether, Hasib Samad, MBA, and the team, has raised $20 million in additional funding led by HV Capital , followed by US-based healthcare specialist BHI - Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments , with continued support from existing investors Cherry Ventures , Speedinvest , and SquareOne . With the new funding, Flinn will expand its platform across the full MedTech and Pharma lifecycle, from r

Aizy , an AI-powered performance marketing platform for small and mid-sized businesses, led by Stefan Nuijten and the team, has secured €2 million in additional funding, bringing its valuation to €22 million less than a year after launch. The round was led by founder Stefan Nuijten, alongside existing investors Michiel Mol, Joost van der Klooster, and Gijs Nagel. The follow-on investment comes just months after the company raised €1.5 million in August, underscoring strong in

Unicity Labs , building Agentic marketplaces for machine-speed commerce, led by Mike Gault and the team, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Tawasal Al Kaleej , a Middle East-based communications super app, and Outlier Ventures , a leading Web3 early-stage investor. The funding aligns with the emergence of AI agents as economic participants, with the global agentic AI market projected to exceed $100 billion by 2032. Unici

OSS Ventures , a Paris-based venture studio building next-generation industrial software, led by Renan Devillieres and the team, has announced the first close of its new investment fund with a target of $80 million. The round is led by Decathlon PULSE  and Teknor Apex, with participation from existing investors including Groupe Peugeot Frères . The fund serves as OSS Ventures’ strategic investment arm, dedicated to follow-on financing for companies emerging from the studio’s

Temporal , revolutionizing backend software engineering, led by Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev, has raised  a $300M Series D at a $5B post-money valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners , Sapphire Ventures , Sequoia Capital , Index , Tiger, GIC , Madrona , and Amplify. Raghu Raghuram  joins as a board observer. AI and other long-running processes expose the limits of traditional backends. Durable Execution preserves state, reco

Render , an intuitive infrastructure to scale any app or agent from your first user to your billionth, led by Anurag Goel , Meagan Gamache , Michael Greer , Eli Staykova , and Shuting Zhang , has raised  $100M in an extension of its Series C, valuing the company at $1.5B. Led by Georgian , who also led the Series C, the round includes strong participation from all the major partners, including Addition, Bessemer , General Catalyst , and 01A , and brings the total funding to $

Koyeb , a high-performance serverless infrastructure for intensive workloads, led by Yann Léger, Edouard Bonlieu, Bastien Chatelard, and the team, has entered  into a definitive agreement to join  Mistral AI  to advance cutting-edge AI infrastructure. Koyeb will bring its platform, technology, and team to accelerate  Mistral Compute  offering. Compute is designed to provide leading teams across the globe with the same state-of-the-art infrastructure Mistral AI uses to build,

Braintrust , the AI observability platform helping teams measure, evaluate, and improve AI in production, led by Ankur Goyal and the team, has raised  $80M in Series B funding led by ICONIQ , with participation from prior investors Andreessen Horowitz , Greylock , Elad Gil, Basecase Capital , and others. Like many founders, building Braintrust came from a personal pain point. While at Impira and Figma, internal tools had to be created just to run evals. That repeated experien

Sphinx , the company building browser-native compliance agents for financial institutions, led by Alexandre Berkovic and Chrisjan Wust, has raised a $7.1 million seed round led by Cherry Ventures , with participation from Y Combinator , Rebel Fund , Deel Ventures, and Singularity Capital. Unlike traditional RegTech platforms, Sphinx does not require teams to adopt a new system. Its AI agents operate directly within existing tools, case management systems, third-party portals,

Mesh Optical Technologies , developing the most efficient and reliable optical interconnect ever for hyperscale computing, led by Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli, has raised  over $50 million led by Thrive Capital  and other major investors. Optical photons represent the most efficient medium for data transfer in physics, and a truly next-generation computing and communications infrastructure depends on scaling optical system manufacturing. Today, m

SatVu , capturing the highest resolution thermal data from space for a safer and more sustainable Earth, led by Anthony Baker, Tobias Reinicke, Camilla Taylor, and Scott Herman, has closed  a £30m ($40m) funding round bringing its total equity funding to £60m ($80m), as it accelerates from single-satellite demonstration to execution of a multi-satellite constellation. The round completes with a strategic investment from the NATO Innovation Fund ( NIF ), together with  British

ScyAI , building AI-powered risk intelligence for companies with large real asset portfolios, led by Bernhard Rannegger and Alex Sidorenko, has raised a €2 million pre-seed round from AENU  and PT1 . The round also attracted unicorn founders, including David Helgason (Unity), Maex Ament and Philip Stehlik (Taulia, Centrifuge), alongside the angel investor alliance Better Ventures .  For manufacturers, energy producers, and companies with large physical asset portfolios, clima

Neysa , purpose-built systems and services to help you accelerate AI adoption and integrate AI seamlessly into your operations, led by co-founders Sharad Sanghi, Anindya Das, and the team, has announced that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone  (collectively, “Blackstone”) and co-investors have entered into definitive agreements to invest in Neysa, enabling a $1.2 billion capital raise. Blackstone and co-investors have provided equity capital of up to $600 million

Terra Industries , protecting Africa's critical infrastructure with autonomy, led by Nathan Nwachuku, Maxwell Maduka, Alexander Moore(Board Director), and AVM Ayoola Jolasinmi, rtd OFR(Advisor), has raised  an additional $22 million in funding, led by Lux Capital with participation from existing investors, including 8VC , Nova Global, Silent Ventures , Belief Capital , Tofino Capital , and Resilience17 Capital , founded by Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga Agboola, as well as angel i

Sitegeist , delivering easy-to-use, modular construction robots that boost productivity, led by Claus Carste, Nicola Kolb, Julian Hoffmann, and Dr. Lena-Marie Pätzmann, has raised  €4M in a pre-seed funding round co-led by  b2venture  and  OpenOcean , with participation from UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators  and several angel investors, including Verena Pausder, Lea-Sophie Cramer, Alexander Schwörer, and additional strategic backers from the construction and robotics sec

Xyall BV , a next-generation innovator in molecular pathology, led by Guido du Pree, Mike Roele, Reinhold Wimberger, PhD, and the team, has secured  an investment of €7.6 million from a consortium led by Capricorn Partners via their Capricorn Healthtech Fund II , alongside existing investors Sioux Technologies , Brabant Development Agency (BOM) , Health Investment Partners , and several private investors. The funding will support the global rollout of Xyall’s Tissector TableT

Arianespace , delivering the most suitable space transportation solution for every customer, led by David Cavaillolès and the team, has successfully launched  32 Amazon Leo satellites with Ariane 64 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. The satellites were delivered to a low Earth orbit at an altitude of approximately 465 km. The mission lasted 1 hour and 54 minutes, from lift-off to separation of all the satellites. The mission, designated VA267 (LE-01 for Amazon Leo), i

Simile AI , a simulation platform for human behavior, led by Joon Sung Park, Michael Bernstein, Lainie Yallen, Percy Liang, and the team, has raised  $100 million in Series A led by Index Ventures with participation from Hanabi Capital , A* , Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) , Andrej Karpathy , Fei-Fei Li , Adam D'Angelo , Guillermo Rauch , Scott Belsky , and others. Joon, an oil painter turned entrepreneur, combines creativity with operational excellence, ambition with realism, a