MENLO TIMES

Kaaj AI , an agentic AI credit intelligence platform that simplifies small business lending, led by Utsav Shah and Shivi Sharma, has secured  $3.8 million in seed funding led by Kindred Ventures , with participation from Better Tomorrow Ventures , Karman Ventures , Pythia Ventures , Coughdrop Capital , and notable angels including Soups Ranjan (CEO, Sardine AI ), Rahul Ramesh (CCO   Brex ), Remy Carole (COO,  TreasuryPrime ), Sip Jiyane (CAO, Affirm ), Steven Ma (CEO, Pony Mo

Infinite Orbits , pushing the boundaries of in-orbit services with cutting-edge spacecraft driven by its own Rendez-Vous solution, an advanced Autonomous Vision-Based Navigation Solution, led by Adel Haddoud, Akshay Gulati, Manos Koumantakis, Marion Andrieux, Yasmin Hassan, and Jürgen Eisenbraun, has raised  a €40 million financing round from European Innovation Council Fund , along with Matterwave Ventures , Wind Capital , Balnord , IRDI , and Newfund Capital . This financin

Sphere , the AI-native cross-border compliance engine, led by Nicholas Rudder, has raised $21 million in Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Y Combinator  and Felicis Ventures . The raise reflects rising demand for scalable tax solutions as companies globalize earlier and face increasing regulatory complexity. Regulators are tightening enforcement, EU authorities now require platforms like Stripe and Adyen to report tax evasion, and many countries a

Cellbyte , AI agents for pharmaceutical drug launches, led by Felix Steinbrenner , Daniel Moreira , and Samuel M. , has secured   $2.75 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures , with participation from Y Combinator , Pace Ventures , Saras Capital , and Springboard Health Angels .  Fragmented data slows drug launches, leaving patients waiting over a year for life-saving treatments. Market Access teams spend a huge amount of time and money assembling regulatory, prici

Infracost , enabling engineers to proactively find and fix cloud cost issues, led by Hassan Khajeh-Hosseini, Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, and Alistair Scott, has raised a $15 million Series A, led by Pruven Capital  with participation from Y Combinator , Sequoia Capital , Mango Capital, Alumni Ventures , TIAA Ventures  (a strategic investment from TIAA’s venture arm), and angel investors Paul Copplestone (co-founder of Supabase) and Timothy Chen (Essence VC).  Sudip Chakrabarti  has

Ursa Major , delivering mission-ready propulsion across missile defense, hypersonics, in-space mobility, and launch, led by Dan Jablonsky, Bill Nash, Brad Appel, and others, has closed  $100 million in its Series E funding round and received an additional $50 million in debt funding commitments. Investors include both new and long-term supporters of Ursa Major’s mission, including Eclipse , which led the round, and were joined by Woodline Partners , Principia Growth , XN, and

Pionix , making EV charging reliable, interoperable, and future-ready for everyone, led by Dr. Marco Möller, Johanna Claussen, Cornelius Claussen, Markus Juhr-De Benedetti, and Tim Valbert, has raised  over €8 million led by Ascend Capital Partners , with participation from Start-up BW Seed Fonds , managed by MBG Baden-Württemberg , Pale blue dot , Vireo Ventures , Axeleo Ventures , and further investors. Despite major progress in e-mobility, EV charging remains fragmented du

Emm , developer of the first smart menstrual cup with integrated biosensors, designed to unlock insights into your cycle, led by Jenny Button, Joss Hawkins, Kaylin Zeuske, Hatty Stubbs, and others, has secured $9 million (£6.8M) in an oversubscribed seed funding led by  Lunar Ventures , with additional participation from  the Labcorp Venture Fund ,  Tiny VC ,  BlueLion Global ,  Alumni Ventures  (investor in Oura & Levels), and a network of high-profile angels, including Amar

Peec AI , the marketing platform built for the age of AI search, led by Marius Meiners, Tobias Siwonia, and Daniel Drabo, Peec AI has raised  a $21 million in Series A, led by European VC firm Singular , with participation from Antler , Combination VC , identity.vc , and S20. The round follows the seed financing led by 20VC in July 2025 and brings total funding to $29 million, marking one of the largest Series A financings in AI search to date. AI search is becoming the new d

Leanspace , a European satellite operations technology provider, led by Guillaume Tanier, Alvaro Alonso Ruiz, and Gert Villemos, has raised  €10 million in Series A funding from new strategic investors: ISAI Cap Venture , Capgemini’s corporate venture arm, Qwaltec, 42CAP , Karista , and Arnaud Guérin, co-founder of military AI platform Preligens. Additional non-dilutive funding comes from Caisse d’Epargne and Bpifrance via the France 2030 strategic investment plan. The space

PowerLattice , the company reimagining power delivery for next-generation AI accelerators, led by Dr. Peng Zou, Gang Ren, and Sujith Dermal, has announced its emergence from stealth with $25 million in Series A funding jointly led by Playground Global  and Celesta Capital . The company’s power-delivery chiplet tightly couples power and compute, cutting total power needs by over 50% and effectively doubling performance. PowerLattice has raised $31 million to date. AI accelerat

Luminal , compiling AI models to give you the fastest, highest throughput inference cloud in the world, led by Joe Fioti, Matthew Gunton, and Jake Stevens, has secured  a $5.3 million seed round led by Felicis Ventures , with incredible angels like Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and many more. Compute demand is soaring, and chips are advancing faster than ever. But software isn’t keeping pace, leaving large portions of modern accelerators underutilized. Reaching peak performan

Artios Pharma Limited , a biopharmaceutical company committed to realizing the therapeutic power of targeting the DNA damage response (“DDR”) in cancer, led by Michael T. Andriole, Christine Silverstein, Graeme Smith, Ian Smith, and others, has announced  the successful close of an oversubscribed $115 million Series D financing, co-led by founding investor SV Health Investors  and new investor RA Capital Management , with participation from new investor Janus Henderson Invest

Sakana AI , building a world-class AI research lab in Tokyo, led by David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito, has raised 20 Billion Yen (135 million US Dollars) from new and existing investors, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group  (MUFG), Khosla Ventures , Factorial, Macquarie Capital , Fundomo , Mouro Capital , New Enterprise Associates , Geodesic Capital , Lux Capital , Ora Global , MPower Partners , Shikoku Electric Power , and In-Q-Tel (IQT) . Record levels of capital are

Runlayer , making enterprise AI secure, compliant, and fully connected, led by Andy Berman, Tal Peretz, and Vitor Balocco, has secured  $11 million seed round from Khosla Ventures  and Felicis . Teams are increasingly wiring their preferred AI tools directly into production databases via MCP, just like thousands of others. But with more than 18,000 MCP servers in the wild, an estimated 10% are outright malicious, and most of the rest remain exploitable. Enterprises face a dan

Hummink , developer of High Precision Printing for Advanced Electronics and a spin-off of the prestigious physics lab of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) and PSL University, led by Amin M'BARKI, Pascal Boncenne, Pr. Lydéric Bocquet, Alessandro Siria, Antoine Niguès, and Christophe Bureau, has secured  €15 million to expand the deployment of their patented High-Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) technology, co-led by  KBC Focus Fund ,  Cap Horn , and  Bpifrance , with foll

Sofinnova Partners , a leading European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London, and Milan, led by Antoine Papiernik , Henrijette Richter , Graziano Seghezzi , Anta Gkelou , Maina Bhaman , Karl Naegler , and others, has announced  the close of its latest flagship fund, Sofinnova Capital XI, at €650 million ($750 million), greatly exceeding its initial target. Sofinnova Capital XI will support a new wave of biopharma and medtech companies developing breakthro

Catalyx Space , a space infrastructure company providing turnkey solutions for orbital missions across industries, led by Rifath Shaarook, Clinton Antony, Keerthan Chand Aluvala, Saqib Hussain, Niharika Naveen, and Thaneem Rayan, has secured  $5.4 million in seed funding led by venture capital firm Outlander VC , with participation from Arka Venture Labs , Lex Reddy, KDX Management LLC , Together Fund , Higher Life Ventures , Nivesha Ventures , Prana Tech Ventures , Bria, HF0

AirOps , the only platform that takes you from insights to action to increase your brand's visibility in AI search, led by Alex Halliday  and Matt Hammel , has secured  $40 million in Series B funding led by Mike Duboe at Greylock . Information discovery has changed more in the past year than in the previous three decades, as billions now get direct answers from AI instead of clicking through search results. This shift is upending how brands are found and rendering traditiona

Forterra , defining the next domain of operations creating an ecosystem where intelligent systems coordinate and prevail across the battlefield, led by Josh Araujo, Joseph Putney, Scott Sanders, Colin Chisholm, Taylor Smith Baisey, and Alberto Lacaze, has announced  a $238 million Series C comprised of both equity and debt led by Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from new investors Salesforce Ventures , Franklin Templeton , Balyasny Asset Management , 645 Ventures ,