MENLO TIMES

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

Walden Robotics, a full-stack Physical AI company building and deploying general-purpose robots that put human ingenuity to work at industrial scale, led by Russ Tedrake and the team, has emerged out of stealth with $300 million in funding. The round, which values the company at $1.1 billion, is co-led by Toyota (Toyota Motor Corp, Toyota Invention Partners, and Toyota Ventures) and Deviation Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Prol

BRINC, building technology in the service of public safety, led by Blake Resnick and the team, has announced a $125 million financing round led by Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and Dylan Field, Figma’s CEO and founder. The investment brings BRINC’s total funding to more than $250 million, supporting the company’s mission to deploy emergency response drones across 80,000 police and fire stations in the United States. The funding will support BRINC’

Pixel-Flo, reinventing MicroLED production with continuous-Flo™, led by Rick Smith, Suneal Ghataora, Simon Jones, and Sanger Hsu, has raised £5.25 million in seed funding led by Northern Gritstone, with additional investment from SCVC, the Parkwalk Northern Universities Venture Fund, and German investment firm HTGF. Pixel-Flo is developing a scalable manufacturing technology designed to reduce the cost of MicroLED display production. Its proprietary fluidic self-assembly proc

e-peas, powering the future with ambient energy, led by Geoffroy Gosset, Julien De Vos, and the team, has announced the successful closing of USD 22-Million in financing led by Crédit Mutuel Innovation, with the support of its Belgian branch, alongside SFPI, the Belgian federal fund. E‑peas’ growth ambition and long-term vision perfectly align with these two investors' strategic objectives. The capital raise also included the continued support of e‑peas’ historic investors, i

QuantumDiamonds, the world's first commercially available quantum sensing system for semiconductor inspection, led by Dr. Fleming Bruckmaier and Kevin Berghoff, has announced the close of a €91 million funding round to scale production of its quantum-based semiconductor inspection technology. The financing combines an €15 million equity round led by World Fund with €76 million in non-dilutive funding approved at the EU level under the European Chips Act. The non-dilutive fund

SambaNova, the fastest AI inference platform, led by Rodrigo Liang, Kunle Olukotun, Christopher Re, and Lip-Bu Tan, has announced it has completed the first close of $1 billion in strategic financing as part of a Series F round, valuing the company at $11 billion post-money. This latest financing round was led by General Atlantic, a leading global investor, with significant investment from Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and Capital Group. New and existing

Aylight, the company that developed a fundamentally new optical frequency comb laser architecture- one that delivers unprecedented wavelength stability, energy efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, led by Bahareh Marzban and Dmitry Kazakov, has raised a €4.5M pre-seed financing round, co-led by Elaia and Swisscom Ventures with participation from Verve Ventures and Plug and Play. The funding takes Aylight's laser from a research result to first prototypes, manufactured in a semi

OXMIQ, a GPU and AI architecture company with expertise spanning every layer of the AI stack, led by Raja Koduri and the team, has closed its $35 million Series A financing, bringing the company's total capital raised to $60 million. The round was co-led by Fundomo and Samsung Catalyst Fund, with participation from MediaTek, AM Intelligence Labs, Pegatron Venture Capital, CDIB-TEN, Darwin Ventures, and Morgan Creek Digital, among other financial and strategic investors. OXMIQ

Etched, building frontier inference clusters led by Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen, Chris Zhu, and the team, has emerged out of stealth with $1B+ in customer contracts and $800M raised. The Series B was led by Stripes, with participation from Ribbit Capital, Radical Ventures, Positive Sum, Primary, & Argo. Frontier Inference Infrastructure. The company builds hardware systems for frontier inference clusters, co-designing chips, racks, software, and manufacturing methods to optim

OpenAI and Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) have unveiled Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first Intelligence Processor: an accelerator architected around OpenAI’s vision for the future of LLM inference, and the first AI accelerator in a multi-generation compute platform the companies are building together to make advanced AI faster, more reliable, and more accessible to more people. Building the AI Stack In-House. OpenAI has taken delivery of its first custom AI chip, Jalapeño, from partners Broad

Groq, building fast, low-cost inference, has announced $650 million in new growth capital to accelerate the expansion of its AI inference cloud. The round was led by Disruptive and Infinitum, with participation from investors who elected to reinvest in the company. Groq’s current growth phase gained momentum following a licensing agreement with NVIDIA in late 2025 and the subsequent introduction of NVIDIA’s LPX platform, which incorporates Groq’s inference technology. These d

Nearfield Instruments, a semiconductor metrology equipment company developing and delivering ground-breaking process control metrology solutions for the worldwide advanced semiconductor I.C. manufacturing industry, led by Roland van Vliet and Hamed Sadeghian, has announced the successful closure of a $380 million Series D funding round led by new investor Fidelity Management & Research Company, along with Temasek, Walden Catalyst Ventures, Innovation Industries, M&G Investmen

Invisix, a Netherlands-based semiconductor metrology company developing soft X-ray measurement systems for advanced logic and memory manufacturing, led by Christina Porter, Sietse van der Post, Roald Dogge, Hens van Ooijen, and the team, has raised an oversubscribed €20 million seed round, which includes Hitachi Ventures, Transition Ventures, imec.xpand, Doosan Investment Co., and a tier-1 semiconductor manufacturer. The funding will support team expansion, accelerate develop

Fractile, the AI inference hardware company, led by Walter Goodwin and the team, has raised $220M to accelerate the path to getting its first chips and systems into customers’ hands, in a financing round led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund, with participation from Conviction, Gigascale, O1A, Felicis, Buckley Ventures, and 8VC, investing alongside its brilliant existing backers. Fractile, founded in 2022, was built on the belief that frontier AI is ultimately con

Eyeo, building the future of imaging, led by Jeroen Hoet, Alden Carracillo, Gerd Van den Branden, and Jan Genoe, has raised €40 million in Series A funding, bringing eyeo’s total funding to €55 million. The round is led by Innovation Industries, with participation from existing investors imec.xpand, Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, QBIC fund, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), and Brabant Development Agency (BOM). eyeo has developed a nanophotonic color-splitting technology that enhance

Auryx, turning ordinary earbuds into health sensors through the power of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, led by Erika Bondareva, Kayla-Jade Butkow, and Cecilia Mascolo, has raised $2M in pre-seed funding to build a platform that turns everyday devices, such as earbuds, into continuous health monitors using sound. The round is led by Celero Ventures, with participation from EWOR, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Vento, PurposeTech, and additional institutional and angel in

DeepInfra, helping you accelerate your AI with developer-friendly APIs designed for performance and cost-efficiency, led by Nikola Borisov, Georgios Papoutsis, and Yessenzhar Kanapin, has raised $107 million in Series B funding to scale DeepInfra's inference cloud and expand its global capacity, co-led by 500 Global and Georges Harik, with participation from A.Capital Ventures, Crescent Cove, Felicis, NVIDIA, Peak6, Samsung Next, Supermicro, and Upper90. Inference is becoming

Pixxel, reimagining earth observation for a new era, led by Awais Ahmed and Kshitij Khandelwal, has announced a strategic partnership with Sarvam, led by Pratyush Kumar, to develop and build India’s first orbital data centre satellite. Under the partnership, Pixxel will design, build, launch, and operate the Pathfinder satellite, while Sarvam AI will provide the AI backbone, enabling both training and inference directly in orbit with full-stack language models running onboard

Atech, an AI hardware startup, led by Tomas Harmer, David Stålmarck, Vladimir Baran, and the team, has raised a pre-seed round with participation from Nordic Makers, Emblem, Lovable, Sequoia Scout Fund (Sequoia), and Andreessen Horowitz Scout Fund (A16z). Atech is building a platform that makes hardware development accessible to everyone, removing one of tech’s highest knowledge barriers. The Problem Building a hardware prototype has traditionally required years of specialise