MENLO TIMES

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

OTee, redefining industrial automation with a Virtual PLC platform that makes control systems software-defined, open, and ready for the industrial AI era, led by Henrik Pedersen, Radek Janik, and the team, has raised a €5.3 million seed round led by North Ventures, with participation from Atlas SGR and existing investors RunwayFBU, Superangel, and Antler. The funding will accelerate product development and international expansion as OTee scales its platform. Industrial contro

AlixLabs , the world's only pure-play ALE company, led by Jonas Sundqvist, has announced that it closed its 15 million euro Series A in the first quarter of 2026 following a strategic investment from Stephen Industries , a Finnish investment company with a strong track record in scaling advanced technology ventures. In November 2025, AlixLabs announced a €14.1 million Series A led by Global Brain and institutional investors, with the remaining portion of the €15 million roun

Peak Quantum , a Munich-based startup engineering the future of computing, led by Leon Koch & the team, has raised €2.2 million in a pre-seed financing round led by Cloudberry Ventures (UK)with participation from United Founders , QAI Ventures , Golden Egg Check , as well as several business angels with industry experience. The company’s total funding now exceeds €5 million, including public support such as funding from the EU Chips Act. The capital will be allocated toward

SiFive , the gold standard for RISC-V processor IP, led by Patrick Little, Krste Asanovic, Yunsup Lee, Andrew Waterman, and the team, has raised $400 million in an oversubscribed Series G financing led by Atreides Management with other A-list investors, including Apollo Global Management , NVIDIA , Point72 Turion, and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc. , alongside repeat investors Prosperity7 Ventures , and Sutter Hill Ventures . For Patrick Little, rising demand fr

Pixel Photonics , a pioneer in superconducting single-photon detectors, led by Nicolai Walter, Dr. Wladick Hartmann, and the team, has announced total funding of €13.5 million. The amount consists of a first closing of a €5 million seed round and €8.5 million from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator , including €2.5 million in grants and €6 million in equity investment. The seed round is led by Futury Capital . Additional investors include the Federal Agency fo

Cognichip , builders of ACI® Artificial Chip Intelligence, led by Faraj Aalaei, Ehsan Kamalinejad, Simon Sabato, and the team, has raised $60 million in new funding led by Seligman Ventures , with notable participation from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who will be joining Cognichip’s board. Umesh Padval, a managing partner at Seligman, will also join the board. Cognichip is developing a deep learning model to assist engineers in designing next-generation chips, tackling a long-stan

INCIRT , the Aachen-based deep-tech company, led by Oner Hanay, Erkan Bayram, Mohamed Saeed Elsayed, Theodore Varelas, and the team, has raised a €4.8 million funding round led by early-stage VC fund Lifeline Ventures , with participation from High Tech Gründerfonds . With this funding, INCIRT advances toward commercializing its novel chip architecture, strengthening Europe’s push for digital sovereignty. New Chip Architecture Overcomes Key Limitations INCIRT is developing n

Starcloud , building data centers in space, led by Philip Johnston, Ezra Feilden, and Adi Oltean, has raised $170 million in Series A led by Benchmark and EQT Ventures , valuing the company at $1.1 billion. Starcloud has raised $200 million to date and launched its first satellite equipped with an Nvidia H100 GPU in November 2025. Later this year, Starcloud 2 will deploy a more powerful satellite featuring multiple GPUs, including an Nvidia Blackwell chip, an AWS server b

Rebellions , a global leader in AI inference infrastructure, led by Sunghyun Park and the team, has raised $400 million in a pre-IPO funding round led by Mirae Asset Financial Group and the Korea National Growth Fund, following the company’s $250 million Series C in September 2025, bringing total funding to $850 million and valuing the company at approximately $2.34 billion. With $650 million raised in the past six months, accounting for over 75% of its total funding, Rebe

Inifinity Avionics , an Australian hardware company providing spaceflight-proven and qualified camera and processor systems for space missions worldwide, led by Igor Dimitrijevic and the team, has announced the full commercial availability of Aquila. Following a debut at IAC Sydney, the high-performance Aquila imaging system is now flight-ready, providing critical ‘eyes’ for the $14B Space Situational Awareness, In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) and Ren

EPIC Microsystems , a semiconductor company developing breakthrough power delivery solutions for AI infrastructure, led by Sabin Eftimie and Wonyoung Kim , has raised an oversubscribed $21 million in Series A funding to accelerate the development and commercialization of its vertical power delivery technology for next-generation AI compute platforms, led by Seligman Ventures , with participation from Intel Capital , AICONIC Ventures , Cambium Capital , and existing seed inv

Frore Systems , bringing a revolution in cooling technology for high-performance applications, led by Dr. Seshu Madhavapeddy, Dr. Surya P. Ganti, and the team, has announced the close of a $143 million Series D financing round, bringing total capital raised to $340 million and valuing the company at $1.64 billion. The Series D round was led by MVP Ventures and included participation from investors Fidelity Management & Research Company , Top Tier, Mayfield Fund , Clear Vent

MatX , building high-throughput chips for LLMs, led by Reiner Pope, Mike Gunter, Avinash Mani, and the team, has announced MatX One and a $500M Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness LP . Participants include Spark Capital , Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman ’s fund, Patrick and John Collison , Triatomic Capital , Harpoon Ventures , Andrej Karpathy , Dwarkesh Patel , and others, including investors across the supply chain, including Alchip and Marvell

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