The statement was light on details and did not specify the planned offering size or where it will list. For its most recent funding round, a $65 billion Series H funding announced last week, the San Francisco company more than doubled its post-money valuation to a staggering $965 billion.

With that round, Anthropic also surpassed its closest rival, , in terms of last reported valuation. In February, OpenAI announced it had closed a $110 billion round at an $840 billion post-money valuation.

Anthropic has now raised roughly $125 billion from investors, per SA国际传媒 data.

The path to the public markets

The IPO filing marks an escalation in the race among generative AI behemoths to make it first to the public market. That said, it could still be while.

Before making its market debut, Anthropic must still receive a sign-off from securities regulators on its confidential filing. After that, it will need to submit its public filing, carry out its pre-IPO roadshow, and put the remaining pieces in place for an offering of this presumed magnitude.

How long could it take? It鈥檚 unclear, of course, but if we use as a proxy, things could proceed briskly. SpaceX, which is reportedly seeking a valuation of $1.8 trillion or more, submitted its confidential filing on April 1. The company is expected to begin trading this month, with multiple reports citing June 12 as the target date.

If Anthropic follows a similar timeline, we could potentially see a market debut in August. Before that, however, will be the public filing of its IPO prospectus, which will offer a long-awaited peek under the hood at Anthropic鈥檚 famously fast revenue growth and the scope of the capital expenditures it has taken to get there.

As someone who has used the word boring in IPO market headlines many times in the past, one thing that can assuredly be said is that word no longer applies.

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Related reading:

• Anthropic Nears $1T Valuation And Leapfrogs OpenAI On Unicorn Board With $65B Funding Round
• OpenAI鈥檚 New $110B Raise At A $840B Valuation Marks The Largest Venture Deal Ever

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So far this year, investors have put about $7.8 billion into Boston-area startups, per SA国际传媒 That puts the region on track for a moderate annual gain and the strongest tally in about four years, as charted below.

Invidious comparison

Under normal circumstances, such numbers might be celebrated as pretty strong. But many Bostonians don鈥檛 see it that way.

鈥淔or the first time, startups in Texas raised more VC money than those in Massachusetts,鈥� one headline this spring. Earlier this year, another correspondent concerns from local startup backers and builders that the tech startup scene is thinning out.

At root, the issue may not be that Bostonians are delivering so little investable startup talent, but rather that other places are swimming in unprecedented capital. This kind of invidious comparison is particularly stark in the AI realm.

Overall, North America venture funding hit a record high in the first quarter of this year, surging to $252 billion. Of that, more than 87% went to companies in SA国际传媒 AI-related categories.

Few of those AI mega-fundraisers were in Massachusetts. The biggest, most heavily funded names in generative AI, like , and others, are predominantly headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area. That means Boston didn鈥檛 get a slice of history鈥檚 largest startup funding rounds.

By contrast, biotech, a traditional area of strength for the Boston area, hasn鈥檛 been on a funding tear. True, there鈥檚 no dramatic slump. But in a time when a single venture-backed AI company can snag $122 billion in a , biotech round sizes can鈥檛 compete for scale.

Standout rounds

Still, by pre-AI standards of venture funding, Boston has been scaling some heavy hitters.

Per SA国际传媒 , at least 12 companies in the greater metro area聽1 raised rounds of $200 million or more this year, listed below.

The largest round went to , a provider of wearable fitness technology and a subscription platform that raised $575 million in Series G funding at a $10.1 billion valuation in March. The company says it is powered by more than 24 billion hours of physiological data and purpose-built AI models to provide predictive, personalized health insights.

, a provider of consumer privacy and security tools, came in second. It secured $375 million in Series B funding in March led by and .

Next on the list is , which provides healthcare plans to seniors on Medicare. The 9-year-old company disclosed in January that it had closed on $366 million across two Series F funding tranches.

Biotech startups, meanwhile, didn鈥檛 make the top 3 but were heavily represented on the list. Overall, more than half of funded startups in the list are focused on biotech or healthcare.

Why compare?

Boston isn鈥檛 the San Francisco Bay Area, and it certainly isn鈥檛 Texas. So it鈥檚 worth asking: What is the point of comparing startup ecosystems? Is a metro area flailing if it doesn鈥檛 keep up with a particular major innovation cycle, even if it maintains core areas of strength?

At risk of over-generalizing, we鈥檇 conclude that competitive rank still matters. A metro area can retain its crown as a startup innovation hub only if it continues to produce transformative companies.

For Boston, there鈥檚 no indication the region is losing its edge in biotech and other sectors where it鈥檚 long been an established powerhouse. However, in the generative AI era, it鈥檚 also evident that the region has not produced one of the most high-valuation players in the space, and that鈥檚 put some ding in the city鈥檚 reputation as a leading innovation hub.

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• North America Q1 Funding Surges Across Stages To Record Level
• Whoop鈥檚 Wearable Fitness Tech Lands $575M From Athletes, Celebrities, Institutional Investors To Reach $10.1B Valuation

That means the San Francisco-based startup has now surpassed its closest rival, , in terms of valuation. In February, OpenAI announced it had closed a $110 billion round at an $840 billion post-money valuation. That financing marked the largest raise ever, according to .

, , and led Anthropic鈥檚 latest raise. , , , , and co-led the round. The financing also included $15 billion of previously committed investments from hyperscalers, $5 billion from , which, interestingly, also participated in OpenAI鈥檚 most recent round of funding.

Anthropic鈥檚 massive round comes just over three months after the startup raised $30 billion in a Series G that valued it at $380 billion post-money. It has now raised around $125 billion since its 2021 inception, .

Since that round, Anthropic says it has grown its enterprise customer base. Its run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month, according to the company.

鈥淐laude is increasingly indispensable to our growing global community of customers, and we work tirelessly to make tools like Claude Code and Cowork more helpful, more powerful, and more adaptable to their needs,鈥� said , chief financial officer of Anthropic, in . 鈥淭his funding will help us serve the historic demand we are experiencing, stay at the research frontier, and bring Claude to more of the places where work happens.鈥�

Correction: This article has been updated to correct Anthropic’s total funding amount to date.

Related SA国际传媒 queries:

• The SA国际传媒 Unicorn Board

Related reading:

• Q1 2026 Shatters Venture Funding Records As AI Boom Pushes Startup Investment To $300B
• OpenAI鈥檚 New $110B Raise At A $840B Valuation Marks The Largest Venture Deal Ever
• Anthropic Raises $30B At $380B Valuation In Second-Largest Venture Funding Deal Of All Time

Illustration:

The global innovation economy remains largely defined by agglomeration dynamics. Worldwide, 19 ecosystems dominate the innovation landscape, increasingly concentrating innovation demand (corporates) and supply (scaleups) 鈥� attracting further growth capital (investors).

Meanwhile, other ecosystems struggle to achieve a meaningful presence on the global innovation map and are at serious risk of technological disruption and economic downfall.

Yet something is happening below the surface. Over the past decade, the composition of the Global Innovation Ecosystems Life Cycle Curve changed dramatically, as the number of scaleup ecosystems worldwide has more than doubled.

The trend is not stopping just here: we expect these figures to even triple in the coming years.

In this new scenario, emerging innovation economies hold the potential for disrupting the agglomeration paradigm, toward a new scheme of interconnected networks of specialized local innovation hot spots.

Among them, there is also Africa. While the continent still lacks ecosystems at the most advanced stages of maturity, it now counts four ecosystems at the startup stage and 40 at the standup stage, compared with respectively 25 of those 10 years ago, according to by my organization, , in collaboration with and .

Africa: the awakening giant of the coming decade?

As of today, Africa鈥檚 innovation economy includes 883 tech scaleups that have raised a combined $24.7 billion. Despite this progress, the continent still represents only about 1% of global figures.

The African innovation landscape remains highly concentrated around four main hubs: South Africa, Egypt (North-East), Nigeria (West Africa) and Kenya (East Africa). The North-Western corner of the continent still lacks a dominant hub, although Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria remain the leading candidates.

A testbed for clean technologies?

Emerging innovation economies that thrive on the global innovation map typically build on top of highly specialized, unique local strengths.

Our recent analysis has identified clear evidence that Africa holds significant potential over the development of clean energy systems and technologies.

The relative prominence of the cleantech sector in Africa is evident from the data:

• Africa is home to 95 cleantech scaleups, representing roughly 11% of the total scaleup base.
• Collectively, they have attracted approximately one-fifth of all capital deployed to African ventures.
• Cleantech has also generated a disproportionate share of high-growth leaders, accounting for around 20% of both scalers (scaleups that raised more than $100 million) and super scalers ($1 billion-plus).

Within cleantech, a highly specialized vertical is also emerging, what we might call 鈥済ridtech鈥�:

• It comprises 16 scaleups (17% of the cleantech total) and two scalers (25% of total).
• It has attracted around 30% of total cleantech funding.
• Africa鈥檚 sole cleantech tech giant, Kenya-based , operates within this gridtech vertical.

That said, the numbers still point to a gap.

The elephant in the room

The main challenge is the grid infrastructure deficit, which remains the primary bottleneck to scaling energy system technologies. As shown in the map below, Africa鈥檚 grid infrastructure is highly fragmented: High-voltage networks are concentrated in a few densely populated areas, while large parts of the continent remain largely disconnected.

As a result, grid infrastructure development and electrification are key to unlocking Africa鈥檚 growth 鈥� consider that Africa still accounts for only about 5% of global energy supply 鈥� and its innovation potential.

At the same time, the continent holds world-class renewable resources, including approximately 13% of global technical hydropower potential and around 60% of the world鈥檚 best solar resources.

Africa鈥檚 energy system is expanding, but fully unlocking its economic and innovation potential will depend on accelerating electrification and strengthening grid infrastructure.

Blended finance will be critical to enable this growth. Both private and public capital are required: private capital drives innovation, while public finance enables foundational infrastructure such as grid expansion.

In particular, private capital needs to be complemented by structured public finance initiatives to address the inherent limitations of a relatively small domestic VC market, which remains heavily focused on early-stage investments.

Public capital will be essential for infrastructure development. In gridtech especially, public investors are expected to account for up to about 80% of total investments by 2030, reflecting the capital intensity and risk profile of grid infrastructure.

International capital still dominates the market, with approximately 69% of active investors originating outside Africa, underscoring continued reliance on foreign capital despite growing local participation.

Get the full story in our report:

is chairman of and a professor at . He is a serial entrepreneur who has started three startups in his career, the last of which is , among the five Italian scaleups that have raised the largest amount of capital. He is recognized among the leading international experts in open innovation and has wide experience in setting up and managing open innovation projects 鈥� venture clients, venture builders, intrapreneurship, CVCs 鈥� with large multinational companies, as well as advising and training on this subject. Onetti has a column on () and several other tech blogs.

Photo by on .

The share of U.S. venture funding going to companies with Black founders in 2025 remained low, even as overall startup investment ticked slightly higher, SA国际传媒 data shows.

Only around $942 million 鈥� or just 0.32% of total U.S. venture funding 鈥� went to startups with a Black founder or co-founder last year, per SA国际传媒 data. That鈥檚 one of the lowest shares in years, and down more than two-thirds from just three years prior.

This year has started off on a slightly rosier note, with $643 million raised by U.S.-based startups with a Black founder or co-founder as of May 20. The majority of that was raised in the first quarter, marking the most raised in a single quarter since Q2 2022, when $653 million was raised by a Black founder or co-founder.

It鈥檚 important to note that the relatively robust quarter was in large part due to an outsized round 鈥� a February $350 million Series E raise by Palo Alto, California-based . Co-founded in 2017 by chief technologist , the AI chip startup has raised a total of $1.5 billion in known funding. and co-led its latest raise.

As such, it鈥檚 not surprising that the $643 million raised so far this year was secured across just 34 deals, signaling larger deal sizes overall.

It鈥檚 important to note that the total funding raised by startups with a Black founder or co-founder so far this year is still a small percentage of the $252 billion raised by U.S.-based startups in 2026.

Last year鈥檚 total also represents a sharp decline from the record venture funding year of 2021, when investment in Black startup founders hit a high of $5.2 billion in the wake of the 2020 racial justice movement. Still, even during the peak year, investment in Black founders represented just 1.5% of U.S. venture funding, per SA国际传媒 data.

, managing partner at said the decline in venture funding to Black entrepreneurs coincides with a marked shift in the political environment. 鈥淭here are fewer conversations on the topic as many are afraid to speak on it directly, which is concerning,鈥� he told SA国际传媒 News via email.

Overall, Pierre-Jacques believes venture capital is about finding outliers. 鈥淭hat isn’t going to change for any group,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 focus on what we can do as a firm and then advocate for underserved founders.鈥�

Notable rounds

Similar to 2025, much of the funding tally for Black-founded startups in 2026 came from a few larger rounds. Standouts include:

• SambaNova, the AI hardware and software company mentioned above. It specializes in providing infrastructure for AI and machine learning applications. Notably, tech giant reportedly in SambaNova to 8.2% following its investment in the Series E round.
• , a New York sweepstakes-based sports prediction market, picked up $75 million in a February Series B round led by at a $500 million post-money valuation. The platform has users participate in peer-to-peer wagering on sporting events.
• San Francisco-based , which is building an AI-native insurance brokerage for SMBs, also raised in February, a $47 million Series A led by . It is an alumnus of the prestigious startup accelerator .
• Live events platform in March raised a $37 million Series B led by .
• , which sells AI-driven government contracting software, raised $30 million in a January Series B round co-led by and.

Relationships and networking

Investors and founders who spoke with SA国际传媒 News on the topic said that in the current AI-centric funding environment, relationships and networking have only become more important for startup founders, particularly Black and other historically overlooked entrepreneurs.

鈥淚n an age of AI, who you know matters more than ever,鈥� Pierre-Jacques said. 鈥淭here are fewer deals getting done by firms and partners. You have to build personal relationships in order to make it to the top of the stack. It isn’t just about KPI comparisons.鈥�

is a two-time startup founder currently raising capital for his fintech startup, . He agrees with Pierre-Jacques on the importance of Black founders widening their networks as much as possible.

Spearman urged younger or Black founders who are building and raising for the first time to gain as much insight and inside knowledge as possible from other founders.

鈥淭his can save significant headaches, time and limited resources, especially during the early stages,鈥� he said. 鈥淏lack people in America have defined, and continue to shape, what it means to be in community, and I’m thankful to play a small role in that ecosystem.鈥�

Having worked at , an Austin analytics software company, Spearman said that he built a network over time that included exited founders whom he was able to turn to as 鈥渁dviser-investors.鈥�

鈥淭hese advisers can write checks, make intros and think like operators, which is sometimes better than seeking advice from VCs who haven’t been operators during the zero-to-one stages,鈥� he said. He also recommends that new founders, particularly those in focused sectors such as fintech or insurance tech, consider attending industry-specific conferences like Money 20/20 or ITC to make connections with VCs 鈥渕onths and sometimes years before you’re ready to raise.鈥�

Spearman also said Black founders should be open to sources of funding other than traditional venture capital, particularly when first starting out. Many are steered toward accelerators at the early stages, he noted.

鈥淚 don’t think this is bad counsel,鈥� he told SA国际传媒 News via email, 鈥渆specially if it involves an accelerator like the one offers annually.鈥� TenYour participated in that accelerator in 2025, which resulted in both an investment and industry connections, he said.

Looking forward, not back

The startup funding landscape has drastically changed in the span of just five years. In 2021, the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, a heated 2020 presidential election, and the high-profile killings of Black Americans including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery spurred many of the largest startup investors to make high-profile pledges to back more Black and other underrepresented founders.

Now, 鈥渨e are so far from 2020, not only in the pledges made but also in the social and venture landscape,鈥� Spearman said.

Still, 鈥渞ather than looking back,鈥� he said, 鈥淚’d recommend we collectively continue to push forward to envision and co-create the world we want. For founders, that often starts with their ventures and the choice to solve a meaningful problem that other founders (and investors) may overlook.鈥�

, co-founder of and an investor with , is frustrated that funding to Black-founded startups relative to overall venture investment funding has fallen in the past few years. That鈥檚 especially disheartening, she said, given research indicating that Black Americans are more active consumers of AI tools than the general population, with a reported 53% using such tools daily or weekly, versus 39% of people overall.

鈥淭o me, this shows early signals that the investment cycle creating wealth from AI is not flowing back to the communities using AI the most,鈥� she said.

In 2021, Lal and started VC Unleashed, a nonprofit, to increase access to the venture capital world for both founders and aspiring investors. While the organization is open to all, Lal said, Unleashed uses its platform 鈥渢o uplift underrepresented founders as much as we can to help them access capital and build their network,鈥� including through its upcoming conference.

When asked if she could change one structural aspect about how venture capital operates to improve outcomes for Black founders, Lal said it would be moving the conversation upstream from general partners at VC firms to those firms鈥� limited partners.

鈥淕Ps deploy capital that LPs give them, and if a pension fund or endowment isn’t asking its VC managers about founder portfolio composition with the same rigor it applies to sector concentration or stage exposure, that absence gets transmitted all the way down to the founder level,鈥� she wrote via email. 鈥淨uestions on founder demographics, asked consistently and at scale, would do more to shift behavior than anything else.鈥�

Related SA国际传媒 queries:

Related reading:

• Share Of Startup Funding For Black Founders Hits Multiyear Low
• Funding To Black Startup Founders Quadrupled In Past Year, But Remains Elusive

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from SA国际传媒, and is based on reported data provided by our partners, venture partners, our community network and news sources. The data in this report is focused on the U.S. market for underrepresented minorities, namely Black-/African-American-founded companies.

SA国际传媒鈥檚 dataset is constantly expanding, but there are gaps. A company may not have founders listed, or the Diversity Spotlight data may not be updated on its SA国际传媒 profile.

We do believe we are missing companies, especially at the early stages of funding.

If you notice missing data, please reach out to spotlight@crunchbase.com or verify with your company email to update your company鈥檚 Diversity Spotlight tags directly onsite.

SA国际传媒, like all databases of private-market transactions, experiences some reporting delays. The data for 2025 and 2026 will increase over time relative to previous years. As data is added to SA国际传媒 over time, some of the numbers in this report may shift.

Illustration:

led the round, which included participation from , , , , and others.

Founded in 2020, New York-based Capchase initially made a name for itself by providing revenue-based financing for SaaS companies. However, by late 2022, the company began to evolve into its current iteration: a vendor-financing technology platform. Capchase embeds itself directly into the sales workflows of companies such as original equipment manufacturers, software vendors and cybersecurity providers.

It has entirely discontinued its revenue-based financing, and instead now focuses on B2B buy now, pay later tools that help software and hardware vendors offer flexible payment terms while getting paid upfront.

The concept addresses a longstanding friction point in enterprise sales: vendors want cash immediately, while buyers want to preserve capital. Rather than forcing a buyer to pay $1 million upfront in 30 days, Capchase allows a sales rep to offer more flexible terms 鈥� say, $15,000 per month for up to five years. When the deal is signed, Capchase pays the vendor the full amount upfront, net of a financing fee.

鈥淲e started to see that there was a very big pull in the market,鈥� , co-founder and CEO of Capchase, said in an interview. 鈥淲e saw that sales cycles were expanding, CAC was going up, and all of this was driven by the high interest rates. Buyers wanted to pay as late as possible and pay installments.鈥�

He added: 鈥淲e shipped a product quickly to solve that need, and we started to get very strong market pull to the point that that ended up eclipsing the other product lines, and we decided to focus everything there.鈥�

Displacing a legacy market with AI

The pivot has unlocked impressive growth. Capchase says it has a 400% growth rate over the past 12 months and forecasts another 200% growth in the upcoming year. Its workforce has scaled alongside this momentum, expanding to 75 employees, up from 50 a year ago.

While legacy banks, independent financing firms and captive financing arms have dominated the $1.3 trillion equipment financing market for decades, Capchase says it differentiates itself by replacing 1980s-era workflows with real-time automation.

Traditional financing approvals often require an email-driven back-and-forth that can take four to 17 days, according to Fernandez. Capchase claims to compress that timeline into seconds.

Capchase uses artificial intelligence and machine learning agents across its platform. For example, an 鈥渙rder generation agent鈥� parses uploaded quotes or purchase orders to create flexible payment links in under 60 seconds 鈥� down from a manual process that typically took eight hours 鈥� according to Fernandez. As another example, an AI email agent automatically handles multiparty coordination between vendors, resellers and buyers, all without human intervention.

鈥淲hat makes us different is that we are both the lender and the technology. And AI is what makes the combination work at the speed enterprise tech sales demands,鈥� Fernandez told SA国际传媒 News in an interview. 鈥淲e built the credit decisioning engines that allow us to look at all the data these other players look at as well, but we were able to do it and infer it in just seconds.鈥�

Moving upmarket and expanding globally

The new capital will primarily support Capchase’s rapid transition into the enterprise space.

鈥淚n the past 24 months, we went from serving vendors in the tens of millions of revenue to in the last 12 months in the hundreds of millions in revenue, and now in the multiple billions of revenue,” Fernandez said.

The startup鈥檚 platform now underwrites more stable, established borrowers. The average buyer utilizing Capchase has roughly $80 million in annual revenue, has been operating for over 20 years, and is profitable, he added. This profile has allowed Capchase to maintain a highly controlled risk environment and what he described as a “spectacular” default rate.

Capchase currently supports hundreds of tech vendors and tens of thousands of buyers. Its customer roster features enterprise tech giants, public cybersecurity firms and massive distributors, including , , , and .

Though Capchase keeps its specific financials, valuation and cumulative funding figures confidential, Fernandez confirmed that the latest capital injection represents a valuation step up from its 2021 $80 million Series B round. At the time of that raise, the company had raised more than $400 million in equity and debt.

Looking ahead, Capchase will use its fresh capital to scale beyond its core markets in North America 鈥� the U.S. and Canada 鈥� and Europe, including the U.K., Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, the Nordics and Spain. Driven by direct demand from its enterprise partners, the company is officially entering the Australian market this year.

Reducing friction with flexible terms

, co-founder and managing partner of 01 Advisors, said he was drawn to Capchase primarily because of how AI has helped it disrupt traditional vendor financing.

Incumbents possessed plenty of capital but 鈥渉ave never been forced to build real technology because their customers had nowhere else to go,鈥� he wrote via email.

AI fundamentally shifts this dynamic, allowing Capchase to “underwrite a buyer and create accurate docs in 30 seconds,鈥� he said.

This solution hits close to home for Bain, who previously ran the sales team at and says he intimately understands the friction Capchase aims to eliminate. In traditional enterprise sales, momentum frequently stalls when a ready-to-buy customer hits a roadblock over payment terms, forcing sales leaders to either “discount to close, wait for the next budget cycle, or spend weeks negotiating.”

Those outcomes drain margin or time. Capchase completely removes that friction, Bain said, by offering instant approvals and flexible terms.

Fintech startups, particularly those that apply AI to traditionally manual or burdensome processes, have benefited from increased investment in recent quarters. Global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $53.8 billion in 2025, per SA国际传媒 . That鈥檚 a more than 29% increase from 2024鈥檚 total of $41.6 billion raised.

Related SA国际传媒 query:

Related reading:

• Fintech Startups Globally Raise More Money In Far Fewer Deals In Q1 2026
• Exclusive: Capchase Raises $80M Series B To Give Startups Alternatives To Venture

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Defense, energy, robotics and government have historically been classic no-go areas for VC investment. These 鈥渉ard鈥� industries have slow procurement cycles, tight regulatory oversight and high-friction customer migration in common. Legacy software vendors serving them have benefited from a barrier of complexity to innovate slowly without facing the risk of customer churn.

This made the victims of this year鈥檚 AI anxiety-driven sell-off all the more dramatic. Software juggernauts serving heavy industries 鈥� , , , 鈥� have gone from safe bets to being the subject of investor scrutiny.

While headlines have attributed that sell-off to quick-fire launches of tools for vertical industries, there鈥檚 more at play. The macro trend is a newfound founder enthusiasm to build AI-native entrants in legacy industries, and the backing they鈥檙e enjoying from VCs that can see the once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt entire industries.

Why investor perceptions are changing

Context is important. Geopolitical instability, supply chain pressure and energy security concerns have placed industrial resilience at the center of national policy.

Be it the U.S. or across Europe, policymakers are prioritizing investment in grid upgrades, transportation networks and public sector infrastructure, while also re-examining procurement and compliance systems that have slowed the adoption of emerging technologies that could bring said industrial resilience about quicker.

At the same time, quick advances in AI and agentic systems make it possible to build a new class of AI-native software tailored to 鈥渉ard鈥� industries through deep integration with verticalized tooling and specialist automation of critical workflows.

Age-old incumbent moats, like cumbersome migration cycles that put businesses off moving to new software providers, are also being challenged as embedded automation cuts migration processes down from weeks to days.

The creation of software in and of itself has become commoditised in the AI era, and more investors are spotting that operational depth, intuitive UI/UX, speed to market and seamless integration into complex real-world systems are traits of high-quality vertical software that startups are well-placed to build.

Investors are also realizing that most of the available value from horizontal SaaS has been extracted. In those early post-ChatGPT years, VCs widely backed AI companies building for non-regulated SMB adoption 鈥� exactly the audience that foundational model players like and Anthropic are now making inroads with as they push into enterprises. Foundational models are general in nature, and their verticalization can therefore only stretch so far. Given this, AI-native products built for heavy industries are compelling and competitive propositions for VCs.

Growing faith that incumbents are vulnerable

There鈥檚 always been lots of skepticism among investors and tech executives that AI startups can meaningfully challenge incumbents that have been on top for decades. But those companies are operating over sprawling product architecture and processes that were built in the pre-AI era.

Pivoting from that state of affairs to AI-native systems is a massive undertaking, whereas new companies are being launched with those systems in place from day one. Incumbents also have a low incentive to innovate at pace when customer churn is limited. But in the current context of breakneck speed improvements to AI models and agentic systems, waiting for churn to show up will be too late.

Scepticism also risks overlooking the profile of outstanding founders building AI-native challengers. Some of the fastest-growing startups in defense, energy, government and the public sector are led by people who came directly from the same industries they are transforming. Their understanding of sector constraints and operational realities gives them an advantage over general software providers that lack the same specialism and experience.

Picking up pace

Savvy entrepreneurship and VC investors are colliding to make a play for hard sectors. Once seen as off-limits due to procurement complexity or regulatory burden, these sectors represent huge, untapped potential in the new AI-native era.

The emerging companies offering solutions designed for these industries with deep, vertical-specific tooling integration and critical workflow automation are well placed to command a growing share of overall AI funding as they serve customer pain points that have gone unanswered for years.

We are talking about disruption within markets worth trillions. The scale of the opportunity for growing VC interest in sectors they鈥檝e historically avoided is no mystery or miscalculation. The vision is an ambitious one. Rather than simply building better software, the foundational sectors of the world economy are about to be reimagined.

is a partner for the U.S. and Europe at early-stage venture capital firm . He currently oversees the deployment of the firm鈥檚 latest $1 billion fund, backing a range of AI-native startups building to disrupt legacy industries and business processes. In a personal capacity, Cuvelier wrote an angel check for at pre-seed.

Related SA国际传媒 queries:

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding deal roundup here.

Physical tech is back, at least judging by this week鈥檚 largest U.S. funding deals. The biggest of all was a $1.5 billion corporate round for a medical device company that develops implants and treatment systems for musculoskeletal disorders. It was followed by an enormous Series A round, backed by a bevy of big-name investors, for , a 1-year-old artificial intelligence startup that says it’s developing personalized AI devices. Along with the usual heavy dose of AI, this week鈥檚 list also includes large deals for aerospace and defense, fintech, and retail technology. Let鈥檚 dive in.

1. $1.5B, healthcare: MiRus raised a massive $1.5 billion corporate round led by as strategic investors continue betting on next-generation orthopedic and spinal technologies. The Marietta, Georgia-based company has now raised $1.6 billion to date, . The deal comes with a 34% equity stake for Boston Scientific.

2. , $700M, artificial intelligence: AI startup Hark landed a huge $700 million Series A led by, with participation from a of investors including chip giants , , and , as well as ,, , 1听补苍诲 . The San Jose, California-based company it鈥檚 building 鈥渁dvanced personalized intelligence and next-generation hardware鈥� and plans to release some kind of product later this summer.

3. , $355M, AI infrastructure and developer tools: New York-based Modal Labs raised $355 million in a Series C round led by and , with participation from and . The company provides serverless cloud computing tools and GPU access for running AI models and testing AI-generated code. Its latest round is at a $4.65 billion valuation. CEO 鈥媡old Reuters that Modal鈥檚 ARR has soared to $300 million, up from about $60 million in September, as enterprise AI coding becomes widespread.

4. (tied) , $300M, artificial intelligence: Frontier lab Decart raised $300 million in a round led by that reportedly values it at nearly $4 billion. The deal also received backing from including venture firms and, AI researcher and corporate investors Nvidia, and . The startup, based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, develops generative AI models and infrastructure, and has now raised roughly $456 million to date as investors continue pouring capital into foundational AI technologies.

4. (tied) , $300M, aerospace and defense: El Segundo, California-based Amca raised $300 million in a Series B led by, alongside investors including and. The company focuses on aerospace manufacturing and supply-chain technologies, an area drawing increased venture interest amid renewed defense-tech spending. Amca has raised $376.5 million overall, . Its latest round reportedly comes at a $1 billion-plus valuation.

6. , $250M, search and generative AI: AI search startup Exa secured $250 million at a $2.2 billion valuation in a Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Based in San Francisco, the company develops AI-native search infrastructure designed for agents and large language model applications. The latest raise brings Exa鈥檚 total funding to $357 million and comes as competition intensifies around AI retrieval and search tools.

7. , $230M, edge computing and AI infrastructure: Armada raised $230 million in fresh funding at a $2.2 billion valuation. The Series B deal was led by , and, with participation from other investors including and . The San Francisco-based company develops edge computing and AI infrastructure systems designed for remote and industrial environments. The round brings its total funding to $469 million, .

8. , $200M, fintech: Mercury raised $200 million at a $5.2 billion valuation in a Series D round led by . Returning backers Andreessen Horowitz, , , , and also participated. The San Francisco-based company provides banking and financial workflow software for companies and has now raised about $657 million to date. Its latest round comes amid a broader uptick in fintech funding, including strong investor interest in digital banking platforms serving startups and businesses.

9. , $170M, retail technology: New York-based Radar secured $170 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. The Series B round was led by and, with participating. The company develops AI technology for brick-and-mortar stores that uses overhead RFID sensors, software and analytics to give retailers real-time inventory visibility with item-level tracking accuracy. The company said its platform is deployed in more than 1,400 stores for customers including and . It has raised nearly $310 million to date, .

10. , $150M, wealth management: Farther raised a $150 million Series D led by as investors continue backing platforms modernizing financial advisory services. The San Francisco-based company provides technology-enabled wealth management tools and has raised approximately $268 million to date. Farther didn鈥檛 reveal its valuation with the latest raise, only that it is 鈥渘ow a unicorn.鈥�

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the SA国际传媒 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of May 18-22. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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At least not these days. The space and AI pioneer posted a net loss of $4.28 billion in the first quarter of 2026, up more than 700% from a year ago. Revenue, meanwhile, totaled $4.69 billion in Q1, up 15% from a year ago.

As a public company, SpaceX is reportedly seeking a valuation of around $1.5 trillion or more, . It鈥檚 aiming to raise up to $80 billion or more in the offering, which would make it the largest IPO in history.

At its target valuation, SpaceX would join a rarified club of just seven U.S. public technology companies with market caps of $1.5 trillion or more. Of those, just five have crossed the $2 trillion mark.

Of course, those companies took time to grow into their 13-digit valuations. But at some point, they too made their first public IPO filings. And they too had revenue.

The similarities end there. For a sense of how SpaceX compares at IPO time to other members of the trillion-plus-club, we took a look at their original S-1s from the 1980s and onward. Here鈥檚 what their numbers looked like just before their public market debuts:

: Today, the Silicon Valley chip designer is a $5.3 trillion market cap company. Anyone who invested in its 1999 IPO, needless to say, has done extraordinarily well.

At the time of its market debut, of course, such a trajectory was not obvious. Still, it looked like a solid bet. The company, which then focused on designing 3D graphics processors for the PC market, had $93 million in revenue for the three reported quarters prior to its IPO, growing severalfold year over year. Over the same period, it posted a modest $3.5 million loss.

: Google was already the dominant player in online search when it went public in 2004, with impressive financials to boot. Revenue for the first half of that year totaled $1.35 billion, more than doubling in a year, paired with a $326 million profit.

While that was impressive, so is Google鈥檚 ongoing growth. Currently, its market cap is $4.7 trillion and it posts more than $400 billion in annual revenue, with massive profits as well.

: The iconic smartphone and computing giant knows a thing or two about longevity. Apple turned 50 last month, and it went public over 45 years ago, in 1980.

It was an impressive and attention-getting offering for the time, with $118 million in sales and nearly $12 million in profit. It helped that Apple was already a prominent consumer brand at the time due to its popular home computers. These days, its market cap hovers around $4.5 trillion.

: Microsoft went public in 1986, so it鈥檚 had some 40 years to grow into its current $3.1 trillion valuation. But even back in the era of big hair and floppy disks, the software giant鈥檚 IPO prospectus showed clear signs this would be no ordinary market entrant.

In the year before its IPO, Microsoft had revenue of $140 million and net income of $24 million. That income figure, however, includes stepped-up spending on marketing and R&D. Without those expenses, profit margins looked astoundingly high for a time before software business models were status quo.

: At the time of its public offering in 1997, Amazon was known as an online bookseller, branding itself as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” All the other stuff came later.

Still, it was a compelling offering at the time, with Amazon growing annual sales from zilch to around $16 million in just two-and-half years after its inception. It pitched losses as part of its growth strategy, which called for investing heavily in marketing and promotion, site development and operating infrastructure.

Needless to say, things worked out well, with Amazon currently valued at more than $2.8 trillion.

SpaceX is not like the others

If we look at the most valuable public tech companies, a few commonalities about their earlier days stand out. All went public relatively early in their operating histories and debuted with sharply growing revenue and either profits or losses in the single-digit millions.

SpaceX, founded in 2002, looks by comparison like an oldster for a company on the cusp of a public market debut. It鈥檚 also worth pointing out that Google, founded in 1998, is only four years older than SpaceX. That means, it鈥檚 had 28 years to grow into becoming a company with over $400 billion in revenue over the past 12 months and $138 billion in operating income.

SpaceX, by contrast, has had 24 years to grow into becoming a company that loses $4.3 billion in a single quarter.

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That鈥檚 up 49% from the $3.5 billion valuation it achieved when announcing its $300 million Series C 鈥� which included primary and secondary funding 鈥� in March of 2025. The latest capital infusion brings San Francisco-based Mercury鈥檚 total primary and secondary funding to approximately $700 million since its 2017 inception.

led the latest financing, which included participation from returning backers , , , , and .

Mercury counts more than 300,000 companies as customers, including startups and larger entities such as , , , , and .

Interestingly, Mercury recently received from the banking regulator, the OCC, to establish its own bank. This is in contrast to many fintechs, which typically work with a sponsor bank but are not banks themselves.

The company hit $650 million in annualized revenue as of the 2025 third quarter, and claims to have achieved four consecutive years of profitability on both a GAAP net income and EBITDA basis.

AI鈥檚 effects

鈥淎I is collapsing the friction between an idea and a company faster than anything I have seen in my career,鈥� , co-founder and CEO of Mercury, said in a press release. 鈥淲e are going to see more founders in the next five years than in the last twenty. But legacy banking in 2026 still works the way it did when I started my first company in 2006. I started Mercury because banking should do more than be a vault, it should help customers run the best business possible.鈥�

Fintech startups, particularly those that apply AI to traditionally manual or burdensome processes, have benefited from increased investment in recent quarters. Global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $53.8 billion in 2025, per SA国际传媒 . That鈥檚 a more than 29% increase from 2024鈥檚 total of $41.6 billion raised.

Disclosure: The author of this article is a freelance writer who also writes for Mercury鈥檚 independent magazine, Meridian.

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