Sources: Manus is set to soon close a $500M funding round at a $4B valuation, signaling growing confidence after Beijing unwound its $2B buyout by Meta (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Sep 17, 2026 · company
Manus is reportedly raising $500M at a $4B valuation after its blocked Meta buyout, marking a major AI financing event.
Introducing Gemini 3.8 Live and 3.8 Live Extended Thinking
Google DeepMind
· Sep 15, 2026 · models
Google DeepMind released Gemini 3.8 Live with an extended-thinking variant for real-time multimodal interaction.
Sources: a group of 10 banks is providing a $22B loan to Blackstone and Alphabet's venture Crux AI, which provides compute for AI labs, to fund TPU purchases (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
Crux AI is securing $22B in debt financing to buy TPUs, underscoring the scale of AI compute infrastructure demand.
Delos Data, which develops network chips and software to connect AI chips in a data center, raised $100M from Matrix, Playground, Socratic Partners, and others (Stephen Nellis/Reuters)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
Delos Data raised $100M to build networking chips and software for connecting AI chips inside data centers.
Cohere and Aleph Alpha sign a definitive merger agreement; the combined company will operate as Cohere, with Aleph Alpha co-CEO Ilhan Scheer becoming Cohere COO (Leo Marchandon/Reuters)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
Cohere and Aleph Alpha agreed to merge, consolidating two enterprise AI model companies under Cohere’s brand and leadership.
LawZero, a non-profit founded by Yoshua Bengio to develop safe AI systems, says Canada and Germany are providing up to $300M in grant funding (Globe and Mail)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
LawZero secured up to $300M in Canada-Germany grant funding to build safe AI systems under Yoshua Bengio.
Source: AI assistant Instinct seeks to raise $1B at a $10B valuation, up from $2.25B less than a month ago; Sequoia and Benchmark are in talks to lead the round (Valida Pau/The Information)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
Instinct is reportedly seeking a $1B round at a $10B valuation, signaling intense investor demand for AI assistant startups.
Sources: Shanghai-based Anew Labs, a ByteDance spinoff using AI for drug discovery, raised $290M from HSG, IDG Capital, and others at a $1.5B valuation (Kane Wu/Reuters)
Techmeme
· Sep 16, 2026 · company
ByteDance spinoff Anew Labs raised $290M for AI drug discovery at a $1.5B valuation, signaling major investor appetite in biotech AI.
CADDi, which sells AI tools to help manufacturers organize engineering and production data, raised a $114M Series D at a $1.2B valuation, up from $470M in 2025 (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
Techmeme
· Sep 15, 2026 · company
CADDi raised $114M at a $1.2B valuation, signaling strong demand for AI systems that organize manufacturing engineering and production data.
Factory, whose AI coding agents, called Droids, switch between models depending on a task's complexity, raised $200M at a $5B valuation, up from $1.5B in April (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Sep 15, 2026 · company
Factory raised $200M at a $5B valuation, signaling continued investor demand for AI coding agent companies.
New York-based AI marketing startup Profound raised a $180M Series D led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins at a $1.8B valuation, taking its total funding to $335M+ (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Sep 15, 2026 · company
Profound raised $180M at a $1.8B valuation, signaling major investor interest in AI search optimization for brands.
Rome-based Exein, which offers cybersecurity tools for connected devices including cars and home routers, raised $270M led by Headline at a $1.7B valuation (Tom Wilson/Financial Times)
Techmeme
· Sep 15, 2026 · company
Exein raised $270M at a $1.7B valuation to expand cybersecurity tools for connected devices.
Netherlands-based inference chip startup Euclyd raised a €200M+ Series A co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital, Scaleup Europe Fund, and Innovation Industries (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/CNBC)
Techmeme
· Sep 15, 2026 · company
Euclyd raised a €200M-plus Series A for AI inference chips, with Samsung among major backers.
Temporal, which makes open-source software that helps apps, including AI agents, recover from failure, raised $550M led by Lightspeed at a $12.55B valuation (Anhata Rooprai/Reuters)
Techmeme
· Sep 14, 2026 · company
Temporal raised $550 million at a $12.55 billion valuation, underscoring demand for resilient orchestration infrastructure for AI agents and applications.
Z.ai says it plans to raise $5B+ via equity and debt to fund its AI investments, including ~$2B through a share placement, after raising $4B in July (P.R. Venkat/Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Sep 14, 2026 · company
Z.ai plans to raise over $5B in equity and debt, signaling another major capital push for AI expansion.
Source: Anthropic signed a $13.7B, six-year deal to lease compute from Rum Group's upcoming Georgia data center; Rum operates Rumble and hosts Truth Social (The Information)
Techmeme
· Sep 14, 2026 · company
Anthropic reportedly committed $13.7B to lease data-center compute, underscoring frontier labs’ escalating infrastructure race.
Sources: Anthropic is in talks to bring on Nvidia as an anchor investor in its IPO, seeking up to $100B at a ~$2T valuation; Nvidia may invest up to $10B (Reuters)
Techmeme
· Sep 11, 2026 · company
Anthropic is reportedly courting Nvidia as a major IPO anchor investor in a massive financing that could reshape AI capital markets.
Sources: Jeff Dean is raising funds again for Discovery Loop, seeking a valuation of ~$50B; Discovery Loop was raising $1B at a ~$10B valuation a few weeks ago (Ben Bergman/Business Insider)
Techmeme
· Sep 11, 2026 · company
Jeff Dean's Discovery Loop is reportedly seeking funding at a $50 billion valuation, weeks after targeting $10 billion.
LinkedIn profiles show Google appears to have completed its talent deal, reportedly for $1.5B+, with AI coding startup Mechanize (Business Insider)
Techmeme
· Sep 11, 2026 · company
Google reportedly completed a $1.5B-plus talent deal for AI coding startup Mechanize, intensifying competition for agentic coding talent.
Sources: Cohere is in advanced talks to raise between $2B and $3B, including financing from the Canadian government and existing backers, at a $20B valuation (Globe and Mail)
Techmeme
· Sep 11, 2026 · company
Cohere is reportedly nearing a $2B-$3B raise at a $20B valuation, reinforcing investor demand for enterprise AI labs.
Positron, which is designing an AI processor called Asimov with a "memory-first architecture" and up to 2.3TB of memory, raised $875M at a $5B valuation (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Sep 10, 2026 · company
Positron raised $875 million at a $5 billion valuation to develop Asimov, a memory-first AI processor for large-scale inference.