Sources: a group of banks is in talks to lend $15B to Nexus to build a Texas data center; Anthropic will lease it and Google has provided financial guarantees (Anissa Gardizy/Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Jul 30, 2026
Banks are discussing $15B in financing for an Anthropic-leased Texas data center backed by Google guarantees.
Simile, which offers "agentic twins" of real people to assess companies' products, brands, and services, raised $200M led by Greenoaks at a $2B valuation (Sri Muppidi/New York Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 30, 2026
Simile raised $200M at a $2B valuation for AI persona agents used to test products, brands, and services.
Sources: Moonshot AI hit a $35B valuation after closing a $3.5B round, exceeding its initial target of $1B to $2B, and plans a Hong Kong IPO as soon as 2026 (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 29, 2026
Moonshot AI closed a $3.5B round at a $35B valuation and is planning a Hong Kong IPO as soon as 2026.
Source: OpenRouter was recently generating ~$140M in annualized revenue, or ~$12M per month, up nearly 3x since April, making Stripe's $10B offer a big premium (The Information)
Techmeme
· Jul 29, 2026
OpenRouter's revenue run-rate reportedly reached $140M, contextualizing Stripe's potential $10B acquisition offer for the AI model marketplace.
Meta and BlackRock form a strategic venture to develop a 1GW data center campus in El Paso, set to cost ~$14B and bring capacity online starting in 2028 (Meta Newsroom)
Techmeme
· Jul 28, 2026
Meta and BlackRock are backing a $14B, 1GW El Paso data center campus to expand AI compute capacity from 2028.
Sources: Nvidia signs leases worth up to $50B for Hut 8's planned 1GW data center in Texas, hosting hundreds of thousands of chips; Hut 8 didn't name its client (Financial Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 28, 2026
Nvidia reportedly committed up to $50B in leases for Hut 8’s Texas AI data center, expanding its infrastructure financing role.
Cyera agrees to acquire Oasis Security for $1B to safeguard proliferating AI agents
TechCrunch AI
· Jul 29, 2026
Cyera is buying Oasis Security for $1B, expanding its security platform around identity risks from proliferating AI agents.
Sources: Nvidia has committed to invest $5B in Ilya Sutskever's SSI; the startup has previously raised about $3B in funding and was valued at $32B last year (Shirin Ghaffary/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 27, 2026
Nvidia’s planned $5B investment in SSI deepens its stake in frontier AI labs and values Sutskever’s startup as a major contender.
Spain-based Multiverse Computing, which shrinks LLMs to reduce energy and compute costs, raised a $570M Series C at a $1.7B valuation (Amelia Isaacs/Pathfounders)
Techmeme
· Jul 27, 2026
Multiverse Computing raised $570M to scale quantum-inspired LLM compression, signaling major investor demand for cheaper AI inference.
Sources: Nvidia is in talks to provide a ~$250B backstop for OpenAI as part of a 10GW data center project that SoftBank is developing in Ohio (Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Jul 26, 2026
Nvidia may guarantee about $250B in financing for OpenAI-linked compute infrastructure, signaling massive capital commitments behind frontier AI scaling.
Samsung announces a $200B+ contract to make chips for Broadcom through 2030, focusing on its 2nm and below process technologies for Broadcom's products (Hooyeon Kim/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 25, 2026
Samsung secured a $200B-plus Broadcom chipmaking contract through 2030, strengthening its advanced foundry position at 2nm and below.
Meshy, whose AI-powered tech lets users generate 3D assets from text and image prompts, raised a ~$400M Series B at a $1.5B valuation (Abhinaya Prabhu/Tech Funding News)
Techmeme
· Jul 25, 2026
Meshy raised about $400M at a $1.5B valuation for AI-generated 3D asset creation.
Neocloud Fluidstack, which has partnered with Anthropic, announces that it raised an $830M Series A led by Situational Awareness at a $7.5B valuation in January (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)
Techmeme
· Jul 25, 2026
Fluidstack disclosed an $830 million Series A at a $7.5 billion valuation, underscoring investor demand for AI compute infrastructure.
Nvidia and SK Group unveil a $500B+ AI initiative that includes an SK Hynix partnership to secure next-gen memory supply for Nvidia and joint development of HBM (Reuters)
Techmeme
· Jul 25, 2026
Nvidia and SK Group announced a massive AI infrastructure and memory partnership securing future HBM supply for Nvidia GPUs.
Google says it has $811B in contracted future spending commitments as of June, up ~$500B from March, covering chips, data centers, electricity, and more (Davey Alba/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 24, 2026
Alphabet disclosed $811 billion in future infrastructure commitments, signaling a massive escalation in AI compute and data center spending.
AMD and Anthropic sign an AI server deal worth tens of billions; Anthropic will buy up to 2GW of MI450 chips from H1 2027, and AMD will invest $5B in Anthropic (Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Jul 22, 2026
Anthropic committed to massive AMD MI450 capacity from 2027, while AMD will invest $5B in the frontier lab.
Sources: Samsung may invest up to €1B in Mistral as part of a broader round valuing it at ~€20B, after previously backing the AI startup through its venture arm (Financial Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 22, 2026
Samsung is reportedly considering up to €1B in Mistral funding, signaling a major strategic bet on Europe’s leading AI lab.
Travis Kalanick’s robotics company raises $1.7B, led by a16z
TechCrunch AI
· Jul 22, 2026
Atoms raised $1.7B from a16z and Uber, making Kalanick’s industrial AI robotics company a newly serious market contender.
Cambridge-based CuspAI raised a $450M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, and launched a coalition for AI materials discovery for chip and other industries (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 20, 2026
CuspAI raised a $450M Series B and launched an industry coalition for AI-driven materials discovery in semiconductors and related sectors.
Sources: China's National AI Industry Investment Fund gained voting rights in DeepSeek by joining its $7.4B round; other investors like Tencent and JD got none (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 18, 2026
China’s state AI fund gained voting rights in DeepSeek’s $7.4B round, signaling unusually direct strategic influence over a major lab.
Sources: Meta is in talks to rent computing power from its data centers to Anthropic in a deal that could be worth ~$10B over two years (New York Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 17, 2026
Meta is reportedly negotiating a two-year, $10B compute rental deal with Anthropic, signaling major shifts in AI infrastructure supply.
Sources: Coatue is leading a $3B investment in Databricks that values the data analytics software company at $188B, a 40% increase from its December valuation (Wall Street Journal)
Techmeme
· Jul 17, 2026
Coatue is reportedly leading a $3B Databricks investment at a $188B valuation, reinforcing its position in enterprise AI data infrastructure.
Fireworks, which helps developers access AI chips and open-source models, raised $1.5B at a $17.5B valuation and says it has exceeded $1B in annualized revenue (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
Techmeme
· Jul 16, 2026
Fireworks raised $1.5B at a $17.5B valuation, signaling major investor demand for AI inference infrastructure.
Filing: Elon Musk quietly bought Jacksonville, FL-based APR Energy, which operates mobile gas and diesel turbines similar to those used in Colossus 2, for ~$1B (Fred Lambert/Electrek)
Techmeme
· Jul 16, 2026
Elon Musk acquired APR Energy for about $1B, tightening control over power infrastructure for large-scale AI data centers.
Sources: DeepSeek is in preliminary talks with investors about raising new funds at a ~$71B valuation, after raising ~$7B at a ~$52B valuation at the end of May (Zijing Wu/Financial Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 14, 2026
DeepSeek is reportedly discussing new funding at a $71B valuation, signaling continued investor demand after a massive May round.
AI drug design startup Chai Discovery raised $400M led by Index at a $3.8B valuation, as it positions its Chai models as AI infrastructure for pharmaceuticals (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 14, 2026
Chai Discovery raised $400M at a $3.8B valuation to build AI drug-design infrastructure for pharmaceutical companies.
Singapore-based and Alibaba-backed video generation startup PixVerse says it closed a Series C extension to raise $439M total for the round, valuing it at $2B+ (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
Techmeme
· Jul 14, 2026
PixVerse raised a $439M Series C extension, valuing the Alibaba-backed video generation startup at more than $2B.
Meta says it will spend an extra $40B on its 4,000-acre data center campus in Louisiana, aiming for 5GW+ of computing power, pushing the total cost beyond $250B (Riley Griffin/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 13, 2026
Meta is expanding its Louisiana compute campus with another $40B, targeting over 5GW and a total cost above $250B.
Munich-based defense tech startup Helsing raised a $1.8B Series E from Dragoneer, Iconiq, and others at an $18B valuation; Germany made a €270M order this year (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 13, 2026
Helsing raised $1.8B at an $18B valuation, cementing defense AI as one of Europe’s hottest venture categories.
SK Hynix opens up 14% at $170 after raising $26.5B in the largest ever US market debut by a foreign company (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
Techmeme
· Jul 10, 2026
SK Hynix raised $26.5B in a Nasdaq debut, giving AI memory investors a major new public-market benchmark.
Sources: Manus investors and management are discussing unwinding Meta's $2B buyout at the same valuation, with Tencent in talks to become the largest investor (Zijing Wu/Financial Times)
Techmeme
· Jul 10, 2026
Manus may unwind Meta's $2B buyout as Tencent negotiates to become its largest investor, reshaping control of a prominent AI startup.
MiniMax is looking to raise as much as $1.9B by selling 35.6M shares at ~$34 each and offering ~$830M in convertible bonds due 2027 (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 10, 2026
MiniMax is pursuing up to $1.9B through a share sale and convertible bonds, signaling major capital demand among Chinese AI labs.
Filing: Chinese AI model maker Z.ai is seeking to raise ~$4B from the sale of 19.8M shares at ~$202 to ~$216 each, after its stock jumped 1,500% since January (Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 8, 2026
Z.ai is seeking a roughly $4 billion share sale after a massive stock rally, signaling major investor demand for Chinese AI labs.
SK Hynix's IPO prospectus analysis, as it seeks to raise ~$28B on the Nasdaq: highly leveraged to HBM, extensive ties to China, and health and safety issues (Tim Culpan/Culpium)
Techmeme
· Jul 8, 2026
SK Hynix is seeking a roughly $28B Nasdaq IPO amid surging HBM demand tied to AI infrastructure.
AI chip maker SambaNova raises $1B at $11B valuation, 5 months after last mega round
TechCrunch AI
· Jul 8, 2026
SambaNova raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation, underscoring investor demand for AI chip companies.
Anthropic signs a 20-year, $19B lease to use a TeraWulf data center in Kentucky, set to have a ~400MW capacity, with the first power delivery in H2 2027 (CNBC)
Techmeme
· Jul 6, 2026
Anthropic committed $19B to long-term Kentucky compute capacity, underscoring frontier labs' escalating infrastructure race.
SK Hynix launches a US share sale to raise ~$28B; the company plans to sell 17.79M new shares, with the specific price range expected to be revealed later today (Reuters)
Techmeme
· Jul 6, 2026
SK Hynix is pursuing a massive US share sale to fund expansion as AI memory demand reshapes semiconductor markets.
Shanghai-based AI chipmaker Biren raises ~$892.5M in a new share sale to boost GPU production; Biren's stock is up 150%+ since its January Hong Kong IPO (Ann Cao/South China Morning Post)
Techmeme
· Jul 6, 2026
Biren raised about $892.5 million to expand AI GPU production, strengthening China’s domestic challenge to Nvidia.
Kling AI, the Kuaishou AI video generator spin-off, raised $2B at a $15B pre-money valuation and says the round could extend to as much as $3B (Zheping Huang/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 2, 2026
Kuaishou’s AI video spin-off Kling AI raised $2 billion at a $15 billion valuation to expand AI video operations.
Tripo AI, which is developing 3D foundation models and world models for use in games, raised $150M, a month after it said it raised $200M (Dean Takahashi/GamesBeat)
Techmeme
· Jul 2, 2026
Tripo AI raised $150M for 3D foundation and world models, extending a rapid funding streak in game-generation infrastructure.
Abu Dhabi-based MGX raised a $49B AI-focused fund, exceeding its $45B target, and plans to spend as much as $10B annually over the next few years (Dinesh Nair/Bloomberg)
Techmeme
· Jul 1, 2026
MGX raised one of the largest AI investment funds ever, giving Abu Dhabi major capital firepower in AI infrastructure and startups.
Microsoft launches its own AI deployment company with $2.5 billion commitment
TechCrunch AI
· Jul 2, 2026
Microsoft committed $2.5 billion to launch an AI deployment company, expanding hyperscaler competition around enterprise AI implementation.