Business & Funding

Nscale has secured $3.36 billion in convertible financing ahead of a planned U.S. listing. The capital will support the British AI neocloud’s expanding data-center buildout, with Nvidia providing an additional $1 billion.

Anthropic is asking shareholders to approve a structure that would give CEO Dario Amodei and six co-founders 50.1% of the vote on most corporate matters. The arrangement is designed to preserve founder influence after the company enters public markets.

Manus is reportedly discussing a $500 million funding round at a valuation of about $4 billion. The AI agent startup has resumed independent operations after its proposed acquisition by Meta was blocked amid regulatory concerns.

Manus is reportedly pursuing a new financing round of about $500 million at a target valuation near $4 billion. If completed, the round would double the valuation attached to the buyback of its shares from Meta.

Crusoe has raised $3.9 billion in a Series F round that values the AI infrastructure company at $30.9 billion. The capital will support large data centers and its transportable Spark modular AI factories.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the company will not go public in 2026, arguing that the current AI safety environment makes an IPO ill-advised. He also acknowledged that building an AI beyond human control is absolutely possible.

Listen Labs reportedly abandoned a signed $125 million Series C term sheet at a $1.5 billion valuation as it entered acquisition discussions with Salesforce.

French AI lab Mistral AI has raised €3 billion at a post-money valuation above €21 billion. The round brings together Samsung, European funds, U.S. technology investors and government-linked capital around a strategy focused on controllable, sovereign AI infrastructure.

OpenAI has announced a $5 million grant program for independent research into how generative AI may affect teen development, well-being, and safety. The program is open for applications, although the available summary does not provide further details on eligibility or selection.

Mistral has closed a €3 billion Series D at a post-money valuation above €21 billion. The French AI company plans to expand frontier research, compute capacity, infrastructure and its international commercial footprint.

British AI infrastructure startup Nscale is reportedly seeking $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing, including convertible notes and potential funding from Nvidia. The company recently signed an approximately $45 billion deal with Anthropic and could go public as soon as this month.

Anthropic’s planned public offering could value the Claude maker at as much as $2 trillion. It will also expose the company’s mission-focused governance structure to tougher scrutiny from public-market investors.

AI infrastructure developer Crusoe has reportedly raised $3 billion at a $30 billion valuation. The financing follows a reported five-year, $13 billion cloud contract with Jane Street.

Thinking Machines is reportedly discussing a roughly $1 billion financing that could value the AI startup at at least $40 billion. Existing backer Accel is said to be considering leading the round.

AI training-data startup AfterQuery has reportedly raised a new round at a $3.2 billion valuation. If confirmed, the deal would make it Y Combinator’s fastest startup to reach unicorn status.

AI cloud provider Lambda has reportedly raised $1 billion in short-dated private debt to purchase Nvidia accelerators and lease them to Microsoft. The deal highlights how quickly AI infrastructure companies are turning to borrowing to fund expansion.

Robotics startup Generalist has reportedly reached a $3 billion valuation after raising nearly $200 million in additional capital led by 8VC. The financing extends its $400 million Series B announced in June, bringing the round’s total to about $600 million.

Demand from leading AI labs and corporations is accelerating the growth of data-labeling and expert-services startups. Micro1 reportedly grew its gross annual run rate from $100 million to $500 million in eight months.

Despite recent losses and a major reduction in its public portfolio, AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness is still making large private bets. Its latest move is a $400 million investment in chip-manufacturing startup Source Foundry.

A former OpenAI technical employee has urged colleagues to take liquidity through tender offers rather than wait for a potential IPO. His argument points to a broader concern: frontier AI lab valuations may be pricing in an overly optimistic future.

Okta has agreed to acquire AI identity security startup Permiso Security, in a deal TechCrunch says is valued at just under $200 million. The move highlights how identity platforms are expanding from login control to continuous monitoring of users, apps, AI agents, and machine identities.