Startups & VC

Venture funding, valuations, exits, the big funds and the startup ecosystem worldwide.

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state of play

The US and China now own most billion-dollar startups, and India has slipped behind the UK

Hurun's 2026 index counted a record 1,603 unicorns, meaning startups worth US$1bn or more, together valued at US$8tn. The US has 806 of them and China 381, and China is now producing a new one about every five days. India dropped to fourth as the UK passed it, one of the few countries to lose ground this year. Almost all the growth came from AI startups, which now number 215 unicorns and hold 36% of all unicorn value.

The biggest AI cheques now come from the Gulf and Asia, not the US

Saudi Arabia's Aramco Ventures led an US$800m investment in Together AI, valuing it at US$8.3bn; Together AI runs on Chinese open-source AI models and Taiwanese chips, so a major US startup now depends on a supply chain that skips US firms at almost every step. Venice AI crossed a US$1bn valuation in July 2026, adding another privacy-focused inference unicorn to the Gulf-backed cohort. Korea's NAVER and Amazon together backed TwelveLabs with US$100m. Prices are running ahead of what these startups have built: former Anthropic staff raised US$200m at about US$1bn before releasing a single product. US labs still raise the most money, but they no longer set the price on their own.

China is funding its own robot startups, and shutting Western investors out

Two Shenzhen robotics startups hit valuations of about US$2.8bn each, with all money from Chinese tech giants, Meituan, Alibaba, ByteDance and Xiaomi, not foreign funds. By funding its humanoid-robot work through its own big companies, China keeps the field out of reach of US export controls. US startups Skild and Generalist AI are chasing the same goal, but the two sides are funded with completely separate money that never mixes.

The big listings came back, and Asia and the Gulf did the buying

The clearest example was Luxshare's Hong Kong share sale of up to US$3.1bn, the year's largest. Its biggest early buyers were Singapore's Temasek and GIC and Abu Dhabi's ADIA, not US investors. India's OYO filed again for a ₹6,650 crore listing, its fourth attempt. OpenAI is said to be delaying its listing to 2027 while chief executive Sam Altman waits for a US$1tn valuation. US firm Datadog bought France's Adaptive ML, another European startup sold off before it could grow at home.

Finance startups still fetch the fattest prices

Meta paid US$900m for about 20% of India's CRED, partly to hire its founder to run WhatsApp. US company Ramp reached a US$44bn valuation for the same reason. Singapore offers a quieter contrast: Qashier raised a small round and is already profitable, handling US$1bn in payments without burning cash to grow.

Europe is finally building its own startup money, even as AI keeps cutting jobs

A €500m defence fund from AVP and Earlybird and Tapestry Fund III, backed by the UK's British Business Bank, are Europe's answer to a16z's US$15bn fund. Meanwhile, Cisco cut 471 jobs in California during one of its best quarters, after Oracle cut 21,000. The cuts are now reaching engineers, not just support staff.

Even the smallest markets are tilting the same way

In biotech, Oblenio raised US$62m for an autoimmune drug licensed from China's Leads Biolabs. First-half Africa funding passed US$1.2bn but fell 17% from a year earlier, held up almost entirely by Spiro's US$270m. Moonshot AI accelerated a Hong Kong IPO at a US$30 billion valuation on July 20 following the Kimi K3 release, which had wiped US$3.3 trillion from global chip stocks; if the listing proceeds, it would be the largest Chinese AI IPO in Hong Kong since the sector emerged. Watch: Moonshot's Hong Kong listing timeline and pricing; OpenAI's listing timing; how far Gulf and Chinese money pushes into deals the US once dominated; Venice AI's next funding round.

tracking

Funding & valuations

Seed & pre-seed2 Seed and pre-seed venture funding Series A/B4 Seed and pre-seed venture funding Growth / late stage6 Growth / Late-Stage Venture Capital Mega-rounds ($100M+)21 activeKorean-founded, US-based TwelveLabs raises US$100m Series B co-led by Korea's NAVER and US firm NEA Down rounds & markdowns2 Down rounds and markdowns in global venture capital Dry powder & fund sizes8 activeUK's Tapestry VC closes a €70m (US$80m) Fund III for repeat founders, co-anchored by the state British Business Bank Valuations & unicorns9 activeHurun's 2026 index counts a record 1,603 unicorns worth US$8tn; China adds 80 as India slips to fourth behind the UK

Funds & investors

Sequoia3 Sequoia Capital Andreessen Horowitz7 Andreessen Horowitz Accel1 Accel Founders Fund6 Defense AI startups Thrive Capital4 Funds & investors: the US mega-funds that move the global startup economy General Catalyst3 General Catalyst Lightspeed1 Lightspeed Venture Partners Khosla Ventures4 Khosla Ventures Benchmark1 Benchmark Index Ventures3 Index Ventures Tiger Global1 Tiger Global Management SoftBank Vision Fund7 Growth / Late-Stage Venture Capital Insight Partners1 Insight Partners

Exits, IPOs & M&A

Tech IPOs13 activeChina's Luxshare launches Hong Kong IPO seeking up to US$3.1bn, 2026's largest, with Singapore and Abu Dhabi anchoring Startup M&A5 activeUS observability firm Datadog acquires French-American AI startup Adaptive ML for an undisclosed sum Secondaries7 contested-resultUS: OpenAI leans toward a 2027 IPO and an employee tender near US$850bn as Altman holds out for US$1tn SPACs2 Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) Direct listings4 Direct Listings Acquihires2 Acquihires

AI ventures

Foundation-model labs7 activeKorean-founded, US-based TwelveLabs raises US$100m Series B co-led by Korea's NAVER and US firm NEA AI agents6 AI Agents AI infrastructure8 activeUS neocloud Together AI raises US$800m Series C led by Saudi Arabia's Aramco Ventures at US$8.3bn Applied / vertical AI1 Applied and Vertical AI Defense AI2 Defense AI startups AI coding / devtools6 AI Coding and Developer Tools

Hot verticals

Fintech23 activeSingapore's merchant-OS fintech Qashier raises US$6.125m after turning profitable on US$1bn annual payment volume Climate tech5 Climate tech Defense tech8 Defense AI startups Biotech / health4 activeAlan raises €480m at €5.5bn, Europe's largest healthtech round in 2026, pending regulatory sign-off Space1 Space ventures Crypto / web37 Crypto / Web3 Robotics & hardware8 activeUnitree Robotics prices its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 61 billion yuan; DeepSeek joins as a strategic investor Consumer & social1 Consumer & Social Apps Deep tech5 Deep tech

Global ecosystems

Silicon Valley16 AI Agents New York4 New York City (tech hub) Boston1 Boston (tech and life sciences hub, United States) Los Angeles1 Los Angeles, California (tech hub) Austin1 Austin, Texas (tech hub) Toronto / Waterloo1 Toronto / Waterloo Corridor, Canada London2 London (UK tech hub) Paris3 activeAlan raises €480m at €5.5bn, Europe's largest healthtech round in 2026, pending regulatory sign-off Berlin1 Berlin (tech hub) Stockholm / Nordics1 Stockholm / Nordics Amsterdam1 Amsterdam (tech hub) Warsaw / CEE1 Warsaw / Central and Eastern Europe (tech hub) Tel Aviv2 Global startup hubs: the cities where venture capital concentrates Dubai / UAE1 Dubai / UAE Technology Hub Riyadh1 Riyadh tech hub, Saudi Arabia Lagos4 worseningAfrican startups raised more than US$1.2bn in H1 2026, down 17% year on year, with one Chinese-backed deal skewing June Nairobi4 worseningAfrican startups raised more than US$1.2bn in H1 2026, down 17% year on year, with one Chinese-backed deal skewing June Cairo3 Cairo tech hub, Egypt Bengaluru5 Bengaluru Delhi / Mumbai1 Delhi / Mumbai (India Tech Hubs) Singapore4 activeJapan startup funding surges 130% year-on-year in 2026, fastest growth of any major tech hub globally Jakarta1 Jakarta (Indonesia tech hub) Beijing1 Beijing (China tech hub) Shenzhen3 activeTwo Shenzhen embodied-AI robotics startups hit ~US$2.8bn valuations on the same day, funded by China's tech giants Hangzhou3 activeThree Chinese firms debut in Hong Kong on the same day as the HKEX IPO revival rolls on Seoul3 activeJapan startup funding surges 130% year-on-year in 2026, fastest growth of any major tech hub globally Tokyo3 activeJapan startup funding surges 130% year-on-year in 2026, fastest growth of any major tech hub globally Sao Paulo1 São Paulo, Brazil (tech hub) Mexico City1 Mexico City, Mexico (tech hub) Sydney / Melbourne1 Sydney / Melbourne (Australia's tech hubs)

Accelerators & studios

Y Combinator8 AI Agents Techstars2 Accelerators and venture studios: the programs that form and fund the world's earliest startups Antler2 Antler Venture studios2 Accelerators and venture studios: the programs that form and fund the world's earliest startups

Shutdowns, layoffs & fraud

Shutdowns4 Startup fraud and failures Layoffs4 worseningUS: Cisco files WARN notices cutting 471 California jobs in an AI-driven restructuring Fraud & failures4 New York City (tech hub) Founder / board disputes1 Founder-board disputes

latest

active India's Astrobase Space Technologies unveils EVEREST, the country's first privately built 800 kN full-flow staged combustion rocket engine

Bengaluru-based Astrobase Space Technologies unveiled EVEREST, an 800 kN liquid-oxygen-methane engine using full-flow staged combustion, which the company calls India's first privately developed engine in this class; a full hot-fire test is planned in 2026, with a first flight of its reusable launch vehicle targeted for December 2028

The Long Game ·4 takes ·Aug 8

active Unitree Robotics prices its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 61 billion yuan; DeepSeek joins as a strategic investor

Unitree Robotics, China's leading humanoid robot maker, priced its initial public offering on Shanghai's STAR Market at 150.80 yuan per share on August 6, 2026, implying a valuation of 61 billion yuan (approximately US$9 billion); DeepSeek, the Chinese AI lab that upended global AI markets in early 2026, took a strategic placement stake; Unitree is seeking to raise 6.1 billion yuan (around US$904 million); subscriptions open August 10

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Aug 7

active Bain Capital buys global bubble tea chain Gong Cha from TA Associates in deal covering nearly 2,200 stores

Bain Capital announced on August 5-6, 2026, that it will buy Gong Cha, the Taiwan-founded global bubble tea franchise with nearly 2,200 stores worldwide, from US private equity firm TA Associates; the deal positions Bain to expand Gong Cha's store network and digital operations; Gong Cha has no presence in mainland China after failing to register its trademark there and is led by a US-domiciled holding company

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Aug 8

active Nike ends Topsports' online sales rights on the Chinese mainland in digital overhaul, taking back control of its e-commerce channels

Nike has terminated the online distribution agreement with Topsports International, its largest Chinese retail partner, effective January 1, 2027, as CEO Elliott Hill moves to reassert direct control over Nike's digital channels in China to curb discounting; Japan's Nikkei and China's Caixin frame the move as a strategic retreat from a key but weakening market amid trade tensions

The Quiet Shift ·3 takes ·Jul 24

active China's Moonshot AI releases open-weight Kimi K3 model, wiping US$3.3 trillion from global chip stocks

Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, an open-weight model priced at roughly half the cost per task of competing frontier models, triggering a US$3.3 trillion sell-off in global semiconductor stocks and prompting Moonshot to accelerate a Hong Kong IPO at a US$30 billion valuation

The Long Game ·4 takes ·Jul 21

active Together AI raises $800M Series C at $8.3B valuation, led by Saudi Aramco's venture arm

The AI neocloud, which rents GPU clusters for open-source model inference, has tripled its platform usage year-on-year and now books over $1 billion annually; Aramco Ventures leads the round alongside NVIDIA, General Catalyst and Vista Equity

Whose Money ·8 takes ·Jul 3

worsening African startups raised more than US$1.2bn in H1 2026, down 17% year on year, with one Chinese-backed deal skewing June

H1 crossed US$1bn for a third straight year but fell from US$1.45bn; June's US$415m was 65% Spiro; capital concentrated in about 15 cities

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jul 2

active Korean-founded, US-based TwelveLabs raises US$100m Series B co-led by Korea's NAVER and US firm NEA

Amazon joins with a multiyear AWS Trainium deal; total funding tops US$207m for video-native foundation models Marengo and Pegasus

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

active Venice AI reaches $1 billion valuation with $65M Series A on a bet that enterprises want AI without surveillance

Dragonfly led the Wyoming startup's first outside funding round; Venice runs open-weight models locally on user hardware and stores no prompts. The company says this is the fastest path to enterprise AI adoption given post-Fable-5 compliance anxiety.

Whose Money ·4 takes ·Jul 4

active US neocloud Together AI raises US$800m Series C led by Saudi Arabia's Aramco Ventures at US$8.3bn

Nvidia, Vista, General Catalyst and Taiwan's Pegatron join; the open-model inference platform runs on Chinese-origin systems DeepSeek, Kimi and GLM and plans a 50x capacity build

Whose Money ·11 takes ·Jul 4

worsening US: Cisco files WARN notices cutting 471 California jobs in an AI-driven restructuring

236 cuts in San José, 154 in Milpitas, 81 in San Francisco, part of a sub-4,000 global reduction; terminations start July 13 despite a strong revenue quarter

What Broke ·4 takes ·Jul 2

active UK's Tapestry VC closes a €70m (US$80m) Fund III for repeat founders, co-anchored by the state British Business Bank

Nearly triple its prior fund; the British Business Bank commits €35m alongside Railpen and Molten Ventures; ~30 startups at US$1m to US$3m cheques

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

active US observability firm Datadog acquires French-American AI startup Adaptive ML for an undisclosed sum

Adaptive ML, an ex-Hugging Face team split between New York and Paris that raised a US$20m seed led by Index Ventures, folds its reinforcement-learning platform into Datadog AI Research

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Jul 2

active China's Luxshare launches Hong Kong IPO seeking up to US$3.1bn, 2026's largest, with Singapore and Abu Dhabi anchoring

The Apple AirPods and iPhone assembler prices up to 383.5m H-shares at HK$63.28; Temasek, GIC and Abu Dhabi's ADIA lead ~US$1.5bn in cornerstones; trading July 9

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Jul 3

pending-decision India's OYO parent PRISM files an updated DRHP for a ₹6,650 crore (~US$775m) all-fresh-issue IPO

The renamed hospitality group refiles with India's SEBI on June 30 with no offer for sale; ₹4,987.5 crore earmarked to repay debt; SoftBank, Microsoft and Airbnb hold their stakes

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jul 2

active Singapore's merchant-OS fintech Qashier raises US$6.125m after turning profitable on US$1bn annual payment volume

Series A+ of equity and debt led by Cocoon Capital with IFP Securities and BlackSoil Global; 20,000+ merchants across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines; profitable since December 2025

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

active GitHub Copilot's first usage-based billing cycle confirms 10x to 50x cost spikes for agentic developers

As the first 30-day token billing cycle for GitHub Copilot closed June 30, agentic developers confirmed bills jumping from $29 to $750 and from $50 to $3,000; GitHub shifted all plans from flat-rate Premium Request Units to AI Credits on June 1, with base prices unchanged but per-model token charges exhausting credit allowances within days for power users

What Broke ·4 takes ·Jul 1

active Two Shenzhen embodied-AI robotics startups hit ~US$2.8bn valuations on the same day, funded by China's tech giants

X Square Robot closes four straight rounds past RMB 20bn (~US$2.8bn) backed by Meituan, Alibaba, ByteDance and Xiaomi; AI² Robotics raises ~RMB 5bn (~US$736m)

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

pending-decision Rocket Lab to buy Iridium for $8 billion in cash-and-stock deal, challenging SpaceX in satellite comms

The June 29 announcement gives Rocket Lab control of Iridium's 66-satellite LEO network, globally licensed L-band spectrum, and 2.55 million subscribers; Iridium shareholders receive $27 cash plus Rocket Lab stock for each share, valuing the deal at roughly $54 per share

Whose Money ·3 takes ·Jun 29

active Three Chinese firms debut in Hong Kong on the same day as the HKEX IPO revival rolls on

Chip-interconnect maker Crealights, Alebund Pharma and InsurTech Baige list June 29 in a market that is reclaiming the global IPO crown

Whose Money ·8 takes ·Jun 29

active Samsung Group readies $646 billion AI investment over 10 years; SK Hynix preparing matching surge

South Korea's two largest chipmakers are preparing the largest combined domestic investment commitment in the country's history, anchored by a Blue House briefing set for June 30

Whose Money ·8 takes ·Jun 27

active US frontier lab Mirendil, founded by ex-Anthropic researchers, raises a US$200m seed at ~US$1bn

Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins co-lead with Nvidia; a ~20-person team from Anthropic, xAI, DeepMind and OpenAI is building AI that automates AI research

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jul 2

contested-result US: OpenAI leans toward a 2027 IPO and an employee tender near US$850bn as Altman holds out for US$1tn

New York Times and Reuters report CFO Sarah Friar eyeing a 2027 debut; Altman reportedly calls a sub-US$1tn valuation a 'non-starter'; Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are mandated

Whose Money ·4 takes ·Jul 2

active Alan raises €480m at €5.5bn, Europe's largest healthtech round in 2026, pending regulatory sign-off

Prosus leads the French health-insurance platform's Series G as ARR crosses €800m and the company hits profitability in France; Index Ventures, Teachers' Venture Growth and Dara Holdings co-invest

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 26

active Hurun's 2026 index counts a record 1,603 unicorns worth US$8tn; China adds 80 as India slips to fourth behind the UK

The Shanghai-founded research house puts the US first at 806 and China second at 381; AI is the top sector at 215 unicorns and 36% of value

The Quiet Shift ·6 takes ·Jul 2

active Japan startup funding surges 130% year-on-year in 2026, fastest growth of any major tech hub globally

Japanese startups have raised $4.25bn across 376 rounds through June 2026, compared with a 23% decline in Israel and a 71% drop in UAE; government-backed deep-tech programmes and a Japan-Korea venture fund underpin the shift

The Quiet Shift ·6 takes ·Jun 26

active US biotech Oblenio Bio raises US$62m Series B for an autoimmune T-cell engager optioned from China's Leads Biolabs

Pfizer Ventures leads with Deep Track, GV and Aditum; the asset LBL-051 comes from Nanjing's Leads Biolabs, another China-discovered drug advanced through a US company

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jul 2

Andreessen Horowitz

The US venture capital firm managing over US$100 billion across AI, defense, bio, and crypto funds, reshaping how technology startups scale globally.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Accel

US venture capital firm founded in 1983, known for early bets on Facebook, Anthropic, and Flipkart, managing more than US$20 billion and backing 110-plus unicorns globally.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Acquihires

The US-originated practice of buying startups primarily to recruit their teams, now reshaping AI-era M&A globally as hyperscalers spend billions of US dollars on talent.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

AI Agents

US-led category of startups building autonomous software systems that execute multi-step enterprise tasks, now the fastest-growing venture segment globally as of mid-2026.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

AI Coding and Developer Tools

US-led sector of startups using large language models to write and review code, attracting record venture funding and the largest startup acquisition in history by mid-2026.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Defense AI startups

The US-led wave of venture-backed companies applying AI to military targeting, autonomous systems, and battlefield software, now the fastest-growing segment in global venture capital.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

AI Infrastructure Startups

US-based neocloud and inference startups building the compute layer for AI drew more than US$9bn in venture capital in 2025-2026, concentrated outside the major hyperscalers.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Amsterdam (tech hub)

Amsterdam is the Netherlands' tech capital, home to Adyen and Booking.com, and centre of a Dutch startup ecosystem that raised €2.64 billion in venture capital in 2025.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Antler

Singapore-founded global pre-seed VC firm that has backed over 1,800 companies across 30 cities, ranking as the world's most active early-stage investor in 2024.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Applied and Vertical AI

Global category of startups deploying AI into specific industries, from US legal and healthcare to India's sovereign model stack, attracting record venture capital as of 2026.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Austin, Texas (tech hub)

Texas state capital turned technology hub; home to Dell, Tesla's global headquarters, and Apple's largest US engineering campus, with US$7.19 billion in venture funding in 2025.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Beijing (China tech hub)

China's AI-and-software capital, where 115 unicorns worth US$594.9bn cluster in the Haidian-Zhongguancun corridor, led by Baidu, ByteDance, and a ring of university AI labs.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Benchmark

The US venture capital firm founded in 1995 in San Francisco, known for an equal-partnership model and landmark early bets on eBay and Uber.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Bengaluru

India's technology capital in Karnataka, home to over 30 unicorns and roughly half of India's venture capital flow, a global benchmark for emerging-market startup ecosystems.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Berlin (tech hub)

Germany's largest startup cluster and Europe's second-biggest venture hub, carrying €169 billion in ecosystem value built on consumer internet and fintech unicorns since reunification.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Biotech and health venture capital

Global private capital deployed into drug development and health-technology companies, concentrated in the United States and Europe, funding the pipeline from which most new medicines emerge.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Boston (tech and life sciences hub, United States)

The Boston-Cambridge metro in the US state of Massachusetts is the world's densest biotech cluster and the second-largest US venture capital market by dollar volume.

·5 takes ·Jul 3

Cairo tech hub, Egypt

Egypt's capital is home to 33% of MENA's registered startups and leads Africa in startup funding raised, attracting US$190m in Q1 2026 alone.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Climate tech

The global sector targeting decarbonization and clean energy drew US$40.5 billion in venture and growth capital in 2025, as AI power demand merged climate and infrastructure investing.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Consumer & Social Apps

The global startup category covering social media, messaging, and entertainment apps for individual users; the United States leads in revenue, with US$167 billion in global app-store spending in 2025.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Crypto / Web3

A global ecosystem of blockchain-based digital assets, smart contracts, and stablecoins reshaping payments and finance, now subject to the US GENIUS Act and EU MiCA.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Deep tech

Startups built on scientific or engineering breakthroughs, spanning quantum computing, synthetic biology, and advanced robotics, representing 36% of global VC in 2026 and a key front in US-China-EU technology rivalry.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Defense tech

The wave of US venture-backed startups building autonomous weapons, AI-enabled sensing and dual-use hardware for militaries, now the fastest-growing segment in global venture capital.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Delhi / Mumbai (India Tech Hubs)

India's second- and third-largest startup cities by VC deal value, hosting 59 of the country's 118 unicorns and anchoring fintech and consumer internet sectors.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Direct Listings

A US-originated route for companies to list shares publicly without underwriters or new share issuance, used by Spotify, Coinbase, and others to bypass traditional IPO fees and lockups.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Down rounds and markdowns in global venture capital

A down round is when a startup raises capital at a lower valuation than its last round, diluting founders and employees while triggering investor anti-dilution protections globally.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Dry Powder and Global Fund Sizes

Committed but undeployed private capital held by VC and PE funds worldwide, now near US$3.7 trillion in PE alone, concentrated in mega-managers as smaller funds struggle to raise.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Dubai / UAE Technology Hub

The UAE runs MENA's most active tech startup market through Dubai's DIFC fintech hub and Abu Dhabi's sovereign AI cluster, now central to US frontier compute strategy.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Fintech

Financial technology, a global sector rewiring payments, lending and savings through software, shapes trillions in flows and sits at the centre of every market regulator's agenda.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Foundation-Model Labs

The US-led cluster of companies training frontier AI from scratch, raising more than US$375bn in early 2026, reshaping corporate competition, export controls, and global geopolitics.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Founder-board disputes

Recurring governance clashes between startup founders and venture-backed boards over control, strategy, and succession, a defining fault line of the global venture-capital industry.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Founders Fund

San Francisco-based US venture firm founded in 2005 by PayPal alumni; concentrated bets on SpaceX, Anduril, and AI have made it a defining force in US defense and technology.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

General Catalyst

US venture capital firm founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; manages US$43 billion and is repositioning itself as an AI transformation company.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Growth / Late-Stage Venture Capital

The global financing stage, dominated by US crossover funds and sovereign wealth funds, that sets valuations and gates which technology companies reach IPO scale.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Hangzhou (tech hub, China)

China's Zhejiang capital is the country's second-largest technology cluster after Beijing, anchored by Alibaba and now producing a new generation of global AI and robotics firms.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Index Ventures

London-headquartered venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1996, backing Spotify, Revolut, Slack, Figma, and Mistral across 32 funds and more than US$10 billion deployed.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Insight Partners

New York-based US venture capital and private equity firm managing US$90 billion exclusively in software companies; one of the largest software-focused investors in the world.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Jakarta (Indonesia tech hub)

Indonesia's capital is Southeast Asia's largest consumer-tech market, home to GoTo, seven unicorns, and a US$90bn digital economy built on 283 million mobile-first consumers.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Khosla Ventures

US venture capital firm founded in 2004 by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla; an early bet on OpenAI yielded one of history's highest venture returns.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Lagos, Nigeria

Nigeria's commercial capital is Africa's fastest-growing tech ecosystem, home to five unicorns and the continent's densest concentration of fintech startups.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Lightspeed Venture Partners

The US venture capital firm managing approximately US$25 billion from Menlo Park, California, whose early bets on Snap and Affirm made it one of Silicon Valley's most consequential early-stage investors.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

London (UK tech hub)

The UK's dominant technology cluster, first in Europe by VC invested, home to 72 active unicorns spanning fintech, AI, and deep tech as of 2025.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Los Angeles, California (tech hub)

The third-largest US startup ecosystem, built on aerospace heritage and Silicon Beach venture capital, now the leading US hub for defense-tech and commercial space startups.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Mega-rounds (US$100m+) in venture capital

Venture capital financings of US$100m or more in a single close, now concentrated in US AI infrastructure and accounting for most global VC dollars on fewer than 3% of deals.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Mexico City, Mexico (tech hub)

Mexico's capital hosts roughly 60% of the country's startups and 10 unicorn companies, driven by fintech dominance, nearshoring demand, and growing venture capital interest.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Nairobi, Kenya

Kenya's capital, East Africa's leading startup hub known as Silicon Savannah, that topped Africa in tech funding for 2025 with US$1.04 billion raised, underpinned by M-Pesa's mobile-money infrastructure.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

New York City (tech hub)

The US's second-largest startup and venture capital market, home to 25,000-plus companies and 203,000 tech workers, and the dominant US city for fintech and AI investment outside the Bay Area.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

OpenAI

OpenAI, a San Francisco-based US artificial intelligence company, operates ChatGPT and the GPT model family that ignited the global generative AI race, and is pursuing a public listing at a reported US$1 trillion valuation.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Paris (tech hub)

France's capital is Europe's second-largest startup ecosystem, with 37 active unicorns, a US$169 billion ecosystem value, and AI accounting for 48% of all funding deals as of 2025.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Riyadh tech hub, Saudi Arabia

Riyadh is Saudi Arabia's capital and primary technology hub, anchoring the country's US$1.72-billion-a-year venture-capital market and Vision 2030 economic-diversification drive.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Global Robotics and Hardware Startups

Robotics and hardware startups globally attracted US$18.8bn in venture funding through mid-2026, driven by embodied AI and humanoid robot makers in the US and China.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

São Paulo, Brazil (tech hub)

Brazil's financial capital hosts Latin America's largest startup ecosystem, anchored by fintech giants, deep engineering talent, and a 215-million-person domestic market.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Private company secondary markets

Platforms where founders, employees, and early investors in private companies sell shares before IPO, unlocking liquidity in a US$4 trillion global private-equity universe.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Seed and pre-seed venture funding

The earliest institutionalized stage of startup financing, global seed rounds set deal and valuation records in 2025 as AI mega-seeds stretched the stage's definition.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Seoul (tech hub)

South Korea's capital region hosts a top-10 global startup ecosystem worth roughly US$237 billion, defined by AI, semiconductors, and state-backed venture funds targeting 50 unicorns by 2030.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Sequoia Capital

The US venture capital firm founded in 1972 in California, managing roughly US$85 billion and holding stakes in OpenAI and Anthropic as their IPOs approach.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Series A/B venture capital rounds

The first two rounds of US-origin institutional venture capital, now the global standard for startup financing, channeling billions annually from VC firms into early-growth companies worldwide.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Shenzhen (China tech hub)

China's premier hardware-and-deep-tech city, a 13-million-person Special Economic Zone north of Hong Kong hosting Huawei, Tencent, and DJI and anchoring a US$35bn robotics industry.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Silicon Valley

California's San Francisco Bay Area technology cluster, capturing nearly half of all US venture capital in 2025 and anchoring the global race in AI and defence technology.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Singapore (tech hub)

Singapore is Southeast Asia's primary technology and venture-capital hub, ranked 4th globally for startup ecosystems in 2025, capturing roughly 60% of the region's venture deal volume.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

SoftBank Vision Fund

Japan-based SoftBank Group's venture capital arm, the world's largest technology fund at US$100 billion, reshaped global startup funding and is now a dominant OpenAI backer.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Space ventures

Private investment in commercial space globally hit a record US$55.3 billion in 2025, driven by launch-cost collapse, defence demand, and US-China competition for orbital infrastructure.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs)

US-originated blank-check shell companies that raise public capital before merging with a private target, offering a faster but sponsor-skewed alternative to a traditional IPO.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Startup fraud and failures

A recurring pattern of US venture-backed founders fabricating metrics to deceive investors and acquirers, now subject to active federal prosecution following a wave of convictions since 2022.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Startup M&A

Acquisitions of venture-backed startups by US tech platforms and multinationals, the exit mechanism that sets prices for founders, investors, and the global flow of AI talent.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Startup shutdowns

The dissolution of venture-backed companies, concentrated in the United States, has surged since 2022 as higher interest rates crushed valuations and zero-rate-era capital ran out.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Accelerators and venture studios: the programs that form and fund the world's earliest startups

Startup accelerators and venture studios supply founders' first institutional capital and mentorship, shaping the global venture pipeline from Silicon Valley to Singapore and Nairobi.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

AI ventures: the global race to fund foundation models, agents, infrastructure, and coding tools

Four linked sub-sectors absorbed the majority of global venture capital in 2025-2026, concentrating AI capability, compute, and sovereign wealth in a handful of US-led companies.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Startup distress: global cycle of shutdowns, layoffs, and investor fraud

When venture funding contracts, tech companies cut workers, startups close, and fraudsters face charges; this beat tracks the distress cycle across the global startup ecosystem.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Global startup hubs: the cities where venture capital concentrates

The beat tracks which cities mint startups and attract venture funding, and how AI concentration and new hubs from Tokyo to Lagos are reshaping the global map.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Exits, IPOs and M&A: the five routes from private venture to public market or strategic buyer

Five exit routes, IPOs, direct listings, M&A, secondaries and acquihires, through which private startups convert venture stakes into liquid capital, a global barometer for risk appetite.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Funding stages: the rounds that price private startups from seed to unicorn

The sequence of named investment rounds that sets valuations for private companies globally, from first seed check to billion-dollar unicorn and the corrections in between.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Funds & investors: the US mega-funds that move the global startup economy

Seven US-based and Japan-based venture capital firms, managing more than US$350 billion combined, determine which technologies scale, which founders win, and where power concentrates.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Hot verticals: the seven technology sectors that concentrate venture capital

Fintech, climate tech, defense tech, biotech, crypto, robotics, and deep tech absorb the majority of thematic VC globally and determine which technologies reach scale.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Stockholm / Nordics

Sweden's startup ecosystem, centered on Stockholm, is Europe's most productive unicorn factory per capita, anchoring global fintech, gaming, and AI ventures.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Sydney / Melbourne (Australia's tech hubs)

Australia's two largest cities form the Southern Hemisphere's leading startup corridor, accounting for over 70% of Australia's nearly A$5.5 billion in venture capital raised in 2025.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Tech IPOs

The global market for technology companies going public, a cyclical barometer of risk appetite that drove US$47bn in US proceeds alone in 2025 and now awaits OpenAI and SpaceX.

·5 takes ·Jul 3

Tech Layoffs

Mass job cuts at US-led technology companies since 2022 have affected more than 500,000 US tech workers, shifting from post-pandemic correction to AI-driven restructuring.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Techstars

The US startup accelerator that pioneered the global mentor-driven cohort model, backing over 10,000 founders across 150 countries since its 2006 founding in Boulder, Colorado.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Tel Aviv (tech hub)

Israel's Tel Aviv metropolitan corridor is the world's fourth-ranked startup ecosystem, concentrating cybersecurity, AI, and defense-technology ventures in the densest per-capita cluster outside the US.

·3 takes ·Jul 3

Thrive Capital

The New York-based US venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner in 2010, now managing roughly US$50 billion, notable for anchoring OpenAI's largest fundraising rounds.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Tiger Global Management

New York-based US crossover investment firm founded in 2001, backing Facebook, Stripe, and OpenAI across public and private markets, now executing a deliberate reset after 2022 losses.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Tokyo (tech hub)

Tokyo concentrates roughly 73% of Japan's startup funding and anchors the country's government-mandated drive to reach 100 unicorns and 10 trillion yen in startup investment by fiscal 2027.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Toronto / Waterloo Corridor, Canada

Canada's largest technology cluster, a 105-kilometre Ontario corridor capturing 40 to 60 percent of Canada's venture capital and hosting the world's highest concentration of AI startups.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Unicorn valuations in global venture capital (US$1bn+)

Private companies valued at US$1 billion or more; the US and China host three-quarters of the world's 1,600 unicorns as of 2026, making valuations a bellwether for global risk appetite.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Venture studios

A company-building model where studios generate ideas, assemble teams, and fund startups from scratch, taking 25-80% equity, with 600-plus studios now active across the US, Europe, and Asia.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Warsaw / Central and Eastern Europe (tech hub)

Poland's capital anchors CEE's largest startup ecosystem by valuation, home to 18 unicorns and drawing €2.3 billion in venture capital in 2024.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

xAI

US AI lab founded by Elon Musk in 2023 to train frontier reasoning models; absorbed into SpaceX in 2026 as SpaceXAI, now operating the world's largest privately held GPU cluster.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

Y Combinator

The US startup accelerator that pioneered the modern seed-funding model, backing 200 companies a year from San Francisco and producing more unicorns than any peer.

·4 takes ·Jul 3

active Nigeria's Daya raises a US$2.4m pre-seed to build stablecoin cross-border payment rails for African businesses

Hivemind Capital leads with the Aptos Foundation, Lattice and Alliance; ex-Circle and Helicarrier founders offer virtual dollar accounts settling into the naira

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jul 2

active General Intuition raises $320M to train AI agents on video-game footage

Khosla-led Series A at a $2.3B valuation bets that gameplay clips teach machines to act in the physical world

Whose Money ·8 takes ·Jun 28

active RunPod raises $100M at a $1B valuation and turns down $500M buyout offers

A New Jersey GPU-cloud doubles revenue to ~$240M ARR as the 'neocloud' layer between developers and hyperscalers keeps pulling capital

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Jun 29

active Baseten raises $1.5bn at $13bn valuation as AI inference demand hits 1 billion daily calls

Altimeter, Conviction and Spark lead the largest-ever pure-play inference infrastructure round; 20x revenue growth in a year and 87 clusters across 18 clouds position Baseten as the production layer beneath AI applications

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 26

active India's fintech CRED raises US$900m from Meta, which takes ~20% and hires founder Kunal Shah to run WhatsApp

Series H of primary and secondary shares at ~US$4.5bn post-money; Miten Sampat becomes interim CEO; CRED says Meta gets no board seat and no customer data

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

worsening Oracle discloses 21,000 job cuts in its annual filing as AI agents replace database and engineering roles

The tech giant's SEC 10-K, filed June 22, names AI adoption directly as the driver; AI now handles 94% of database administration tasks that were previously done by human employees

What Broke ·6 takes ·Jun 25

active Africa's EV and battery-swap firm Spiro closes a US$270m round as China's NewTrails Capital adds US$55m

NewTrails, an affiliate of smartphone maker Transsion, tops up a round that also drew Afreximbank's FEDA; Spiro runs 100,000+ EVs and 2,500 swap stations across seven markets

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Jul 2

active Groq confirms $650M raise to rebuild as an AI-inference neocloud after Nvidia gutted it

Six months after Nvidia's $20B licence-and-hire deal stripped out its founders, Groq bets its second act on cloud, not chips

Whose Money ·8 takes ·Jun 28

active France and Germany's AVP and Earlybird launch E2D, a €500m European defence and dual-use growth fund

About US$585m for roughly 20 companies at ~€25m tickets across space, air, land, maritime and subsurface; first close June 30, pitched at keeping European defence startups off US cap tables

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 2

active SpaceX buys Cursor maker Anysphere for $60bn, the largest startup acquisition on record

An all-stock deal announced four days after SpaceX's Nasdaq debut; Cursor reached $4bn in annualised revenue in under four years and counts two-thirds of the Fortune 500 among its enterprise clients

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jun 25

active YC's Spring 2026 Demo Day fields 196 startups and debuts on-chain USDC seed funding

Y Combinator's S26 cohort is its largest and most watched batch yet, with hottest startups commanding $175m+ valuations and the accelerator sending its first fully on-chain seed investment

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

active Defense tech startups raise $14.6bn in five months, smashing 2025's full-year record

Anduril, Shield AI and Saronic account for $8.75bn of the total; the Pentagon is now actively encouraging VC participation and the sector is consolidating fast

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jun 25

active Sarvam becomes India's newest AI unicorn on a $234M HCLTech-led round

A $1.5B valuation built on a sovereign-AI pitch, sharpened by Anthropic cutting off foreign access to its top models

Whose Money ·7 takes ·Jun 28

active Generalist AI raises $400m at $2bn for embodied foundation models, as its GEN-1 hits 99% task success

Former DeepMind scientist Pete Florence's startup closes the year's largest Series A in robotics AI, backed by Radical Ventures, Nvidia and Fei-Fei Li; GEN-1 completes dexterous tasks 3x faster than prior models

Whose Money ·4 takes ·Jun 26

active Quantinuum raises $1.68bn in Nasdaq IPO at $14bn, quantum computing's first major public listing

Honeywell's 54%-owned quantum spinout priced at $60 a share on June 4, upsized from its original plan; stock rose 13% on debut to value the company at $17.6bn despite $192m net loss on $31m revenue

Whose Money ·9 takes ·Jul 8

active Ramp raises $750m at $44bn valuation, nearly triples in a year

Iconiq, GIC and Ontario Teachers lead the spend-management platform's Series F; annualised revenue tops $1bn as companies lean on Ramp to control AI budgets

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

active Supabase raises $500m at $10.5bn on 600% database growth driven by AI agents

GIC leads a Series F that doubles the company's valuation in eight months; Claude Code is Supabase's largest growth driver since the start of 2026

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

active Mach Industries raises $300m at $1.8bn, quadrupling in a year on autonomous drone production

22-year-old MIT dropout Ethan Thornton's defense startup lands Series C led by Infinite Capital, Sequoia and Khosla; a 115,000 sq ft Huntington Beach factory and five weapons platforms underpin the jump from $470m

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jul 8

active Former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer closes $250m Gigascale Capital debut, a contrarian climate-tech bet

Schroepfer raised the fund in 2023 but closed it oversubscribed on June 1 despite market skepticism; portfolio spans energy, critical minerals and physical AI, with Commonwealth Fusion and Form Energy as anchors

Whose Money ·4 takes ·Jun 26

active Anduril doubles to $61bn valuation in $5bn Series H

Thrive Capital and a16z lead the largest-ever defense-tech private round; revenue doubled to $2.2bn in 2025 and the Army's $20bn Lattice counter-drone contract underpins the raise

Whose Money ·6 takes ·Jun 25

active Parker, the YC-backed e-commerce fintech, files Chapter 7 after $200m raised and a failed acquisition

The corporate credit-card startup shut down without warning on May 7, stranding merchants and notifying Patriot Bank customers by letter; a $90m acquisition offer collapsed in the final stages

What Broke ·5 takes ·Jun 26

active Africa startup funding rises 26% in Q1 2026 to $705m, led by Egypt, South Africa and Kenya

Fintech remains dominant but energy, logistics and agritech attract a larger share as the continent's ecosystem matures beyond payments

Whose Money ·4 takes ·Jun 25

active Kalshi doubles to $22bn in five months and targets $40bn as prediction markets hit mainstream

The YC W19 company led by Tarek Mansour raised $1bn from Coatue, Sequoia and a16z; 90% of US prediction market volume flows through its exchange

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

active Kalder CEO Gökçe Güven pleads guilty to $7m securities fraud, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree charged with two sets of books

The Turkish-American fintech founder faked $1.2m in ARR (actual: $60k), forged brand partnership documents, and committed visa fraud using an extraordinary-ability application built on fabricated credentials; sentencing September 2026

What Broke ·6 takes ·Jul 8

active a16z closes $15bn Fund VII, the largest VC fundraise in Silicon Valley history

Andreessen Horowitz surpasses $60bn in assets under management as Fund VII bets on AI infrastructure, defense, bio and crypto, each in a separate vehicle

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

active Skild AI raises $1.4bn at $14bn valuation to build a general-purpose robot brain

SoftBank leads a Series C for the Pittsburgh startup building the Skild Brain, a foundation model that can retrofit any robot without task-specific retraining

Whose Money ·5 takes ·Jun 25

tracking

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