funding

Enigma emerges from stealth with a $71M seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital to develop intuitive human-robot interfaces. The startup launches a large-scale online experiment allowing anyone to interact with over 100 of its proprietary AI robots, aiming to make robot control as effortless as turning a volume knob.

ETN (European Tech News) has raised $1.6M to launch Europe's first daily live technology show, with a state-of-the-art newsroom near Kings Cross, starting soon.

Ant International raised approximately $1.2 billion in Series A funding to expand its global payments infrastructure and AI-enabled commerce solutions for cross-border trade, with participation from Ant Group and Alibaba Group.

Y Combinator announces the deadline for Fall 2026 batch applications is July 27 at 8pm PT, with details about the application process and batch structure.

An analysis of Yann LeCun's bet that intelligence starts with world models via JEPA, not language, supported by AMI Labs' $1.03 billion funding. The article explains why next-pixel prediction fails and how JEPA predicts in latent space to avoid blurry futures.

DeepSeek has paused its second fundraising round amid CEO Liang Wenfeng's frustration over leaked remarks, though the company continues to explore IPO options and maintain open-source AI priorities.

Fly.io CEO Kurt Mackey steps down, replaced by Scott Johnston, as the company pivots focus to its Sprites product for AI agents and raises new funding.

Prentis, an AI research lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman and Marc Pincus, is raising $100M at a $1B valuation to build computer-use agents that automate office workflows. The startup claims its Hive-32B model outperforms GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 on benchmarks while being significantly cheaper.

AegisAI, founded by former Google security executives, raises $36M Series A to use AI agents to detect and prevent AI-driven spear phishing attacks, with dozens of customers already onboard.

AI chip startup Etched raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation, defying skeptics by designing specialized chips for AI inference with low-voltage and cluster-scale memory technologies.

Gergely Orosz notes that Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in annual recurring revenue (ARR) based on a third-party tracker, with Anthropic at $74.1B versus OpenAI's $41.3B as of July.

MIT researchers will lead or contribute to 15 projects funded under the US Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, which aims to build an integrated science discovery platform using AI, supercomputing, and quantum systems.

Y Combinator announces a Request for Startups (RFS) focused on defending America, inviting entrepreneurs to apply with relevant ideas.

Travis Kalanick's robotics company Atoms raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz joining the board. Uber also participated, marking a reunion with Kalanick, who previously founded the company.

Yope has raised $12.3M to build a private, algorithm-free social network focused on micro-communities, with no ads and a subscription model.

Colossal Biosciences is reportedly in talks to raise new capital at a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion, a significant increase from its previous $10.2 billion valuation. The round is not yet confirmed, and final terms are unknown.

Passionfroot, a German B2B creator marketplace, raised $15M in Series A funding led by Insight Partners to expand to the US and Brazil, and will use the funds to grow its team and develop AI features.

Gritt, a startup using AI-controlled robots to install solar panels, exited stealth with $34 million in funding to accelerate solar plant construction.

CuspAI, a UK startup using AI to discover new materials for clean energy and chipmaking, raised $450M in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA, with participation from Jeff Bezos and the UK's Sovereign AI Fund.

Databricks announces a new funding round at a $188 billion valuation, continuing its fundraising streak as it positions itself as a leading AI provider.