Funding, product, and the business of technology.
27 storiesLatest: Oct 27, 2026
Anthropic filed its S-1 on 26 October 2026 with $16.3 billion in first-half revenue, an $80.7 billion net loss driven by accounting, and founder control.
TPW Editorial9 min read
OpenAI is close to a round of up to $30 billion at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, led by UAE investors and Coatue, $150 billion below its earlier target.
DeepSeek is reported to have raised about $15 billion at a roughly $74 billion valuation, two days after DHS ordered its removal from federal civilian systems.
On 14 October 2026, Anthropic told investors its Q3 revenue hit $16.8 billion and that it was profitable on an adjusted basis, ahead of a November IPO.
Crunchbase reports global venture funding of $159 billion in Q3 2026, down 25% from Q2 but up 53% year on year, with a record 27 billion-dollar rounds.
The Seattle startup reached a $1.6 billion valuation and opened its satellite Bluetooth network to the public, betting ordinary devices can skip the modem.
Kakao Games will take a 39.56% stake in the social-casino and casual developer Me2on for about 98 billion won, its first major deal under new leadership.
Factory raised $200 million on September 15, 2026, at a $5 billion valuation, more than tripling its April mark and pushing total funding past $400 million.
Vishal Sikka's Hang Ten Systems closed a $53 million second seed led by Temasek-backed Xora, taking total funding to $85 million five weeks after launch.
Manus is in talks to raise about $500 million at a $4 billion valuation, the Wall Street Journal reported, doubling its mark as it considers a Hong Kong listing.
D-Robotics closed a $400 million Series C on September 17, 2026 to expand its Sunrise robot chips and software as embodied AI enters mass production.
Profound, which helps brands show up in AI answers rather than blue links, raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation on September 15.
Cohere and Germany's Aleph Alpha signed a definitive merger on September 16, creating a transatlantic AI company built to keep regulated data outside US cloud reach.
Crusoe closed a $3.9 billion Series F at a $30.9 billion valuation, betting power-first campuses and truck-ready AI factories can turn contracts into compute.
Temporal raised $550 million at a $12.55 billion valuation, more than doubling its worth in seven months as demand grows for durable execution in AI agents.
Grab agreed to pay $1.49 billion in cash for 60% of buy-now-pay-later platform Atome Financial, its biggest acquisition, with the rest to follow.
Bending Spoons agreed to acquire Miro at a $1.355 billion enterprise value, about 90% below the whiteboard company's 2022 peak, in a second steep markdown.
The Boring Company, Elon Musk's tunnelling startup, raised $3 billion at a $23 billion valuation in a UAE-led round to build 150 km of tunnels in the Gulf.
Jeff Dean's weeks-old AI startup Discovery Loop is reported to seek a $50 billion valuation, up from about $10 billion in August. The round is not confirmed.
LEGO Digital Play has acquired Offroad Games, the London mobile studio behind Chrome Valley Customs, in its first major move since the entity was created.
Anthropic's backers expect an October listing above $2 trillion, which would eclipse SpaceX. The bet rests on a run rate, not booked revenue, and the skeptics know it.
France's Mistral AI raised €3 billion at a €21 billion valuation, the largest equity round in European tech history, to prove sovereign, open-weight AI can compete at the frontier.
Legal-AI startup Harvey raised $550M at a $15.5B valuation and acquired Guardrails AI, its fourth deal of 2026, as the vertical-AI race accelerates further.
Stripe agreed to acquire AI model router OpenRouter, reportedly for about $7.5 billion, betting that routing and billing tokens is the next payment rail.
Databricks closed a $5 billion round at a $190 billion valuation, six months after a $134 billion mark, as it defers an IPO and bets on enterprise AI.
Brett Adcock's Hark unveiled Handoff on August 5, a computer-use agent with a top web benchmark score and aggressive pricing, but no independent validation yet.
Small teams are beating well-funded incumbents by building vertical AI products. Here's the playbook we keep seeing work.
