9 stories · “startups”.
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.
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.
Mazama Energy raised $135 million, led by Centaurus and Doerr Capital, to scale superhot rock geothermal after a 331°C record and an 80% drilling gain.
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.
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.
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.
