The AI market is getting bigger, but the easy money phase is fading.
OpenAI raised $11B at a $1.25T valuation, while AI usage keeps climbing even as spending growth slows and Microsoft walks away from older Oracle compute.
At the same time, more than $716M + £20M is being raised across specialist funds focused on cybersecurity, oncology, vertical AI, and pre-seed investing.
Five signals worth watching today:
OpenAI raised $11B at a $1.25T valuation.
AI usage is rising while spending growth starts to stall.
AMD now calls itself a “data center first” company.
Microsoft is ending its Oracle AI cloud deal.
More than $716M + £20M is being raised across specialist venture funds.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
At least $2.70B + €102M + A$750K disclosed across today’s startup financings
The three biggest rounds:
Zipline: $1.5B
CesiumAstro: $730M Series D
Harbinger: $240M Series D
Together, those three companies accounted for more than 91% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.
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PRE-SEED
OnSport AI: Miami-based sports technology startup raised $2M. Backers were not disclosed.
Juritas: Stockholm-based contract intelligence software platform raised €1.4M led by Passion Capital, with participation from Blackwood, Araya Ventures, Baseline, Angel Invest, and the byFounders Angel Collective.
Foozi: Espírito Santo-based AI-powered restaurant purchasing platform raised $1.02M led by Quartzo Capital, with participation from regional angel investors.
Indrus: Perth-based AI-powered logistics yard monitoring platform raised A$750K led by Purpose Ventures, with participation from Melt Ventures and Curtin University.
SEED
Circularity Fuels: Redwood City-based renewable fuels technology platform raised $7M led by Trucks and DCVC, with participation from Sum Ventures and Automotive Ventures.
GROWTH
Zipline: South San Francisco-based autonomous drone delivery company raised $1.5B at a $21.5B valuation. The round was led by Paradigm, WCM Investment Management, and Layer Global, with participation from Fidelity, Uber, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest, Salesforce Ventures, and others.
CesiumAstro: Austin-based space and defense communications company raised $730M Series D at a valuation above $4.5B. The round was led by Janus Henderson, with participation from Insight Partners, Sands Capital, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Woven Capital, Magnetar, NewSpace Capital, and others.
Harbinger: Garden Grove-based electric and hybrid medium-duty vehicle manufacturer raised $240M Series D co-led by Tiger Global, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, and Ridgeline, with participation from Fidelity, Squarepoint Capital, Greycroft, FedEx, THOR Industries, and others.
Giva: Bengaluru-based fine jewellery brand raised more than $100M led by Multiples Alternate Asset Management.
Fourthline: Amsterdam-based identity verification and compliance technology company secured a financing package of up to €65M, including a €40M growth investment from AshGrove and additional support from Finch Capital and Seaya Andromeda.
Humble Robotics: San Francisco-based autonomous and electric freight transportation company raised $51M Series A led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Eclipse, Energy Impact Partners, and others.
Beacon Holdings: Toronto-based centralized AI holding company platform received a $50M investment from CPP Investments.
Vaeridion: Munich-based all-electric aircraft manufacturer raised €30M Series A2 led by SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL, with participation from World Fund, Project A, Vsquared Ventures, Alexander Rittweger, and others.
Snaplii: Toronto-based fintech infrastructure platform for AI agent spending raised $15M from investors including Hat-Trick Capital.
Claimlane: Copenhagen-based AI-powered aftersales and product resolution platform raised €5.6M Series A led by Verb Ventures, with participation from Skagerak Capital and Vendep Capital.
Telarus: Sandy-based technology services distributor received an undisclosed strategic investment led by Snowhawk Partners, with participation from Columbia Capital.
📍 Funding Signal
Physical infrastructure captured nearly all of today’s biggest checks.
Zipline, CesiumAstro, Harbinger, Humble Robotics, and Vaeridion are building across drones, satellites, vehicles, freight, and electric aviation. The scale of these rounds shows investors are willing to fund hardware-heavy businesses aggressively once they demonstrate a path to deployment and commercial scale.
The other signal is strategic capital. Uber, FedEx, Toyota’s Woven Capital, CPP Investments, Sumitomo, and other corporate or institutional investors appeared across major rounds, suggesting partnerships, distribution, and infrastructure access are becoming increasingly important alongside venture capital itself.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
More than $716M + £20M is being raised across cybersecurity, oncology, vertical AI, and pre-seed funds
Yosemite closed its second fund at $350M, up from a $200M first close earlier this year.
The cancer-focused firm will back early-stage biotech and healthcare companies across drug discovery, screening, and care navigation. LPs include Amgen, AbbVie, MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and John Doerr.
Brightmind Partners is targeting roughly $250M for its second fund, focused primarily on seed and Series A cybersecurity startups, with around 20% allocated to AI infrastructure. A meaningful share of investments is expected to come from Israel.
Flashpoint Capital closed its fourth Venture Growth Fund at $116M to back growth-stage B2B vertical AI companies founded in Europe and Israel and scaling into the U.S. The fund has already invested in 10 companies and plans a portfolio of roughly 15 to 20 businesses.
Octopus Ventures also held the first close of First Cheque II, targeting more than £20M. The fund plans to back more than 80 founders across the UK and Europe in AI infrastructure, robotics, health and biology, digital security, industrial software, and energy.
Sequoia Capital is also shutting down its long-running Scouts program as it simplifies the firm and concentrates resources around fewer investors and investments.
📍 Capital signal
The market is becoming more concentrated around specialist funds and tighter operating models. Yosemite, Brightmind, and Flashpoint are each leaning into narrow sector expertise, while Sequoia is reducing distributed sourcing infrastructure. The broader shift is toward fewer, higher-conviction bets backed by deeper domain expertise.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Nvidia opens independent probe into Jensen Huang’s relationship with alleged Chinese spy
Nvidia’s board has launched an independent investigation after reports that CEO Jensen Huang was targeted through a relationship with Alice Huang, a former Megaspeed executive allegedly recruited by China’s intelligence service.
Huang acknowledged having an affair and apologized to his family, employees, partners, and shareholders, while committing to cooperate fully with the review.
Nvidia says it currently has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and independent directors will conduct the investigation with outside legal counsel.
Why it matters: Nvidia sits at the center of the U.S.-China AI chip race, so any potential intelligence access to its leadership could become a major national-security and corporate-governance issue.
OpenAI raises $11B at a $1.25T valuation
![OpenAI $11 Billion Funding at $1.25T Value [2026]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6PcY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2056eebb-087f-4ca4-bae0-c7e4e0093809_1920x1072.webp "OpenAI $11 Billion Funding at $1.25T Value [2026]")
OpenAI has reportedly raised $11B so far in a new funding round valuing the company at $1.25T, with the round potentially reaching about $20B in total.
That is below the $30B target OpenAI was reportedly seeking in September, suggesting investors are becoming more selective on valuation and capital intensity.
The funding comes as Anthropic also faces pressure on its expected IPO valuation, adding to signs that enthusiasm around trillion-dollar AI companies is becoming more disciplined.
Why it matters: OpenAI can still attract enormous amounts of capital, but the lower target suggests the AI funding market is shifting from pure momentum toward tougher scrutiny of valuation, burn, and infrastructure spending.
AI usage keeps rising, but spending growth is starting to stall
Ramp data shows AI token spending grew just 1.5% across August and September, even as usage volumes continued climbing, before rebounding 8.9% in October.
The slowdown appears driven by aggressive price cuts from OpenAI and Anthropic, cheaper competing models, and companies getting better at routing workloads toward lower-cost options.
That matters as Anthropic approaches its IPO and OpenAI raises new capital, because both companies are relying on continued enterprise spending growth to support trillion-dollar valuations.
Why it matters: AI may be becoming cheaper faster than usage is growing. That is great for customers, but it could put real pressure on the revenue assumptions behind today’s biggest AI companies.
AI reportedly solves an 18-year-old quantum computing problem
Physics research company PSI says an automated system using a non-public Anthropic model solved the Aaronson-Ambainis conjecture, an 18-year-old problem in quantum computing, in just three days.
The proof was checked and accepted by Lean, a formal verification system, and the AI reportedly improved the proof twice before reaching the final version.
The result has not yet completed full independent academic review, though Stanford researchers familiar with the problem have provided feedback and are preparing a shorter write-up for experts.
Why it matters: If independently validated, this would be another strong example of AI contributing directly to frontier mathematics and theoretical computer science, not just accelerating routine research work.
Fox closes $22B acquisition of Roku
Fox has completed its $22B purchase of Roku, combining a major traditional media company with one of the largest connected TV platforms in the U.S.
The deal gives Fox direct access to more than 100 million Roku households, strengthening its streaming distribution and advertising reach.
The combined company is expected to rank among the largest U.S. television businesses by viewership, while reducing Fox’s dependence on traditional TV distribution.
Why it matters: Fox is using M&A to secure direct control over distribution, audience data, and ad inventory, showing how legacy media companies are repositioning around connected TV.
AMD declares itself a “data center first” company
CEO Lisa Su said data centers now define AMD’s identity, with the segment accounting for about 63% of its record $13.4B Q3 2026 revenue.
Growth from Instinct AI accelerators and Epyc server chips pushed quarterly revenue up 97% year over year, while gaming revenue fell 40% to $773M.
AMD expects its data center business to grow another 50% sequentially in Q4 and more than double next year as AI infrastructure spending continues to expand.
Why it matters: AMD is increasingly positioning itself as an AI infrastructure company first, putting more of its future growth directly against Nvidia in the data center market.
Microsoft ends its Oracle AI cloud deal
![Oracle Falls 4% as Microsoft Reportedly Ends AI Deal [2026]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wrS4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0abb3c6e-a1c9-451c-82ff-e5a49e72f053_1920x1072.webp "Oracle Falls 4% as Microsoft Reportedly Ends AI Deal [2026]")
Microsoft is reportedly ending a 2023 Oracle cloud agreement that supplied AI compute for products including an AI-powered version of Bing.
The Oracle capacity relied on older Nvidia GPUs that no longer matched Microsoft’s evolving technical requirements, reducing its usefulness as the company reviews large cloud commitments.
Oracle says demand for older AI hardware remains strong, but the move highlights how quickly infrastructure can become less attractive as model architectures and hardware needs change.
Why it matters: AI infrastructure spending is becoming more selective. Big tech companies are not just chasing more compute anymore, they are increasingly optimizing for the right generation of chips and the right cost structure.
Nvidia can reportedly fulfill only 1% of China’s GPU orders
Chinese firms including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have reportedly placed around $70B in orders for Nvidia’s RTX Pro 5500 GPUs.
Nvidia is expected to fulfill only about 1% of that demand over the coming months, equivalent to just a few tens of thousands of units.
The chip is especially attractive for AI workloads because it combines high CUDA core counts with 84GB of memory and can still be shipped to China without U.S. export restrictions.
Why it matters: China’s AI compute demand is still massively outpacing available supply, showing that access constraints are increasingly coming from production capacity, not just regulation.
LAST COFFEE SIP
🌎 Around The Ecosystem
SpaceX: Google executive Donald Harrison has resigned from SpaceX’s board after more than a decade, with Elon Musk saying the move was driven by growing conflicts of interest with Alphabet, which remains SpaceX’s largest institutional shareholder.
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The AI startup onboarding playbook: An analysis of 30 AI products, including Lovable, Perplexity, Cursor, and Clay, reveals how leading startups get users to experience value within minutes. This piece breaks down the onboarding flows, signup friction, free trials, and email sequences, with practical templates founders can use to improve activation and reduce early churn.
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