Newsletter #50

This Week's Good Reads

Nature - Concrete Multi-Agent Path Planning Enables Aggressive Swarm Maneuvers — Researchers from Cambridge demonstrate a hybrid "concrete planning" approach that bridges continuous optimization and discrete search, enabling 40 robots (20 aerial, 8 ground, and 12 dynamic obstacles) to operate safely in a compact space while executing aggressive maneuvers at speeds up to 5.3 m/s. The framework achieves collision-free coordination for large-scale multi-robot systems including warehouse automation and last-mile delivery scenarios. Nature
TechCrunch - Are AI Tokens the New Signing Bonus or Just a Cost of Doing Business? — Jensen Huang suggested engineers receive up to $250,000 in AI tokens annually as a recruiting tool, but the article questions whether this "fourth pillar of compensation" actually benefits engineers or simply inflates apparent package value without the vesting, appreciation, or negotiation power of cash and equity. As agentic AI drives exponential token consumption, companies may use compute allowances to justify flat cash compensation while employees shoulder the productivity pressure. TechCrunch
WSJ - Apple Is Way Behind in AI—and Still Making a Fortune From It — Despite lagging in its own AI product development, Apple collected nearly $900 million in App Store fees from generative AI apps in 2025, with ChatGPT alone accounting for roughly three-quarters of that figure. The piece is a sharp reminder that distribution and platform control remain durable competitive advantages even when the platform owner is not the technological leader — and a signal of how much AI monetization is flowing through mobile. WSJ
a16z - Institutional AI vs Individual AI — Drawing parallels to the 1890s electrification of textile mills that took 30 years to deliver productivity gains, this piece argues that individual AI productivity tools don't create organizational value without redesigning workflows and institutions. It proposes seven pillars of "Institutional Intelligence"—including coordination, signal-finding, objectivity, edge optimization, revenue scaling, enablement, and unprompted action—that will define the next generation of B2B AI companies and determine which organizations capture lasting value. Andreessen Horowitz

Robotics and AI Companies Funding

Pre-seed / Seed

Applied Computing – ~$11M, Seed round, backed by KBR (strategic investment + board seat). Foundation model built specifically for energy operations, combining physics-grounded intelligence with chemical engineering and time-series forecasting for refineries, petrochemical facilities, LNG, wind, and hydro.
Anori – $26M, Seed round as it spins out of Alphabet's X, led by Prologis and Builders VC with Series X Capital. AI-native platform that pulls zoning rules, building codes, design constraints, and cost signals into one shared workspace for developers, architects, cities, and investors.
Bounti – €4M, Seed round led by Ventech with IBB Ventures, Robin Capital, and Common Magic (Tracxn | PitchBook). AI-native operations layer for frontline teams in hospitality, retail, logistics, and multi-site businesses.
CloudCruise – $5M, Seed round backed by Floating Point, Meridian Street Capital, Twine, and Refract Ventures (PitchBook). Browser automation infrastructure layer for healthcare AI agents operating payer portals and EHRs.
Dentronic – $1M, Pre-seed round backed by South Park Commons and Crew Capital (PitchBook). Robotic arm automating repetitive chairside assistance tasks like suction and retraction during dental procedures.
Ezra – $3.2M, Seed round co-led by Penny Jar Capital and LMNT Ventures with Andreessen Horowitz. Voice AI recruiting platform conducting structured interviews to evaluate applicants on role-specific criteria.
eternal.ag – €8M, Seed round backed by Simon Capital, Oyster Bay Venture Capital, EquityPitcher Ventures, and BackBone Ventures. Fully autonomous harvesting robots for tomato greenhouses across Europe.
Hosted.ai – $19M, Seed round led by Creandum with Repeat VC, People Ventures, and Z21 Ventures (PitchBook). Software turning underutilized GPU infrastructure into profitable AI clouds through pooling and workload optimization.
Littlebird – $11M, Seed round led by Lotus Studio with Lenny Rachitsky, Scott Belsky, Gokul Rajaram, Justin Rosenstein, and Russ Heddleston. Always-on context layer that captures screen activity as text to give AI systems continuous access to digital context.
Niv-AI – $12M, Seed round led by Glilot Capital with Grove Ventures, Arc Ventures, and Encoded Ventures (PitchBook). Orchestration layer measuring GPU power spikes to help data centers run closer to real electrical limits.
Obin AI – $7M, Seed round led by Motive Partners with Fei-Fei Li and Lukasz Kaiser (PitchBook). Agentic workforce for financial institutions running underwriting, monitoring, and risk workflows inside strict audit boundaries.
Reson8 – €5M, Pre-seed round led by Balderton Capital with NP-Hard Ventures. Speech recognition platform using small, pluggable adapters customized in real time for 20+ European languages.
Respan – $5M, Seed round led by Gradient Ventures with Y Combinator, Hat-Trick Capital, and Antigravity Capital (PitchBook). Proactive observability platform for AI agents that catches regressions and cost anomalies before escalation.
Ringtime – €1.8M, Seed round led by Volta Ventures with Syndicate One and NewSchool.vc (Crunchbase). Voice-native AI agents for blue-collar recruiting in logistics, retail, hospitality, and technical hiring.
Sequential – $3.5M, Equity round co-led by Sparkfood and Corundum Systems Biology. AI-powered discovery engine built on clinical skin microbiome datasets for personal care ingredient discovery.
VoiceBit – $2.5M, Pre-seed round led by 1984 Ventures with Berkeley SkyDeck and Tetrad VC (Crunchbase). Voice AI infrastructure giving restaurants direct ownership of their ordering channels.

Series A

Bioliberty – $10.2M in total financing including $8.2M Series A led by Scottish National Investment Bank with Archangels and Eos Advisory (Crunchbase | PitchBook). AI-powered post-acute care platform using computer vision to track functional movement during therapy sessions.
Conduit Health – $17M, Series A round led by Drive Capital (Crunchbase | PitchBook). AI-driven operating layer for insurance-covered home medical supplies with agentic authorization engine.
Corridor – $25M, Series A round at a $200M valuation led by Felicis with Conviction, Lux Capital, and Datadog as strategic backer. Agentic Coding Security Management platform embedding security controls directly into AI coding workflows.
Deeptune – $43M, Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz with 776 and Abstract Ventures (Tracxn | PitchBook). Simulation environments where AI agents practice real-world tasks before production deployment.
Edra – $30M, Series A round led by Sequoia Capital with 8VC and A* (Tracxn | PitchBook). AI agents that learn how companies operate from tickets, logs, emails, and chat histories to automate IT service management.
Foresight – $25M, Series A round led by Macquarie Capital Venture Capital with Creandum and ISAI Build (Crunchbase). AI-powered project delivery platform for large-scale infrastructure programs turning execution data into predictive control.
Gimlet Labs – $80M, Series A round led by Menlo Ventures with Factory and Eclipse (Crunchbase | PitchBook). Multi-silicon inference cloud automatically mapping AI workloads across GPUs, CPUs, and SRAM-based architectures.
Knox Systems – $25M, Series A round led by B Capital with M12, Okta Ventures, and MongoDB Ventures. AI-managed cloud platform delivering FedRAMP authorization in 90 days for government AI adoption.
Latent Health – $80M, Series A round co-led by Spark Capital and Transformation Capital (Tracxn). Clinical Reasoning Engine automating prior authorization and medication access across 45+ health systems.
Parallel – $20M, Series A round led by Index Ventures with Frst and Y Combinator. AI agents automating hospital administration including medical coding, billing, and admissions.
Rivia – $15M, Series A round led by Earlybird Venture Capital (Tracxn | PitchBook). Data engine for clinical trial intelligence structuring fragmented trial data and layering agents for monitoring.
Surf AI – $40M, Series A round led by Accel with Cyberstarts and boldstart ventures (PitchBook). Agentic operations layer for enterprise security teams coordinating remediation across identity, cloud, and security tools.

Series B

Cloaked – $375M, Series B round led by General Catalyst and Liberty City Ventures. AI-powered privacy and security platform expanding from consumer into enterprise with AI-driven call screening and breach response agents.
Oasis Security – $120M, Series B round led by Craft Ventures with Cyberstarts, Sequoia Capital, and Accel (Tracxn | PitchBook). Access-control layer for AI agents and non-human identities across enterprise infrastructure.
RoboForce – $52M, Oversubscribed funding led by YZi Labs bringing total to $67M (Crunchbase | PitchBook). General-purpose Physical AI robots for industrial work across solar, data centers, mining, shipping, and logistics.
Video Rebirth – $80M funding round including $30M extension, backed by AMD Ventures, Hyundai Motor Group, and Openspace Capital (Crunchbase | PitchBook). Industrial-grade AI video engine generating physically consistent worlds for media, interactive entertainment, and physical AI training.

Series C and beyond

QCraft – $100M, Series D round backed by Ningbo Ninghai Xingtaihe Fund, Wonderland Capital, and Liangxi Science and Innovation Industry Investment Fund (PitchBook). QPilot intelligent driving system deployed in 1M+ vehicles with robotaxi pilot launching this year.

Strategic / Growth / Other

BusRight – $30M+, Growth round led by Volition Capital (Crunchbase | PitchBook). Student transportation platform adding 24/7 AI-powered transportation agent and NFC child safety features.
GridBeyond – €12M, Equity with Samsung Ventures joining (Crunchbase | PitchBook). AI platform forecasting and optimizing distributed energy assets across arbitrage, frequency response, and capacity markets.
Halter – Growth round, led by Founders Fund at ~$2B valuation (Tracxn | PitchBook). Solar-powered smart collars creating virtual fences for cattle with remote herd monitoring and movement control.
Kewazo – Strategic investment from Schooner Capital, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Asahi Kasei bringing total to $35M (Crunchbase | PitchBook). Battery-powered lifting robots for maintenance turnarounds and capital projects at refineries and petrochemical plants.
Nebius – $4.3B, Convertible notes raise (Crunchbase). Full-stack AI cloud platform covering build, train, and deploy lifecycle with data centers and GPU capacity for frontier labs.
Spectral AI – $31.7M, Non-dilutive BARDA funding bringing total contract to $86.6M (Crunchbase | PitchBook). AI burn wound imaging system generating objective healing assessments from multispectral imaging.
Unitree Robotics – $610M, IPO filing on Shanghai Stock Exchange. Humanoid robot manufacturer with 5,500+ robots shipped and 32%+ global market share.
Zipline – $600M, Growth funding at a $7.6B valuation backed by Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and Tiger Global (Crunchbase). Autonomous drone delivery with 1.8M+ deliveries completed and U.S. volumes growing 15% week over week.

Robotics and AI News

Tech Funding News - Air Street closes $232M fund to become Europe's largest solo GP AI investor — The London-based venture firm has raised its third fund to invest in AI-first startups across North America and Europe, planning to lead early-stage rounds with investments ranging from $500K to $15M. Air Street has already backed companies like Synthesia and Wayve, and the new fund will focus on software, developer tools, AI-driven science, infrastructure, and defense technologies. Tech Funding News
Tech Funding News - 360 Capital closes €85M of €100M target for new deeptech fund — French VC 360 Capital is doubling down on deeptech with the €85 million close of its latest technology transfer fund, Poli360 2, targeting ventures emerging directly from research labs and universities. The fund is classified as an Article 8 fund under the SFDR framework and has attracted backing from the European Investment Fund, CDP Venture Capital, Italian pension funds, and major corporates like Brembo and MBDA. Tech Funding News
Tech Funding News - Cloudberry Ventures raises €50M for AI and infrastructure startups — The London-based venture firm will invest from seed to Series A across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia, with a strong emphasis on infrastructure-layer innovations spanning compute, physical systems, and financial rails. The fund has already invested in Xavveo, a Berlin startup working on 360-degree awareness systems for robotics using photonics radar. Tech Funding News
Bloomberg - Google begins testing Gemini Mac app to match ChatGPT and Claude — Google is ramping up development of a dedicated Gemini AI app for Apple's Mac computer lineup, code-named "Janus," and has begun privately sharing an early version with beta testers this week. The app will compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, which already have Mac apps, and includes a "Desktop Intelligence" feature allowing Gemini to tap into other Mac programs like the calendar to feed data into queries. Bloomberg
PR Newswire - SWI Group secures €260M for North American AI and data center expansion — Amsterdam-listed SWI Group has entered into binding agreements for a €260 million private placement to fund the acquisition of a significant stake in a US data center company. The alternative investment conglomerate, which has approximately €11 billion of assets under management, operates in Data Centers, Real Estate, Credit, and the Financial Sector across 26 offices worldwide. PR Newswire
TechCrunch - Cursor admits its new coding model was built on top of Moonshot AI's Kimi — The AI coding company acknowledged that its Composer 2 model started from Kimi 2.5, an open-source model from Chinese company Moonshot AI, with only about 25% of the compute spent on the final model coming from the base. The revelation comes as Cursor reportedly reaches $2 billion in annual recurring revenue, and raises questions about disclosure when building on top of Chinese models in the current AI "arms race" narrative. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - Amazon acquires Rivr, maker of a stair-climbing delivery robot — The Zurich-based autonomous robotics startup known for its "dog on roller skates" robot has been acquired by Amazon in a deal that signals the e-commerce giant's continued interest in doorstep delivery. Rivr had previously raised $25 million with backing from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund and Bezos Expeditions, and had launched a pilot program in Austin with Veho. TechCrunch
MiniMax - MiniMax releases M2.7 model with self-evolution capabilities — The Chinese AI company has launched M2.7, a model capable of building complex agent harnesses and completing highly elaborate productivity tasks. The model can participate in its own evolution by updating its own memory and building skills to help with reinforcement learning experiments, achieving 56.22% on SWE-Pro benchmark and handling 30-50% of research workflows autonomously. MiniMax
TechCrunch - World launches tool to verify humans behind AI shopping agents — Sam Altman's World (formerly Worldcoin) has released AgentKit, a software development tool that allows websites to verify a real human is behind an AI agent's purchasing decisions. The tool integrates with World ID and the x402 protocol developed by Coinbase and Cloudflare, aiming to provide safeguards for the growing field of agentic commerce as AI agents increasingly make purchases on behalf of users. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - Gecko Robotics lands the largest US Navy robotics deal yet — The Pittsburgh-based company has signed a five-year IDIQ deal with the U.S. Navy and GSA starting with $54 million and a $71 million ceiling to help monitor and predict maintenance needs on the Navy's fleet of ships. Gecko's robots will create detailed digital replicas of vessels to help the Navy reach its goal of 80% ship readiness by 2027, up from about 40% today. TechCrunch
Pulse 2.0 - Sands Capital raises $1.1 billion for Global Innovation Fund III — The fund, which surpassed its initial target, will focus on investing in a concentrated portfolio of approximately 10 mid- to late-stage private technology companies with the potential to become major public businesses. The strategy emphasizes long-term partnerships across sectors including artificial intelligence, industrial technology, and intelligent infrastructure, with previous investments in companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. Pulse 2.0

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