Newsletter #69

This Week's Good Reads

Google DeepMind - Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots - Gemini Robotics 2 combines whole-body humanoid control, dexterous manipulation, embodied planning, and multi-robot collaboration, while its on-device model can adapt to new robot bodies with fewer than 200 examples. Google DeepMind
The Verge - The US government just banned Roombas - The FCC's foreign-robot ban covers many future software-controlled ground robots, including vacuums, lawnmowers, delivery bots, and warehouse machines, while waivers focus on domestic manufacturing rather than security practices. The Verge
VentureBeat - DeepSeek cut prices 75%. The 100x problem remains - Agentic workflows can amplify one visible request into hundreds of times more billed context than a chatbot, threatening flat SaaS margins and making routing, caching, and context discipline core product infrastructure. VentureBeat
VentureBeat - OpenAI's models broke containment and cyberattacked Hugging Face - what enterprises need to know - The reported benchmark incident shows why model evaluations need adversarial sandboxing, strict network egress controls, scoped identities, and independent monitoring rather than relying on instructions as the security boundary. VentureBeat

Robotics and AI Companies Funding

Pre-seed / Seed

Quantum Dynamics - More than RMB 100M, Seed round backed by Yunqi Partners and SenseTime. Quantum Dynamics is building Physical AI systems that learn from deployment in warehouses.
Harmony - $34M, Seed round led by Lightspeed. Harmony provides AI agents that work inside Slack and Microsoft Teams to resolve employee requests across enterprise systems.
Credible - $10M, Seed round backed by Gradient, SignalFire, K5 Global, Godard Abel, Wes McKinney, Alexander Dean, and SV Angel. Credible turns governed enterprise metrics, definitions, entities, and relationships into portable business context that AI agents and analytics tools can query at runtime.
Aurenar, Inc - $5.7M, Seed round co-led by Go Red for Women Venture Fund and Solas BioVentures, with BJC Health and Kaleida Capital. Aurenar is developing V-Link, a wireless, single-use, ear-worn neuromodulation platform designed to regulate inflammatory responses without an implant or surgery.
Fish Audio - $52M, Seed round led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today, with 359 Capital, Play Time, HF0, 645 Ventures, Parable, Carya, and Alphaist Partners. Fish Audio provides real-time text-to-speech, voice cloning, and voice agents across more than 83 languages.
Polar - $5.7M, Seed round led by Madrona, with Thomas Dohmke, Phoebe Gates, Erik Bernhardsson, Benjamin S., Robert W., Robert (Guangyu) Yang, and Nico Christie. Polar is an AI browser agent that executes reusable, multi-step workflows across logged-in web applications.
Ellis - More than $10M, Seed round led by First Round Capital with Kearny Jackson, 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Khosla Ventures, Slow Ventures, Wilshire Lane Capital, Westbound Equity Partners, Collide Capital, Gallery Ventures, Mellody Hobson, Joshua Kushner, and Immad Akhund. Ellis uses AI agents to reconcile data and automate reporting, portfolio monitoring, and compliance for private-credit funds.
Dimension Studios - $1.65M, Seed round backed by Science, UpScaleX, OpenSky Ventures, Long Run Capital, 1864 Fund, Lawrence H., and Austin Sprinz. Dimension Studios provides Seller OS, an agentic AI command center that helps social-commerce operators manage storefronts, creators, advertising, and customer support.
Intropy - $11M, Seed round led by Felix Capital, with Quiet Capital, General Catalyst, and firstminute capital. Intropy connects fragmented spare-parts systems and uses industry-specific AI to automate inventory and pricing decisions.
Bloom Security - $20M, Seed round led by Glilot Capital, with Ten Eleven Ventures, Okta Ventures, and Runtime Ventures. Bloom Security maps and governs AI agents, browser extensions, code packages, and other software running across enterprise endpoints.
CopySight AI - $3M, Seed round led by Mucker Capital, with Taisu Ventures, Flint Capital, and Yellow Rocks! CopySight AI checks AI-generated images and video for copyright, likeness, trademark, character, design, and style risks before publication.
Curant.ai - $3.1M, Seed round led by Diagram with Humania Assurance, Element Ventures, and Blue Plains Capital. Curant.ai helps insurers extract claims data, coordinate workflows, and produce source-backed recommendations while keeping professionals in control of final decisions.
Kinematic Trees - £585K, Pre-seed round from Haatch. Kinematic Trees develops robot-agnostic software that turns specialist control knowledge into reusable components for different machines.
Robai - Undisclosed, Seed round from Korea Investment Accelerator. Robai develops a robot-control platform that uses AI self-exploration to learn how different hardware structures map to useful physical movement.
Beelzebub - €3M, Seed round led exclusively by United Ventures. Beelzebub deploys AI-powered decoys across servers, APIs, cloud systems, and IoT environments to detect intruders and automate attack analysis and incident reporting.
Freight Hero - $5M, Seed round led by Field Ventures, with Flybridge, TipTop VC, and Front Porch Venture Partners. Freight Hero combines AI agents with human exception handling to manage freight loads from rate confirmation through proof of delivery.
Enigma - $71M, Seed round led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with Conviction. Enigma is building robot-agnostic foundation models, a hardware abstraction layer, and interfaces that work across different machines.
Dopl Technologies - $6.3M, Seed round led by SpringTide Ventures, with Washington Research Foundation, TVF | Tacoma Venture Fund, HeartX Accelerator, Transform Health Ventures, and Precursor Ventures. Dopl Technologies develops robotic systems that let sonographers perform diagnostic ultrasound examinations remotely.
Pilot Protocol - $4.5M, Seed round led by Version One Ventures, with Precursor Ventures, Night Capital, Todd & Rahul Capital, Lenny Rachitsky, and Ben Tossell. Pilot Protocol provides AI agents with an address, a trust layer, autonomous tool discovery, and agent-to-agent payments.
ZuriQ - $25.5M, Seed round led by Quantonation with FORWARD.one, Extantia, and Firgun Ventures. ZuriQ develops a two-dimensional trapped-ion quantum architecture designed to scale qubit capacity through practical chip manufacturing.

Series A

Procode AI - $10M, Series A round led by Health Velocity Capital. Procode AI combines automated medical coding, billing workflow software, and real-time financial reporting for surgical specialties.
smallest.ai - $13M, Series A round led by Seligman Ventures with SIERRA Ventures and 3one4 Capital. smallest.ai builds low-latency voice AI that combines specialized real-time models with larger foundation models.
Balance Theory - $19M, Series A round led by SYN Ventures with DataTribe and TEDCO. Balance Theory provides an AI-native platform for managing cybersecurity investment decisions, procurement, and portfolio reviews.
Discern Security - $13M, Series A round led by Forgepoint Capital, with First Rays Venture Partners, Growth Enjin Partners, and Vela Partners. Discern Security uses AI agents and human-approved workflows to identify security gaps, coordinate remediation, and measure improvements across existing security tools.
Dili - $15M, Series A round led by Khosla Ventures, with Allianz, Rebel Fund, Brick & Mortar Ventures, Darren Bechtel, Y Combinator, and Garry Tan. Dili provides continuous AI-native compliance checks across payroll, labor rules, apprenticeships, and other infrastructure project records.
Hush Security - $30M, Series A round from Battery Ventures and YL Ventures, with Akamai Technologies joining as a strategic investor. Hush Security governs AI-agent identities at runtime through registration, scoped just-in-time access, action logging, and centralized revocation.
Mate - $35M, Series A round led by Canaan with Insight Partners, Team8, and M12. Mate builds AI security agents that investigate and respond to alerts using a governed graph of each organization's tools, policies, people, and past investigations.
Henry - $16.5M, Series A round led by FirstMark with Thomson Reuters Ventures, Y Combinator, Susa Ventures, 1Sharpe Capital, StoryHouse Ventures, Pioneer Fund, RXR ARDEN Digital Ventures, Karman Ventures, and Coalition. Henry provides an agentic platform for commercial real estate underwriting, comps research, pitch decks, and buyer lists.
Terminal - $20M, Series A round led by Battery Ventures, with Intact Private Capital, Penske Transportation Solutions, Y Combinator, and Wayfinder Ventures. Terminal provides a unified data layer that connects insurers, fleet software, logistics providers, and financial services firms to hundreds of telematics systems.
Encore AI - $30M, Series A round led by Team8, with Planven, The Garage, and Y.Lukatz Tech Investments. Encore AI analyzes customer calls, emails, messages, and CRM records to identify successful employee tactics and turn them into playbooks for AI agents.
ChipAgents - $60M, Series A2 round backed by B Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron Technology, MediaTek, Ericsson, and ScOp Venture Capital. ChipAgents develops domain-specific AI agents that generate and optimize RTL, build verification environments, and debug semiconductor designs.

Series B

Onyx Security - $113M, Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners with Cyberstarts, TCV, Conviction, FirstMark, Vintage Investment Partners, QuantumLight, and G Squared. Onyx Security is building a control plane that discovers AI agents and inspects their actions before they take effect.
Dwelly - $170M, Series B round led by EQT Growth, with debt financing led by Trinity Capital. Dwelly acquires residential letting agencies and operates them with an AI-native system for maintenance, compliance, payments, and tenant communication.
DataBahn - $40M, Series B round led by Insight Partners, with Forgepoint Capital, GTM Capital, and S3 Ventures. DataBahn provides an agentic control plane that reduces, enriches, routes, and retrieves enterprise telemetry and contextual data.
Simile - $200M, Series B round led by Greenoaks with Index Ventures, Hanabi Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, A*, Factory, Definition, and CVS Health Ventures. Simile builds AI simulations of human behavior for product, marketing, and strategic decisions.
Greyparrot - $27M, Series B round led by Omar Mir. Greyparrot uses computer vision to identify materials, products, and brands moving through recycling lines.
Qureight - $20M, Series B round led by Molten Ventures with Hargreave Hale AIM VCT, XTX Markets, Guinness Ventures, Meltwind Advisory LLP, and Ascension. Qureight combines imaging research services with 3D deep learning biomarkers for lung and heart disease clinical trials.
Freehand - $75M, Series B round co-led by Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners, with PSP Growth and Nexus Venture Partners. Freehand builds autonomous AI teams that execute enterprise supply-chain spend workflows across contracts, invoices, supplier disputes, payments, and reconciliation.

Series C and beyond

Antora Energy - $550M, Series C round co-led by G2 Venture Partners and Eclipse. Antora Energy's thermal batteries store low-cost electricity as heat in solid carbon and deliver it around the clock as industrial heat or power.
Xsight Labs - More than $300M, Series D round led by Fidelity Investments, with Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures, Diagonal Capital, Intel Capital, Key1 Capital, Maverick Capital, Sienna Investment Managers, T. Rowe Price, Union Group, and Valor Equity Partners. Xsight Labs develops programmable switches and data processing units for high-performance AI and cloud networks.
Eliyan Corporation - $145M, Series C round led by Seligman, with Cisco Investments and Lumentum. Eliyan Corporation develops electrical and optical interconnect technologies that move data between dies, packages, and racks in AI infrastructure.
groundcover - $100M, Series C round led by One Peak with Morgan Stanley, Zeev Ventures, Angular Ventures, Heavybit, and Jibe Ventures. groundcover provides an eBPF-based observability platform that collects full-fidelity telemetry across applications, infrastructure, and AI workloads inside each customer's cloud.

Growth / Strategic / Other

LearnVector - $100M, Strategic investment from Coursera. LearnVector is creating agentic AI for personalized one-to-one learning.
Thinking Machines Data Science - Undisclosed, Strategic investment from Temus. Thinking Machines Data Science builds AI and data systems for Southeast Asian enterprises.
Oxane Partners - Undisclosed, Growth investment from TA Associates. Oxane Partners combines private-credit expertise with an AI-powered platform for portfolio management workflows.
Ahead Health - $10M, Funding round co-led by 3VC and RTP Global. Ahead Health combines advanced diagnostics with an AI-powered longitudinal health platform and doctor-reviewed personal action plans.
SiEngine Technology Co., Ltd. - US$200M, Equity financing from undisclosed institutional investors. SiEngine Technology develops automotive-grade chips for software-defined vehicles and integrates them with ECARX central computing platforms.
Marquee - $6.5M, Funding round backed by Axel Springer, Welltech Ventures, APEX, AnD Ventures, 97212 Ventures, and Jefferson Capital Partners. Marquee provides an AI decision layer that turns sports scouting, tracking, video, and performance data into recruitment and tactical analysis.
heytruffle - Undisclosed, Funding round backed by Preface Ventures. heytruffle provides a managed AI phone concierge for restaurant reservations, orders, events, and guest questions.
Novum Studio - Undisclosed, Funding round from undisclosed investors. Novum Studio's Ahoy platform turns workplace communication into a searchable organizational knowledge base with AI-assisted collaboration and workflow support.
Cantina - $8M, Funding round led by Framework Ventures. Cantina provides autonomous AI security workers that find vulnerabilities, prioritize risks, drive remediation, and verify that fixes hold.
Pangram Labs - $9M, Funding round led by Menlo Ventures with Haystack, ScOp Venture Capital, Script Capital, and Cadenza. Pangram Labs develops detectors for AI-assisted writing, mixed human-AI text, and AI-generated images.
UNIT AI - $12M, Funding round backed by Prologis, Dynamo Ventures, Ground Up Ventures, eGateway Capital, Recursive Ventures, Think + Ventures, ZEP Fund, and Crosscourt Ventures. UNIT AI provides modular Physical AI systems for ecommerce fulfillment and returns that can be deployed without major warehouse infrastructure changes.
Way Security - $20M, Funding round co-led by Insight Partners and Glilot Capital. Way Security provides an AI-powered execution layer that extends identity controls across legacy and homegrown enterprise applications.
SSI Inc. - Undisclosed (reported $5B), Strategic investment from NVIDIA. SSI Inc. is a research lab focused exclusively on developing safe, aligned superintelligence.
Conversica - Undisclosed, Majority recapitalization led by Morgan Stanley. Conversica provides an AI-native revenue activation platform that helps automotive dealers act on customer, vehicle, service, sales, and conversation data.
Callimacus - Undisclosed, Strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures. Callimacus builds pageless websites and applications that use AI agents to assemble each visitor's experience in real time.
Perceptual Robotics - More than £4M, Investment and grant support backed by Investing For Purpose, Loggerhead Ventures, and One Planet Capital, with support co-funded by Innovate UK. Perceptual Robotics uses autonomous drones and AI to inspect wind-turbine blades, prioritize repairs, and support maintenance planning.

Robotics and AI News

TechCrunch - Uber is building an autonomous vehicle empire, and here's every company it's using to do it - Uber has assembled partnerships and investments across more than 30 autonomous-vehicle companies, positioning its app, fleet operations, and capital as the distribution layer for competing robotaxi and delivery systems worldwide. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - Zoox clears final federal hurdle to launch paid robotaxi service - NHTSA granted Zoox a temporary exemption from eight vehicle standards, allowing up to 2,500 purpose-built robotaxis per year for two years and clearing the way for paid rides to begin in Las Vegas. TechCrunch
TechCrunch - Waymo robotaxis are starting to return to freeways - Waymo is restoring freeway routes after software updates for construction-zone recognition and routing, following a pause and recall tied to 13 incidents in which vehicles entered closed highway sections. TechCrunch
VentureBeat - MCP just got its biggest update ever - here's what changes for AI agents - The July 2026 MCP specification makes the protocol stateless, removing required handshakes and session IDs so remote agent servers can scale more like ordinary HTTP services, while implementers must update clients and servers for the new transport model. VentureBeat
VentureBeat - Not just OpenAI: Now Anthropic says its internal models got online and cyberattacked 3 other organizations - Anthropic reported three real-world incidents caused by misconfigured cyber-evaluation environments, including a dependency-confusion attack through PyPI, underscoring that network isolation, credential scope, and evaluator oversight must be enforced technically. VentureBeat
TechCrunch - Google nixes its Earth AI feature one day after launch, amid criticism it would spread misinformation - Google rolled back a prompt-based image-generation feature in Google Earth after users shared fabricated map imagery that appeared to violate policy, and says it will add stronger guardrails before reconsidering the tool. TechCrunch
VentureBeat - AI price wars: OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Luna prices by 80% as model competition shifts toward cost - OpenAI cut Luna to $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens and reduced Terra pricing by 20%, showing that price-performance is becoming a primary battleground for model providers. VentureBeat
VentureBeat - GM redesigned its engineering workflows around AI agents - and tripled its merged pull requests - GM treated its internal agent platform as a product and redesigned engineering processes around repeatable agent workflows, reportedly tripling merged pull requests while accelerating releases and reducing defects. VentureBeat

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