Venture capital

Mercor raises $750M at $20B valuation to take AI agent evaluation to enterprises (opens siliconangle.com)

Mercor supplies human experts to train and evaluate AI models, drawing on a network of more than 5 million domain experts.

Anthropic sets IPO price range of $70 to $78 per share to reach an implied valuation of $1.404 trillion (opens techcrunch.com)

The range of $70 to $78 per share implies up to $1.404T fully diluted; SiliconANGLE puts the fundraising goal at $64B.

Coframe, which uses AI to make websites that test and personalize themselves for each visitor, raised a $25M Series A, bringing its total funding to $35M (opens businessinsider.com)

Vinod Khosla is doubling down on the bet that one-size-fits-all websites are numbered.

Proximal Ventures raises debut fund to back startups bringing AI to drug development (opens techcrunch.com)

Former SignalFire investor Sahir Raoof's first fund targets AI in pharma.

Investing in General Translation (opens a16z.news)

a16z's own announcement that it is leading General Translation's Series A.

Graphon Labs raises $35m to give AI agents a memory that lasts (opens thenextweb.com)

Graphon builds memory for AI agents by mapping connections across docs, videos and images; RRE led.

PitchBook opens its platform to startups for free and debuts Origin deal sourcing service (opens siliconangle.com)

Startups get PitchBook free in exchange for quarterly financials and milestones, which feed the new PitchBook Origin deal-sourcing service for investors.

AI Boyfriends, Aztecs, Chocolate, & Microchips (opens sajithpai.substack.com)

Sajith Pai's irregular newsletter #46 on India's startup and consumer landscape.

Mavria raised $130M across pre-seed and seed rounds at a $1B valuation led by Paradigm (opens wsj.com)

Mavria plans modular data centers that can be shipped by truck, per the Wall Street Journal.

Nominal raises $240M at $3B, tripling its value since March (opens thenextweb.com)

Lightspeed led and Insight co-led; TechCrunch notes Nominal claims Anduril as a major customer and that the valuation tripled in eight months.

I'm not convinced the AI bubble exists (opens matteoraso.github.io)

What Frontier Labs Buy: A Data Deep Dive with Handshake AI — Garrett Lord & Team (opens latent.space)

Handshake went from launch to $1B in a year selling specialized data to frontier labs; examples across finance, bio and alignment.

ChinAI #381: China’s Venture Capital Market is Defying Common Sense (opens chinai.substack.com)

A sobering take from a long-time observer of China’s VC industry

Sequoia partners reportedly blindsided when Roelof Botha joined SpaceX board (opens techcrunch.com)

A new report claims Sequoia's recent changes undo the legacy of the firm's former steward.

When Does the US Become a Net Importer of Tokens? (opens tomtunguz.com)

US AI demand grows from 66gw in 2027 while tokens per watt compound 2.9x a year, so the grid only binds if token demand outruns efficiency. Break-even real token growth is ~2.5x a year with no cancellations.

OpenAI raises $11B at a $1.25T valuation (opens 247wallst.com)

The report says OpenAI raised $11 billion at a $1.25 trillion valuation, below the $1.4 trillion it had sought.

How Sequoia's Alfred Lin and Pat Grady erased Roelof Botha's legacy, halving GPs and unwinding his fund (opens ft.com)

The FT reports Sequoia closed its London office and permanent-capital fund and halved its GPs, and that Botha joined SpaceX's board without telling his partners.

Excluding Anthropic's IPO, AI companies sold or priced $300B+ of stock in 2026, with ~$100B more on tap (opens theinformation.com)

The Information tallies more than $300 billion of AI stock sold or priced this year, with about $100 billion more coming, and asks how much the market can absorb.

He arrested a hacker, then spent 18 months clearing his own name. Now he’s a cybersecurity VC. (opens techcrunch.com)

Stephen Ward, a former Secret Service agent and Home Depot CISO, is preparing a second fund of roughly $250 million.

Deep Dive: Anthropic S-1 Myths and Mythos — Jamin Ball, Altimeter (opens youtube.com)

Altimeter's Jamin Ball walks through the roadshow, the Thanksgiving window and what investors would need to believe about Claude.

Sequoia shutting down its Scouts program marks the end of an era (opens techcrunch.com)

Sequoia pioneered the scouts model and many VC firms followed suit, but a consensus now seems to be forming that the model has reached limits in its current form.

The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: AI, Defense And Space Tech Lead For Large Rounds (opens news.crunchbase.com)

Crunchbase's weekly roundup of the largest rounds; Shield AI's $2B led the week.

General Catalyst Tops Lead Investors For October In Busy Month For US Startup Dealmaking (opens news.crunchbase.com)

October was a busy month for U.S. startup funding, led by well-known venture investors with a healthy appetite for big deals. We take a look at active investor rankings across three categories: lead deal count, largest lead investments and total venture rounds.

Defense in Depth, Rebuilt for Machine Speed (opens a16z.news)

Six generational opportunities we see

Nasdaq Sinks 5% as Investors Retreat from AI Trade After Election (opens wsj.com)

Sources: Thinking Machines Lab is raising $5B led by Accel at a $40B pre-money valuation (opens businessinsider.com)

Business Insider reports Accel is leading a $5B round at a $40B pre-money valuation, more than tripling the lab's last public valuation; it debuted Inkling 2 Small the same day.

Sources: major investors are increasingly skeptical Anthropic's IPO can achieve a $1.5T valuation after a market selloff (opens wsj.com)

After the post-election tech selloff, investors told the WSJ Anthropic may need a significantly lower valuation, one saying closer to $1T.

The Nasdaq 100 drops 6%, losing a record $2.3T in value, and the Philadelphia chip index plunges 12%, on concerns over the AI trade after Democrats won Congress (opens bloomberg.com)

Tech stocks fell the most since 2020 as investors exited the AI trade after the election.

Sources: cloud security startup Cyera is planning to raise around $800M in a round led by Cyberstarts at a $20B valuation, up from $12B in June (opens theinformation.com)

The Information reports a raise at a $20B valuation, up from $12B in June.

The ex-Secret Service agent who flipped a hacker is now raising a second $250M cybersecurity fund (opens techcrunch.com)

Stephen Ward, a former Secret Service agent and Home Depot CISO, is preparing a second fund of roughly $250 million for Brightmind Partners.

The Exploit Was the Bottleneck (opens a16z.news)

What 23 Years of Data Say About AI and the Patch Gap

Most Venture Capital Is Going To Companies That Are Founded Or Led By Billionaires (opens news.crunchbase.com)

Crunchbase counts more than $260B raised in 2026 by seven companies founded or led by men who are already billionaires.

Sequoia hits rewind, undoing 20 years of expansion (opens techcrunch.com)

Sequoia is consolidating into a smaller Bay Area-centered firm, shutting programs and offices from its 20-year expansion while announcing about $10B in new funds.

AI inference startup Fal doubles its valuation to $16B as demand surges (opens techcrunch.com)

Fal hosts image, video and audio AI models for developers; the new valuation is double its April value. Bessemer led the round, and Nvidia and T. Rowe Price also invested.

Traversal, which provides AI agents for site reliability engineering, raised $120M co-led by Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, and Khosla at a $1B valuation (opens forbes.com)

Traversal's agents help companies such as American Express and Pepsi troubleshoot site outages.

Ted Schlein’s Ballistic Ventures seeks $490M for new funds amid AI-driven cybersecurity boom (opens techcrunch.com)

Ballistic Ventures is seeking $360 million for a new flagship fund and $130 million for a separate investment vehicle.

AI cloud startup Applied Compute raises $350M after reaching key revenue milestone (opens siliconangle.com)

Applied Compute, an AI infrastructure provider, raised at a $3.25 billion valuation after reaching a revenue milestone.

China’s Largest Startup Deal Ever Lifts Global Venture Funding To $59B In October (opens news.crunchbase.com)

Crunchbase counts $59 billion of global venture funding in October, up 45% from a year earlier, largely because of DeepSeek's record $15.9 billion round.

Yvonne Bajela is bringing $17M in fresh capital to Europe’s startup scene (opens techcrunch.com)

Yvonne Bajela's Evertrue Capital announced a $17M debut fund to back early-stage AI and fintech startups in Europe.

What iPhone Packaging Reveals About the Robotics Opportunity (opens youtube.com)

Tutor Intelligence CEO Josh Gruenstein tells a16z's Martin Casado and Raghu Raghuram that robotics for factories and warehouses is a systems problem spanning AI, hardware, manufacturing and the work itself.