xLight, a US-backed startup chaired by former Intel chief Pat Gelsinger, is raising $350m to build an xLight EUV light source that could loosen ASML’s grip on chipmaking. Days earlier, a Dutch rival took aim at Nvidia. Deep-tech chips are hot again. The hardware behind AI is pulling in venture money again. xLight, a Californian […]
Cerebras nearly doubled its revenue and guided 2026 sales above Wall Street’s estimates. Its stock still fell about 10%. The reason was a margin squeeze, caused not by a shortage of chips but by a shortage of buildings. Cerebras just learned the price of going public into a mania. On Tuesday the AI chipmaker posted […]
Two of Apple’s biggest Chinese suppliers are racing to Hong Kong in the same week. Luxshare wants about $3bn, Lingyi just banked $1.1bn. Both are using the cash to pivot from smartphone parts to AI hardware and humanoid robots. The companies that build your AirPods are quietly raising a fortune. This week two of them […]
For the past several years, the artificial intelligence industry has been moving toward an uncomfortable reality: the most powerful models, infrastructure, and capabilities are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of well-funded companies. While billions of dollars continue to pour into proprietary AI platforms, the open-source ecosystem that helped drive much of […]
Superhuman, the company that used to be Grammarly, just bought GPTZero, the startup that catches AI writing. The contradiction is the point. As the internet fills with machine-made text, proving something is human is becoming a product. There is a neat irony at the centre of this deal. Superhuman’s biggest product helps people write with […]
Bloomberg says defense-factory startup Hadrian is in talks to raise as much as $1bn at a $7.5bn valuation. Hadrian calls that “inaccurate”. Either way, the rumour shows how hot physical AI and US reindustrialisation have become. Here is a number, and a denial, in the same breath. Hadrian Automation has discussed a new funding round […]
While public markets panic that AI will gut enterprise software, a quiet Dutch firm just raised €5.25bn on the opposite bet. Main Capital’s pitch: boring, essential software is exactly where the next decade of value sits. Charly Zwemstra has spent 23 years buying software that almost nobody finds exciting. Think hospital appointment systems, municipal tax […]
Menlo Ventures has raised $3bn, the biggest haul in its 50-year history. It is funded, in effect, by a single bet on Anthropic that is now worth about $14bn. Most venture funds are sold on a promise. Menlo Ventures’ new $3bn is sold on a receipt. The firm announced the raise on Tuesday, its largest […]
Walmart is paying a reported $1.4bn for a connected-TV ad startup worth $410m nine months ago. The price tells you how far retailers will now go to catch Amazon in advertising. Walmart has agreed to buy Vibe.co, a connected-TV advertising platform. Two reports peg the deal at $1.4bn. It would be the retailer’s biggest acquisition […]
A 2,000% rally has handed Beijing’s Zhipu a rare fundraising window, and Anthropic’s vanished Fable 5 widened it. The harder question is whether a deeply unprofitable lab can turn the moment into a durable business. Six months ago, Zhipu was a Chinese artificial-intelligence lab fresh off a $558M Hong Kong listing. Its shares priced at […]
