🚀 Zipline just raised $600M for drone delivery at a $7.6B valuation, Ricursive Intelligence hit $4B valuation two months after launch, and Apple's buying its way into the AI audio race. Meanwhile, the IPO window is wide open and M&A activity is heating up.
Mega funding rounds and AI lab breakaways
Ricursive Intelligence lands $300M Series A at $4B valuation less than two months after launch
Ricursive Intelligence raised $300 million in a Series A round of funding at a $4 billion valuation.
Lightspeed Venture Partners led the latest round, which included participation from DST Global, NVentures (Nvidia's venture capital arm), Felicis Ventures, 49 Palms, Radical Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Sequoia led Ricursive's seed financing.
What this signals: The pattern is clear: pedigreed AI lab founders can raise hundreds of millions before shipping a product. Going from $35M seed to $300M Series A in two months shows investors are betting on team credentials over traction.
Kirill Lazarev, CEO and Founder at Lazarev.agency: "Ricursive's rapid valuation jump from $750M to $4B in two months shows investors are racing to lock in AI lab teams. But frontier AI labs need exceptional product design to translate research breakthroughs into tools people actually want to use."
9 more funding rounds: a big week for AI and drone delivery
- Zipline, $600M, drones: Drone delivery unicorn Zipline says it closed on over $600 million at a $7.6 billion valuation from investors including Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners and Tiger Global. South San Francisco, California-based Zipline also says it expects to expand into at least four new states this year, with initial plans to begin service in Houston and Phoenix.
- Baseten, $300M, AI infrastructure: AI infrastructure startup Baseten reportedly raised $300 million with backing from IVP, CapitalG and Nvidia. The financing set a $5 billion valuation for the 7-year-old, San Francisco-based company.
- OpenEvidence, $250M, medical AI: OpenEvidence, an AI platform for doctors, announced that it picked up $250 million in a Series D funding round that doubled its valuation to $12 billion. Thrive Capital and DST co-led the round, which marks the fourth fundraise for the Miami-based startup in less than a year.
- Noveon Magnetics, $215M, rare earth magnets: San Marcos, Texas-based Noveon Magnetics, a manufacturer of sintered rare earth permanent magnets, says it secured $215 million in Series C funding, including $200 million from One Investment Management. The money will go toward expanding the company's rare earth magnet manufacturing capacity.
- Upscale AI, $200M, AI infrastructure: AI networking infrastructure startup Upscale AI landed $200 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, Premji Invest and Xora Innovation. The financing set a valuation of more than $1 billion for the Santa Clara, California-based company, which was founded less than two years ago.
- Preply, $150M, online tutoring: Language learning marketplace Preply raised $150 million in Series D funding led by WestCap. The financing reportedly sets a $1.2 billion valuation for the 14-year-old, Brookline, Massachusetts-based company.
- Inferact, $150M, AI inference: Inferact, a startup founded by creators and maintainers of open-source LLM inference engine vLLM, announced its launch along with $150 million in initial funding. Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners led the financing, which set an $800 million valuation for the company.
- Claroty, $150M, cybersecurity: Security provider Claroty picked up $150 million in Series F funding led by Golub Growth. The 11-year-old company, founded in Israel and now headquartered in New York, has raised close to $900 million in equity funding to date.
- Zanskar, $115M, geothermal energy: Salt Lake City-based Zanskar, a startup applying AI to geothermal exploration, raised $115 million in Series C funding led by Spring Lane Capital and joined by a long list of new and existing investors.
Northwood Space raises $100M Series B and lands $50M government contract as space tech funding rockets higher
Northwood Space raised $100 million in a Series B funding round.
Washington Harbour Partners led the financing, which was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and included participation from Alpine Space Ventures, Founders Fund, Balerion Space Ventures, Fulcrum, 137 Ventures and others.
The latest round is the Torrance, California-based startup's second in just over nine months, after it raised a $30 million Series A last April. It has now raised a total of over $136 million since its 2023 inception.
Oleksandr Koshytskyi, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency: "Space tech platforms need interfaces that handle massive data streams from thousands of satellites. Ground station operators need real-time visibility into satellite health, communication windows, and bandwidth allocation, all in dashboards that make split-second decisions clear."
Startup acquisition spree: the race for niche AI expertise heats up
Apple buys Israeli startup Q.ai as the audio AI race heats up
Apple, Meta, and Google are locked in a fierce battle to lead the next wave of AI, and they've recently increased their focus on hardware. With its latest acquisition of the AI startup Q.ai, Apple aims to gain an edge, particularly in the audio sector.
As first reported by Reuters, Apple has acquired Q.ai, an Israeli startup specializing in imaging and machine learning, particularly technologies that enable devices to interpret whispered speech and enhance audio in noisy environments. Apple has been adding new AI features to its AirPods, including the live translation capability introduced last year.
Kirill Lazarev, CEO and Founder at Lazarev.agency: "Apple's Q.ai acquisition shows AI is moving into ambient computing. Whisper detection and audio enhancement in AirPods means devices understand context without explicit commands."
AI data labeler Handshake buys Cleanlab, an acquisition target of multiple others
AI data-labeling startup Handshake has acquired Cleanlab. The deal's purpose is primarily to acquire talent, aka an acqui-hire, adding nine key Cleanlab employees to Handshake's research organization. This includes the startup's co-founders, who earned their PhDs in computer science from MIT: Curtis Northcutt, Jonas Mueller, and Anish Athalye.
Cleanlab has raised a total of $30 million from investors, including Menlo Ventures, TQ Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Databricks Ventures. At its peak, the startup had more than 30 employees.
Why acqui-hires matter: AI companies need talent more than technology. Handshake acquiring Cleanlab's MIT PhD founders shows that expertise in data quality is critical as AI models demand cleaner training data.
Open source strikes back, startups building big models
Tiny startup Arcee AI built a 400B-parameter open source LLM from scratch to beat Meta's Llama
According to TechCrunch, Arcee AI released a truly and permanently open (Apache license) general-purpose, foundation model called Trinity, and Arcee claims that at 400B parameters, it is among the largest open source foundation models ever trained and released by a U.S. company.
Arcee says Trinity compares to Meta's Llama 4 Maverick 400B, and Z.ai's GLM-4.5, a high-performing open source model from China's Tsinghua University, according to benchmark tests conducted using base models (very little post-training).
What this proves: Small teams can compete with Big Tech on model performance. Open source models with Apache licenses mean companies can build without vendor lock-in or usage restrictions.
Unexpected partnerships: fashion meets ride-sharing
Fashion rental app By Rotation and Uber partner to help deliver ski clothing
According to Uber's official release, By Rotation, one of the U.K.'s most popular peer-to-peer fashion rental platforms, announced on Wednesday a partnership with the ride-sharing app Uber.
From now until May 31, By Rotation users in the U.K. can rent outfits from others in their neighborhood and have them delivered via Uber within 60 minutes at a 10% discount. Though the discount applies to all users, the service is geared toward those renting ski gear. By Rotation said that 30% of the ski renters on its platform look for same-day pickup, and this partnership seeks to alleviate the annoyance of renting bulky, expensive ski gear and having to lug it around.
Why this works: Peer-to-peer rental platforms need logistics. Uber's existing driver network solves last-mile delivery for bulky items like ski gear. Same-day delivery within 60 minutes makes rental competitive with ownership.
Danylo Dubrovsky, Senior UX/UI designer at Lazarev.agency: "By Rotation's Uber partnership shows that rental platforms need seamless logistics. Users renting ski gear want one-tap delivery without coordinating pickup times. The UX challenge is making delivery tracking feel as smooth as ordering a ride, showing real-time driver location and estimated arrival."
6 trends in tech and startups we're watching in 2026 so far
The venture landscape is shifting fast. IPO momentum is building, M&A is accelerating, and AI funding is concentrating into fewer hands. Crunchbase shares top trends to watch out for.
1. IPO window stays open for AI and profitable companies
At least 23 U.S.-based companies listed above $1 billion in 2025 compared to nine in 2024, with total valuations doubling to $125 billion. Experts expect this momentum to continue in 2026, particularly for profitable companies with strong AI stories.
Companies to watch: Fintech unicorns like Plaid and Revolut, and AI companies including OpenAI, Databricks and Cohere.
Big names like SpaceX or OpenAI going public would prop the window open. Run-of-the-mill enterprise SaaS IPOs won't be enough to fuel a sustained boom.
2. M&A activity accelerates
Around 2,300 M&A deals closed for venture-backed startups last year, and dealmaking is expected to continue at a steady pace. Big corporates are snapping up seed/Series A AI startups for talent (acqui-hires under 100 employees landing $100M+ exits), while 3-6 year old unicorns that stalled on IPO plans are finally selling for liquidity.
3. Venture funding concentrates in AI, robotics, and defense tech
Investors predict 10-25% year-over-year funding increases, with capital flowing to AI infrastructure, robotics, and defense tech at the expense of climate tech, crypto, and undifferentiated vertical AI.
Oleksandr Koshytskyi, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency: "Vertical AI providers must be deeply embedded into industry workflows. Surface-level integrations won't cut it when foundation models can handle repetitive tasks. The design challenge is creating AI tools that feel native to industry-specific workflows."
4. Capital concentration raises AI bubble fears
Five companies: OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Project Prometheus and xAI, raised $84 billion in 2025, representing 20% of all venture funding. Last year also set records: OpenAI's $40B round (largest ever), SpaceX's $800B valuation (highest ever), and Wiz's $32B acquisition by Google (largest venture-backed exit).
Kirill Lazarev, CEO and Founder at Lazarev.agency: "Capital concentration creates a winner-take-most dynamic, but massive funding doesn't guarantee product-market fit. Companies with $5B+ war chests still need to build products users love. Winners will combine capital advantages with exceptional design and user experience."
5. AI-driven layoffs continue
Around 55,000 U.S. layoffs in 2025 cited AI as a factor, with companies like Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon cutting customer service and knowledge work roles. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff explained reducing headcount from 9,000 to 5,000 "because I need less heads." Expect more companies to replace human workers with AI substitutes as cost-cutting pressures mount in 2026.
6. Fintech rebounds with AI at the center
Fintech funding jumped 27% year-over-year to $51.8 billion in 2025. VCs expect growth to continue, concentrating in pre-IPO companies and startups adding AI value. Hot areas: stablecoins, agentic payments (AI making financial decisions), and AI-native tools.
Oleksandr Koshytskyi, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency: "Fintech's 27% funding increase shows the sector is back. But AI-native fintech tools need to feel trustworthy. Users won't let AI agents make payments or investment decisions unless interfaces clearly explain reasoning and give users control to override decisions."
What's coming next week
More mega-rounds for AI startups with pedigreed founders, continued shift from cloud to on-device AI as infrastructure costs mount, IPO filings from fintech unicorns, and probably another unicorn video or coding AI tool.
We'll keep tracking where AI meets real-world business models and we can help you build the next newsworthy project with:
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