Search: “Valor Equity Partners”

Crusoe reportedly raises $3B at a $30B valuation

AI data center developer Crusoe raised $3 billion at a $30 billion valuation, plus a $13 billion five-year GPU contract with Jane Street.

Crusoe, which builds hyperscale data centers for customers including Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, raised a $3 billion round at a $30 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported. The round was co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners with participation from Mubadala Capital. It comes 10 months after a $1.38 billion raise at a $10 billion valuation and follows a $13 billion, five-year cloud contract supplying GPUs and AI infrastructure to trading firm Jane Street. The company has met with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley about a potential near-term IPO.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 4, 00:48 UTC · 12d agoAI industry

NVIDIA AI Factory Compute Is Becoming an Investable Asset Class

NVIDIA partners with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure financing.

NVIDIA announced partnerships with major financial firms including Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The independent financing platforms are designed to mobilize more than $500 billion of third-party capital to support AI infrastructure buildout. NVIDIA frames the move as positioning AI factory compute as an investable asset class.

NVIDIA Blog·Aug 12, 00:38 UTC · Aug 12, 2026AI industry

Mistral raises €3B

Mistral raised a Samsung-led €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation — the largest European tech equity round — to scale compute and frontier AI research.

Mistral announced a €3 billion Series D at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, the largest equity round ever by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with co-leads Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT) and PSG Equity; new investors include Advent, BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The company operates across 20 countries, serves 125+ enterprises including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC, and says funds will expand frontier research, compute capacity, and international growth.

Hacker News · AI·Sep 8, 05:06 UTC · 8d agoAI industryHN 648↑ · 468 comments

AEO startup Profound hits unicorn valuation, raises $180M Series D 7 months after last round

AEO startup Profound raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins.

Profound, which builds marketing software to help brands appear in AI search results, raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, seven months after its $96 million Series C. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins led the round, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and South Park Commons participating. The company reports 3x revenue growth in six months and over 1,000 enterprise customers including Comcast, The Estée Lauder Companies, and Walmart. It operates in the generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) space.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 15, 15:22 UTC · 1d agoAI industry

Announcing the 2026 Wiz Partner Alliance Award Winners

Wiz announces its 2026 Partner Alliance Award winners honoring partners in cloud security, AI risk management, and SOC modernization across three regions.

Wiz recognized partners, integrators, and visionaries with 2026 Partner Alliance Awards spanning the AMER, EMEA, and ANZ regions. The awards highlight work in cloud security transformation, AI risk management, and SOC modernization. The announcement is partner marketing with no direct security impact.

Wiz Blog·Aug 18, 12:00 UTC · 29d agoIndustry

How law firm Gilbert + Tobin governs and scales AI with OpenAI

OpenAI details how law firm Gilbert + Tobin scales ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex firm-wide under CEO-led governance with human accountability.

OpenAI published a customer story describing Gilbert + Tobin's adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex across the law firm. The firm pairs executive-level commitment with formal governance and human accountability to expand AI use in legal workflows. The piece is a promotional case study, with no new product capabilities or research announced.

OpenAI News·Sep 1, 01:00 UTC · 15d agoAI industry1

Mistral raises €3B as sovereign AI becomes big business

Mistral AI raised a €3B Series D at a €21B+ valuation, led by Samsung Electronics, to scale European compute capacity and sovereign AI services.

French AI lab Mistral AI raised €3 billion (~$3.58B) at a post-money valuation above €21 billion, which it calls the largest equity round ever completed by a European technology company. Samsung Electronics led the round, with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; a16z, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Advent, BlackRock, and Luxembourg also participated. The company plans to build 1 GW of European compute capacity by 2030, offer region-selectable query processing, and host third-party open-weight models as part of a sovereign AI strategy. Mistral operates in 20 countries and targets governments and enterprises seeking control over AI models and data residency.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 8, 14:17 UTC · 8d agoAI industry

Cognition hits $48B valuation, signaling investors believe AI coding is far from a winner-take-all market

Cognition, maker of Devin, raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation led by a16z, Accel, and Founders Fund, with revenue at $900M annualized.

Cognition raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation, four months after a $26 billion round, led by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir. Its annualized run-rate revenue grew from $492 million to $900 million since May, with projected $4-5 billion by end of 2026, while compute costs could push 2026 burn to $800 million. The startup, founded by Scott Wu, counts Mercedes-Benz, NASA, Goldman Sachs, and Citi as customers and is training its own model to cut reliance on OpenAI and Anthropic.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 8, 21:04 UTC · 7d agoAI industry

Sequoia doubles down on Cymphony as AI agents create new enterprise security risks

Cymphony emerges with $30M from Sequoia and SMBC to give security teams unified visibility into AI agent and non-human identities.

Cymphony, a New York- and Tel Aviv-based startup, raised a $25 million Series A co-led by Sequoia and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, valuing it above $100 million. Its platform builds a "workforce graph" unifying identity, data, and activity signals for employees, AI agents, and other non-human identities. The company says it found roughly 85,000 files exposed to AI tools at one US public company and reached seven-figure ARR in its first year of sales with customers including KKR and Syngenta. Sequoia previously led its undisclosed seed round, betting on Israeli Talpiot program alumni founders.

TechCrunch · Security·Sep 9, 13:00 UTC · 7d agoIndustry

Panic builds over bankrupt Spirit’s looming data sale to Google

Startups object to Google's bankruptcy-auction purchase of Spirit Airlines operational data, claiming proprietary IP is being sold without consent.

Google won an auction to acquire a large enterprise dataset from bankrupt Spirit Airlines, which it says will help improve its products and AI models, with no personal information included. Springshot, whose airline logistics platform powered Spirit's stack, filed a limited objection arguing the vaguely defined data categories could transfer third-party IP and trade secrets it owns; International Aero Engines filed a similar objection. The EFF called it the first public bankruptcy proceeding over selling company and employee data as an asset, and objectors warn of a precedent letting large companies acquire startup IP through bankruptcy courts.

Ars Technica · AI·Sep 10, 18:14 UTC · 6d agoAI industry

Financially Motivated Threat Actor BREEZE COMET Targets Brazil

Google Threat Intelligence details BREEZE COMET, a financially motivated group manipulating Brazilian payment systems and banking software to conduct fraudulent transfers since 2024.

Mandiant and Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) track this activity as BREEZE COMET (formerly UNC5669), active since 2024 against Brazilian financial services, retail, and eCommerce organizations. The actor specializes in manipulating payment systems and banking software to conduct fraudulent transfers. The activity overlaps with operations publicly reported as Plump Spider and SHADOW-AETHER-064. The report details the group's tactics, toolkit, mitigations, and detections for this active and developing threat.

Google Threat Intelligence·Sep 1, 14:00 UTC · 15d agoThreat actor in the wild

Intelligence Insights: August 2026

Red Canary's August 2026 Intelligence Insights report covers new threat actor debuts, departures, and threats targeting the blockchain sector.

Red Canary published its August 2026 Intelligence Insights, a monthly threat intelligence roundup. This edition highlights newly emerged threat actors, groups that ceased or reduced activity, and danger on the blockchain, likely threats to cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystems.

Red Canary·Aug 20, 20:09 UTC · 27d agoThreat actor

Mistral AI raises 3 billion euros in Europe's largest-ever tech funding round despite lagging behind rivals

Mistral AI closed a €3 billion Series D led by Samsung Electronics, valuing the lab at over €21 billion.

Mistral AI raised €3 billion in what it calls the largest equity round ever by a European tech company, lifting its valuation past €21 billion after ASML valued it near €12 billion in September 2025. Samsung Electronics leads the round with EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads; new investors include Advent, BlackRock-managed funds, and Luxembourg. The company also took an $830 million loan in March to fund its own data centers and serves 125+ enterprise customers including Airbus, ASML, and HSBC. Mistral Medium 3.5 trails open rivals like Qwen and Kimi and doesn't compete with top closed US models.

The Decoder·Sep 8, 07:45 UTC · 8d agoAI industry1

Superhuman acquires YC-backed notetaker Fathom as productivity platforms push for agentic work

Superhuman acquires AI notetaker Fathom to add meeting context and agentic workflows to its 40-million-user productivity platform.

Superhuman is acquiring Y Combinator-backed AI notetaker Fathom, which raised over $30 million and was valued at $94 million in 2024. Fathom reports 400,000+ monthly active users and over 1 million people have recorded meetings with it. The deal adds notetaking to Superhuman's suite (email, docs, calendar, database, AI agent builder) to enable proactive AI agents driven by meeting context, competing with Granola, Read AI, and Wispr.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 14, 14:45 UTC · 2d agoAI industry

Horizon3.ai hits $2 billion valuation in $250 million funding round

Help Net Security·Aug 3, 00:00 UTC · Aug 3, 2026Vulnerability

Horizon3 Names Chad Keefer Vice President of Federal Sales

Horizon3.ai appointed federal sales veteran Chad Keefer as Vice President of Federal Sales to expand its civilian, defense, and intelligence business.

Horizon3.ai named Chad Keefer, a federal go-to-market veteran, as its Vice President of Federal Sales. He will lead growth across civilian, defense, and intelligence agencies. The appointment signals a push to expand the vendor's federal market presence.

Horizon3.ai·Aug 25, 13:02 UTC · 22d agoIndustry

New CISO appointments 2026

Companies including Mistral AI, Trellix, Marriott, and ANZ appointed new CISOs in July-September 2026 amid high security-leadership turnover.

CSO Online's rolling column tracks senior security appointments, noting many companies are hiring a CSO/CISO for the first time. Notable moves include Thomas Coudray leaving Ledger to become Mistral AI's CISO, David Soto joining Trellix from Amazon, and Daniel Dubowski becoming Marriott International's SVP and CISO. Other appointments span ANZ, Gigamon, Axonius, Tricentis, Remitly, Allied Universal, and the State of California.

CSO Online·Sep 7, 10:09 UTC · 9d agoIndustry

What LLM Trading Agents Actually Do in Production: A Six-Month, Population-Scale Record from Two Fleets

Six-month record of 7.5M LLM trading agent invocations shows volatility-blind sizing, minimal upside capture, and no directional edge across two fleets.

The study records autonomous LLM trading agents in production across DX Terminal Pro (3,505 user-funded vaults trading real ETH in Base memecoin markets) and the DXAP fleet (500-599 agents on Hyperliquid perpetuals), spanning roughly six months, 7.5M single-model invocations and about 300K onchain actions. A risk slider explains leverage (+0.425 per level), median leverage is 5.0x in every volatility sextile, and one posture-slider cell holds 62% of liquidations. Agents capture little upside: 43.2% of positions saw +300 bps favorable excursion within 24h yet 49.3% of those closed negative, while the DXAP fleet trails a matched retail benchmark (41% vs 50% roundtrip win rate). A paired-replay league of frontier models finds decision quality statistically indistinguishable at this horizon.

Hugging Face daily papers·Sep 3, 20:00 UTC · 13d agoAI research

AI compute provider Nscale is looking for $3.5B in pre-IPO financing

British AI compute provider Nscale seeks $3.5B pre-IPO via $1.5B convertible notes and $2B from Nvidia ahead of a possible September IPO.

Nscale, a British AI infrastructure company founded about two years ago, is reportedly in talks to raise $3.5 billion ahead of an IPO that could come as early as late September 2026: $1.5 billion in convertible notes plus $2 billion in financing from Nvidia. Nvidia previously joined Nscale's $1.1 billion Series B in March, led by Aker and billed as the largest Series B in European history, following a $155 million Series A in December 2024. Nscale recently signed an approximately $45 billion deal with Anthropic and has told investors it has roughly $103 billion in projected revenue based on signed customer leases.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 4, 21:12 UTC · 11d agoAI industry

Bidding war for defunct Spirit Airlines’ employee data will not die

AI firm Micro1 bid $12.5 million for Spirit Airlines' 600 million employee email and chat records, challenging Google's $10 million auction win.

After Spirit Airlines entered bankruptcy, Google won an auction for the airline's data trove with a $10 million bid, beating Mercor's $7.5 million offer, but Micro1 has now counter-offered $12.5 million. The data includes about 600 million email and chat records from 17,000 employees, 17 million OneDrive files, 20.5 million SharePoint items, and over 30 million customer service calls, valuable for AI training. Former employees' unions, including the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA representing 5,500 flight attendants, have taken legal action to block the sale over privacy concerns.

CSO Online·Sep 4, 13:29 UTC · 12d agoAI industry

You don’t have to join the hack-back program to inherit its risk

A new US presidential memorandum creates a vetted private hack-back program, leaving participating vendors and their customers with untested legal liability and collateral risks.

The August 12 National Security Presidential Memorandum directs the National Coordination Center, run jointly by DOJ and DHS, to approve covert surveillance and disruptive Cyber Effects Operations by vetted private companies, with a forfeitable bond of at least $1 million required as a contract condition. The analysis argues the criminal shield rests on an untested reading of the CFAA exemption at 18 U.S.C. 1030(f), with no civil safe harbor, no state-law preemption and no foreign-law protection. Non-participating organizations can still inherit risk through shared infrastructure collateral damage, lack of customer disclosure, Lloyd's bulletin Y5381 state-backed attack exclusions, and threat-intelligence pipelines feeding offensive proposals.

CSO Online·09:00 UTC · 11h agoPolicy & legal

The full stack behind abundant intelligence

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar describes how compounding gains across chips, compute, models, and products cut intelligence costs.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar explains the company's 'full stack' strategy, arguing that advances across chips, compute, models, and products compound to deliver more useful intelligence at greater scale and lower cost. The post is a corporate strategy narrative rather than a technical or product release. It frames vertical integration as the driver of OpenAI's economics.

OpenAI News·Aug 25, 07:05 UTC · 22d agoAI industry

Emerald AI, Google and NVIDIA Launch Alliance to Advance Flexible AI Data Centers

Emerald AI, Google, and NVIDIA launched the AI Energy Management Alliance to promote power-flexible, grid-responsive AI data centers.

Emerald AI, Google, and NVIDIA announced the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA), a coalition advancing data centers that dynamically adjust electricity use in response to grid conditions. The technology-neutral, performance-based alliance will standardize flexibility requirements, define ride-through and curtailment obligations, and create faster interconnection pathways for facilities making verifiable flexibility commitments. It plans to convene AI platforms, data center operators, utilities, power producers, and grid operators to support US AI infrastructure growth.

NVIDIA Blog·13:00 UTC · 7h agoAI industry

Cylake Raises $245 Million Ahead of Cybersecurity Platform Beta

Cylake, an AI-native sovereign security startup founded by Palo Alto Networks' Nir Zuk, raised $245 million, taking total funding to $290 million.

Security startup Cylake raised $245 million via a convertible note with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Picture Capital, and Redpoint Ventures, six months after a $45 million Greylock-led seed. Founded by Nir Zuk, Wilson Xu, and Ehud Shamir, the 40-plus-employee company is building an on-premises/private-cloud AI-native security platform for governments and highly regulated enterprises. A beta is expected by the end of 2026 with general availability in 2027.

SecurityWeek·Sep 8, 15:21 UTC · 8d agoIndustry

Group of Bipartisan Lawmakers Ask US Government to Ban Several Hack-for-Hire Firms

Bipartisan US lawmakers urged Commerce Secretary Lutnick to sanction three Indian hack-for-hire firms, including BellTroX, over espionage targeting US citizens.

On September 9, 2026, a bipartisan group of US lawmakers sent a letter urging Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to add three Indian companies, including BellTroX InfoTech Services, to the economic sanctions list. The firms are accused of targeted espionage against US citizens, businesses, and their lawyers, as well as lawfare to censor investigative reporting by major American media. The request builds on Citizen Lab's 2020 discovery of the Dark Basin hack-for-hire operation, which targeted US nonprofits involved in #ExxonKnew and net neutrality advocacy and was linked to BellTroX and related entities.

Citizen Lab·Sep 10, 17:19 UTC · 6d agoPolicy & legal1

Google Cloud races to catch up in the AI deployment wars with Accenture deal

Google Cloud and Accenture formed a joint unit, training up to 1,000 forward-deployed engineers to drive enterprise adoption of Gemini Enterprise.

Google Cloud and Accenture launched the Accenture Gemini Enterprise Business Group, a joint unit of forward-deployed engineers helping enterprises adopt Google's AI tools. Google will train up to 1,000 Accenture FDEs to build custom applications on the Gemini Enterprise platform. Ramp data cited by TechCrunch puts Google at roughly 6% of US enterprise AI spending versus Anthropic's 43.5% and OpenAI's 39.7%. Alphabet held $811 billion in purchase commitments as of June 30, against Google Cloud's $24.8 billion second-quarter revenue.

TechCrunch · AI·Sep 8, 16:20 UTC · 8d agoAI industry

Hackers Impersonate IT Support to Breach Leading Financial Companies

Security Affairs·Aug 7, 15:51 UTC · Aug 7, 2026Ransomware

Lawmakers call on Treasury to sanction hackers-for-hire

Bipartisan US lawmakers asked Treasury to sanction three India-based hack-for-hire firms accused of long-running espionage against Americans.

Sens. Ron Wyden and Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Pat Harrigan urged Treasury to add Sunkissed Organic Farms (formerly Appin), BellTroX, and CyberRoot to the Entity List. The letter says the mercenary groups conducted targeted espionage against US citizens, businesses, and lawyers for over fifteen years, allegedly including work for Qatar's government such as targeting opponents of Qatar's World Cup bid and Kristi Rogers, wife of Senate candidate Mike Rogers. Adding the firms to the Entity List would restrict their access to American software, cybersecurity tools, and cloud infrastructure. The lawmakers also accuse the groups of lawfare campaigns to censor investigative reporting on their hacking activities.

CyberScoop·Sep 9, 18:43 UTC · 7d agoThreat actor in the wild

HiddenLayer nabs $100M as enterprises rush to secure their AI deployments

AI security startup HiddenLayer raised a $100 million Series B led by Delta-v Capital as enterprise spending on securing AI deployments accelerates.

HiddenLayer, which protects AI models, agents, and workflows from adversarial attacks, vulnerabilities, and code injections, raised a $100 million Series B led by Delta-v Capital with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft's M12, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The company says annual recurring revenue grew more than 10x to the tens of millions of dollars, with customers including the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and a frontier model provider with over 700 million weekly users. Gartner estimates enterprise spending on AI security products will reach $2.83 billion in 2026, up 83% from 2025, and nearly $4.78 billion next year.

TechCrunch · Security·Sep 2, 15:01 UTC · 14d agoIndustry1

CREST Onboards First Cohort for AI-Enabled Pentesting Accreditation

CREST accredited 10 companies, including ImmuniWeb and Thoropass, in the first cohort of its new AI-Enabled Penetration Testing accreditation.

CREST granted its AI-Enabled Penetration Testing accreditation, an optional module added in July 2026 to its Penetration Testing Accreditation Standard, to a first cohort of 10 firms spanning Europe, India, the US, and Canada, including Closed Door Security, ImmuniWeb, JUMPSEC, Packetlabs, Pentesys, REDSECLABS, Risk Associates, SECNORA, Solusec, and Thoropass. The module lets providers that integrate AI into pentesting demonstrate responsible AI governance through independent assessment. A March 2026 CREST report found 76% of cybersecurity providers increased AI usage year over year and 69% already integrate it into daily service delivery; its June AI Charter has been signed by over 100 organizations.

Infosecurity Magazine·Sep 3, 13:00 UTC · 13d agoIndustry