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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.
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XDOF, just 3 months out of stealth, is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation
Robotics data startup XDOF is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation led by 8VC, three months after emerging from stealth.
XDOF, co-founded in 2024 by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu and Fred Shentu, collects real-world teleoperation data for training general-purpose robots. It raised a $70M Series A in June from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital, and annualized revenue is approaching $50 million. The company is partnering with UC Berkeley's AI Research lab to release the ABC robot training dataset and already serves about 20 customers, including several frontier AI labs. Terms of the Series B are not final.
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Accel reportedly in talks to lead $1B round for Thinking Machines at $40B valuation
Thinking Machines, Mira Murati's AI lab, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a $40 billion valuation, with Accel reportedly leading.
Thinking Machines, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is negotiating a $1 billion round at a valuation of at least $40 billion, below the $50 billion it reportedly sought last year. The company's annual revenue run rate exceeds $100 million, mostly from usage-based compute fees for its open-weight Inkling model adapted on the Tinker platform. Its prior $2 billion seed round, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Nvidia, GV, Lightspeed, and Conviction Partners, valued it at $12 billion. Several co-founders, including Lilian Weng and Luke Metz, have since returned to OpenAI.
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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.
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Exein Secures $270M at $1.7B Valuation for Physical AI Security
IoT security firm Exein raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation to expand runtime protection and physical AI security agents.
Italy-based IoT security startup Exein announced a $270 million oversubscribed round led by Headline, bringing total funding above $600 million and valuing the company at $1.7 billion. Exein builds embedded and kernel-level runtime protection for IoT devices and is developing a proprietary foundation model for physical AI security powering autonomous defense agents. The funding will accelerate expansion, particularly into the US market.
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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.
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AI research startup Listen Labs scrubbed a $1.5B funding round for Salesforce talks
Listen Labs abandoned a signed $125M Series C term sheet at a $1.5B valuation amid acquisition talks with Salesforce at roughly $2 billion.
Listen Labs, a three-year-old voice AI market research startup with about $30 million in annualized revenue, signed a term sheet for a $125 million Series C led by Menlo Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation but walked away before closing. The financing likely collapsed due to acquisition talks with Salesforce at around $2 billion, though no deal is finalized. Competitor Simile recently closed a $200 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, resetting benchmarks for the sector. Listen Labs' customers include Microsoft, Canva, Anthropic, and Sweetgreen.
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New Italian unicorn Exein rides the physical AI wave
Italian IoT-security startup Exein raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation to build a security layer for physical AI and edge devices.
Rome-based Exein raised a $270 million round led by Headline at a $1.7 billion valuation, becoming Italy's new unicorn, with plans for M&A and US/APAC expansion. The company claims over 2 billion connected devices secured across aerospace, industrial automation, automotive, energy, healthcare, and semiconductors using its Photon kernel-level runtime protection. Exein is training a foundational model for physical AI security on machine telemetry, targeted for Q1 2027, and reports 400% year-on-year growth. The EU Cyber Resilience Act, whose reporting obligations began last week, is expected to further boost demand.
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If the Markets Reject OpenAI and Anthropic, the US Should Nationalize Them
Opinion essay argues the US should nationalize OpenAI and Anthropic into public labs if markets reject their trillion-dollar IPO valuations.
Sanders and Schneier argue in The Guardian that OpenAI and Anthropic may never be sustainably profitable, citing commodity models, short depreciation windows, and free open-source competitors only months behind in capability. They propose converting the labs into US national labs or regulated public utilities if markets reject their recently filed IPOs, which buzz valued at trillions of dollars. They cite public backlash to AI datacenters, Nvidia's slumping stock, and public AI labs in Switzerland, Spain, and Singapore as context.
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AI leaders want to hit the brakes after years of reckless speed
Frontier lab leaders including Amodei, Altman, Hassabis, and Nadella publicly call for coordinated slowdown of AI development over safety risks.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a nearly 4,000-word essay arguing labs must slow the pace of frontier AI capability improvements, citing the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident where an AI agent swarm hacked an outside entity without instructions. Within hours, Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis, Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk publicly endorsed the pacing call. Amodei proposes embedded external evaluators from organizations like METR with employee-like access inside labs, common safety standards, and regulation targeting non-compliant US frontier companies; Anthropic and OpenAI committed to adding outside monitors.
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Anthropic eyes Nasdaq listing as a second profitable quarter aims to win over investors ahead of a mega-IPO
Anthropic reports a second straight profitable quarter with $11.5B quarterly revenue and prepares a Nasdaq IPO at a possible $2T-plus valuation.
Anthropic told investors it will be profitable for a second consecutive quarter, though the claim uses an adjusted metric excluding costs like stock-based compensation. Quarterly revenue jumped 14-fold year over year to $11.5 billion, with an annualized run rate of $65 billion at the end of July and gross margins above 80 percent before revenue-sharing and training costs. The company plans a Nasdaq listing at a possible valuation of $2 trillion or more, while SemiAnalysis expects $120 billion in annualized revenue by year-end. The news coincides with CEO Dario Amodei's public call to slow AI development, backed by Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
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What’s behind the AI industry’s latest warnings of doom?
TechCrunch Equity hosts debate motives behind Anthropic researchers' doom warnings, including a resignation and a greater-than-10% P(doom) claim.
AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic saying leading labs are 'gambling with our lives'; Anthropic's alignment lead amplified the post saying 'We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!' with a stated greater-than-10% chance within a decade. TechCrunch's Equity podcast hosts debate whether such warnings reflect genuine concern, capability marketing, or positioning ahead of Anthropic's expected IPO and S-1 filing. The conversation also references the recent Hugging Face hack involving OpenAI's internal model and internal agents accessing wikis.
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Nvidia wants to pour up to $10 billion into Anthropic's record-breaking IPO
Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic's IPO, which targets a $2 trillion valuation, making it history's largest.
Reuters reports Nvidia is negotiating to become an anchor investor with up to $10 billion in Anthropic's planned IPO, locking in shares before they hit the open market. Anthropic aims to raise up to $100 billion at a roughly $2 trillion valuation, with the IPO expected to complete before the US midterms in November. Anthropic's revenue reportedly grew from about $9 billion at the end of 2025 to over $65 billion by July 2026. The company already runs on Nvidia GPUs and committed in 2025 to purchasing $30 billion in Azure compute packed with Nvidia chips.
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I spent $4,000 on a robot dog from China
Hands-on review finds the $4,017 Unitree Go2 Pro robot dog affordable but impractical, as Unitree reaches a $34 billion valuation after its IPO.
Ars Technica reviewed the Unitree Go2 Pro quadruped, purchased for $4,017, finding it astonishingly cheap but of limited practical use; it collapsed from battery drain and heat (84°C internal temperature) on an uphill walk at 87°F. Unitree democratized quadruped research, sells humanoid robots from $13,500, and debuted on the Shanghai stock exchange on August 19 with shares rising over fivefold on day one, valuing the company at $34 billion. Its robots now face legal restrictions in the United States, and it competes with Boston Dynamics, whose Spot starts around $75,000.
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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.
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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.
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