- OpenAI raised $110 billion from Amazon, SoftBank, and Nvidia — the largest private financing round in history.
- Vast closed $300 million in a Series A to build the first commercial space station for microgravity manufacturing.
- Science Corp. raised $230 million for brain-computer interfaces that have restored reading in blind patients.
- PLD Space pulled in $209 million to build Europe’s first reusable orbital rocket.
- Nominal hit a $1 billion valuation with an $80 million raise from Founders Fund and Sequoia.
- Crossover Markets, Evervault, Lio, Sage, and Agaton round out a week dominated by AI and defense.
OpenAI’s $110 Billion Changes the Game for Everyone
The week’s biggest headline was not close. OpenAI raised $110 billion from Amazon ($50 billion), SoftBank ($30 billion), and Nvidia ($30 billion), valuing the company at $840 billion. It is the largest private financing round ever. ChatGPT now serves over 900 million weekly active users, and CEO Sam Altman is targeting $100 billion in annual revenue by 2027.
Space, Vision, and Defense Are Eating Venture Capital
Three deals stood out for their ambition. Science Corp. raised $230 million in a Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to develop implantable brain-computer interfaces that restore vision. Its PRIMA implant — the size of a grain of rice — has shown “the first-ever restoration of fluent reading in blind patients.”
Vast pulled in $300 million in a Series A (plus $200 million in debt) to build Haven, a commercial space station for microgravity research and manufacturing. PLD Space, the Spanish reusable rocket company, closed a $209 million Series C led by Mitsubishi Electric to accelerate its Miura launch vehicle program.
Nominal, co-founded by a former submarine officer, raised $80 million from Founders Fund and Sequoia to automate hardware testing for defense clients — reaching a $1 billion valuation. Sage raised $65 million in a Series C led by Goldman Sachs to replace pagers and paper in senior living facilities with real-time AI monitoring.
AI Agents, Crypto Infrastructure, and Encryption-First Security
Lio closed $30 million from Andreessen Horowitz for AI agents that automate enterprise procurement — navigating ERP systems and contracts without human intervention. Stockholm-based Agaton raised $10 million in seed funding to analyze customer conversations and detect buying intent using AI.
Crossover Markets raised $31 million in a Series B led by Tradeweb Markets to build institutional-grade crypto trading infrastructure, reaching a $200 million valuation. Ripple, Wintermute Ventures, and Virtu Financial also participated.
On the security side, Evervault closed $25 million in a Series B led by Ribbit Capital for its encryption-first data processing platform. “Most compliance frameworks assume sensitive data will exist in plaintext — that’s a liability,” founder Shane Curran said. It is a bet that the future of data security is never seeing the data at all. And these ten deals are just the tip of the iceberg — WorkOS raised $100 million at a $2 billion valuation, Anduril targets a $60 billion valuation, AMI Labs pulled in $1.03 billion for world models, Legora closed $550 million at a $5.55 billion valuation, and Juicebox raised $80 million for AI recruiting, rounding out a record month for venture capital.
