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Snap alumni launch Ghost Angels fund to back AI startups redefining social media

Twenty Snap alumni have launched Ghost Angels, an angel fund targeting the next generation of social media. Led by former global partnerships head Max Rivera, the fund has backed five companies and plans to invest in at least 15 more within the next year. The group believes social media is splitting into two distinct categories: platforms focused on human connection and AI-native creative tools.

2 Sources

Yesterday

XCENA raises $135M on a bet that AI's real bottleneck is memory, not compute

XCENA, a chip startup founded by Samsung and SK Hynix veterans, secured $135 million in Series B funding at a $570 million valuation. The company's MX1 chip addresses the AI memory bottleneck by placing compute capabilities directly near DRAM, eliminating costly data round trips between CPUs, GPUs, and memory that slow down AI inference and drive up infrastructure costs.

2 Sources

28 May 2026

Groq seeks $650 million rebuild after Nvidia's $20 billion deal stripped its top engineering talent

AI chip startup Groq is raising $650 million from existing investors to fund its inference cloud business after a $20 billion Nvidia licensing deal cashed out investors and took senior engineers. Two backers guarantee the round as Groq pivots to AI inference with its Language Processing Unit hardware, facing intensifying competition from DeepSeek price cuts and Nvidia's own inference platforms.

5 Sources

27 May 2026

Cognition raises $1B at $26B valuation as Devin AI software engineer writes 90% of its own code

AI coding startup Cognition has raised over $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation, more than doubling its worth in eight months. The company's flagship product Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer, now writes more than 90% of Cognition's internal code. With customers like Goldman Sachs, Mercedes-Benz, and NASA, Cognition has grown its annualized revenue from $37 million to $492 million in just 12 months.

3 Sources

Capchase raises $200M to transform vendor financing with AI that approves loans in 30 seconds

Capchase has secured over $200 million in debt and equity funding to scale its AI-powered vendor financing platform globally. The company embeds lending directly into Salesforce, approving 97% of applications in under 30 seconds. Its new AI agent compresses what used to be an eight-hour loan process into just 60 seconds, addressing a critical friction point in the $1.3 trillion enterprise tech market.

2 Sources

Airis Labs exits stealth with $60M to transform video intelligence for defense and government

Tel Aviv-founded Airis Labs emerged from stealth mode with $60 million in funding to tackle a pressing challenge: government agencies drowning in unstructured visual data. The defense-AI startup built a video-first intelligence platform that turns fragmented footage from drones, security cameras, and social media into machine-readable output that intelligence teams can actually use.

2 Sources

26 May 2026

Stord raises $250 million at $3 billion valuation to deploy AI across fulfillment network

Atlanta-based logistics company Stord has secured $250 million in Series F funding at a $3 billion valuation, doubling its worth in just one year. The e-commerce logistics firm is launching Stord Labs to test AI and robotics across nearly 100 warehouses, positioning itself as an Amazon fulfillment competitor that helps independent brands match Prime-level delivery speeds.

5 Sources

OpenRouter raises $113M Series B, doubles valuation to $1.3B as multi-model AI approach takes hold

OpenRouter has secured $113 million in Series B funding led by Alphabet's CapitalG, pushing its valuation to $1.3 billion—more than double last year's figure. The AI gateway now processes 25 trillion tokens weekly across over 400 models, signaling that enterprises are abandoning single-vendor strategies in favor of flexible, multi-model infrastructure to control costs and optimize performance.

4 Sources

23 May 2026

Peec AI doubles revenue to $10M helping brands show up in ChatGPT and AI search results

Berlin-based startup Peec AI crossed $10 million in annualized revenue just six months after raising a $21 million Series A, more than doubling from $4 million ARR. The company helps brands track and improve visibility in AI search results across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity through generative engine optimization (GEO) dashboards that mirror traditional SEO tools but for conversational AI platforms.

2 Sources

22 May 2026

DeepSeek seeks $45 billion valuation while prioritizing AGI over short-term profits

DeepSeek is pursuing a $10 billion funding round that could value the AI startup at $45 billion, with founder Liang Wenfeng telling investors the company will focus on artificial general intelligence rather than commercialization. The Hangzhou-based startup continues to offer open-source AI models and a free chatbot despite generating limited revenue, setting it apart from global AI leaders focused on monetization.

2 Sources

Modal Labs raises $355M at $4.65B valuation as AI coding and compute demand surge

Modal Labs secured $355 million in new funding at a $4.65 billion valuation, up from $1.1 billion in September. The serverless AI infrastructure startup helps companies rent GPUs for AI inference workloads and test AI-generated code, seeing revenue jump from $60 million to $300 million annually as AI coding tools drive unprecedented demand for compute capacity.

2 Sources

21 May 2026

Hark raises $700M Series A for AI hardware as Brett Adcock bets big on consumer AI devices

Hark, an AI lab founded by Brett Adcock, secured $700 million in Series A funding at a $6 billion valuation to develop AI hardware and multi-modal models. The startup plans to launch its first models this summer, followed by consumer devices designed to serve as a universal interface with the digital world, despite revealing few details about its products.

4 Sources

Pivot raises $40M Series B to push agentic-AI deeper into enterprise procurement workflows

Paris and New York-based Pivot Technologies SAS has secured $40 million in Series B funding to expand its agentic-AI procurement platform. The startup, founded in 2023, processes $3 billion in invoices annually and counts DoorDash, Lemonade, and Flix among its enterprise customers. The funding will deepen ERP integrations and push the platform into more enterprise markets as legacy software continues to leave procurement teams struggling with fragmented data.

2 Sources

Imperagen raises £5M to transform enzyme engineering with quantum physics and AI modeling

Manchester-based biotech company Imperagen secured £5 million in seed funding to accelerate enzyme engineering using quantum physics-based simulations and AI modeling. The techbio spin-out from University of Manchester has already achieved 677x performance improvements for a Fortune 500 client, demonstrating how its closed-loop system could reshape pharmaceutical manufacturing and sustainable production.

2 Sources

NanoClaw creators reject $20M buyout, raise $12M seed round in six weeks after viral launch

Brothers Gavriel and Lazer Cohen turned down a $20 million acquisition offer for NanoClaw, their secure open source AI agent. Instead, they raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round led by Valley Capital Partners, with backing from Docker, Vercel, and Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue. The enterprise-grade agentic AI assistant went from first code to term sheet in just six weeks.

4 Sources

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