DeepSeek wants seven-point-three billion dollars. And that's just the opening bid on what's shaping up to be a very expensive Tuesday in hard tech. Welcome to Startup Fundraising. Today we've got rockets with data centers bolted on top, humanoid robots out of China, AI security, and a deep-ops rebuild. We’re starting with DeepSeek's monster round and what it actually signals. Seven billion for a model lab that already spooked the entire Valley with a cheap open-weight release? I want to know who's leading, what the terms look like, and what DeepSeek needs to be true in 2028 to justify this. And then there’s Cowboy's orbital data center upper stage. Real business, or the most expensive PowerPoint in aerospace? We’ll get to that. Here's Dataconomy:
DeepSeek is in advanced talks to raise up to 50 billion yuan ($7.35 billion) in what would be the largest single funding round for a Chinese artificial intelligence company, according to reports from The Information and Reuters. The funding could value the previously self-funded startup at as much as $50 billion, a significant increase from an estimated $10 billion just weeks ago.
DeepSeek — the self-funded Chinese AI lab that spent the last year making every American hyperscaler look overpriced — is now reportedly in advanced talks for a $7.35 billion round that would peg its valuation at fifty billion. Dataconomy had it, sourcing Reuters and The Information. And the lead isn't a VC firm — it's China's state-backed National AI Industry Investment Fund. The whole DeepSeek pitch was, 'we do more with less, we don't need your money.' So what exactly costs seven billion dollars now? That’s the question I’d be asking before I let the state write a check with my name on it. And the cap table here is genuinely weird. Liang Wenfeng owns nearly ninety percent, is personally dropping three billion into the round himself, and is reportedly reluctant to let Tencent take twenty percent. That’s one founder negotiating against a state fund and two of China’s biggest tech companies at the same time. Good luck with that. The valuation went from ten billion to fifty billion in weeks. Weeks. Either the product or the business changed in a pretty dramatic way, or this is national-interest pricing — and I know which one I’d bet on. From Jason Rainbow at SpaceNews:
TAMPA, Fla. — Cowboy Space, founded less than two years ago as Aetherflux to develop space-based solar power, has raised $275 million at a $2 billion valuation to build rockets with upper stages that would serve as data centers once in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Cowboy Space — formerly Aetherflux, formerly a solar power play — just closed a $275 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, with Index Ventures leading for the second time after anchoring the Series A. Founder Baiju Bhatt, yes, the Robinhood co-founder, also put in personal money. Less than two years old, already a rebrand, and now they're building rockets, data centers, and space-based power? That's not a company, that's a pitch deck that escaped into the wild. Index staying in to lead is the tell. They clearly like the direction shift, or at least they’re not about to let someone else price the B after they owned the A. The $2 billion valuation on roughly $365 million raised total is the number I'd keep my eye on. What has to be true here in two years? The rocket has to work, the upper stage has to survive orbit as a data center, and somebody has to want to buy that compute. That’s not a Series B bet — that’s a prayer with a slide deck. From Greg Bock at AI Insider:
Chinese embodied AI startup Vbot has raised about USD $73 million, in a Pre-A funding round to expand robot production and develop full-size humanoid robots, according to PanDaily. The round was co-led by Oriental Fortune Capital, Huatai Zijin Investment and Fosun RZ Capital, with participation from investors including SAIC Motor’s Shangqi Capital.
Chinese embodied AI startup Vbot — founded late 2024, so barely a year old — just closed a Pre-A at seventy-three million dollars. The round was co-led by Oriental Fortune Capital, Huatai Zijin, and Fosun RZ Capital, with SAIC Motor's venture arm tagging along. Credit to PanDaily for breaking it, picked up by AI Insider. Pre-A, founded in 2024, and the headline number is seventy-three million. That's a big check for a company that's been alive roughly eighteen months. So what are we actually buying here? They're scaling a robotic dog from five hundred units a month to twenty-five hundred. That's the real business. The humanoid robot stuff is the pitch deck. Three co-leads is worth noting — no single conviction bet there, just a syndicate spreading risk. And SAIC Motor's involvement is strategic, not just financial. If you're building robots, having a major automaker's fund on your cap table is a distribution story as much as a capital story. Sure, but the money is going to mass production, offline retail, and AI world models — that's three different bets in one sentence. Pick one. What has to be true in two years is that robotic dogs become a real consumer or industrial product category at scale, and right now I'd want to see margin on those twenty-five hundred units before I believe any of the humanoid framing. Ynet News writes:
Frame Security announced its public launch today alongside a $50 million funding round led by Index Ventures, Team8 and Picture Capital, with participation from Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and technology investor Elad Gil, who first backed the company as an angel investor and has since doubled down through his fund, Gil Capital.
Frame Security out of Israel just dropped a fifty-million-dollar launch round. Index Ventures, Team8, and Picture Capital all listed as leads, plus Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and Elad Gil coming in as angels who've since doubled down through Gil Capital. Ynet News had this one. Okay, so ninety-six percent of companies already do security awareness training, and ninety percent of breaches still involve a human. That's their own pitch deck working against them. If the existing thirteen-billion-dollar market isn't solving it, what exactly does Frame do differently besides slap 'AI-driven' on the front? Worth noting: Elad Gil first wrote a personal check and then came back through the fund. That’s a meaningful signal on conviction, not just logo collection. The real question is whether Index led price or led terms. For this to make sense in two years, enterprises have to rip out a training-and-phishing-sim budget line and replace it with a platform that actually catches deepfake social engineering in real time. That's a buying-center fight, not just a tech problem — and fifty million doesn't buy you that sales motion cheaply. This one's from IT Digest:
Basata, the AI company rebuilding the operational layer of US healthcare, announced a $21 million Series A led by Basis Set Ventures, with participation from Cowboy Ventures, PHX Ventures, Zenda Capital, and Victoria Treyger. Basata’s AI agents handle the administrative work still running on fax machines and phone calls, like referrals, intake, patient scheduling, and follow-up end to end.
Basata closes a $21 million Series A led by Basis Set Ventures, with Cowboy, PHX, Zenda, and Victoria Treyger also in, bringing total raised to $24.5 million. The pitch: AI agents that replace fax machines and phone tag in healthcare referrals and scheduling. Okay, but this is the rare healthcare admin story where I'm not rolling my eyes — 500,000 patients served, 100,000 in the last month alone, and 70% of new sales coming from customer referrals? That's a product working, not a deck working. The $3.5 million pre-Series A makes this a tight, disciplined cap table going into the A. They didn't bloat the seed, which means Basis Set isn't cleaning up a mess before they even start. What I want to know is whether the $21 million is going into sales headcount to chase more specialty groups, or into the actual AI infrastructure. Because 'cardiology, urology, gastro, ophthalmology' is a horizontal play pretending to be vertical — you have to actually go deep somewhere or you're just a scheduling wrapper. If something in today’s briefing made you want the details, we’ve put links to every story in the show notes. Take a look there and read through the ones most useful for your fundraising work.
That’s Startup Fundraising for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.