Today's headline: DeepSeek and Databricks turn AI funding into a mega-round arms race. Welcome to Startup Fundraising. Crypto Briefing writes:
DeepSeek just closed the kind of funding round that makes Silicon Valley do a double-take. The Hangzhou-based AI lab raised over $7.4 billion, roughly 50 billion yuan, in its first external funding round, landing a post-money valuation north of $50 billion. That makes it China’s most valuable AI startup, and it has very clear plans for what comes next: undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic on price while expanding aggressively overseas.
Julie Bort, writing in TechCrunch:
Databricks on Thursday announced a new round of funding that values the company at$188 billion. The round was led by Coatue. Databricks didn’t disclose exactly how much it raised; it said the money isn’t in its hands yet and that the round will close later this summer.
Forbes India writes:
Artificial intelligence (AI) startup Emergent has become India’s latest unicorn, after receiving $130 million in a Series C funding round, which values the software-creation platform at $1.5 billion, a fivefold jump in value from four months ago. The round was led by Creaegis, with Claypond Capital and Sentinel Global as co-lead investors, and participation from existing backers Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed and Y Combinator.
From Marina Temkin at TechCrunch:
Valar Atomics, a startup building small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) — essentially miniaturized, factory-built power plants designed to be cheaper and faster to deploy than traditional reactors — is in talks to raise a new round of capital, according to three sources familiar with the company. The three-year-old company is seeking a valuation of about $6 billion, and Sequoia is expected to lead the deal, the people said.
From Financial Express:
Indian-origin entrepreneur Nishith Khandwala has raised $25 million for his healthcare AI startup Bunkerhill Health, taking the company’s total funding to $55 million. The latest Series B funding round was led by Khosla Ventures, with Sequoia Capital, Felicis Ventures, Optum Ventures and Y Combinator also investing.
If you track where startup capital is flowing, try The Data Center Daily — a daily briefing on AI compute, hyperscaler capex, the power grid, semiconductor supply, and the energy markets being reshaped by intelligence at scale. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Next, we're watching Databricks, whose new funding round is set to close later this summer, and Valar Atomics, which is in talks for a new round at about a $6 billion valuation, with Sequoia expected to lead.
You'll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can go straight to the source. That's Startup Fundraising for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.