This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

Defense tech unicorn led the fundraising lineup in a week heavy with rounds for companies focused on applications in the physical world. Anduril’s $5 billion financing was by far the biggest. Other large rounds went to companies focused on supplying data power, robotics, space tech, biotech, and even strawberries.

1.��, $5B, defense tech: Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries raised another $5 billion in funding at a $61 billion valuation — double the valuation of $30.5 billion it received less than a year ago. The Series H round, led by and , brings the Costa Mesa, California-based company’s total raised to date to $11.4 billion, .����

2.��, $775M, energy: Houston-based VoltaGrid, a provider of mobile natural gas generators for data centers, microgrids and industrial applications, secured $1 billion in strategic investment from and . The investment includes $775 million in capital funding and a $225 million secondary purchase from existing investors.

3.��, $400M, robotics: Palo Alto, California-based Mind Robotics, developer of an AI-enabled industrial robotics platform, picked up $400 million in new financing led by . The round brings total funding to date to more than $1 billion for the startup, which launched in 2025 as a spinout of .

4.��, $275M, space tech: Cowboy Space, a developer of rockets and satellite infrastructure to power and run AI compute in space, closed on $275 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation. led the financing for the San Carlos, California-based startup, which was founded by co-founder .��

5.��, $150M, indoor farming: Oishii, operator of highly automated indoor farms for growing strawberries, raised $150 million in Series C funding led by . Founded in 2016, the Jersey City, New Jersey-headquartered startup has raised $370 million in total funding to date.

6.��, $125M, cybersecurity: San Jose-based Exaforce, developer of an AI-native security operations platform, secured $125 million in Series B funding from backers including , , , �����Ի��� .

7.��, $122M, biotech: Create Medicines, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup focused on in vivo immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer, closed on $122 million in Series B funding. , , and led the financing.

8.��, $100M, autonomy: Providence, Rhode Island-based HavocAI, a provider of tools for developing military and commercial-grade autonomous systems across sea, air and land, secured $100 million in Series A funding. The round brings total funding to date for the 2-year-old company to $200 million.

9.��, $65M, space tech: Star Catcher, a startup that says it is building the first power grid in space by beaming concentrated solar energy on demand to satellites, picked up $65 million in Series A funding. , and led the financing for the Jacksonville, Florida-based company, which was founded less than two years ago.

10.��, $64M, data center power: GridCare, developer of technology to more efficiently provide power to AI data centers, raised $64 million in Series A funding. led the financing for the Redwood City, California-based startup.��

Related reading:

• Anduril Raises Another $5B As Defense Tech Startups Shatter Funding Records��

Illustration:

AI and software continue to draw the biggest share of startup investment, but most of the interesting companies that caught our eye in the past month were working on problems in the physical world, often far from the glow of a laptop screen.��

They include a defense-tech startup that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the frontlines, a company working to recycle valuable raw materials from defunct solar panels at industrial scale, and a startup that wants to produce cell-based milk for the dairy supply chain. Let’s take a look.

$82M to build near the battlefield

A decade ago, defense tech was considered a niche and sometimes controversial corner of venture capital, with few startup investors daring to place bets on companies working with the military.��

How times have changed. Already this year, $13.6 billion in venture investment has gone into companies in Crunchbase’s military, national security and law enforcement categories — more than 1.5x last year’s annual total.��

is one of the latest defense startups to get some of that funding, with an approach that aims to bring manufacturing closer to the battlefield. The San Diego-based startup last month announced an $82 million Series B led by .��

Firestorm builds expeditionary manufacturing systems and modular drones for military use. Its containerized “xCell” manufacturing platforms are designed to produce drones, replacement parts and other systems closer to the battlefield, a concept gaining traction as militaries rethink supply chains and logistics in contested regions such as the Indo-Pacific.

Existing and new investors including, , , , and others also joined its latest funding round, which brings Firestorm’s total funding to nearly $150 million, .

“The ability to produce, adapt, and sustain systems at speed and scale will define outcomes in future conflict,” , founder and chief investment officer at Washington Harbour Partners, said in a statement. “We’re excited to lead Firestorm’s Series B and back a company building a new model for manufacturing that replaces centralized supply chains with deployable, containerized units that can operate at the edge.”

The raise lands amid a broader surge in investor appetite for military tech, not just from defense-industry investors but also some of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture names. Sector heavyweight recently raised another $5 billion at a staggering $61 billion valuation in an – and -led round, underscoring just how mainstream venture-backed defense startups have become.

Related Crunchbase query:

$60M for a legal tech operating system

Legal tech has been one of the fastest-growing startup sectors in recent years, at least when measured by funding to the area, with venture investors pouring a record $4 billion-plus into the industry last year. That growth, of course, has been driven by AI’s rapid automation of many aspects of the notoriously paperwork-heavy industry.

Adding to this year’s tally is , a startup that says it’s building the operating system and brand for AI-native law firms. The startup said last month that it raised $60 million in Series A funding at a $750 million valuation from big-name investors. led the round and , and participated.

Manifest OS says it takes a different tack than most legal tech startups. Rather than sell software to traditional law firms that operate under a billable hour model, the company only caters to AI-native firms that charge clients based on outcomes.

“Companies want fee transparency, predictability, and speed,” , a Manifest investor and former general counsel for ��1, and , said in a statement. “Lawyers want to focus on delivering results, not justifying billable hours. Manifest OS’s model and use of advanced technology align those interests in a way the traditional system simply doesn’t.”

Along with AI software that helps attorneys with tasks like client communications, legal research, document drafting and billing, Manifest OS also offers a centralized back office to handle client intake, business development, paralegal work and other administrative tasks. That, according to the firm, frees attorneys up to focus on more complex legal work.

One important caveat: All firms that use its platform operate under the Manifest Law name. According to the startup, that results in a consistent brand presence, pricing, response time and service quality to clients. Its is a business immigration law firm.

The startup says it has already served 150-plus corporate clients, including large tech companies, since launching 18 months earlier. It has hired more than 100 attorneys to date, it said, less than 1% of those that applied.

Related Crunchbase query:

$23M for industrial solar panel recycling

French cleantech startup said last month that it has secured €20 million (about $23 million) in Series B and grant funding to tackle a growing problem: industrial-scale solar panel recycling.��

By 2050, tens of millions of tons of solar panels are expected to become defunct, according to ROSI. The company’s technology recovers high-purity raw materials including silver, silicon, copper, aluminum and glass from those panels so that they can be recycled into new products.��

ROSI said the new funding will be used to build its first large-scale recycling plant in Spain. The site will be able to process 10,000 tonnes per year.��

The funding was led by , , and Spanish family office . Zurich-based corporate advisory firm , which specializes in deep tech, acted as strategic financial adviser and investor. Other investors included unnamed Swiss and Polish family offices.

“Our ambition is to build a European-scale industrial platform for circular management and the production of strategic raw materials, transforming end-of-life solar panels into a reliable source of high-purity materials for the European industries of tomorrow,” ROSI President and co-founder said in a statement.

The investment comes as cleantech funding has seen tepid investor enthusiasm in recent years. Overall funding to startups in Crunchbase’s cleantech-, electric vehicle- and sustainability-related categories fell to a five-year low in 2025. Still, some areas — including solar and recycling — have continued to see larger rounds.

Related Crunchbase query:

$2.3M for a cell-based milk supplier��

Venture investment in food and beverage startups has fallen precipitously in recent years, from more than $22 billion in the peak year of 2021 to . Companies working on cell-based alternatives to traditional sources of protein such as meat and dairy products, in particular, have largely fallen out of favor with startup investors, Crunchbase data shows.

That makes Montreal-based ’s recent $3.2 million CAD (roughly $2.3 million) seed round all the more interesting. The company, previously named BetterMilk, says it produces “complete milk” — with proteins, fats and sugars — from mammary cells in a bioreactor, without employing any cows.

Its recent round was led by , with participation from , , and existing investors including , and .

Rather than make a direct-to-consumer play, as many food and beverage startups have done, Opalia is positioning itself as a supplier in the food industry. The company recently inked a two-year deal with dairy supplier and a paid pilot with an unnamed “Canadian division of a leading global dairy group.”

“We see Opalia as a foundational player in the next era of dairy,” , managing partner at Nadarra Venture, said in a statement. “What sets them apart is a combination of highly credible, differentiated science and a clear, executable path to scale within existing dairy infrastructure, addressing the economics required to compete globally. Today, global demand for dairy is outpacing supply, and the traditional system is under increasing pressure from climate and resource constraints, making innovation no longer optional.”

Opalia plans to make its commercial debut in 2028 and said it’s currently working through the regulatory process in North America.

Related Crunchbase query:

$16M to automate the factory playbook

Mountain View, California-based last month announced a $16 million seed funding round��to speed up what it calls one of manufacturing’s most stubborn bottlenecks: turning digital product designs into actual production plans.

The startup’s platform, dubbed AutoAssembler, plugs into existing CAD and PLM systems and uses AI to automate process planning, the painstaking engineering work required to determine how parts fit together, in what order they should be assembled, and how products can realistically be built at scale. C-Infinity says workflows that once took weeks can now be completed in minutes.

Its seed round was led by with participation from and

C-Infinity’s pitch taps into a broader trend gaining traction across industrial tech: software that doesn’t just analyze operations, but actively participates in physical production decisions. That kind of investment in physical AI — real-world applications of artificial intelligence, including in factories and on construction sites — has taken off this year.��All told, startups working on physical AI have already hauled in more than $37 billion in venture funding globally in 2026, , shattering the full-year records of $21 billion set in both 2025 and 2021.

Related Crunchbase query: ��

Illustration:

But while the fundamental need for food security remains high, startup investors have become increasingly risk-averse, driven by structural and economic pressures, Crunchbase data shows.

And that aversion is reflected in the number of venture deals being conducted in the sectors so far in 2026.

The broad trend: Venture funding in agriculture and farming is still undergoing a market correction following the hyper-funding era of 2021, when startups in the space raised $10.5 billion across 1,419 deals, a review of Crunchbase data shows. Many agtech startups that raised massive rounds during that 2021 peak have struggled to show real-world traction.

At the same time, as with most other industries, AI is having an impact. AI in agriculture has moved from predictive to agentic. The focus is no longer strictly on collecting data, but on autonomous orchestration — closing the loop between digital insight and physical action on the farm.

The numbers: So far this year through May 7, agtech startups have raised $1.4 billion, on track to be down slightly or on par with the $4.4 billion raised last year and the $4.6 billion raised in 2024. It’s also well below the peak $10.5 billion raised by agriculture-related startups in 2021 and the $10.3 billion that went to such companies in 2022.��

Deal count looks to be pacing down more significantly, with the 187 deals done year to date tracking much slower than the 784 rounds in 2025 and the 1,038 in 2024.That signals not only less overall funding but also larger round sizes for fewer companies.

Standout deals

The largest round in 2026 so far was raised by , a New Zealand startup that develops a smart collar for cattle, which enables virtual fencing and real-time monitoring. In late March, Halter raised funding led by at a valuation of just over $2 billion.

Boston-based , a weather technology company offering real-time forecasting services to predict and respond to climate-related threats, closed on at a $1 billion valuation in February. Private equity firm and co-led that financing.

������Գ���’s , which has built an amphibious water bomber aircraft for aerial wildfire suppression, raised a $135.2 million Series A round led by in March.

And , a UK-based producer of gene-edited crops, raised $105 million in a Series C round of funding co-led by and in March.

Interestingly, Indian startups have raised three of the 11 largest deals in the sector so far in 2026: , and .

Exits

The agtech exit landscape over the past year has been characterized by strategic consolidation rather than high-profile IPOs. As venture capital interest remains disciplined, established players – both within the agricultural sector and from broader tech – are acquiring startups to bolster their AI and automation capabilities.

The third quarter of 2025 saw three notable acquisitions in the space:

• picked up (founded in 1982, the company is manufacturer of driverless orchard sprayer for agriculture applications).
• announced it would buy , which aims to offer high-volume crop production units made from upcycled shipping containers to support farming in any climate, ��and
• said it would acquire (formerly Agritask), a crop supply intelligence company.

In the first half of 2026, the trend continued.��

In January, announced it would acquire biological insect control group . Interestingly, the company said it plans to.

Also in January, cannabis industry enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform announced it had acquired competitor , an 8-year-old cultivation management software startup.

(FBN), , and have long been viewed as IPO candidates but it remains to be seen when (or if) they’ll take the plunge.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• Automation Is A Bright Spot Amid Ho-Hum Agtech Funding

Illustration:

led the raise, which included participation from , , , and St. Elmo Venture Capital, the investment arm of customer . It brings the Raleigh, North Carolina-based startup’s total raised to $5.35 million since its 2023 inception.

The idea for Cloneable traces back to a bottleneck its founders encountered years earlier while working in the field.

In 2019, as wildfires ravaged California, co-founders , and — founding employees at drone company — were deployed to help inspect critical infrastructure. Their team sent out 150 drone pilots to survey thousands of miles of transmission lines.

But reviewing that data proved far less scalable.

When Reich visited a utility command center weeks later, she saw hundreds of workers manually scrubbing through video footage, while only a handful of experts knew what to look for.

“It was an ‘aha’ moment,” she recalled. “We realized this cannot be the way. If we know what the expert is looking for, why can’t we just clone that expertise?”

The startup’s founders realized that heavy industries — energy, oil and gas and agriculture — face a “knowledge crisis” as experienced workers retire faster than they can be replaced.

“For every young worker entering the energy workforce, 2.4 experienced ones are walking out the door toward retirement. And it’s happening right as energy demand is set to double by 2050,” Reich, the company’s CEO, told Crunchbase News.

Cloneable aims to capture and preserve that kind of institutional knowledge.

In February 2025, it launched Cloneable Field for automated infrastructure inspection targeting the energy sector.�� Alongside the fundraise, the company is now launching an agentic product that codifies expert knowledge and deploys it as scalable AI agents.

The funding will also support expansion into infrastructure-heavy industries such as public utilities, vegetation management, construction, rail, mining, agriculture and manufacturing.

“These are markets chronically underserved by point solutions,” Reich said. “No one has combined in-field data collection with agentic automation at the scale these industries require.”

That includes workers’ judgment and institutional knowledge not captured in documentation or general AI models, according to Reich. “Cloneable automates workflows that have traditionally been considered too complex for automation,” she said.

The company claims that a process that typically takes a human engineer eight hours, such as structural calculations for a project where a firm is going to replace, upgrade or install 25 utility poles can be completed by a Cloneable agent in under two minutes.

“A single engineer can process roughly 4,500 to 5,500 poles a year before they hit a capacity ceiling,” Reich said. “Our agent runs at 2 million to 3 million poles a year. For a mid-size engineering firm with five to 10 people spending half their time on this work, that’s $115,000 to $312,000 a year in labor that’s not being redirected to higher-value work.

She added: “This could be the difference in entire towns being connected to fiber or not over the next 12 months.”

From the field to the back office

The startup says it grew ARR 100x between February and the end of 2025. It has dozens of customers, including , , , and , as well as , which is expanding the “expert cloning” model to livestock and food supply.

Unlike generic AI that requires coding or clean data, Cloneable’s platform “shadows” experts. AI watches an expert perform a workflow, such as a complex utility-pole design. It then captures audio and documentation from the expert in real time. Next, it turns that contextual experience into an AI agent capable of executing the same task.

“Our differentiation is a decade of lived experience in how these industries actually operate, and the proprietary data and workflows we’ve captured from being inside these companies,” Reich said, adding that everything is highly specific — from tools to how they’re configured per customer.

Large foundation model companies focus on the model itself, she said.

“We’re focusing on a framework that leverages different model types, including small, specific ones,” she said. “We clone our customers’ knowledge and experience into a small model, which makes it extremely cost-effective to do their work. We’ve built it so all the agent needs to know is: my company, my rules, my industry, my tools.”

Cloneable makes money from its field offering through seat-based licenses per field collection device. With its new agent, charges are per-token and usage-based.

Solving for both data and the agents to act on it

, a partner at Congruent Ventures, said her firm’s investment in Cloneable was the culmination of many conversations with founders about AI adoption in legacy industries.

“We’ve seen companies focus either on data capture with complex, expensive, purpose-built hardware — or on agentic AI for the back office where they struggle to get the high-fidelity data needed to power those agents,” she wrote. “Cloneable has solved both.”

She said the firm is betting on Cloneable’s team to bring AI to industries where horizontal solutions “aren’t deep enough.”

Related Crunchbase query:

Illustration:

In a quarter when nearly two-thirds of global venture capital went to just four companies, it’s easy to lose track of the many other companies getting funding to tackle interesting problems. Nonetheless, we spotted five companies in just the past month working on issues from cleaner ferries and trains to foundational AI for plants. Let’s take a closer look.

$55M for a mineral rights-backed credit card

Natural resources can be incredibly valuable financial assets, but you can’t exactly buy your weekly groceries with oil or water rights.

That’s an issue that a Dallas-based fintech startup aims to solve. recently raised $50 million in a debt round from to provide a credit card to U.S. households holding mineral rights to natural resources such as oil, natural gas, solar, wind or water.

“For the millions of mineral rights owners in the United States, these rights are one of the most valuable assets the family owns. But these families are just like the rest of Americans and often are carrying revolving credit card balances at more than 25% [interest],” Frontlands CEO said in a statement. “Historically, owners have had few options to access the value trapped inside their mineral rights without selling.”

Its AI system combines machine learning, production data, royalty payment histories, lease terms, commodity price forecasts, geologic data and traditional to automate the underwriting process, the company says. While it’s historically been difficult for traditional lenders to assess natural resources as collateral, Frontlands says its process typically delivers a same-day credit decision.

The company’s recent credit facility is in addition to a announced in December from venture investors including , , and .

Frontlands said its average credit line in early markets — Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, North Dakota, Wyoming and Oklahoma — is more than $30,000. It plans to launch its credit card product this summer in partnership with Texas-based sponsor bank .

Frontlands said it also expects to raise a Series A round later this year.

“Our goal isn’t to pile on more debt,” Cotter said in a statement. “But the opportunity to help our customers move away from high-interest credit card debt — and provide a path toward greater financial stability — is compelling.”

Investment in fintech startups hit a multiyear high in 2025, Crunchbase data shows, though remains well below the peak. Many of the best-funded companies in recent quarters have brought AI to bear on traditionally more manual or cumbersome processes in the financial services industry.

Related Crunchbase query:

$32M for ‘flying’ electric commuter ferries

As of this writing, oil prices are hovering around $100 a barrel — down from an even greater peak a few weeks earlier, but still among the highest levels seen in years, as the U.S.-Iran war disrupts global energy markets.

So Swedish electric vessel maker ’s recent funding of €30 million (about $32 million) seems timely. The Stockholm-based company makes electric “flying” boats that are used as commuter ferries. They differ from traditional vessels by using computer-controlled hydrofoils to lift the hull above the water, an approach the company says dramatically reduces drag and cuts energy use by up to 80% — enabling faster, smoother, zero-emission travel compared to conventional diesel ferries that push through the water.

“From a physics perspective, ships have been essentially the same for hundreds of years,” Candela founder and CEO said in a statement. “We’re redefining waterborne transport by effectively creating a new category of vessel. This allows cities and municipalities to finally take full advantage of waterways — while escaping the fossil-fuel cost trap that has long prevented them from being used efficiently.”

Its P-12 vessels have already been deployed as commuter ferries in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Oslo and Trondheim.

The new funding was led by ’s arm and included previous investors , , and .

The capital will primarily be used to fund a second factory in Poland. Candela says it has more than 65 vessels on order and planned deployments across markets including India — where a fleet of 10 of its P-12s will reportedly cut travel times from Navi Mumbai Airport to the city center from around two hours to 35 minutes —��the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The startup’s funding defies an overall downturn in clean-tech funding. Funding for clean-tech related startups totaled $26.9 billion in 2025, down 23% year over year and the lowest annual amount since 2020, Crunchbase data shows.

Related Crunchbase query:

$30M to electrify trains with batteries and microgrids

Let’s now turn from waterways to train tracks, with another company that recently raised significant funding aimed at giving centuries-old transportation systems a green overhaul.

, a Philadelphia-based startup, said last month that it raised $30 million in seed funding led by Australian mining company and Israeli venture firm to develop a new way of powering freight rail that avoids the high costs of traditional electrification.

The startup positions its technology as a way to decarbonize one of the world’s most efficient but still fossil-fuel-dependent transport systems. It’s targeting a major pain point for the rail industry: its heavy reliance on diesel. In North America alone, the six largest freight rail operators spend roughly $11 billion annually on diesel fuel, while full electrification of rail networks could cost more than $1 trillion, according to Voltify.

Instead of relying on overhead wires, Voltify says it’s building a system that combines battery-equipped railcars with technology that allows trains to recharge while moving. The goal is to help rail operators cut emissions and fuel costs without requiring massive infrastructure overhauls.

Its approach — using mobile batteries and distributed charging via microgrids — aims to sidestep those costs by retrofitting existing trains and building localized energy systems rather than rebuilding entire rail networks.

CEO and co-founder that the company has signed a paid pilot agreement with a Class 1 railroad, though she declined to name the customer, citing a confidentiality agreement.

She noted in a that raising funding for a transportation company in the current market was difficult. “Securing capital in the hardware space and traditional industries is challenging,” she wrote. “It is not the ‘in’ space; there is no FOMO at play, so we need to focus on metrics and execute quickly. With some of the top 5 largest rail companies globally and a large order pipeline, we are determined to keep moving at lightning speed.”

Related Crunchbase query:

$7M for foundation AI for biology

Funding to foundational model AI startups surged last quarter, reaching $178 billion, per Crunchbase data. But the vast majority of that funding went to AI giants like and that are building general-purpose GenAI models.

Such models are fundamentally lacking for hard sciences, argues , a startup based in Paris and Berkeley, California, that last month raised $7 million in seed funding to develop foundation AI for biology trained on DNA, RNA and data from other “” fields, rather than human text.

The company’s first family of transformer models is called Botanic and is trained on data from 43 plant species. Living Models noted that it’s starting with the commercial crop industry, a massive global market that has abundant data, well-established research infrastructure, and fewer regulatory concerns and faster commercialization timelines than the pharmaceutical industry.

“Plant biology combines three properties that make it an ideal first domain for biological foundation models: genomic data is abundant and largely unrestricted, the commercial need is acute and quantifiable, and the feedback loop between computational prediction and real-world validation is well established through existing breeding infrastructure,” the company said in a statement.

The global seed industry is also dominated by a handful of incumbents, it noted: , , , and —��companies that already spend billions of dollars a year on breeding research.

“Biology is an information problem at every scale, from a single cell to an entire ecosystem. The genomic data exists across many domains; what’s been missing is a model architecture capable of learning from it at scale,” , Living Models’ CTO and co-founder, said in a statement. “We start with plants because the data is rich and the breeding cycle is a clear bottleneck, but the same approach applies wherever sequence data meets slow, empirical discovery.”

The company’s recent funding was led by , , and . Other included and

Related Crunchbase query:

$2.1M for a brain-stimulating consumer wearable

Billions of dollars a year are spent on therapy and other mental-health treatments, yet measuring progress can be elusive.

That’s one of the issues that San Francisco-based aims to take on with a neuromodulation wearable headset that it says can reduce stress, improve attention span and mood, and more quantitatively measure mental health scores.

Mave’s device uses transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, a noninvasive technique that delivers a low electrical current to the brain through electrodes placed on the scalp, with the aim of modulating neural activity. The technology is when used by adults as directed in controlled settings.

The company last month raised $2.1 million in seed funding led by , with participation from individual investors including Autopilot AI lead .

Crucially, Mave says it does not plan to pursue medical-device approval for its product, which sells for $495. Instead, it is positioning the gadget as a wellness tool that consumers can use on a daily basis to improve their mental well-being and better measure the outcomes of talk therapy or other treatments.

“If you ask a psychologist how do you know if a person is making progress, their response to it is very standard, which is that it’s not about progress. It’s about process […] But for somebody with depression who is spending a lot of time in therapy, progress is important. So how do you know whether they’re making progress or not? And even these basic questions were not being answered,” co-founder .

Mave’s funding comes amid an overall downturn in investment for wellness and fitness-related companies, although select wearables makers including and have raised significant funding in recent years.

Related Crunchbase query:

Related reading:

• 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Blood-Drawing Robots, Inboxes For AI Agents, Franchised Defense Manufacturing, And More
• 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Plant-Based Clothing Dyes, A Shoebox-Picking Robot, And Power Generated On The Moon
• 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed In December: A Hospital-Grade Wireless Heart Monitor, AI-Designed Proteins For Manufacturing, And More

Illustration:

U.S. and Canadian companies secured a staggering $252.6 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding rounds per Crunchbase data. That’s more than 3x the total raised in the prior quarter, and the largest quarterly total of all time.

Predictably, artificial intelligence was the driver. More than 87% of Q1 investment went to companies in Crunchbase AI-related categories.

To say these are record funding tallies is somewhat of an understatement. It’s more like Q1 smashed the prior quarterly record — $95.7 billion — set in Q3 2021.

Just a single financing for was bigger than the prior quarterly record for all startup funding rounds put together. And the four next-largest financings totaled almost as much as the prior quarter, which at the time we considered a very strong period for startup funding.

So, in summary, it was a lot of money. For a more detailed picture, we drill down more deeply into how that largesse was distributed across stages and sectors. We also take a look at exits for the quarter, including both IPOs and acquisitions.

Table of contents

• AI
• Later stage and technology growth
• Early stage
• Seed
• Exits
• Big picture: A paradigm shift
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

AI

We’ll start with AI, since that’s where the overwhelming majority of the money went.

A staggering $221 billion went to North American companies in Crunchbase AI-related categories in the first quarter. That’s about 6x the AI investment total from the prior quarter, which was itself no slacker on this front.

For perspective, we charted out AI-related funding over the past 13 quarters to compare.

A few megarounds for high-profile companies accounted for most of the quarter’s AI funding, led by OpenAI, , and .

Later stage and technology growth

These same names factor heavily in tallies for late-stage and technology-growth funding, which comprised the vast majority of total startup investment.

Per Crunchbase data, $222.4 billion — or 88% of all North America startup investment — went to rounds at these stages. That’s more than 5x the prior quarter’s tally, and more than triple year-ago levels.

The gains were driven by bigger deals, not more of them. Later- and growth-stage round counts were actually down a smidge sequentially in Q1. For perspective, below we chart round counts and investment totals at this stage for the past five quarters.

Enormous rounds for AI companies accounted for a majority of the late- and growth-stage totals. The biggest of these was OpenAI’s record-setting $110 billion February financing led by , and . The generative AI giant topped it off with a raise in March.

Anthropic secured the quarter’s next-biggest late-stage financing — a $30 billion February Series G — followed by xAI, which announced a $20 billion Series E in January. landed another of the quarter’s very big deals, with a $16 billion February Series D.

Early stage

Early-stage investment was also running high in Q1, albeit not setting records.

Overall, investors put $25.1 billion into deals around Series A and Series B stage in the first quarter. That’s up 17% from the prior quarter and 56% from year-ago levels. It’s also the highest quarterly total in over three years, though still below peaks scaled in 2021.

Early-stage round counts, meanwhile, were down a bit, indicating investors’ increasingly concentrating their bets among perceived star performers.

As usual, a few jumbo-sized deals significantly boosted the early-stage totals. For Q1, this included four rounds of $500 million or more.

Of these, Austin-based humanoid robotics startup was the biggest fundraiser, pulling in $520 million in a February Series A. Three other companies secured $500 million financings: AI infrastructure developer , semiconductor startup , and industrial robotics-focused .

Seed

Seed-stage investment, meanwhile, did not show an upswing but remained at historically robust levels.

Per Crunchbase data, an estimated $5.1 billion went to seed and pre-seed investments in Q1. That’s roughly flat with the prior quarter and up a bit from year-ago levels.

Seed round counts declined in Q1, both sequentially and year over year. However, we expect these tallies to rise some over time, along with investment totals, as seed deals commonly get added to the data set weeks after they close.

Exits

Exit activity was fairly staid in comparison to the high-rolling startup fundraising environment.

That said, the IPO market did boast a few sizable startup debuts. Of these, the largest was the January IPO of construction equipment rental marketplace , followed by space tech company , and crypto platform .

Below, we aggregated a list of 12 private, venture-backed companies that carried out IPOs on U.S. exchanges.

Acquirers also announced several large deals to purchase venture-backed private companies.

The priciest planned M&A deal was ’s agreement to purchase business credit card provider for $5.15 billion. Biotech also delivered some large outcomes, including ’s planned acquisition of RNA therapeutics startup , and ’ purchase of allergy treatment startup .

Below, we put together a list of five of the quarter’s biggest M&A deals.1

Big picture: A paradigm shift

Having written many of these funding reports over the years, it’s common for one quarter to quietly blur into another. Not so for Q1 of 2026.

The just-ended quarter cemented a notion that startup insiders have been circling for some time: Private markets now have the capital stores and appetite for ultra-high valuations to rival public markets. For evidence, look no further than OpenAI’s $122 billion raise at a valuation higher than all but a handful of the largest large-cap technology companies.

IPO enthusiasts may pine for a future period when these most sought-after foundational AI names finally do make it to public markets. But for now, they’ve demonstrated there are plenty of investors willing to shell out billions in private offerings as well.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from Crunchbase, and is based on reported data. Data is as of March 31, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. Crunchbase also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. Crunchbase includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

Illustration:

These in-between exits don’t generate a lot of buzz, but collectively they add up to a tidy sum. Last year, for instance, U.S. startup purchases under $300 million��1 brought in about $8.7 billion altogether, Crunchbase data shows.

These small and mid-sized deals are not a long-term growth area for M&A, by many measures. The total deal value of purchases between $100 million and $300 million last year was still below levels routinely reached nearly a decade ago, as charted below.

Moreover, the total value can add up to just a fraction of a single, larger exit. ’s $32 billion purchase of , for instance, is worth more than 4x all these sub-$300 million deals put together.

Even so, we’re up from prior lows. Startup purchases in this range hit a low point a couple years ago and have rebounded since, with this year off to a brisk start as well.

Smaller deals shrink more

Smaller disclosed-price acquisitions of under $100 million are also well below peak. The volume and value of these deals hit a low in 2024 and has made somewhat of a comeback since, as charted below.

These sub-$100 million purchases are a mixed bag for returns. Investors might recoup solid profits from companies that raised a few million in seed funding and sold for prices in the tens of millions.

In other cases, startups sold for considerably less than the sums they raised in venture investment. Using Crunchbase data, we aggregated a few examples of such deals from the past year. It includes companies with known struggles, such as , which filed for bankruptcy before selling to an acquirer this month.

No power buyers

Notably, there is no “power acquirer” for small and mid-sized startup purchases. Out of 181 sub-$300 million startup acquisitions since 2024 there was no buyer with more than two such deals, per Crunchbase data.

That said, there are companies with a larger number of funded startup purchases, just without reported prices for all or most. Examples include , , , , , and , among others.

When price isn’t disclosed, it’s hard to gauge how founders and investors fared on the deal. That said, most of the more active buyers can certainly afford to pay well. Whether they choose to do so is another matter.

*This is only disclosed-price purchases. Most startup acquisitions do not have a disclosed price.

Related Crunchbase queries:

Related reading:

• Biotech Startup M&A Is Reliably Delivering Some Big Exits
• Crunchbase Predicts: Why The Race For Talent And Tech Could Accelerate Startup M&A In 2026
• M&A The Highest On Record For Unicorn Exits In 2025

Illustration:

February was the biggest month on record for venture funding. And while the vast majority of that capital went to just three companies — , and — a whole host of under-the-radar startups also drew investor checks.

Among those that most piqued our interest: A phlebotomy robot, a company that aims to revive precision manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe with a small-business franchise model, and a health beverage made from seaweed. Let’s dive in.

$70M for robotic blood draws

If you’re squeamish about needles or blood, you might want to stop reading now.

This week, Dutch startup raised $70 million in Series B funding for its phlebotomy robots, which are designed to autonomously perform diagnostic blood draws.

Vitestro was founded in 2017 and has raised more than $104 million to date, . Its Series B investors include , and , among others.

The new funding will be used to advance its Autonomous Robotic Phlebotomy Device, to seek regulatory approvals in the U.S. and to scale commercialization.

Blood draws are one of the most routine and important processes in healthcare, investors noted, but have undergone little to no technical innovation, despite chronic industry staffing shortages.

Vitestro’s device is designed to be installed in phlebotomy departments and combines imaging technology, AI and advanced robotics to identify suitable veins for a blood draw, guide needle insertion and collect blood samples, according to the company.

“Vitestro is redefining one of the largest and most under innovated clinical workflows with a first-of-its-kind autonomous robotic platform for diagnostic blood collection addressing an enormous unmet global market need,” Dr. , co-founder and partner at Sonder Capital and former co-founder and CEO of and , said in a statement. “I believe this technology has the potential to establish a new standard of care, much as robotic surgery did in its early days.”

Related Crunchbase query:

$50M for a franchise model for precision manufacturing

Two of the hottest startup industries right now are defense and space tech. At the same time, domestic manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe, particularly for military and defense applications, has come under renewed focus amid global trade tensions and intensifying wars.

Against that backdrop, manufacturing startup said earlier this week that it raised a $50 million Series A, less than a year after its seed round. The London-based company says it plans to open 25 factories by the end of 2026 and launch into Germany, France and Ukraine.

Isembard makes technology to manufacture precision components that are used in the defense, aerospace, energy and robotics sectors. Interestingly, it operates as a franchise model that lets existing machine shops and new businesses use its proprietary software and AI system.

It noted that component manufacturing is a $1.8 trillion a year industry. Yet, 95% of production is done by small businesses. The typical owner of one of those small machine shops is more than 65 years old and 40% plan to retire within five years, according to the company.

led Isembard’s Series A investment, which included participation from��, , , , and individual investors , and .

“Isembard is redefining the process of owning and running a factory,” , managing partner at Union Square, said in a statement. “By embedding deep operational expertise into an agentic OS, MasonOS lowers the barrier to operating high-performance manufacturing businesses and enables a networked, capital-efficient path to scale. At a moment when demand for advanced manufacturing is accelerating and interest in SMB ownership is rising, Isembard brings both forces together.”

Related Crunchbase queries: and

$13M for seaweed beverages

While overall funding to food and beverage startups has plummeted since their pandemic-era heights, products that offer unique health benefits do still attract investor attention.

One recently funded company in that space is , a Torrance, California-based startup that makes wellness-oriented drinks from seaweed. The company secured $13 million in seed funding led by with participation from and .

Founded in 2019 by , Aqua Theon’s first product is OoMee, a seaweed-based beverage marketed as supporting gut health and satiety. Its star ingredient, agar-agar, has reportedly seen a surge in social media interest.

Beverages marketed as healthful or beneficial are to be a more than $192 billion market by the end of this year.�� Among funded startups, that has included a heavy emphasis on products that orient themselves around offering protein, fiber or an energy boost, a review of Crunchbase data shows.

Related Crunchbase query:

$6M for an email provider for AI agents

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Less than four years into the AI boom, AI agents are already asking for their own email addresses.

That’s the premise behind , a San Francisco-based startup that this week said it has raised $6 million in seed funding from a long list of investors to build the tech stack for software agents, starting with their inboxes.

“AI agents are already starting to function as virtual employees across industries,” , partner at , said in a statement. “These agents need their own identity and email is the heart of identity on the internet. Traditional identity services were not built with agentic use cases in mind, and AgentMail is building that part of the stack, starting with email.”

To that end, AgentMail said it’s launching its onboarding API to let AI agents get email addresses without human assistance.

“The next billion users of the internet will be AI agents,” AgentMail co-founder said in a statement. “We’re building infrastructure that treats agents as first-class citizens, starting with email. The demand is so intense that the agents themselves are finding us and signing up.”

Related Crunchbase query:

$1.3M for AI for wastewater treatment

, an AI software company that helps the wastewater industry manage complex systems and make critical decisions, raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding. The deal exemplifies a common theme among funded AI startups: Many operate in very niche industries and promise to automate process-heavy workflows.

Nyad said its tool is designed to help plant operators in the wastewater industry, which faces a looming labor shortage as nearly half of the sector’s U.S. workforce is expected in the next decade.

The round for the Birmingham, Alabama-based startup was led by and included participation from , , , , and angel investor .

Nyad was founded in 2024 by British entrepreneurs (CEO) and after the two reportedly experienced poor water quality during triathlon training in the U.K. They later moved the company to the U.S. after seeing early customer demand through pilot programs in the Birmingham area.

Nyad’s technology helps plant operators maintain compliance and troubleshoot issues. “Operators are the final line of defense for public health and the environment,” Szepietowski said in a statement. “As experience retires out of the industry, we need tools that support operators in the moment when decisions matter most.”

Related reading:

• Massive AI Deals Drive $189B Startup Funding Record In February While Public Software Stocks Reel
• Startups Are Serving Up Drinks With Protein, Caffeine And A Shot Of Wellness

Illustration:

Seed-stage investors have a different view. Over the past few months, two startups focused on the intersection of AI and biosecurity have raised good-sized initial rounds with among their investors.

, a developer of AI systems that identify biological threats and design countermeasures, last fall in its first known funding round. The New York-headquartered company counts and as backers, along with OpenAI.

Weeks later, , a self-described AI biosecurity company, secured $15 million in a seed round led by OpenAI and joined by investors including , and . The company’s operating thesis is that as AI capabilities advance, biological risks grow exponentially, so defenses must scale at the same rate.

On the nonprofit front, meanwhile, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based secured grant funding from multiple sources last year, $1.4 million from in December. The organization’s stated mission is to secure the future from catastrophic pandemics.

A drop in the AI bucket

Given all the capital that has poured into artificial intelligence of late, these are not comparatively large sums going to biosecurity. To put it in perspective, the two biggest seed rounds are less than one-tenth of a percent of the record-setting $110 billion financing OpenAI secured last week.

What’s more noteworthy than sums invested is these are relatively new areas for startups to scale.

Per Crunchbase data, the term “biosecurity” and similar terminology has cropped up in funded startup descriptions but not so much in the context of AI. Funded startups around this theme have also commonly focused on livestock.

The Australian startup , for instance, raised a few million two years ago, , with a focus on tracking biosecurity risks for cattle, pigs, eggs and poultry. And Nebraska-based last year for a business focused on swine disease surveillance.

Running in place

In addition to their AI focus, the latest crop of biosecurity seed-funded startups stand out for the dire scenarios they’re hoping to contain.

, it’s now faster to weaponize biology than to advance new cures, an ominous development that AI leaders have identified as one of the largest threats of our time. The company envisions a future where any threat to human health can be immediately identified and neutralized.

Red Queen Bio evokes a similarly alarming specter of threats, reflected in its nomenclature. The , a notion that evolution requires constant adaptation to ever-evolving threats, stems from a “Through the Looking Glass” passage. In it, the tyrannical Red Queen explains that in her kingdom, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

Running to keep in the same place seems a more broadly apt metaphor for the modern era in myriad domains, not just biosecurity. However, this is one of the spaces where not keeping up carries the potentially deadliest penalties.

Illustration:

Those, in obnoxiously overgeneralized terms, are the basic tenets of launching and scaling a beverage startup targeting the modern consumer. Per an analysis of Crunchbase data, recently funded companies in the drinks space typically check one if not all of those boxes.

These are not especially shocking findings. Consumers willing to pay handsomely for a container of liquid are commonly looking for health and wellness benefits, as well as an energy boost, if not a buzz.

That’s reflected in our sample list of . Standouts include such potable offerings as protein soda, botanical tonics and sugar-free energy drinks.

We take a closer look at where the money is going by focusing on a few top investment themes.

Protein everywhere

First off, it seems safe to say protein is officially the macronutrient of the year. This is evident in the beverage space, where startups and established brands alike are competing to stuff more protein into everything from sodas to lattes to flavored waters.

Below, we assembled a list of four startups along these lines funded this year.

Dutch startup , which produces dairy proteins through precision fermentation, picked up the biggest recent round, landing . The company makes a whey protein that’s been used for clear drinks, powder mixes and snack bars.

, which makes high-protein milk shakes and iced coffees, is also poised to scale, having secured a . More than three-fourths of the calories in its drinks come from protein.

For those seeking something fizzier, is another option. The Los Angeles-based company sells canned sodas that feature 15 grams of whey protein.

Energy

Of course, what use is all that protein if one isn’t awake or alert enough to appreciate it? Enter our next favored funding category: energy-boosting drinks.

Using Crunchbase data, we assembled a sample list of five such startups funded this year.

One continuing trend is the incorporation of caffeine into drinks that traditionally don’t contain the stuff. , for instance, markets a sparkling pink lemonade with more caffeine than many cups of coffee. , meanwhile, sells a lineup of even more caffeinated fruity-flavored drinks.

We’re also seeing startups straddling multiple hot beverage niches. Concentrated coffee purveyor , for instance, sells a . And makes products with added ingredients offering nutritional and health benefits.

Wellness

Drinks for health and fitness buffs are also attracting investors. To illustrate, we assembled a list of five startups funded this year that meet this criteria.

, a maker of fizzy tonics crafted with potentially mood-boosting , scored one of the more high-profile rounds, selling a minority stake to the venture arm of spirits maker early this year. The Southern California startup promotes itself as a festive alternative to alcoholic beverages.

Venice, California-based also picked up a venture round, per a securities filing, as it scales up its offerings of drinkable shots crafted to augment mental performance.

Anything but tap water

It’s a good thing for startups that consumers are accustomed to paying up to quench our thirst with basically anything other than tap water. But given the plethora of options already out there, newcomers are playing in a crowded field.

“The big question starting to emerge is: How big can the shelf get and how many options can consumers truly absorb?” research and accounting firm posited in a recent on beverage industry trends. The firm sees certain categories as better poised to cut through the clutter, with wellness drinks having a particular edge.

Sugar-free or low-sugar drinks also appear to be on the rise, at least looking at funded startups, with a sizable chunk of this year’s investment recipient boasting this attribute. It’s not just zero-calorie drinks either. In fact, both startups and established brands are increasingly pushing the envelope on the notion that a drink can be both sweet and protein-rich enough to sub for a steak.

Now that brands have made such strides in the nutritional profile of drinks, the next step will be to see which ones consumers believe actually taste good.

Related Crunchbase list:

Illustration: