Nvidia’s real moat was never the chips. AI has started rewriting it.
Nvidia’s real moat was never the chips. AI has started rewriting it.

The usual story about Nvidia is a hardware story: the fastest chips, in the shortest supply, at the highest price. The more important part is software. For two decades the company’s real moat has been CUDA. It is the layer that turns its silicon into s…

A two-year-old battery startup just hit $13bn by turning American homes into grid capacity.
A two-year-old battery startup just hit $13bn by turning American homes into grid capacity.

A home-battery company that did not exist three years ago is now worth $13bn. Base Power has raised $1bn in a Series D and launched its own battery, Base Core. The bet behind the number is blunt: the grid cannot keep up with America’s power demand, and…

A Korean chip startup just quadrupled to $2.2bn, betting AI’s next money is outside the data centre.
A Korean chip startup just quadrupled to $2.2bn, betting AI’s next money is outside the data centre.

A South Korean chip designer few outside the industry have heard of just became a $2.2bn company. DeepX has signed the first tranche of a Series D round that values it at roughly four times its previous mark. And it is not finished raising. The first s…

Fusion’s best-funded bet raised another $1bn, and hired the banker who took Moderna public
Fusion’s best-funded bet raised another $1bn, and hired the banker who took Moderna public

The AI boom needs colossal amounts of electricity. That has turned fusion, forever mocked as “30 years away,” into one of the hottest bets in tech. The best-funded player just raised another $1 billion. Commonwealth Fusion Systems, based in Massachuset…

Everyone else is shrinking satellites. K2 raised $500m to build giant ones, and put AI in orbit.
Everyone else is shrinking satellites. K2 raised $500m to build giant ones, and put AI in orbit.

Most satellite startups are racing to build smaller. K2 Space is going the other way, on purpose. Investors just handed it $500 million to keep going bigger. K2 raised a $500 million Series D at a $6.8 billion valuation, it said on Thursday. Kleiner Pe…

The chips that wire GPUs together are the new prize. Xsight raised $300m to sell an open one.
The chips that wire GPUs together are the new prize. Xsight raised $300m to sell an open one.

The AI boom made GPUs famous. The dull chips that wire thousands of those GPUs together are quietly becoming just as valuable. Xsight Labs, an Israeli chipmaker, has raised more than $300 million at a $2.8 billion valuation, it said on Thursday. Fideli…

China threatens ‘resolute’ retaliation over the US robot ban, and it holds the rare-earth card
China threatens ‘resolute’ retaliation over the US robot ban, and it holds the rare-earth card

The US wanted to keep Chinese robots out. Beijing’s answer: do this, and we will hit back where it hurts. China has threatened “resolute” retaliation after Washington moved to bar imports of Chinese-made humanoid robots. Its commerce ministry called th…

Ex-Anduril founders raise $30mn to build Europe’s synthetic battlefield for defence AI
Ex-Anduril founders raise $30mn to build Europe’s synthetic battlefield for defence AI

A London startup building the training grounds for Europe’s autonomous weapons has come out of stealth with $30mn. It is one of the region’s largest defence-tech seed rounds this year. Agon is not building the weapons themselves. It is building the inf…

Google’s new AI can now walk a humanoid across the room and tidy up, feet to fingertips
Google’s new AI can now walk a humanoid across the room and tidy up, feet to fingertips

Google DeepMind wants one AI brain to run every robot, and it just taught that brain to use its whole body. It has released Gemini Robotics 2, a family of models that can control a humanoid from its feet to its fingertips. The system can also coordinat…

To find out what customers think, this $2bn startup asks their AI twins
To find out what customers think, this $2bn startup asks their AI twins

A startup wants companies to stop asking real people what they think, and ask fake ones instead. Simile has raised $200m at a $2bn valuation to build “agentic twins,” AI stand-ins for real consumers that firms can survey by the million. Greenoaks led t…