From powerboat records to a $1bn war chest: meet Europe’s newest defence unicorn
From powerboat records to a $1bn war chest: meet Europe’s newest defence unicorn

First the Royal Navy shoved a robot boat out of a transport plane at 1,300 feet. Then its maker became Europe’s newest defence unicorn. Kraken Technology Group, a British maker of uncrewed surface vessels, has raised $175m (€152.9m) in a Series B round…

Nanya plans a $6bn spending surge in 2027 to ride the AI memory boom
Nanya plans a $6bn spending surge in 2027 to ride the AI memory boom

Nanya Technology spent years as the also-ran of the memory business, the Taiwanese DRAM maker that Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron never had to worry about much. The AI boom has changed the arithmetic. The company now plans to spend around $6bn in 2027 as…

A €91M bet on the diamond microscope that could be Europe’s next ASML
A €91M bet on the diamond microscope that could be Europe’s next ASML

Europe uses about a fifth of the world’s chips, but makes only a tenth of them. A three-year-old Munich startup thinks it can help close that gap, and Brussels has just backed the bet. QuantumDiamonds is a spin-out of the Technical University of Munich…

SoftBank and PayPay said to be in talks to invest in Seven & i
SoftBank and PayPay said to be in talks to invest in Seven & i

Japan’s biggest payments app and its most famous convenience-store chain may be about to get closer. SoftBank and its payments arm PayPay are in talks to invest in Seven & i Holdings, the retailer behind 7-Eleven, according to Bloomberg, which repo…

Tencent in talks to become Manus’ largest shareholder
Tencent in talks to become Manus’ largest shareholder

Manus was, briefly, one of the most valuable exits in Chinese AI. Meta agreed to buy the agentic AI startup for more than $2bn late last year, then watched Beijing block the deal on national-security grounds. Now the company is being bought back by the…

Bezos opens Blue Origin to outside investors for the first time in 26 years
Bezos opens Blue Origin to outside investors for the first time in 26 years

Jeff Bezos is letting outside investors into Blue Origin for the first time since he founded it in 2000. The rocket company is seeking about $10bn in fresh capital at a $130bn pre-money valuation, according to CNBC. For 26 years, Bezos bankrolled the c…

Ollama raises $65M as its open-model runner hits nearly 9M developers
Ollama raises $65M as its open-model runner hits nearly 9M developers

Ollama has raised a $65M Series B led by Theory Ventures. Benchmark, 8VC, Y Combinator and others joined. The round takes the company’s total funding to $88M, three years after it launched, and Ollama set out the plan in a blog post on Thursday. Founde…

Lithuania’s Oxylabs raises $130M from Warburg Pincus at a $3.6bn valuation
Lithuania’s Oxylabs raises $130M from Warburg Pincus at a $3.6bn valuation

Oxylabs has raised $130M from private equity firm Warburg Pincus. It is the company’s first outside investment since it launched in 2015. The deal values the Vilnius-based data infrastructure firm at around $3.6bn. Oxylabs announced the raise on Thursd…

Databento raises $97M to take on Bloomberg’s terminal
Databento raises $97M to take on Bloomberg’s terminal

Databento has raised $97M in Series B funding to build what it calls the market data platform for modern finance. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with DRW, Redpoint Ventures, and Tribe Capital joining. The company announced the raise on…

Lyzr used its own AI agent to help raise a $100mn round
Lyzr used its own AI agent to help raise a $100mn round

A startup that builds artificial-intelligence agents for large companies has turned that software on itself, using one of its own agents to help run a $100 million fundraise. Lyzr, an enterprise AI agents firm backed by Accenture, says the agent handle…