Funding
14 items across 5 editions · appeared in the last 5 editions in a row. First seen Fri 11 Sep, last seen Tue 15 Sep.
- Schwab said on 14 September that its Advisor Services division is integrating Claude for Financial Advisors into its platform, that the more than 16,000 registered investment advisers it serves will have access, and that it is the only RIA custodian currently providing the integration.
- WealthManagement.com reports the product ships with connectors to Charles Schwab, BlackRock, Addepar, Envestnet, iCapital, Orion, SS&C Black Diamond, Wealthbox, Wealth.com, Vanguard and Zocks, alongside existing connectors including Microsoft 365, Salesforce, DocuSign, Box, FactSet, S&P Global and Morningstar, and with eight workflow skills covering advisor onboarding, compliance and AI policy review, portfolio rebalance review and meeting preparation.
- WealthManagement.com puts pricing at roughly $70 to $120 per user per month, says it is available on Enterprise plans with audit logs, and that firms requesting licences before 30 September 2026 receive a one-time usage credit.
- Neither company published adoption numbers, accuracy figures or an error rate for the advisor workflows. Peter Nolan, Anthropic's head of asset and wealth management, is quoted by Schwab saying "A direct path to families runs through the advisors they already trust."
- Euclyd announced on 15 September that it raised over €200 million in a Series A co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund and Innovation Industries, with EIFO, imec.xpand, the Brabant Development Agency and Quadri also participating. Peter Wennink, former president and chief executive of ASML, joins as chairman.
- CNBC reports the same round as "$231 million" and says chief executive Bernardo Kastrup told it the Eindhoven company is designing an inference system with an architecture different from GPUs, covering both processor and memory. CNBC notes: "Euclyd's systems have yet to be proven at scale in commercial deployments."
- Kastrup told CNBC the company aims to begin rolling out physical chip systems in 2028, with thousands of enterprise customers served by 2030, and said of Samsung: "They are one of the biggest memory manufacturers in the world… they know the supply chain, they have a huge network."
- Euclyd's release names its products as "craftwerk" agentic AI silicon and a "craftwerk station CWS" low-power exascale AI factory, but discloses no performance figures, no benchmark comparison against Nvidia parts and no deployment dates.
- Bloomberg reports that SoftBank Group secured an $11.87 billion loan to support its investment in OpenAI, up from an earlier target of $10 billion. The two-year facility was sealed last week and attracted commitments from around 20 banks, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified.
- The report says SoftBank stated last week that it would repay the balance of a $40 billion loan taken earlier this year to finance the OpenAI investment, paying down the $25.9 billion it owes on 15 September; that uncollateralised borrowing was due to mature in March next year.
- Bloomberg says SoftBank is slated to invest close to $65 billion in OpenAI by October and has already raised about $37 billion this year from offshore and domestic bond sales and loans, including this facility, alongside a $10 billion margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake and a potential bond sale of as much as $20 billion.
- The sources are unnamed and SoftBank has not published the facility's terms. Bloomberg notes the financing comes as executives voice the need to slow AI development, and flags concerns about growing credit risk in the sector.
- TechNode Global, reporting a filing made to the Hong Kong stock exchange on 13 September, says Z.ai plans a share placement of HK$15.68 billion (about $1.98 billion) at HK$714 per share — a 9.96% discount to the 11 September close of HK$793 — representing about 4.5% of enlarged share capital and expected to close on 16 September.
- Alongside it the company plans convertible bonds with gross proceeds of $3.016 billion and principal of RMB20.14 billion, zero coupon, maturing in 2027, with an initial conversion price of HK$892.50 per share.
- Of the proceeds, 60% is earmarked for next-generation GLM models and training, inference and computing infrastructure, 15% for business expansion, strategic investments and potential acquisitions, and 25% for capital structure, working capital and general corporate purposes, with deployment expected by 30 June 2028.
- Both transactions remain conditional and had not closed; TechNode notes the placement may not proceed if its conditions are not met. Only this outlet's account of the filing was read for this item.
- CNBC reported on 14 September: "Anthropic has picked the Nasdaq as the exchange for its potential IPO, CNBC confirmed after Business Insider first reported the selection." The company was valued at $965 billion earlier this year, confidentially filed its IPO prospectus in June, has been widely expected to list as soon as next month and "could seek a $2 trillion valuation in its IPO".
- CNBC reports Anthropic hit $65 billion in annualised revenue in July, about a sevenfold increase from the prior year. Matt Murphy, a partner at Menlo Ventures and an Anthropic investor, called the growth rate "off the charts" and said: "Don't see why growth would slow or any other reason to wait."
- Gil Luria, an equity analyst at D.A. Davidson, told CNBC: "I don't know that investors are necessarily going to see it as a negative. Unless the companies are genuine and say, 'OK, we're not going to IPO, we're not going to use any more compute, we're not going to train any more models.' That's not what they're saying." CNBC also cites a Pew Research Center report that more than half of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the growing use of AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.
- Anthropic and OpenAI declined to comment. No filing date, price range or exchange confirmation has come from the company itself, and the $2 trillion figure is reported as what the company could seek, not a set target.
- Reuters, summarising a Financial Times report published on 13 September, says Anthropic told shareholders that "adjusted operating income will be positive for a second straight quarter", and that gross margins are above 80% before accounting for revenue shared with distribution partners, including Amazon, and the cost of training its models.
- CNBC, reporting the same FT story on 14 September, says the FT cited people familiar with the matter and that the profit refers to the current period.
- The figures are being shown to shareholders ahead of a listing the company has not yet dated, at the moment its own chief executive is arguing publicly that the industry should slow down.
- These are Anthropic's own numbers, relayed by unnamed people to the FT; Reuters says it could not independently verify the report and that Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. The 80% margin figure excludes partner revenue share and model training costs, so it is not a gross margin on the ordinary definition.
- Altman told Fortune: "I actually think that given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public." Asked directly about 2026, he said: "I would say not 2026, yeah. We've got a lot of stuff to do."
- TechCrunch, publishing at 1:19 PM PDT on 12 September, reports OpenAI has filed confidentially for an IPO, and that the New York Times reported in June the company had hired bankers and lawyers targeting Q3 or Q4 2026 before leaning towards 2027.
- CNBC says the decision "pushes one of the most anticipated IPOs in history until at least 2027", and notes OpenAI CFO Sara Friar told employees last month the company would likely go public in 2027 or sooner if "our business continues to inflect".
- Altman gave no replacement timetable beyond ruling out this year, saying OpenAI would list "when we're ready, when the business is ready". CNBC reports Anthropic is also preparing for an IPO without having disclosed a date.
- The Globe and Mail, citing four sources, reports Cohere is in advanced talks to raise between US$2-billion and US$3-billion at a US$20-billion valuation, including financing from the Canadian government and existing backers, with the German government also in talks to participate.
- That compares with Cohere's roughly US$7-billion valuation in September 2025. The paper notes Mistral's €3-billion raise at a €21-billion valuation, OpenAI at US$852-billion in March 2026 and Anthropic at US$965-billion in May 2026.
- The round would be the largest on record by a private Canadian startup. The Globe and Mail says it could close as early as next week but that timing could slip.
- Cohere has not confirmed the round and the reporting rests on unnamed sources; no term sheet or filing has been made public.
- Business Insider reported on 11 September that Discovery Loop is seeking funding at a valuation of roughly $50 billion, up from the approximately $10 billion valuation at which it was seeking $1 billion just weeks earlier.
- The company was founded by former Google chief scientist Jeff Dean with Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals, and says it aims to "use AI to accelerate scientific and engineering research through the parallel execution of thousands of experiments".
- Its initial funding was led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures with Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins and Doerr Capital participating; Alphabet is a founding investor and cloud partner.
- A Discovery Loop spokesperson declined to comment and Dean did not respond. There is no confirmation the financing will close at that valuation, and the company has no disclosed commercial product.
- Reuters reported on 11 September at 8:46 pm that Nvidia is in talks to invest up to $10 billion as an anchor investor in Anthropic's IPO, which is seeking to raise up to $100 billion at a valuation of around $2 trillion, with completion expected before the US midterm elections in November.
- For comparison, Reuters cites Anthropic's May round of $65 billion raised at a $965 billion post-money valuation, and an annualised revenue run rate that surpassed $65 billion by the end of July, up from roughly $9 billion at the end of 2025.
- The report notes Nvidia said in November 2025 it would invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic under a broader partnership including a $30 billion Azure computing commitment, and that Anthropic committed more than $100 billion over a decade to AWS in April.
- Reuters says "The plans remain under negotiation and could change". Both companies declined to comment or did not respond, and no filing has been made. This is a Reuters exclusive; other outlets are aggregating it.
- TechCrunch reported on 11 September at 9:46 am PDT that the UK-based AI data centre company Nscale has appointed Fidji Simo to its board, and that per Bloomberg it is pursuing up to $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing ahead of a planned autumn listing.
- Simo left OpenAI in July 2026 as CEO of AGI deployment — described by TechCrunch as "essentially the No. 2 executive at the AI lab" — citing health reasons, and continues to advise part-time. She was previously chair and CEO of Instacart through its 2023 IPO and spent over a decade at Meta.
- She joins a board that includes Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg; the CEO is Josh Payne. The company was founded two years ago.
- The $3.5 billion figure is attributed to Bloomberg rather than to Nscale, and no IPO filing or date has been confirmed.
- TechCrunch reported on 11 September at 3:58 pm PDT that Mecka AI is nearing a Sequoia Capital-led round at a valuation of about $500 million; the round size is not disclosed and "terms of the deal are not final and could still change".
- That follows a $60 million Series A announced three months earlier, led by Framework Ventures with Menlo Ventures, SV Angel and Kindred Ventures.
- Mecka pays people to record themselves performing everyday tasks using body sensors and smartphones, and sells that motion data to train humanoid robots. It was founded in 2024 by Josh Gao, Mogen Cheng, Jason Chong and Duy Nguyen, and as of early June was projecting an annual run rate of $100 million by the end of 2026.
- TechCrunch names competitor XDOF as nearing a $1.2 billion valuation. The valuation and run-rate figures come from sources and company projections rather than filings.
- The Wall Street Journal reported on 11 September, followed by Reuters, that the Department of Defense is in talks to lend $5 billion to AI cloud startup Fluidstack through its Office of Strategic Capital, which lends to companies in areas deemed critical to national security. It would be by far the office's largest loan.
- The reported purpose is not a new AI data centre but strengthening US manufacturing capacity and supply chains for the components data centres depend on — an industrial-policy move aimed at reducing foreign supplier dependence in AI infrastructure.
- This is talks, not a signed agreement. Neither the Pentagon nor Fluidstack commented, and the WSJ sourced the story to people familiar with the matter. The underlying WSJ and Reuters reports are paywalled or blocked to automated retrieval; the figures here are as relayed by Tech Startups.
- Watch for an OSC announcement confirming terms, and for which components are named — that would reveal where the government judges the AI supply chain to be most fragile.
- Announced 10 September at the International Space Summit in Paris: a $1 billion programme called Altair-Next Gen, led by UAE-based Marlan Space and Loft Orbital, to field a 50-satellite constellation running AI hardware in orbit, scaling from a ten-satellite demonstration. Ten satellites are in production in Abu Dhabi, with first launches in October 2026.
- Mistral supplies the onboard models providing reasoning and natural-language tasking, and powers services in an AI application store; BlackSky is the programme's highest-resolution optical provider. The constellation carries both radar and optical sensors for government and commercial customers.
- The claimed advantage is latency: analysing imagery on orbit and transmitting results in seconds, rather than downlinking raw imagery for ground processing hours later. Stated initial applications are maritime domain awareness, wildfire detection, disaster response, and port and critical infrastructure protection.
- No power, compute capacity or per-satellite cost figures were published, and the $1 billion is a programme value across a consortium rather than committed spend. Maritime domain awareness and infrastructure monitoring are dual-use by nature.