Happy Monday!
Volta
Volta may be one of the fastest “born unicorns” of the AI boom. Founded just this past January by Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, two former Brookfield infrastructure investors, the company raised $300M across its seed and Series A at a $2.4 billion valuation from Andreessen Horowitz, Altimeter, NVIDIA, Azora and Michael Dell’s family office.
Volta wants to become the “utility of compute,” vertically integrating power, data centers, NVIDIA GPUs, networking, financing and software to build massive AI factories. It has already assembled a $5 billion infrastructure financing program, secured more than 1GW of power and announced a six-year $10 billion compute agreement reportedly with Anthropic. Volta wants to finance AI compute more like power plants, fiber networks and other infrastructure.
The biggest question for me is founder DNA and execution risk. Boada and Gumuzio come from infrastructure investing with no technical AI infrastructure background. Financing billions of dollars of infrastructure and operating it reliably at scale are very very different skills 🤔
BraveHeart Bio
Congrats to Braveheart Bio on its IPO, one of the fastest biotech launch-to-public-market stories we’ve seen to date!
Braveheart was incorporated in Delaware in May 2024, began operations in 2025, raised a $185 million Series A and then went IPO a year later, raising $382.5 million on Nasdaq.
What makes the story particularly interesting is that Braveheart didn’t discover its lead drug. Its core asset, BHB-1893, was originally developed by China’s Hengrui Pharma. In September 2025, Braveheart licensed exclusive rights outside Greater China for $32.5 million upfront in cash, another $32.5 million in equity, and up to roughly $1 billion in future milestones plus royalties.
This is becoming an increasingly important biotech playbook:
Take a clinically de-risked Chinese asset
Put it into a U.S. NewCo with experienced US operators and top-tier Western investors
Fund global Phase 3 development through U.S. capital markets.
Braveheart may be one of the clearest examples yet of how China’s growing drug-discovery engine is reshaping the global biotech startup model.
Last week a total of 16 startups raised $2B in funding, 4 exits:
$1.05B goes to 8 Enterprise startups
$700M goes to 1 Hardware startup
$115M goes to 1 BioTech startup
$40M goes to 1 Defense Tech startup
$37M goes to 1 Climate Tech startup
$27M goes to 1 Transportation startup
$20M goes to 1 Energy Tech startup
$6.5M goes to 1 Robotics startup
$5.2M goes to 1 Consumer startup
$2.7M goes to 1 FinTech startup
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to someone who would also enjoy it and have them subscribe.
If you’re interested in seeing what deals are happening in China, check out my other newsletter: The Crane.
Edith
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Funding (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Enterprise
Oxide Computer (on-premises cloud computing) raised $445M Series D
Volta (AI cloud) raised $300M Seed led by Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz
HappyRobot (agentic AI for enterprise operations) raised $150M Series C led by Prysm Capital, Eurazeo
Convex (AI-optimized application backend) raised $57M Series B led by Insight Partners
Sapiom (production infrastructure for AI agents) raised $35M Series A led by Dragonfly
Gravity (full-stack ad platform for AI chatbots) raised $30.5M Series A led by Committed Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Naïve (infrastructure platform for AI agents) raised $28.5M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners
Hardware
Lumilens (optical-interconnection technology for data centers) raised $700M Series C led by Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Seligman Ventures, Spark Capital
BioTech
Expedition Therapeutics (small molecule therapies for inflammatory and respiratory diseases) raised $115M Series B led by General Atlantic
Defense Tech
Aurelius Systems (autonomous counter drone defense) raised $40M Series A led by Draper Associates, KAS Venture Partners
Climate Tech
WindBorne Systems (AI weather intelligence platform) raised $37M Series B led by Khosla Ventures, Galvanize
Transportation
Revoy (electric dolly for diesel freight trucks) raised $27M Series A led by Standard Capital
Energy Tech
Buzz Solutions (AI-powered grid intelligence) raised $20M Series A led by S3 Ventures
Robotics
Avatar Robotics (humanoid robots) raised $6.5M Seed led by AlleyCorp
Consumer
Pally (AI assistant through text messages) raised $5.2M Seed led by Cyber Fund, Y Combinator
FinTech
Rivo (autonomous cash management for bank accounts) raised $2.7M Seed from South Park Commons, Wisdom Ventures, Script Capital, 645 Ventures, 20VC
IPO & M&A (300 miles radius from Silicon Valley)
Braveheart Bio (therapeutics for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) went IPO on Nasdaq
Attovia Therapeutics (biologic therapies for immune-mediated and inflammatory conditions) went IPO on Nasdaq
iRhythm Technologies acquired VitalConnect (cardiac monitoring platform) for $287.5M