🧑‍🚀 Top Deals You Can’t Miss

1. Anthropic — potential $50 billion raise at a $900 billion valuation, which would push the AI lab past OpenAI.

2. Ramp — $750 million in talks at over $40 billion valuation, just six months after hitting $32 billion.

3. Kraken — $600 million acquisition of Reap Technologies, deepening stablecoin payment rails across Asia.

Dopamine Dealflow

Series B+ & Growth

• Anthropic | $50B | Growth | San Francisco, CA

  Builds Claude, the frontier AI assistant competing with ChatGPT and Gemini. Multiple investors have made preemptive offers in the $850 to $900 billion valuation range, with a board decision expected in May and a potential IPO as early as October 2026.

• Ramp | $750M | Growth | New York, NY

  Builds a corporate card and financial operations platform serving over 50,000 customers and processing more than $100 billion in annualized purchase volume. GIC and Iconiq Capital are co-leading the round at over $40 billion, more than 25% above its $32 billion mark from November.

• ICEYE | €250M | Growth | Espoo, Finland

  Operates the world's largest synthetic aperture radar satellite constellation, with a €1.5 billion order backlog tied to defense forces across Finland, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Greece, and the Netherlands. The new round would push valuation above the €2.4 billion mark set in December.

• Quantum Motion | $160M | Series C | London, UK

  Builds full-stack quantum computers using the same silicon CMOS technology found in laptops and smartphones, promising 100x lower cost and 1,000x lower energy consumption than rivals. DCVC and Kembara co-led the round and were joined by the British Business Bank and Firgun.

• Skyroot Aerospace | $60M | Growth | Hyderabad, India

  Builds the Vikram-1 small-satellite launch rocket, designed to carry 350 kg payloads to low Earth orbit. Sherpalo Ventures and GIC co-led $50 million in primary equity with $10 million in structured debt from BlackRock-affiliated funds, making Skyroot India's first space-tech unicorn at a $1.1 billion pre-money valuation.

• Lunar Outpost | $30M | Series B | Golden, CO

  Builds Pegasus, a small lunar rover targeted to land on the moon by 2027 under NASA's Artemis program. Industrious Ventures led the oversubscribed round and were joined by Type One Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Promus Ventures, and Reliable Equity.

Series A

• Fazeshift | $17M | Series A | San Francisco, CA

  Builds AI agents that automate accounts receivable and finance operations, already automating over 90% of manual AR tasks for customers including Sigma Computing and Snyk. F-Prime led the round and were joined by Gradient, Y Combinator, Wayfinder, Pioneer Fund, and Ritual Capital.

Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

• Kraken (Payward) | $600M | Acquisition | San Francisco, CA / Hong Kong

  The deal strengthens Payward's stablecoin and payments infrastructure across Asia, adding API-driven rails for corporate card issuance, cross-border payouts, and treasury management. The transaction, expected to close in H2 2026, follows Payward's April acquisition of derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million.

• Scale AI | $500M | Defense Contract | San Francisco, CA

  The Pentagon expanded Scale AI's CDAO production OTA ceiling fivefold from $100 million, signaling a shift from AI experimentation to full-scale deployment in computer vision, decision support, and data operations across the US military.

IPOs / Direct Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

• HawkEye 360 | $416M | NYSE IPO | Herndon, VA

  Priced 16 million shares at $26, the top of its range, then surged 31% on debut to a $3.15 billion market cap under ticker HAWK. The constellation of more than 30 satellites detects, identifies, and geolocates radio-frequency signals for defense and maritime customers.

VC Funds Raised & Raising

• Worldbuild I | $30M | Debut Fund | San Francisco, CA

  Sumeet Singh's first fund after leaving a16z. Worldbuild has already backed SF Compute, space energy startup Aetherfux, and AI hardware maker Truffle.

Founders: Want to be featured on @tradedvc? → traded.co/submit/vc

Read of the Day

Anthropic Walks Up to a $900 Billion Valuation

The Claude maker is fielding $50 billion in preemptive offers as revenue reportedly tracks toward $45 billion annualized.

Anthropic is weighing a fundraise of as much as $50 billion that would value the company near $900 billion, the Financial Times reported Thursday, citing half a dozen sources familiar with the matter. The mark would push Anthropic past the $852 billion valuation OpenAI achieved in March and approach the trillion-dollar threshold no private company has crossed.

The Backstory

Anthropic last raised $30 billion in a Series G in February at a $380 billion valuation. Its annualized revenue, sources said, is expected to surpass $45 billion in short order, up from $9 billion at the close of 2025. A board decision is expected in May, with an IPO targeted as early as October 2026.

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The fundraise is one of several megadeals layered around Anthropic's growth thesis. The company has committed $200 billion to Google Cloud and Broadcom for tensor processing capacity beginning in 2027, while Alphabet is separately investing up to $40 billion. Those commitments alone account for over 40% of the cloud backlog Google disclosed to investors last week.

Why It Matters

A $900 billion valuation would crystallize Anthropic's pivot from a research lab into one of the most capital-intensive enterprises in software history. It also recalibrates the AI capital cycle: investors are now willing to underwrite frontier AI based on revenue trajectories rather than narrative alone. If the round closes and the IPO lands in October, Anthropic becomes the first AI-native public company at scale, with implications for every infrastructure, model, and application company downstream.

👉 Read The Whole Story Here

Other News You Don’t Want To Miss

• Nvidia to Invest Up to $3.2 Billion in Corning for AI Optical Fiber Build-Out 

  The pair will open three new factories in North Carolina and Texas to expand fiber capacity for AI data centers.

• Pentagon Lifts Scale AI Contract Ceiling to $500 Million 

  The DOD raised the CDAO production OTA fivefold from $100 million in eight months, signaling broader AI deployment across the force.

• Spotify and Peloton Launch Fitness Hub With 1,400 Workout Classes 

  Premium users gain Peloton's on-demand catalog inside Spotify, sending Peloton stock up 11% Wednesday on raised guidance.

• Skyroot Becomes India's First Space-Tech Unicorn 

  The Hyderabad rocket builder is preparing the maiden orbital flight of its Vikram-1 vehicle in coming weeks.

• Recursive Superintelligence Hits $4 Billion in Months 

  The four-month-old AI lab pulled $500 million from GV and Nvidia, with the round so oversubscribed it could ultimately reach $1 billion.