🧑‍🚀 Top Deals You Can’t Miss

1️⃣ Databricks – In talks for a multibillion-dollar raise at a $130B+ valuation, pushing frontier AI infra deeper into enterprise scale.

2️⃣ nvp Capital – Closed an $80M fund, expanding its vertical-AI strategy with support from major institutional LPs.

3️⃣ Sphere – Raised $21M in Series A funding led by a16z, modernizing cross-border tax and compliance automation.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

🌳 Series B+ & Growth

• Quantum Lending Solutions, a Reston, VA-based AI-powered fintech company, raised $400M in financing. Lead investors led the round and were joined by other investors.

• Celero Communications, an Irvine, CA-based developer of high-performance coherent DSP technology for AI infrastructure, raised $140M in funding. Lead investors led the round and were joined by other investors.

• Solve Therapeutics, a San Diego, CA-based clinical-stage biotech developing ADCs for solid tumors, raised $120M in upsized financing. Lead investors led the round and were joined by other investors.

• Artios Pharma, a Cambridge, UK-based biopharmaceutical company, raised $115M in Series D funding. Lead investors led the round and were joined by other investors.

• Ursa Major, a Colorado-based aerospace and defense startup developing rocket engines, raised $100M in Series E funding. Eclipse led the round and was joined by other investors.

• SmartHR, a Tokyo-based HR management platform, received a $96M strategic minority investment from General Atlantic.

• Gridware, a San Francisco-based grid-technology startup, raised $55M in growth funding. Tiger Global and Generation Investment Management led the round.

• Nanoramic, a Boston-based energy storage and advanced materials company, raised $54M in Series 1 funding.

• GoTu Technology, a Miami-based dental talent marketplace, raised $45M in growth funding.

• Agentio, a Brooklyn-based creator advertising platform, raised $40M in Series B funding.

• Apono, a NYC cloud identity-security company, raised $34M in Series B funding.

• Avanzanite Bioscience, an Amsterdam-based specialty pharma company, raised €32M in Series A funding.

🚀 Series A

• GetVocal, a Paris-based conversational AI platform, raised $26M in Series A funding.

• PowerLattice, a Vancouver, WA-based AI power-delivery startup, raised $25M in Series A funding.

• Peec AI, a Berlin-based AI marketing platform, raised $21M in Series A funding.

• Sphere, a San Francisco-based cross-border tax and compliance platform, raised $21M in Series A funding led by a16z.

• Xenia, a Chicago-based AI operations platform, raised $12M in Series A funding.

• Condukt, a London-based compliance platform for financial services, raised $10M.

• Shipday, a Menlo Park-based logistics and delivery platform for SMBs, raised $7M in Series A funding.

🌱 Seed & Early Rounds

• Span, an AI-native developer intelligence platform, raised $25M in Seed + Series A funding.

• Mate, a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity startup, raised $15.5M in Seed funding.

• Hummink, a Paris-based HPCaP printing technology company, raised €15M.

• PicoJool, a Palo Alto optical connectivity company, raised $12M.

• Hammerhead AI, an ORCA RL control agents platform, raised $10M in Seed funding.

• Obello, a San Francisco AI design platform, raised $8.5M in Seed funding.

• Skeletalis, a Boston-based musculoskeletal drug development startup, raised $8M.

• Voltrac, a Valencia-based robotics company, raised €7M in Seed funding.

• Muse Software, a Miami-based museum operations platform, raised $4.5M in Seed funding.

• Barker, a NYC fintech company, raised $3.5M.

• AlertD, an AI SRE/DevOps platform, raised $3M in pre-seed.

• Big Rentals, an equipment rental platform, raised $2.8M in Seed.

• Cellbyte, a Munich AI pharma-launch platform, raised $2.75M in Seed.

• No Barrier, an AI medical translation startup, raised $2.7M in Seed.

• Rebuildr, a PT and rehab platform linked to Athletic Rebuild, raised $1.1M in Seed.

• Planet Smart, a London biomaterials startup, raised $1M in Seed.

🤝 Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

• GoWit, an AdTech company spanning Newark / Istanbul / Dubai, raised an undisclosed round.

• Bambusa Therapeutics, a Boston biotech, closed an undisclosed Series A-2.

• TearOptix, a developer of presbyopia-focused lenses, received strategic funding.

📈 VC Funds Raised & Raising

• Keen Venture Partners, a Dutch VC firm, held a first close above €150M for its European defense & security tech fund.

• nvp Capital, a US-based vertical-AI fund, closed an $80M vehicle backed by major institutional LPs.

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

📚 Read of the Day: Cloudflare Outage

⚡ Cloudflare’s Global Outage Takes Down Major Parts of the Internet

ChatGPT, X, Spotify, Canva and more were knocked offline after a cascading edge-network failure.

Cloudflare experienced a global outage that disrupted major parts of the internet, impacting consumer apps, enterprise tools, and government portals. The issue originated in Cloudflare’s edge routing layer and propagated globally, triggering widespread 502/504 errors before systems gradually recovered.

🧩 The Technical Root

A malformed routing configuration pushed across multiple PoPs triggered a cascading failure, forcing edge servers to shed load and breaking dependency chains across thousands of apps.

🌐 The Impact

Platforms including ChatGPT, X, Shopify, Discord, Canva, government login portals, and countless SaaS APIs were intermittently unreachable.

🛡️ The Backstory

This becomes one of Cloudflare’s largest outages since 2019, raising concerns about configuration safety and global redundancy in mission-critical infrastructure.

🚨 Why It Matters

Even the largest web infrastructure providers represent single points of failure. Today’s outage highlights how deeply consolidated global traffic has become, and how AI apps in particular depend on Cloudflare’s stability.

👉 Read The Whole Story Here

📰 News You Don’t Want To Miss

⚡️ Cloudflare outage cuts access to X, ChatGPT and major web platforms — A global Cloudflare failure disrupted access across thousands of apps.

🤖 Google launches Gemini 3, embeds the AI model directly into Search — Google rolls out its most advanced model yet.

🧠 Google unveils Gemini 3 with new coding app and record benchmarks — Gemini 3 scores top marks across developer and reasoning benchmarks.

💬 xAI launches Grok 4.1 with improved emotional intelligence and creative writing — Grok 4.1 boosts emotional reasoning and creative output.

🏦 Intuit pays OpenAI $100M a year as TurboTax integrates ChatGPT — Intuit commits a nine-figure annual contract to bring ChatGPT into consumer tax workflows.

💸 Grindr shares soar as majority owners make $3.5B take-private bid — Majority shareholders move to acquire the company outright.