🧑‍🚀 Top Deals You Can’t Miss

1️⃣ OpenAI – $10B additional raise bringing total to $120B+ at an $850B valuation.

2️⃣ Shield AI – $2B Series G at $12.7B, doubling valuation as defense AI scales.

3️⃣ Harvey – $200M at $11B as AI legal agents approach $200M ARR.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

🌳 Series B+ & Growth

• Shield AI, a San Diego, USA-based autonomous defense AI company, raised $2 billion in Series G funding. Advent International and JPMorgan led the round and were joined by Blackstone.

• Harvey, a San Francisco, USA-based AI legal agent platform, raised $200 million in growth funding. GIC and Sequoia led the round and were joined by Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Conviction Partners, Elad Gil, Evantic, and Kleiner Perkins.

• Granola, a London, UK-based AI productivity platform, raised $125 million in Series C funding. Index Ventures led the round and were joined by Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, and Spark.

• Giraffe360, a London, UK-based real estate media platform, raised $10 million in Series B funding. Cipio Partners led the round.

🚀 Series A

• eMed, a Miami, USA-based AI healthcare platform, raised $200 million in Series A funding. Aon Consulting led the round and were joined by Tom Brady, Joe Lonsdale, Linda Yaccarino, Antonio Gracias, Ara Cohen, and Tom Ricketts.

• Glimpse, a San Francisco, USA-based retail AI platform, raised $35 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from 8VC and Y Combinator.

• Deccan AI, a San Francisco, USA-based AI training platform, raised $25 million in Series A funding. A91 Partners led the round and were joined by Susquehanna and Prosus Ventures.

🤝 Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

• OpenAI, a San Francisco, USA-based AI company, raised $10 billion in strategic funding. Investors included Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, and T. Rowe Price

• Olaplex, a Santa Barbara, USA-based hair care brand, was acquired for $1.4 billion by Henkel.

• Polymarket, a New York, USA-based prediction markets platform, raised $600 million in strategic funding. Intercontinental Exchange led the round.

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📚 Read of the Day

🛩️ Shield AI Doubles to $12.7B as Autonomous Defense Goes Mainstream

Shield AI closed a $2 billion round at a $12.7 billion valuation, up 140% from $5.3 billion just one year ago. The round was co-led by Advent International and JPMorgan's Security and Resiliency Initiative, with Blackstone separately committing $500 million in preferred equity and a $250 million delayed draw facility. Alongside the raise, Shield AI announced it will acquire Aechelon Technology, a simulation platform used by the Pentagon's Joint Simulation Environment.

The Product Pitch

Hivemind is an AI pilot that flies fighter jets, drones, and other autonomous systems without GPS, communications links, or human oversight. The platform has already flown more than one million sorties across real-world and simulated environments, including U.S. Air Force evaluations where it was tested directly against human pilots in dogfight scenarios.

The Strategy

The acquisition of Aechelon closes a critical gap in the stack. By bringing simulation in-house, Shield AI can now train Hivemind entirely in synthetic environments before deploying to live aircraft, dramatically compressing development cycles and reducing reliance on costly flight testing. Aechelon’s existing integration with the Pentagon’s Joint Simulation Environment also gives Shield AI a direct pathway into Department of Defense certification infrastructure.

Why It Matters

Defense AI is no longer experimental. It is becoming deployed, revenue-generating infrastructure. Shield AI is one of the few companies operating at that intersection, with real contracts and battlefield-relevant systems already in use.

The 140% valuation jump in twelve months signals a broader shift: top-tier institutional capital including Advent, JPMorgan, and Blackstone now treats autonomous military AI as a durable, long-term asset class.

Just as important, the Aechelon acquisition highlights a pattern investors should watch closely. The winners in this category will likely be the companies that vertically integrate simulation, training, and deployment, controlling the full pipeline from model development to real-world execution.

👉 Read The Whole Story Here

📰 Other News You Don’t Want To Miss

• 💰 SoftBank Secures $40 Billion Loan to Fund Further OpenAI Investment — The financing supports SoftBank’s aggressive push into AI through its OpenAI exposure.

• 🗣️ Mistral Releases New Open-Source Model for Speech Generation — Expands open-source competition in voice AI against major incumbents.

• 💬 WhatsApp Can Now Draft AI-Generated Responses Based on Your Conversations — Meta deepens AI integration across its messaging ecosystem.

• 🚕 Zoox Brings Its Robotaxis to Austin and Miami — Amazon’s AV unit expands commercial rollout after extended testing.

• ⚡ Sam Altman-Backed Helion in Talks With OpenAI on Power Deal — A potential 5GW energy deal signals how compute demand is reshaping infrastructure.