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  • Sequoia Raises $950M Across Two Funds, a16z To Raise $10B For AI & Defense Funds, & Mercor Hits a $10B Valuation

Sequoia Raises $950M Across Two Funds, a16z To Raise $10B For AI & Defense Funds, & Mercor Hits a $10B Valuation

The world’s top VC firms and frontier AI startups are doubling down. From Sequoia’s new early-stage funds to Andreessen Horowitz’s $10B megafund and Mercor’s leap to a $10B valuation.

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Your dose of daily dealflow, essential VC & tech trends to know. The biggest moves in venture, all in one place. Celebrating startups, founders, and funders.

🧑‍🍳 Let’s get right into it…

💸 Sequoia Capital launched $950M in new early-stage funds, doubling down on seed and Series A bets amid the AI boom.

🧠 Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is targeting a $10B raise to fund the next generation of AI and defence tech giants.

🤖 Mercor raised $350M at a $10B valuation, powering human-in-the-loop AI training at scale.

🇮🇱 Onfire, founded by Israeli intelligence alumni, secured $20M Series A to track developer buying signals using AI.

🧬 Hemab Therapeutics closed a $157M Series C for next-gen bleeding disorder treatments.

🌎 Huntington Bank agreed to a $7.4B acquisition of Cadence Bank, expanding across Texas and the South.

🧑‍🚀 Top Deals You Can’t Miss

1️⃣ Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) – targeting a $10B fund to fuel AI and defense tech startups.

2️⃣ Sequoia Capital – launched $950M in new early-stage funds focused on AI and next-gen founders.

3️⃣ Mercor – raised $350M at a $10B valuation, redefining human-in-the-loop AI infrastructure.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

🌳 Series B+ & Growth

  • Crusoe, a San Francisco and Denver-based AI factory company, raised $1,375 million in Series E funding. Undisclosed lead investors led the round and were joined by others.

  • Hemab Therapeutics, based in Cambridge and Copenhagen, raised $157 million in Series C funding. Undisclosed investors participated.

  • Mercor, a US-based human-in-the-loop AI platform, raised $350 million in growth funding at a $10B valuation. Undisclosed investors participated.

  • FieldFlo, a Denver-based project and safety management software provider for subcontractors, raised $35 million in growth funding.

  • XNRGY Climate Systems, based in Quebec and Arizona, received growth equity financing for its sustainable cooling systems.

  • Force Electrical Services, an Oklahoma-based infrastructure provider, received a growth investment from SkyKnight Capital.

  • Overfuel, an Indianapolis-based website platform for dealership sales, received a strategic growth investment from Recurring Capital Partners.

🚀 Series A

  • Serval, a San Francisco-based AI-native IT service management platform, raised $47 million in Series A funding.

  • Onfire, a Tel Aviv-based developer intelligence platform, raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Grove Ventures and TLV Partners.

🌱 Seed & Early Rounds

  • Pave Bank, a Singapore-based digital and on-chain commercial bank, raised $39 million in funding.

  • Bridge, a New York-based AI-native operating system for private markets allocators, raised $5.1 million in seed funding.

  • Turtle, a Zug, Switzerland-based on-chain liquidity distribution protocol, raised $5.5 million in early financing.

  • Adaptam Therapeutics, a San Sebastián, Spain-based biotech startup, raised €3 million (~$3.5 million) in pre-seed funding.

🤝 Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

  • Huntington Bancshares, a Columbus, OH-based bank, agreed to acquire Cadence Bank for $7.4 billion in stock.

  • Gravity, a Tampa, FL-based automation company, acquired Cityspan, a grants management platform.

  • Apro, a decentralized oracle network, closed a strategic funding round.

💸 VC Funds Raised & Raising

  • Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is raising $10 billion across new funds focused on AI, defense, and national resilience.

  • Sequoia Capital raised $950 million across a $750 million Series A fund and a $200 million seed fund.

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📚 Read of the Day

🎵 OpenAI Composes Its Next Symphony: A Generative Music Tool in the Works

The AI pioneer behind ChatGPT is setting its sights and ears on the music industry.

Opening:
OpenAI is reportedly developing a new generative music platform, aiming to bring the same creative revolution to sound that ChatGPT brought to text. The tool, still in early development, will allow users to generate original music and soundscapes from simple text prompts, blending composition, lyrics, and vocal synthesis in one seamless experience.

The Product Pitch
The new product is expected to integrate into OpenAI’s creative suite alongside ChatGPT, DALL·E, and Sora. It will combine generative and remix capabilities, letting users adapt styles, genres, or artist sounds with full customization.

Powered By...
The tool will likely use multi-modal transformer architectures similar to GPT-4o and Sora, enabling real-time sound generation, context awareness, and possible future integrations with tools like Spotify or Logic Pro.

Why It Matters
Generative audio has been one of the last untouched frontiers in AI. If successful, OpenAI’s move could disrupt how music is made, licensed, and distributed. For startups such as Suno, Udio, and Stability Audio, this is both an opportunity and a challenge.

📰 News You Don’t Want To Miss

🇮🇱 Israeli startups add $19.5B to New York’s economy, led by Wiz and Fireblocks — Read more

🎵 OpenAI is building a generative music tool, expanding its AI creativity suite — Read more

🌐 Microsoft launches an AI browser just two days after OpenAI’s Atlas debut — Read more

🤖 Anthropic expands use of Google Cloud TPUs to train next-gen Claude models — Read more

💰 SoftBank approves remaining $22.5B OpenAI investment, doubling down on AGI — Read more

🪪 Apple to add U.S. passports and digital IDs to Wallet app soon — Read more

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