Companies spanning construction and robotics have raised about $1.6 billion this year through Oct. 29 —Ěýmore than 4x the $389 million recorded in all of 2025 — according to °µÍřłÔąĎ data. The surge was driven by three companies that raised the majority of the funding.

The broad trend: For contractors struggling to hire, the appeal of construction-oriented tech offerings is straightforward: They need to get work done and there aren’t enough skilled workers to do it. The AI-driven data center building boom is only adding to that competition for workers. Labor shortages remain the biggest cause of project delays, according to by the and .

Some of the technology is already at work on job sites.

San Francisco-based , this year’s largest funding recipient in the sector, said in August that excavators equipped with its autonomous systems were operating without human operators on commercial projects in Texas and Nevada.

The numbers: With roughly two months left in the year, funding has already surpassed the previous five years combined.

Companies spanning construction and robotics raised about $1.6 billion through Oct. 29, 3x the previous high of $506 million in 2021, according to our dataset that goes back to 2018. This year’s total is also more than 3x the 2021 high of $506 million.

So far, the funding surge reflects much bigger bets rather than more deals. The sector has recorded 30 rounds this year, compared with 28 in all of 2025. Bedrock alone accounts for $870 million across two deals — more than half of this year’s total. This underscores just how much a few large financings are impacting the recovery.

Austin-based , which builds homes using 3D printing, also raised two rounds in 2026. It has raised nearly $800 million since its 2017 inception. A company spokesperson told °µÍřłÔąĎ News that the company has taken its technology from an experiment to “an in-the-field system that can build faster, with fewer people, less waste, greater design freedom and lower cost.”

To date, the company has built more than 270 homes and structures across five states and two countries. It says that it’s on pace to grow revenue by 4x this year.

“Early on, the question was whether a robotic construction system could build a good home,” the spokesperson wrote via email. “Today, the question is whether a company can deliver at volume, across geographies and project types, and improve its economics with each build. That’s only answerable with time in the field.”

Notable deals

Bedrock Robotics was the largest funding recipient in 2026, impressively raising $870 million across two rounds. The 2-year-old company, which converts existing heavy construction equipment into autonomous machines, announced a $600 million Series C in October led by and. That round, which valued Bedrock at $4.1 billion, followed a $270 million Series B in February led by CapitalG and.

Austin-based construction technology company Icon also raised two rounds, bringing its listed 2026 funding to $265 million. Its largest financing was a $200 million Series D in October led by and, following a $65 million Series C in March.

Another $200 million round went to, based in Zurich, Switzerland, which develops technology to retrofit construction machinery for autonomous earthmoving and excavation. led the company’s Series A in August, which valued the startup at $1 billion post-money.

Beyond those large financings, investors backed companies automating homebuilding and specific construction tasks.

• , based in Andover, Massachusetts, uses AI, robotics and automation to build homes. It raised $40 million in an August venture round led by.
• Amsterdam, Netherlands-based, developer of robots for on-site masonry and other building workflows, secured a $32 million Series B in July led by.
• Meanwhile Las Vegas-based raised a $30 million Series B in May led by. Its autonomous systems serve construction, exhibitions, industrial fit-out and facility operations.
• Belmont, California-based, which develops AI-powered robotic systems for infrastructure construction, followed with a $26 million Series A in July led by.

Sizable seed rounds also made the list.

London-based, which uses AI and robotics to design, manufacture and assemble buildings, raised $25 million in April led by., based in San Francisco, developing a general-purpose construction robot, secured $20 million in October, led by and.

Exits

Acquisitions have dominated exit activity in construction robotics and related jobsite automation this year.

One of the largest disclosed deals was Carpinteria, California-based’s acquisition of, a San Francisco-based platform that combines imagery from drones, ground robots and cameras to track construction progress and site conditions. Procore announced the approximately and closed it in September.

Other buyers have focused on automating the work itself. In January, subsidiary developed by, a San Francisco-based startup known for robotic drywall finishing.

Heavy-equipment autonomy also attracted buyers. In March, of Palo Alto, California-based , whose technology lets operators remotely oversee heavy machinery.

The following month, San Francisco-based confirmed that, ’s physical AI company, had completed its acquisition for an undisclosed price. Pronto’s autonomous haulage technology now reportedly underpins Atoms’ mining division.

Public offerings have been less prominent, with no known IPOs this year by companies focused specifically on construction robotics. The broader construction technology market did produce a sizable debut: Columbia, Missouri-based, an equipment rental and connected-jobsite technology company, raised approximately $747 million in gross proceeds in its January IPO, selling 30.5 million shares at $24.50 each.

For all the variety in the companies attracting funding, this year’s surge has so far largely rested on three: Bedrock, Icon and Gravis, which together accounted for more than $1.3 billion, or about 83%, of the roughly $1.6 billion raised. Investors are placing unusually large bets on a small group of companies, even as acquisitions give others a route into larger businesses already serving construction customers.

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s Top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

This week featured a robust lineup of large rounds, led by manufacturing startup , which closed on $2.1 billion, and predictions marketplace , which picked up another $1 billion. Other sectors in which startups drew significant rounds included construction automation, biotech, batteries and enterprise AI.

1. , $2.1B, manufacturing: Re:Build, a manufacturing startup that partners with industrial companies and innovators from the product design phase to large-scale production, secured $2.1 billion in new funding. and led the financing for the 6-year-old, Framingham, Massachusetts-based company.

2. , $1B, predictions marketplace: Predictions marketplace Kalshi announced a $1 billion Series G financing led by and . The round set a $40 billion post-money valuation for New York-based Kalshi, which says its business’ annualized trading volume now exceeds $1 trillion.

3. , $600M, construction tech: San Francisco-based Bedrock Robotics,Ěý a developer of autonomous systems for heavy equipment used in construction, raised $600 million in Series C funding led by and . The round brings Bedrock’s total funding to nearly $1 billion and sets a post-money valuation of $4.1 billion.

4. , $350M, biotech: Dren Bio, a developer of antibody therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune diseases, closed on $350 million in a new round led by and . The funding will support advanced trials for the San Carlos, California-based company’s blood cancer therapies.

5. , $169M, battery tech: Woodinville, Washington-based Group 14 Technologies, a manufacturer and supplier of advanced silicon battery materials, picked up $169 million in Series D extension funding. The company also announced plans to expand into Europe with a production facility in Sagunto, Spain.

6. (tied) , $150M, defense tech: Firehawk Aerospace, a developer of propulsion technology, said it secured over $150 million in Series D funding at a valuation of more than $1.4 billion. and led the financing for the 7-year-old, Dallas-based company.

6. (tied) , $150M, enterprise AI: Serval, a startup focused on coding agents for enterprise automation, raised $150 million in Series C funding at a $3 billion valuation. led the round for the 2-year-old, San Francisco-based company.

8. (tied) , $100M, AI infrastructure: AI cloud provider General Compute picked up $100 million in Series A funding led by and . The company is building out its infrastructure using inference chips from rivals , and .

8. (tied) , $100M, autonomous factories: Emeryville, California-based Foundry Robotics, a startup focused on building and operating autonomous factories, closed on $100 million in a Series A funding round led by .

8(tied) , $100M, data analytics: Hex Technologies, a startup focused on building an AI-native platform for data analytics, secured $100 million in new financing. and led the round, which set a $1.2 billion valuation for the San Francisco-based company.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the °µÍřłÔąĎ database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Oct. 24-30, 2026. Although most announced rounds are in the database, there may be a small time lag, as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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It was the latest in a run of quarters with nearly $10 billion or more in funding. Funding to the robotics sector in Q1 through Q3 2026 is up around 185% year over year.

China and the US lead

The bulk of robotics funding this year has been in China, with $13.2 billion invested, and the U.S., with $12.1 billion. Germany, the third-largest recipient of robotics startup funding, trails with $1.7 billion invested.

The largest rounds in China went to Guangzhou-based , a builder of AI models and physical robots that raised $900 million, and Shenzhen’s , which is working to build intelligent robots for manufacturing, healthcare and services and raised a $736 million Series C round.

In the U.S., billion-dollar rounds have also been raised this year by companies including ’s Los Angeles-based —Ěýwhich includes its ghost kitchen business, and divisions for robotics in mining and transport —Ěýand Pittsburgh-based , which raised $1.4 billion for its robotics foundation model Skild Brain.

Another notable round this year went to Germany-based , which raised $1.4 billion for its cognitive robots, with AI and data infrastructure to build intelligence.

Building out the data and model layer

“We’re just seeing physical AI take off,” , co-CEO of San Francisco-based , a provider of the data layer for physical AI, told °µÍřłÔąĎ News at its inaugural Long Horizon Physical AI Summit in San Francisco earlier this month.

The compute and storage capabilities are being developed to support these systems, he noted, but building for the physical world takes time, especially compared to large language models trained on the vast troves of text on the internet. “Physical AI is very different because there is no internet of physical AI data, and so the data first has to be collected, and you have to convert it from sensor tokens to action tokens,” he said.

Data sets are orders of magnitude larger for physical AI, requiring multimodal data combining vision, tactile, force and torque. “Storing all that data, curating all that data, enriching all that data, and validating that all the data works for these systems is a very expensive operation,” said Hansen.

We are still in the pre-training phase of physical AI, but will soon be entering the post-training phase, he noted.

More winners

Around 75 robotics companies on the unicorn board have raised funding in the past threeĚý years. Of these, more than half — 45 —Ěýjoined the board just this year. Among the most highly valued robotics startups, many competing companies are building data and models, as well as varied vertical use cases in heavy industry, manufacturing, logistics and household and use cases among others.

Robotics funding is surging and new unicorns are emerging, but the sector’s direction remains uncertain as companies race toward further breakthroughs over the next year.

“There are a lot of companies that are raising capital, and I think a lot of them are going to win, just because there’s so many different types of applications to the physical world,” said Hansen.

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Related reading:

• Sector Snapshot: Robotics Startups On Fire As Venture Funding Surges To Record Numbers In 2026
• Embodied AI Fuels Record Robotics Funding In China As IPO Momentum Builds
• VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s Top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here.

It was another interesting week for AI-related startup funding, with a number of large rounds and quirky companies. The largest financings went to , a developer of AI processors and systems, and AI lab . The quirkiest round, meanwhile, was undoubtedly a $200 million financing for , which wants to breed elite military dogs.

A number of big rounds in areas including biotech, space tech and physical AI rounded out the list.

1. , $1.5B, AI infrastructure: Santa Clara, California-based Tenstorrent, a developer of AI processors and systems, secured $1.5 billion in Series E funding. and led the round, which set a $6.2 billion valuation for the 10-year-old company.

2. , $1B, foundational AI: Flapping Airplanes, an AI lab with a focus on developing models that cost less to train and run, closed on $1 billion in Series A funding led by and . The round comes less than 10 months after the year-old San Francisco startup raised a $180 million seed financing.

3. , $325M, AI for critical infrastructure: ASI, a developer of AI technology for securing and operating critical infrastructure in areas such as aviation, transportation and defense, picked up $325 million in Series C financing. led the round, which set a $3 billion valuation for the Boston-based company.

4. , $250M, space tech: Xona, a startup developing a next-generation version of GPS, raised $250 million in Series D funding led by . The round sets a $2.4 billion valuation for the Burlingame, California-based company.

5. , $237M, biotech: Pathos AI, a startup applying AI to drug development, completed a $237 million Series E financing at a post-money valuation around $3 billion. led the financing for the New York-headquartered company.

6. , $215M, AI, robotics and life sciences: Warp Sciences, a startup applying AI and robotics to help develop new medicines faster, raised a $215M Series A round led by .

7. (tied) , $200M, online business marketplace: Whop, a platform that helps entrepreneurs build and run online businesses, secured $200 million in Series D funding led by and . The round set a $5.1 billion valuation for the New York-based company.

7. (tied) , $200M, biotech: South San Francisco, California-based drug developerĚý Star Therapeutics says it raised $200 million in new financing led by and . The investment follows ’s July acquisition of , a subsidiary of Star, in a deal valued at up to $2 billion.

7. (tied) , $200M, military dogs: Warhound, a startup that wants to breed working dogs for U.S. military forces and emergency responders, launched from stealth with $200 million in seed funding from a long list of backers including and 1.Ěý The startup, co-founded by founder , plans to equip the dogs with Anduril technology.

10. , $160M, AI manufacturing software: Arda Industries, a developer of AI-powered software for manufacturing engineering, closed on $160 million in Series A funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, co-led by , and . The San Francisco-based startup also announced a previously undisclosed $72 million seed financing.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the °µÍřłÔąĎ database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Oct. 17-23, 2026. Although most announced rounds are in the database, there may be a small time lag, as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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From teaching robots to do everyday household chores to using lasers to track satellites in space, this month’s crop of interesting startup deals spans some decidedly different corners of tech.

Other startups that caught our eye are working on making cement production less polluting, turning agricultural waste into a useful tool for carbon removal, and helping independent video game developers get their product in front of more players. Let’s take a closer look.

$30M to teach robots by watching humans

Before robots can fold laundry, load dishwashers or prepare meals, they need to learn how humans actually do those things. is betting there’s a big business in supplying the training material.

The Santa Clara, California-based startup this week announced a $30 million seed round led by, with participation from , , and . The company, founded by veterans of the robotics and autonomous vehicle industries, is building what it calls the data layer for physical AI.

Its approach is surprisingly low-tech in some respects: Pay people to wear cameras while they go about everyday tasks, from washing dishes to preparing food or cleaning hotel rooms. But turning all that footage into something useful for robotics models is more complicated. Maxinsights develops its own recording hardware and AI-powered software to collect, label and organize the data so robots can learn from it.

The startup says it has already captured more than 2 million hours of human activity, with 1.5 million hours ready for use in AI training. Its customers include robotics model developers and . It is also developing a sensor-equipped glove called MaxGlove that can capture information cameras can’t see, such as grip strength and the force needed to manipulate objects.

The funding comes amid a massive boom in physical AI investment. Startups in the sector raised $47.4 billion globally in the first half of 2026, nearly 4x the amount invested in the second half of 2025, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows.

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ÂŁ8.2M to track satellites with lasers

Space is getting crowded, and keeping track of everything flying around up there is becoming an increasingly complicated problem.

With that in mind, London-based emerged from stealth this month with ÂŁ8.2 million (around $11 million) in pre-seed funding led by , with participation from investors including , and .

The company uses a technique called satellite laser ranging, which involves firing laser pulses from ground stations toward reflectors mounted on satellites. The company says that by measuring how long the light takes to return, its system can calculate satellite positions with millimeter-level accuracy.

While the technology has existed for decades, Foundational is working to make it cheaper and more scalable. Its system combines automated ground stations, satellite-mounted hardware and a software platform called Origin that provides positioning data to satellite operators. The company says its stations cost roughly 30x less than legacy systems.

The technology could prove increasingly valuable as thousands more satellites enter orbit, raising the risk of collisions with other spacecraft and debris. The estimates that around are orbiting Earth — large enough to cause serious damage to functioning satellites.

Foundational’s raise comes amid a record-setting year for space technology funding. Investors had already poured $20.3 billion into space- and satellite-related startups globally by late August, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows, easily surpassing previous annual records with several months still left in the year.

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$10M to make cement without so much carbon

Cement is the glue holding much of the modern world together. It’s also , per an estimate.

Calgary, Canada-based wants to change that. The startup last month said it raised $10 million in new funding led by, with participation from , and , to advance technology that could substantially reduce emissions from cement production.

Cement manufacturing traditionally requires heating limestone to extremely high temperatures, a process that releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide. Cura is developing an electrochemical alternative that uses electricity to separate carbon dioxide from limestone before it enters the kiln.

The company says its process could cut cement-related emissions by up to 85% while also reducing energy consumption. Crucially, the technology is designed to integrate with existing cement plants rather than requiring manufacturers to replace their entire production facilities.

The fresh capital will help fund a pilot plant in Alberta capable of producing 100 metric tons of material annually, as well as engineering work for a larger commercial demonstration facility with a planned capacity of 30,000 metric tons per year.

Cura is among a growing crop of startups targeting industrial processes that have proven particularly difficult to decarbonize. While venture funding for cleantech has fallen well below the peaks of 2021 and 2022, the sector has shown signs of stabilizing. Investors put $15 billion into cleantech-, EV- and sustainability-related startups in the first half of 2026, with second-quarter investment reaching its highest level since 2024, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows.

Startups like Cura working on cleaner cement technologies, in particular, have also seen investor interest in recent years.

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$10M to help mobile games find their players

Making a successful mobile game is one thing. Getting enough people to discover and play it is an entirely different — and often very expensive — challenge.

Cyprus-based is tackling that problem with an unusual investment model. The company, founded by co-founder , said this week that it had raised $10 million in new funding led by to help early-stage gaming studios turn promising titles into commercial successes.

Mika isn’t a traditional game developer. Instead, it invests in small studios and helps finance the expensive marketing campaigns needed to attract players.

The problem is something of a catch-22 for developers: They often need hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising to prove that their games can attract and retain paying users. But the financing providers that fund those campaigns typically want several months of marketing performance data before they’ll provide capital.

Mika aims to bridge that gap by combining equity investments in game development with separate financing for early marketing campaigns. If those efforts demonstrate that a game can acquire players profitably, the studio may then qualify for larger financing arrangements.

The company says it now has five studios in its portfolio, including the developer of Legendale, a farming adventure game with more than 3 million players, and Punko, a tower defense game with more than 500,000 downloads.

The investment comes as gaming startup funding is showing signs of recovery. Companies in the sector had raised around $2 billion globally in 2026 as of late September, already exceeding the full-year 2025 total, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows.

Mika isn’t the only investor experimenting with alternative financing for game developers. earlier this year a $100 million fund offering indie studios financing in exchange for a share of game revenue, another sign that investors see opportunities beyond conventional equity funding in the gaming industry.

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$3M to turn coffee waste into carbon removal

Not that you need another reason to look forward to your steaming morning cup of coffee, but consider this: The leftovers from that daily ritual might eventually help remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Zurich-based said late last month that it had raised $3 million in funding co-led by PINC, the venture arm of food and beverage company , and . Cotierra says it’s developing technology that turns agricultural waste into biochar, a charcoal-like material that can store carbon for long periods while improving soil health.

itself isn’t new. What’s interesting about Cotierra’s approach is where and how it wants to make it. Rather than transporting bulky crop residues to large centralized facilities, the startup says it’s developing smaller, decentralized reactors that can be deployed close to where agricultural waste is generated. Its technology combines the reactors with software to monitor production, track the resulting carbon removal, and verify the environmental benefits.

The company has initially on Colombia’s coffee-growing regions, including Huila, the Coffee Triangle, Antioquia and Santander, where growers face increasing pressure to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. Cotierra says its technology has already been tested on coffee farms and is now moving toward larger commercial deployments, with plans to expand into cocoa, cotton and citrus production.

It’s a potentially appealing business model for both farmers and food companies: Turn an otherwise low-value waste product into something that can improve soil conditions while also generating measurable carbon removal.

Its raise, however, comes against a difficult backdrop for agricultural technology investment. Global funding to agriculture and farming startups remains far below its 2021 peak, when companies in the sector raised $10.5 billion, according to a °µÍřłÔąĎ News analysis earlier this year. Funding to the sector totaled just $2.8 billion through the third quarter of 2026, down even from the $3.5 billion raised in the same period last year.

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Related reading:

• VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape
• Sector Snapshot: Space Tech Startup Funding Orbits New Highs
• Sector Snapshot: Cleantech Startup Funding Stabilizes As Energy Demand Grows
• Gaming Startup Funding Levels Up A Bit In 2026
• Sector Snapshot: Agtech Startups Face A Drier Funding Climate

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Twenty-one of last month’s new unicorns are U.S. headquartered. Six new unicorns joined the board from China and three from the U.K., while Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Israel, Italy, Finland, Germany and Bulgaria each added one new unicorn.

Through September, 311 companies have joined the board so far this year, putting 2026 on track to be the second-highest year for new unicorn creation, following only the venture peak year of 2021, when counts topped 600.

Several companies already on the board stand out for significant valuation increases via new raises last month. They include San Francisco-based , developer of AI for software engineering, which saw its value climb to $48 billion, up from $26 billion only four months earlier. Data center provider was valued at $31 billion last month, up from $10 billion a year ago. And Paris-based frontier lab was valued at $24.4 billion in its more recent funding, up from $13.7 billion a year ago.

New unicorns in September

Here are September’s 38 new unicorn companies:

Semiconductors

• , an Austin-based semiconductor manufacturing startup, closed a $500 million Series A at a $3.7 billion valuation, led by . The 3-year-old company builds compact chip factories and develops their manufacturing equipment internally, aiming to make semiconductor production more accessible.
• , an Irvine, California-based semiconductor company, raised a $275 million Series C, valuing it above $3 billion and bringing total funding to $415 million. , and led the round. The 2-year-old company develops digital signal processing chips for high-speed optical connectivity in AI infrastructure.
• , a Hangzhou-based AI chip developer, announced a $149 million Series C. Its IoT inference chips combine memory and computing to reduce power consumption and data movement. The 5-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• , a Beijing-based AI chip company, raised $298 million at a valuation of $2.2 billion. The 4-year-old company develops AI computing chips using the open RISC-V architecture.

• , a San Jose, California-based developer of specialized AI chips and software, raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.45 billion valuation, co-led by and , bringing total funding to $500 million. The proceeds for the 8-year-old company will support its software platform and next-generation hardware for robots, vehicles and drones.

Financial services

• , a Texas-based prediction-market platform, announced a strategic partnership with , which will take an equity stake following OG’s separation from . The less than 1-year-old company was valued at $5 billion. The investment amount was not disclosed; the partnership will route Robinhood event-contract trading through OG’s regulated exchange and clearing infrastructure.
• Saudi Arabia-based , a digital payments company, raised a $329.5 million Series A at a $1.85 billion valuation. Investors included , and . The 3-year-old company has processed more than $117 billion in 2 years.
• , a Nevada-based financial software company, raised a $250 million Series E at a $1.43 billion valuation led by founder and chairman . The 8-year-old company provides an AI-based investment management platform for asset and wealth managers.
• , a Miami-based remittance platform for Latino immigrants operating through , secured $200 million in financing: an $87 million Series C equity round led by valued at $1.4 billion and $113 million in debt from ’s Customer Value Fund. The 5-year-old company plans to expand to lending and add to its Latin American reach.

Space technology

• Munich-based space company raised a $450 million Series C, co-led by , and at a valuation of $2 billion. The financing for the 5-year-old company will advance its reusable Nyx spacecraft for an International Space Station mission and support development of its Storm rocket engine.
• , a Seattle-based satellite connectivity company, raised a $200 million Series C at a $1.6 billion valuation, led by , bringing total funding to approximately $300 million. The 5-year-old company enables standard Bluetooth devices to connect directly to satellites for tracking and sensor-data applications.
• Oxfordshire, U.K-based , a satellite company, secured $346 million, co-led by and, valued at $1 billion. The 11-year-old company manufactures satellites and provides infrastructure, connectivity, Earth observation and intelligence services.
• Bulgaria-based , a satellite company, raised $205 million in a round co-led by and , reaching a $1 billion valuation. The 11-year-old company has raised financing that will expand standardized spacecraft production, including new manufacturing capacity in the U.S. and Europe.

Biotechnology and medical devices

• , a Framingham, Massachusetts-based developer of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, raised around $79 million. The Ěý 13-year-old company was valued at $1.9 billion. Investors were not disclosed.
• Shanghai-based , an AI drug discovery company, raised $290 million at a $1.5 billion valuation following its spinoff from . , , and co-led the round. Anew develops tools for biomolecular prediction and drug discovery; ByteDance retained a 56% stake.
• , a New York-based brain-computer interface developer, closed a $250 million Series D, bringing total funding to $430 million and reaching a valuation of approximately $1 billion. and led the round. The 5-year-old company is building a brain–computer interface that is minimally invasive and removable.
• Toronto-based , a biotechnology company, raised $153 million at a $1 billion valuation led by the , with participation from and other investors. The 3-year-old company uses AI to identify abandoned drug candidates that could succeed under different treatment approaches. The financing will expand clinical development and support additional drug acquisitions.

AI and internet infrastructure

• , a San Francisco-based AI cloud infrastructure company, raised a $300 million Series B at a $3 billion valuation, led by . The 3-year-old company distributes AI inference workloads across different types of chips to improve performance and efficiency. It announced in March that its customers include one of the leading frontier labs.
• Helsinki-based , an AI cloud company, raised a $189 million Series B led by . The financing valued the 6-year-old company above $1 billion with total funding over $450 million. The company manages physical data centers along with its cloud platform.
• London-based , an internet infrastructure company supporting content delivery for large streaming, gaming and software companies, raised $570 million in its first external financing led by . The 15-year-old company was valued at $1.9 billion.

AI training

• , a San Francisco-based AI training-data company, raised more than $100 million led by at a $4 billion valuation, an eightfold increase from its valuation in September 2025. The 4-year-old company recruits and vets specialists who create training and evaluation data for AI developers. that participants included two frontier AI laboratories and two co-founders.
• , a San Francisco-based provider of expert-created AI training data, reached a $3.2 billion valuation in September, earlier, according to . The funding amount and lead investor were not publicly disclosed. The 1-year-old company’s datasets capture professional reasoning in fields such as software engineering, law and finance. AfterQuery was part of the Winter 2025 batch.

Robotics and autonomous driving

• , the Shanghai-based operator of Hello’s robotaxi business, raised about $100 million at a valuation close to $3 billion. fund led the round. The financing to the 1-year-old company will support a 10,000-GPU computing cluster, AI model development and commercialization of Level 4 autonomous driving.
• , a Sunnyvale, California-based robotics perception company, raised a $165 million Series C at a $1.6 billion valuation, led by . Founded by former and engineers, the 5-year-old company combines custom chips, sensors and spatial software to help robots perceive their surroundings. The financing will accelerate deployments across logistics, manufacturing and inspection applications.

Health insurance

• , a San Francisco-based health benefits company, announced a $200 million Series C at a $2.7 billion valuation. led the financing. It also includes $400 million in secondary financing for existing investors. The 7-year-old company provides a benefits platform using AI to make healthcare more affordable for small and midsize employers. The company services 5,000 businesses.
• , a San Francisco-based health benefits platform, raised a $108 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation. Investors included , , and . The 5-year-old company helps employers provide individualized health budgets for employees to select their own medical plans.

Energy and EV infrastructure

• China-based , a battery-swapping and charging company, agreed to a strategic transaction that gives a 30% stake. Geely will contribute its Yiyi battery-swapping operation and a $95 million investment. The 9-year-old company was valued around $2.4 billion.
• , an Austin-based developer of off-grid power systems for AI data centers, raised a $120 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, led by . The less than 1-year-old company builds modular systems for renewable energy and battery systems as data-center operators seek access to electricity.

AI applications

• raised $150 million led by , at a valuation just over $2 billion. The 3-year-old company, headquartered in London with offices in Los Angeles and Mumbai, built an enterprise audiovisual content platform for media, advertising, sports and healthcare customers. The financing will support research, commercial expansion and a larger Silicon Valley presence.
• , a New York-based AI ranking and personalization company, raised a $90 million Series B at a $1.44 billion valuation, led by . The 2-year-old company’s software helps enterprises respond to customer behavior in real time, improving the relevance of recommendations.

Cybersecurity

• Rome-based , a cybersecurity company protecting connected devices and autonomous machines, raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation, led by . The financing to the 8-year-old company will support U.S. and Asia-Pacific expansion and development of AI security models.
• Tel Aviv-based , a consumer cybersecurity company, raised $40 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $167 million. co-founder joined existing investors including and , among others. The 8-year-old company protects consumers against phishing, scams, malicious websites and AI-generated fraud.

AI models

• Beijing-based , a language-model startup, raised $120 million reaching a valuation of $1.4 billion. Investors include , , and . The less than 1-year-old company raised $400 million across three rounds so far this year, before releasing its first public model.
• , a San Francisco-based developer of open-weight foundation models, announced a $150 million Series B led by , and , valuing the company above $1 billion. The financing will support the 3-year-old company’s Trinity models and products for customizing and operating them.

Manufacturing and construction software

• , an AI company for manufacturing with dual headquarters in Tokyo and Chicago, raised a $114 million Series D at a $1.2 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $234 million. Investors included and . The 9-year-old company’s platform organizes design and procurement and production; the financing will deepen its technology and accelerate North American expansion.
• , a Georgia-based construction software company, secured a growth investment of $250 million led by , valuing it above $1 billion. The 17-year-old company manages construction projects, with the investment supporting its AI capability build out and commercial growth.

Defense technology

• , a Washington, D.C.-based defense company, emerged from stealth with $250 million raised across three rounds at a valuation above $1 billion. The 2-year-old company develops long-range cruise missiles with manufacturing in Texas, Germany and Israel. Backers who have led across three rounds include , , , 1, and .

Food

• , the New York-based parent of consumer food brands David Protein and HallPass, raised a $250 million Series B at a $2.25 billion valuation. and co-led the round. The financing to the 2-year-old company will expand retail distribution, develop new products and support additional brands.

Related °µÍřłÔąĎ unicorn lists:

• (1,901)
• (666)
• (321)
• (198)
• (119)
• (102)
• (998)
• (547)
• (258)
• (39)
• (489)

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• 29 Companies Joined The °µÍřłÔąĎ In August, Led By AI Software And Semiconductors

Methodology

The °µÍřłÔąĎ °µÍřłÔąĎ is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on °µÍřłÔąĎ data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. °µÍřłÔąĎ converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to °µÍřłÔąĎ long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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Founded in 2016, Los Angeles-based Fifth Wall has grown into one of the largest investment firms focused on real estate technology, with roughly $3 billion in commitments and capital under management. Its portfolio includes , , and .

Notable exits include , which went public in 2024, and flexible workspace provider , which real estate giant of in January 2025 at a valuation of more than $800 million.

Major real estate and hospitality companies — including CBRE, , and — are among its investors, giving the startups it backs a direct connection to potential customers.

Wallace, who serves as CEO and chief investment officer, brings experience on both sides of that relationship. He worked in real estate finance at and before co-founding workforce analytics startup , which was acquired by in 2014, and ridesharing company .

As AI makes certain products easier to replicate, Wallace sees growing potential in startups that use technology to own and operate real estate themselves.

In a recent interview with °µÍřłÔąĎ News, we discussed that shift, why proptech funding totals may overlook some of the sector’s biggest investments, what it all means for founders, and the housing problems he believes still need solving.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

°µÍřłÔąĎ News: Our recent proptech funding analysis showed capital on pace to roughly match or slightly exceed last year, but across fewer deals. What does that tell you about the market?

Brendan Wallace: My sense is that statistic might belie the actual amount of funding flowing in, because what was previously characterized as proptech in the narrowest sense is probably representing a smaller share of where proptech investors are deploying capital.

There are increasingly horizontal solutions that are just as good, if not better, than many of the vertical solutions we’re seeing. We recently made a very big investment out of our growth fund into , the visualization software company. Most people reflexively think of that as being for movies or rendering scenes. But we saw real estate agents and commercial leasing brokers using it to represent spaces.

For an unbuilt home, you could feed it blueprints, have it build an entire home, put your family inside and walk through it in a full scene. That had surpassed the industry-specific solutions for space visualization that would have been narrowly defined as proptech.

Another category is investment flowing into full-stack businesses: real estate companies themselves. We just invested $135 million into , and I would be surprised if that fell under the definition of proptech.

Those are probably the two categories that might not be captured: horizontal software, with Higgsfield as an example, and businesses that reimagine physical space based on autonomy, AI or robotics. They’re actually building a physical thing. They’re building a real estate company, directly or indirectly.

How much is AI driving that shift toward software that serves multiple industries?

Wallace: It’s a big part of it. Without something profoundly better that you can’t replicate on your own, there’s less justification for buying outside software. There still is a justification, to be clear. There’s just less of one.

No real estate company can build the kind of visualization software Higgsfield has. I don’t believe they ever will. But a tenant engagement app they might have previously purchased and rolled out to their assets, they can now replicate over a long weekend.

The imperative to buy these third-party solutions has been reduced, and more value has been placed on the best horizontal solutions, whether that’s a foundation model or a specific use case like sound, audio or visual.

I don’t know the statistic, but it would be interesting to know how much real estate companies are spending on foundation models versus proptech applications. If I had to guess, we’re probably close to, or at, an inflection point where it’s passing it.

No one would characterize as a proptech company, but it might be taking a significant amount of the upstream proptech dollars, and an even larger share downstream once you go through the application layer.

Has AI reset the bar for what makes a venture-scale proptech software company? What does a startup need beyond adding AI to existing workflows?

Wallace: We’re still figuring that out, but I think it has to be something that can’t be replicated. Anything where the intellectual property moat is not extremely defensible is very challenged, and I think it will be for some time.

Simple application point solutions are becoming less financeable by venture investors because the capacity of one of the large labs to build that as an interface, or of a company to build it on its own, has caught up so dramatically.

The flip side is that bespoke AI development labs are now building solutions for the real estate industry. We backed one called , which is kind of like a for real estate. Antares works with a number of our strategic limited partners. They go in-house, identify a problem they think can be solved with an AI-based solution, build the intellectual property specifically for the organization, and leave it with them.

It’s more of a fee-for-development model than an intellectual property licensing model. You’re seeing that across industries, and you’re absolutely seeing it in real estate.

In some sectors, founders argue that domain expertise gives specialized AI companies an advantage over broad models. How durable do you think that advantage is?

Wallace: I’m a little more optimistic about foundation models’ and general intelligence’s capacity to adapt rapidly to specific use cases.

I wouldn’t argue that specific legal expertise, for example, is not valuable. But I think that moat collapses over time. You might be on a treadmill.

Think about what ChatGPT looked like in 2023 versus what Claude looks like today. At a basic level, it’s the same thing, but they’re totally different things. The sophistication, memory, capacity to be personalized, and ability to build off natural language instructions are unlike anything I think anyone could have anticipated in 2023.

What will that look like in 2029? I think what you’re saying is true today. It’s less true than it was, and it might become even less true in three years.

Is construction technology still an area of focus for Fifth Wall?

Wallace: It is, but it’s less of a focus today. When we look at our performance, it has generally favored two things: pure software businesses, whether marketplaces, consumer software or enterprise software, and full-stack businesses.

Anytime you get into physically doing things, the risk profile changes pretty profoundly. I don’t think it should be surprising that construction tech broadly is probably the biggest graveyard in all of venture. Maybe there’s a bigger category, but if there is, it’s not obvious to me.

Why do you think construction tech continues to attract significant funding?

Wallace: Because it’s still a massive market and a huge problem. If someone can bring greater efficiency to construction, you’re talking about one of the largest markets on earth. It’s such a massive prize that the largest funds are going to focus on it.

For founders raising seed or Series A funding, what opportunities would you encourage them to pursue that might not have been fundable a few years ago?

Wallace: You can actually build new real estate companies. That hasn’t really been conceptualized as being within a venture mandate, but it’s absolutely something we’d like to see.

For example, we have a better approach to buying multifamily assets, stripping out costs, and running more of the processes, operations and management with AI. That’s something I think is eminently fundable today by Fifth Wall and many venture funds. I don’t think that would have been the case five years ago.

I’d encourage founders to look at building full-stack, capital-R real estate businesses.

The second opportunity is around data. Real estate is characterized by extremely opaque data in a way that’s different from most large financial markets. Nothing that’s happened in proptech in the past 10 years has fundamentally changed that.

Where can generative AI provide signal through that opaque data to make capital allocation decisions? Real estate is generally a cash-flowing asset. We don’t necessarily think of it as comparable to bonds or stocks, but it is, and it should be.

Can you derive signal by looking at more data or different data, or use generative AI to predict what kind of real estate will perform better? The quantitative model that has existed for securities for a very long time now has the potential to affect real estate, because we have computational capacity that wasn’t previously possible.

Are there opportunities you’re interested in that have less to do with AI?

Wallace: We’re intrigued by the intersection of land, real estate and the financial instruments around them. To make most of what we describe as real estate, you usually have to build something on land. Land is an input to almost all real estate, but many real estate owners don’t want to own it or take on that risk profile.

Is there a way to decouple having to own land from owning and operating a building? That’s less about AI and more about financial engineering. There are new financial solutions emerging in that category that interest us.

How could AI, robotics and autonomy change the kinds of real estate businesses founders build?

Wallace: I’m interested in entrepreneurs who can conceptualize real estate through a sociological lens: New catalysts are changing how humans use space compared with the past.

That’s happened for a long time. E-commerce built the modern industrial real estate industry. Cloud computing, the internet and now AI built the data center industry. Cell towers were born out of mobile phones and smartphone technology. Genome sequencing helped create the lab-space real estate asset class.

I think we’re on the precipice of three new catalysts that will spawn entirely new real estate asset classes: AI, robotics and autonomy. In many ways, they’re entangled.

Do you expect fewer dedicated proptech venture firms? What would that mean for founders?

Wallace: I do think you’re going to see fewer vertical funds, in the narrowest sense of where we started this conversation. Dedicated venture capital funds investing in consumer and enterprise software focused on an industry —– I think you’ll see less of that, and funding will probably continue to go down in that category.

The inverse is venture capital funding real estate businesses themselves. I think that’s about to explode.

If you were starting a company in this sector today, what problem would you most want to solve?

Wallace: Housing drives everything. Housing costs drive our economy, and the U.S. is grappling with a very real housing affordability crisis. It’s unclear how to solve it.

There are multiple approaches. One is building homes better, faster and cheaper — that’s construction tech. Another is financing homes at a lower cost. How do you bring efficiency to the housing finance market?

That’s a place where we’ve made a lot of money and invested a lot, but I would argue it’s still unsolved. Getting a mortgage is still painful, archaic, slow and too expensive.

Related to that is making regulation more efficient to improve housing affordability. That’s not something an entrepreneur can solve alone, but there’s potential to bring efficiency to how cities deal with this problem.

There’s an intersection of regulatory technology, policy work and consulting. How do we make it so more people can afford homes in the cities they live in? That problem isn’t going away. Despite everything that’s happened, housing has gotten more expensive, not less.

Related °µÍřłÔąĎ queries:

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• Sector Snapshot: Proptech Funding Holds Up, But Investors Are Placing Different Bets

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Per °µÍřłÔąĎ data, a majority of the most active venture investors in Q3 participated in more deals compared to the prior quarter. This includes many of the usual busiest dealmakers, like , and .

The top lead venture investors also largely stepped up the pace this past quarter, even as the highest-spending among them appeared to put less capital to work. At seed stage, meanwhile, the typical top dealmakers largely held their ranks.

For a more detailed look, below we chart and analyze the most active investor ranks across multiple metrics, including venture dealmakers, high spenders, lead backers and seed funders.

Most active venture investors

We’ll start with the most active investors in post-seed rounds. By this measure, topped the ranks with 45 deals. The famed accelerator typically ranks high because it participates in follow-on rounds for startups it incubates.

Next on the list were Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners and Sequoia Capital. Overall, as charted below, at least 22 investors participated in 10 or more known venture rounds this past quarter.

Busiest lead investors

Among lead investors in venture rounds, Insight, Andreessen and ranked highest with 18, 16 and 12 rounds, respectively.

Another three investors — , Sequoia and — had 10 lead deals each in Q3.

Spendiest lead investors

We also attempted to get a sense of which lead investors put the most capital work in Q3. To approximate this, our ranking looks at investors whose lead rounds had the highest aggregate value.1

By this metric, Valor and Atreides tied for the No. 1 slot, with $7.7 billion in led or co-led deals for the quarter. The two had some overlap, with at least listing both firms as lead investors. This included ’s $3.9 billion Series F and ’s $375 million Series C.

Next in the ranking were Andreessen Horowitz and , with $6.5 billion and $6.3 billion in led or co-led Q3 deals. Andreessen’s tally largely stemmed from a $2 billion round for and a $1.7 billion financing for .Ěý Nvidia’s standout deal was a $5 billion round for .

Seed investors

Seed investors also kept busy in Q3. Among them, the busiest by far was Y Combinator, which participated in at least 221 known seed rounds this past quarter, per °µÍřłÔąĎ data.

also ranked high, with 31 reported seed rounds, followed by and with 24 and 23 reported deals, respectively.

Overall, another busy, AI-driven quarter

Overall, our active investor rankings paint the picture of another busy quarter for startup funding, with AI driving the bulk of dealmaking.

Mostly, it’s familiar names topping our various rankings. However, we are seeing a few firms significantly scaling up their investments, with Atreides and Valor in particular stepping up their game of late.

Related °µÍřłÔąĎ query:

Related reading:

• North America’s Startup Funding Falls In Q3 As AI Giants Eye The Public Markets
• °µÍřłÔąĎ Data: Q3 2026 Posted A Record Count Of Billion-Dollar Rounds As The Global AI Race Heats Up

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European startup funding reached $25 billion last quarter, well above the $14 billion invested in Q3 2025 and up slightly from the $24 billion invested in Q2. Quarterly funding was up 77% year over year, per °µÍřłÔąĎ data.

While the U.K. continued to lead startup funding totals last quarter, Germany and France both posted their strongest quarters since the boom years of 2021 and early 2022. Last quarter’s funding totals were boosted heavily by a $3.5 billion investment in Paris-based , the largest venture round ever for a Europe-based company.

Table of contents

• Billion-dollar fundings
• Venture expands beyond the UK
• Late-stage rise
• Early stage
• Seed
• Looking forward
• Methodology
• Glossary of funding terms

Billion-dollar fundings

Four European companies raised billion-dollar-plus fundings, representing close to 40% of the region’s startup capital raised last quarter.

They include Mistral, which also announced its new open-source model Large 4, an LLM it claims outperforms competing open source models on several vectors.

Data center provider raised a convertible note of $3.36 billion that it says it will convert once it goes public, which it has filed plans to do.

Two defense tech startups also raised billion-dollar-plus rounds last quarter: raised a Series E of $1.8 billion, and raised $1.2 billion.

AI drove 75% of European funding this past quarter — totaling $18.8 billion — the highest proportion on record.

Investments in physical tech in Europe in defense, data centers, energy, aerospace and robotics accounted for roughly half of European funding in Q3.

Venture expands beyond the UK

The U.K. led the region’s quarterly funding totals with $7.5 billion even as Germany and France gained market share for venture capital funding in Q3 with $5 billion and $4.8 billion invested, respectively.

The fourth-largest market, Sweden, saw $1.5 billion in venture capital invested while the Netherlands and Spain posted their strongest quarter since the COVID boom years with $1.4 billion and $1.2 billion invested in their startup markets, respectively.

Late-stage rise

A total of $17.3 billion — 70% of Europe’s Q3 venture capital — was invested in late-stage deals in 83 companies.

Outside of the billion-dollar rounds, large late-stage fundings between $400 million to $700 million were raised by Stockholm-based health scanning provider ; Lisbon-based autonomous drone developer ; Spain-based , which offers model compression technology for enterprise AI adoption; Amsterdam-based AI deployment startup ; Bayern-based space transportation company ; and Stockholm-based AI web application builder .

Early stage

Europe’s early-stage funding totaled $5.7 billion into just over 200 companies in Q3, down quarter over quarter and flat year over year.

The largest Series A funding deals, each $200 million or over, were raised by Eindhoven-based AI semiconductor startup and ZĂĽrich-based autonomous construction company .

Large Series B rounds were raised by Munich-based fusion energy company and London-based optical computing provider .

Seed

Europe’s seed funding fell quarter over quarter and was flat year over year. Around $2 billion was invested in more than 750 companies at seed stage in Q3.

London-based managed inference company raised the largest seed round at $100 million, followed by Munich-based AI for robotics startup , which raised $55 million.

Looking forward

Europe’s momentum in 2026 continued in Q3, which was the second quarter this year when venture totals topped $20 billion. Those are figures not seen in the region’s startup scene since Q3 2022. Along with growth in AI funding, late-stage funding noticeably increased last quarter with many of the leading rounds sourced across multiple European countries.

Europe represented 16% of global venture capital in Q3, although the true impact of its technology and startups is higher, with many of the region’s startups expanding or moving to the U.S. to capitalize on the rapid growth of AI there.

At the same time, Europe’s ambition to build leading deep-tech companies and meet demand for sovereign AI will be tested in the quarters ahead by its ability to mobilize the substantial capital these businesses need.

Related °µÍřłÔąĎ queries:

Related reading:

• °µÍřłÔąĎ Data: Q3 2026 Posted A Record Count Of Billion-Dollar Rounds As The Global AI Race Heats Up
• Reporter’s Notebook: Europe’s Sovereign AI Push Needs Customers As Well As Capital

Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from °µÍřłÔąĎ, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Oct. 5, 2026.

Note that data lags are most pronounced at the earliest stages of venture activity, with seed funding amounts increasing significantly after the end of a quarter/year.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. °µÍřłÔąĎ converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to °µÍřłÔąĎ long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Glossary of funding terms

Seed and angel consists of seed, pre-seed and angel rounds. °µÍřłÔąĎ also includes venture rounds of unknown series, equity crowdfunding and convertible notes at $3 million (USD or as-converted USD equivalent) or less.

Early-stage consists of Series A and Series B rounds, as well as other round types. °µÍřłÔąĎ includes venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $3 million, and those less than or equal to $15 million.

Late-stage consists of Series C, Series D, Series E and later-lettered venture rounds following the “Series [Letter]” naming convention. Also included are venture rounds of unknown series, corporate venture and other rounds above $15 million. Corporate rounds are only included if a company has raised an equity funding at seed through a venture series funding round.

Technology growth is a private-equity round raised by a company that has previously raised a “venture” round. (So basically, any round from the previously defined stages.)

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Historically that wasn’t the case. But more recently, startup investors are putting more capital to work around these themes.

Over the past year, venture backers have poured close to $3 billion into good-sized rounds for marine-related startups in sectors ranging from defense tech to clean energy, per °µÍřłÔąĎ data. Top areas for investment include autonomous sea vessels, water robots, electric watercraft and ocean data.

Lead fundraisers

A single company — — accounts for most of the past year’s haul. The Austin-based startup, which develops autonomous sea vessels and counts the as a key customer, secured $1.75 billion in Series D funding in March.

The round, led by , set a $9.25 billion valuation for 4-year-old Saronic, which is scaling at a fast clip. The company announced this summer that it plans to invest more than $3 billion to build a next-generation shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, focused on software-defined shipbuilding and autonomous maritime systems.

China-based , a developer of marine robotics technology, was a distant second for equity fundraising. The 3-year-old startup closed on a $150 million Series A round in July backed by a long list of venture investors.

In third place, meanwhile, is Rhode Island-based , a developer of vessels called Seagliders that operate just over the water at the speed of an aircraft. The 6-year-old startup picked up $120 million in Series B equity funding in August led by maritime-focused investor and , plus an additional $120 million in debt financing.

Overall, °µÍřłÔąĎ data showed quite a few maritime-focused startups funded in roughly the past year that have raised significant capital to date. To illustrate, below we put together a sample list of 27 that fit this criteria.

Top investors

Several investors have assembled particularly prolific portfolios of companies focused on the seas.

Among generalist VCs, one standout is , a backer in three companies on our sample list: Saronic, electric-boat maker , and , a developer of small, autonomous craft for undersea environments. In its April Series A lead investment in Ulysses, the firm pointed to promoting U.S. naval supremacy as an investment theme, along with reengineering technologies first envisioned on land to also work at sea.

is another generalist that has emerged as a marine startup serial investor. The firm has backed three companies on our list: Regent, , a builder of battery electric cargo ships, and , a developer of renewable energy systems in the ocean.

Besides cross-sector venture investors, °µÍřłÔąĎ data also shows a growing array of specialized firms with multiple maritime startups in their portfolios. This includes , focused on startups reducing emissions from boats and ships, and , a marine-focused investor with Pentagon backing.

Autonomy, AI and robots

While the sea may be exotic terrain for venture dealmaking, in many ways maritime funding fits pretty cleanly into prevailing investment trends.

Perusing the sample list of funding recipients from the past year, for instance, three sectors account for the vast majority of funding: autonomy, AI and robotics. Notably, these are core areas of strength for venture investments tied to land and space as well.

Moreover, a hefty chunk of marine investment also has defense tech applications. This coincides with the sharp rise overall in recent quarters in venture investment in startups with military applications.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether venture investors’ enthusiasm will continue for what looks to be a capital-intensive space to scale. For now, however, marine-focused startups are managing to convince backers they can do a lot more than just stay afloat.

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• Sector Snapshot: Defense Startup Funding Hits An All-Time Record As VCs Begin To Eye Exits

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