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 tracker includes layoffs conducted by U.S.-based companies or those with a strong U.S. presence and is updated at least bi-weekly. We’ve included both startups and publicly traded, tech-heavy companies. We’ve also included companies based elsewhere that have a sizable team in the United States, such as , even when it’s unclear how much of the U.S. workforce has been affected by layoffs.

Layoff and workforce figures are best estimates based on reporting. We source the layoffs from media reports, our own reporting, social media posts and , a crowdsourced database of tech layoffs.

We recently updated our layoffs tracker to reflect the most recent round of layoffs each company has conducted. This allows us to quickly and more accurately track layoff trends, which is why you might notice some changes in our most recent numbers.

If an employee headcount cannot be confirmed to our standards, we note it as “unclear.”

This is not a difficult stat to unearth. So far this year, just seven companies raised more than half of all seed- through growth-stage investment. They’re mostly familiar names: , , (now part of ), , , and

These companies raised more than $260 billion in equity funding in the first 10 months of the year. That’s just over 50% of the U.S. seed and venture investment over the same period, per °µÍřłÔąĎ data.

Founders and CEOs of these seven companies are also well-known — and exceptionallyĚý well-off to boot.

The world’s wealthiest men

Two founders are particularly famous. They are the world’s wealthiest men: and .

Musk founded xAI and The Boring Co., and also co-founded OpenAI, (though he has no known equity stake in the latter). And while outside investors funded these companies, Musk could have also afforded to do so himself.

Ditto for Bezos, who in 2025 launched the physical AI startup Prometheus, which raised $12 billion earlier this year. Bezos’ own net worth, meanwhile, is calculated at more than $350 billion.

AI’s leading names

The two highest valuation startups — OpenAI and the soon-to-be-public Anthropic — also have prominent billionaire founders and CEOs. However, they have mixed backstories to their wealth.

OpenAI co-founder and CEO primarily made his vast wealth through investments in startups, including and . Altman has said he in OpenAI beyond a sliver from an old YC round. Co-founder , by contrast, has a larger stake in OpenAI that was reportedly valued around $30 billion earlier this year.

At Anthropic, meanwhile, all seven company co-founders have similar-sized equity stakes, and each is worth billions. This includes the AI giant’s most famous co-founder, CEO .

Databricks, Anduril and others

Databricks and Anduril, meanwhile, both have founders serving as CEOs who have amassed billion-dollar-plus net worths during their tenures.

Databricks co-founder and CEO has a reported , with the company he leads valued at around $190 billion following an August financing.

Anduril co-founder and CEO , meanwhile, has an estimated $1.5 billion net worth as a result of his stake in the $61 billion valuation defense industry disruptor. Co-founder , who sold his virtual reality startup to for $2 billion in 2014 before starting Anduril, has an estimated $5.9 billion net worth.

Several other founders and CEOs of startups that raised some of this year’s largest rounds are billionaires too. This includes founder , founder , and founder and CEO , among others.

Billionaire categories

We can split the billionaires who founded this year’s most heavily funded startups into two broad subcategories. There are those who became billionaires through the startup that just raised capital. And there are those who were already billionaires through prior companies or investments.

Ghodsi, Amodei and Brockman fit in the first group. In the second group, of course, we can put Musk and Bezos, as well as Altman and Luckey, who became a following the Oculus sale.

Historically, neither billionaire type was a particularly common recipient of venture funding rounds. The term “unicorn” as a moniker for private companies valued at $1 billion or more only entered the lexicon in 2013, when this asset class became noticeably large. In prior decades, founders and CEOs mostly only hit billionaire status after their startups went public or sold in high-priced acquisitions.

Updating the venture archetype

But times change. And in tandem, our image of what a startup funding recipient looks like should evolve as well.

True, quite a bit of capital still flows to the stereotypical venture recipients: first-time founders or serial entrepreneurs whose prior companies didn’t make them fabulously wealthy. But a majority of venture funding now does not go to these classic startup types.

Instead, it goes to companies with valuations already high enough to warrant billionaire status for their stakeholders as well as ventures founded by men who are already billionaires.

Related reading:

• More Money, Fewer Checks: These 3 Charts Show The Divide Behind VC’s Record Funding Year
• The °µÍřłÔąĎ °µÍřłÔąĎ

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The bulk of October’s venture funding was invested in the two leading countries for startup investment, with companies based in the U.S. and China raising $28 billion and $20.6 billion last month, respectively. The last time more than $20 billion was invested in China in a single month was June 2018, when raised $14 billion in its Series C funding.

Funding concentration

Funding concentrated in seven companies that raised billion-dollar rounds, accounting for just over 40% of October’s venture funding. These large amounts were invested in frontier labs, manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, prediction markets and spend management software. Private equity led much of this funding, along with a few multistage venture firms including , and .

’s $15.9 billion raise at a valuation of $90 billion marked the largest private funding by a Chinese tech company on record. The deal places DeepSeek among the Top 10 most highly funded private companies. It also makes it the second most highly valued Chinese company after , and the third most highly valued private frontier lab after U.S. companies and .

DeepSeek wasn’t the only Chinese frontier lab to raise big in October. , a rival open-source lab, reportedly reached a $50 billion value in October, making it the 11th most valuable private company on The °µÍřłÔąĎ °µÍřłÔąĎ. The startup has also reportedly confidentially filed to go public on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Massachusetts-based manufacturing startup raised the second-largest funding deal last month, a $2.1 billion round. The company partners with industrial companies and innovators from the product design phase to large-scale production and says it has 2.4 million square feet of manufacturing capacity.

Other large rounds last month went to , which raised $2 billion for power and grid capacity build out for data centers; spend-management platform , which raised $1.85 billion and said its ARR has reached $2 billion; open-source semiconductor company , which says itĚý raised a $1.5 billion Series E funding and recently moved itsĚý headquarters to Silicon Valley from Canada; prediction market , which raised a $1 billion Series E; and frontier lab , which raised a $1 billion Series A.

AI-driven

A further eight companies raised rounds north of $500 million last month. They spanned industries ranging from frontier labs, robotics, legal and chips, to agentic AI and healthcare. Among the most notable was , which says it raised an $870 million Series A funding on the heels of rapid developer adoption of its decision model Jev.

A total of 66% of global funding was in AI-driven companies in October, with semiconductor companies gaining market share this past month.

Exits

The U.S. IPO market was slow in anticipation of Anthropic’s November IPO. The offering could surpass even ’s record-setting June listing .

On the M&A front, at least nine venture-backed companies were acquired for more than $1 billion last month, including ’s acquisition of 19-year-old for $2.3 billion.

Looking ahead

With two months remaining, 2026 has already set records for acquisitions, IPOs and funding rounds across major venture markets. October extended that momentum, but also highlighted how concentrated this cycle has become: Seven companies accounted for more than 40% of global funding, while AI-driven businesses captured two-thirds.

The question heading into year-end is how widely that momentum will spread, as Anthropic prepares to list in what could be the largest IPO of all time.

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Methodology

The data contained in this report comes directly from °µÍřłÔąĎ, and is based on reported data. Data is as of Nov. 2, 2026.

is targeting a $5 billion funding that was announced in October, . This funding was not included in the October monthly totals.

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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Our data shows that despite record venture capital spending in 2026 — nearly $680 billion through Q3 — investors are writing fewer checks to seed and early-stage companies, the businesses one typically thinks of when we talk about startups.

Large rounds dominate funding

One of the best ways to visualize this dichotomy is by looking at how much of the record global venture funding this year went to funding rounds across different tiers: less than $100 million, $100 million to just under $1 billion, and $1 billion and more.

As illustrated above, the funding surge this year is concentrated in those largest rounds, while the smaller-round market has essentially flatlined since 2023.

The massive surge in billion-dollar-plus rounds in Q1 and Q2, of course, was thanks to record-setting financings for and . But it’s not just those two companies concentrating capital at the top. About one-third of Q3 funding went to just 27 companies raising billion-dollar-plus rounds.

Deals keep falling even as dollars rise

In North America, the largest startup market, deal counts have trended downward over several years, even as venture investment soared.

In Q3, reported deal counts in North America fell 16% year over year and 14% quarter over quarter, reaching the lowest quarterly total since 2023, even as North American funding dollars jumped 50% year over year to $92 billion. The contraction is concentrated in seed and early-stage deals —ĚýNorth American late-stage counts actually increased year over year.

The early-stage slump

Series B is a particularly stark illustration of the dollars-up-but-deals-down trend. Series B marks the stage when startups are maturing: they typically show some growth and traction but still have plenty of upside potential. But while dollars invested in U.S. startups at the Series B stage hit a multiyear high so far this year, deal count is on track to hit a multiyear low.

It’s a similar story among seed and Series A startups, with money concentrating into larger rounds even as deal count dips.

Looking ahead

Anthropic, the biggest venture-backed private company of all, is slated to go public this month in a potential $2 trillion IPO, offering a prominent test of public investors’ appetite for the companies driving this venture boom.

A strong public-market reception could reinforce venture investors’ willingness to finance enormous AI bets, while a disappointing debut could put unicorn valuations under pressure.

But neither outcome guarantees that funding will reach a wider pool of startups. The real measure of a broader startup recovery we’ll be watching: whether deal counts start to rise alongside the dollars.

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Related reading:

• North America’s Startup Funding Falls In Q3 As AI Giants Eye The Public Markets
• Series B Funding Is Up, But Fewer Deals Are Getting Done
• Jumbo-Sized Series A Rounds Are On The Rise
• California Startups Have Raised More So Far In 2026 Than The Entire US Ever Has In A Single Year

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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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Startups in the travel tech space have raised $2.2 billion this year through the third quarter, according to °µÍřłÔąĎ data. The largest funding recipients span a wide range of categories including hotel management software, travel booking platforms, alternative accommodations and corporate events. The mix also includes electric aviation, travel finance and insurance, and consumer hospitality businesses, reflecting a broad definition of travel tech.

The broad trend: Investors are making far fewer bets on travel startups than immediately before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows. This year could be the lowest since at least 2018 when it comes to dollars raised and deal count.

AI is a recurring theme among the largest funding recipients, with many using it to perform functions such as automating hospitality operations, personalizing bookings and streamlining travel planning.

The numbers: In the first three quarters of 2026, startups in the travel tech space have raised $2.2 billion globally across just 302 funding rounds, °µÍřłÔąĎ data shows. That’s down fairly significantly so far from the $3.7 billion raised in 2025. Deal volume is on track to fall for a third consecutive year — pointing to a market where investors are putting more money into fewer companies.

Funding and deal volume in recent years remain far below past levels. In 2021, for example, funding in the sector topped $12 billion. That’s a bit surprising considering that so much travel was halted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But even prior to the pandemic, funding and deal totals were much higher — totaling $9.4 billion across 1,277 deals in 2018 and $10.4 billion across 1,190 transactions in 2019.

Even travel industry researcher noted the funding downturn in a recent newsletter, saying: “Though it’s too early to say whether this is a long-term market movement, it’s a clear sign of the time˛ő.”

Notable deals

Interestingly, several of the year’s largest deals involved startups headquartered outside of the United States.

The year’s largest funding recipient through the third quarter was, which raised a $300 million Series D in January led by, with participation from,,, and. The Amsterdam-based hospitality software company helps hotels manage reservations, payments and operations, and says it plans to expand its use of AI agents to automate workflows. The financing valued the company at $2.5 billion.

Chinese electric aircraft developer raised about $144 million in February in a financing led by , joined by, and other investors. Chengdu-based Aerofugia, also backed by automaker, develops electric passenger aircraft that take off and land vertically, often called flying taxis.

Montreal-based secured a from in February. The startup uses AI to help publishers, creators and event organizers turn their audiences’ interest in travel into bookings and affiliate revenue.

Home-swapping platform announced an led by in February. The San Francisco-based startup operates a members-only network where travelers exchange stays in one another’s homes. Its announcement also included a $40 million Series B co-led by and CEO , bringing the combined funding disclosed that day to $125 million.

Another large deal went to Paris-based, which announced a in February led by with participation from, and . The company uses AI to help businesses source venues, organize corporate events and manage related purchasing and payments.

Exits

Several travel startups have found buyers in 2026, including companies developing AI tools for planning and booking trips. acquired corporate travel AI assistant in February, while acquired AI trip-planning startup in July. Both deals illustrate a trend of established travel companies buying startups to expand their AI capabilities.

Expedia also completed its acquisition of venture-backed , a booking platform for museums, attractions and experiences, in February.

On the IPO side, a potentially prominent prospective exit fell through. Travel experiences platform withdrew its planned U.S. offering in October after having filed last November.

Still, the downturn in startup funding and dearth of IPOs in the sector hasn’t affected one of the bigger now-public players in the space. Corporate travel booking and expense management platform has seen its stock rise nearly 60% this year. Formerly called TripActions, it began trading on under NAVN in October 2025. Its stock closed at $27 on Oct. 28, up about 58% this year from its Dec. 31 closing price of $17.08. It was also 8% above its $25 IPO price, meaning much of this year’s gain recovered from losses following the listing.

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was 16 and had been repeatedly hospitalized for Graves’ disease when her mother suggested they move to China and become monks. Frustrated with the care her daughter was receiving through Medicaid, she wanted to try something different.

Chen left high school and spent about two years as a monk, ordained in the United States before spending several months at a monastery in China. She meditated, reread the same books, and gradually felt well enough to consider returning to school.

She went on to enter without a high school diploma, briefly play video games professionally, and become an engineer at . When she quit that job, she didn’t have a startup idea. She just wanted to find work she believed in.

That mission eventually led her to ,” a Philadelphia-based company that’s building software for some of the government’s least glamorous tasks, including administering school food services and managing public records.

After her brief stint at a large tech company, Chen realized she wanted to tackle the everyday problems that make people’s lives harder, even if solving them wouldn’t generate much excitement in Silicon Valley.

“What does it actually take to solve the really unsexy, boring stuff?” she remembers asking herself.

A different route to college

Before Chen was thinking about government software, she was trying to get well enough to return to school.

At the monastery in China, she meditated, ate food grown on-site or brought by nearby villagers, and lived without internet access. She continued taking thyroid medication and said her health became more manageable during that period.

She also read. A lot. With no nearby place to buy books, she reread the ones she had brought, finding different places around the monastery to sit with them.

Her attachment to those books prompted a conversation with a fellow monk who asked what she enjoyed about reading and where she might find more books. The discussion eventually turned to colleges, and why she wasn’t attending one.

Chen explained her health problems. He observed that she seemed well. She realized she was.

So Chen returned to the U.S., homeschooled herself and enrolled at Colorado College without having earned a high school diploma. She turned 20 during her freshman year and graduated in 2019 with a double major in mathematics and economics.

While she was in college, Chen briefly played Dota 2 professionally. She also played against ’s game-playing bots, an early encounter with AI technology she would later help support as an engineer.

After an initial job in Boston, she joined Facebook, where she built infrastructure used to train AI models.

Leaving without a startup idea

Then on Jan. 6, 2021, Chen was attending a remote company all-hands meeting while watching coverage of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on another screen. Her concerns about Facebook’s role in enabling the organization of violence made her question whether she could continue working there.

“I realized that I couldn’t work for Big Tech anymore,” she recalls.

She quit shortly afterward.

To figure out her next move, she returned to the sort of questions she had encountered as a monk. What made her happy? What mattered to her? What was she good at?

Programming remained her most concrete skill. She just needed to figure out where to apply it.

An introduction through , a student-run accelerator focused on nontraditional founders, connected her with , a venture firm that has backed the likes of and . The firm wrote Chen her first check in 2021, before she had even settled on the business that would become FSH.

Although she didn’t have a developed company pitch, Chen’s earnest explanation of what motivated her and her passion for solving a meaningful problem won investors over. That investment gave her room to experiment, she said.

FSH took shape into what it is today in 2024. The Contrary investor who first backed her, , has since joined the company as its chief operating officer.

The company has raised $25 million in total funding, including a recent $20 million Series A that Chen said came together in about a week. Participants in that raise included , , Ramp, , , . Contrary also led its seed financing.

Finding the problem beneath the paperwork

Ultimately, Chen landed on government software because in her view, it had the potential to solve many consequential problems that attracted relatively little excitement.

For example, permits, licenses, grant applications and other administrative processes can be slow for reasons that extend beyond an outdated interface, Chen noted. Information may exist in separate departments. Updating a website may require approvals from multiple stakeholders including policymakers, communications staff and an IT team.

Putting a chatbot on top of that system, Chen argues, leaves much of the underlying problem unresolved.

Her approach to solving some of the problems that exist within governments draws on an exchange she had years earlier at the monastery, where one of her chores was feeding koi.

The head monk would periodically ask her if she thought she was the fish or the pond?

Initially, Chen didn’t understand what he was asking. But he kept returning to the question, and she began thinking about it. Eventually, she picked a fish she thought resembled her: one that stayed out of fights, swam with the group and occasionally ventured off on its own.

The head monk’s response was, “You’re the pond, not the fish.”

Chen viewed the exchange as a lesson in looking beyond individual pieces to understand how a whole system works. Looking at government software, she believed that it meant examining why information is scattered or processes are slow before deciding what technology to build.

One early area for FSH has been K-12 food services, where administrators must perform tasks such as coordinating meal planning, nutritional information and reimbursement requirements. Another is records and archive management, including the paper documents that can still require residents to visit a government office to retrieve them.

FSH does use AI for tasks such as optical character recognition, translation and natural-language search. But, Chen said, the company treats it as a tool within its software, rather than relying on a chatbot or an AI agent to handle an entire process.

Government sales have required patience. The company generated less than $100,000 in revenue in its first year, Chen said, reflecting the time it takes to win contracts. At the time of this interview, FSH had roughly eight or nine employees, with additional offers outstanding.

Thinking slowly, moving quickly

Chen’s time as a monk has also influenced how she runs the company.

She admits she is skeptical of startup culture that treats sleeping in the office or working extremely long hours as evidence of commitment or a badge of pride. Rather, Chen views some of that behavior as performative, especially when it comes at the expense of the rest that she believes people need to work effectively.

Her preferred motto to the team is, “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

“We think slowly about a lot of things, and then we do things quickly,” she said.

Chen believes it’s crucial to first understand the people, departments and procedures behind a government service before trying to improve it.

Looking back, Chen also credits her success to finding people willing to back someone whose experience didn’t resemble the usual résumé. That includes the college that admitted her without a high school diploma and an investor who wrote a check before she had settled on a company idea.

“You definitely end up finding your own way if you just stick to being weird,” she said.

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Clocking in at 335 pages, the document wasn’t exactly light reading. However, after a preliminary once-over, we highlight a few of the more intriguing disclosures below:

Revenue growth is unusually rapid

For the first half of this year, Anthropic reported revenue of $16.3 billion. That’s up 14x from the same period in 2025.

Things aren’t slowing either. While the S-1 doesn’t forecast the second half of this year, has that Anthropic could reach a $110 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end, citing analysts who met with company executives.

But losses persist

Anthropic also posted a $693 million operating income loss for the first half of 2026, down about two-thirds from last year. Its net loss for this year’s first half was $80 billion, of which about 90% stemmed from what it called a “change in fair value of convertible notes, derivative liabilities, and ˛ő.”

Founders hold similar stakes

Each of Anthropic’s seven founders holds between 230,000 and 246,000 shares of Class A stock, per the S-1. This kind of egalitarianism seems unusual given that startup prospectuses usually show a founding CEO with a much larger relative stake compared to co-founders.

The company’s co-founders include , , , , , and .

Anthropic’s risk factors take up 93 pages of its IPO filing

So, is investing in Anthropic a risky bet?

Anthropic certainly seems to think so. The company’s IPO prospectus contains a staggering 93 pages of risk factors. They start at page 27 and end on page 120.

Some are pretty mundane. For instance, the company is concerned that slower revenue growth could potentially constrain its ability to fund frontier AI development and attract and retain top talent. Having incurred significant debt to date, it’s worried about the ability to keep servicing those obligations while still covering operating costs.

But more unusual risks, like rogue AI agents, are in there too. In one section, Antrophic notes that “future models are expected to demonstrate capabilities that could provide meaningful assistance to malicious actors seeking to develop chemical, biological, or other dangerous weapon˛ő.”

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Related reading:

• Oura Hits Pause On IPO While Anthropic’s Prospectus Reveals The Cost Of Its AI Ambitions
• The AI IPO Wave Is The Dot-Com Bubble’s Evil Twin. Anthropic’s Delay Just Proved It.
• Anthropic Files Confidentially For IPO
• A Hard Year For Software IPOs

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But that’s not all. As investment hit unprecedented levels in 2026, Golden State companies alone raised more than all U.S. startups in any prior year on record. Most of that stems from a handful of megarounds for San Francisco-based AI pioneers.

And keep in mind: This year still has a couple months left. Yet California companies have already pulled in an unparalleled $385 billion in seed- through growth-stage rounds. That’s more than double last year’s tally.

California’s share of U.S. startup funding also has been trending higher for the past three years. Much of this is due to San Francisco AI unicorns, but we’re also seeing strength in the broader Silicon Valley region as well as Southern California.

Where the money went

Flabbergasting financings for San Francisco-based and account for more than half of this year’s California statewide tally. But even without those, California companies 1 still secured a disproportionate share of the largest U.S. equity funding rounds.

To illustrate, we used °µÍřłÔąĎ data to put together a list of the 10 next-largest California funding rounds this year.

Some of these are familiar names and involve fairly mature companies. For instance , which launched inside in 2009 and spun out as an independent company 10 years ago, picked up $16 billion in February.

Another old-timer is , which picked up $5 billion in August. It’s now 13 years old and has raised over $30 billion in debt and equity funding to date.

Still, we’re also seeing younger companies secure megarounds. , the physical AI startup co-founded and led by and launched last year, pulled in $12 billion in new funding this spring. And AI model startup landed $5 billion in a -led round this summer.

Early-stage funding

That brings us to our next point. California’s startup funding windfall isn’t only about late-stage and pre-IPO companies bagging enormous rounds. Early- and seed-stage companies are also attracting big checks from investors.

Per °µÍřłÔąĎ data, California companies have secured nearly $62 billion in seed- and early-stage financings so far in 2026. That’s roughly 57% of all U.S. funding at these stages.

It’s also far above prior year tallies, as charted below, and appears to be a record funding level.

Don’t bet against California

If there’s a lesson to be learned in these numbers, it’s one that savvy startup investors ought to have learned a long time ago: Don’t bet against California.

Whatever the year, whatever the technology cycle, California, and Silicon Valley in particular, have a knack for being home to the leading companies of the era.

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