Funding More Than Doubled, and Valuations Crowded Toward $1 Billion

This issue · The Billion-Dollar Line

The SVTR AI Venture Activity Index rose 8.9% to 169.5 this week, 69.5% above its 2025 median level. Among sub-sectors, training and inference stack (+142.6%) and vertical industries (+28.7%) led the gains, while foundation models fell 19.1%.

There were 111 confirmed rounds with $7.9B disclosed, more than double last week. Fifteen were valued at $1B or more, against 7 to 12 a week over the previous nine weeks, and most of the extra ones landed between $1B and $1.5B.

New this week: members can pick the sectors they follow under "For you" at the top of Deal Showcase, and matching projects move to the top.

1. This Week's Opportunities

1. Financing and M&A

Table 1 | Issue #180: AI Deals in Progress

Data: SVTR Deal Showcase, as of 2026-10-25.

2. Customer Partnerships

Table 2 | Issue #180: AI Customer Partnership Requests

Data: SVTR Deal Showcase, as of 2026-10-25.

2. Our Take

• $1B has become the pricing line for hot rounds. Seven confirmed rounds this week were valued between $1B and $1.5B (Table 3), against 1 to 4 a week over the previous nine weeks; Daytona and Blacksmith raised only 6% to 7% of their valuations. Our view: competition for hot deals has become a race to $1B first, with founders selling less stock in exchange for a round number. Companies that only just cleared the line will need revenue to hold that price next round, and they have the least room to spare.

Table 3 | Issue #180: Rounds Valued at $1B to $1.5B

Data: SVTR AI venture database, as of 2026-10-25. Confirmed rounds this week only; for Town and Reliable Robotics the sources say only "unicorn" and "over $1 billion".

• Chinese robot makers are raising shared suppliers together. On October 20, Galbot and Fourier invested in the same round of joint-actuator maker YITA Dynamics. In the SVTR AI venture database, of the 25 rounds since August 2025 in which Chinese robot companies invested in other companies, 6 fell between October 10 and 22, and 5 went to joints, sensors, chips and cooling. Our view: a stake does not buy exclusivity; it buys a place near the front of the line when capacity is tight.

• Big acquisitions are still buying ready-made customers and data. Salesforce signed to buy marketing platform Braze and LSEG signed to buy credit data platform Octus this week (Table 6). Of the 9 acquisitions above $1B over the past ten weeks, only two targeted AI-native companies: NVIDIA's Hugging Face and AMD's World Labs. OpenAI and Rivian both bought small teams this week on undisclosed terms. Our view: large application-layer deals still pay for customer relationships and data, while AI-native application companies mostly get bought for their teams.

Further Reading

• Galbot and Fourier Backed a Former Fourier Engineer: China's Robot Makers Are Raising Shared Suppliers (Signal): the full case for the second point, including Figure's opposite approach of pulling its supply chain into its own factory.
• SVTR Field Notes: Bay Angels' October Pitch Night, Where All Six Skipped General AI Customer Service (Recap): three community projects in Table 1 pitched here.
• Beyond Eric Schmidt's 1% of Anthropic: 13 of the 20 AI companies he backed personally build models (Profile): his fund backs applications; he personally backs models.
• Jun Ye Wins the Wolf Prize: Money Pours into Quantum Computing, Orders Land on Atomic Clocks (Thesis): six neutral-atom computing companies have raised about $1.88B combined.

3. Market Signals

See the full board at SVTR Signals.

1. Startups

Table 4 | Issue #180: Top 10 AI Rounds by Amount

Data: SVTR AI venture database, as of 2026-10-25. Confirmed rounds only.

Outside the table, IC substrate maker AaltoSemi raised nearly RMB 1.5B in a Series A2, with Victory Giant Technology and Rockchip as strategic investors; Gewu Tongzhi, which builds dexterous manipulation models for robots, closed an angel round of nearly RMB 100M on October 18. Two IPOs this week: Korean AI cloud and AI education company Elice listed on KOSDAQ on October 20, raising about $150M; Indian manufacturing outsourcing platform Zetwerk listed on India's two exchanges on October 23, and it is not an AI-native company.

2. Investors

Table 5 | Issue #180: AI-Related Fund Raises

Data: SVTR AI venture database, as of 2026-10-25.

3. Big Tech

Table 6 | Issue #180: AI M&A (Signed or Completed)

Data: SVTR AI venture database, as of 2026-10-25. Acquisitions still in talks are in Table 1.

4. Upcoming Events

• SVTR 2027 Spring Global AI Venture Camp · CES × Silicon Valley
  Round one closes October 31, round two November 30
  Planned for January 2027, Las Vegas and Silicon Valley

• SVTR Saturday Salon · Palo Alto
  October 31, 3:00 PM PT | California Ave, Palo Alto
  Apply in advance; SVTR verified members first

• Funders & Founders: State of the Market
  October 29 | Menlo Park
  Free, approval required
  SVTR score: 9.0/10

  Investor and founder panels on how AI is changing fundraising, valuations and exits, with speakers from Bullpen Capital, Altos Ventures and others.

• Defense Tech Conference 2026
  November 3–4 | San Francisco
  Paid, $300, approval required
  SVTR score: 8.5/10

  A two-day defense tech conference where founders and investors meet military and government representatives.

---

Note: visit SVTR (svtr.ai) for the full database and project details, or email us at kerry@svtr.ai.