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Let's dive deeper into what is trending this past week in startups!
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🎯 BLUF: Bottom Line Upfront
AI Mega-Fund: Felicis closes $900M fund betting on $100B+ AI companies.
Founder Comeback: Anne Wojcicki bets her personal fortune to reclaim 23andMe.
Search Solved: Glean hits $7.2B valuation solving enterprise file finding problem
Dev Tools Win: Linear reaches unicorn status, making project management enjoyable.
Analytics Renaissance: PostHog raises $70M from Stripe at $920M valuation
Fintech Efficiency: Ramp hits $16B valuation while burning just $2M monthly.
No-Code Rumor Mill: Lovable is raising $100M for its “vibe coding” platform.
💰 Felicis Goes All-In on AI's $100B Fantasy
Believe it or not, Felicis Ventures founder Aydin Senkut survived 50 straight "nos" when raising his first fund in 2009. Now, Felicis just raised a monster $900M Fund X, making the bold prediction that "dozens of $100B+ AI companies will emerge this decade," not just the usual unicorn or decacorn, but full-blown centacorns.
Senkut has put his money where his mouth is with over 70% of the portfolio now consisting of AI-native startups, including Runway, Supabase, and Poolside. With AI companies snagging 58% of all VC dollars in Q1 2025 ($73B out of $126B total), he is betting that we're still in the early innings of the biggest tech transformation in history.
🧬 Anne Wojcicki Bets Her Fortune on 23andMe's Genetic Resurrection
Last year, 23andMe torched $666M and was on the verge of going bankrupt. Now, Anne Wojcicki just pulled off the ultimate founder comeback story to buy it back by outbidding Big Pharma giant Regeneron with a $305M offer to buy back her bankrupt genetics company.
After Regeneron initially won the bankruptcy auction for $265M, the deal sparked lawsuits from 27 state attorneys general worried about customer data privacy. So Wojcicki fought to reopen bidding, put her entire fortune on the line, and emerged victorious when Regeneron's CEO bluntly told CNBC, "the juice isn't worth the squeeze."
🔍 Glean's Search Party Just Got $2.6B Bigger
Enterprise search startup Glean just raised a $150M Series F at a whopping $7.2B valuation, a $2.6B jump in less than a year. The six-year-old Palo Alto company has cracked the code on something every office worker desperately needs: AI-powered search that actually finds that important email buried somewhere between Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and your overflowing Slack channels. With ARR already surpassing $100M just three years post-launch, Glean is proving that solving the search issue is worth billions in a world drowning in digital clutter.
📋 Linear Finally Makes Project Management Cool
Project management startup Linear just secured $82M in a Series C round led by Accel at a $1.25B valuation, officially joining the unicorn club. It did the impossible: making developers actually want to use project management software, mostly fed up with Jira.
The raise rewards Linear's relentless focus on speed and simplicity, winning over 15,000+ enterprise customers, including OpenAI, Scale AI, and Perplexity. With profits up 280% in the past year and just 80 remote employees, Linear proves that the best way to beat a household name is to be fast, beautiful, enjoyable, and better than Jira.
📊 PostHog's $70M Stripe-Led Round Makes Analytics Sexy Again
Open-source analytics darling PostHog just closed a $70M Series D led by Stripe, hitting a $920M "unicorn adjacent" valuation. The five-year-old company has won over 176,000 companies with its developer-first approach to product analytics, including an impressive 54% of Y Combinator's latest batch. With their ambitious "customer infrastructure" vision to replace entire data tool stacks and a CAC payback period of just five days, PostHog is proving that being open-source doesn't mean leaving money on the table.
💳 Ramp's $200M Rocket Ship Hits $16B While Burning Just $2M Monthly
Corporate spend management platform Ramp just raised $200M at a $16B valuation led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. This caps off one of fintech's most impressive efficiency stories as the six-year-old company scales to $700M in ARR while burning less than $2M per month thanks to AI automation. Ramp has 30,000+ customers, including Poshmark, Anduril, and Notion, who process $55B in annual payment volume.
🛠️ Rumor Mill: From Zero to Lovable in Zero Lines of Code
Swedish AI startup Lovable is reportedly raising $100M at a $1.5B valuation to fuel its "vibe coding" platform. The 2-year-old startup has had crazy growth, hitting $1M in ARR just 8 days after launch. Then, it scaled to $61M ARR with only 28 employees (that's $1M+ per person). Typing to be the anti-Cursor, Lovable is betting big that the 99% of people who can't code represent a massive untapped market.
💸 In Other Funding News
Here’s a roundup of notable recent funding rounds across various sectors:
🤖 AI & Machine Learning
Yupp: Raised $33M Seed led by a16z crypto for an AI model comparison platform.
Landbase: Raised $30M Series A led by Picus Capital, Sound Ventures for an AI-driven platform that helps businesses automate.
Outset: Raised $17M Series A led by 8VC for an AI-based interview tool.
Iterate.ai: Raised $6.4M Series A led by Auxier Asset Management for an AI tools platform for secure environments.
Bolo AI: Raised $8M Seed led by True Ventures for an AI-powered knowledge platform.
Ryght AI: Raised $3M Seed led by Foothill Ventures for an AI platform helping drug developers find clinical trial sites.
Tendersight: Raised $1M Pre-Seed for AI OS for Government Contracting.
💻 Software & Technology
Aethero: Raised $8M Seed led by Kindred Ventures for building the future of space computing.
FlowFuse: Raised $7M Seed led by Senovo for an open-source and low-code development platform.
RIIICO: Raised $5M Seed led by Pi Labs for an information technology company.
ByTeams: Raised $1M Pre-Seed led by 10vc for streamlining everything non-coding in engineering organizations.
💎 Hardware & Robotics
Bedrock Ocean: Raised $25M Series A-2 led by Primary and Northzone for autonomous underwater robots for seafloor mapping.
Shinkei Systems: Raised $22M Series A led by Founders Fund and Interlagos to use robotics to provide fish for farmers and harvesters at scale.
Volantis: Raised $9M Seed for a semiconductor manufacturing company.
xRobotics: Raised $3M Seed led by FinSight Ventures for machinery manufacturing, making pizza-making collaborative robots.
🏥 Healthcare & Biotech
Mosanna Therapeutics: Raised $80M Series A led by EQT Life Sciences, Pivotal bioVenture Partners for a nasal spray for treating obstructive sleep apnea.
Ellipsis Health: Raised $45M Series A led by CVS Health Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Salesforce for vocal biomarker technology to assess behavioral health.
Somnee: Raised $10M Seed Extension led by Khosla Ventures for an electronic sleep aid headband for neuroscience.
Tombot: Raised $6M Series A led by Caduceus Capital Partners for robotic animals that transform daily life.
Clara Home Care: Raised $3M Seed led by Torch Capital, Virtue, and Y Combinator for a platform for in-home caregivers for seniors.
🏠Construction & Real Estate
🏗️ Logistics & Supply Chain
⚡ Other
Standard Nuclear: Raised $42M Series A led by Decisive Point for reactor-agnostic nuclear fuel production.
Arketa: Raised $15M Series A led by Inspired Capital for SaaS for fitness/wellness studios.
Piston: Raised $6M Seed led by Spark Capital for payments technology for the logistics industry.
PoolDay ai: Raised $5M Seed for rapid video creation for apps.
Sorcerer: Raised $4M Seed led by FundersClub for deploying a global network of persistent airborne systems.
💸 New Venture Funds
Geodesic Capital (Foster City): Launched a $250M fund to back U.S. deep tech startups in AI, space, and cybersecurity, with a Japan GTM focus.
Bloomberg Beta (SF): Closed a $75M fifth fund targeting business tech and AI.
Plug and Play (Sunnyvale): Raised $50M for a fund focused on fintech and AI startups.
DataTribe (Fulton, MD): Closed a $41M fund backing cyber startups spun out of government labs.
Seven Stars (LA): Launched a $40M debut fund focused on backing pre-seed and seed AI startups.
🤝 M&A Activity
Stripe quietly acquired Privy, a crypto wallet startup, to accelerate its push into stablecoin and on-chain payments (terms undisclosed).
IonQ (IONQ) is acquiring Oxford Ionics in a $1.1B all-stock deal, one of the largest in quantum hardware to date.
DoorDash is acquiring Symbiosys, a Seattle-based ad-tech firm, for $175M in cash to expand DoorDash Ads.
📈 IPO & Public-Market Moves
Chime: Priced its IPO at $27/share for an $11.6B valuation (peaked at a $25B valuation in 2021), then jumped 59% to $43 on opening day to have a decent public debut.
Please note that we're still working on building our data pipelines to identify pre-seed rounds as they come.
🌟 Editor's Note
At Startup Intros, our mission is to bring the latest founder-investor news straight to your inbox, keeping you ahead in the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley. Our free weekly newsletter delivers curated insights, deals, and trends to help you navigate the startup ecosystem.
Stay tuned for our upcoming paid daily newsletter, packed with deeper dives, plus weekly spotlights on top VCs, investors, and founders, and practical tips for raising your next round.
💭 Closing Thoughts
That’s a wrap for this week! Whether you're building, investing, or just exploring the AI space, we hope these stories sparked new ideas. Catch you next week with more updates from the Bay Area's fast-moving startup scene.
Till next time,
Dev Chandra
CEO @ Startup Intros
Associate @ Context VC
LinkedIn: /in/devchandra
Tim Hsia
Investor @ Context VC
Co-Founder @ Startup Intros
LinkedIn: /in/timhsia
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