AI Funding News Week Ending 04.18

Welcome to your weekly breakdown of the most notable moves in the world of AI startups, funding rounds, and acquisitions.

This week brought fresh capital for infrastructure, defense, healthtech, and insurance startups + a half-billion-dollar acquisition and what is can signal.

💸 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week

  • Auradine raised $153M (Series C) for AI and blockchain infrastructure.

  • Hammerspace closed $100M to scale its AI data platform.

  • Goodfire secured $50M (Series A) to improve AI interpretability.

  • hellocare.ai raised $47M for its AI-assisted virtual care platform.

  • Well landed $30M in fresh funding for AI-powered health engagement.

  • Virtue AI came out of stealth with $30M across Seed and Series A for privacy-preserving AI systems.

  • Assort Health raised $26M to fix patient call workflows with AI.

  • Doss raised $18M (Series A) for an AI-native ERP and data platform.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences

Agents Day - AI x Web3 | Token2049 Dubai

Expect deep dives into the latest advancements in AI & Web3, AI Agents, Data, Privacy & Security, agentic infrastructure, and more — all led by top industry experts and investors.

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

RA brings together the world’s top researchers and industry leaders to share ideas, exchange knowledge, and advance the field of robotics for the benefit of humanity.

🚀 Startups to Watch

These rising startups are carving out bold new spaces in AI. Niche focus, cutting-edge tech, and building serious momentum, making them ones to watch:

  • Scout AI raised $15M (Seed) to build Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for defense.

  • Loti AI raised $16.2M to protect identity and likeness in the AI era.

  • 1Fort raised $7.5M to bring AI to the business insurance workflow.

  • Risa Labs raised $3.5M to apply AI to oncology and cancer diagnostics.

  • Friday Harbor raised $6M to help loan officers build compliant files with AI.

  • Arcana Labs raised $5.5M to bring AI-powered tools to content production.

  • Corvic AI raised $12M for cognitive infrastructure and data-centric AI.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

  • Infinite Reality to acquire Touchcast (agentic AI firm) for $500M.

  • PLAUD.AI acquired StarJar, a medical AI company.

  • Futureverse acquired Candy Digital, signaling a continued convergence between generative AI and entertainment.

  • Voiant acquired Voxeleron, an AI-powered imaging company.

  • Vista Higher Learning acquired MyConversationTrainer, specializing in AI-driven language education.

  • Torq acquired stealth-mode Israeli AI startup Revrod.

  • GeneDx to acquire Fabric Genomics, an AI-powered genomics interpretation platform.

📡 Signals – What This Week Tells Us

  • AI Infrastructure is Back in Focus: With Auradine and Hammerspace landing $250M+ combined, it's clear that data and compute infrastructure for AI workloads remains a top investment theme.

  • Healthcare AI Still Hot: Assort Health, Well, hellocare.ai, and Risa Labs all raised new rounds. AI is being deployed across the care continuum — from virtual triage to patient engagement to diagnostics.

  • Defense & National Security AI on the Rise: Scout AI’s $15M round joins Gallatin and others in signaling that dual-use and defense applications of AI are gaining investor attention.

  • AI Agent & Content Tooling Gaining Traction: From Arcana Labs and Corvic AI to Touchcast and Infinite Reality, tools for content generation, likeness protection, and media/agent fusion are emerging fast.

Beyond the Feed:

This week we explored how “agent swarms” are becoming a major design trend in AI — inspired by robotics, nature, and now startups. Read the full post:

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Till next week,

- Joey Labs and The Feed the AI Crew