AI Funding News: Week Ending 06.06

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StartEngine’s $30M Surge — Own a Piece Before June 26

Private markets are having a moment, thanks to companies like StartEngine.

The leading alternative investing platform is helping everyday investors like you access deals once reserved for VCs and insiders, including exposure to private market titans like OpenAI, Databricks, and Perplexity.¹

How’s it going? In Q1 2025, StartEngine pulled off $30M in revenue, its biggest quarter ever (based on unaudited financials).²

But StartEngine isn’t just a middleman. The company earns 20% carried interest on select pre-IPO offerings, unlocking value for shareholders when these deals succeed.³

How can you tap into this diversification play? By investing in StartEngine.

StartEngine has crowdfunded $85M+ to date, and you can join 45K+ shareholders before the company’s current round closes on June 26.

Invest in StartEngine

_{Reg A+ via StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc. No BD/intermediary involved. Investment is speculative, illiquid & high risk. See OC and Risks on page.}

This week was stacked. Over $2 billion in AI funding hit the wires, spread across defense, health, agentic workflows, and even underwater drones. Big checks. Big themes.

Let’s break it down:

🔥 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week:

Helsing – €600M strategic raise backed by Daniel Ek’s fund, pushing the defense AI leader to a €12B valuation. Building battlefield-ready software for NATO allies.

Applied Intuition – $600M Series F + tender offer to scale its “AI for moving machines” platform. Now worth $15B, covering everything from autonomous vehicles to military systems.

Commure – $200M growth round to modernize hospital billing with full-stack AI. Tackling a $100B+ rev-cycle mess with software-first precision.

Animaj – $85M Series B for its Pixar-style GenAI studio, using LLMs to create and scale original kids’ IP across streaming platforms.

Nabla – $70M Series C to scale its doctor-side AI copilot. Already assisting 30,000+ providers, now eyeing deeper integrations across hospital systems.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences:

AI Furnace – NYC Summit (June 26)
An AI summit in NYC next week bringing together 100+ growth-stage AI founders (some who’ve raised up to $200M) and 30+ top VC funds, including a16z, Sequoia, Greylock, and more.

→ If you’re building in AI, this is where you want to be.
🎟️ Founder tickets are just $200 with code O9QXLF
📍 June 26 | NYC
🔗 Details & Tickets → aifurnace.co

📡 Signals – What This Week Tells Us:

• 1. AI Defense is heating up. Helsing’s monster round and Unitree’s humanoid push signal one thing: AI and national security are becoming inseparable.

  2. AI infrastructure ≠ just cloud anymore. HOPPR, Applied Intuition, and Iterate.ai are building the piping for machines, hospitals, and AI-PCs.

  3. Vertical AI is going global. From childcare (Illumine) to procurement (Mercanis) to sonar (AndrenaM), founders are chasing deep workflows with custom models.

  4. Agentic AI is in. From Outset’s customer-facing agents to Nvelop’s autonomous sourcing, the autonomous agent stack is crossing from trend to traction..

🦄 Startups to Watch:

• Synthflow AI - Enterprise-Ready AI voice agents for automated phone calls

• Illumine – Childcare is getting its own vertical AI platform.

• Pelico – The unsung hero of supply chains: fix the parts, save the ops.

• HeartFocus – Cardiac ultrasounds, now with an AI copilot for any clinician.

• CaseCraft – Justice for all... now with a GPT small-claims lawyer.

• Multiplier Holdings – Rolling up old-school consulting firms under a new AI-first playbook.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions:

TrustRadius gets scooped up

HG Insights, a Santa Barbara-based GTM data platform, acquired TrustRadius, known for its verified B2B review intelligence. The move signals a consolidation play around AI-fueled buyer intent + sales intelligence.
→ Deal size undisclosed. Expect integrations into enterprise GTM stacks soon.

🤖 Beyond The Feed:

Meme of the Day:

📬 Enjoyed the intel?

Forward this recap to a colleague who still thinks ChatGPT was the last big AI deal.

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See you next Friday.

Until then: ship fast, raise smart, stay curious.

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