AI Funding News: Week Ending 09.12

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How Did Papaya Slash Support Costs Without Adding Headcount?

When Papaya saw support tickets surge, they faced a tough choice: hire more agents or risk slower service. Instead, they found a third option—one that scaled their support without scaling their team.

The secret? An AI-powered support agent from Maven AGI that started resolving customer inquiries on day one.

With Maven AGI, Papaya now handles 90% of inquiries automatically - cutting costs in half while improving response times and customer satisfaction. No more rigid decision trees. No more endless manual upkeep. Just fast, accurate answers at scale.

The best part? Their human team is free to focus on the complex, high-value issues that matter most.

👉 Curious how they did it? Read the full case study to learn how Papaya transformed their customer support

Happy Friday people.

Oracle tacked on $200B in market cap riding the AI cloud wave and flashed a $455B backlog as proof enterprise demand is far from slowing. Europe flexed with ASML’s €1.3B Mistral move stealing headlines, while smaller startups raised just enough to say, “Don’t forget about us.” Robotics stayed buckled in the passenger seat, but the real cash heat was on sovereign-backed giants and fresh agentic plays.

Lets dive in:

🔥 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week:

» Funding Roundup

Mistral AI – $2.0B (Series C) – Paris, FR
Open‑weights + enterprise LLMs; ASML’s €1.3B anchor makes Mistral a European AI standard‑bearer.

PsiQuantum – $1B (Round undisclosed) – Palo Alto, CA
Fault‑tolerant quantum compute with NVIDIA tie‑up to accelerate model development and AI‑adjacent workloads.

Cognition AI – $400M (Growth) – San Francisco, CA
Devin coding agent aims at autonomous software delivery; fresh cash to scale product and enterprise go‑to‑market.

Replit – $250M (Growth) – San Francisco, CA
AI software platform (agents + cloud dev) nearly triples to $3B valuation to push Agent‑3 into enterprise.

Perplexity – $200M (Late‑stage) – San Francisco, CA
Conversational search keeps stacking firepower to chase enterprise and premium subscriptions.

ReOrbit – $53M (Series A) – Helsinki, FI
“Software‑defined” satellites for sovereign space networks; AI onboard to optimize missions.

Higgsfield – $50M (Series A) – San Francisco, CA
Click‑to‑video generative platform pitching a faster studio pipeline for brands and creators.

Motion – $38M (Round undisclosed) – San Francisco, CA
YC‑backed “Office of AI agents” building SMB‑friendly agentic apps and workflows.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences:

• The AI Conference – September 17–18, 2025 | San Francisco, CA | More Info

• IAPP AI Governance North America – September 18–19, 2025 | Boston, MA | More Info

• Oracle AI World – October 13–16, 2025 | Las Vegas, NV | More Info

• AI Security Summit – October 22-23,2025 | More Info

• Nvidia GTC 2025 – October 27–29, 2025 | Washington, D.C. | More Info

🦄 Startups to Watch:

• Altan (Pre‑seed, $2.5M) - Agent teams that build apps from prompts; tiny today, but squarely in the “autonomous dev” wave.

• Nuclearn (Seed, $10.5M) - AI for nuclear plant ops and maintenance. An overlooked, regulation‑heavy niche where reliability sells.

• TwinMind (Seed, $6M) - Ex‑Google X trio building personal knowledge/agent tooling; early, but pedigree + category heat.

📡 Signals – What This Week Tells Us:

• Europe’s flex: ASML’s €1.3B anchor turns Mistral’s €1.7B round into the year’s defining EU AI moment—and a template for industrial‑AI alliances.

• Quantum is (commercially) real: PsiQuantum’s $1B round + NVIDIA collaboration signals near‑term utility for AI workloads, not just physics papers.

• Code agents are the new platform: Cognition ($400M), Replit ($250M) and Perplexity ($200M) show sustained bet on agentic dev and AI‑native search UX.

• AI video stack consolidates: Minute Media bought VideoVerse; sports + real‑time clipping = distribution moat.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions:

• F5 to acquire CalypsoAI for ~$180M (AI security).

• Minute Media acquires VideoVerse (AI sports highlights/clipping).

• Bending Spoons to take Vimeo private for ~$1.38B (video platform with growing AI toolset).

M&A Pulse: Platforms want distribution + defensibility. AI security to trust agents, and AI video pipes to own real‑time content.

Meme of the Week:

📬 Enjoyed the intel?

See you next Friday.

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

Feed The AI