AI Funding News: Week Ending 1.02

A holiday-thin tape, but not asleep: China dropped a half-billion check into an OpenAI rival while a pair of fresh U.S. seeds and a radar player’s convertibles kept the wires warm.

Lets dive in…

🔥 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week

Moonshot AI – $500M (Series C) – Beijing, China
Large-scale Chinese foundation-model player topping up for compute and commercialization; multiple outlets peg a ~$3.5B valuation.

Arbe Robotics – $15.7M (Convertible Bonds) – Tel Aviv, Israel
Automotive 4D imaging-radar vendor raises convertibles to extend runway into production programs and ADAS wins.

Lemon Slice – $10.5M (Seed) – San Francisco, CA
Frontier AI lab aiming to ship practical, agent-grade capabilities faster—capital to grow research and an initial product push.

Dazzle AI – $8M (Seed) – Palo Alto, CA
Marissa Mayer’s new venture to “rethink how we interact with information” with an AI-first UX. Early team and tooling is in build mode.

Holiday hangovers in full effect. Funding was light this week, so we smashed the biggest AI rounds and startups to watch into one.

Don’t worry tho. The billionaires are sobering up fro m St. Barths and should be back to wiring nine-figure checks next week.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences:

• CES 2026 – Jan 6–9, 2026 | Las Vegas, NV | More Info CES

• World AI Cannes Festival – Feb 12–13, 2026 | Cannes, France | More Info

For a full list of upcoming conferences check out our full list here!

📡 Signals – What This Week Tells Us:

• China’s model race is still capitalized. Moonshot’s $500M keeps domestic LLMs flush despite a tighter export environment—expect more compute-heavy cap tables in 2026.

• Holiday weeks ≠ zero flow. Seeds like Lemon Slice and Dazzle show operator-led AI co’s will announce even in the lull to get first-mover mindshare into Q1.

• Alt financing for hard tech. Arbe’s convertibles are a reminder: deep-tech (sensors, autonomy) often bridges with debt as OEM timelines stretch.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

• Meta → Manus - Meta to acquire VR-hand-tracking startup Manus to reinforce XR/Quest hand presence. (Announced Dec 29).

• Cvent → ON24 - $400M deal to fold webinar/virtual-events platform ON24 into Cvent’s event stack; AI analytics and personalization cited as drivers. (Announced Jan 2).

M&A Pulse: Incumbents are stitching in workflow-critical AI - schedulers, review, personalization, and chat - to make suites stickier and upsell AI SKUs.

Meme of the Week:

📬 Enjoyed the intel?

See you next week.

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

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