AI venture funding decided summer. What does that mean? It means time to ramp up the funding across all sectors. We saw at least 6 investments over $100m

Crusoe reportedly pulled in roughly $3 billion. Tripo AI raised nearly half a billion dollars for 3D foundation models. Wonderful added another $550 million for enterprise agents. And robotics, AI security, chips, infrastructure, healthcare, and even autonomous restroom cleaners all found buyers.

The interesting part is where the money is clustering: compute, agents, security, and systems that connect AI to the physical world.

Usage-based and hybrid pricing models are changing how B2B companies generate revenue — and creating new headaches for the finance teams behind them.

Tabs co-founder Rebecca Schwartz and PwC Partner Amit Dhir sat down to unpack exactly what that means in practice: how pricing model decisions ripple into revenue recognition, forecasting, and financial ops — and what it takes to scale without piling on manual work.

Watch the on-demand recording to get practical frameworks, real-world examples, and a clear path to operationalizing usage-based revenue — including a forward-looking take on how AI will reshape financial workflows. If your team is navigating pricing complexity heading into the back half of the year, this is worth an hour.

Watch the recording now

Crusoe — ~$3B | AI Infrastructure | San Francisco, CA
The AI cloud and data-center company reportedly raised more than $3 billion at a valuation of roughly $30 billion as demand for specialized AI compute keeps climbing.

Wonderful — $550M Series C | Amsterdam / Tel Aviv
The enterprise AI company raised $550 million at a $5 billion valuation, more than doubling its valuation in roughly six months. Insight Partners led, with Salesforce, Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards and Bessemer participating.

Tripo AI — ~$446M Series B/B+ | Hong Kong / San Francisco
The generative 3D startup raised roughly RMB 3 billion to expand its 3D-native foundation models, data infrastructure and compute capacity.

Lyte — $165M Series C | Sunnyvale, CA
The physical AI startup is building the perception layer robots need to understand and safely operate in the real world. Maverick Silicon led the round at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation.

iPronics — $125M Series B | Valencia, Spain
The photonics company raised $125 million for programmable optical networking designed for increasingly massive AI data centers. Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital co-led, with NVIDIA participating.

HiddenLayer — $100M Series B | Austin, TX
HiddenLayer raised $100 million to secure models, agents and AI applications against a growing AI attack surface. Delta-v Capital led the round.

Physical Superintelligence — $58M Seed | Cambridge, MA
PSI launched with $58 million to build an AI-native physics laboratory staffed by virtual physicists, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures leading the round.

Elucid — $55M Series D | Boston, MA
The healthcare AI company raised $55 million to expand commercialization of its AI-powered cardiovascular imaging platform.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences:

Atira — Industrial sales is stuffed with engineering documents, pricing rules, prior proposals and tribal knowledge. Atira is building an AI orchestration layer around that mess. A $15 million seed is a large vote of confidence that industrial workflows could become fertile ground for vertical agents.

Motion — The Humanoids-as-a-Service model deserves attention. Factories may want automation without owning robots, maintaining them, training models or managing hardware depreciation. Motion is bundling that complexity into a monthly service.

Zeit AI — European mid-market businesses have mountains of ERP and operational data and considerably fewer data engineers than Silicon Valley. Zeit wants an agent to become the data engineer. That's a big addressable bottleneck.

Catch — AI agents become substantially more useful when they can safely act on email, calendars and communications instead of merely producing text. Catch is attacking that transition directly.

Hivebotics — A robot that cleans commercial bathrooms sounds mundane. That is precisely why it is interesting. Physical AI may scale first in repetitive, labor-constrained jobs where ROI can be measured in hours of labor saved.

NVIDIA → Hugging Face | ~$12.9B
NVIDIA entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Hugging Face, giving the chip giant control of one of the most important distribution and collaboration layers in open AI. (we reported this last week but it wasn’t finalized until this week so worth doing twice)

The transaction includes roughly $11.9 billion for shareholders plus up to $1 billion in employee retention equity. NVIDIA says Hugging Face will remain open and support hardware from other vendors.

Palo Alto Networks → Console | ~$500M reported
Palo Alto Networks acquired Console, an AI-native platform using agents to automate IT support and enterprise operations.

TechCrunch reported a price of roughly $500 million in cash and stock, versus Console's previous valuation of around $157 million.

Enovis → eCential Robotics | €155M enterprise value + earnout
Medical technology company Enovis entered a binding offer to acquire France's eCential Robotics, adding surgical robotics capabilities to its ASTRA platform.

The agreement values the business at €155 million upfront enterprise value, with up to €35 million in additional milestone payments.

Adobe → Rilo
Adobe acquired India-based AI market-intelligence startup Rilo in a team-and-technology deal designed to strengthen Adobe's automated marketing and AI workflow capabilities.

Keystone → Zero Gravitas
Technology advisory firm Keystone acquired Zero Gravitas, adding AI executive education and organizational AI transformation capabilities to its AI Navigator business.

SoundHound AI → LivePerson | Shareholder approval
LivePerson shareholders approved the company's previously announced acquisition by SoundHound AI, pushing the conversational AI combination closer to completion.

See you next week.

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

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