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Sequoia announced in a memo posted to X that it is shutting down its scout program, which let selected founders and operators invest on the firm's behalf, and closing its London office. The firm described the changes as part of a push toward more focus rather than a critique of the scouts model itself.
Northwood Space, a ground infrastructure startup building antennas and software for satellite communications, announced a $375 million Series C round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and DFJ Growth, valuing the company at $2 billion. The round includes a financial agreement with HSBC, and funds will go toward scaling operations, hiring, and fulfilling existing contracts. Founded in 2022 and led by CEO Bridgit Mendler, the company previously raised a $100 million Series B in January and secured a nearly $50 million U.S. Space Force contract.
Ex-Palantir executives Andy Elder and Arjun Mathur have launched Dream, a startup building AI world models to automate architecture and construction design. The company has raised $17 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from SV Angel, XYZ, and Zigg Capital, and aims to replace legacy tools like AutoCAD and Revit. Dream's model is trained on over 100 million square feet of building data drawn from U.S. permit archives, incorporating physics and construction standards rather than just generating images.
Insurance software firm Guidewire said Tuesday it will buy UK-based underwriting AI startup Hyperexponential for $1.7 billion in cash, with the deal potentially reaching $2 billion including a $400 million earnout tied to revenue targets. The acquisition is expected to close next year. Hyperexponential, founded in 2017 and backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Battery Ventures, has raised nearly $90 million and counts roughly 600 insurers across 40 countries as customers.
Andreessen Horowitz announced it is rebranding its digital asset investing arm from a16z Crypto to a16z Frontier. The unit, led by Chris Dixon alongside general partners Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet, has raised nearly $10 billion across five funds since 2018 and backed companies like Coinbase. Under its new name, the team will expand beyond crypto to invest in AI, robotics and other emerging technologies, while Dixon says blockchain will remain part of the mix.
Ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms, tech policy topics like AI regulation, data center construction, privacy and child online safety are becoming prominent campaign issues. Tech executives are making large political donations, including Elon Musk's roughly $366 million to conservative causes, Andreessen Horowitz's $91.3 million to Republican-aligned groups, and a $25 million gift from OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife to a pro-AI PAC. A Gallup poll found 70% of US adults, across party lines, oppose local data center construction due to concerns about electricity and water use.
TypeSafe AI, maker of the Jev model, has closed an $870 million funding round at a $7.5 billion valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Sequoia and existing backer DCVC also participating. Jev launched on Sept. 15 and, per the company, is already used by a third of Fortune 500 firms. Unlike large language models, Jev uses a transformer architecture to output probabilities or 'calibrated decisions' rather than text, which TypeSafe says makes it faster and more token-efficient for automation tasks.
AI infrastructure startup TypeSafe announced an $870 million funding round valuing the company at $7.5 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Sequoia Capital, existing backer DCVC, and several angel investors, and Martin Casado is joining the board. The company says a third of Fortune 500 firms already use its Jev platform and that it has saved customers millions in production costs.
Andreessen Horowitz partner Olivia Moore released a report ranking the top 100 consumer AI apps, finding ChatGPT remains dominant while smaller apps like Suno and ElevenLabs retain strong usage. The report also identifies several consumer categories that remain largely untouched by AI products. In an interview, Moore argued consumer AI's revenue model needs to move beyond subscriptions and API fees to find new monetization paths.
Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman cited an Andreessen Horowitz chart of OpenRouter data showing AI agents used 7.3 trillion tokens versus 1.4 trillion for humans as of August, six months after agent usage overtook human usage. OpenRouter says over 85% of agent tokens come from cached prompts, and since February agent token usage has risen 14x compared with 2.8x growth in human usage.
Andreessen Horowitz is leading a $42 million investment in the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a for-profit San Francisco school it incubated, with backing from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. Starting September 2027, about 50 graduating high schoolers will join a tuition-free, one-year fellowship featuring project-based coursework led by tech industry figures, plus over $50,000 in computing credits and $5,000 for travel. Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani will serve as CEO, and the school plans to seek approval for a paid two-year program starting fall 2028.
Kevin Mandia's new security startup Armadin has closed a $255.5 million Series B round at a valuation exceeding $2.5 billion, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Redpoint, 8VC, Ballistic Ventures, Google Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Kleiner Perkins, and Menlo Ventures. The round follows a $190 million Series A just six months earlier, bringing Armadin's total funding to over $445 million. The company builds always-on 'agentic swarms' that continuously probe enterprise systems for vulnerabilities, chaining weaknesses together in a manner meant to replicate how attackers might exploit them.