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Tech News
Simplismart, a four-year-old Bengaluru-based startup, raised $14 million in a Series B round led by Dallas Venture Capital, with participation from Nvidia, Accel, Shastra VC, and Micromax. The all-primary round values the company at roughly $100 million and will support its software that helps businesses run AI models more efficiently on existing computing infrastructure.
Town, an AI agent startup led by CEO Jean-Denis Greze, announced a $108 million Series B funding round on October 19, co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures. The round values the company at $1 billion. Greze also spoke publicly about why most people struggle to use AI agents effectively, citing what he calls the 'empty-box problem' and objecting to the term 'assistant' to describe such tools.
AI assistant startup Town announced a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, pushing its valuation past $1 billion. The San Francisco company, founded by former Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze, has now raised at least $160 million total after a $55 million Series A in June, and says it reached millions in annual recurring revenue within weeks of its public launch. Andreessen Horowitz, Serena Ventures, and First Round Capital also joined the round, alongside a new shared workflow feature that updates all employees' AI assistants, called Townies, with company-wide information automatically.
Stripe has agreed to acquire OpenRouter, a startup whose API routes developer requests across more than 400 AI models, in a deal reported by The New York Times at $7.5 billion. Of that, $1.5 billion is allocated to OpenRouter's founders and the remainder to investors; neither company has confirmed the price publicly. OpenRouter, founded in 2023 by CEO Alex Atallah, says it processes over 10 trillion tokens daily for more than 10 million developers, with customers including Nvidia, Zoom, and Lovable.
Indian health startup Even Healthcare has closed a $50 million all-equity Series B round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Alpha Wave, valuing the company at $300 million—triple its valuation 18 months ago. The round brings Even's total funding to over $120 million, and the company has opened two hospitals in Bengaluru as it shifts from partnering with hospitals to operating its own.
Christina Qi, who built and later shut down MIT-founded hedge fund Domeyard after a losing 2020, now runs market data startup Databento as CEO. The company, which serves 70,000 customers including Nvidia and OpenAI, raised a $97 million Series B round in July, bringing total disclosed funding to about $127 million, and reports eight-figure annual recurring revenue.
Arena, the crowdsourced AI model ranking platform that began as a UC Berkeley research project in 2023, announced a $200 million Series B funding round at a $3.1 billion valuation. The raise follows a $150 million Series A in January at a $1.7 billion valuation, when annualized revenue stood at $30 million; the company says that figure has since hit $100 million. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, a16z and others, and Arena also introduced a new alignment category to its leaderboard.
Arlington-based Quartermaster has closed a $140 million Series B just months after a $43 million Series A, with about $100 million in equity from Insight Partners, Overmatch Ventures and existing backers, plus a $40 million debt facility from Stifel. The company makes 'SmartMast,' a hardware package of cameras and radios mounted on ship masts that delivers real-time maritime data beyond basic AIS location pings.
Arlington-based Quartermaster raised a $140 million Series B just months after closing a $43 million Series A in May, according to CEO Neil Sobin. Roughly $100 million came from equity investors led by Insight Partners, with new backer Overmatch Ventures and existing investor First Round Capital, while the remaining $40 million came as debt financing from Stifel. The startup builds weather-hardened camera and radio hardware called SmartMast that mounts on ship masts to deliver real-time maritime data beyond basic AIS location pings.
Ema, which builds coordinated AI agent systems it calls 'AI employees' to automate HR, IT, and finance workflows, has closed a $77 million Series B funding round. The round, led by Creaegis with participation from existing backers Accel, Section 32, and Prosus, was all-primary equity and pushes Ema's total funding to $140 million while more than quadrupling its valuation from 2024.
Verda, a Finland-based AI cloud infrastructure company, closed an oversubscribed $189 million Series B round led by Emergence Capital, with backing from MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance, Lifeline Ventures, 6 Degrees Capital, byFounders, Tesi, and several angel investors. The round pushes Verda's total funding past $450 million in combined equity and debt, and values the company at unicorn status, making it one of Europe's newest billion-dollar startups.
Mazama Energy closed an oversubscribed $135 million Series B round led by Centaurus Capital and Doerr Capital, with Vinod Khosla among earlier backers. The funds will support horizontal drilling into super-hot rock formations in Oregon, where each well could generate up to 15 megawatts, and the company now estimates the site could ultimately yield 10 gigawatts of power, double last year's projection.