Tags: venture capital

Amazon Ring chose AI voice platform Vapi from a pool of more than 40 vendors to handle all inbound calls, a move that spurred a $50 million Series B round and pushed the startup’s valuation to roughly $500 million. The deal, led by Peak XV Partners and backed by Microsoft’s M12, Kleiner Perkins and Bessemer, marks a milestone for Vapi, whose technology now powers millions of daily calls for Ring and a roster of other enterprise customers. Read more

Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever told a California federal court that his ownership in the artificial‑intelligence firm is worth about $7 billion. The disclosure, made during Elon Musk’s litigation over OpenAI’s shift from nonprofit to capped‑profit status, positions Sutskever among the company’s largest individual shareholders. The testimony adds a new data point to the case, which challenges the governance changes that accompanied OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation. Read more

Robinhood Markets filed a confidential registration statement to launch RVII, its second publicly traded venture fund, expanding beyond the late‑stage companies that anchor its first fund, RVI. The new vehicle will target growth‑stage and early‑stage startups, opening the private‑market upside to everyday investors without accreditation requirements. RVI, which debuted at $21 per share and now trades above $43, has already doubled in value, driven by optimism around AI‑heavy holdings such as OpenAI and Databricks. CEO Vlad Tenev says the move aims to let retail investors sit at the ground floor of future tech breakthroughs. Read more

The University of Michigan invested $20 million in OpenAI before ChatGPT existed, and court documents reveal the stake is now worth $2 billion. This hundred-to-one return on investment is a significant windfall for the university's endowment, which made the bet on the AI company when it was still a nonprofit research laboratory. Read more

Beijing‑based Moonshot AI raised roughly $2 billion in a financing round led by Meituan’s Long‑Z Investment, pushing its valuation to $20 billion. The round also included Tsinghua Capital, China Mobile and CPE Yuanfeng. Founded in 2023 by former Meta and Google Brain researcher Yang Zhilin, the lab’s open‑weight Kimi models have quickly become some of China’s most used large‑language models, driving annual recurring revenue past $200 million. The new capital arrives as global demand for Chinese open‑source AI surges, positioning Moonshot alongside rivals such as DeepSeek, Zhipu AI and MiniMax. Read more

Beijing‑based Moonshot AI closed a $2 billion financing round led by Meituan’s Dragon Ball arm, with China Mobile, CITIC Private Equity and other investors participating. The deal values the Kimi chatbot maker at over $20 billion—roughly seven times its December 2024 valuation. Founded in 2023 by three Tsinghua alumni, Moonshot has seen its consumer‑facing Kimi product double annual recurring revenue to more than $200 million in two months. The funding surge places the firm among China’s most heavily backed AI labs and fuels speculation about a near‑term public listing. Read more

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek is in talks to raise its first venture‑capital round, aiming for a valuation that could climb from $20 billion to $45 billion. Founder Liang Wenfeng, who controls about 90% of the company, is turning to investors after rival firms began poaching key researchers. The round is expected to be led by the state‑backed China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, with cloud giants Tencent and Alibaba reportedly considering participation. DeepSeek’s efficient large‑language model runs on Huawei chips, positioning it as a strategic asset in Beijing’s push for AI independence. Read more