Tags: venture funding

Deccan AI, a San Francisco‑based startup that supplies post‑training data and evaluation work for frontier AI models, closed a $25 million all‑equity Series A round led by A91 Partners with participation from Susquehanna International Group and Prosus Ventures. The company leverages a large India‑based contributor network to deliver services such as expert feedback generation, model evaluation, and reinforcement‑learning environments for customers that include Google DeepMind and Snowflake. With about 125 employees and a pool of over one million contributors, Deccan aims to meet the growing demand for high‑quality, time‑critical data that drives reliable AI deployment. Read more

Mirage, the company behind the video‑editing app Captions, has raised $75 million in growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. The startup rebranded to Mirage, introduced a freemium model, and launched new AI models for pacing, framing, attention dynamics, and accent‑preserving audio. With more than 3.2 million downloads and over 200 million videos created, the platform serves an international audience and is targeting small‑business marketers. The fresh capital will fuel growth, especially in high‑growth Asian markets, and support the development of additional AI models for video assembly. Read more

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is leaving the board chair of fusion startup Helion amid reports that the two companies are in early talks for a power agreement. The potential deal could give OpenAI a share of Helion’s future production, which aims for five gigawatts by 2030 and 50 gigawatts by 2035. Helion, which raised $425 million last year, is developing a magnetic‑based reactor that directly converts fusion energy into electricity. Helion confirmed Altman's departure but did not comment on new customer agreements beyond existing deals with Microsoft and Nucor. Read more