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The month in Startups and VC
Longest running story: 26 days
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The month began with capital spreading across the AI stack, from model development to infrastructure and applications. Funding then concentrated around dominant platforms, while investors reassessed weaker bets and still committed to multibillion-dollar AI raises despite higher demands for revenue, reliability, and deployment.
OpenAI completed a $7 billion tender offer after a record funding round, giving private investors a concrete liquidity event. Anthropic expanded its credit facility beyond $10 billion while building the growth and financial profile needed for a possible IPO.
AI infrastructure attracted major financing across chips, cloud capacity, and training data. Groq, Etched, Mercor, and Micro1 showed that venture interest extended beyond model companies to the systems required to run and supply AI.
Large private rounds lifted Polymarket, Whatnot, and Harvey to sharply higher valuations, while Zepto postponed its IPO after investors demanded a steep cut. The contrast showed that private markets rewarded strong growth but imposed harsher tests on companies approaching public markets.
Week’s Recap