Financial movements in the AI ecosystem, including venture capital investments, strategic acquisitions, IPO's and funding rounds for AI companies.
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has launched Dazzle, a new AI startup focused on personal assistant technology, after closing her previous venture Sunshine. The company has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green, with participation from several major investors.
Alphabet has agreed to acquire Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure developer, for $4.75 billion in cash plus assumed debt. The deal will help Google expand data center power generation capacity and is expected to close in the first half of 2026.
Cerebras Systems is preparing to file for a U.S. IPO next week, targeting a second-quarter 2026 listing. The move follows the company's clearance from U.S. regulators and the removal of G42 from its investor list after previous delays.
SoftBank Group is working to finalize a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by the end of the year, using asset sales, loans, and other financing strategies to meet its pledge.
OpenAI is reportedly seeking to raise up to $100 billion in new funding, potentially valuing the company at as much as $830 billion. The round is expected to close as early as the end of the first quarter of next year, though terms may still change.
Salesforce has agreed to acquire Qualified, a San Francisco-based provider of agentic AI marketing technology, to expand its Agentforce platform and enhance automation in sales and service processes. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027.
Swedish AI startup Lovable has secured $330 million in Series B funding at a $6.6 billion valuation, led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures. The company plans to expand integrations, enterprise features, and infrastructure for its AI-powered software-building platform.
Blue Owl Capital has decided not to provide equity funding for Oracle's planned $10 billion data center in Saline Township, Michigan. Blackstone is now in talks to supply capital, with Bank of America leading a $14 billion debt package to support the project.
OpenAI is in preliminary talks to raise tens of billions of dollars at a valuation of around $750 billion, potentially involving Amazon and other major investors.
Coursera has agreed to acquire Udemy in an all-stock transaction valued at $2.5 billion, with Udemy shareholders set to receive 0.8 Coursera shares for each Udemy share. The merger is expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals.
BoodleBox has completed a $5 million seed funding round co-led by Dogwood Ventures and Osage Venture Partners to expand its AI collaboration platform for higher education and other sectors.
Scale AI has announced $128.5 million in funding for 44 new AI projects across Canada, marking its largest investment round to date. The initiative aims to accelerate adoption of artificial intelligence across industries including healthcare, energy, and public infrastructure.
OpenAI is in early discussions with Amazon about a potential investment exceeding $10 billion and an agreement to use Amazon’s AI chips, following the ChatGPT maker’s recent restructuring and expanded partnership flexibility.
Databricks has raised more than $4 billion in a Series L round at a $134 billion valuation, while surpassing a $4.8 billion revenue run-rate with over 55% year-over-year growth. The funding will support development of its AI and data products including Lakebase, Agent Bricks, and Databricks Apps.
Kilo Code has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Cota Capital, joined by Breakers, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and Tokyo Black. The San Francisco-based startup plans to expand its open-source AI coding platform, which integrates with tools like VS Code and JetBrains and supports over 500 models.
OpenAI-backed biotech firm Chai Discovery has raised $130 million in Series B funding at a $1.3 billion valuation, led by General Catalyst and Oak HC/FT. The company’s Chai-2 platform uses AI to design new antibodies from scratch, improving success rates in drug discovery.
Intel is negotiating to acquire AI chipmaker SambaNova Systems for about $1.6 billion including debt, with a potential deal expected as soon as next month. SambaNova, founded by Stanford professors, designs custom AI chips and was valued at $5 billion in 2021.
Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and allow over 200 of its characters to appear in Sora-generated videos under a three-year licensing agreement, with user-created clips to be streamed on Disney+.
Tel Aviv-based startup Shapes has raised $24 million in Seed and Series A funding to expand its AI-native PeopleOS, a system designed to unify HR, IT, and finance operations into a single adaptive platform.
Spherea will acquire Averna to create a combined test and quality engineering systems organization with over 1,800 employees across 13 countries. The deal, backed by Andera Partners and Walter Capital Partners, is expected to close by the end of December 2025.
