Etched doubles valuation to $21B in under a month

Startup / Product / Platform Radar

Etched doubles its valuation to $21B in under a month: The AI inference chip startup raised another $700 million in a round led by Jane Street, doubling its valuation to $21 billion. Etched says Jane Street led the round after installing the startup’s first shipped AI cluster. TechCrunch · SiliconANGLE
Anthropic nears a multibillion-dollar deal for Israeli AI startup Decart: Anthropic is in advanced talks to acquire the Israeli AI startup Decart in a multibillion-dollar deal. Decart shareholders see more upside in Anthropic stock, given Anthropic is planning the largest IPO in history at a $2 trillion valuation. Jerusalem Post
Velaura AI raises a $110M Series A at a $1B valuation: The Santa Clara company’s Titan Core chip platform promises a 2-4x improvement in performance per watt for AI workloads. StepStone Group, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Maverick Silicon joined the round. Yahoo Finance
Mark Cuban-backed ‘physical AI’ startup nears a $500M SPAC deal: A startup backed by Mark Cuban that makes hardware and software to more safely control and operate autonomous robots plans to go public via a blank-check vehicle at a $500 million valuation. Yahoo Finance

$47.4B flowed into physical AI in H1 2026, nearly 4x the prior half: Crunchbase data shows global venture funding in physical AI totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals in the first half of 2026 — almost 4x the second half of 2025 — as robotics and aerospace become the next wave of AI investment. Crunchbase
Unitree unveils a humanoid robot faster than Usain Bolt: The Chinese robotics company’s ‘Superman’ robot jumped two metres from standing and reached 12.66 metres per second — faster than the record-holder if sustained over 100 metres. AFR
Reach Capital closes a $265M Fund V for AI founders: Reach Capital announced an oversubscribed $265 million Fund V to back AI founders building to ’expand human potential’ — a reminder that early-stage capital keeps flowing even as mega-rounds dominate headlines. TechCrunch

Performance-per-watt is becoming the inference battleground: With Etched and Velaura both scaling on dedicated inference silicon and power efficiency, energy cost is now a core axis of competition for AI workloads. Teams building tools to measure and optimize inference cost and energy have a real opening. Yahoo Finance · TechCrunch
The robotics safety-and-control software layer: The Cuban-backed startup’s safe-control hardware/software and Unitree’s speed race both signal that as robots get faster, safety and verification become the bottleneck. Fleet safety certification and simulation-testing tools are an emerging niche. Yahoo Finance · AFR

Whether Etched’s valuation velocity is sustainable: It is still unclear whether a valuation that doubled in a month reflects real demand for dedicated inference silicon or froth. Whether its in-house chip strategy holds up against the Nvidia ecosystem remains to be seen. TechCrunch · SiliconANGLE
Anthropic’s $2T IPO and the Decart deal are not yet final: The Decart acquisition is still unsigned, and whether the ’largest IPO in history’ actually materializes at a $2 trillion valuation is uncertain — the open question is whether these AI mega-deals can justify their valuations. Jerusalem Post