financing

According to a report by the Financial Times citing informed sources, Blackstone recently informed investors in a $63 billion chip financing deal for Anthropic that the company may not immediately receive an investment-grade rating after going public, with major rating agencies more likely to assign it a BB range rating, which is speculative grade (commonly referred to as "junk grade").According to the rating systems of S&P and Fitch, BBB- and above are considered investment grade, while BB+ and below are considered speculative grade. If Anthropic ultimately receives a junk grade rating, its financing costs may rise, and the range of funds available to institutions such as insurance companies and pension funds, which are subject to investment-grade investment restrictions, will also narrow.The financing pressure mainly comes from Anthropic's massive computing power expenditure plans. The company previously disclosed plans to invest over $800 billion in computing infrastructure by 2045. Although Anthropic currently holds over $112 billion in cash and cash equivalents and plans to further raise funds through an IPO, the long-term commitments to computing power still raise concerns among investors about its future funding needs and debt capacity.After the report was released, U.S. tech stocks fell further, with the Nasdaq 100 index ultimately down 3.5%. However, Anthropic has not yet received a formal credit rating from S&P, Moody's, or Fitch, and Blackstone's assessment is not an official rating result.

Artificial intelligence inference company Baseten announced the launch of a new round of financing of $2 billion, with a valuation of up to $30 billion. Existing investor Sands Capital is expected to lead this round of financing.Baseten was founded in 2019 and mainly provides AI model deployment and inference platforms for enterprises, helping them run various AI models. In June of this year, Baseten completed a $1.5 billion financing round, with a valuation of $13 billion. Its competitor Fireworks AI completed a $1.5 billion financing round in July this year with a valuation of $17.5 billion. It is reported that NVIDIA invested $150 million in Baseten in January this year, increasing its active layout in the field of artificial intelligence inference.

According to PR Newswire, AI security startup AvalonX has concluded its 18-month stealth operation and announced a $10 million funding round from Ridown Capital.The company also launched a continuous AI penetration testing platform, which is trained on nine years of real-world offensive security data and incorporates human expert analysis. AvalonX claims that the platform offers continuous penetration testing to small and medium-sized enterprises on a monthly subscription basis.

The U.S. government raised $839 billion this week through the issuance of Treasury bills and bonds, setting a historical record. This move is both to repay maturing debt and to raise additional funds needed for federal deficit financing. The scale of Treasury bills, floating rate notes, and the auctions of 2-year, 5-year, and 7-year Treasury bonds held this week exceeded the previous record of $834 billion set during the same period last year.This total of $839 billion covers the scale of 11 auctions, most of which is used to repay the principal to holders of maturing Treasury bills. The portion that truly represents "new borrowing" for the U.S. government is only $106 billion, far from reaching historical highs. The previous peak occurred in March and April 2020, when the scale of Treasury bond auctions surged to raise funds to respond to the pandemic, with weekly net new cash reaching a peak of nearly $362 billion.Tony Fallon from Mischler Financial Group's interest rate sales and trading department stated, "The total amount of debt issued by the Treasury each week reaching a historical high is certainly not a good thing. The biggest risk is that investors may demand higher yields."

According to Bitfinex analysis, Strategy shareholders voted on October 28 to approve the proposal for daily dividends on STRC preferred shares, with preliminary results showing that 99.3% of votes supported the proposal. STRC is expected to change from bi-monthly dividends to daily dividends starting November 1, with the first cash dividend to be credited on November 2; the other three preferred shares under Strategy, STRF, STRK, and STRD, are expected to follow suit in January 2027.This move by Strategy aims to reduce price volatility caused by ex-dividend dates. The company's CEO Phong Le stated that previously, when STRC paid monthly dividends, the average price dropped about 49 basis points around the ex-dividend date, which decreased to about 36 basis points after switching to bi-monthly dividends. The company expects that daily dividends will further disperse selling pressure and enhance price stability.This model is not unique to Strategy. Bitcoin treasury company Strive switched its SATA preferred shares to daily dividends in June this year and launched a subordinate preferred share SATS with a fixed annual dividend rate of 15%. In October, Strive issued 7 million shares of SATS at $90 per share, raising approximately $630 million, and used about $511 million of that to purchase 6,182 BTC.

San Francisco startup Dream has emerged from stealth mode, announcing the completion of a $17 million seed round financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from SV Angel, XYZ, and Zigg Capital.Dream was co-founded by Andy Elder and Arjun Mathur, who both worked at Palantir for about ten years. The company develops a "building world model" that trains on over 100 million square feet of permitted building data in the United States. The model can understand the spatial relationships between building components, such as the direction of HVAC ducts through walls. The company claims that the drawings generated by the model are accurate enough for contractors to build directly from them. The initial business focus is on commercial projects such as storefronts, offices, and data centers.

FUNDA posted on platform X that OpenAI is reportedly giving potential investors time, promising to participate in a $30 billion financing round that values the company at $1.25 trillion.

Robot Lab Machenta has secured $40 million in seed funding, led jointly by Creandum and USV.According to reports, the company currently has no products; the Creandum team visited its London Archway office in May this year with their own props to stress test the AI model that claims to teach robots to perform tasks with just one demonstration.

The market intelligence platform Predict Pro announced on its official X account on October 26 that it has completed a $4 million strategic financing round, with investors including DuckDao, Becker Ventures, and M2M Capital.Predict Pro stated that this round of funding will be used to advance its global ecosystem and develop AI Agents powered by DEITIES to support AI-related capabilities in the prediction market. According to the official introduction, Predict Pro is positioned as an AI-native intelligence product for the prediction market, connecting real-world events, market signals, and judgments.

According to The Information, details of DeepSeek's second round of financing have emerged. This round of financing amounts to 105.5 billion yuan (approximately 15.8 billion USD), attracting nearly 30 investors, corresponding to a company valuation of about 615.5 billion yuan. Tencent Holdings and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. remain the two main funding sources: Tencent contributed 10 billion yuan in both rounds; Contemporary Amperex Technology and its chairman Zeng Yuqun contributed 5 billion yuan and 10 billion yuan in the two rounds, respectively.Industrial capital from Changxin Memory Technologies, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, vivo, Meituan, Geely Automobile, Midea Group, Luxshare Precision, Trip.com, and Xiaohongshu also participated, with some single contributions ranging from 1 billion to 3 billion yuan. The participation of state-owned capital has significantly increased. The National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund of China contributed another 1 billion yuan in this round, the same as in the first round. Institutions such as China Mobile, China Telecom, CICC, CITIC Securities, and China Life also participated in the investment, with individual contributions ranging from 2 billion to 8 billion yuan.Informed sources stated that the continuous rise in prices of high-end chips from NVIDIA and concerns about the AI industry bubble are the reasons why DeepSeek decided to double its fundraising scale midway. Previously, Bloomberg reported that DeepSeek had completed approximately 100 billion yuan in financing, led by Contemporary Amperex Technology and Tencent.

Morgan Stanley maintains a "Market Perform" rating and a target price of $210, believing that the funding and return framework is clearer, with the key going forward being timely delivery of capacity and maintenance of profit margins.

According to Bloomberg, California-based personal AI assistant company Wabi Inc. has completed a $55 million financing round, with a valuation of $1.25 billion. This round was led by IVP, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Amazon Alexa Fund, and Forerunner Ventures, and the company plans to announce this on Thursday. The funds will be used to continue developing software that allows multiple people to interact with AI agents to coordinate activities and make collective decisions.Wabi was founded by Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda and is headquartered in San Francisco. The product is positioned as a personal AI assistant for multiple users, combining AI agents, personalized mini-apps, and shared spaces. The company announcement shows that participating angel investors include Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, former Yahoo head Marissa Mayer, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, and Alex Pall. The new funds will be used for product development and business expansion, with the product currently available on iOS, Android, and Mac.

Hot Wheels collectible car model blind box platform Rip Cars announced on X that it has completed a $1.5 million strategic round of financing. Participants include DBA, Colosseum, Kyle Samani, Novora, Allinbitcoin, Sacha, and Erik C. Rip Cars stated that this round of financing will drive its construction of the world's largest Hot Wheels collectibles trading market.Rip Cars claims to be the world's first Hot Wheels blind box platform, operating on Solana and issuing the token CARS through MetaDAO. After opening a box, users can hold the corresponding physical car model, trade, or resell through the platform. The project previously completed $250,000 in financing through MetaDAO, and the official disclosure on October 28 stated that over 15,500 boxes have been opened since its launch.

Canadian AI model startup Cohere is undergoing a large-scale financing round, with a valuation reaching 20.5 billion USD.Cohere stated that it has completed the first tranche of this financing round, with the total amount expected to reach up to 5 billion USD. The Canadian government and investors such as Nvidia have committed to funding, with the Canadian government agreeing to invest up to 1.14 billion USD.

Kalshi co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour stated that Kalshi has completed a $1 billion Series G funding round, led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management.Other investors participating in this round include Baillie Gifford, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Coatue Management, and Andreessen Horowitz, with a valuation of $40 billion.

According to an official tweet from Gaea Foundation, the decentralized AI ecosystem project GAEA announced the completion of a $3.6 million strategic round of financing on September 19, with investors including MH Venture, CGV FOF, K24 Ventures, and M2M Capital. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of GAEA's Emotional Layer, expand the global community, and promote the implementation of AI entities with emotional perception capabilities.According to the official introduction, GAEA is committed to building a decentralized ecosystem that connects humans, AI entities, data, and computing resources, with the number of users in the ecosystem exceeding 850,000.

The BNB Chain execution-oriented Rollup project Matrix announced that it has received additional Series B funding from Shima Capital and Delphi Ventures, bringing the total amount of this round of financing to 8.5 million USD. Previously participating institutions in this round include ParaFi Capital, Tribe Capital, Point72 Ventures, CMT Digital, Lightspeed Faction, BITKRAFT Ventures, and Makers Fund.The funds from this round will continue to be used to advance the mainnet launch, the construction of the ZK validity proof system, and the Stage 2 decentralization process. Matrix is built on the Facet technology stack and is adapted to the BNB Chain PoSA consensus, with no centralized sequencer and no administrative privileges; the transaction order is directly determined by the BNB Chain. The official claim is that it can effectively increase the throughput of the BNB ecosystem by 3 to 5 times. Currently, Matrix testnet Phase 1 has been launched.

HSBC assesses that, combined with the previous financing of 35 billion dollars corresponding to over 1 gigawatt, this transaction roughly supports the deployment of 1.7 to 1.8 gigawatts, which still falls short of the management's target of 5 gigawatts by 2027. Future attention needs to be paid to the continuation of funding.

Key hardware manufacturer Foundry Robotics founder and CEO Adarsh Kulkarni announced that the company has completed a $100 million Series A funding round, led by Marlinspike VC, with continued participation from Khosla Ventures.Kulkarni stated that the company will build a 130,000 square foot factory in Emeryville, California, to produce critical hardware domestically in the United States. The company has delivered products to paying customers in the energy, telecommunications, autonomous driving, and defense sectors.