AI startups raised over $2.3 billion this week across infrastructure, agentic AI, voice technology, and vertical applications. From Crusoe’s massive $1.38 billion data center expansion to innovative payment infrastructure for AI agents, capital continued flowing to companies building the foundational layers and specialized applications of the AI economy. Here are the highlights:
Crusoe Energy Reaches $10 Billion Valuation with $1.38 Billion Series E
Fund Raised: $1.38 billion
Valuation: $10 billion
Total Funding: $3.9 billion
Investors: Valor Equity Partners (co-lead), Mubadala Capital (co-lead), NVIDIA, Fidelity Management, Founders Fund
Denver-based Crusoe Energy Systems closed a massive $1.38 billion Series E funding round at a $10 billion valuation, cementing its position as a critical player in AI infrastructure. The round was oversubscribed, bringing together major tech and institutional investors in what represents one of 2025’s largest AI infrastructure bets.
Founded in 2018 by Chase Lochmiller (CEO) and Cully Cavness (COO), Crusoe began with an unconventional approach: converting wasted natural gas from oil fields into energy for portable data centers initially used for cryptocurrency mining. By 2025, the company has evolved into a vertically integrated “AI factory” building gigawatt-scale data centers that power massive AI training workloads.
Impressive metrics:
- Valuation increased 257% from $2.8 billion (December 2024)
- 1.2-gigawatt facility in Abilene, Texas operational in just one year
- 45 gigawatts in development pipeline (equivalent to 8-10 New York Cities)
- First phase of $500 billion Stargate project delivered
The Abilene facility, developed for OpenAI and Oracle, went from groundbreaking to operational in just 12 months—a remarkable achievement for a nearly one-million square-foot data center designed to host up to 100,000 GPUs. Beyond Texas, Crusoe is constructing a 1.8-gigawatt campus in Wyoming and operating natural gas-powered centers in Alberta, Canada.
Crusoe has prevented over 22 billion cubic feet of natural gas from being flared since 2018, equivalent to taking 630,000 cars off the road annually.
Crusoe’s model addresses the AI industry’s emerging bottleneck: energy availability, not chip supply. Traditional cloud providers are hitting power constraints as cities struggle to handle the electrical load AI models demand. Crusoe solves this by building facilities near stranded energy sources—flared gas, excess renewable power, and underutilized grid capacity.
The funding will support GPU purchases, expand Crusoe Cloud services, and accelerate development of the 45-gigawatt pipeline. NVIDIA’s continued backing validates the company’s technical approach—Crusoe deploys tens of thousands of Blackwell chips across its infrastructure.
Uniphore Raises $260 Million Series F to Lead Business AI Cloud
Fund Raised: $260 million
Valuation: $2.5 billion
Total Funding: $870 million
Investors: NVIDIA, AMD, Snowflake, Databricks, NEA, March Capital, BNF Capital, National Grid Partners, Prosperity7 Ventures
Palo Alto-based Uniphore closed a $260 million Series F round at a $2.5 billion valuation, with strategic investments from AI and data infrastructure giants NVIDIA, AMD, Snowflake, and Databricks. This marks one of the most strategic funding rounds in enterprise AI, bringing together the companies that define the current AI infrastructure landscape.
Founded in 2008 by Umesh Sachdev (CEO) and Ravi Saraogi in Chennai, India, Uniphore has evolved from speech analytics to providing comprehensive Business AI infrastructure. The company’s Business AI Cloud is a sovereign, composable, and secure platform that connects data, knowledge, models, and AI agents across enterprise ecosystems.
Platform architecture:
- Data layer: Connects to any application or cloud to query and prepare information
- Knowledge layer: Structures and contextualizes enterprise data for model training
- Model layer: Applies enterprise safety guardrails to third-party LLMs
- Agentic layer: Provides prebuilt AI agents with orchestration capabilities
Market traction:
- 2,000+ global businesses using the platform
- Fortune 500 clients include KPMG, Dell Technologies, The Washington Post, Atlassian, Skechers
- Exponential adoption from large enterprises
- Zero-debt, profitable operations
The round is particularly notable for maintaining the $2.5 billion valuation from its 2022 Series E, despite the challenging funding environment. This reflects investor confidence in Uniphore’s long-term strategy prioritizing sustainable growth over valuation inflation.
Recent strategic moves strengthen Uniphore’s position: the company acquired ActionIQ (customer data platform) and Infoworks (data engineering), and announced plans to acquire Orby AI (agentic automation) and Autonom8 (low-code workflow editor). These acquisitions position Uniphore at the forefront of AI talent and capabilities.
Sesame Raises $250 Million Series B for AI-Powered Smart Glasses
Fund Raised: $250 million
Stage: Series B
Total Funding: $307.6 million
Investors: Sequoia Capital (lead), Spark Capital
San Francisco-based Sesame secured $250 million in Series B funding to develop conversational AI integrated into lightweight smart glasses. Led by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar (former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6), Sesame is building what Sequoia Capital describes as “a platform for natural collaboration between humans and machines.”
The startup first emerged from stealth in February 2025, offering demos of its AI voices named “Maya” and “Miles.” Within weeks, over one million people accessed the demos, generating more than five million minutes of conversation. The natural-sounding, emotionally expressive voices resonated strongly with early users.
All-star founding team:
- Brendan Iribe: Oculus co-founder and former CEO
- Nate Mitchell: Oculus co-founder, now CPO at Sesame
- Hans Hartmann: Former Oculus COO and Fitbit executive, now COO
- Ryan Brown: Former Oculus engineering manager and Reality Labs director
- Angela Gayles: Longtime Facebook and Meta executive
- Ankit Kumar: Former CTO of Ubiquity6
Unlike bulky VR headsets or expensive AR devices like Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro, Sesame is developing lightweight, fashion-forward eyewear designed for all-day wear. The glasses will feature high-quality audio and access to an AI companion that can “observe the world alongside you” through natural voice interaction.
The company’s iOS beta launched alongside the funding announcement, allowing select users to interact with the AI for search, messaging, and thinking tasks. The beta requires confidentiality agreements, suggesting features that could surprise competitors.
Sequoia emphasized that Sesame represents the fourth major interface shift in computing: from typing to tapping to talking. “The interface layer of computing is undergoing its fourth major shift,” the firm noted. “Voice-enabled collaboration will define the next era.”
The funding will support hardware development, conversational AI refinement, and manufacturing scale-up. With Iribe’s track record—he built Oculus into a $2 billion Facebook acquisition—investors are betting Sesame can navigate the notoriously difficult consumer hardware market.
The competitive landscape is intense: Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses with AI, Google’s Android XR collaboration with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, and Samsung’s planned Android XR glasses all target similar territory. However, Sesame’s focus on natural conversation and wearability could differentiate the platform.
Giga Raises $61 Million Series A to Scale Enterprise Voice AI
Fund Raised: $61 million
Stage: Series A
Investors: Redpoint Ventures (lead), Y Combinator, Nexus Venture Partners
San Francisco-based Giga secured $61 million in Series A funding to scale its voice-based AI agents for enterprise customer support. Founded by IIT Kharagpur graduates and Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees Varun Vummadi (CEO) and Esha Manideep (CTO), Giga is automating complex customer service operations for Fortune 100 companies.
The company already powers customer support for DoorDash, handling millions of calls monthly across 40+ countries and nearly 50 million monthly users. Giga’s system delivers measurable improvements: fewer escalations, faster resolution paths, and enhanced operational efficiency.
Technical advantages:
- Rapid deployment: Enterprise-scale AI support in less than two weeks
- Real-time orchestration: Sub-half-second response times managing listening, comprehension, decision-making, database queries, and responses simultaneously
- Multilingual support: Open-source and multilingual LLMs with native language options
- 98% resolution rate: Autonomous handling of complex customer interactions
For example, at DoorDash, when a Dasher can’t complete a delivery, Giga’s system maintains a live connection with the Dasher, calls the consumer to verify the address, and performs compliance cross-checks—all automatically and in real time.
The voice AI market is projected to grow from $3.14 billion in 2024 to $47.5 billion by 2034, with intense competition from specialized startups like ElevenLabs and Vapi alongside tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft.
Giga previously raised $3.6 million in a 2023 seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners. The company pivoted from helping enterprises deploy on-premise LLMs to offering ready-to-use conversational AI agents—a shift reflecting the broader trend toward verticalized AI applications.
The funding will expand the technical team, accelerate go-to-market efforts, and scale deployments with global enterprises. Giga is particularly focused on regulated industries like healthcare and finance, deploying entire systems on client infrastructure using open-source models to ensure data never leaves client control.
Natural Emerges from Stealth with $9.8 Million for Agentic Payments
Fund Raised: $9.8 million
Stage: Seed
Investors: Abstract (co-lead), Human Capital (co-lead), Forerunner Ventures, Terrain, Restive Ventures, Genius Ventures, plus founders from Bridge, Mercury, Ramp, Vercel, Unit
San Francisco-based Natural emerged from stealth with $9.8 million in seed funding to build payment infrastructure for AI agents. Co-led by Abstract and Human Capital, the round included prominent fintech founders who understand the payment stack intimately.
Natural addresses a critical bottleneck in agentic AI: while AI agents can manage procurement, negotiate with suppliers, and make business decisions, they lack the infrastructure to execute payments autonomously. This forces humans to intervene at the transaction layer, breaking automated workflows.
Target use cases:
- Property management: Agents sourcing, hiring, and paying contractors for maintenance
- Logistics: Freight negotiation agents settling payments with truckers automatically
- Healthcare: Back-office agents sourcing and paying vendors and suppliers
- Procurement: Inventory management agents monitoring stock, negotiating with suppliers, and handling payments in real time
Legacy payment systems were built around human-to-human interaction, requiring approval workflows, compliance checks, and manual verification steps incompatible with autonomous agent operations. Natural is creating a natural language layer that allows agents to transact directly with businesses and other agents.
The company’s early design partners span logistics, property management, procurement, healthcare, and construction—sectors where agents can source, negotiate, and pay vendors or contractors in real time. The platform leverages existing rails like ACH initially, with plans to consolidate fragmented payment workflows into machine-accessible protocols.
Natural is deliberately keeping its team lean—currently five employees, expected to remain under 10 by year-end—with most hires focused on engineering talent. The funding will support expanding engineering capabilities and signing bank and payout partners as Natural moves toward general availability in 2026.
The agentic payments category is emerging rapidly, with multiple startups recognizing that autonomous AI systems require purpose-built financial infrastructure. Natural joins companies like Catena Labs ($18M), Nevermined ($4M), and Lava ($5.8M) building payment infrastructure for the agent economy.
Other Notable Rounds
Beacon Software Raises $250 Million Series B
Fund Raised: $250 million
Stage: Series B
Beacon Software secured $250 million in Series B funding to modernize niche vertical software businesses through acquisition and transformation. The software roll-up strategy targets legacy vertical SaaS companies in industries underserved by modern technology.
Lettuce Financial Raises $28 Million
Fund Raised: $28 million
Location: San Francisco, CA
San Francisco-based Lettuce Financial raised $28 million to power financial infrastructure for solo entrepreneurs. The company enables one-person businesses to access accounting, payroll, benefits, and tax compliance tools previously reserved for larger firms. In conjunction with the raise, Lettuce acquired Besolo to add healthcare benefits to its platform.
Anrok Secures $55 Million Series C
Fund Raised: $55 Million
Stage: Series C
Total Funding: $100+ million
Anrok raised $55 million in Series C funding to automate global sales-tax compliance for fast-growing digital businesses. The platform removes the complexity of managing tax obligations across multiple jurisdictions, a critical pain point for scaling software companies.
The Every Company Closes $55 Million Series D
Fund Raised: $55 million
Stage: Series D
The Every Company secured $55 million in Series D funding to scale production of precision-fermented egg proteins. The food tech company uses fermentation technology to create animal proteins without animals, targeting sustainable food production.
Parable Raises $19.5 Million Seed
Fund Raised: $19.5 million
Stage: Seed
Investors: HOF Capital (lead), Story Ventures, InMotion Ventures
Parable secured $19.5 million in seed funding to provide AI-powered resource optimization for enterprises. The platform combines simulation models with AI to recommend optimal allocation across people, projects, and time—giving organizations measurable visibility into their most valuable but least tracked asset: time.
C.Scale Closes $2 Million Pre-Seed
Fund Raised: $2 million
Stage: Pre-Seed
San Francisco-based C.Scale raised $2 million in pre-seed funding to expand its AI-powered marketplace for low-carbon building materials. The climate tech platform helps architects, developers, and manufacturers identify and source sustainable materials, bridging a major gap in the $1 trillion global construction materials market.
Augmented Intelligence (AUI) Raises $20 Million
Fund Raised: $20 million
Stage: SAFE round at $750 million cap
Total Funding: $60 million
Neuro-symbolic AI startup Augmented Intelligence raised $20 million in a SAFE round at a $750 million valuation cap. The company combines neural networks (pattern recognition and language fluency) with symbolic reasoning (structured logic and rule-based systems), enabling models to not only predict outcomes but also follow consistent rules and verify results.
International Spotlight
United States: Dominated funding this week with Crusoe ($1.38B), Uniphore ($260M), Sesame ($250M), and Beacon Software ($250M) representing the largest deals. Infrastructure, agentic AI, and vertical SaaS commanded premium valuations.
France: Poolside’s reported discussions for up to $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation (with NVIDIA committing $500M-$1B) would cement Paris’s position as a major AI coding hub, following Mistral AI’s success.
India: Strong fintech and AI activity with Giga’s founding team (IIT Kharagpur graduates) and Uniphore’s Chennai roots highlighting India’s growing role in enterprise AI innovation.
Important Takeaway
This week’s $2.3+ billion in funding reveals three critical shifts in AI investment:
1. Infrastructure Becomes the New Battleground
Crusoe’s $10 billion valuation and Uniphore’s strategic backing from NVIDIA, AMD, Snowflake, and Databricks signal that AI infrastructure commands premium valuations. The bottleneck has shifted from algorithms to compute power, energy availability, and enterprise integration layers. Companies providing these foundational capabilities are achieving massive scale.
Energy is the new constraint: While everyone focused on GPU shortages, power availability emerged as the real bottleneck. Crusoe’s model—building data centers near stranded energy sources—represents a blueprint for scaling AI infrastructure without overwhelming electrical grids. The company’s 45-gigawatt pipeline would power computing equivalent to 8-10 New York Cities.
2. Agentic AI Demands New Infrastructure Layers
Natural’s $9.8M raise for agentic payments infrastructure highlights an emerging category: purpose-built systems enabling AI agents to interact with the physical economy. As agents move from generating content to taking actions—negotiating contracts, making purchases, managing workflows—they require payment rails, identity systems, and compliance frameworks designed for autonomous operations.
The agentic AI stack is forming: Companies are building identity layers, payment infrastructure, workflow orchestration, and decision-making frameworks specifically for agent-to-agent and agent-to-business interactions. This represents a massive greenfield opportunity, as legacy systems were never designed for autonomous software entities.
3. Voice-First Computing Gains Momentum
Sesame’s $250M raise and Giga’s $61M Series A demonstrate growing conviction that voice will replace screens as the primary computing interface. Both companies are building not just better voice assistants, but entirely new interaction paradigms optimized for ambient, continuous dialogue.
The shift from apps to conversations: Rather than launching applications and navigating menus, users will increasingly “talk” to their computing environment through wearables and ambient devices. This interface revolution requires not just better speech recognition but contextual understanding, emotional intelligence, and multi-modal awareness.
The week also highlighted how strategic corporate investors are shaping AI development. NVIDIA’s investments in Crusoe, Uniphore, and potentially Poolside demonstrate the chip giant’s strategy of backing companies that drive GPU demand while building the AI ecosystem. Similarly, Snowflake and Databricks investing in Uniphore strengthens data platform integration.
The geographic distribution remains heavily US-weighted, but Europe (Poolside in Paris) and India (Giga founders, Uniphore origins) continue producing globally competitive AI companies with strong technical foundations.
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