This week saw a busy period for startup acquisitions and funding rounds, highlighting significant activity across various sectors of the tech industry.
In one major deal, the Israeli mobile unlocking giant Cellebrite acquired Corellium, a startup that specializes in mobile device testing, for $170 million in cash, plus an additional $20 million converted into equity at closing. Elsewhere, IBM bolstered its artificial intelligence competencies by purchasing Seek AI, known for its natural language interfaces that help users query enterprise data seamlessly. Seek AI’s tools will form a central element of IBM’s recently established Watsonx AI Labs accelerator located in New York City.
The European data governance industry also saw consolidation as Collibra, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, acquired fellow Brussels-based startup Raito. Raito previously raised about $4 million to refine systems for managing data access among internal staff and external customers.
Meanwhile, AMD revealed its purchase of AI software optimization startup Brium, signaling the company’s direct challenge to Nvidia’s dominance in the AI hardware field. Cloud platform Snowflake confirmed its intention to acquire Crunchy Data, which focuses enterprise database solutions around PostgreSQL. The deal valuation remains undisclosed, but market sources approximate its value around $250 million.
Not all developments were positive, however. Airtime, the video communication startup founded by Evernote’s Phil Libin and formerly known as mmhmm, laid off numerous employees due to business restructuring despite accumulating nearly $135 million in early-stage venture funding. Indian online grocery service KiranaPro suffered a critical cybersecurity breach in May, losing all its stored data as hackers wiped servers completely. Additionally, HR tech giants Deel and Rippling escalated their legal battle, exchanging serious accusations of spying and unethical recruitment practices.
In significant venture funding news, defense technology startup Anduril Industries secured an enormous $2.5 billion Series G funding round, with a massive $1 billion investment coming from Founders Fund alone. This latest influx of capital effectively doubled Anduril’s valuation to approximately $30.5 billion.
AI continues to attract major investments as coding-assistant company Anysphere, creators of the Cursor tool, closed a $900 million funding round at a valuation of $9.9 billion, surpassing $500 million in annual recurring revenue. Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink finalized a $650 million Series E fundraising, placing its valuation at $9 billion pre-money. Singapore-based Bolttech, an insurtech provider specializing in embedded insurance, raised a $147 million Series C, pushing its valuation to $2.1 billion.
Other fundraisings included Israeli chip enterprise Speedata, which announced a $44 million Series B as it challenges GPUs dominance in AI applications with its Analytics Processing Units (APUs). Irish-based fintech startup Nomupay secured $40 million in Series C funding from SoftBank subsidiary SB Payment Services to expand its global footprint, particularly in Asian markets. Further, AI road safety platform Obvio secured $22 million in a Series A round from Bain Capital Ventures to improve its digital system for detecting unsafe drivers at stop signs.
Recent data provided additional context about venture capital flows indicating North American AI startups attracted an overwhelming majority of investment, approximately $69.7 billion distributed across 1,528 deals in just the past few months, far ahead of Europe ($6.4 billion across 742 deals) and Asia ($3 billion across 515 deals).
Finally, early AI investor Elad Gil, well-known for his investments in Perplexity and Harvey, shared his latest strategy for the sector, highlighting his increased focus on traditional industries ripe for transformation through AI technology.
