This Week's Opportunities
Thinking Machines Lab and Isomorphic Labs are both in talks on new rounds of about $5B; four community projects are raising.
Thinking Machines Lab is in talks on a round of about $5B at a pre-money valuation of at least $40B, with Accel expected to lead
Isomorphic Labs is in talks on a round of about $5B at about $50B
Neros signed a $450M conditional loan commitment with the Pentagon to build a drone factory
Bravo (raising) gives diners an AI assistant connected to a restaurant network for booking and payment; raising a $2M SAFE
Antheom AI (raising), founded by a former NASA engineer, builds autonomous systems for in-orbit resupply and repair
Want an intro to any of them, or want your project featured here? Just reply.
Our Take
Big rounds now come with loans and structured capital. The ten largest rounds totaled about $8B, and $2B of that skipped a standard equity round: Shield AI took $1B of structured equity from Blackstone and a $500M loan arranged by JPMorgan, and Nooks' $500M is repaid from revenue and takes no stake.
Drone and space companies took about half of this week's money. Shield AI, Zipline, CesiumAstro and Northwood Space raised $5.1B between them, mostly for production lines and satellites.
Shield AI's $2.5 Billion Is Only 40% Equity: Banks Are Now Helping Fund Big Defense AI Rounds (Signal)
Sequoia Shuts Arc and Scouts: The Median Round It Joins Doubled in a Year (Radar)
Thrive Holdings Spent $2 Billion Buying Accounting Firms: What Is the Real Moat for AI Applications? (Thesis)
Market Signals
This week's two largest rounds both went to drone companies. Military drone maker Shield AI raised $2.5B and drone delivery company Zipline raised $1.5B at a $21.5B post-money valuation; humanoid robot maker Agility Robotics listed on Nasdaq, the only IPO this week.
Upcoming Events
SVTR Spring 2027 Global Venture Camp · CES × Silicon Valley: first stage closes November 30.
Berkeley x DeepMind Hackathon (November 14, Berkeley, free, approval required): teams build with Gemini for three hours and then pitch; the grand prize is meetings with seed investors.
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