startups

Hermeus closed a $350 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation, combining equity and debt as it shifts prototyping into production and relocates to El Segundo.

Merino Energy debuts the Mono, a single-unit heat pump that plugs into a standard 120-volt outlet and costs roughly half the price of a conventional mini-split, as California races to install millions of heat pumps by 2030.

Canadian startup Upside Robotics closes a $7.5 million seed round to expand solar-powered autonomous robots that micro-dose fertilizer in corn fields, claiming 70 percent input reduction across 1,300 acres.

A Caltech-backed startup claims utility-scale quantum computers need far fewer qubits than previously estimated, potentially accelerating the timeline for cryptographically relevant machines to the end of the decade.

The Y Combinator graduate plans an 88,000-satellite constellation for orbital AI compute, backed by Benchmark and EQT Ventures.

Mountain View startup Sunday has raised $165 million at a $1.15 billion valuation to bring its Memo household robot from demos to real-world deployment, with beta units heading to 50 homes by late 2026.

Seattle-based XBOW raised $120 million in Series C funding led by DFJ Growth and Northzone, crossing the $1 billion valuation mark as it scales an AI platform that autonomously discovers and validates software vulnerabilities.

Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raises $500M Series A led by Accel and a16z at $2B valuation, challenging humanoid robot trend with AI-powered industrial automation.

Kalanick rebrands City Storage Systems as Atoms, absorbing CloudKitchens and acquiring autonomous-driving startup Pronto to build purpose-built industrial robots.

Nominal, an Austin-based hardware data platform, reached a $1 billion valuation after raising an $80 million Series B extension led by Founders Fund, bringing total funding to $155 million in under ten months.

Helion, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and China's EAST reactor have each cleared critical technical barriers in early 2026, collectively marking the most concentrated period of fusion progress in the industry's history.

Ex-Waymo engineers secure major Series B to deploy operator-less construction equipment amid an industry labor crisis.