Big Bets: Growth and Late-Stage Raises
The day's largest headline came from the AI and robotics crossover space. General Intuition, which builds foundation models for generalized AI agents that navigate physical space, is in talks to raise at a $6B pre-money valuation. Backers in the round include Valor Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and Seven Seven Six. The raise underscores how quickly investors are willing to assign enormous valuations to startups bridging language models and physical-world movement.
On the AI search side, Perplexity is reportedly in talks to receive a strategic investment from Nvidia at a valuation exceeding $30B, more than 50% above its previous mark. No terms have been disclosed, but Nvidia's reported interest signals how chipmakers are moving aggressively to secure stakes in the AI application layer, not just the infrastructure beneath it.
Series A: Autonomous Delivery Takes Off in India
- Airbound raised $37M in a Series A round to scale autonomous drone delivery in India, with funds earmarked for aircraft engineering, manufacturing, and commercial expansion.
Bengaluru's regulatory and logistics environment has become an increasingly credible proving ground for drone delivery, and Airbound's raise is one of the larger bets placed on that thesis to date.
Early-Stage Raises: Physical AI and Mobile Security
Smaller rounds pointed toward two distinct themes: software for hardware, and data integrity in mobile ecosystems.
- Embedd raised approximately $3M in pre-seed funding to build software infrastructure for physical AI, with a focus on semiconductor partnerships. The round was led by Seedcamp, with participation from Connect Ventures, Cocoa, and several others.
- Boldr raised $5M in a pre-Series A round to expand its smart thermostat and connected heating and cooling platform into North America and commercial markets. Unconventional Ventures led the round.
- Kazimi closed a $2.5M pre-seed round to help mobile app developers protect and verify first-party data against bot activity. The oversubscribed round was led by Market One Capital, with participation from IBB Ventures and several mobile industry executives.
Fund Closes: Industrial Tech Gets a New European Backer
RunwayVC, a Norwegian early-stage venture firm, reached a $44M first close for its Fund II, targeting industrial AI, robotics, automation, and autonomous systems. Cornerstone investor Aker returned from Fund I, joined by new LPs including Halliburton and Aker BP. The fund close reflects sustained institutional appetite for European deep-tech, particularly in markets where industrial automation is not a future bet but an operational reality.
Notable Activity: Robotics M&A Accelerates
NEURA Robotics, fresh from a $1.3B raise, acquired Adlatus Robotics, an Ulm-based maker of autonomous cleaning robots. The deal was executed through NEURA Mobile Robots GmbH and folds Adlatus's existing fleet into NEURA's broader cognitive robotics platform. The move illustrates a pattern noted across the broader market: well-capitalized startups are acquiring smaller players to accelerate capability development rather than build from scratch.
Editorial Perspective
August 25 was not a day defined by one blockbuster close, but the pattern across raises is coherent. Capital is concentrating around physical AI in its broadest sense, from drones navigating Indian airspace to foundation models training agents to move through the world, to software that makes embedded hardware smarter. The Nvidia-Perplexity talks, if confirmed, would mark another step in the blurring of infrastructure and application investment. Meanwhile, the RunwayVC close and the Adlatus acquisition both suggest that Europe's industrial corridor is maturing fast enough to attract both institutional LPs and acqui-hire interest from better-funded peers. The direction is clear: the next hardware cycle will be won at the software and data layer.