AI Chipmaker Tenstorrent Leads Week’s $1.5 B Funding Surge, Followed by $1 B AI Lab Flapping Airplanes

The latest weekly roundup of U.S. venture activity highlighted a wave of large-scale financing driven largely by artificial-intelligence-related companies. Tenstorrent’s $1.5 billion Series E round topped the list, setting a $6.2 billion valuation for the Santa Clara chipmaker, and was followed by a $1 billion Series A for San Francisco AI lab Flapping Airplanes. The breadth of the deals, from AI infrastructure to space navigation and biotech, underscores the continued appetite of investors for capital-intensive, technology-heavy businesses.

Tenstorrent, a ten-year-old developer of AI processors and systems, closed its Series E with $1.5 billion led by Trace Capital and Innovation X. The financing lifts the company’s post-money valuation to $6.2 billion, positioning it among the most valuable private AI hardware firms in the United States. The round reflects strong demand for custom silicon that can accelerate large language models and other compute-intensive workloads, a market where Tenstorrent competes with industry giants and newer entrants alike.

Flapping Airplanes, an AI laboratory focused on building models that are cheaper to train and run, raised $1 billion in a Series A led by Lux Capital and Index Ventures. The San Francisco startup announced the round less than ten months after a $180 million seed round, indicating rapid scaling of its research platform. By targeting cost-efficient model development, Flapping Airplanes aims to lower the barrier to entry for enterprises that need advanced AI without the expense of massive cloud compute.

Other sizable rounds spanned a range of deep-tech sectors. Boston-based ASI secured $325 million in a Series C led by Spark Capital, valuing the AI-for-critical-infrastructure firm at $3 billion. Xona, developing a next-generation global positioning system, attracted $250 million in Series D funding from Future Ventures, setting a $2.4 billion valuation. New York’s Pathos AI, which applies AI to drug discovery, completed a $237 million Series E led by Bristol-Myers Squibb, also reaching a $3 billion valuation. Warp Sciences, blending AI, robotics and life-science expertise to accelerate medicine development, raised $215 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Three companies each announced $200 million financings, tying for the third-largest amount. Whop, a New York marketplace for online entrepreneurs, secured a Series D led by Sequoia Capital and Shopify Ventures, pushing its valuation to $5.1 billion. South San Francisco drug developer Star Therapeutics raised $200 million from OrbiMed and Janus Henderson Investors, following Incyte’s acquisition of its Vega Therapeutics subsidiary for up to $2 billion. Warhound, a stealth-mode startup that intends to breed elite military dogs equipped with Anduril technology, announced a $200 million seed round backed by Sequoia Capital, 8VC and other investors.

Rounding out the list, San Francisco-based Arda Industries closed a $160 million Series A for its AI-powered manufacturing software, co-led by Altimeter Capital, Accel and Khosla Ventures, and disclosed an earlier $72 million seed round. The diversity of sectors, AI hardware, foundational models, biotech, space navigation, and even military-grade canine programs, illustrates how deep-pocketed capital is flowing into both core and fringe applications of artificial intelligence.

The concentration of multi-hundred-million deals suggests that investors remain confident in the long-term growth of AI-centric businesses, even as valuations climb. For founders, the environment rewards clear technical differentiation and the ability to address capital-intensive markets. As the pipeline of AI-driven products expands, the next wave of financing may hinge on demonstrable revenue traction and the capacity to translate research breakthroughs into scalable commercial offerings.