Nvidia's equity portfolio has skyrocketed from roughly $2 billion to nearly $100 billion over a span of two years, driven by strategic investments in various tech companies, particularly those advancing artificial intelligence technologies.
In August, venture capitalists invested $42 billion across more than 1,500 startups worldwide, marking a 122% increase compared to last August despite a 25% drop from July’s $56 billion. Seven startups secured billion-dollar funding rounds, matching the year's second-highest monthly total after July's 13 such deals. The standout was Databricks, which raised $5 billion at a $190 billion valuation. Other billion-dollar rounds spanned diverse sectors including defense tech, AI, satellite networks, nuclear energy, automated coding, and home battery services. Significant exits included Unitree Robotics’ IPO, soaring 460% on its debut in Shanghai, and Nvidia’s planned $12.9 billion acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face. Funding momentum remains strong, with many companies quickly closing large rounds within months, underscoring investor confidence in emerging tech leaders.
Thinking Machines, a high-profile startup, is experiencing significant growth with an annual revenue run rate exceeding $100 million. Accel is reportedly in discussions to spearhead a $1 billion funding round, valuing the company at $40 billion.
Across Asia, digital issuers are tokenizing local currencies, regulators are defining frameworks for digital assets, and financial institutions are adopting stablecoins for payments, treasury, and cross-border settlements. However, issuing stablecoins is just the initial step. Efficiently transferring local currencies across borders demands robust banking links, institutional liquidity, forex management, compliance, and settlement infrastructure to create a seamless financial ecosystem.
In the first half of 2026, Dutch tech firms raised close to €1.9 billion, with the majority of capital flowing into the sector’s largest deals. Notably, the three biggest funding rounds represented around 44% of the total investment, underscoring a trend towards concentrated financing among top players.
Oura advanced toward becoming a publicly traded company by submitting its S-1 filing on Thursday, revealing $1.4 billion in revenue and setting the stage for its IPO.
Perplexity has unveiled hybrid compute for its AI platform, Computer, enabling a single AI agent to split tasks between cloud-based frontier models and smaller models running locally on Apple silicon Macs. This setup routes sensitive data to local devices, ensuring it never leaves the user's machine. The system uses a Privacy Gate, a classifier running on the device that detects personally identifiable information to prevent sensitive data transmission to the cloud. Users can choose whether flagged data is processed locally or shared. Targeted at enterprises, this approach balances cutting-edge AI intelligence with privacy and security, especially for confidential tasks like legal work, financial modeling, and marketing analytics. The platform supports models from Google, Alibaba, and a proprietary Perplexity-trained version, emphasizing local inference to mitigate geopolitical risks. Perplexity also offers robust controls for enterprise compliance and transparency, including audit logs and opt-out data policies. This innovation addresses the critical challenge of data privacy in AI adoption, blending cloud power with local security to meet professional standards.
The 2026 IPO season has seen remarkable activity, led by SpaceX's record-breaking Nasdaq debut raising $86 billion. While the public-market window is closing, a select group of venture-backed startups remain poised for IPOs in the coming months. Crunchbase's predictive intelligence highlights eight diverse companies—including leaders in AI, fintech, crypto, and climate tech—with a strong likelihood of going public within six months. Anthropic, the world's most valuable private venture startup, might take a slightly longer timeline, but remains a key player to watch. Other notable candidates include Oura, Notion, Kraken, SambaNova, Stegra, Stripe, and OpenEvidence, each positioned to make significant market impacts with upcoming listings or plans. This evolving IPO landscape reflects increased investor appetite and strategic moves by private companies to capitalize on public markets in 2026.
The board of Delivery Hero has endorsed Uber's proposed $15 billion acquisition. If this deal receives approval, the merged entity is set to become one of the world's dominant food delivery services, significantly expanding its market presence.
Wonderful has successfully closed a $550 million Series C funding round, achieving a $5 billion valuation. This round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Salesforce. The funding milestone comes eighteen months after Wonderful was founded and just six months following a $150 million raise at a $2 billion valuation. Although the press release is datelined in Amsterdam, Israeli tech media have reported Wonderful as an Israeli company.
