K2 Space, a startup building large satellites for high-power applications including data-heavy communications and defence missions, has raised $500 million in a Series D funding round. The round values the company at $6.8 billion. Kleiner Perkins and Iconiq co-led the financing, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alphabet's CapitalG, Altimeter Capital Management, and other investors. The investment is part of a broader surge in funding across the space industry. Investors have committed billions to space startups in recent years, wagering that cheaper launches and growing demand will drive sector growth. The company plans to announce the funding on Thursday.

Anduril reportedly in talks to raise funding at $100B valuation, more than 3x last year s mark. Anduril is said to be raising a new round of funding that may push its valuation up to about $100 billion, per Reuters. Defense tech company Anduril is said to be raising a new round of capital that may push its valuation up by a whopping $40 billion to about $100 billion, Reuters reported, citing anonymous sources. The company, which raised $5 billion in May at a $61 billion valuation - itself roughly double the $30.5 billion valuation it landed in its June 2025 Series G round - may be structuring the fundraise as a two-stage process, with the second stage bringing in investors at a higher valuation. Both tranches could be closed within the year, Reuters reported. The news comes as the defense tech industry experiences an unprecedented revival, spurred by demand for drones, autonomous craft, and AI's role in warfare, as war rages both in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In the first six months of the year, the sector saw venture funding more than double to over $12 billion, eclipsing the nearly $10 billion that startups in the space raised in all of 2025. Anduril has benefited from this demand, signing contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, Air Force, and Army; the Dutch Ministry of Defence; NATO; the U.K. Ministry of Defence; Poland; and more. The company said in May that it had more than doubled its revenue to $2.2 billion in 2025 compared to a year earlier. Other startups have cashed in, too: Military aircraft maker Shield AI in March raised $1.5 billion, Mach Industries quadrupled its valuation to $1.8 billion last month, and Europe's Helsing this month raised $1.8 billion at an $18 billion valuation. A common thread across these deals is a shift toward cheaper, more expendable hardware, often called "attritable" systems, rather than the expensive-to-replace equipment that's defined defense contracting for decades. Mach CEO Ethan Thornton has said the startup is designing systems for the current era of warfare at significantly lower cost than traditional defense contractors, citing Ukraine's use of autonomous drones as a model. Separately, both Mach and Anduril have also moved to secure their own propulsion supply. Mach acquired solid rocket motor maker Exquadrum for $50 million in May, while the Pentagon has funded Anduril's efforts to expand domestic solid rocket motor manufacturing capacity - moves aimed at a supply bottleneck that predates and cuts across the low-cost-weapons trend. Anduril's investors include Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, Flux Capital, Greycroft, Altimeter, 1789 Capital, and current U.S. Vice President JD Vance, according to PitchBook. "No decisions have been made about any future financing, and anyone claiming knowledge of its terms, structure, pricing, or timing is speculating or misinformed. As a private company, we regularly evaluate opportunities to fund the growth of the business," Anduril said in an emailed statement. _Note: This story was updated to add Anduril's comment. _

Daily AI grants roundup - july 24, 2026. July 24, 2026 | By admin Stay updated with the latest in AI grants. Here are the top picks for today, curated and summarized by HappyMonkey AI. Humanoid, a UK robotics startup, raised $152M in Series A funding at a $1.35B valuation, backed by Prime Movers Lab, Schaeffler, and Bosch. Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Runway no longer wants to be just another AI model company... It wants to become the infrastructure layer for generative media... On Thursday, the startup launched Runway Media Router through Runway Dev, its developer platform, released earlier this month, that provides API... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Paper, a design platform built for the AI coding era, has raised $34 million in a Series A led by Accel and ICONIQ to expand its team and product. Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Opus 5 will be both cheaper and less restrictive than Fable, likely making it preferable in most use cases Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Several AI companies, including Hugging Face, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral, and Nvidia, have signed an open letter urging policymakers not to impose broad "premature restrictions" on open-weight AI models... The letter comes as Washington debates how the U.S... should respond to... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Attie, Bluesky's AI assistant that lets you build custom social feeds without programming, is evolving into an open-ended research tool... The company this week said it's added a new feature to the AI assistant, called Quests, that lets users ask it for information and news... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Posted: Amanda Silberling Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star Midjourney, an AI lab best known for its LLM-powered image and video generators, has acquired the social astrology app Co-Star, according to Bloomberg... The deal terms were not disclosed... Co-Star,... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. 'AI communism', rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street Chinese AI lab Moonshot's open model Kimi went viral this week for reasons that had less to do with the model itself and more to do with how the U.S... Meanwhile, an unreleased OpenAI model wandered outside... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Posted: Ivan Mehta OpenAI's new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app OpenAI on Thursday said it has updated its ChatGPT desktop app to add support for ChatGPT Voice, allowing users to talk to the app to control AI agents and perform tasks on their computer... The new... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. For months, AI giants have devised special vetted programs and strict guardrails to limit the use of their models by malicious hackers... But these limits are now hindering the work of legitimate network defenders, as well as that of offensive cybersecurity researchers... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Chipmaker AMD is taking aim at competitor Nvidia with its latest hardware release: a rack-scale system designed to power computing needs of the world's largest AI labs... At the company's sold-out Advancing AI conference in San Francisco on Thursday, AMD Chair and CEO Dr... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential. Weeks after OpenAI rolled out a new family of conversational models and updated ChatGPT's voice mode, rival Anthropic is making its move to make Claude more voice-friendly with a new update... The company said Thursday that users can choose between Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku... Why it matters: Potentially relevant AI tooling update - review for integration potential.