NeuralStackAI dominated the latest roundup of major U.S. startup financings, with nearly every company in the top 10 tied directly to artificial intelligence. The largest deal went to Instinct, a San Francisco-based developer of personal AI assistants for everyday tasks, which raised $1 billion in Series C funding. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue backed the round, valuing the year-old company at $10 billion.
EliseAI ranked second after raising $350 million at a $4 billion valuation. The New York-based startup applies AI to the home rental industry and is expanding into healthcare, signaling an effort to carry its technology into another large service sector.
Cybersecurity was another major destination for capital. Palo Alto-based Armadin raised $255.5 million in Series B funding for its AI-native approach to autonomous security, reaching a valuation of more than $2.5 billion. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel led the financing for the year-old company.
Other rounds show how far the AI investment stack now extends beyond applications. GMI Cloud raised $223 million in Series B funding and $445 million in debt to provide GPU cloud infrastructure for teams training and running models, with participation from Nvidia. General Intuition raised $220 million to develop models trained on videos and virtual worlds to build skills for physical environments.
Physical AI and developer tools also drew substantial backing. SiMa.ai secured $150 million in Series C funding at a $1.45 billion valuation for its platform supporting physical AI applications. Supabase raised an additional $150 million for its AI-enabled open-source Postgres platform and announced the acquisition of database architecture startup Turso.
The remaining deals included CScale, which emerged from stealth with $145 million in Series C funding for optical interconnect technology aimed at AI data centers. Kahua raised $250 million in growth funding for enterprise capital-project management, while real estate startup Homeward raised $120 million in Series D equity and secured $330 million in debt financing.
Why this matters
The lineup suggests that AI investment is spreading across the full technology chain, from assistants and industry-specific software to cybersecurity, computing capacity, data infrastructure and systems for physical environments. The presence of large rounds for both model-related companies and the infrastructure needed to operate them points to sustained investor interest in building the surrounding ecosystem. It also shows that AI funding is increasingly reaching established business workflows such as housing, healthcare, project management and real estate.
Crunchbase’s ranking covered announced rounds raised by U.S.-based companies during the specified reporting period. With most of the largest deals concentrated in AI-related businesses, the next phase of startup competition will likely depend not only on model capabilities but also on distribution, specialized applications and the infrastructure required to deploy them.