Issue #2 · Startup-funding intelligence
Midu SF Weekly — Oct 23, 2026 (Issue #2)
Coverage: 2026-10-16 to 10-23 · Data as of 10/22, 19:00 PT · All event times in Pacific Time (PT)
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110 New Projects & Launches Worth Watching
- #01
Flapping Airplanes · San Francisco AI lab
Trains large models with less data via a GPU megakernel that can run training, inference and even games in one kernel.
Deal: Series A $1B at a $6B valuation; co-led by Index and Lux. Seed nine months earlier was $180M at $1.5B from GV, Sequoia and Index; this round also includes Sequoia, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Valor, Atreides, A* and Nvidia (10/21).
X: unverified
Source: TechCrunch - #02
Town · San Francisco
Gives every employee an AI assistant (Townie) wired into email, calendar and core work tools; Townies can talk to each other.
Deal: Series B $108M at a $1B unicorn valuation; co-led by Forerunner and Menlo, with a16z, Serena and First Round. Public launch ~4 months ago; company says millions in ARR within weeks. At least $160M raised to date. Founded by ex-Plaid CTO Jean-Denis Greze (10/19).
X: @TownAI · CEO @jgreze
Source: TechCrunch - #03
Warp Sciences
Former OpenAI science lead Kevin Weil: AI + robots that automate wet-lab chemistry for drug discovery and reshore synthesis from overseas contractors.
Deal: Series A $215M at an $865M valuation; led by Lightspeed, with IVP, Mayfield, Lux Capital, Premji Invest and Menlo (10/22; founder announcement on X).
X: @warpsciences · CEO @kevinweil
Source: TechCrunch · Kevin Weil post - #04
Tenstorrent
AI inference chips and Galaxy servers aimed at open-weight models and video generation.
Deal: Series E $1.5B at a $6.2B valuation; led by Trace Capital and Innovation X, with Cadence Ventures, Eclipse, Fidelity, SanDisk and T. Rowe Price. CEO Jim Keller (10/19).
X: @tenstorrent
Source: TechCrunch · Tenstorrent - #05
Otter.ai · Mountain View
AI meeting notetaker evolving into a conversational knowledge layer and in-meeting assistants for enterprises.
Deal: $320M non-dilutive growth financing from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (repayable against marketing outcomes, not equity). 40M+ users; 86%+ of Fortune 500; ARR crossed $100M last year (10/20).
X: @otter_ai
Source: TechCrunch · Otter blog - #06
Eka Robotics · Cambridge, MA
Force-sensitive gripper plus a vision-force-action model for superhuman dexterous pick-and-place.
Deal: Series A $150M at a $1.45B post-money valuation; led by a16z and F-Prime. Co-founders MIT’s Pulkit Agrawal and ex-DeepMind Tuomas Haarnoja. Company/report claim ~1,500 picks/hour and >95% success unverified (10/20).
X: @EkaRobotics
Source: TechCrunch - #07
Blacksmith · San Francisco
Makes GitHub Actions / CI faster and cheaper so teams can keep up with AI-written code volume.
Deal: Series C $66M at a $1B valuation; led by Sequoia. $125M raised to date; ARR up 17x; 90M+ CI jobs run. Customers include Mercury and Granola. Comes ~2 months after a $45M Series B at $550M (10/21).
X: @useblacksmith · CEO @adijayaprakash
Source: TechCrunch - #08
Dream Labs · San Francisco
Robot foundation model Dream-1: a “universal brain” from egocentric video; Dream API from ~$3/hour to control bimanual robots.
Deal: Seed $90M co-led by B Capital and Kindred Ventures, with A.Capital, Unusual Ventures, Wing VC, SV Angel, Scribble VC and angel Adrian Aoun. Public API launched with the round (10/19).
X: @dreamlabs_ai
Source: SiliconANGLE - #09
Elorian Glimpse · Product launch · Palo Alto
Visual reasoning model that re-checks the source mid-reasoning (crop, video frames, code) via a “visual scratch space.” Targets robotics, science labs and media video.
Deal: Research preview with API and chat. Prior seed $55M at a $300 million valuation co-led by Striker, Menlo and Altimeter, with Nvidia and Jeff Dean. Pricing about $0.60 / $3 per million tokens in/out (10/16).
X: @ElorianAI · CEO @AndrewDai
Source: TechCrunch - #10
Tolan
AI companion for daily life, relationships and goals; cartoon avatar support plus task help.
Deal: $30M new capital from Union Square Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Homebrew; roughly doubles total raised. Prior valuation $120M; new valuation undisclosed (PitchBook estimate >$268M, medium confidence) unverified. Company told media ARR is in the “double-digit millions” unverified; claims 250k+ active users and 70M+ conversations (10/19).
X: unverified
Source: TechCrunch
2This Week's Funding & Investment Trends
- 1
US rounds stay huge, but mega-checks shift to year-old AI labs.
Value Add VC tracked 77 US rounds totaling $8.6B for 2026-10-15–10-22 (window still includes last issue’s Ramp $1.85B). New leaders this week: Tenstorrent Series E $1.5B and Flapping Airplanes Series A $1B (valuation 4× from a $1.5B seed nine months earlier). A one-year-old lab raising a billion-dollar Series A on “train with less data” is rewriting early-stage check sizes.
Sources: Value Add VC weekly rankings · TechCrunch · Flapping
- 2
Physical AI / robotics moves from demo week to large checks.
Eka $150M at $1.45B (a16z-led force-sensing manipulation), Dream Labs $90M seed (robot foundation model + public API), Warp Sciences $215M (wet-lab automation). Capital is rotating toward grasp, general robot brains and drug-synthesis grunt work — not just walking humanoids.
Sources: TechCrunch · Eka · SiliconANGLE · Dream Labs
- 3
Downstream of coding agents: CI must keep up.
Blacksmith jumped from a $550M Series B to a $1B Series C in ~two months. The pitch: agents write more code → CI volume explodes → trust and throughput become the bottleneck. Complements last week’s “generate the PR” seed deals (Lightsprint, Replicas) with the verify-and-ship layer.
Sources: TechCrunch · Blacksmith
- 4
Enterprise AI assistants: unicorn in months after public launch.
Town hit a $1B valuation with a $108M Series B about four months after going public. Otter separately took $320M non-dilutive growth capital to deepen its voice/meeting system-of-record. The fight is expanding from single chats to Townie-to-Townie handoffs, live in-meeting assist and cross-app knowledge layers.
Sources: TechCrunch · Town · TechCrunch · Otter
- 5
Vision and video keep being treated as next-layer infrastructure.
Elorian shipped Glimpse, which re-checks source images/video mid-reasoning; Dream Labs trains robots from human egocentric video; Flapping’s capital plan also names video-generation serving. Whoever can truly “see” and close the loop into action or finished media is commanding the next premium.
Sources: TechCrunch · Elorian
3SF Opportunities: Events & Accelerators
Events to watch (10/24–10/31, PT)
- Through 10/25Open Source AI Week wrap-up
Awards night around 10/23 at Founders Inc; community recaps still rolling through 10/25.
- Sat 10/24 · 08:00 PTVibeCon SF 2026: Vibecode Your Way to a YC Interview
At Y Combinator (560 20th St). Highest-signal in-person session before the W27 deadline.
- Sat 10/24 · 09:00 PTHack for Social Impact · Kane CLI Hack Day · Patch Hackathon
Social-impact hackathon plus Kane CLI Hack Day (OpenAI-supported) and Patch the Conference Hackathon.
- Sat 10/24 · 14:00 PTBABF Halloween Book Fair
Oakland (Two Pitchers); in-person book-community fair.
- Sun 10/25 · 09:00 PTGemini 4 Argon SF Hackathon · Dell × NVIDIA Hackathon
Gemini hackathon: $20,000 prizes. Dell × NVIDIA at Frontier Tower same morning.
- Starts Mon 10/26Meta Global AI Developer Hackathon · Are We Running Too Many Agents?
Meta: 10 days online, indie and startup tracks, $1M prize pool (selection required). Same evening 18:00 PT: Are We Running Too Many Agents? at Sentry (45 Fremont).
- Tue 10/27 · 18:00 PTCode Engineering: From Coding Agents to Software Factories
Speakers from Prime Intellect, Warp, LangChain and Factory. Same evening discussions include Who Controls the Future of AI Coding?
- Wed 10/28 · 09:00 PTOne Way Summit 2026 · Agentic Infrastructure Stack Summit
One Way Summit (immigrant entrepreneurship) at the Commonwealth Club; Agentic Infrastructure Stack Summit at Terra Gallery.
- Further outClaude Japan · Hack the Feed
Built with Claude: Japan (online, around 11/2); Hack the Feed creator-tools hackathon at Amplitude HQ on 11/6.
Incubators & accelerators
- ◆ YC Winter 2027On-time deadline 11/2, 20:00 PT; decisions by 12/11. Batch runs in person in San Francisco, January–March. Early Decision is also available for later batches. · YC Apply
- ◆ a16z speedrun SR008Applications open through 11/1, 23:59 PT. Up to $1M ($500K SAFE for 10% plus up to $500K into the next round within 18 months) and $10M+ in credits; residency 2027/2/1–4/18 in San Francisco; Demo Day 4/13. · speedrun announcement · Apply
- ◆ Founders Inc Blueprint IIProgram still running through ~12/11. Prefer open campus / Night Hack touchpoints over late applications. · Blueprint
- ◆ For international foundersAbout 10 days to the YC on-time deadline and 9 days to speedrun SR008 — lock the application this week rather than waiting for one more mixer.
Data: Midu. Not investment advice. All SF Weekly issues →