India’s Airbound bags $8.65M to build rocket-like drones for one-cent deliveries

Kalshi hits $5B valuation days after rival Polymarket gets $2B NYSE backing at $8B; also,

Reflection AI raises $2B to be America’s open frontier AI lab, challenging DeepSeek

Novoloop’s upcycled plastic takes a step closer to production; and Knapsack picks up $10M to help bridge the gap between design and engineering teams

Base Power raises $1B to deploy home batteries everywhere

Trump’s DOE proposes cutting billions in grants for GM, Ford, and lots of startups

One startup’s paper-thin stainless steel could change how bridges are built

Alternative app store AltStore raises $6M, connects with the fediverse; also, ÄIO invented a method to make edible fat from ag waste like sawdust

A 19-year-old nabs backing from Google execs for his AI memory startup, Supermemory

Heidi Health raises $65M Series B; also, Sugar Free Capital raises $32M inaugural fund

Event startup Partiful wasn’t stripping GPS locations from user-uploaded photos; plus, If you’re not an AI startup, good luck raising money from VCs

A new search engine raises $1.1M to let obsessive fans dive down internet rabbit holes; also, New deep tech fund Wave Function Ventures raises $15 million

How startups could be affected by a prolonged government shutdown, plus Oneleet raises $33M to shake up the world of security compliance

Kevin Hart’s VC firm led $35M Series B for weight-loss app Simple, also, Electroflow promises to make LFP material for 40% less than Chinese producers

Composite gets backing from NFDG for its cross-browser agent tool

Former OpenAI and DeepMind researchers raise whopping $300M seed to automate science, plus, Whoop opens blood-testing service to what it says is a 350,000-person waitlist

CommanderAI building Salesforce for the waste management industry, also, a year after filing to IPO, still-private Cerebras Systems raises $1.1B

Vibe-coding startup Anything nabs a $100M valuation after hitting $2M ARR in its first two weeks; also, AI recruiter Alex raises $17M to automate initial job interviews

The startup behind open source tool Polars raises $21M from Accel; plus, ComplexChaos thinks AI can help people find common ground

Paid, the AI agent ‘results-based billing’ startup, raised huge $21M seed; former Microsoft execs launch AI agents to end Excel-led finance