TheChek News Flow

SPAIN HSR ACCIDENT – INVESTOR SNAPSHOT

WHAT HAPPENED

OPERATORS (NOT LISTED)

ROLLING STOCK – MANUFACTURERS & LISTED EXPOSURE

- Hitachi Rail

- Alstom

- Siemens Mobility

INFRASTRUCTURE & SYSTEMS

MARKET / INVESTOR IMPLICATIONS

BOTTOM LINE

Jason Ma

As the European Union weighs options to retaliate against President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs, its most potent weapon may be in financial markets.

France is already urging the EU to deploy its “anti-coercion instrument,” which can target foreign direct investment and finance as well as trade. That’s after Trump announced new U.S. tariffs on NATO countries that sent troops to Greenland amid his plans to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

At face value, a 10% tariff rising to 25% would have minimal economic consequences, Capital Economics chief economist Neil Shearing said in a note Sunday, estimating they would reduce GDP in the targeted NATO economies by 0.1-0.3 percentage points and add 0.1-0.2 points to U.S. inflation.

“The political ramifications would be far greater than the economic ones,” he warned, with any attempt by the U.S. to seize Greenland by force or coercion potentially leading to irreparable harm to NATO.

So far, European officials have signaled Greenland’s sovereignty is a red line that’s not up for compromise, while the Trump administration isn’t budging either on its stance.

But the U.S. has a key vulnerability the EU can exploit, according to George Saravelos, head of FX research at Deutsche Bank.

“Europe owns Greenland, it also owns a lot of Treasuries,” he wrote in a note on Sunday.

Holding those bonds helps balance America’s massive external deficits, and Europe is the world’s biggest lender to the U.S.

For example, offsetting the U.S. trade imbalance requires heavy inflows of capital from abroad. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department must also finance budget gaps by issuing more debt, often to foreign investors.

“European countries own $8 trillion of US bonds and equities, almost twice as much as the rest of the world combined,” Saravelos pointed out. “In an environment where the geoeconomic stability of the western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it is not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part.”

As Trump threatened to upend global trade and finance last year, Danish pension funds led the charge in reducing their dollar exposure and repatriating money back home, he said.

Such moves represented the “sell America” trade that saw investors dump dollar-denominated assets amid doubts that they would continue serving as safe havens or still deliver attractive returns.

“With USD exposure still very elevated across Europe, developments over the last few days have potential to further encourage dollar rebalancing,” Saravelos added.

At the same time, the euro and Danish krone may see minimal impact from the fallout of Trump’s tariffs on NATO and any subsequent retaliation, he predicted.

That’s as European political cohesion stands to solidify in the face of Trump’s threats, with even right-wing officials previously sympathetic to him now rejecting his heavy-handed approach.

Saravelos sees additional leverage for Europe ahead of U.S. midterm elections with the Trump administration focused on affordability issues. On that front, the EU could influence inflation and Treasury yields, which affect borrowing costs.

“With the US net international investment position at record negative extremes, the mutual inter-dependence of European-US financial markets has never been higher,” he said. “It is a weaponization of capital rather than trade flows that would by far be the most disruptive to markets.”

The government’s $38.5 trillion national debt is suffocating the American Dream, a leading economist has warned, and if a highly debated debt crisis comes to fruition the country could be facing an all-out economic depression.

Many factors have been blamed for the death of the American Dream. Most recently, it has been housing stock, with President Trump moving to bar large Wall Street investors from buying up single-family homes. Elsewhere, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon agrees that housing is a barrier but so is education, saying opportunities need to be more accessible to young people across the country.

Meanwhile, the rising cost of retirement, raising children and running a car has led many to believe they can only achieve the lofty heights of the American Dream if they have $5 million in the bank.

However, many of these symptoms trickle back to the vast sum America owes to its debtors, according to Kurt Couchman, a senior fellow in fiscal policy at thinktank Americans for Prosperity. In the final three months of 2025, the government spent $276 billion in interest on the debt, which the likes of Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio warn will one day squeeze out government investment needed to bolster economic prosperity.

In a Congressional testimony last month, Couchman told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government that “the growing debt risks a bond market reckoning with potentially dire consequences for the American people. The actions of their representatives in Congress will determine whether the conditions of the American Dream—peace, freedom, and prosperity—survive, or if the future is decline.”

Already, that future is being hampered, Couchman, author of ‘Fiscal Democracy in America’, told Fortune in a phone interview. The affordability crisis (inflation by any other name) was largely sparked by an “explosion” in monetary supply at the onset of the pandemic, he outlined.

“We’ve already experienced the inflationary aspects of excessive federal spending and debt,” Couchman, who previously worked in government addairs positions in the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said. “We’re now at the point where if you look at [the Congressional Budget Office], World Bank and [International Monetary Fund] and others, they say that once the debt burden achieves it surpasses a certain threshold of GDP that it starts to slow the economic growth.”

Economists aren’t necessarily worried by the total level of debt (in fact, government debt is a necessary foundation of global markets). Rather it’s the debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures a nation’s borrowing against its growth. If this tips too far out of balance, growth can be hampered by the excessive amount of cash needed for interest payments.

“So that means there’s fewer opportunities,” Couchman added. “The opportunities that are there aren’t paying as well. Productivity is being suppressed.”

The worst-case scenario is a debt crisis. This is the moment at which the U.S. cannot find buyers for its debt and is either forced to rein in spending, agree to higher interest payments to secure loans, or significantly increase its money supply to lower the value of the repayments—which comes with inflationary or hyper-inflationary effects.

In this case, Couchman believes, the “likelihood of having a recession, if not a severe recession or maybe even a depression, become possibilities.” He added: “The global, economic instability could translate into some real security risks and even threats to our political systems because of the kinds of politicians that people may respond to if they’re feeling especially desperate. Those are all challenges to the American dream that stem from the growing debt burden.”

Many speculators argue that while national debt is a problem, it is not a crisis that will ever become a reality: After all, one could argue the U.S. is too big to fail, and has within its own power the ability to avert such a squeeze.

And yet, Couchman argues that while a recession is an inevitability (“they happen every five years on average, plus or minus a few years, so sooner or later we’ll have one of those”) America has a chance to avoid anything more sinister if it “learn[s]] from the mistakes of others abroad or in the states before we get to that moment and turn the ship.”

A solution

There’s no easy fix for the government’s spending habits. At least, not a solution which will be popular, and as such, not one which elected politicians will be keen to put their neck on the line for. Because of this, the national debt issue is often described as a game of “chicken” with one administration to the next betting their successors will be the administration to address the poisoned chalice.

There are many options to rectify the balance, the least popular being to pull back spending. More broadly, the federal government could adopt a set of budget-balancing “fiscal rules.” While a more palatable option, that also means it’s less effective: According to an analysis from Oxford Economics of IMF data for more than 120 countries, on average, there’s a 1.1%-of-GDP improvement in the primary balance in the three years up to and including adopting a fiscal rule. However, there’s then a deterioration of the exact same percentage in the subsequent two years.

Couchman’s request is simpler: Transparency. The author and economist is making the same plea as Thomas Jefferson did to his Treasury Secretary more than 200 years ago, when he wrote: “We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books, so that every Member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them.”

“The most important thing Congress could do, to not only fix the budget but also restore democracy within Congress, is to do a real budget with all spending and all revenue in it so you can see everything,” Couchman said. “All the committees will get to manage their portfolios, and you can have real discussions about trade-offs, what’s more valuable, what’s not, what we need to do, and what we can live without.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the White House efforts are ‘contrary to its policy,’ a rare public admonishment

Israel publicly opposes the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar in the U.S.-established Gaza Executive Board.

Prime Minister Netanyahu said the committee was “not coordinated with Israel and contrary to its policy,” reflecting deep distrust of Turkey and Qatar.

The Gaza Executive Board, part of President Trump’s peace plan, aims to oversee reconstruction and demilitarization, but Israel seeks changes to its composition.

TEL AVIV—Israel is publicly pushing back against the makeup of a U.S. committee created to oversee Gaza, which includes Israeli rivals like Turkey and Qatar.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that the committee established by the White House to help advance the next phases of the Gaza cease-fire was “not coordinated with Israel and contrary to its policy.”

The comments were a rare public admonishment of U.S. efforts to enact a 20-point peace plan spearheaded by President Trump. It reflects Israel’s deep distrust of both Turkey and Qatar, and their support for Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist group. Both countries are home to Hamas senior political officials.

The U.S. administration didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Netanyahu’s statement.

The White House on Friday announced the establishment of the “Gaza Executive Board,” which will be involved in reconstruction and demilitarization of the Gaza Strip in line with Trump’s peace plan.

Among the members included on the board are Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and senior Qatari official Ali Thawadi. Other members include Egyptian and Emirati officials, former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and an Israeli-Cypriot businessman, but no Palestinians.

Israel made clear its opposition to the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar, said Miri Regev, a senior minister in Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, in an interview Sunday with Army Radio. “We’ve said it clearly to Trump and those around him,” she said. Regev said Israel was working to change the makeup of the executive committee.

Israel and Turkey are former allies, but their relations have been souring for years and Israel’s war in Gaza has accelerated their rivalry. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has downgraded diplomatic relations with Israel and compared Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. The two are also at odds over events in Syria. Israel is distrustful of the new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda militant. Turkey has offered military assistance to support the new government, which has won Western backing.

Netanyahu, who is up for re-election this year, was criticized domestically by allies and opponents for failing to prevent Turkish and Qatari influence in Gaza.

“The countries that breathed life into Hamas cannot be the ones to replace it,” wrote Israel’s finance minister and far-right ally of Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, in an X post on Saturday. “The prime minister is required to stand firm on this even if it demands managing a dispute with our great ally and President Trump’s envoys.”

The Gaza Executive Board is meant to act as the intermediary between a Palestinian technocratic government, whose members were announced last week, and the Board of Peace, a 12-member committee led by Trump that will set policy for Gaza, and potentially other conflicts as well.

The members of the Board of Peace haven’t yet been announced, though Trump has said it would include heads of state. The leaders of Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Argentina have confirmed receiving invitations to join the board.

The Board of Peace is expected to be involved in overseeing the disarmament of Hamas, according to a person familiar with the matter. But what that looks like isn’t clearly laid out in the Trump plan. Hamas has agreed to give up its large arms, such as its rocket arsenal and antitank missiles, but has so far rebuffed Israel’s demand to give up its small arms. Netanyahu has said that Hamas has around 60,000 automatic guns, and that the group must give them up as part of any disarmament.

The inclusion of Qatari and Turkish officials to the Executive Board shows that the U.S. and Israel aren’t fully coordinated on the plan for Gaza’s future. Analysts say the decision to include the two Israeli rivals will create a battle of influence over Trump and his peace plan for Gaza, which is short on details.

“At the end of the day, it will be about who will succeed in winning to convince Trump about disarmament,” said Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies.

College Football Teams Are Now Worth Billions—and Their Values Are Skyrocketing

An annual analysis of programs found that valuations went up 46% over last year, as talent moves freely around the country and levels the playing field.

On Monday night, either Indiana or Miami will grab hold of college football’s ultimate bragging rights and call themselves national champions. But no matter what happens in the title game, there’s one distinction that neither one will be able to claim: being the most valuable team in college football.

That title belongs to Texas.

Despite a disappointing season that began with a No. 1 ranking and finished without a playoff berth, the Longhorns lead the country with a $2.2 billion valuation, according to an annual analysis by Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University Columbus. Brewer’s study examines industry trends, cash flows, revenue and broader economic shifts to calculate what every team would be worth if it could be bought and sold on the open market—just like a professional sports franchise.

These days, that’s closer to reality than ever. Schools can pay players while athletic departments are cutting deals with private-equity firms. And while some feared that this new landscape would damage the sport, Brewer actually found the opposite. Interest in college football is soaring—and so are the valuations.

Across the FBS level, Brewer found that they were up 46% compared to last year.

“There’s more value in college football than there’s ever been,” Brewer says. “Even though they’re paying players and it’s more expensive, it’s also worth more.”

Brewer points to Indiana as proof. The Hoosiers are showing how nontraditional powers can emerge as huge attractions in this era. So while Indiana only ranks 28th on Brewer’s list at $648 million, it remains a 67.9% increase over last year. At $806 million, Miami placed 21st.

And even though the new revenue-sharing may level the playing field, it doesn’t mean that everyone is on equal ground. Texas became the first team to cross $2 billion in the analysis, overtaking Ohio State ($1.5 billion) for the top spot.

Overall, Brewer says that one reason valuations have surged is that the deeper pool of potential champions—created by the loosening of rules around player movement and compensation—has brought college football’s competitive landscape closer to the richest league around.

In the NFL, it isn’t uncommon for the fortunes of crummy teams to turn on a dime. Take the New England Patriots, who went from winning four games last season to 14 victories this year. But at the college level, the powerhouses typically remained the powerhouses while schools like Indiana were their doormats.

But with increased parity, Brewer believes that the sport is attracting new fans from programs that wouldn’t typically be thought of as football schools. That, in turn, boosts revenues and television ratings.

Right now, the surprise team happens to be Indiana. What the Hoosiers have also shown, however, is that it could be practically anyone next year.

“It’s interesting,” Brewer says, “because different teams could ostensibly enter into that conversation in the future.”

Inside Larry Fink’s bid to revive scandal-hit Davos

BlackRock chief aims to make World Economic Forum central to global conversation

The unusually large and high-powered crowd gathering in Davos from Monday can be traced back to the persistence — and extensive Rolodex — of a single figure: BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink.

Fink, who runs one of the most important financial institutions on Wall Street, drew on relationships built over decades to attract heads of state, tech honchos and business executives to an annual gathering that was in danger of sliding into irrelevance.

As interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum, Fink’s calls to the White House, which helped secure US President Donald Trump’s attendance, were critical to revitalising the WEF after a governance scandal threatened the institution last year.

“I reached out to many people, heads of state and CEOs on the idea that we’re trying to rebuild the confidence that policymakers have, that business leaders have, that NGOs have,” Fink told the FT in an interview.

This year, nearly 850 top business leaders will attend, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, a first-time attendee, new Meta president Dina Powell McCormick and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who will be on stage for the first time in years.

Fink said he saw the conference in Davos as a critical forum for world leaders to huddle with business, “focusing on how we can build economic prosperity, economic progress that is shared more broadly in the world”.

“Prosperity is being narrowed,” he added. “I think this is one of the reasons why we have more polarisation.”

He said he hoped to see concrete announcements made following the event, pointing to dozens of side meetings he knew were in the works already, including with senior government figures from Saudi Arabia, Germany and Abu Dhabi.

With nearly 65 heads of state, including most of the G7 countries, in Davos, a key topic of discussion will be efforts to rebuild Ukraine and the impact of AI. World leaders will also be hard pressed to ignore the US intervention in Venezuela and Trump’s promise to take “very strong action” in Iran.

The BlackRock chief, who oversees $14tn in investments for both small retirees and the biggest sovereign wealth funds, has long played a critical role as Wall Street statesman.

BlackRock and Fink have been go-to advisers for policymakers and central bankers during times of crisis. The Federal Reserve tapped the New York-headquartered group to manage its bond-buying programme in 2020 in the midst of a market sell-off during the early days of the pandemic, and the firm played a big role managing the liquidation of toxic mortgage assets tied to the bailout of insurer AIG in the 2008 crisis.

Fink has more recently played a significant part in helping a BlackRock unit navigate the politically fraught takeover of dozens of ports, including two on either side of the Panama Canal.

But his decision to step in as interim co-chair of the WEF last year gave the 73-year-old a new stage from which to influence global affairs. Fink told the FT that he took on the role because he believed the gathering could foster global growth and co-operation. Though Davos has been derided by critics as an elite echo chamber, Fink said that overlooked the importance of bringing leaders together.

“We are living in a more polarising world. There’s more people talking at each other, not to each other,” he said. “I’m not here to tell you [the WEF] is perfect. But I think we have to stop the destructiveness of these assertions of what it is and look at what it can be.”

His success in luring Trump for only his second visit as president helped elevate the gathering’s appeal for other leaders, but Fink insisted that it was “an unfair assertion” to say Davos would become “a Trump show. There is no question when the president is on stage, he’s going to command a lot of attention.

“It is my role to elevate everybody and have a serious conversation.”

The WEF itself is still finding its footing after a tumultuous chapter under the leadership of Klaus Schwab in which the organisation was rocked by allegations of financial misconduct and a toxic work environment. An investigation cleared Schwab of misconduct allegations. Fink and Roche vice-chair André Hoffmann have headed up the WEF’s governing board since August.

Fink, a WEF board member since 2019, said he took the role expecting to lead for two years or less and then hand over to a permanent chair. European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde has been seen as a possible contender for that position.

Fink said “it would be wonderful” to have Lagarde as a candidate when a search committee is ultimately convened.

“If the governing board believes that when her [ECB] term is up that she should be a candidate, I think that’s fantastic. She’s a highly qualified person,” he said, adding that Lagarde was a personal friend.

Fink’s enthusiasm has impressed WEF staffers who worried that he would be a mere figurehead. “He was able to use his influence especially with Silicon Valley, which had shunned WEF in recent years, to come,” said one WEF executive.

Fink combined drumming up interest in the summit with his usual global trips and corporate meetings in the months leading up to the forum.

“He actually seemed to have fun with it and relish the role to some people’s surprise. I think initially some of us were worried about him being too busy with BlackRock but it wasn’t the case,” said a Switzerland-based person familiar with the organising discussions.

Fink, who founded BlackRock in 1988, said he had a similar apprehension. But after discussing the time commitment with the BlackRock board, he came to believe others at the asset manager could step in to help lead the firm as he focused on rebuilding the WEF.

“I didn’t even know if I had the capacity to do it,” he said. “In consultation with my leadership and my board, they thought it would be something that my other leaders who are growing tremendously can fill in for the time that I needed to ensure that we re-establish the World Economic Forum as a place for conversation.”

Europe could also threaten to restrict US companies’ market access in run-up to crunch talks at Davos

EU capitals are considering hitting the US with €93bn worth of tariffs or restricting American companies from the bloc’s market in response to Donald Trump’s threats to Nato allies opposed to his campaign to takeover Greenland. The move marks the most serious crisis in transatlantic relations for decades.

The retaliation measures are being drawn up to give European leaders leverage in pivotal meetings with the US president at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, officials involved in the preparations said.

They are bidding to find a compromise that would avoid a deep rupture in the western military alliance, which would pose an existential threat to Europe’s security.

The tariff list was prepared last year but suspended until February 6 to avoid a full-blown trade war. Its reactivation was discussed on Sunday by the EU’s 27 ambassadors, along with the so-called anti-coercion instrument (ACI) that can limit the access of American companies to the internal market, as the bloc wrestled over how to respond to the US president’s threat with punitive tariffs.

Trump, who has demanded permission from Denmark to take control of Greenland, on Saturday evening vowed to impose 10 per cent tariffs by February 1 on goods from the UK, Norway and six EU countries that sent troops to the Arctic island for a military exercise this week.

“There are clear retaliation instruments at hand if this continues . . . [Trump’s] using pure mafioso methods,” said a European diplomat briefed on the discussion. “At the same time we want to publicly call for calm and give him an opportunity to climb down the ladder.”

“The messaging is . . . carrot and stick,” they added.

France has called for the bloc to hit back with the ACI, which has never been used since its adoption in 2023. The tool includes investment restrictions and can throttle exports of services such as those provided by US Big Tech companies in the EU.

Paris and Berlin are coordinating a joint response, with their respective finance ministers due to meet in Berlin on Monday before travelling to Brussels for a gathering with their European counterparts, a French ministry aide said. “The issue will also have to be broached with all G7 partners under France’s presidency,” the person added. 

While many other EU member states have voiced support for exploring how the ACI could be deployed against the US, a majority called for dialogue with Trump before issuing direct threats of retaliation, diplomats briefed on the discussions told the FT.

“We need to get the temperature down,” said a second EU diplomat.

In a step towards retaliation, the biggest parties in the European parliament this weekend said they would delay a planned vote on measures that would have reduced EU tariffs on US goods as part of a trade agreement struck last year.

Trump, who will be at the Swiss forum on Wednesday and Thursday, is set to hold private talks with European leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in addition to participating in a wider discussion among western countries supporting Ukraine.

“We want to co-operate, and it is not we who are seeking conflict,” said Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister.

National security advisers from western countries will meet in Davos on Monday afternoon. The talks were initially set to focus on Ukraine and ongoing peace talks to end Russia’s invasion of the country, but have been overhauled to give time to discuss the crisis over Greenland, two officials briefed on the preparations said.

The Swiss foreign ministry, which is hosting the gathering, said it “will not comment on participants or topics”.

Trump’s threats “certainly warrant the ACI as it would be textbook coercion”, said a third European official.

“But we need to use the time to February 1st to see if Trump is interested in an off-ramp,” they said, adding that much would depend on the outcome of the talks in Davos.

European officials said that they hoped their retaliation threats would increase bipartisan pressure in the US against Trump’s actions and result in him retreating from his tariff pledge.

“It is already a situation that no longer allows compromises, because we cannot hand over Greenland,” said a fourth European official. “The reasonable Americans also know that he has just opened Pandora’s Box.”

But on Sunday US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said that Europe was too weak to guarantee Greenland’s security, and refused to back down on the US demand to take control of the strategically important island.

“The president believes enhanced security is not possible without Greenland being part of the US,” he told NBC News.

The pace of big funding rounds continued to hold up at brisk levels this past week, led by a $1.4 billion financing for “robot brain” developer Skild AI. More big rounds went to startups in sectors including AI chips, brain-computer interfaces, defense tech, biotech and airplanes, among others.

1. Skild AI, $1.4B, robotics: Skild AI, a robotics company building an “omni-bodied” brain to operate any robot for any task, announced it raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion. SoftBank Group led the Pittsburgh-based startup’s latest financing, which comes just over seven months after it raised a Series B at a $4.5 billion valuation.

2. Etched.ai, $500M, AI and semiconductors: Etched.ai, a startup working on chips for AI superintelligence, reportedly secured $500 million in new funding. Stripes led the financing, which was said to set a $5 billion valuation for the Silicon Valley-based company.

3. Merge Labs, $252M, brain-computer interfaces: Merge Labs, a Sam Altman-founded startup based in San Francisco, which is working on brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth and integrate with advanced AI, reportedly locked up a $252 million seed round. According to reports, OpenAI was the largest backer.

4. Mirador Therapeutics, $250M, biotech: San Diego-based Mirador Therapeutics, a precision medicine startup developing therapies for immune-mediated inflammatory and fibrotic diseases, says it closed on $250 million in Series B funding. The company said the round brings total capital raised to more than $650 million since it launched in March 2024.

5. (tied) Onebrief, $200M, defense tech: Defense tech startup Onebrief has raised another $200 million and reportedly acquired a small battle simulation company, Battle Road Digital. Battery Ventures and Sapphire Ventures led the Series D funding for Honolulu-based Onebrief, which makes AI-driven collaborative and planning software used for military operations.

5. (tied) Beast Industries, $200M, media: Bitmine Immersion Technologies, an Ethereum treasury company, announced that it made a $200 million equity investment into Beast Industries — also known as MrBeast — the Greenville, South Carolina-based entertainment and consumer products company founded by YouTube creator Jimmy Donaldson.

7. JetZero, $175M, aerospace: Long Beach, California-based JetZero, a developer of planes with much higher fuel efficiency and lower carbon emissions than existing commercial airliners, picked up $175 million in Series B financing led by B Capital. Founded in 2020, JetZero says it is looking to enter commercial service in the early 2030s.

8. Deepgram, $143M, voice AI: Deepgram, an API platform for voice AI, secured $130 million in Series C funding led by AVP at a $1.3 billion valuation. San Francisco-based Deepgram also announced that it acquired OfOne, an AI voice platform for restaurants and drive-thru operators.

9. Defense Unicorns, $136M, defense tech: Colorado Springs, Colorado-based Defense Unicorns, a provider of software delivery for national security mission systems, locked up $136 million in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.

10. (tied) Mytra, $120M, robotics: Mytra, a developer of industrial robotics technology for warehouse operations, raised $120 million in a Series C round led by Avenir. Founded in 2022, Brisbane, California-based Mytra has raised close to $200 million to date, per Crunchbase data.

10. (tied) Tulip Interfaces, $120M, AI for manufacturers: Boston-based Tulip Interfaces, a developer of AI-enabled tools for manufacturers to digitize processes and improve production, says it secured $120 million in Series D funding backed by Mitsubishi Electric.