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Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded brain implant startup, on Monday officially announced a $650 million Series E funding round, confirming earlier reports that the Fremont, California-based company was set to close on a massive raise.

The raise, which reportedly values Neuralink at $9 billion, is by far the largest for a startup working on brain-computer interface technology, but comes as funding to neuroscience startups overall is set to rise sharply this year. All told, funding to the broader category of neuroscience startups totaled $896 million last year and is on track to reach $1.4 billion in 2025, Crunchbase data shows.

Neuralink has now raised a total of $1.3 billion since its founding in 2016, Crunchbase data shows. It received its latest backing from Ark Investment Management, DFJ Growth, Founders Fund, G42, Human Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Qatar Investment Authority, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Vy Capital, among others.

Its brain implants are designed to treat neurological disorders such as paralysis and blindness. The company said five people with “severe paralysis” are now using Neuralink technology “to control digital and physical devices with their thoughts, marking a profound step toward helping restore independence.”

The company’s brain implant device, which has a chip that processes neural signals that can be transmitted to computers or phones, is entering clinical trials.

While Neuralink is the most well-funded of the group, other companies working on computer-brain interfaces have also raised significant venture backing, a review of Crunchbase data shows.

To illustrate, we put together a curated list of some of the most well-funded companies in the space.

They include Science Corp., which says it’s developing devices “aimed at restoring vision, cognition, and mobility to patients who have lost it.” The Alameda, California-based company announced in April that it had raised $104 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures. (The financing was in the form of a convertible note, according to Crunchbase data). The company has raised a total of $177.3 million since its 2021 inception. Besides Khosla, investors include Artis Ventures, Serafund and Unbound Ventures, among others.

Another example is China’s Stairway Medical, a Neuralink competitor that raised a $48 million Series B funding round in February, reportedly the largest-ever funding round for a startup in the field in that country. It’s unclear how much the company raised in previous venture rounds.

Meanwhile, another Neuralink competitor, Austin, Texas-based Paradromics, announced on June 1 that it had performed its first human surgery using its Connexus Brain-Computer Interface. Paradromics has raised a total of $108.4 million in funding since its 2015 inception, according to Crunchbase data. Investors include Fusion Fund, FJ Labs, 15th Rock, Alpha Edison and DARPA.

Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has raised $2.5 billion in a Series G round of funding, more than doubling its valuation to $30.5 billion post-money, the company’s chairman, Trae Stephens, told Bloomberg TV on Thursday.

Founders Fund, a venture firm where Stephens is also a partner, led the financing.

Stephens told Bloomberg TV that as Anduril continued to grow, it was “really important to shore up the balance sheet and make sure” it had “the ability to deploy capital into these manufacturing and production problem sets that we’re working on.”

Since its 2017 inception, Costa Mesa, California-based Anduril has raised more than $6 billion in funding, per Crunchbase data. Other investors include General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Valor Equity Partners, BlackRock and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Founders Fund, which co-led Anduril’s $1.5 billion Series F in July 2024, contributed $1 billion to the latest financing, according to Stephens. He noted that it was the largest check the firm had ever written.

Palmer Luckey co-founded Anduril after being fired from Meta, the company to whom he’d sold his previous startup, Oculus. The two companies have since buried the hatchet, it seems, with Anduril announcing on May 29 that they are working together to build extended reality devices for the U.S. military.

Funding to VC-backed startups in defense — defined here as the industries of military, national security and law enforcement — hit $3 billion in 102 deals last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s only an 11% uptick from 2023, which saw $2.7 billion raised in 100 announced rounds.

With this latest Anduril round alone totaling almost all of last year’s funding to the sector, expect this year to see a significant bump.

Levi’s bought the brand in 2021 and is finally ready to unveil more of its future with a new door in Greenwich, Conn.

Beyond Yoga is stepping out, cutting the ribbon on a bigger store concept in Greenwich, Conn., on Friday and preparing an assortment that really lives up to its name.

It’s Beyond Yoga’s first brick-and-mortar store on the East Coast and a big moment for the brand, which Levi Strauss & Co. bought in 2021 and which is now being prepped for a growth spurt that would put it into direct competition with Lululemon and Athleta at scale.

Leading the way is Nancy Green, who oversaw Athleta as it grew from 39 to 175 stores and has been putting that experience to work since becoming Beyond Yoga’s chief executive officer last year.

Green has been using her own particular blend of art and science to set the brand up for its next step. The arrival in Greenwich, for instance, is no accident. The company knows from its e-commerce business that the greater New York area is its largest market and used that data to guide it to the wealthy enclave.

“There’s a big intuitive piece to this too,” Green told WWD. “There’s the data on where the bulk of our customer fans are currently, and then there’s intuition. Does that make sense? Does that feel right? Because you can go into a market and there’s multiple places you could open. We’re opening in Boston [this year] and we can see where that customer bubble is in the Boston area. And there’s multiple choices where we could go. We’re going to Seaport because we stand there, we watch, we see our customer walking the streets.

“The other piece that’s important is, Does the space feel right? That’s also intuitive,” she said. “Maybe it’s not the right location or you need to wait for the right location. We’re not going to go in just because the data shows us that that’s probably where we should be.”

Both sides of Green’s brain aligned on the Greenwich store, a 2,760-foot-space that also has room to hold events and tap into that “wellness-forward lifestyle” customer the brand targets.

“It’s gorgeous,” Green said. “Light oak floors, very natural elements and a lot of wood, a lot of very organic shapes, curves. The main reason for the larger format is that the line is expanding quite a bit. We needed a larger space to showcase the breadth of the assortment and to really just show the best expression of the brand. We’re also [planning to use] these new spaces as community hubs, whether it’s fitness events that we do in the store, community events, whatever is right for that store. We create very strong local partnerships with various studios.”

The store comes with a new logo and is at the vanguard of a bigger rollout — both in retail and in terms of Beyond Yoga’s assortment, which all includes or ties back to its signature Spacedye fabric.

While the 20-year-old business has long had workout-ready gear and dresses, the collection has been growing rapidly lately. Puffer jackets were added last year. In August, the assortment reaches out more with wide-leg bottoms, vegan leather, sweaters, cashmere wool blends, varsity-inspired prep looks, styles for the trail and more.

Beyond Yoga is done tiptoeing and is going even further beyond yoga with more looks that work from the studio to work to the street to the airport and everywhere else.

“First and foremost, we are a lifestyle brand that serves an active woman and man’s lifestyle,” Green said. “So we think about what are the things that they do? What do they need? Well, it starts with the activities that they do.”

With the Greenwich opening, Beyond Yoga has eight doors and is expanding to 14 by the end of the year. Earlier this year Green said the brand could have “at least 200 stores” over time.

“This is our 2.0 in stores,” Green said of the Greenwich location. “This is a new concept. We are going to test it and we are going to nail it. We have to iterate and tweak some things as we learn and then we nail it and then we scale it. So test, iterate, nail it and scale it.”

Tehran wants to bolster military capacity amid contentious nuclear talks with U.S.

Key Points

Iran has ordered thousands of tons of ballistic-missile ingredients from China, people familiar with the transaction said, seeking to rebuild its military prowess as it discusses the future of its nuclear program with the U.S.

Shipments of ammonium perchlorate are expected to reach Iran in coming months and could fuel hundreds of ballistic missiles, the people said. Some of the material would likely be sent to militias in the region aligned with Iran, including Houthis in Yemen, one of the people said.

Iran wants to bolster regional allies and rebuild its arsenal while it pushes deeper into contentious talks with the Trump administration over its nuclear program. Iran has continued to expand its stockpiles of uranium enriched to just below weapons grade and ruled out negotiating limits on its missile program.

President Trump said he discussed the negotiations in a call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. “Time is running out on Iran’s decision pertaining to nuclear weapons,” Trump wrote Wednesday in a social-media post.

An Iranian entity called Pishgaman Tejarat Rafi Novin Co. ordered the missile ingredients in the past few months from Hong Kong-based Lion Commodities Holdings Ltd., people familiar with the order said.

Lion Commodities director Nelson Barba didn’t respond to a request for comment. Pishgaman couldn’t be reached for comment.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations didn’t respond to a request for comment. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said China wasn’t aware of the contract.

“The Chinese side has always exercised strict control over dual-use items in accordance with China’s export control laws and regulations and its international obligations,” the spokesperson said.

Iran has been looking for ways to rebuild its so-called Axis of Resistance network of militias after Israel pummeled Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the Assad regime fell in Syria. U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Houthis damaged the group’s capabilities, though they still threaten Israel.

Iran recently transferred ballistic missiles to Shia militia groups in Iraq, who could target Israel and U.S. forces in the region they have previously attacked, the people confirmed. The missile transfers were previously reported by the Times of London.

After the U.S. in 2020 killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Iraqi Shia groups fired at least a dozen ballistic missiles at the U.S. Al Asad air base in the country.

Iran has one of the biggest ballistic missile programs in the region, U.S. officials have said. Ammonium perchlorate, an oxidizer used in fireworks, is essential to the solid propellant used in Iran’s most effective ballistic missiles.

Earlier this year, two Iranian ships docked in China were loaded with more than 1,000 tons of sodium perchlorate, a precursor for producing ammonium perchlorate. The material was delivered to Iranian ports in mid-February and late March, according to shipping trackers. The sodium perchlorate was enough to fuel around 260 short-range missiles, officials said.

The new, larger contract for ammonium perchlorate could be enough for Iran to produce 800 missiles, one official said. The contract was signed months ago, likely before Trump said he had proposed nuclear talks to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early March.

The U.S. Treasury on April 29 sanctioned six people and six entities based in Iran and China for their role in “procuring ballistic missile propellant ingredients,” including sodium perchlorate, for Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Two weeks later, it added sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong entities and people for aiding Iran’s ballistic missile industry.

Treasury in May added sodium perchlorate to the list of materials it says are being used for Iran’s military, nuclear or ballistic missile programs. “Chinese entities and individuals have provided support to Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as to the Houthis’ missile and UAV production efforts, which is why we continue to identify and sanction them,” a State Department official said.

In November 2022, U.S. naval forces said they intercepted a vessel in the Gulf of Oman carrying over 70 tons of ammonium perchlorate on a route commonly used by Iran to send weapons to the Houthis in Yemen.

srael severely damaged Iran’s ability to produce new solid propellant missiles in October by taking out around a dozen so-called planetary mixers, used to blend components for the missiles.

Iran has started to repair the mixers, one official said. That means much of the material imported from China could remain in Iran but some is expected to be sent to militia including the Houthis, the official said.

Iran likely needs material from abroad to avoid bottlenecks in its domestic production capabilities, said Fabian Hinz, a military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Storing the combustible material creates risks. An April explosion at the Shahid Rajaee port, which handles most of Iran’s container trade, killed dozens of people, state media said. The explosion was the result of mishandling of explosive material by a unit of the IRGC’s Quds Force. At least some of the sodium perchlorate imported from China earlier this year was lost in the explosion, one official said.

“These substances are a major fire and explosive hazard,” Hinz said. “Iran’s defense industrial complex does not have a strong track record in ensuring safety standards.”

Last month, Iran’s customs authorities issued an order to accelerate the clearing of “hazardous materials” through customs.