The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: World Labs Leads Another AI-Heavy Lineup
This week’s largest U.S. funding rounds once again featured an AI-heavy cohort, along with sizable financings around fintech and energy tech. By far the largest deal was a $1 billion financing for World Labs, developer of AI models that interact with the 3D world, followed by a $385 million round for savings platform Vestwell.
1. World Labs, $1B, spatial AI: San Francisco-based World Labs, a startup founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li that develops foundational models to generate and interact with the 3D world, raised $1 billion in fresh funding. Investors in the round include AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia and Sea.
2. Vestwell, $385M, fintech: Vestwell, an online provider of multiple types of savings accounts and tools, raised $385 million in Series E funding at a reported $2 billion valuation. Blue Owl Capital and Sixth Street Growth led the financing for the 10-year-old, New York-based company.
3. Temporal Technologies, $300M, workflow management and fault tolerance: Bellevue, Washington-based Temporal Technologies, a provider of tools that allow developers to make workflows more reliable and fault-tolerant, closed on $300 million in Series D funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the financing, which set a $5 billion valuation for the 7-year-old company.
4. Heron Power, $140M, energy tech: Heron Power, a developer of hardware designed to move electricity from renewable sources into the grid and data centers, picked up $140 million in a funding round backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The Scotts Valley, California-based company is founded by former Tesla SVP Drew Baglino.
5. Code Metal, $125M, AI coding: Code Metal, a provider of verifiable code translation tools, raised $125 million in Series B financing led by Salesforce Ventures . The round comes just three months after the Boston-based startup secured its Series A.
6. (tied) Render, $100M, cloud for developers: Render, a cloud provider for application development teams, secured $100 million in Series C extension funding. Georgian led the financing for the San Francisco-based company, which said it now has over 4.5 million developers on its platform.
6. (tied) Utility Global, $100M, clean energy: Houston-based Utility Global, developer of a technology to produce hydrogen and capturable carbon from industrial gases, raised $100 million in Series D funding. Ara Partners and APG Asset Management led the financing for the 8-year-old company.
6. (tied) ZaiNar, $100M, location tracking: ZaiNar, developer of a technology for wireless networks to sense the location of things without satellites, cameras or heavy compute power, emerged from stealth and disclosed that it has drawn over $100 million in investment to date and a valuation of over $1 billion. Backers in the Belmont, California-based company include Steve Jurvetson, Jerry Yang, Tom Gruber and Jaan Tallinn.
9. Jump, $80M, fintech: Salt Lake City-based Jump, developer of an AI agent for financial advisers and financial services providers, raised $80 million in a Series B round led by Insight Partners.
10. Braintrust, $80M, AI observability: San Francisco-based Braintrust, a developer of AI observability software for development teams, raised $80 million in a Series B round led by Iconiq Capital.