Funding & Deals - SiliconNoon (Page 26)

The Arena

CodeRabbit raises $143M to tame the flood of AI-generated code

The money in AI coding is moving from generating code to governing it: CodeRabbit raised $143 million at a $1.5 billion valuation to help teams keep up with the flood of machine-written pull requests. Elsewhere, Ahrefs shipped an agent workspace for marketers, and some of AI's biggest backers started buying old-school service firms to rewire them. CodeRabbit raised $143 million in Series C funding at a $1.5 billion valuation to help engineering teams manage the explosion of AI-generated code.

The Arena

Blacksmith raises $45M to fix AI coding's testing bottleneck

AI is writing code faster than teams can check it — and investors are betting that fixing that gap is the next big business in the AI coding boom. Blacksmith, a startup that tests and validates software before it reaches production, has raised $45 million in a Series B led by Peak XV Partners, valuing the company at $550 million — nearly ten times the $60 million valuation it carried when it raised a $10 million Series A less than a year ago.

The Arena

Lovable raises $400M at $13.3B, doubling valuation in eight months

Money moved on three fronts at once: Europe's hottest vibe-coding startup doubled its valuation, DeepSeek's long-rumored agent harness surfaced under a black-whale logo, and Mistral started charging a premium for EU data residency. Lovable, the Stockholm-based startup whose AI app builder helped turn "vibe coding" into a mainstream workflow, has raised $400 million at a $13.3 billion valuation — roughly double the $6.6 billion it commanded in December, per a Wall Street Journal report.

The Arena

Devin maker Cognition eyes $40B valuation in new round

Two stories set the pace today: the agent boom is repricing its most famous startup, and China's newest state-owned auto giant is betting its AI future on Huawei's stack. Cognition, the startup behind the Devin coding agent, is in early talks to raise a new round at a valuation of at least $40 billion, Bloomberg News reported.

The Arena

CoreWeave's backlog tops $104 billion as AI cloud revenue doubles

The AI buildout's scoreboard came in overnight: CoreWeave's revenue doubled and its backlog hit a record, while China locked in its first mandatory safety rules for L3/L4 self-driving. CoreWeave posted second-quarter revenue of $2.58 billion, up 112 percent from a year earlier and ahead of the $2.56 billion analysts expected, with the stock jumping about 10 percent in extended trading.

The Arena

China's biggest edge-AI unicorn ModelBest files for A-share IPO

The AI story this cycle is usually written in data centers — but two items overnight point elsewhere: China's largest on-device model maker is heading for the public market, and a new paper hands diffusion language models scaling rules of their own. Beijing ModelBest, China's biggest edge-AI unicorn, has officially started the A-share IPO process, signing a tutoring agreement with CITIC Securities that was posted to the securities regulator's website on August 12.

The Arena

Palantir's federal government AI contracts: the $244M no-bid Pentagon deal, explained

Two stories this evening trace where AI's center of gravity is moving: Washington is preparing to hand Palantir up to $244 million without a competitive bidding process, and the researcher who built Alibaba's Qwen is leaving to build agents that cross into the physical world. A draft memo from Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg proposes giving Palantir up to $244 million through 2028 for AI-assisted analysis of military production — and it reportedly skips competitive bidding.

Today in AI

Today in AI — August 11, 2026 (2nd edition)

The buildout became a market Tuesday: GPU rental futures are coming to CME, Anthropic hit the IPO roadshow, and CoreWeave and Super Micro posted blowout quarters — while agents moved into business workflows, Gemini crossed a billion users, and the trust wars over watermarks, surveillance and poisoned data kept escalating. Models & Research * Sergey Brin took direct oversight of Google's Gemini team as reports say the long-delayed Gemini 3.5 Pro has been shelved to clear the runway for a…

The Arena

Kevin Weil raising $150M for AI science startup

The AI talent exodus from OpenAI keeps producing new companies: former chief product officer Kevin Weil is raising a nine-figure round for an AI-for-science startup, and CoreWeave's earnings showed the infrastructure buildout underneath it all is still accelerating. Kevin Weil, OpenAI's former chief product officer, is seeking to raise $150 million for a new AI science startup at a valuation of at least $750 million, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.

The Arena

OpenAI's Brad Lightcap exits after eight years to start something new

OpenAI's longest-serving business executive is out the door, and the shakeup at the world's most valuable AI lab just got its biggest name yet. Brad Lightcap, who spent eight years at OpenAI — most recently leading its special projects division after years as chief operating officer — announced Tuesday he is leaving the company "to start something new." "Team, it is bittersweet to share that I'll be moving on from OpenAI to start something new," Lightcap wrote on X, without naming his next…

The Arena

Ant Group leads strategic round in robot-touch startup Daimon

China's embodied-AI money is moving from robot bodies to robot senses. Ant Group led a strategic round in tactile-sensing startup Daimon Robotics, which also unveiled what it calls the first "physical interaction brain"; meanwhile Westlake Robotics banked its fourth round in six months, and researchers showed an AI agent can crack a critical Zoom bug in a day. Daimon Robotics, the Shenzhen startup building tactile sensing for robots, has closed a strategic round of several hundred million yuan…

The Frontier

Trajectory raises $40M for AI that learns without forgetting

The morning's biggest bets are on the long game: Sequoia is funding a team trying to make models keep learning after deployment, Beijing's order to unwind Meta's Manus deal is nearly done, and agent observability keeps pulling in money. Trajectory, a startup founded by former DeepMind, Apple, OpenAI, and Meta staffers, has raised $40 million led by Sequoia at a $300 million valuation to build continual learning models, according to The Information.

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