So what if a brand new AI company, I mean, really
just starting out, somehow secured $2 billion,
not some later stage round, not a tech giant,
$2 billion in its seed round. It's just a massive
number. Yeah, you heard that right. Seriously,
this is not your grandma's seed round. This past
week, the AI funding scene, it's gone. Absolutely
bonkers. Just wow. Welcome to the Deep Dive.
Today, we're going to unpack a whole stack of
sources detailing this latest and frankly, kind
of mind boggling AI investment landscape. Right.
Our assignment here is to navigate this, well,
wild flow of cash into AI. We're looking at the
week of June 20th to 26th, 2025. We'll explore
who got funded, sure. But more importantly, what
kind of cutting edge AI they're actually building.
I mean, it touches everything from legal tech
to, well. Smart cow callers. Seriously. OK, yeah.
We'll definitely highlight the biggest players,
maybe some surprising applications and try to
figure out what it all means for, you know, technology
and maybe beyond. OK, let's dig in. We really
have to start with the one that just broke all
the records. Thinking Machines Lab. They just
secured an astonishing two billion dollars in
a seed round. That amount of capital right out
of the gate, it just signals this huge vote of
confidence. Yeah, what's fascinating here isn't
just the number, the two billion itself, though
that's wild. It's that it's a seed round. It
tells you investors believe they're on to something
truly monumental, like potentially landscape
changing. So what are they building with all
that money? What's the focus? Well, they're focused
on next generation multimodal. So dealing with
different types of data agentic foundation models.
Yeah. Think of AI that doesn't just, you know,
chat or make an image. It understands complex
goals. Yeah. And then it takes multiple steps
kind of autonomously to actually achieve those
goals. Ah, OK. So like a really smart digital
assistant that actually does things for you,
not just fetches info, but acts. Exactly. Precisely.
It's about AI becoming more of an independent
actor, not just a tool you specifically command
for each tiny step. This funding gives them this
massive war chest to go after truly. autonomous
really capable ai it's a huge bet on that future
so what's the sort of core insight from such
a massive initial investment like that i think
it's pretty clear investors are betting big on
ai autonomy okay now beyond these these giants
there seems to be a really clear trend in ai
for healthcare our sources point to big raises
for both uh a bridge and commure yeah bridge
raised 300 million dollars They're aiming to,
like, eliminate physician burnout using ambient
listening clinical documentation. Ambient listening?
Right. It basically acts like a medical scribe
in the background. Converts the natural conversation
between a doctor and patient directly into clinical
notes. Wow. So doctors can actually focus on
the patient instead of typing everything out
on a keyboard. That feels revolutionary. It really
could be. Then you've got Khmer. They secure
$200 million. Their thing is a full -stack healthcare
AI platform. It combines that ambient note -taking
with revenue cycle management, specifically for
large health systems. So it's optimizing the
admin side, too. And we also saw Foresight Robotics
getting funding, right? $125 million for robotic
surgery. That's a different angle. Definitely
different, yeah. Details in the sources are a
bit light, but robotic surgery fundamentally
relies on incredibly advanced AI. You're talking
machine vision, complex algorithms for making
decisions in real time, and just achieving superhuman
precision in really delicate operations. It's
about augmenting the surgeon. So looking at these
health care investments together, what's the
main impact we should expect? I'd say AI is rapidly
becoming health care's operational backbone.
OK, let's move out of medicine and into, say,
the world of law and finance. Harvey secured
$300 million for legal workflow automation. That's
significant. Yeah, Harvey develops these. pretty
sophisticated large language models, you know,
LLMs, AI trained on massive text data sets, but
specifically tailored for legal workflows. So
they automate things like legal research, drafting
initial contracts, analyzing documents. Think
about the sheer volume of text lawyers have to
wade through. Right. So lawyers can maybe ditch
some of those late night research marathons and
actually, you know, focus on higher level stuff.
That seems to be the aim. Yeah. More time for
strategy, client interaction, the complex thinking.
We also see Finam raising $133 million. They're
doing AI -driven business banking, automating
things like invoicing and expense management,
mainly for SMEs in Europe. Pretty practical stuff.
And for financial planning, Conquest Planning
pulled in $80 million. Right. Their system uses
a generative planning engine. It helps financializers
create personalized plans way faster than the
old way. So again, it lets the advisors focus
more on the strategy and the client relationship,
not just the number crunching. Scaling expertise,
basically. Got it. And there were a couple others,
too. Neural with $31 million for enterprise business
process automation. And Spinwheel with $30 million
for AI and liability management, helping people
manage debt. Yeah, all about automating complex
flows. So what's the common thread running through
these business and finance AI applications? I
think it's that AI is automating core professional
knowledge work. Okay, let's pivot now to the
more physical and operational side. Our sources
mention Gal - bit, from Beijing, getting $153
million for embodied AI manufacturing robots.
Yeah, embodied AI. That means physical robots,
not just software. Robots that can intelligently
perceive and interact with their environment
right there on the factory floor. So not just
repetitive arms. Exactly. These are designed
for more complex, maybe more adaptable manufacturing
tasks. like intelligent workers, really. Interesting.
And then Physics X raised $135 million for industrial
AI and engineering simulation. That sounds a
bit more abstract. It sounds abstract, but it's
actually super practical. They combine physics
principles with AI to simulate and optimize designs
for... Well, almost anything. Race cars, wind
turbines, all virtually. It dramatically speeds
up the design process. You cut down on needing
lots of expensive physical prototypes. So you're
optimizing the physical world using digital tools.
Makes sense. Now, switching gears again, customer
service. Decagon secured $131 million for an
AI agent customer service platform. Right. And
these AI agents, they're meant to go way beyond
simple chatbots. They're designed to handle complex
queries, understand context, remember past interactions,
really have human. unlike conversations to solve
problems, often without needing a human to jump
in. So maybe fewer frustrating phone trees and
more actual help quickly. That sounds appealing
to, well, everyone. Chuckles slightly. Yeah,
definitely. And related to that, BotPress got
$25 million for AI agent infrastructure. They
provide the underlying tools for developers.
Ah, the building blocks. Exactly. The tools to
build, manage, and deploy these high -quality
AI agents and chatbots reliably and at scale.
Like the Lego blocks for building sophisticated
AI conversations. So how are these companies
in the industrial and service spaces changing
things? Well, fundamentally, AI is driving a
new era of intelligent automation, physical and
digital. Okay, this next one you mentioned earlier.
It is genuinely kind of wild. Holter in New Zealand
raised $100 million for a smart collar herd management
system. Chuckles. Wait, seriously. Smart collars
for cows. Like Fitbits for the herd. Yeah. Exactly
like that, basically. These are solar -powered
collars. They use AI, computer vision, analytics,
all to remotely guide herds, set up virtual fences
for grazing, and even detect early signs of health
issues in individual cows. Whoa. Okay, just imagine
scaling that level of... Like individual animal
care across millions of farms. The efficiency
gains, the animal welfare benefits. That's actually
incredible. It really is. A great example of
AI reaching unexpected places. Definitely. Then
we also saw XBOW raising $75 million for offensive
cybersecurity. Offensive? Yeah. Using AI to actively
simulate attacks, find vulnerabilities in systems
before the bad guys do. So it's proactive defense
through simulated offense. Got it. And Centific
raised $60 million. They call themselves an AI
day. data foundry. What's that about? Think of
a metal foundry forging steel. Centific basically
forges high quality data. They clean it, label
it, structure it specifically to train powerful
enterprise AI models because, you know, data
is the absolute fuel for AI. They're making sure
it's premium grade fuel. Okay. And ClearSpeed
got $60 million for voice analytics AI. Detecting
risk just from the sound of someone's voice.
Yeah, without even analyzing the words they're
saying. It's about the how you say it, not the
what. Looking for patterns in tone, cadence,
stress that might indicate risk. It's kind of
spooky, but also potentially powerful. And OpenRouter
raised $40 million for a unified LLM API. You
described it as like a switchboard. Yeah, basically.
It intelligently routes your request, your prompt
to whichever AI model is best suited for that
specific task, like a smart concierge for accessing
different AI brains. And just quickly, MetaView
with $35 million for recruiting intelligence,
helping with hiring. Right, analyzing interview
dynamics. And WhisperFlow got $30 million for
a hands -free AI dictation platform. Useful for
doctors, sure, but maybe anyone who needs to
dictate notes while doing other things. So looking
at this incredibly diverse set of applications,
from cows to cybersecurity to voice analysis,
what does it tell us overall? I mean, it just
shows AI's influence is pervasive, transforming
basically every industry. Mid -roll sponsor,
Reed. So let's try to pull this all together.
From that, that just jaw -dropping $2 billion
seed round for Thinking Machines Lab. all the
way to smart collars for cows in New Zealand,
this past week showed an absolutely incredible
flood of cash into the AI ecosystem. Yeah, and
if you connect the dots, looking at the bigger
picture, it's just crystal clear that investors
have this monumental confidence in AI. Not just
for the future, but for right now, for immediate
applications. We're seeing AI getting embedded,
becoming really foundational across basically
every sector you can think of. You said it before,
like the early Internet, but on steroids. Exactly.
But maybe even faster and with way more capital
chasing these really transformative ideas from
the get go. And it really highlights the speed,
right? The speed of innovation, the speed of
investment. And this isn't just a few big tech
companies anymore. It's hundreds of companies
all trying to solve specific real world problems
in all sorts. of different industries. And that
common thread we kept seeing, the push towards
more autonomous, more agentic AI. Yeah. That
feels like a really significant theme here. These
systems aren't just tools anymore. They're being
designed to understand complex goals and then
act on them independently. That's a major leap
from where we were even just a year or two ago.
I have to admit, I still wrestle with just how
quickly these capabilities are emerging and how
we as a society are supposed to adapt to it all.
It's moving so fast, challenging a lot of our
assumptions about work, about problem solving.
It's a lot to take in for sure. So this deep
dive, it's not just about the investment numbers.
It feels like a roadmap showing where AI is heading
next. Yeah. And it raises a really important
question, I think, for you listening right now.
Given this huge surge. of investment and just
the incredible diversity of AI applications we've
talked about. Where do you see AI making the
most profound or maybe the most surprising impact
on your own daily life in, say, the next five
years? Think about those implications. Are we
really on the cusp of truly intelligent agents
fundamentally changing how we work, how we live?
Or is it more about just making current things
more efficient? It's something to really ponder
as you look at your own smart devices. Or maybe
your cows, if you have any. Chuckles. Right.
Well, that's it for this deep dive. We hope this
exploration gave you some fascinating insights,
maybe a bit of a shortcut to feeling informed
about this crazy landscape. Yeah. Until next
time, keep digging and keep learning. Out to
your own music.