Imagine a single company, just starting out,
raising $2 billion, yes, a billion, in one week.
That's the kind of wild, truly unprecedented
money flowing into AI right now. Beat. Welcome
to the Deep Dive. We're your shortcut to understanding
complex topics. Today, we're plunging into the
latest wave of AI funding. It's been a fascinating,
really record -breaking week in artificial intelligence.
Our mission? Pretty simple. Uncover what these
companies are building, why this massive investment
matters, and what it all means for you. We'll
navigate through the biggest deals, from foundational
AI to much more niche applications, and try to
reveal the pattern shaping tomorrow. Yeah. And
this deep dive comes from AI Grant News, specifically
their top 20 investments list for July 11th to
17th, 2025. So it's a real snapshot, like right
now where the smart money is flowing in AI. Right.
And it's everywhere from deep tech to, you know,
everyday tools. The pace is just incredible.
OK, so kicking things off, we have the absolute
headline grabber, Thinking Machines Lab. A staggering
two billion dollars in a seed round. Announced
July 15th. I mean, that's just unprecedented
for a company so new. Okay, let's try and unpack
this. $2 billion. For a seed round, what exactly
does agentic AI mean? And why is it worth so
much so early? Right. So agentic AI, what's really
revolutionary here is that these are systems
designed to reason, plan, and then execute complex
multi -step goals autonomously. They're moving
beyond being just passive tools. They become
active, goal -oriented partners. It's often called
the holy grail of AI research. Beat. Because
it could just revolutionize entire workflows.
Investors, well, they see this as the next frontier
for massive efficiency games. Think drug discovery,
scientific research automation, transforming
business ops. Fundamentally, they're really investing
in the future of work itself, I think. So does
this mean AI could soon act like a highly capable
colleague, an autonomous one? Yes, exactly. Performing
complex, multi -step tasks independently. Okay.
Moving on then, we also see significant investments
in securing our worlds, both digital and physical.
Hadrian, for example, they raised $260 million,
Series C, for offensive cybersecurity. That was
July 17th. That's right. Offensive cybersecurity,
or you might know it as ethical hacking or penetration
testing. It's basically simulating cyber attacks
to proactively find vulnerabilities before the
bad guys do. Hadrian uses intelligent agents,
AI agents, to automate this whole process at
huge speeds. And then there's Open Evidence,
a company that really made a splash during the
pandemic. They just secured $210 million in Series
B funding. And this is specifically for medical
research AI. Yeah, Open Evidence is fascinating.
What they do is leverage AI to read and synthesize
millions of medical papers, clinical trials,
research findings almost instantly. It identifies
key findings, emerging trends, even like hidden
connections that human researchers might take
years, literally years to uncover. Imagine its
ability to cross -reference tiny data points
from totally different studies. It just accelerates
discovery for researchers and clinicians. It's
huge. So what's fascinating here is how AI finds
hidden connections in just vast amounts of data,
stuff humans miss. Precisely. It connects dots
humans miss, accelerating discovery. Okay, let's
shift gears a bit. enhancing creativity in how
we access information. There's Lovable, a Swedish
company, $200 million Series A for something
they call AI vibe coding, which sounds delightfully
intriguing, I have to say. Hey, yeah, vibe coding.
It's essentially an AI coding assistant, but
it's designed to make software development feel
much more intuitive, supportive even. It learns
a developer's unique style, their preferences,
and then it automates the repetitive stuff, the
boilerplate code. The goal is really about reducing
developer burnout, letting engineers focus on
the bigger picture, the problem solving, the
actual innovation. It's kind of like having a
co -pilot that actually understands your creative
flow. You know, I still wrestle with prompt drift
to myself sometimes, trying to get just the right
output from AI. Vibe coding sounds like a dream
for that. Like the AI really gets what you're
trying to do. And then Substack, they received
$100 million, Series C, for newsletter platform
features. Yeah, for SubSec, that investment likely
means a whole suite of new AI features to help
writers and publishers. Think AI editing assistants
to polish your writing, or maybe headline optimizers
to get more clicks. Or even personalized content
recommendations, helping readers find new newsletters
they'll actually love. They could also use it
to generate AI audio versions of articles. Makes
things more accessible. Right. And Perplexity
AI, a name I think many of us know now, they
secured $100 million for their AI search engine,
an extension around Series E. Yeah, and this
really raises questions about how we get information,
right? Unlike traditional search engines that
just give you a list of links, an AI search engine
like Perplexity gives you direct synthesized
answers. It pulls from multiple sources, gives
citations. It acts much more like a research
assistant. Cuts straight to the info you need.
Saves you time sifting through pages and pages.
So what does this all mean for creators and how
we find information? AI seems to be bringing
personalized tools and more direct answers. Yes,
it brings personalized tools and direct answers.
Streamlines things. Okay, shifting gears again
slightly. Mantis VC, they raised $100 million
for a new venture fund. Now this is different,
right? It's not money for building AI directly,
but for investing in other AI companies. That
feels like a crucial distinction. Oh, absolutely.
That's a great point. Mantis VC's role is crucial.
They provide that vital early stage capital,
the seed money, for the very startups we're discussing.
This kind of investment just fuels the whole
AI ecosystem. It's a catalyst for innovation.
It lets smaller teams with big ideas actually
bring their products to market. And speaking
of funding innovation, Moon Valley, they got
an additional $84 million for their AI video
generation platform. Generative video. Platforms
like Moon Valley let you create pretty stunning
video clips just from text prompts or even static
images. This really democratizes video creation,
takes it out of specialized studios and puts
it into the hands of, well, anyone with an idea.
Now, it's incredibly computationally intensive,
generating high quality, longer videos. But this
funding will definitely help them. scale up.
Whoa. Imagine scaling that, creating like Hollywood
level video from just a few words. The potential
is just incredible. Two sec silence. Yeah. So
how critical are these kinds of funds, these
VC funds for AI innovation across the board?
Crucial. They fuel the next wave of AI products,
definitely. Which, you know, it raises an important
question. Where isn't AI making an impact? When
you look at the rest of these significant investments,
the sheer breadth of AI's application is just
striking. It reaches far beyond the obvious stuff.
We're seeing it infuse deeply into almost every
industry, from super technical processes to just,
you know, daily operations. It's true. It really
is everywhere. Let's maybe group some of these.
How about we start with AI pushing into industrial
optimization and energy? See, Amagi, they raised
$80 million for ammonia -to -power solutions,
clean energy tech. AI here is going to be key
for the complex control systems, maximizing efficiency,
ensuring safety in these new kinds of energy
applications. Now, there's QAnaghi, a German
company. They got $62 million. That's around
$65, $70 million U .S. for photonic deep tech
aimed at industrial quantum sensing. Okay, jargon
to hurt. Photonic just means it uses light, so
it's super fast, energy efficient. And quantum
sensing. That uses quantum mechanics for incredibly
precise measurements, like hyper -accurate navigation
without GPS, detecting diseases way earlier,
or creating totally new sensors for manufacturing
that spot microscopic claws. Really deep tech
stuff. And RealSense, $50 million. They work
on AI -powered computer vision. Basically letting
machines see and interpret the visual world.
Think quality control on assembly lines or retail
analytics. Optimizing store layouts, security.
Lots of use. Oh, and Geologic AI, $44 million.
Applying AI in geology. Analyzing rock samples
incredibly fast for resource exploration, for
mining, unlocking insights from the earth itself.
That's incredible precision, materials, energy.
It really shows how fundamental AI is becoming.
What about how AI is optimizing business operations
and professional services? Absolutely. Okay,
so Boulevard raised $80 million. They're a client
experience platform, likely using AI for smart
scheduling, personalized recommendations, often
wellness and beauty sectors. Then Unify. $40
million. They're building an AI -native go -to
-market platform. Now, AI -native means it's
built from the ground up with AI at its core.
It's not just bolted on. This lets it predict,
analyze, automate marketing and sales processes
almost autonomously. Beyond just finding leads,
it's orchestrating campaigns, predicting customer
success, heron data, $16 million, automating
finance workflows, think streamlining loan processing,
transaction monitoring, that kind of thing, and
Calidus AI. $10 million seed round, building
an AI -powered litigation platform. So AI helping
with e -discovery, legal research, maybe even
predicting case outcomes, really changing how
legal pros work. Wow. It sounds like AI is just
quietly becoming the backbone for so many industries.
And what about the actual infrastructure and
development, the stuff needed to build all this
AI? Right. The picks and shovels, kind of. Crash
Override got $28 million. They focus on engineering
security or DevSecOps. DevSecOps basically means
integrating security right into software development
from the very beginning. And AI helps find vulnerabilities
in code much, much faster than humans looking
manually. Panama, $27 million. They're a development
company. Venture Studio, just building new AI
-powered products across different areas. Spico,
$22 million. They build custom AI platforms.
So tailored AI solutions for big companies using
their own private data to create unique AI applications.
And Gig .io, $21 million, first part of a Series
B. They work on software -defined infrastructure
for AI workloads. Basically, this tech allows
flexible on -demand combining of computing resources
like powerful GPUs, absolutely essential for
training these huge AI models we keep talking
about. Okay, so if we connect all this back to
the bigger picture, how will this whole wave
of funding really change our daily lives? Often,
maybe, without us even realizing it. AI will
quietly optimize countless hidden processes,
making systems run smoother behind the scenes.
Yeah. This deep dive into the latest AI investments,
it paints a very clear picture. Money is flowing
at just an unprecedented scale, especially into
that foundational AI, those really powerful agentic
models. But AI isn't just about the cutting edge
labs anymore, is it? It's truly transforming
every single industry from cybersecurity to medical
research, content creation to geology. AI is
becoming deeply embedded in our world. The focus
seems clear. Automate complex tasks, enhance
what humans can do and provide deeper, more actionable.
insights pretty much everywhere. Exactly. And
the speed of innovation right now is just incredible.
It's such a dynamic, rapidly evolving landscape,
these investments. They're just a snapshot of
that momentum, which, you know, raises an important
question for you listening. Beyond what we've
talked about, what surprising new industries
do you think AI will disrupt next? How might
this reshape how you work or even how you live
your everyday life in ways we haven't even touched
on yet? Keep exploring. Keep asking questions.
It's moving fast. Thank you for diving deep with
us today. We hope you feel a little more well
-informed and maybe a lot more curious about
the future of AI. Until next time, keep learning.
Out -y row music.