Daily Funding Roundup:
Apr 15, 2026
All-time highs. Artemis emerged with $70M for AI-vs-AI cybersecurity from Felicis and First Round. Wayve added $60M to its Series D from Qualcomm, AMD, and Arm at $8.6B. HockeyStack closed $27M Series B, Parasail $32M, NanoTech Materials $29M. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq hit all-time highs as Trump said the Iran war is "very close to over."
Rounds
AI-native cybersecurity platform Artemis emerged from stealth six months after founding with $70M in combined funding: a $15M seed led by First Round Capital and Brightmind, and a $55M Series A led by Felicis. Founded by former AWS GuardDuty leader Shachar Hirshberg and ex-Abnormal AI ML lead Dan Shiebler, Artemis builds AI agents that detect and respond to AI-powered attacks at machine speed. Early customers include Mercury, Wix, Lemonade, and Abnormal AI (Shiebler's former employer), with angels from Demisto, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk. AI-vs-AI security is fast becoming a category.
UK autonomous driving AI startup Wayve raised a $60M Series D extension from three chipmakers (Qualcomm, AMD, Arm Holdings), bringing its Series D to ~$1.2B at a reported $8.6B valuation. The investor mix is notable: every major chip architecture (x86 via AMD, ARM via Arm and Qualcomm) is now betting on Wayve's mapless autonomous driving stack as the challenger to Waymo. Customers include Nissan (ADAS starting 2027), Mercedes-Benz, and Stellantis. Total raised: ~$2.83B.
Revenue Agents platform HockeyStack raised $27.3M led by Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing total funding over $50M. The YC S23 company has scaled to 300+ customers including Fortune 100 revenue teams and manages over $20B of campaign spend through its AI agents (Odin and Nova), which help B2B teams break into, close, and expand accounts. Founded by three Turkish entrepreneurs (Bugra Gunduz, Arda Bulut, Emir Atli) who dropped out of Northwestern, Brown, and Istanbul's Robert College respectively.
AI Supercloud Parasail raised $32M Series A co-led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures. The pay-per-token inference cloud aggregates global GPU supply (H100s, H200s, A100s, 4090s) into a single fabric and processes 500B+ tokens per day with ~30% MoM revenue growth. Customers include Elicit, mem0, Gravity, Kotoba, and Venice. Founded by Mike Henry (Mythic, Groq) and Tim Harris (Swift Navigation), Parasail is positioned as the pay-as-you-go alternative to locked-in GPU contracts as AI agent workloads become bursty and unpredictable. Total raised: $42M.
Texas-based advanced materials company NanoTech Materials raised $29.4M Series A led by HPI Real Estate & Investments to scale its Insulative Ceramic Particle (ICP) coatings for buildings and infrastructure. Products include Cool Roof Coat (30-40% HVAC reduction), Insulative Coat, and Wildfire Shield (engineered to withstand 3,272F without toxic byproducts). As wildfires and extreme heat intensify across the US, climate-adaptation materials are becoming a venture category distinct from decarbonization. Total raised: $34.4M.
News & Signals
S&P and Nasdaq hit all-time highs as Trump says Iran war 'very close to over'
The S&P 500 closed +0.80% at 7,022.95 and the Nasdaq surged +1.59% to 24,016.02, both new all-time highs. Both sides of the US-Iran conflict reportedly have an 'in principle agreement' to pursue further diplomacy, with Pakistani Field Marshal Asim Munir arriving in Tehran for meetings. Trump said the war is 'very close to over' and markets are 'going to boom.' WTI crude was little changed at $91.29 as the Strait of Hormuz flows remained at only ~10% of normal (~2.1M bpd). The recovery from the Iran war is now faster than both the post-COVID 2020 rebound and the 2024 tariff recovery.
SEC eliminates Pattern Day Trader Rule, Robinhood jumps 7.8%
The SEC eliminated the 25-year-old Pattern Day Trader Rule that required a $25,000 minimum equity balance for active day traders. It will be replaced by an Intraday Margin Level framework, effective 45 days after regulatory notice. Robinhood jumped ~7.8% on the news. The change opens active trading to millions of retail investors who were previously capped. The broader policy signal: the Trump-era SEC is dismantling decades of post-2001 investor protections that were originally designed to prevent retail speculation, reflecting a philosophical shift toward letting investors self-determine their risk.
Tesla AI5 chip tapes out, IonQ +17.7% on Q4 earnings and photonic breakthrough
Tesla's AI5 chip was sent to foundries (Samsung in Taylor TX and TSMC in Arizona), offering 8-10x the compute of HW4 and 192GB LPDDR5X. Volume production not expected until mid-2027; the chip is primarily for Optimus and supercomputer clusters. Separately, quantum computing stocks rallied hard: IonQ +17.7% to $42.08 (first public quantum company with $100M+ GAAP revenue), D-Wave +9%, Rigetti +5-7%. Drivers: IonQ Q4 revenue of $61.89M (+429% YoY), a photonic interconnect breakthrough announced on World Quantum Day, a new DARPA contract, and Nvidia's open-source quantum AI models (Ising).
JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, BofA crush Q1 earnings on trading volatility
Bank earnings season continued to impress. Morgan Stanley posted its first-ever $20B+ quarter ($20.6B in revenue), with IB revenue +36% and equity trading +25%. Bank of America beat on EPS ($1.11 vs $1.01 est.), with investment banking fees +21%. JPMorgan (reported Tuesday) had record trading revenue. The Iran war volatility, the Strait of Hormuz disruption, and the ensuing rate whiplash were an earnings windfall for trading desks. Meanwhile, Sazerac made an unsolicited ~$15B bid for Brown-Forman at $32/share, signaling that consumer M&A is also heating up.
VC Mood on X
The mood on Wednesday was unreserved optimism. "New all-time highs while a naval blockade is active and an active shooting war is still unresolved. Markets have officially stopped caring about geopolitics as long as oil stays below $100," one macro investor posted. The day's deals reinforced the pattern: AI infrastructure, AI security, and climate-adaptation all drawing capital with minimal discount to pre-war multiples. Several VCs noted that Q2 looks likely to set another fundraising record following Q1's $297B global total, with the deal pipeline that was frozen in March now actively closing.
Artemis at $70M for an eight-month-old company provoked heated debate. "Shachar Hirshberg and Dan Shiebler raised at a time when the median pre-seed is 20 pitches to get funded. Felicis and First Round saw something the rest of us did not," one early-stage investor posted. The bull case: AI-powered attacks are a real, measurable problem (the Marimo zero-day last week went from disclosure to exploitation in 9 hours), and the talent pool that can build AI-native defense is extremely narrow. The bear case: security is a competitive graveyard where incumbents (CrowdStrike, Wiz, Palo Alto) have distribution advantages that startups rarely overcome. Both views have merit; Artemis's founder pedigree favors the bull case.
The SEC eliminating the Pattern Day Trader Rule was the most discussed regulatory move. "This is the single biggest structural change to retail trading in 25 years. Whether you think it's good or bad depends on whether you believe retail investors should be allowed to lose money fast," one fintech investor posted. The consequences cascade to Robinhood (stock +7.8%), Schwab, Fidelity, and the whole ecosystem of day-trading tools. Several investors noted that the rule change makes it easier for prediction markets (like Kalshi) to capture mindshare, since the friction between 'trading' and 'betting' is shrinking.
Rounds and signals sourced from SEC filings, press releases, and verified news reports. All amounts in USD unless noted. Reporting reflects information available at time of publication.