Feb 24, 2026 Daily Roundup

Daily Funding Roundup:
Feb 24, 2026

A massive Monday. Wayve's $1.5B Series D at $8.6B valuation leads the day as automakers pile into end-to-end autonomous driving. Axelera AI draws $250M+ for edge chips with BlackRock co-leading. Two new unicorns minted: Basis (AI accounting, $1.15B) and Profound (AI search, $1B). Seven deals totaling over $2B in a single day.

$2.07B+
Total Capital
7
Deals
2
New Unicorns

Key Themes

Autonomous driving bets go strategic. Wayve's $1.5B round is not just about the check size. The investor lineup reads like an automotive industry summit: Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Stellantis, and Uber alongside Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank. These are deployment partners writing checks, not passive financial investors. Wayve's end-to-end deep learning approach, which learns from data rather than hand-coded rules, appears to have won over major OEMs who need technology that generalizes across vehicle platforms and geographies. At $8.6B and $2.7B total raised, this is one of the largest autonomous driving bets outside of Waymo and Cruise.

Two unicorns in a day, both from the AI application layer. Basis hit $1.15B doing AI accounting. Profound hit $1B doing AI search visibility. Neither is training foundation models or building chips. Both are applying existing AI capabilities to specific, revenue-generating verticals. The speed is striking: Basis went seed-to-unicorn in ~28 months, Profound in under 18. Investors (Accel, GV, Lightspeed, Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins) are clearly willing to pay unicorn multiples for AI companies with real customers and clear monetization, not just model benchmarks.

BlackRock enters the edge AI chip race. Axelera AI's $250M+ Series C co-led by BlackRock alongside Samsung and EU institutions signals that edge semiconductor investing has matured beyond VC-only territory. The Dutch company's 214 TOPS chips for edge computing attracted institutional capital at a scale typically reserved for data center plays. With a EuroHPC grant already in hand and EIC Fund participating, Axelera is also a test case for whether Europe can build a competitive chip ecosystem with coordinated public-private capital.

The Rounds

Wayve Series D
Feb 24
$1.5B
$8.6B valuation

The London-based autonomous driving company closed the day's largest round to scale its end-to-end deep learning approach to self-driving. Unlike rule-based stacks, Wayve's AI learns from data and generalizes across vehicle types and geographies. The strategic lineup of automakers (Mercedes, Nissan, Stellantis, Uber) signals real deployment intent, not just financial bets. Total funding now exceeds $2.7B.

Eclipse Ventures (Lead) Balderton Capital (Lead) SoftBank Vision Fund (Lead) NVIDIA Uber Mercedes-Benz Nissan Stellantis Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
Axelera AI Series C
Feb 24
$250M

The Dutch semiconductor company raised $250M+ to scale its Metis AI Platform for edge computing. Axelera's chips deliver up to 214 TOPS at a fraction of competing power consumption, targeting smart cities, industrial automation, and autonomous systems. Co-led by BlackRock alongside longtime backer Innovation Industries, with Samsung and EU institutional capital joining. Total funding now ~$420M.

Innovation Industries (Lead) BlackRock (Lead) Samsung Catalyst Fund CDP Capital EIC Fund
Basis Series B
Feb 24
$100M
$1.1B valuation

The AI accounting platform hit unicorn status just over two years after founding. Basis automates bookkeeping, reconciliation, and financial reporting using LLMs that process financial data with human-level accuracy. Co-led by Accel and GV with continued backing from Khosla. From seed to unicorn in roughly 28 months, one of the fastest trajectories in fintech.

Accel (Lead) GV (Lead) Khosla Ventures
Profound Series C
Feb 24
$96M
$1.0B valuation

The AI search visibility platform reached $1B valuation barely a year after launching. Profound helps brands track and optimize how they appear in AI-powered search results across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Seed to unicorn in under 18 months with Lightspeed, Sequoia, and Kleiner Perkins all on the cap table.

Lightspeed Venture Partners (Lead) Sequoia Capital Kleiner Perkins Evantic Capital Saga VC South Park Commons

Also noted

$47M Series B
Nimble Way - Israeli web data infrastructure platform enabling AI-powered data collection at scale. Led by Norwest Venture Partners with Square Peg and Target Global returning. Serves enterprise clients for market intelligence, pricing analytics, and competitive research.
$42.2M Series A
Deeptune - AI training gym platform providing infrastructure for training, fine-tuning, and evaluating ML models. Backed by Seven Seven Six (Alexis Ohanian) and Inspired Capital. Founded in NYC in 2022, now scaling standardized benchmarking and optimization tools for AI developers.
$36M Series B
Slang AI - Voice AI for the hospitality industry, handling restaurant reservations and customer calls through natural-language phone agents. Led by US Venture Partners with Thayer Ventures, Homebrew, Wing, and others. Total funding now ~$52M.

News & Signals

Two new unicorns minted in a single day

Both Basis ($1.15B, AI accounting) and Profound ($1B, AI search visibility) crossed the billion-dollar threshold on February 24. Basis reached unicorn status in roughly 28 months from founding, while Profound did it in under 18 months. Both are revenue-generating AI-native companies, not model builders, suggesting that AI application layer valuations are catching up to infrastructure plays.

Automaker strategic capital floods autonomous driving

Wayve's $1.5B Series D featured Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Stellantis, and Uber alongside financial investors. This is the clearest signal yet that major automakers are betting on end-to-end learning approaches over rule-based self-driving stacks. The combination of Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank with four automotive strategics suggests Wayve is positioning for commercial deployment partnerships, not just R&D.

Edge AI chips attract BlackRock-scale capital

BlackRock co-leading Axelera AI's $250M+ Series C alongside Samsung and EU institutional funds marks a shift in semiconductor investing. Edge AI, which processes data locally rather than in the cloud, is attracting the same caliber of institutional capital previously reserved for data center chips. Axelera's EU backing (EIC Fund, earlier EuroHPC grant) also reflects European ambitions to build a domestic chip ecosystem.

Data infrastructure becomes the quiet AI winner

Nimble Way's $47M and Deeptune's $42.2M round show that investors are increasingly betting on the AI supply chain: the data collection, training infrastructure, and optimization layers that AI companies need but prefer not to build in-house. This "picks and shovels" thesis is generating meaningful deal flow beneath the headline rounds.

VC Mood on X

Bullish Sentiment snapshot from X discussions

Bullish signals

  • $2B+ in a single day with two new unicorns signals strong Monday deal momentum
  • Wayve's automotive strategic lineup (Mercedes, Nissan, Stellantis, Uber) suggests real deployment timelines
  • BlackRock co-leading a chip round shows institutional capital entering hardware at scale
  • Basis and Profound prove the AI application layer can reach unicorn scale on revenue, not just hype
  • European chip sovereignty thesis gains traction with Axelera's public-private capital stack

Bearish signals

  • Autonomous driving has consumed billions before without commercial breakthroughs (Cruise, Argo AI)
  • Seed-to-unicorn in 18 months (Profound) raises questions about valuation discipline
  • Edge AI chip market is crowded: Axelera competes with Hailo, Qualcomm, and Google's TPU edge play
  • Concentration of capital in AI across all sectors could mean a painful correction if AI revenue disappoints

Monday VC Twitter was energized by the deal volume. Wayve's round drew the most analysis, with investors debating whether automaker-backed autonomous driving rounds signal genuine commercial traction or another cycle of strategic optimism. The dual unicorn minting (Basis + Profound) sparked discussions about whether AI application companies deserve the same multiples as infrastructure plays. BlackRock's entry into edge chips got noted as a watershed moment for semiconductor venture. Alexis Ohanian celebrated Deeptune's round as validation for AI infrastructure tooling. Overall mood: firmly bullish, with the caveats reserved for autonomous driving timelines and the pace of new unicorn creation.

Methodology

Data sourced from company announcements, press coverage, and social media posts via Grok analysis of X. All funding rounds include linked sources in our database. Visit individual company pages to see source URLs. X sentiment is an informal snapshot, not a quantitative index.

Feb 23 roundup Feb 25 roundup