Feb 25, 2026 Daily Roundup

Daily Funding Roundup:
Feb 25, 2026

A stealth-heavy Tuesday. Three companies emerged from the shadows in a single day: Gambit Security ($61M), Rowspace ($50M), and Callosum ($10.25M). Guidde matched Rowspace with a $50M Series B for AI adoption. Harper pulled $47M fresh out of YC. And OpenAI's valuation keeps climbing as Thrive stakes $1B at $285B.

$270M+
Total Capital
10+
Deals
3
Stealth Launches

Key Themes

Stealth mode is back, and it ships with nine figures. Three companies launched from stealth on the same day with a combined $121M in disclosed funding. Gambit Security ($61M), Rowspace ($50M), and Callosum ($10.25M) all chose to build quietly before announcing. The common thread: all three are infrastructure plays, not application wrappers. Data resilience, financial data intelligence, and chip orchestration are the kind of deep technical problems that benefit from heads-down execution before public attention. The VCs backing them (Spark, Kleiner, Sequoia, Emergence, Plural) are placing bets on the plumbing layer.

AI meets regulated industries, and the check sizes follow. Harper ($47M for insurance), Rowspace ($50M for finance), and Guidde ($50M for enterprise software adoption) all operate in highly regulated, process-heavy verticals. These are not "AI for AI's sake" plays. They replace human-intensive workflows where the cost of errors is high and the incumbents are slow. Emergence Capital leading both Harper and Rowspace, deploying ~$100M in a single day, suggests the firm sees a category forming around AI-powered operations in regulated sectors.

Israeli cybersecurity keeps compounding. Gambit Security's $61M stealth launch, backed by Cyberstarts (the dedicated Israeli cyber fund) alongside Spark and Kleiner Perkins, continues the trend of Unit 8200 alumni building enterprise security companies at pace. With three founders who received the Israel Defense Award, the pedigree is exceptional. Data resilience, specifically protecting against catastrophic downtime rather than just perimeter threats, is emerging as a distinct category within the broader security stack.

The Rounds

Gambit Security Seed + Series A
Feb 25
$61M

The Israeli data protection startup launched from stealth with $61M raised across two rounds in 12 months. Built by three Unit 8200 veterans who received the Israel Defense Award, Gambit's AI-native resilience platform autonomously maps enterprise infrastructure and backup data, exposing hidden gaps before they become catastrophic downtime. With 60 employees already on board and three top-tier cyber VCs co-leading, this is one of the larger stealth launches in cybersecurity this year.

Spark Capital (Lead) Kleiner Perkins (Lead) Cyberstarts (Lead)
Guidde Series B
Feb 25
$50M

The AI digital adoption platform raised $50M to scale its dual-sided training approach: teaching humans how to use software and teaching AI agents how to execute workflows. Guidde reports 3x annual revenue growth for three consecutive years, 4,500+ customers (Anheuser-Busch, Bayer, Nasdaq), and 90%+ retention. Total funding now $80M. PSG Equity leading signals a growth equity play, not just venture.

PSG Equity (Lead) monday.com Norwest Entrée Capital Qualcomm Ventures Inkberry Ventures
Rowspace Seed + Series A
Feb 25
$50M

The stealth AI platform for financial firms emerged with $50M co-led by Sequoia and Emergence. Founded by former Notion CTO Michael Manapat and former Uber/Binance CFO Yibo Ling (MIT classmates), Rowspace connects structured and unstructured firm data across legacy systems and applies finance-specific intelligence for portfolio monitoring, credit analysis, and cross-cycle decisions. Institutions managing hundreds of billions in assets are already deploying.

Sequoia Capital (Lead) Emergence Capital (Lead) Stripe Conviction Basis Set Ventures Twine Ventures
Harper Seed + Series A
Feb 25
$47M

The YC W25 grad raised $47M for its AI-native commercial insurance brokerage. Harper automates insurance buying for mid-sized businesses across 160+ carriers and 35 states. With 6,000+ customers, $6M+ annualized premiums, and a 98.78% retention rate, the numbers back the check size. Founded by a former Coatue/Carlyle investor and a Goldman Sachs engineering lead who previously co-built Poolit ($100M AUM).

Emergence Capital (Lead) Y Combinator Peak XV Partners Lobster Capital Antler

Also noted

$16.6M Series A
Xflow - Indian B2B cross-border payments infrastructure serving 15,000 businesses with $1B annualized volume. Led by General Catalyst with Stripe, PayPal Ventures, Square Peg, and Lightspeed returning. First Indian fintech backed by both Stripe and PayPal. Valued at $85M.
$18M Series A
NationGraph - AI procurement intelligence platform helping businesses predict and win government contracts across 110,000+ agencies. Led by Menlo Ventures with Perplexity Fund and XYZ Venture Capital. Founded by a former Ramp executive and a Citadel alum. Total funding now $22.5M.
$10.25M Seed
Callosum - London-based AI infrastructure startup orchestrating workloads across mixed chip types (Nvidia, AMD, AWS Trainium, Cerebras). Founded by two Cambridge neuroscience PhDs. Led by Plural (Taavet Hinrikus/Ian Hogarth). Claims 2x accuracy, 7x speed, 4x cost reduction vs. homogeneous hardware.
$9M Series A
Profitmind - Agentic AI decision intelligence platform for retail, delivering pricing, promotions, and assortment recommendations. Led by Accenture Ventures with AI Fund (Andrew Ng). Serves retailers from $20M to $100B revenue across three continents. Incubated at Landing AI.
$5M Seed
t54 Labs - AI agent trust and verification platform for the autonomous economy. Co-led by Anagram, PL Capital, and Franklin Templeton with Ripple participating. Building identity, risk, and settlement infrastructure for AI agents that transact independently.
$5M Seed
Mogul - Music royalty management platform that has tracked $1.5B in lost royalties since launch. Led by Yamaha Music Innovations Fund with Urban Innovation Fund and Mindset Ventures. Founded by the team behind Repost Network (acquired by SoundCloud). Total funding now $6.9M.

News & Signals

Thrive Capital stakes ~$1B in OpenAI at $285B valuation

Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital invested approximately $1 billion in OpenAI at a $285 billion valuation with preferential terms. The deal reportedly includes downside protection and priority allocation in future rounds. Separately, Amazon's potential $50 billion investment in OpenAI may be contingent on an IPO or AGI milestone, adding unusual conditional structures to frontier AI dealmaking.

Three companies launch from stealth on the same day

Gambit Security ($61M), Rowspace ($50M), and Callosum ($10.25M) all emerged from stealth on February 25. The pattern suggests a coordinated PR window, but the common thread is deeper: all three are infrastructure plays (data resilience, financial data, chip orchestration) rather than application-layer AI. VCs appear to be backing the plumbing that makes AI work in enterprise contexts.

Emergence Capital leads two rounds in a single day

Emergence Capital led Harper's $47M and co-led Rowspace's $50M, deploying nearly $100M in a single day across AI insurance and AI finance. The firm, known for backing Salesforce, Zoom, and Veeva, is making aggressive bets on vertical AI that replaces human-heavy workflows in regulated industries.

Chip diversity thesis gains traction

Callosum's $10.25M seed for multi-chip AI orchestration follows yesterday's Axelera AI $250M+ for edge chips. The investment thesis that AI compute will not remain a Nvidia monopoly is attracting capital at both the hardware and software layers. ARIA (UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency) providing grant funding to Callosum also signals government interest in chip sovereignty.

VC Mood on X

Cautiously Bullish Sentiment snapshot from X discussions

Bullish signals

  • Multiple stealth launches with $50M+ rounds suggest deep conviction in AI infrastructure bets
  • Sequoia and Emergence co-leading Rowspace validates AI applied to institutional finance
  • Harper's metrics (98.78% retention, 6K+ customers from YC W25) show AI can sell insurance at scale
  • Gambit Security's three-way co-lead (Spark + KP + Cyberstarts) is an unusual signal of cross-firm conviction
  • Guidde's 3x revenue growth and 90%+ retention demonstrate durable SaaS economics in AI adoption

Bearish signals

  • OpenAI valuation at $285B with preferential terms raises questions about downside protection in AI mega-rounds
  • Amazon's conditional $50B (tied to IPO/AGI) introduces unusual milestone-based structures that could set precedents
  • AI hype fatigue continues: investors on X debating whether vertical AI companies have real moats or just incumbency leads
  • Combined Seed+Series A structures (Harper, Rowspace, Gambit) may indicate difficulty closing standalone seed rounds at scale

Tuesday VC Twitter was split between the stealth launches and OpenAI deal mechanics. The Rowspace announcement drew attention for the founder pedigree (Notion CTO + Uber CFO), with investors debating whether finance AI is a "two-body problem" (data access + regulatory compliance) or a straightforward automation play. Gambit Security's Unit 8200 founding team sparked the recurring conversation about Israeli cybersecurity's dominance in enterprise security. The Thrive/OpenAI deal drew the most engagement, with investors parsing the preferential terms and what they signal about late-stage AI valuations. Overall mood: bullish on execution in regulated verticals, cautious on the structural dynamics of mega-round AI financing.

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 24 roundup Feb 26 roundup