Daily Funding Roundup:
June 25, 2026
PCE dovish miss: core +0.2% m/m (consensus +0.3%), +2.7% y/y. September cut probability jumps 48% to 63%. Twelve $250M Series D at $1.8B BEV-led for SAF. Clay $150M C at $2.5B ICONIQ-led ($115M ARR). Zenity $120M C at $850M for agent security. Lark $16M seed for UK legal AI. Anthropic PIF Riyadh confirmed $8B, book at $79B, upsize scenario live. UMich revised up to 51.3 (biggest revision since 2020). Nvidia at ATH $198. VIX at 12.9.
Rounds
Berkeley, California-based Twelve raised a $250M Series D at $1.8B post-money (up from $900M at Series C in Nov 2023, 2x step-up over 31 months) led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures. CO2 electrolysis converts captured CO2 into synthetic aviation fuel, cosmetic ingredients, and industrial chemicals. Round funds the Moses Lake, Washington plant expansion (SAF production capacity from 1M gallons/year to 40M gallons/year by Q4 2027) plus a new Louisiana Gulf Coast SAF site with Alaska Airlines as anchor offtaker. Co-founded 2015 by CEO Nicholas Flanders (Stanford Skoll Fellow), CSO Etosha Cave (Stanford ME PhD), and CTO Kendra Kuhl (Stanford Chemistry PhD). Total raised: $446M. Rio Tinto extends its Series C lead into the new round. Slots into the SAF cohort with Prometheus Fuels, LanzaJet, and OXCCU as the four venture-backed independent SAF producers competing for the ICAO CORSIA and EU ReFuelEU regulatory-driven demand curve.
New York-based Clay raised a $150M Series C at $2.5B post-money (up from $500M at Series B in January 2025, 5x step-up over 17 months) led by ICONIQ Growth. AI-native GTM data enrichment and outbound automation platform. Consolidates 100+ enrichment vendors + LLM signals into one workflow used by revenue teams at OpenAI, Anthropic, Notion, Vercel, and Ramp. Co-founded 2017 by CEO Kareem Amin (Frame.io Data, ex-Microsoft Bing), Nicolae Rusan (ex-Etsy, ex-Frame.io), and CTO Varun Anand (ex-MongoDB). Total raised: $222M. ICONIQ takes over from Meritech (which led Series B) and joins Sequoia (Series A) as the second-largest institutional cap-table piece. ARR disclosed at the announcement: $115M (up from $27M at Series B), 4.3x growth in 17 months. The 'Clay is the growth-team OS' framing is now consensus operator language across YC-backed and Series-A B2B SaaS orgs.
Tel Aviv-based Zenity raised a $120M Series C at $850M post-money (up from $250M at Series B in Nov 2024, 3.4x step-up over 20 months) led by Insight Partners. Agentic AI security governance platform: monitors and secures enterprise deployments of Copilot Studio, Salesforce Einstein, ServiceNow Now Assist, and custom agents. Customers include Fortune 100 and government agencies. Co-founded 2021 by CEO Ben Kliger (ex-Microsoft Azure Sentinel PM) and CTO Michael Bargury (well-known Black Hat + DEF CON speaker on Copilot Studio security). Total raised: $179.5M. Every Anthropic and OpenAI enterprise Q&A now includes 'how do you secure agent-to-agent lateral movement?', and Zenity is now the reference vendor for that question in the CIO-CISO-CTO calls the underwriter syndicate has been running through week 2.
London-based Lark raised a $16M seed at $90M post-money led by Balderton. AI legal research and drafting for corporate lawyers, trained on public filings, case law, and internal firm data. Magic Circle customers: Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Slaughter and May. Co-founded 2024 by CEO Charlotte Winter (5 years at Clifford Chance M&A) and CTO James Okafor (ex-DeepMind ML engineer). YC W25. The Winter + Okafor + Magic Circle customer wedge is meaningfully differentiated from Harvey (which is a Big Law US play) and Ironclad (contract lifecycle rather than research). The 'legal AI is UK's cleanest AI vertical because of the concentrated Magic Circle customer set' framing is now the London operator consensus.
News & Signals
PCE May: core +0.2% m/m (consensus +0.3%), +2.7% y/y (consensus +2.9%): the dovish miss
May Core PCE at +0.2% month-over-month (consensus +0.3%, prior +0.3%), +2.7% year-over-year (consensus +2.9%, prior +2.9%). Headline PCE at +0.1% m/m (consensus +0.2%), +2.4% y/y (consensus +2.6%). Personal income +0.5% m/m (consensus +0.4%), personal spending +0.3% (consensus +0.4%). Saving rate at 4.4% (up from 4.2% April). The core PCE 10-basis-point miss is the first meaningfully dovish inflation print since December. Services ex-housing (supercore PCE) at +0.24% m/m, the softest since October. Fed strategist consensus updated within 90 seconds: September cut probability jumped from 48% to 63% on FedWatch; 10Y -8bp to 4.84%, 2Y -11bp to 4.66%. The 'Iran framework disinflation dividend arriving faster than expected' narrative is now consensus.
Anthropic PIF Riyadh session: $8B commitment confirmed, book now $79B, upsize scenario live
Anthropic CFO Krishna Rao at the Riyadh Thursday session with Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Kingdom Holding. Bloomberg reporting mid-afternoon: PIF confirmed $8B commitment (up from $6B soft-circle Monday), Kingdom Holding $1.5B, Al Rajhi $500M. Total anchor book at end-of-day Thursday: $79B (from $73B end of week 1). Underwriter tone: 'upsize scenario is now the working plan.' Working upsize at $220 with 20% more shares: $37B raised at $1.12T post-money. The 'PIF becomes the third largest single-fund order after Norges and BG' framing was the most-shared FinTwit content of the day. Friday Abu Dhabi with Mubadala plus ADIA is the last confirmed session; underwriter book close is Friday evening.
Jobless claims 218K (consensus 232K), continuing claims 1.83M: labor market still resilient
Weekly initial jobless claims at 218K (consensus 232K, prior 215K). Continuing claims at 1.83M (vs 1.87M expected, 1.85M revised down from prior). The series is at three-year lows on a four-week moving average basis. Employment stress signals: Challenger job cuts announcement (delayed to next Monday due to internal system issue per Challenger's statement), Indeed job postings +0.4% w/w (first positive read after four negative weeks), LinkedIn hire rate stable at pre-pandemic median. The Fed's September calculus is now fully bifurcated: the disinflation (PCE) is friendly, but the labor market cannot deliver the 'need to cut to prevent recession' framing that would give Powell full cover. The 'insurance cut in September' story is now the base case; the 'aggressive cutting cycle' story stays off the table.
UMich sentiment revision 51.3 (preliminary 49.2, Q2 low 44.8): the biggest revision since 2020
Final June Michigan consumer sentiment at 51.3 (vs preliminary 49.2, vs the Q2 low of 44.8 in May pre-Iran-framework). This is the biggest single-month sentiment revision since June 2020 (COVID reopening). 1-year inflation expectations revised down to 3.4% (from 3.6% preliminary). 5-10Y inflation expectations revised down to 3.1% (from 3.3% preliminary). Buyers' index for major appliances and vehicles improved another 3.2 points from preliminary. The full arc: Iran framework signed Jun 13, first sanctions-free tanker delivered Jun 20, gasoline futures -17% over the arc, consumer feeling it in real time. The 'consumer is cracking' narrative is now dead; the working replacement is 'consumer front-loaded through the rate shock and is now benefiting from geopolitical disinflation.'
Micron follow-through + AI capex flow: NDX +1.3% intraday, semis lead, Q2 buy-flow amplified
Micron's Tuesday-AH beat continued to drive semis and AI-capex plays on Thursday. NDX +1.3% intraday, closed +0.9% (13th positive close of last 16). Nvidia +2.4% to $198 (new all-time high close), Broadcom +1.9%, AMD +2.1%, Marvell +2.7%. Microsoft +0.6% to $573 (new ATH). SPX +0.4%. Bitcoin +0.9% at $58,300. VIX at 12.9 (below 13 for first time since March). The PCE dovish miss + Nvidia ATH + ANTH book upsize + Q2 buy-flow tail is the cleanest possible 'summer melt-up' setup. Bear-camp positioning meaningfully wound down through the day; short interest on SPY -3.4% w/w per Bloomberg. Operators come back Friday morning to Chicago PMI, KC Fed services, and the Anthropic Abu Dhabi session which underwriters expect to close the book.
VC Mood on X
The 8:30 PCE print set the entire day. Core +0.2% m/m + +2.7% y/y beat every model on FinTwit; the September cut probability jumping from 48% to 63% on FedWatch within 90 seconds was the cleanest possible dovish repricing. Three threads dominated by 10am: (1) 'the FOMC hawkish pivot from Jun 17 is going to age poorly' (Timiraos WSJ frontpage-flag), (2) 'the September cut is now the base case, not the tail case' (Goldman note), (3) 'the disinflation is Iran-framework driven and the arithmetic gets easier through August' (bond-market consensus). The 2Y drop of 11bp is the largest single-day move in eight weeks; the 10Y drop of 8bp took the curve back below 5.00% comfortably.
The Anthropic PIF Riyadh confirmation ($8B, up from $6B) was the second thread. Total book at $79B by end of Thursday means the underwriter upsize scenario is now the working plan; the working upsize (20% more shares at $220 pricing) raises $37B and takes post-money to $1.12T at IPO. The 'ANTH prices at $220, opens above $260' base case from earlier in the week hardened; the tail case is now 'ANTH prices at $230 with upsize.' FinTwit frame: 'Anthropic just did the SPCX-book-cascade in five days.' The 'sovereigns are the new retail' meme evolved into 'sovereigns are pulling forward five years of AI equity allocation into eight weeks.'
The venture tape kept pace. Twelve at $1.8B (SAF), Clay at $2.5B ($115M ARR disclosed), Zenity at $850M (agent security) is the cleanest possible three-signal cross-section of what venture capital is willing to write: physical decarbonization (Twelve, extending the Sila + Form Energy + Neura + Rescale streak), growth-team AI infrastructure (Clay, at 22x forward revenue which is now the bull-market multiple for AI-native SaaS with defensible metadata moats), and enterprise-security-for-AI (Zenity, extending the Descope + Skyflow + Wiz enterprise-cybersec triangle). Nvidia at $198 all-time close is the market's clearest single ratification of the AI capex cycle continuing. VIX at 12.9 confirms institutional positioning is now formally 'melt-up' rather than 'grind-higher.' Operators come back Friday morning to Chicago PMI, KC Fed services, the Anthropic Abu Dhabi session (Mubadala + ADIA), and Q2 quarter-end front-loaded buy-flow tail.
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.