Daily Funding Roundup:
May 12, 2026
Mega-day with a macro hangover. Anduril doubled to $61B on a $5B Series H. Isomorphic Labs closed $2.1B for AI drug discovery. Exaforce, Elliptic, and Havoc AI all raised nine-figure rounds. But April CPI printed hot at 3.8%, the highest since May 2023, and the six-week melt-up paused. Thrive Capital led or co-led $8.3B across just three deals over Monday plus Tuesday.
Rounds
Costa Mesa defense AI company Anduril Industries doubled its valuation to $61B on a $5B Series H co-led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund and the rest of the existing syndicate rolling. Brings total raised to over $11B. The cadence is now striking: Series G $2.5B at $30.5B in June 2025, Series H $5B at $61B 11 months later. Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, and Joseph Chen co-founded the company in 2017; Schimpf has led as CEO since founding. Products span Lattice OS, Ghost, Sentry, Roadrunner, Bolt, Dive-LD, Fury (CCA), and Barracuda.
DeepMind drug-design spinout Isomorphic Labs closed $2.1B Series B led by Thrive Capital, with Alphabet and GV continuing and new strategics MGX (Abu Dhabi), Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund joining. Founded 2021 by Sir Demis Hassabis (who remains CEO of both Isomorphic and Google DeepMind) with President Max Jaderberg. Builds the IsoDDE drug-design engine leveraging AlphaFold-derived architectures. The round lands 13 months after the company's $600M first external raise (April 2025), also Thrive-led; total external capital now $2.7B.
Bay Area AI-native security operations platform Exaforce raised $125M Series B at $725M post-money led by returning investor Mayfield, with HarbourVest and Peak XV joining as significant new participants. The company combines a real-time security knowledge graph with autonomous Exabot AI agents that triage, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. Founded 2023 by three-time founder Ankur Singla (previously sold Contrail Systems to Juniper and Volterra to F5 for $500M). Total raised: ~$200M.
London-based blockchain analytics and crypto compliance platform Elliptic raised $120M Series D at $670M post-money led by One Peak Partners, with Nasdaq Ventures and Deutsche Bank joining as strategic investors. Processes over 1 billion transactions weekly across 65+ blockchains, serving 700+ clients (banks, exchanges, governments) across 30 countries. Co-founded in 2013 by Chief Scientist Tom Robinson with Adam Joyce and James Smith; current CEO is Simone Maini. Total raised now $224M.
Providence-based maritime autonomy company Havoc AI raised $100M Series A. The platform lets a single operator task, monitor, and supervise thousands of heterogeneous unmanned assets across sea, air, and land. Founded 2024 by CEO Paul Lwin (with former US Congressman Devin Nunes as Board Chair), the company has now raised roughly $200M including a seed-and-extensions round of similar size. Cap table is heavy on defense strategics: Lockheed Martin, SAIC, and a wave of new institutional capital across CCM Capital Markets, Clear Street, Cobalt Capital, and Boardman Bay.
Also Noted
Jersey City vertical farming company Oishii closed the first $150M tranche of its Series C, led by SPARX Asset Management with Nomura Real Estate Development, MISUMI Group, and Mizuho Bank participating. The company crossed unit-economic break-even on premium Japanese-technique strawberries across its US and Japan Smart Farms. Total raised: ~$370M. Co-founded by CEO Hiroki Koga and COO Brendan Somerville in 2016.
Jacksonville, FL Star Catcher closed an oversubscribed $65M Series A co-led by B Capital, Shield Capital, and Cerberus Ventures, with GreatPoint Ventures, Helena, Oceans Ventures, and MVP Ventures. Building the first commercial in-orbit power grid: a constellation of satellites that harvest solar energy and beam it via optical lasers to other spacecraft, claiming up to 10x more power delivery without retrofitting hardware. Founded 2024 by ex-Made In Space CEO Andrew Rush.
San Francisco enterprise voice AI platform Vapi raised $50M Series B at $500M post-money led by Peak XV Partners, with M12 (Microsoft), Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer joining. The platform has handled 1B+ calls across 1M+ developers, with customers including Amazon Ring (chose Vapi over 40 rivals), ServiceTitan, New York Life, and Intuit. Co-founded by CEO Jordan Dearsley and Nikhil Gupta.
San Francisco AI financial compliance OS Greenboard raised $15.5M Series A led by Base10 Partners, with Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform, and Liquid2 Ventures. New product Greenboard Go answers employee compliance questions instantly with policy-grounded answers; 500+ financial institutions on the platform. Co-founded by CEO Dave Feldman (ex-Guideline) and CTO Ed Schembor (ex-Amazon Search Navigation).
News & Signals
April CPI prints hot at 3.8% YoY, highest since May 2023
Headline CPI rose 0.6% MoM (annual rate 3.8%, highest since May 2023). Core CPI +0.4% MoM, +2.8% YoY. Energy jumped 3.8% MoM and is now up 17.9% over 12 months on the Hormuz closure. Apparel +0.6%, airline fares +2.8% MoM (+20.7% YoY). Fed rate-hike odds by year-end rose to roughly 30% per CME FedWatch. The print breaks the soft-landing narrative that the May 8 jobs report had reinforced, putting the May 26 Anthropic round and Wednesday's Mag 7 commentary on a notably tighter stage.
Markets sell off on CPI plus oil
S&P 500 closed -0.37% (Dow -0.21%, Nasdaq -0.65%), giving back some of Monday's 7,400+ peak. Brent traded near $98/bbl with WTI ~$91, the Strait of Hormuz still closed. Chris Zaccarelli (Northlight): 'Inflation is moving higher again as the war in Iran is impacting both the headline number, as expected, but also the core, which was even higher than the +0.3% expected.' The melt-up paused for the first time in six weeks.
Thrive Capital has the most concentrated 48 hours any firm has ever had
Helsing $1.2B Monday, Isomorphic Labs $2.1B Tuesday, Anduril $5B Tuesday. Roughly $8.3B in three deals across two days, all Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital leading or co-leading. The implicit thesis: Thrive is the new Tiger Global of the defense plus AI complex, paired with Andreessen Horowitz on the Anduril co-lead. Defense Twitter (now its own subculture) treated the Anduril Series H as confirmation that 'techno-industrial' is the dominant new asset class.
Iran peace talks stall but continue, two-phase deal framing emerges
Iran is reviewing the latest US peace proposal with Pakistan mediating. Trump signaled he is willing to 'wait a few days' for the right answers. The framing now circulating: a two-phase deal where Hormuz reopens immediately, with a 30-60 day window on nuclear issues. Iran insists ceasefire include the Lebanon front; the US will not allow Iran-imposed Hormuz tolls. Brent stayed under $100 despite the inflation print, suggesting markets still price toward a negotiated resolution.
Voice AI gets a category leader
Vapi's $50M raise at $500M, having handled 1B+ calls and won Amazon Ring over 40 rivals, validates that voice AI infrastructure is moving from 'novelty' to 'won by a leading platform.' Peak XV's lead positions Vapi against rivals Bland AI, Retell, and Synthflow. The Microsoft (M12) and Kleiner Perkins follow-on is a structural signal that the voice agent layer is being underwritten as enterprise infrastructure rather than consumer experimentation.
VC Mood on X
The vibe was schizophrenic in a way that has become familiar in late-cycle AI markets. The funding feed read like 2021 redux: $2.1B for an AI drug-design lab, $5B for a defense unicorn doubling its valuation in 11 months, $125M for a 3-year-old cyber startup at $725M, $100M for a 12-month-old maritime autonomy company. Founders and growth-stage GPs were celebrating. Defense Twitter (now its own subculture) treated the Anduril round as confirmation that "techno-industrial" is the dominant new asset class. Thrive Capital is having one of the most concentrated 48-hour runs any firm has ever had (Helsing, Isomorphic, Anduril), and the takes ranged from "Thrive is the new Tiger" to "this is what dominance in the new defense plus AI complex looks like."
Underneath, the macro chat was sober. The 3.8% CPI print was the highest in three years and the second consecutive month of upside surprises. The Citrini "2028 hangover" thesis got fresh airtime, with the argument being that simultaneous shocks of inflation re-acceleration, tariff pass-through, Hormuz oil disruption, and AI-capex-driven Treasury issuance create a setup where private markets sprint while public markets stall. Several growth-stage investors openly questioned whether $61B for Anduril and $670M for a 13-year-old crypto compliance firm doing $50M ARR are signs of conviction or signs of nowhere else to put money.
Seed founders, predictably, felt the squeeze. The gap between mega-rounds and traditional Series A/B is widening, and the chatter about "the missing middle" (strong companies stuck between $5M and $20M ARR with no obvious next round) picked up again. Anthropic's $900B target on May 26 is now the next big test of whether the AI-funding ceiling has any ceiling left at all. If that round prints anywhere near its target, even the most bearish observers will probably stop calling tops.
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.