Daily Funding Roundup:
May 13, 2026
Inference takes center stage. Fractile raised $220M for in-memory compute AI chips the same day Cerebras priced at $185 and raised $5.55B on its Nasdaq IPO. Forus crossed the $1B unicorn line for healthcare AI orchestration. NVision, Cinder, Mantle8 each cleared nine figures. Recursive Superintelligence emerged from stealth at $4.65B. Apple touched $300 intraday.
Rounds
London-based AI chip company Fractile raised $220M Series B co-led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund, with Conviction, Gigascale, O1A, Felicis, Buckley Ventures, and 8VC. The company builds in-memory compute (IMC) silicon targeting AI inference workloads where token-generation cost and latency dominate. Anthropic reportedly in discussions to buy Fractile chips when available in 2027. Total raised: ~$237M. Co-founded 2022 by CEO Walter Goodwin and Yuhang Song. Lands the same day Cerebras prices its IPO; both bets on AI inference architecture being the next bottleneck got funded simultaneously.
New York-based healthtech Forus raised $160M Series B at a $1B post-money valuation co-led by Thrive Capital and General Catalyst, with Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Redpoint, BoxGroup, and Pear VC. Founded 2023 inside Thrive's office by CEO Sahir Jaggi (Forbes 30 Under 30 Healthcare 2025), the AI-powered network connects doctors, pharmacies, payers, and biopharma to automate the path from prescription to patient. Live in all 50 states. Crossed $10M ARR by end-2025 and on track for $50M+ in 2026. Total raised: $160M+.
Ulm-based German quantum-tech company NVision raised $55M Series B (including $17M EIB venture loan) anchored by Abbott, with Playground Global, Matterwave Ventures, b2venture, Entrée Capital, and the European Investment Bank. The company hyperpolarizes metabolic molecules to amplify MRI signals roughly 10,000x for real-time disease metabolism imaging, and is expanding into quantum computing for drug design. CEO Sella Brosh and CTO Ilai Schwartz lead the technical and commercial team.
New York-based AI-powered trust and safety operations platform Cinder raised $41M Series B led by Radical Ventures, with Accel, Y Combinator, M12 (Microsoft), PSP Growth, and Outpost Ventures. The platform detects and responds to digital abuse, fraud, and AI-driven manipulation. Customers include OpenAI, Spotify, ElevenLabs, and Midjourney. Co-founded 2022 by ex-Meta integrity team alumni Glen Wise (CEO) and Phil Brennan (COO). Total raised: $55M.
Grenoble-based French natural-hydrogen explorer Mantle8 raised €31M ($33M) Series A led by Sandwater, with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bpifrance, IP Group, Wind Capital, and Calderion. The company uses proprietary 4D subsurface modeling (HOREX) to identify commercially viable geologic H2 deposits, targeting production cost below €0.80/kg. Founded 2019 by ex-TotalEnergies geoscientist Emmanuel Masini. Funds the world's most advanced natural hydrogen exploration and drilling campaign.
Also Noted
Boulder, CO BranchLab raised $26M Series A led by McKesson Ventures, with FCA Venture Partners, Sanofi Ventures, and AIX Ventures. Privacy-first AI platform for pharma commercialization, delivered roughly 70% lift in client commercialization efficacy. Founded 2024 by CEO Josh Walsh, President Michael Parkes, and CTO Chris Cagle. Total raised: $35M.
Encinitas-based AI virtual specialty care company 9amHealth raised $26M Series B led by Define Ventures with SemperVirens VC, Catalio Capital Management, and NewHealth Ventures. Focused on cardiometabolic chronic conditions (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, hyperlipidemia) for Fortune 100 employer customers. Co-founded 2021 by CEO Frank Westermann. Total raised: ~$55M.
San Francisco insurance AI platform Outmarket AI raised $17M Series A led by Permanent Capital Ventures, with SignalFire, Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, and Dash Fund. Connects to agency management systems and automates policy checking, loss-run analysis, and policy comparison across commercial, benefits, personal, and specialty lines. Founded 2024 by CEO Vishal Sankhla and CTO Anshu Jain.
New York AI home management platform Hint raised $10M seed led by Slow Ventures, with Tusk Venture Partners, Amplo, Energy Impact Partners, Hannah Grey VC, and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly. Pulls property, weather, soil, insurance, and bill data to flag homeowner issues before they break. Founded 2025 by CEO Yih-Han Ma (ex-Red Ventures), Martha Stewart (board), and CTO Kyle Rush (ex-Casper). Launches summer 2026.
News & Signals
Cerebras prices IPO at $185, raises $5.55B, becomes CBRS on Nasdaq
Cerebras priced its IPO at $185, significantly above the upmarked $150-$160 range and the original $115-$125. Raised $5.55B on 30M shares sold, now trading as CBRS on Nasdaq. The print re-opens the AI hardware IPO window meaningfully and validates AI-infra public-market appetite after 18 months of stalled filings. Cerebras had withdrawn its original 2024 S-1 over G42 customer-concentration concerns; the resubmitted prospectus and demand suggest investors got comfortable. Single most consequential AI hardware IPO since the 2024 GPU runup.
Recursive Superintelligence emerges from stealth at $4.65B
$650M led by GV and Greycroft with Nvidia and AMD participating. London and SF outfit founded 2025 by Richard Socher (CEO, ex-Salesforce chief scientist) and Tim Rocktäschel (UCL, ex-DeepMind), with fewer than 30 employees. Mission: self-improving AI as the fastest path to AGI/ASI. Public launch targeted for mid-2026. Confirms how aggressively LPs are funding frontier-AI 'agentic compounding' theses even as the same day's Fractile $220M round was raised to solve the inference-cost headwinds those agents face.
Apple touches $300 intraday for the first time, semis rip on Jensen plus Trump in China
Nasdaq +1.2% to 26,402, S&P +0.58% to 7,444, Dow -0.14%. Nvidia +2%, Micron +4%, SMH +2%. Apple hit $300.49 intraday (first ever close above $300 still pending), backstopped by Jensen Huang accompanying Trump to China for talks with Xi. April PPI printed 6% YoY (energy-driven by Iran war), which knocked rate-cut hopes and kept cyclicals flat. Two-day setup with Tuesday's hot CPI plus Wednesday's hot PPI now gives bears clean ammunition; semis priced through.
Amazon launches Alexa for Shopping, agentic e-commerce assistant
Amazon unveiled Alexa for Shopping, a unified agentic e-commerce assistant merging Rufus and Alexa Plus, designed to answer queries and take checkout actions on behalf of users. Direct shot at Google's and OpenAI's shopping-agent ambitions and an indicator of how fast Big Tech is wiring agentic AI into the transactional layer. The merge of Rufus and Alexa+ also signals Amazon is consolidating its AI assistant stack rather than running parallel rails.
Iran/US/Pakistan talks: 14-point MOU draft circulating
Pakistani army chief Asim Munir continues to mediate. A 14-point memo draft is now circulating; sticking points remain enrichment supervision, Strait of Hormuz toll-free passage, and uranium handover. Brent held near $98 with the talks providing a soft ceiling on further escalation. The 'strike while you negotiate' pattern from earlier in the conflict has settled into a steady-state drag on energy markets rather than a binary risk-off event.
VC Mood on X
Wednesday was the day the "AI compute is the only trade" narrative got its loudest validation yet. Cerebras pricing above the upmarked range and clearing $5.5B in proceeds is the single most consequential AI hardware IPO since the 2024 GPU runup, and it landed in the same 24 hours that Fractile pulled $220M from Accel, Founders Fund, and Factorial for an alternative inference architecture. The reads from both sides of the IMC-vs-GPU bet are getting funded simultaneously, with Anthropic reportedly evaluating Fractile silicon for 2027. VC X was unusually consensus that inference (not training) is now the bottleneck, and that the next $1T of AI value capture will be split between custom silicon and the agents running on it (Recursive's $650M reinforced the latter half).
Healthcare AI had its best day in months: Forus at a $1B valuation, NVision $55M for quantum MRI, BranchLab $26M, 9amHealth $26M. The Thrive plus General Catalyst plus Define plus McKesson Ventures cluster is clearly running a coordinated thesis on AI-native healthcare orchestration (prescription routing, payer intelligence, pharma commercialization, chronic care). Founders and operators on X were noting how quickly the "vertical AI agents in healthcare" category has compressed from concept to billion-dollar outcomes. Forus went from inside Thrive's office in 2023 to $1B in roughly 30 months.
The undercurrent was nervousness, not euphoria. PPI at 6% YoY with energy as the swing factor means the Fed is functionally pinned by the Iran war, and Tuesday's hot CPI plus Wednesday's hot PPI gave bears a clean two-day setup. Lots of "the macro will catch up to private valuations" caveats from Tier-2 VCs, mixed with "we're back" energy from the AI-infra crowd. Anduril's $61B Tuesday plus Cerebras's IPO plus Recursive's $4.65B in 48 hours made it impossible to argue the cycle has peaked.
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.