Daily Funding Roundup:
May 26, 2026
First US session after Memorial Day, heaviest tape of May. Stord doubled to $3B on a $250M Series F. OpenRouter cleared $1.3B with CapitalG, Nvidia, ServiceNow, MongoDB, Snowflake, and Databricks all in the same round. Catena Labs took $30M to build an AI-native bank. The Anthropic round slipped past Tuesday without a print, market quietly repriced for an upsize. S&P and Nasdaq closed at fresh records on Micron +19%. Mistral acquired Emmi AI.
Rounds
Atlanta-based AI-powered e-commerce fulfillment platform Stord raised $250M Series F at $3B post-money (2x in 12 months), led by Strike Capital. Existing backers Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Bond, and Lux Capital all rolled forward; Franklin Templeton, Baillie Gifford, and G Squared added. The round coincides with the launch of Stord Labs, a robotics and physical AI division. Stord now handles $15B+ GMV across 1,000+ DTC and enterprise brands including True Classic, Native, and AGI. Co-founded by Georgia Tech students Sean Henry (CEO) and Jacob Boudreau (CTO) in 2015. Total raised: $775M+.
Unified API and router for 400+ LLMs OpenRouter raised $113M Series B at $1.3B post-money led by CapitalG (Alphabet's growth fund), with strategic checks from Nvidia, ServiceNow, MongoDB, Snowflake, and Databricks Ventures. Existing backers a16z and Menlo Ventures followed on. Volume has exploded to roughly 25T tokens per week (about 100T/month) for 8M global users, more than doubling valuation from $547M just 11 months ago. Co-founded by Alex Atallah (CEO, ex-OpenSea CTO) and Louis Vichy (CTO) in 2023. The CapitalG check is the tell: Alphabet hedging the multi-model future.
AI-native bank Catena Labs raised a $30M Series A co-led by a16z crypto and Acrew Capital. The company is building banking and governance infrastructure for AI agents, including spending limits, payee allowlists, and account caps. Filed for a national trust bank charter with the OCC alongside the round. Co-founded by Sean Neville (Circle co-founder, USDC) and Matt Venables. Total raised: $48M.
Connecticut-based green chemistry company P2 Science closed an oversubscribed $23M up round led by Sofinnova Partners. New backers Emerald Technology Ventures and GS Futures joined; Chanel, BASF, dsm-firmenich, and Lewis & Clark all re-upped. The company converts plant oils and sustainable feedstocks into ingredients for beauty, aroma, polymers, coatings, and crop care. Co-founded in 2009 by Yale Center for Green Chemistry director Paul Anastas and Patrick Foley. CEO Oihana Elizalde leads the commercial scale-up.
Paris-based AI-driven preventive healthcare platform Lucis raised a $20M (€17.3M) Series A led by Singular, with General Catalyst and Y Combinator participating. Angels include Céline Lazorthes (Resilience), Manu Lecomte, and the investors behind Runna. Lucis analyzes 110+ blood biomarkers across metabolic, hormonal, cardiovascular, inflammation, and nutrient panels for 10,000+ users in France, UK, Ireland, and Portugal. Co-founded in 2025 by Maxime Berthelot and Baptiste Debever. Comes just four months after the $8M YC seed.
Antwerp-based plasma-based CO2 recycler D-CRBN raised €17.5M Series A led by Astaia, with SFPIM and the European Innovation Council Fund participating. The company uses plasma reactors to convert industrial CO2 emissions and hydrocarbons into carbon monoxide and syngas for chemicals, fuels, and materials. Reframes decarbonization as feedstock resilience. Co-founded in 2020 by Gill Scheltjens (CEO), David Ziegler, and Georgi Trenchev (CTO).
Austin-based AI-powered rewards platform CasaPerks Technologies raised a $15.8M seed led by Longevity Equity (Will Steakley). The company operates CasaPerks (loyalty for student housing and multifamily renters) and WorksPerks (employee recognition), both built on Anthropic Claude. 10x revenue growth in 2025. Founded around 2023 by CEO Kevin J. Bradt.
London-based AI operating system for drug discovery Perceptic emerged from stealth with a $12M seed co-led by Accel and Air Street Capital. The platform covers asset scouting, scientific evaluation, indication selection, and clinical data analysis. Already deployed at top-20 pharma including CSL. Co-founded in 2024 by Tilman Flock (CEO), Zaki Trache, and Martin Copes, all ex-Palantir AIP and Life Sciences.
San Francisco-based robotics training-data company Human Archive raised an $8.2M seed co-led by Wing Venture Capital and NVP Capital, with Y Combinator and a star-studded angel list. The company collects egocentric video via 1,000+ head-mounted camera units worn by Indian gig workers, plus tactile gloves and motion-capture suits for physical AI. Co-founded in 2024 by Raj Patel (CEO), Shloke Patel, Samay Maini, and Rushil Agarwal, all UC Berkeley and Stanford BAIR/SAIL alumni.
Spain-based programmable identity verification API Didit closed a $6M seed extension co-led by Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund, with angels including Tomer London (Gusto) and Taro Fukuyama (Fond). Profitable with 1,500+ customers and 30%+ monthly growth. Total seed now $7.5M. Co-founded in 2023 by twin AI engineers Alberto (CEO) and Alejandro Rosas (CTO).
Tampere-based cloud-native multiphysics simulation platform Quanscient raised a €10M Series A co-led by Danish quantum fund 55 North and Austrian industrial backer B&C Group. The company applies quantum algorithms to hardware engineering simulations for aerospace, energy, and automotive customers, claiming up to 99% runtime reduction. Co-founded in 2021 by Juha Riippi, Alexandre Halbach (CTO), Asser Lähdemäki, and Valtteri Lahtinen; operating CEO Andrew Tweedie joined in 2024.
San Francisco-based Canyon Code raised a $5M pre-seed led by Cota Capital. The company builds a workflow intelligence layer for multi-agent AI systems, observing dependencies, memory, scheduling, and policy behavior across agents and LLM calls. Founded in 2024 by third-time founder and CEO Ravikiran Gopalan.
Also Noted
Helsinki-based AI-native CI/CD platform Avrea emerged from stealth with a $4.7M pre-seed led by Earlybird. Cuts pipeline times 2 to 3x and infra cost up to 80%. Co-founded by Aiven and Nosto alumni Hannu Valtonen and Juha Valvanne.
Acquisitions
Paris-based Mistral AI acquired Linz-based physics-AI startup Emmi AI for an undisclosed price, its second M&A deal in months. Emmi was founded December 2024 as an NXAI and JKU Linz spin-off by Johannes Brandstetter and had raised a roughly $15M seed (the largest on record in Austria). Emmi's 30+ engineers join Mistral's Science and Applied AI teams; Linz becomes a Mistral office.
News & Signals
Anthropic round SLIPPED past Tuesday, market repricing the upsize
Bloomberg's prior reporting had teed up the $30B+ Anthropic round at $900B+ pre-money to close week of May 25, with Tuesday May 26 as the consensus print day. It didn't land. The dominant VC X subtext all afternoon was whether the round was being upsized (vindicated 48 hours later: Anthropic ultimately announced Thursday May 28 at $65B Series H, $965B post-money, plus $15B in committed hyperscaler money including $5B from Amazon, more than doubling the initial leak). Tuesday's slip without explanation read as a positive signal, not a negative one, by Tuesday evening.
Markets: S&P and Nasdaq fresh records on Micron +19%, Dow flat
First US session after Memorial Day. S&P 500 +0.61% to record close 7,519.12. Nasdaq +1.19% to record 26,656.18. Dow -0.23% to 50,461.68. Driver: tech rally led by Micron +19% on AI memory demand. Brent crude held near $100/bbl on Iran framework headlines. Bitcoin around $76,755, down ~$484 d/d. Tech and AI-infra continue to do all the index lifting; Dow underperforming is becoming the structural feature of this melt-up.
Iran framework MoU one page from signed, Hormuz reopening close
Per Axios reporting Saturday May 24, the one-page MoU framework between US, Iran, Qatar, and Pakistan is now within days of signing: a 60-day ceasefire extension, gradual reopening of the Strait of Hormuz under managed shipping protocols, Iran resumes oil sales, frozen-asset release of roughly $24B, and a 30-60 day window for nuclear talks. Trump on May 23 said it was 'largely negotiated.' Brent's slide to $96 and Brent's likely biggest monthly loss since 2020 are pricing the deal as near-certain.
Nvidia digesting the $81.6B print, Blackwell visibility $500B through 2026
Nvidia trading well above $180 a week after the Q1 FY27 results: $81.6B revenue (+85% YoY), $75.2B data center (+92%), clean EPS beat. CFO Colette Kress disclosed $500B in Blackwell/Rubin visibility through 2026. Hyperscaler 2026 capex (MSFT/GOOGL/AMZN/META) is tracking $725B vs $410B in 2025. The 'Nvidia is sold out for the entire year' narrative is now fully priced; the next question is whether the AI-infra trade rotates from chips to memory (Micron's +19% Tuesday is the early read) and to power.
Firefly Aerospace files S-1 dated May 26, IPO calendar fills out
Texas-based rocket company Firefly Aerospace filed an S-1 dated Tuesday May 26 (NYSE: FLY proposed ticker). Adds to a fast-thickening pre-September IPO calendar that includes OpenAI's confidential S-1 (May 22, targeting Sep 2026 at $852B-$1T per Goldman/Morgan Stanley/JPM) and Anthropic's confirmed confidential S-1 (October 2026 target). Defense, space, and AI infrastructure dominate the 2026 IPO pipeline.
VC Mood on X
The dominant thread on VC X all day was, literally, 'where is Anthropic?' Bloomberg's Friday report had teed up Tuesday May 26 as the closing day. By 9am ET nothing had hit the wire. By noon the FinTwit consensus was that the round was being upsized; by close, the prevailing read was that the leak number ($30B at $900B) was now the floor, not the ceiling. (Vindicated 48 hours later when Anthropic announced $65B at $965B with $15B in committed hyperscaler money.) Threads dissecting '$900B as the new floor for frontier model labs' compounded all day.
OpenRouter at $1.3B was the under-the-radar tell. CapitalG leading a router/aggregation layer at a unicorn price, with Nvidia plus ServiceNow plus MongoDB plus Snowflake plus Databricks Ventures all writing the same check, reads as the entire data-cloud and platform ecosystem hedging the multi-model future together. Catena Labs (AI banking) + Canyon Code (multi-agent observability) + OpenRouter (model routing) all printing the same day crystallized a thesis: the control plane is the next moat, not the model. Physical AI also got a new YC darling pattern: Human Archive's gig-worker headset model drew both real-world-data-flywheel excitement and India-privacy concern.
Underneath it all, the macro tape kept compounding the bull case: S&P and Nasdaq fresh records on Micron +19%, Brent flat near $100 on Iran framework progress, Bitcoin steady. The Mistral acquisition of Emmi AI continued the European AI consolidation theme. Memorial Day hangover was real until about 10am ET, then the tape opened up and ran hot until close.
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.