Weekly Funding Roundup:
Feb 2–8, 2026

Alphabet's autonomous driving subsidiary raised the week's — and quite possibly the year's — largest single funding round. The $16B raise values Waymo at $126B post-money, making it one of the most valuable private tech companies globally. The round drew a massive syndicate of institutional investors, signaling deep conviction in the autonomous vehicle market as Waymo continues to expand its robotaxi service across US cities.

The AI chip maker closed a $1B Series H at a $23B valuation. Cerebras builds the Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), the largest chip ever built, purpose-designed for AI training and inference. With AMD joining as a strategic investor, the round signals growing industry belief that specialized AI hardware will be critical alongside GPUs. The company had previously explored an IPO in 2024 before pivoting back to private fundraising.

The AI voice startup's rapid ascent continued with a $500M Series D that values the company at $11B — remarkable for a company founded just three years ago. ElevenLabs has become the go-to platform for AI-generated speech, with products spanning voice cloning, dubbing, and text-to-speech. The round positions them to expand into video and broader media generation.

The LA-based aviation tech company raised $300M to advance its universal flight system, which aims to make any aircraft autonomously flyable and safer. Skyryse's technology integrates fly-by-wire controls across helicopter and fixed-wing platforms, with certification paths through the FAA.

The San Francisco robotics startup raised $270M at a $1.75B valuation to develop foundation models for robotic manipulation. Bedrock is building general-purpose AI models that allow robots to learn physical tasks in the real world — a bet that the same scaling laws powering language models can apply to embodied intelligence.

The Austin-based aerospace comms company raised $270M to scale production of its phased array antenna systems for satellites and UAVs. CesiumAstro's technology enables software-defined communication links that can dynamically adapt in orbit — critical infrastructure for the growing commercial and defense space economy.

The weather intelligence platform raised $175M to expand its real-time weather data and forecasting capabilities. Tomorrow.io operates its own constellation of weather satellites and provides enterprise-grade weather APIs, making it a key infrastructure player in climate adaptation and supply chain resilience.