Billion Series

• Shield AI, gevestigd in San Diego en opgericht in 2015, verzekerde zich in maart 2026 van 1,5 miljard dollar in haar Series G-financieringsronde, waarmee de totale financiering op 2,5 miljard dollar komt. • De investering ondersteunt vooruitgang in AI-gestuurde autonome systemen voor defensietoepassingen, ter verbetering van de nationale veiligheidscapaciteiten. • Deze enorme ronde onderstreept het groeiende vertrouwen van investeerders in Amerikaanse defensie-tech startups te midden van stijgende geopolitieke spanningen.

• Moonshot AI, a leading Chinese chatbot maker focused on commercial AI applications, secured $20 billion in its Series E funding round led by Meituan. • The massive investment, one of the largest in AI history, will accelerate development of advanced AI models and expand commercial deployments across Asia. • This funding underscores China's aggressive push in AI amid global competition, positioning Moonshot to challenge U.S. giants like OpenAI.

• Anthropic announced a $4 billion Series E funding round on April 25, 2026, with lead investments from Amazon and Google, valuing the AI safety firm at $61.5 billion post-money. • The capital will accelerate development of Claude 4 models and expand enterprise AI infrastructure across US data centers in California and Virginia. • This funding underscores intensifying competition in AI amid regulatory scrutiny, positioning Anthropic as a key challenger to OpenAI's dominance.

• Elon Musk's xAI closed a $6 billion Series C on April 25, 2026, backed by Sequoia and a16z, to build a 100,000-GPU supercluster in Memphis, Tennessee. • Funding supports Grok-3 development, targeting 5x faster inference than GPT-5, with first phase online by December 2026. • Initiative aims to repatriate AI compute to US soil, creating 1,200 high-tech jobs amid national security concerns over overseas data centers.

• Silicon Valley-based Resolve AI secured $40M in Series A extension funding, boosting its valuation to $1.5B to establish Resolve AI Labs focused on AI models optimized for production environments. • The funding supports development of reliable AI systems tailored for enterprise-scale deployment in US tech sectors. • This round highlights investor confidence in Resolve AI's infrastructure for bridging research-to-production AI gaps amid booming demand.

• Elon Musk's xAI announced a $6 billion Series C funding round on April 19, 2026, led by Sequoia Capital, valuing the startup at $24 billion post-money. • Funds will expand the Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, to 300,000 Nvidia GPUs for Grok AI training. • Investment accelerates US AI infrastructure race, countering China's advances and supporting domestic chip production.

• Perplexity AI announced a Series D funding round of $500 million at an $8.5 billion post-money valuation on April 19, led by prominent venture capital firms and strategic investors including Nvidia and Saudi PIF. • The funding will support expansion of Perplexity's AI search engine capabilities, development of enterprise API offerings, and geographic expansion into European and Asian markets with localized language models. • The round positions Perplexity as a serious challenger to Google Search and reflects growing investor confidence in AI-powered search alternatives and conversational information retrieval platforms.

• Anthropic secured $8 billion in its Series E funding round on April 9, 2026, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from US-based investors including Amazon and Google. • The funds will accelerate development of Claude 4 AI models and expand enterprise AI infrastructure in US data centers. • This round values Anthropic at $61.5 billion post-money, solidifying its position as a leading US AI challenger to OpenAI amid intensifying competition.