Funding Round

• 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.

• Databricks announced a Series H funding round of $10 billion at a $43 billion valuation on April 18, led by existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, to accelerate development of its AI and data platform. • The funding will support expansion of Databricks' lakehouse architecture, which integrates data warehousing and data lakes, and fund aggressive hiring in engineering and sales across North America. • The round positions Databricks as one of the fastest-growing enterprise software companies and signals strong investor confidence in the competitive data infrastructure market dominated by Snowflake and others.

• Alcatraz, a physical security startup founded by a former Apple Face ID engineer, completed a $50 million Series B funding round on April 13, 2026. • The company focuses on privacy-first artificial intelligence solutions for the physical security sector, leveraging expertise from its founder's background in biometric technology. • The funding reflects growing investor confidence in AI-powered security solutions and privacy-preserving technology approaches.

• Scale AI raised $1 billion on April 9, 2026, at $2.5 billion valuation from Accel and Founders Fund for US data labeling expansion. • Funding supports hiring 1,000 engineers in San Francisco to improve RLHF datasets for models like Llama 4. • Positions Scale as critical US AI infrastructure player, with CEO Alexandr Wang noting 'data is the new oil.'

• Shield AI, a San Diego-based defense tech firm, raised new funding that more than doubled its valuation to $12.7 billion on March 27, 2026. • The company projects revenue exceeding $540 million this year, driven by its Hivemind autonomy software used in drones and fighter-jet programs. • This funding underscores growing investor confidence in AI-powered military autonomy amid rising defense tech demand in the US.