Cohere's $500M Fund, Anthropic's Strategic Move & Big Tech Partnerships! 🚀

Issue #26 • August 15, 2025

Hi Seedradar Squad! This week, AI lab Cohere has secured a massive funding round to fuel the growth of its enterprise-grade platform, positioning it as a major competitor to established giants. This is happening alongside AI safety leader Anthropic's strategic acqui-hire of the Humanloop team to bolster its enterprise AI capabilities.

Besides, high-profile ventures from Sam Altman and Parag Agrawal are making headlines, while Oracle and Google have announced a major partnership to integrate AI models into cloud infrastructure. Capital is also flowing into a diverse array of startups, from biotech firms advancing women's health to AI platforms redefining workflow automation.

🤖 Cohere Secures $500M to Advance Enterprise-Focused AI Platform

AI lab Cohere raised $500M in a round led by Radical and Inovia, pushing its valuation to $6.8B.

The funding will fuel the growth of its enterprise-grade AI platform, which emphasizes data privacy, customizability, and flexible deployment options to compete with major players like OpenAI and Google.

🤝 Anthropic Acqui-hires Humanloop Team to Bolster Enterprise AI Safety

AI safety leader Anthropic announced the strategic acqui-hire of the core team from Humanloop, a platform for AI evaluation and prompt management.

The move, which includes Humanloop's CEO, CTO, and CPO, is designed to accelerate Anthropic's development of robust, enterprise-ready AI systems with a strong focus on safety, compliance, and monitoring.

💰 Snapshots: What Else Is Happening?

Funding News

Sam Altman's Merge Labs is preparing to raise $250M at an $850M valuation. The company aims to develop less invasive, high-bandwidth BCIs for broad human-AI integration, diverging from the initial medical focus of competitors like Neuralink.  - Read More

Parag Agrawal, the former CEO of Twitter, launched Parallel Web Systems, a new venture focused on building infrastructure for AI agents to search and interact with the web. The company has raised $30M from investors including Khosla Ventures to create a new web architecture built "with, by, and for AIs."  - Read More

Oracle and Google announced a major partnership to integrate Google's Gemini AI models, including the latest Gemini 2.5, into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This allows Oracle's enterprise customers to use Gemini's advanced AI capabilities for finance, HR, and supply chain applications, paying with their existing Oracle Cloud credits.  - Read More

Google announced Gemma 3 270M, a new compact and highly efficient model in its Gemma 3 family, designed for task-specific fine-tuning. With 270 million parameters, the model is optimized for on-device applications, offering significant power efficiency and enabling developers to build lean, cost-effective systems for tasks like text classification and data extraction.  - Read More

💰 Sharks of the Week!

Funding News

️‍🔥 Andreessen Horowitz- Led a $17.5 million Series A for AI automation startup Sola, an AI-native platform redefining automation, enabling the enterprises of tomorrow to automate workflows with intelligent agents beyond the limits of traditional RPA.  - Read More

️‍🔥 Bain Capital Ventures- Was a key investor in the $155 million funding round ($135 million equity, $20 million debt) for Loyal, a biotech firm developing drugs to extend the lifespan of dogs.   - Read More

️‍🔥 Overwater Ventures- Led a $44 million venture round for Gameto, a biotech company focused on women's health, to fund US clinical trials for its fertility therapy.  - Read More

️‍🔥Peak XV Partnerss- Led a $21 million Series A funding round for Arintra, a startup using AI to automate medical coding for health systems.  - Read More

🚀 Startup Radar: Movers, Shakers & Future Makers

Seed Radar - Startups
🤖 Refold AI
#EnterpriseAPI

Platform that automates enterprise API integrations using autonomous agents.

$6.5M Seed  Read More

♾️ Infinity L.
#ContractIntelligence

AI-native contract intelligence platform designed to help enterprises save money.

$5M Seed  Read More

💬 Continua
#SocialAI

Company improving social AI with dynamic, agentic conversations in group chats.

$8M Seed  Read More

🎮 Qloud Games
#Gaming

Independent studio building Loftia, a cozy, non-combat "solarpunk" MMO game.

$5M Seed  Read More

💿 Protege
#AIData

Platform enabling the secure exchange of proprietary data for artificial intelligence training.

$25M Series A   Read More

🧠 Jocasta N.
#Biotech

Preclinical stage company advancing a longevity protein program for managing cognitive impairment.

$35M Series A  Read More

📈 Evertune
#AI-Marketing

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI marketing platform for brands.

$15M Series A  Read More

💰 Cache
#FinTech #WealthTech

Fintech offering products for managing and optimizing stock positions.

$12.5M Series A  Read More

🛠️ Trending AI Tools to Supercharge Your Workflow!

Tools List Newsletter

🧠 HolmesAI

Platform for creating and deploying personalized, persona-based AI agents.

📈 Drivepoint

An AI-powered strategic finance platform built for consumer and retail brands.

💰 Dealops

Pricing and quoting infrastructure for modern revenue teams at SaaS companies.

🗣️ Palabra AI

Provides real-time, AI-powered speech-to-speech translation for events, calls, and APIs

📊 Julius

A data analysis tool that allows users to ask questions and visualize data using natural language.

📝 Granola

An "invisible" AI tool that automatically takes notes for your meetings without a bot in the call.

💼 Join the Revolution: Hot Startup Jobs!

Job Board
Animator
Remote (Everywhere)
23 Designs
$65K-$80K  - Apply here
Founding Engineer
Remote (California)
hostAI
$150K-$200K  - Apply here
Full-Stack Dev.
Remote (Everywhere)
Crateble
$60K-$100K  - Apply here
Design Engineer
Fayetteville (US)
Aspire Solutions
$60K–$85K  - Apply here

💼 Resource of the Week: Compliance Checklist!

The Consolidated AI Compliance & Ethics Checklist for 2025

A synthesized checklist for AI-driven companies, combining best practices for navigating the complex regulatory landscape of 2025. It covers critical areas like the EU AI Act, bias mitigation, explainability, data privacy, model monitoring, and vendor accountability, providing a framework for building trustworthy and compliant AI systems.

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