Issue #48 • October 31, 2025
Hi Seedradar Squad! October was marked by a monumental surge of capital into core AI infrastructure and a strategic pivot toward vertical integration. An AI startup, Reflection AI, secured a substantial funding round. This investment mirrored colossal capital flowing into the energy and compute foundations, including multi-billion-dollar rounds for Crusoe (AI data centers) and Base Power (energy solutions).
The hardware arms race escalated dramatically as OpenAI announced a landmark collaboration with Broadcom to develop custom chips, while Anthropic gained access to massive computational power via Google Cloud. Meanwhile, Apple unveiled its new M-series chip with a dramatic boost to on-device AI, confirming that the battle for compute is now about owning the entire stack, from the cloud to the consumer device.
💥 Monumental Funding Moments!
October delivered an unparalleled surge of capital into ventures defining the next industrial and scientific era. Featuring multi-billion-dollar war chests for AI superintelligence rivals, colossal investments into core AI compute infrastructure, reusable space technology, and the clean fusion energy race.
🥇 Reflection AI's $2B Superintelligence Bet: Countering Global AI Rivals
On October 9, 2025, AI startup Reflection AI announced that it had secured $2 billion in a new funding round, a transaction that boosted its valuation to $8 billion.
The round was led by NVIDIA, which contributed $800 million, and included participation from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This massive investment comes as AI companies captured 46% of global venture capital in Q3 2025, positioning Reflection AI as a key Western competitor to rivals like China's DeepSeek in what some are calling a "modern-day space race.”
Reflection AI's competitive moat is built on its elite team of former DeepMind and OpenAI researchers, as well as its pivot to creating an open-source alternative to closed AI labs. The company's core focus is on developing tools to automate software development, with plans to release its first frontier language model, trained on "tens of trillions of tokens," to serve enterprise and government clients pursuing sovereign AI systems.
🔥 More Hot Rounds Across the Board!
💸 Polymarket (10/12) raised up to $2 billion in a Venture round from Intercontinental Exchange. The investment in the prediction market platform highlights a significant convergence of traditional finance and crypto-based technologies. - Read More
💸 Crusoe Energy Systems (10/24) raised $1.38 billion in a financing round led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital. The company develops AI data centers and infrastructure, and the funding will be used to expand its operations to meet the growing demand for AI computation. - Read More
💸 Base Power (10/09) raised $1 billion in a Series C funding round. The energy and utilities startup will use the capital to scale its innovative energy solutions and expand its market presence. - Read More
💸 Kailera Therapeutics (10/14) raised $600 million in a Series B financing led by Bain Capital Private Equity. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based biotech company will use the funds to initiate Phase 3 trials for its injectable therapy to treat obesity. - Read More
💸 Stoke Space Technology (10/08) raised $510 million in a Series D funding round. The investment will help the space technology company advance its reusable rocket technology and expand its launch capabilities. - Read More
🔥 Igniting the Future: Seedradar Ventures Syndicate!
At Seedradar Ventures, we back relentless founders at the earliest stage, investing in teams solving big problems with solutions that deliver a 10–20x greater impact.
Our syndicate offers investors access to a curated pipeline of early-stage startups, sourced through our network.
🤖 The AI Core: News on Transformative Change!
A massive push toward vertical integration and on-device AI is reshaping the core tech landscape. OpenAI partnered with Broadcom to design custom chips, Anthropic gained access to 1 million TPUs for training, and Apple’s M5 delivered a major boost to consumer AI, signaling that the battle for compute is now about owning the entire stack.
OpenAI and Broadcom announced a major collaboration on October 13th to deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators.
OpenAI will design the chips and systems, which Broadcom will then develop and deploy, marking a massive strategic move to build out the foundational hardware required for the next generation of AI.
🚀 More Impactful Highlights!
🤖 Anthropic (10/23)- Announced a landmark expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud, gaining access to up to 1 million of Google's advanced TPU AI chips. The deal is valued at tens of billions of dollars and will provide the massive computational power needed to train and deploy future generations of its Claude AI models. - Read More
🤖 Apple (10/15)- Announced its M5 chip, delivering a massive boost to AI performance with a next-generation GPU architecture that offers over 4x the peak AI compute performance of the M4. The new chip will power the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro, bringing a new level of on-device AI capability to millions of users. - Read More
🤖 OpenAI (10/21)- Launched "Atlas," a new AI-powered web browser for macOS, intensifying its competition with Google. The browser integrates a powerful AI assistant that can summarize complex information, conduct multi-step research, and automate online tasks, representing a significant step toward redefining how users interact with the internet. - Read More
🤖 Microsoft's Copilot (10/26)- Announced its Copilot Fall Release, a major update that brings long-term memory, group chats for up to 32 people, and a new customizable avatar named "Mico." The new features are designed to make the AI companion more personal, social, and context-aware, deeply integrating it into both work and personal life. - Read More
🤖 NVIDIA (10/28)- Launched the "AI Factory for Government," a new reference design for building and deploying secure, full-stack AI. The initiative equips federal agencies and regulated industries to create their own AI platforms compliant with rigorous security standards, accelerating public sector AI adoption. - Read More
🚀 Startup Spotlight: Emerging Game Changers!
A surge of landmark seed funding is driving deep, strategic bets in the foundational layers of the future. This elite group of ventures is pioneering spatial reasoning models for robotics, creating a new US-based source for the crucial semiconductor lithography supply chain, and launching a biosecurity firm backed by the OpenAI Startup Fund to defend against bio-threats.
🧠 General Intuition Raises Landmark Seed to Build AI for the Physical World (10/16)
General Intuition, an AI research lab, secured an unprecedented $133.7 million seed round to build foundational models for spatial reasoning.
Spun out of the gameplay-sharing platform Medal, the company is training AI agents on billions of video game clips to teach them how to perceive and navigate 3D environments, a critical step for creating general-purpose robots and autonomous drones.
🌱 More Seeds of Tomorrow's Giants!
💵 Substrate (10/28) raised a $100 million seed round led by Founders Fund to develop a new generation of lithography tools for semiconductor manufacturing. This is a major geopolitical and industrial play, as the company aims to provide a US-based alternative to the near-monopoly held by Dutch firm ASML in the most critical segment of the chipmaking supply chain. - Read More
💵 Seneca (10/20) closed a combined $60 million in seed and Series A funding to deploy its autonomous firefighting drones. The platform uses AI to detect wildfires and dispatches heavy-lift drones to suppress them before they become catastrophic, creating a new "Resilience Economy" category focused on adapting to and defending against existing climate threats. - Read More
💵 Valthos (10/29) raised $30 million in a seed round led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital, and Founders Fund. The company is building AI systems to rapidly identify novel biological threats and accelerate the design of medical countermeasures, addressing the critical national security challenge of bio-threats in an era of advanced AI. - Read More
💵 Clove (10/14) raised a large $14 million pre-seed round led by Accel. The company aims to automate administrative tasks, allowing advisors to provide more accessible and affordable wealth management services to the underserved mass-affluent market. - Read More
💵 Bronto (10/21) secured a $14 million seed round to reinvent logging for the age of AI. The platform is designed to handle the massive volumes of data generated by AI applications at a fraction of the cost of current solutions, solving an unglamorous but essential infrastructure problem for the entire AI ecosystem. - Read More
🌐 Connecting Minds: October Events & Resources That Empowered!
October's conferences united the global tech elite, with TechCrunch Disrupt launching tomorrow's giants and Dreamforce defining the future of AI-powered enterprise. Simultaneously, Money 20/20 and ODSC West laid the groundwork for fintech innovation and the application of AI at scale.
🛠️ TechCrunch Disrupt Gathers the World's Top Startups and VCs (10/27-29)
The world's most iconic startup conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, returned to San Francisco, bringing together thousands of founders, investors, and tech leaders.
The event is renowned for its Startup Battlefield competition, where early-stage companies debut on a global stage, and features sessions on AI strategy, fundraising, and product-led growth from the biggest names in the industry.
✨ More Event Highlights!
🎉 Dreamforce (10/14-16) -This Salesforce's conference took over San Francisco, drawing tens of thousands of attendees for sessions on CRM, AI, automation, and customer experience. As one of the largest tech conferences in the world, Dreamforce is an invaluable event for startups and enterprises looking to grow within the SaaS ecosystem and build relationships with industry leaders. - Read More
🎉 Money 20/20 USA (10/26-29) -The premier global event for fintech, payments, and financial services innovation convened in Las Vegas. The conference is a critical hub for the entire financial ecosystem, from the biggest banks to the most disruptive startups, focusing on the future of money and the technologies, like AI, that are reshaping the industry. - Read More
🎉 The Open Data Science Conference (ODSC) West (10/28-30) -was held in San Francisco. The event offered hands-on training, workshops, and talks from industry leaders, making it an essential platform for data scientists, engineers, and AI practitioners to gain practical skills and connect with top minds in the field. - Read More
🚀 Beyond October: The Road Ahead!
October proved to be a defining period where capital, custom hardware, and sovereign compute became the new measure of power in the tech world. The unprecedented scale of investment in infrastructure, from specialized chips to dedicated data centers, confirms the industry's singular focus on securing the physical and digital resources needed to sustain the next era of intelligence.
As we move toward the final months of the year, the focus will shift from building the capacity to delivering the results. Watch closely as the themes of practical autonomous agents—those capable of automating complex workflows in biosecurity and industrial robotics—and the commercial viability of AI-driven drug discovery take center stage in the next period. Our continuous market intelligence will remain your essential advantage in identifying the true game-changers and investment opportunities emerging in the new period.
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Disclosure: Seedradar Ventures and/or its general partner may hold investments in some of the companies mentioned in this newsletter. This content is provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.
