YWR: PEVC Q2 2026 Deal Tracker
Every quarter we check the PE and Venture Capital deal flow to see where they are (and aren’t) allocating capital. It’s good ‘Situational Awareness’ and often gives us ideas for the public markets.
Top 20 Deals in Q2 2026
Let’s go over the highlights:
Anthropic $65bn raise at $965 billion valuation: Recall that Anthropic raised $30bn at a $380bn valuation in February (PEVC Q1 Deal Tracker)! +$585 billion in 3 months!!!
Since our Series G in February, adoption has continued to grow across global enterprise customers, and our run-rate revenue crossed $47 billion earlier this month.
Anthropic has raised $65 billion in Series H funding led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, valuing the company at $965 billion post-money.
The round was co-led by Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, GIC, ICONIQ, and XN. Significant investors in this round include AMP PBC, Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Insight Partners, Jane Street, Lightspeed Venture Partners, MGX, NTTVC, NX1 Capital, Situational Awareness LP, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., and Temasek. It also includes $15 billion of previously committed investments from hyperscalers, including $5 billion from Amazon. Source: Anthropic
Note the $47bn/month revenue run. Back in February it was $14bn. That’s 3x in 3 months.
Prometheus raises $12 bn at $41bn valuation: This is Jeff Bezos’s industrial AI start-up. In case you are worried LLM’s are getting commoditised and the trend is fizzling out, Physical AI and World Models are the new hot trend. Physical AI also requires billions of financing, which will need to go into more chips and data centers.
Prometheus is building what it calls an “artificial general engineer” — software capable of automating the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems, from jet engines to drug compounds.
The ambition is sweeping: replace large swaths of engineering work with AI. Although the startup will automate many aspects of an engineer’s job, Bezos told CNBC that the productivity gains AI delivers will lead to what he calls “labor scarcity” — his term for a world where demand for human workers outpaces supply.
Bezos indicated that a large portion of the capital will go toward the company’s large compute needs. Source: TechCrunch
DeepSeek raises $7.5bn at $50bn valuation: Chinese AI is coming in hot. You might not have been paying attention but DeepSeek expanded from the original LLM model to develop its own AI coding software and are also building their own inference chip. They want to own the full stack (model, software, hardware). Check out their blog to get a sense of the momentum.
Interestingly, the round was structured as a Private Partnership with no voting rights, instead of direct equity. CEO Liang Wengfeng wants to keep total control of the firm. Wengfeng also invested $3bn of the $7.5bn himself. Tencent came in for $1.5bn and CATL invested $740mn. Tencent has its own Hunyuan model, but looks like they want to spread their bets on different models, or they want DeepSeek to use their data centers. CATL is angling “to strategically position themselves to supply the massive energy and storage infrastructure required by power-hungry AI data centers.” Source: DeepSeek
Anduril $5bn raise at $61bn valuation: WW3 is great for DefenceTech. Anduril raised $2.5bn in June 2025 at a $30bn valuation. So +100% valuation gain in a year.
I recommend reading Anduril’s January investor letter on the nature of warfare, which they included as part of their announcement. The highlight for me was the increasing importance of submarines as the only domain where detection is still difficult. I have been waiting to seem some confirmation of this idea. It’s part of why I like Kawasaki Heavy (7012 JP). Thyssen Krupp (TKA GR) also makes submarines. Submarines could be the new hot thing.
Deployment Co raises $4bn: This is OpenAI’s consulting firm to speed the buildout of AI into corporations.
The OpenAI Deployment Company will extend OpenAI’s ability to embed engineers specialized in frontier AI deployment, known as Forward Deployed Engineers, or FDEs, into organizations working on complex problems in demanding environments. These FDEs will work closely with business leaders, operators, and frontline teams to identify where AI can make the biggest impact, redesign organizational infrastructure and critical workflows around it, and turn those gains into durable systems. Source: OpenAI
I’m a little surprised Bain, McKinsey and CapGemini are so eager to bring OpenAI into their business.
The OpenAI Deployment Company is a committed partnership between OpenAI and 19 leading global investment firms, consultancies, and system integrators. The partnership is led by TPG, with Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield as co-lead founding partners, and B Capital, BBVA, Emergence Capital, Goanna, Goldman Sachs, SoftBank Corp., Warburg Pincus, and WCAS as founding partners.
Investors also include leading consulting and systems integration firms, including Bain & Company, Capgemini, and McKinsey & Company. The Deployment Company will also work closely with and alongside OpenAI’s Frontier Alliance partners and the broader industry to drive AI adoption and change management globally.
It’s also interesting OpenAI sees AI integration as a big growth opportunity because public consulting/integration companies like Accenture, EPAM and Cognizant (CTSH) screen highly in our QARV data screen as value stocks. They are doing well but investors think they are ‘disrupted’. So are these firms disrupted by AI or is helping corporations integrate AI actually a huge growth trend for them?
Isomorphic Labs raises $2.1bn and Ineffable Intelligence raises $1.1bn at $5.5bn valuation: I’m grouping these two rounds together because they are both Deep Mind spin-offs.
LONDON, 12 May, 2026 - Isomorphic Labs, an AI-first drug design and development company, today announced it has raised $2.1 Billion in Series B funding. This latest round of investment will accelerate the company’s evolution from pioneering novel AI models to applying them at scale. The financing round is led by Thrive Capital, and includes participation from existing backers Alphabet and GV alongside new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund, significantly expanding Isomorphic Labs’ global capital base.
The new capital will be used for the continued development and deployment of Isomorphic Labs’ AI drug design engine (IsoDDE), accelerating and expanding its pipeline of therapeutic programs towards the clinic. Additionally, the funding will support our existing hiring targets by integrating world-class AI, engineering, drug design, and clinical talent across our sites; this global scale is crucial to Isomorphic Labs’ long-term vision of applying AI-driven breakthroughs to the most complex biological and medical challenges and addressing the global burden of disease. Source: Isomorphic.
Ineffable Intelligence, a British AI lab founded a mere few months ago by former DeepMind researcher David Silver, has raised $1.1 billion in funding at a valuation of $5.1 billion to join the race for novel AI models that could outperform large language models.
Isomorphic and Ineffable are two more datapoints confirming our view that London is the Seattle of AI (The Seattle of AI no one realises yet). We came up with a public way to play this which is acting very well.
Stegra raises EUR 1.4bn to build Green Steel plant in Sweden: This is one of few examples where VC money goes into building a factory, instead of software. But I guess that’s because the main investor is the Wallenberg Family, and not a Silicon Valley VC fund.
The Wallenberg Investments-led consortium consists of existing investors IMAS and Temasek as well as new investors Bolero and SEB-Stiftelsen. In addition, a large group of Stegra’s existing shareholders continue to invest in the company. These investors include Altor, that will become the second largest shareholder, Hy24 and Just Climate, as well as AMF, AP2, Climate Infrastructure Fund**, Kallskär, Kobe Steel, Lingotto Innovation, Scania, Schaeffler, Security Trading* Stena Metall Finans and Swedbank Robur. Also, a group of Stegra’s second lien lenders, led by AIP Management, have decided to support the project as direct equity investors.
Being Europe’s first greenfield steel mill in 50 years, it will set a new benchmark for the industry. We will do things differently and produce green steel in a fully integrated production process, using end-to-end digitalization, electricity from renewable sources, and green hydrogen. By replacing coal with green hydrogen and electrifying the steelmaking process, we will be able to cut CO2 emissions by up to 95% compared to traditional steelmaking. Source: Stegra
Kalshi raises $1bn at $22bn valuation:
Prediction market Kalshi today announced a $1 billion Series F round at a $22 billion valuation, led by Coatue, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest. Source:Kalshi
It seems a bit off that Kalshi gets a $22bn valuation while CME’s valuation is $95bn, but as we see over and over (and why distributions to LP’s are at record lows), one business lives in the land of private valuations where anything goes, while the other is public. Maybe if Kalshi ever IPO’s it will do better than Spacex.
In the meantime Kalshi does have impressive growth and probably gets a scarcity premium for high growth that isn’t AI.
“There are few categories in recent history that have scaled this quickly outside of AI,” said Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of Kalshi. “Event contracts could become a trillion-dollar market, and we’re still in the early stages of that transition.”
Ramp raises $750mn at $44bn valuation: I’m flagging Ramp (accounting software) because their pitch is how to control token spend by routing simple AI tasks to older models and taking advantage of the falling costs for the older models. They call it the Routing Opportunity. It’s a slightly concerning development for the frontier labs.
Slate (Re Car) raises $650mn: Like Stegra, Slate Auto is one of the few start-ups building something which isn’t software. And they are building something completely All-American. A truck!!
The idea is an affordable, modular truck at $25,000 where you can modify it into an open air Jeep or an SUV plus customise many of the parts. Slate also invites people to create their own customised parts for the truck, which they can then sell in the Slate marketplace. Cool idea.
The round was led by TWG.
Slate Auto has closed its $650 million Series C round. Slate possesses the operating capital to reach the next stage of development, thanks to visionary investors dedicated to developing the affordable and customizable vehicle. TWG Global continues its strong support of Slate and led the round. Slate has taken over 160,000 reservations and will deliver its first vehicles to customers in late 2026.
“For nearly four years, Slate has remained laser-focused on the steps needed to develop our vehicle and reindustrialize our Warsaw Factory, and we will deliver Slate Trucks at nearly half the cost of the average new vehicle—as promised,” said Chris Barman, President, Vehicles.
Top PEVC industries by number of portfolio companies
I harp on the continual PE/VC invetment into software because it is already the largest sector concentration for portfolio companies and they keep ploughing more money into it.
This software concentration is the reason why return of capital to LP’s is at 20 year lows. Software is in the midst of record uncertainty and potential disruption. Most of these older software investments are now unsellable in the public markets (without big discounts to NAV). But Silicon Valley doesn’t know how to do anything else.
Bottom PEVC industries by number of portfolio companies
Then you look at all the industries PE/VC won’t invest in, and they are looking pretty good right now. Contract drilling, cutting tools, railroads, auto parts, coal, banks, precious metals, and oil refining. It’s why I flag the rare deals like Stegra or Slate Automotive where someone is doing something different.
Below is link to the data sheet on over 2,700 rounds during Q2. You can go over all the rounds to see which fund is participating, or filter it by fund investor.
For most rounds the data is the Investor (PE or VC firm) and then target company. For some rounds the data also includes the size of the round and % of the round taken by the investor.
