AI startups raised over $4.1 billion this week, with watershed moments in open-source AI, legal technology, and energy infrastructure. From Reflection AI’s $2 billion Series B to transformative bets on workflow automation and grid modernization, here are the highlights: AI startups Reflection AI Secures $2 Billion Series B at $8 Billion Valuation Fund Raised: $2 billion Fund Raised: Investors: Nvidia (NVentures), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, Eric Schmidt’s Hillspire, Citi Ventures, B Capital, GIC, 1789 Capital Investors: Brooklyn-based Reflection AI closed a massive $2 billion Series B round at an $8 billion valuation, a 15-fold increase from its $545 million valuation just seven months earlier. Founded in March 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Misha Laskin (CEO) and Ioannis Antonoglou, the startup is positioning itself as both an open-source alternative to closed frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, and a Western counterpart to Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek. Reflection AI Laskin led reward modeling for DeepMind’s Gemini project, while Antonoglou co-created AlphaGo, the AI system that defeated the world champion in Go. Their pedigree underpins Reflection’s pitch that elite AI talent can build frontier models outside established tech giants. The company has built a large-scale LLM and reinforcement learning platform capable of training massive Mixture-of-Experts models at frontier scale. The 60-person team—comprising AI researchers and engineers from DeepMind and OpenAI has secured compute infrastructure to release its first frontier language model in early 2026, trained on tens of trillions of tokens. Reflection’s open-source strategy centers on releasing model weights for public use while keeping datasets and training pipelines largely proprietary. Revenue will come from large enterprises building products on Reflection’s models and from governments developing sovereign AI systems. The company has identified what it calls “a scalable commercial model that aligns with our open intelligence strategy.” The funding drew strong support from American technologists. David Sacks, the White House AI and Crypto Czar, posted: “It’s great to see more American open source AI models. A meaningful segment of the global market will prefer the cost, customizability, and control that open source offers. We want the U.S. to win this category too.” Base Power Raises $1 Billion Series C to Transform Home Energy Storage Fund Raised: $1 billion Fund Raised: Investors: Addition (lead), Trust Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz, Ribbit Capital, CapitalG, Spark Capital, BOND, Lowercarbon Capital, Avenir, Glade Brook, Positive Sum, 1789 Capital Investors: Austin-based Base Power closed a $1 billion Series C round to expand its distributed home battery network across the United States. The round values the company at $3 billion pre-money. Co-founded in 2023 by CEO Zach Dell and COO Justin Lopas, Base Power has deployed more than 100 megawatt-hours of residential storage in Texas in under two years, making it one of the country’s fastest-growing distributed energy companies. Base Power leases batteries to homeowners, who pay between $695 and $995 upfront for 25-kilowatt-hour or 50-kilowatt-hour batteries—both significantly larger than competitors. The 25-kilowatt battery doubles a single Tesla Powerwall. The batteries can keep households powered for up to 48 hours. Customers pay a monthly fee of $19 or $29 and commit to buying electricity from Base Power for three years at 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour plus monthly service charges. Grid operators pay Base Power for power they receive from the batteries during peak demand periods, and these payments are passed to customers, helping offset power bills. The virtual power plant model turns homes into distributed energy resources that strengthen grid resilience while reducing costs. The funding will accelerate Base Power’s first major battery manufacturing factory, currently under construction in downtown Austin at the site of the former Austin American-Statesman printing press. The company plans to build a second U.S. manufacturing facility as it scales domestic production capacity. Base Power intends to expand beyond Texas into additional states and eventually international markets. n8n Hits $2.5 Billion Valuation with $180 Million Series C Fund Raised: $180 million Fund Raised: Investors: Accel (lead), Meritech Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Evantic, Visionaries Club, NVentures (Nvidia), T.Capital (Deutsche Telekom), Sequoia Capital, HV Capital, Highland Europe, Felicis Ventures Investors: Berlin-based n8n, founded in 2019 by Jan Oberhauser, secured $180 million in Series C funding at a $2.5 billion valuation seven months after its $60 million Series B. The workflow automation platform has emerged as the AI orchestration layer for enterprises, with more than 80% of workflows built on n8n now embedding AI agents. n8n positions itself between two extremes in the agentic AI landscape. Some platforms put everything in AI’s hands—you write prompts and hope for results, with entire logic determined by model interpretation. Others require strict, rule-based routing that’s powerful for engineers who code every pathway, but impractical for business users who need rapid iteration. n8n combines the flexibility of code with the accessibility of no-code, letting teams build dynamic, intelligent workflows that adapt to changing business needs. The company’s “fair-code” licensing model blends open-source principles with commercial viability. The platform connects hundreds of applications, automates complex business processes, and integrates AI models from multiple providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google—giving companies flexibility without ecosystem lock-in. Annual recurring revenue has surged past $40 million, and revenue has grown tenfold in the past year. The company serves over 3,000 enterprise clients, including Vodafone, SoftBank, and SEAT. The funding will expand n8n’s engineering team, accelerate product development, and support international expansion, with the U.S. market now accounting for roughly half of users. EvenUp Doubles Valuation to $2 Billion with $150 Million Series E Fund Raised: $150 million Fund Raised: Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners (lead), REV (RELX Ventures), B Capital, SignalFire, Adams Street Partners, Premji Invest, Bain Capital Ventures, HarbourVest, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Broadlight Capital Investors: San Francisco-based EvenUp, founded in 2019 by Rami Karabibar (CEO), Raymond Mieszaniec, and Saam Mashhad, raised $150 million in Series E funding at a valuation exceeding $2 billion, doubling in less than a year. The personal injury AI platform brings total capital raised to $385 million across four rounds in just 24 months, each preempted by investors. EvenUp’s Claims Intelligence Platform, powered by its proprietary Piai model, is trained on hundreds of thousands of injury cases and millions of medical records. Unlike traditional tools, EvenUp’s AI acts proactively, drafting, reviewing, and strategizing at superhuman scale across the entire case lifecycle. The platform has helped secure over $10 billion in settlements and resolved cases totaling thousands of years of accelerated timelines. Case volume on the platform nearly doubled in the past six months to 10,000 cases per week. The company serves more than 2,000 law firms, including 20% of the Top 100 U.S. personal injury firms. Annual recurring revenue has doubled year-over-year, with nearly 90% of new sales now coming from products launched in 2025. EvenUp’s new Mirror Mode feature allows firms to upload a winning draft and instantly generate customized versions that match its tone, structure, and legal precision. One Ohio firm increased an initial settlement offer from $50,000 to $1.75 million using EvenUp’s Case Companion to dismantle defense arguments in real-time mediation. Another California firm scaled past $500 million in annual results with 70% year-over-year growth without increasing headcount. The funding will expand EvenUp beyond contract review into the full scope of transactional work and scale go-to-market teams to capture more of the $1 trillion transactional legal services market. Spellbook Raises $50 Million Series B at $350 Million Valuation Fund Raised: $50 million Fund Raised: Investors: Khosla Ventures (lead, Keith Rabois), Threshold Ventures, Inovia Capital, Bling Capital, Moxxie Ventures, Path Ventures, Jean-Michel Lemieux Investors: Toronto-based Spellbook, often described as “Cursor for contracts,” closed a $50 million Series B round led by Keith Rabois, Managing Director at Khosla Ventures. The round values the company at $350 million post-money and brings total funding to over $80 million. Rabois will join Spellbook’s board of directors. Founded in 2022 by CEO Scott Stevenson and co-founders, Spellbook was the first company to launch a generative AI copilot for lawyers. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5, the platform is optimized for legal-specific approaches to contract law. The company has surpassed 10 million contracts reviewed, serving nearly 4,000 law firms and in-house legal teams across 80 countries, more customers than any comparable AI contract review product. Customers include Nestlé, eBay, and law firm Kennedys. The company is on pace to triple revenue this year. Unlike competitors requiring multi-month enterprise rollouts, Spellbook works instantly within existing workflows—right in Microsoft Word. The platform can connect with in-house document resources, including OneDrive and Dropbox, to ingest, analyze, and index personalized and teamwide contract language. This puts legal teams’ own deal history to work by finding past clauses already used by the firm that fit the current contract. With generative AI, it finds the right context to reveal appropriate clauses without manual keyword searches. The funding will expand Spellbook beyond contract review into the full scope of transactional work, scale go-to-market teams, and enhance AI capabilities with deeper contract intelligence grounded in real-time market data. Other Notable Rounds HavocAI raised $85 million to scale production of its autonomous AI-driven military boats, retrofitting commercial vessels with proprietary autonomy software. Co-founded by former U.S. Navy officers in 2024, HavocAI has deployed over 20 robotic vessels for the U.S. Army, Navy, and allied forces including Poland. HavocAI Meanwhile secured $82 million in Series B funding co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and Haun Ventures to scale Bitcoin-denominated insurance and annuity products. The Bermuda-based startup is regulated and issues all premiums and claims in Bitcoin, bringing total 2025 funding to $122 million. Meanwhile AI2 Incubator closed an $80 million third fund to back the next generation of AI startups emerging from the Allen Institute for AI. AI2 Incubator Juicebox raised $36 million total ($30 million Series A led by Sequoia Capital) to expand its AI recruiting platform PeopleGPT. The San Francisco startup now serves over 2,500 companies and has surpassed $10 million in annual recurring revenue with just a dozen employees. Juicebox Routefusion closed $26.5 million in Series A funding led by PeakSpan Capital to expand its cross-border payments platform. The Austin-based fintech provides a unified API that lets businesses embed international banking services, multi-currency accounts, and forex directly into their products. Routefusion Knapsack secured $10 million in Series A funding to expand its intelligent product design platform for engineering teams building AI-first applications. Knapsack Zingage raised $10 million in seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners to automate home healthcare logistics using AI agents that handle caregiver scheduling, patient emergencies, and compliance paperwork. Zingage Burnt landed $3.8 million in seed funding led by Penny Jar Capital (Stephen Curry’s venture firm) to modernize the food supply chain with its AI-powered operating system. The platform already handles over $10 million in orders monthly for specialty food distributors. Burnt Civilized AI announced $2 million in seed funding led by Benson Capital to expand its AI platform for municipal services and GovTech applications. Civilized AI International Spotlight LayerX (Japan) secured $100 million Series B led by Technology Cross Ventures, marking TCV’s first investment in a Japanese startup. The Tokyo-based AI SaaS company serves over 15,000 enterprise clients with its Bakuraku workflow automation platform. LayerX Lexroom (Italy) raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Base10 Partners to scale its generative AI platform for European legal teams. Founded in 2023, the startup uses AI models trained on localized European legal data to help firms research case law and draft complex documents across multiple jurisdictions. Lexroom Important Takeaway This week’s $4.1+ billion in AI funding represents a decisive shift toward practical implementation over pure innovation. Reflection AI’s $2 billion round signals that open-source superintelligence has become a strategic priority for the U.S. tech ecosystem, with government officials publicly championing American open models to compete globally. Meanwhile, established categories like legal tech and energy infrastructure attracted massive growth capital, with EvenUp, Spellbook, and Base Power collectively raising $1.2 billion to transform trillion-dollar industries. The emergence of specialized AI orchestration tools like n8n at a $2.5 billion valuation demonstrates that the infrastructure layer connecting AI models to business workflows has become as valuable as the models themselves. Across 15+ deals spanning infrastructure, applications, and vertical AI solutions, the week underscored that capital continues flowing to companies solving real enterprise problems with measurable ROI—not just building foundation models. Read our Q3 2025 Global AI Funding Report for in-depth analysis of quarterly trends, regional breakdowns, and investor insights shaping the AI ecosystem. Read our Q3 2025 Global AI Funding Report for in-depth analysis of quarterly trends, regional breakdowns, and investor insights shaping the AI ecosystem. Q3 2025 Global AI Funding Report Check out our weekly roundups for comprehensive coverage of venture capital activity in the artificial intelligence space. weekly roundups

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