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Databricks $190B Signal, Cognition's ARR Test & Anthropic's $6B Inference Bet
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Enterprise AI infrastructure dominates today's briefing as Databricks closes a record $5B round at $190B, Cognition tests a $40B contingent valuation, and Anthropic moves to acquire Decart AI for $6B. Europe's VC surge, Legora's legal AI breakout, and defense tech going mainstream round out a market-defining week.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Databricks just closed five billion dollars in a single funding round at a valuation of one hundred and ninety billion dollars. That's the largest enterprise AI infrastructure raise on record, and the signal it sends is worth paying close attention to.
Running alongside that is a very different kind of story. Cognition, the company behind the AI coding agent Devin, is in discussions for a new funding round that would value it at over forty billion dollars.
Anthropic is in talks to acquire Decart AI for approximately six billion dollars. For a frontier lab, this is an unusual move.
In Europe, Swedish legal AI startup Legora moved from a five point six billion euro valuation to over ten billion dollars in under four months. Its customers include Linklaters and Deloitte.
European venture funding hit twenty-four billion dollars in Q2, up thirty-three percent quarter on quarter and the strongest quarter in four years. The UK led with ten point four billion.
One more development worth marking. Neros Technologies raised two hundred and fifty million dollars in a Series C for military drones, backed by Sequoia, Thiel Capital, and ASTF.
The through-line across all of this is concentration. Fewer companies, larger rounds, higher stakes.
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