Flapping Airplanes, Blacksmith, Legora
Industry
VC Trends
Overview
Bloomberg, Quartz, TechCrunch, and TNW | Amazon tracked Flapping Airplanes' $1 billion raise at a $6 billion valuation, showing investors funding pre-product AI research focused on extracting more performance from chips and data. TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE separately covered Blacksmith's $66 million Series C and $1 billion valuation, while Legora secured $550 million at an $8.8 billion valuation. The pattern is split: frontier AI attracts speculative scale, while enterprise software rounds increasingly cite revenue and usage metrics. Seaya Ventures' €600 million European fund and Tala's equity-plus-debt expansion show that capital is still reaching broader geographies and financing models.
Key Stories
Flapping Airplanes raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation. Bloomberg led coverage, with Index Ventures and Lux Capital leading and Sequoia, GV, and Kleiner Perkins participating. The one-year-old AI research company is developing methods to reduce data and compute requirements and improve Nvidia chip efficiency, despite having no commercial product. The round indicates that investors are underwriting infrastructure efficiency and research talent ahead of near-term revenue. "The basic thesis is demand for AI is going to outpace chip and data supply," said co-founder Asher Spector. Quartz, TechCrunch, and TNW | Amazon also covered the raise.
Blacksmith raised $66 million in a Sequoia-led Series C at a $1 billion valuation, two months after its $45 million Series B. TechCrunch reported the round. The company reported 17x annual recurring-revenue growth and more than 90 million continuous-integration jobs, positioning it as infrastructure for validating AI-generated code. This is a more execution-backed financing narrative than Flapping Airplanes, although SiliconANGLE noted that AI model vendors could eventually compete in code validation. SiliconANGLE also covered the financing. Axios included the round in a broader deal roundup.
Legora's $550 million Series E lifted its valuation to $8.8 billion from $5.6 billion. TechCrunch and Quartz covered the round. Annual recurring revenue exceeded $200 million, and the company plans international expansion across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. TechCrunch placed the round alongside Harvey's $15.5 billion valuation after a financing of the same size, highlighting intense competition for enterprise legal AI capital and customers.
Spain's Seaya Ventures raised €600 million for Seaya Nova and opened a London office. Bloomberg reported the fundraise, adding Vinoth Jayakumar as a managing partner. Operating from London and Madrid expands the firm's access to European startups and shows that fund formation and geographic reach remain active beyond the AI financing cycle. The fund will be managed by a team of eight investors.
Tala raised a $50 million Series C, led by Revolution Growth, plus $15 million in debt for expansion into India and Mexico. Fast Company covered the financing. The company has extended credit to more than 1.3 million customers and uses mobile-phone data for underwriting where traditional credit bureaus are limited. The combination of equity, debt, and localized operations offers a different growth model from the large AI rounds.
