---
title: "August 9–10 VC News: Lithography Bets, APAC AI Factories, COPD & Home Robots"
description: "Gap-fill deep dives for Aug 9–10: Source Foundry’s $400M Sequoia-adjacent chip-tool bet, Firmus’s $2B AI factories, Expedition’s $115M COPD Series B, Prime Intellect’s $130M agent stack, and Noen’s ¥500M home robots."
date: 2026-08-10T00:00:00.000Z
tags: ["2026-vc-news", "startup-funding", "venture-capital", "market-analysis", "ai-infrastructure", "semiconductors", "biotech", "robotics"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/2026-august-9-10-investment-news-chips-infra-biotech
---

# August 9–10 VC News: Lithography Bets, APAC AI Factories, COPD & Home Robots

> Gap-fill deep dives for Aug 9–10: Source Foundry’s $400M Sequoia-adjacent chip-tool bet, Firmus’s $2B AI factories, Expedition’s $115M COPD Series B, Prime Intellect’s $130M agent stack, and Noen’s ¥500M home robots.

Earlier August batches already covered Hadrian, Moove, Fireworks, Straiker, Omilia, Sapiom, and the Bessemer cyber cluster. **This roundup is the Aug 9–10 gap-fill** — five deals that still needed VCT-style write-ups: who uses the product, why now, and why *this* capital.

## Snapshot table

| Company | Amount | Stage / type | Key capital | Job |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Firmus](/2026-firmus-2b-coatue-nvidia-blackstone-ai-factories) | $2B | Strategic equity @ >$10.5B | [Coatue](/fund/coatue), NVIDIA, Blackstone, Jane Street | APAC AI factories |
| [Source Foundry](/2026-source-foundry-400m-sequoia-situational-awareness) | ~$400M | Private / stealth (~$5B press) | Situational Awareness + [Sequoia](/fund/sequoia) | Lithography / fab tooling |
| [Prime Intellect](/2026-prime-intellect-130m-series-a-agent-stack) | $130M | Series A @ $1B | Radical Ventures (+ NVIDIA/Intel/Dell/Iconiq) | Own-your-agent training stack |
| [Expedition Tx](/2026-expedition-therapeutics-115m-series-b-copd) | $115M | Series B | General Atlantic (+ RA/Vivo + syndicate) | COPD DPP1 Phase 2 |
| [Noen / Knowin](/2026-noen-intelligence-500m-rmb-angel-home-robots) | ¥500M | Angel++ | Matrix China + [Redpoint](/fund/redpoint-ventures) | Foldable home robots |

## Theme 1 — The machines behind the machines

**[Source Foundry](/2026-source-foundry-400m-sequoia-situational-awareness)** is the purest “chip wall” bet: Sequoia-backed stealth tooling aimed at ASML’s lithography bottleneck, with ~$500M concentrated from Situational Awareness after that fund’s public unwind.

**[Firmus](/2026-firmus-2b-coatue-nvidia-blackstone-ai-factories)** is the deployment layer: $2B to roll NVIDIA-aligned AI Factories across Australia and into APAC, with Coatue returning beside Blackstone and Jane Street.

## Theme 2 — Own the agent stack (or the clinical binary)

**[Prime Intellect](/2026-prime-intellect-130m-series-a-agent-stack)** sells compute + RL + evals so enterprises stop renting their intelligence from frontier APIs — $130M at $1B with a claimed ~$100M ARR.

**[Expedition Therapeutics](/2026-expedition-therapeutics-115m-series-b-copd)** is the non-AI counterweight: $115M at first-patient-in for a China-sourced DPP1 COPD asset — NewCo biotech capital still clears when the Phase 2 plan is sharp.

## Theme 3 — Embodied AI goes home

**[Noen Intelligence](/2026-noen-intelligence-500m-rmb-angel-home-robots)** (Knowin) raised ¥500M Angel++ for GLOW models and a sub-40cm foldable dual-arm home robot targeting 2027 — Matrix China led, Redpoint participated.

## Also noted (not full explainers yet)

Flagged for coverage gaps rather than thin stubs:

- **Lyzr** — company-reported ~$100M Series B “on track” with agent-run fundraising; **no named lead / not confirmed closed** — wait for primary confirmation.
- **AWOMO AI** — ~¥100M seed (China cognitive/world-model research); thin English primary for a full VCT page.
- **Fabulate** — A$4.5M APAC influencer platform raise; outside our core fund/startup JTBD.

## How to use these pages

| Audience | Start here |
| --- | --- |
| Founders (infra) | Firmus + Source Foundry — sell MW online or fab tooling, not slides |
| Founders (agents) | Prime Intellect — ownership + RL stack vs API wrappers |
| Investors / scouts | Follow `/fund/sequoia`, `/fund/coatue`, `/fund/redpoint-ventures` for directory-linked angles |
| Operators / clinical | Expedition for Phase 2 COPD NewCo pattern |

Browse more funds in the [directory](/directory).

### Sources

Primary links live on each deep dive. Roundup anchors:

1. https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/09/embattled-hedge-fund-situational-awareness-invests-400m-in-chip-startup-source-foundry/
2. https://firmus.co/newsroom/firmus-announces-fully-subscribed-usdusd2-billion-strategic-equity-investment-to-accelerate-nvidia-ai-factory-expansion-across-australia-and-asia-pacific
3. https://expeditiontx.com/news/expedition-therapeutics-announces-oversubscribed-115-million-series-b-financing-to-advance-next-generation-dpp1-inhibitor-for-copd/
4. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/08/prime-intellect-raises-130m-series-a-to-help-enterprises-build-their-own-ai-agents/
5. https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3933076448558212