Aug 14–19, 2026: Etched $700M at $21B (Jane Street), Castelion $1B Series C at $13B, ALSO $150M, Unitree’s STAR Market IPO, Rillet $1B, SpaceX closed Cursor, Stripe–OpenRouter announced Aug 19 ($7.5B is press), plus Databricks $190B, Accel $3.5B, Higgsfield, Groq, Wispr, and Gravis.
Through August 30: HubX printed up to $75M at $1.2B pre (Point72), Yardstik $30M Series B, Palona $20M restaurant AI, Capital F $17M debut fund, AusperBio $120M Series C (unnamed lead; no valuation), plus Owner $2.3B, a16z $1.1B Machine Age, OpenAI–Cursor wind-down, Lambda $1B debt (reported), and YC’s apply page rolled to Winter 2027. Town and General Intuition remain talks.
Etched closed $700M at $21B on August 18, 2026, led by Jane Street after the trading firm tested and installed a rack. That doubles July’s $10.3B Series C in a month. Revenue was not disclosed.
Costanoa and First In led Smack Technologies’ $61M Series B (total >$90M) to build Alpha hardware that pairs with Omega command planning already moving into U.S. military production.
SoftBank is the sole investor in Gravis’s $200M Series A (Aug 17, 2026). ETH Zurich spinout sells a mixed-fleet autonomy kit — physical AI for earthmoving, not a new OEM.
Groq’s current valuation is $3.5 billion as of the August 17, 2026 $350M Series A (Disruptive; planned NVIDIA). That sits on top of $650M in June — not instead of it. $3.5B is not a simple down round vs the old ~$6.9B chip-company mark.
