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QUANTLOGIX STARTUP DAILY
THURSDAY · 09/24/2026 SILICON VALLEY
Displayed Rounds
5
Past 7 days
Disclosed Capital
$174M
Past 7 days
Tracked Startups
2,523
QL private book
Mega-Round Board
8
$100M+ recent
Markdown Watch
100
names flagged

Rainmaker Series B ($100M) leads the startup tape

Tracked disclosed rounds last 7 days: 5 deals, $174M — down 97.5% from the prior week's $6.8B across 29 rounds. Caveat: this covers 2,523 tracked companies, not the whole market, and a single week is noise, not regime change. The tape itself skews early: Bain Capital Ventures led Corridor's $25M seed (Insurtech), M13 led Baselayer's $35M Series A (Fintech), Inovia led Feldera's Series A (amount undisclosed), Atum emerged from stealth with $14M, and Rainmaker's $100M Series B accounted for over half the week's capital. Energy, Cybersecurity and AI all printed zero tracked rounds this week after sizeable prior-week totals.

Daily Startup News

Fresh in the last 24h but outside our tracked tape: Noetive raised $41M (WSJ), Cornelis Networks raised $205M, and Betterhood raised Rs 11.5 crore seed led by Sauce VC. On valuations: Island hit a $6.4B round valuation with CNBC citing AI-attack-driven spending; an unnamed Seattle space startup reached $1.6B. Skillmatics is reportedly in talks for $75M at $420M — talks, not a signed round. Bloomberg reports Modal and Baseten in funding talks. Treat all talks items as unconfirmed until terms print.

Valuations & Secondary Transactions

Our Markdown Watch flags 124 scored names; top overvaluation-risk readings: Linktree (86/100, +483% vs public comps), Replit (86/100, +197%) and Xendit (80/100, +1943%). The ledger holds 100 on watch with fresh cuts: Anchorage Digital -28.6%, Etched -51.5%, Found -70%. 2,399 tracked companies remain unscored — treat scored names as a sample, not a census. Context pieces this week argue valuations running ahead of execution get repriced at the next round; the mark cuts are consistent with that.

No round-specific post-money valuations captured in the last seven days.

Historical round marks are not replaced with today's company valuation. Mark changes compare disclosed post-money levels, not investor returns; dilution and financing terms may differ. Secondary indications, fund marks and enterprise values in linked reporting are separate evidence, not interchangeable round valuations.

Capital by Sector

ClimateClimate · $100M disclosed in window$100MFintechFintech · $35M disclosed in window$35MInsurtechInsurtech · $25M disclosed in window$25MFinancial SoftwareFinancial Software · $14M disclosed in window$14M

Disclosed round capital in the window. Undisclosed amounts count as zero.

The Funding Tape — Past 7 days

Tracked disclosed rounds last 7 days: 5 deals, $174M — down 97.5% from the prior week's $6.8B across 29 rounds. Caveat: this covers 2,523 tracked companies, not the whole market, and a single week is noise, not regime change. The tape itself skews early: Bain Capital Ventures led Corridor's $25M seed (Insurtech), M13 led Baselayer's $35M Series A (Fintech), Inovia led Feldera's Series A (amount undisclosed), Atum emerged from stealth with $14M, and Rainmaker's $100M Series B accounted for over half the week's capital. Energy, Cybersecurity and AI all printed zero tracked rounds this week after sizeable prior-week totals.

DateCompanyRoundAmountReported Post-MoneyLeadSector
2026-09-22 Atum Undisclosed (stealth emergence) $14M Financial Software
2026-09-22 Baselayer Series A $35M M13 Fintech
2026-09-21 Corridor Seed $25M Bain Capital Ventures Insurtech
2026-09-21 Feldera Series A Inovia Capital Database Software
2026-09-21 Rainmaker Series B $100M Climate

Stage Mix — Deals & Capital by Stage

Where the window's activity sits on the funding ladder: deal count (solid) against disclosed capital (faded) per stage, with the companies behind each cluster. Stages come from the reported round labels; undisclosed amounts count as zero capital.

Seed: 1Series A: 2Series B: 1Other: 1
Seed · 1 deal · $25MSeries A · 2 deals · $35MSeries B · 1 deal · $100MOther · 1 deal · $14M
SeedSeed: 1 deal1 dealSeed: $25M$25MSeries ASeries A: 2 deals2 dealsSeries A: $35M$35MSeries BSeries B: 1 deal1 dealSeries B: $100M$100MOtherOther: 1 deal1 dealOther: $14M$14M
Seed
1 deal · $25M disclosed · 14% of window capital
Series A
2 deals · $35M disclosed · 20% of window capital
Series B
1 deal · $100M disclosed · 58% of window capital
Other
1 deal · $14M disclosed · 8% of window capital

VC Activity & Lead Investors

Fund formation stayed active even as deal flow slowed: Bessemer closed $5.75B across BVP XIII and Century Fund III (announced, closed per report); Connect Ventures took a $55M first close toward an $80M Fund V; EIF committed €20M to Educapital's third fund; and Carnelian launched a Rs. 2,000 crore India mid-market PE vehicle. Corporate and non-traditional LPs are in motion too — Tesco invested in a food-innovation venture fund and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation launched a $100M venture fund. ARK tokenized its ARK Venture Fund with Securitize; distribution innovation, not new capital. Note: fund sizes are not startup deployments.

Lead InvestorDisplayed DealsAssociated Round Sizes
M131$35M
Bain Capital Ventures1$25M
Inovia Capital1

Total sizes of associated rounds, not the lead investor's check sizes. Investor types are not inferred from their names.

Private Equity & Growth Buyouts

PE signals point both ways. Family offices plan to double down on stocks and PE despite inflation worries per a Citi survey; 'private credit steady as PE rebounds' headlines continued. But the week's marquee item is structural: Hamco plans to launch a Pan-Asia PE fund natively on-chain via Chainlink and Synthesys — an announcement, unproven at scale. Separately, Mother Jones reports the SEC wants to scrap a key anti-corruption rule targeting PE — a regulatory-relief story, not a capital story. Acumen invested $5M in Sun King's Zambia business; a UK PE-backed tech group eyes a £100m exit.

Investment Funds & Capital Formation

LP behavior is the quiet counterweight to the thin deal tape: Hawaii ERS is weighing more public equity as its risk strategy evolves — a shift away from private exposure at the margin — while Blackstone opened a private markets fund to non-US investors, widening the retail/institutional funnel. Bessemer's $5.75B close and Connect Ventures' $55M first close mean dry powder is arriving even as tracked deal counts collapse week-over-week. The gap between fund closing and deployment typically resolves with a lag; this week's -97.5% is a supply-side pause, not yet a demand verdict.

M&A & Exits

A quiet but real M&A day: UAE proptech-adjacent Huspy acquired Integra Finance alongside an $86M Italy expansion (terms of the acquisition itself not itemized); Groundcover acquired Israeli startup Wand for 'tens of millions' per Calcalist; security firm Upwind bought AI security startup Aegis and opened a cyber research lab; D.C. startup Statecraft made its first acquisition of a McLean geospatial firm. Buyer mix — growth-stage strategics acquiring small capabilities — is typical of thin funding weeks when sellers prefer tuck-ins to down rounds.

Off-Book Wire

Funding headlines from outside the tracked book — sourced links, not QL data.

Mega-Round Board

The largest recent private rounds ($100M+) across the tracked book — 2181 ranked. Full board: quantlogix.ai/mega-rounds.

OpenAIOpenAI · $122B · Late-stage primary122000WaymoWaymo · $16B · 2026 mega-round16000Scale AIScale AI · $14B · Series F + Meta investment14300PrometheusPrometheus · $12B · Funding12000SwitchSwitch · $11B · Buyout/LBO11000Blue OriginBlue Origin · $10B · Private (Bezos-funded)10000

🎯 QL Score Movers

Biggest overnight changes in the graded company score — scores only move when disclosed data moves, and every repricing grades the score that was standing.

CompanyScoreΔ
Shippo 43 → 57 +14

Private Markets Weekday Digest · 09/24/2026

Display-only private-markets tape from the tracked roster — formations, priced fundraises, valuation marks, and U.S. VC lead activity. No inferred amounts; empty sections stay empty.

Window: 2026-09-24 · sources: private-companies.json, investors.json

New company formations

No rows in the report window.

Fund raises

No rows in the report window.

Valuation marks

No rows in the report window.

Top U.S. VC activity

No rows in the report window.

No in-tree private-market events matched the report window; amounts and valuations were not inferred.

Private Market Desk — Evening Edition · 09/23/2026

The Silicon Valley Private Market Daily — the 8pm PT desk close: qualified raises, roster re-rates and sector velocity from the QL private-market pipeline.

💰 Notable Raises

  • Ema$77M Series B led by Creaegis (+ Accel, Section 32, Prosus). AI agents for enterprise workflows Ema's funding demonstrates the continued shift of enterprise budgets toward agentic AI platforms for core operational processes.

🔍 Reported, not yet verified

  • TEKEVER — reported $580M Series D; details did not clear cross-source verification — held for manual review, excluded from the dataset.

📊 Valuation re-rates (roster marks that moved)

  • Impulse Space — $4.3B (2026-Q2) → $5.6B (+31%) on Series D extension.
  • Factory — $1.5B (2026-Q2) → $5B (+233%) on Growth round (series undisclosed).
  • Profound — $1B (2026-Q1) → $1.8B (+80%) on Series D led by Sequoia Capital / Kleiner Perkins (co-led).
  • Temporal — $5B (2026-Q1) → $12.6B (+151%) on Series E led by Lightspeed.
  • The Boring Company — $5.7B (2022-Q2) → $23B (+305%) on Series D led by United Arab Emirates and affiliated investment entities.
  • Harvey — $11B (2026-Q1) → $15.5B (+41%) on Later Stage VC led by Diffusion / Lightspeed Venture Partners (co-led).
  • Cognition — $26B (2026-Q2) → $48B (+85%) on Later Stage VC led by Andreessen Horowitz / Accel / Founders Fund / General Catalyst / Avenir (co-led).
  • Upwind — $1.5B (2026-Q1) → $3.8B (+153%) on Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners, TCV.
  • AfterQuery — $300M (2026-Q2) → $3.2B (+967%) on Growth round (reported).
  • Fluidstack — $7.5B (2026-Q1) → $18B (+140%) on Growth round (series undisclosed) led by Jane Street.
  • Instinct — $500M (2026-Q3) → $2.5B (+400%) on Series B led by Index Ventures / Benchmark (co-led).
  • Firmus Technologies — $5.5B (2026-Q1) → $10.5B (+91%) on Growth Equity led by Nvidia & Coatue.
  • Hadrian — $1.6B (2025-Q3) → $7.9B (+392%) on Series D led by JPMorgan Strategic Investment Group.
  • HappyRobot — $500M (2025-Q3) → $1.2B (+140%) on Series C led by Prysm Capital.
  • Owner — $1B (2025-Q2) → $2.3B (+130%) on Series D led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives.
  • K2 Space — $3B (2025-Q4) → $6.8B (+127%) on Series D led by Kleiner Perkins / ICONIQ Capital.
  • Anthropic — $965B (2026-Q2) → $1000B (+4%) on Strategic Investment led by AMD.
  • Wonder — $7B (2025-Q2) → $9.7B (+38%) on Series D.
  • Baseten — $5B (2026-Q1) → $13B (+160%) on Series F led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction, Spark Capital.
  • Prometheus — $38B (2026-Q2) → $41B (+8%) on Funding led by Jeff Bezos.
  • Ramp — $32B (2025-Q3) → $44B (+38%) on Series F led by ICONIQ / GIC / Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

⚡ Mega-round momentum (sector velocity, closed rounds)

  • AI — $19B across 24 rounds / 24 companies (accelerating, 24 vs. 6 prior rounds). Top: Anthropic $5B (Strategic Investment).
  • Energy — $3.4B across 5 rounds / 5 companies (accelerating, 5 vs. 2 prior rounds). Top: Valar Atomics $1B (Series B).
  • Defense — $3.4B across 5 rounds / 5 companies (accelerating, 5 vs. 1 prior round). Top: Helsing $1.8B (Late Stage).
  • Transportation — $3B across 1 round / 1 company (steady, 1 vs. 1 prior round). Top: The Boring Company $3B (Series D).
  • Space / Defense — $1.5B across 2 rounds / 2 companies (new, new vs. a quiet prior window). Top: Stoke Space $1B (Series E).
  • Defense / Industrials — $1.4B across 1 round / 1 company (new, new vs. a quiet prior window). Top: Hadrian $1.4B (Series D).

🚀 New / Stealth Companies

  • No fresh stealth intake surfaced this window.

🏦 Private-Market Fund Watch

  • No new fund registrations, launches, or portfolio changes cleared primary-source verification in this window.

📊 Robinhood Ventures Performance

  • RVI — $28.18 close (2026-09-23) · day -0.95% · since first available close (2026-03-06) +34.19% · NAV/premium-discount not published in today's qualified inputs.
  • RVII — $22.36 close (2026-09-23) · day -1.67% · since first available close (2026-08-13) -2.57% · NAV/premium-discount not published in today's qualified inputs.

🏛️ Institutional Ownership (13F)

  • RVI: no holders currently indexed in the curated top-manager 13F universe. The quarter-over-quarter read is BEARISH: 0 new, 0 increased, 0 decreased, and 1 exited (2026-03-31 → 2026-06-30). Coverage is filing-based and can lag quarter-end by up to 45 days.
  • RVII: no holders currently indexed in the curated top-manager 13F universe. Coverage is filing-based and can lag quarter-end by up to 45 days.

🧭 Macro read

The private market landscape on September 23, 2026, is heavily dominated by AI-focused capital deployment, evidenced by Bessemer Venture Partners' new $5.75 billion allocation targeting seed to growth AI stages. There is clear concentration of investment in specialized enterprise AI and defense technology, with large raises from Ema and TEKEVER suggesting institutional appetite remains high for companies that demonstrate operational efficiency or strategic utility in high-demand sectors. Despite this, uncertainty lingers regarding valuation sustainability as secondary market pricing shifts and companies like Starcloud enter funding talks at aggressive premiums.

🗂️ Dataset updated: added 1 company to the QuantLogix private-companies list — Ema — 2,523 → 2,524. Append-only.

🔗 Sources

  • [TechStartups](https://techstartups.com/2026/09/23/startup-funding-news-today-september-23-2026-tekever-f13-brahma-ai-noxtua-standardx-more/)
  • [TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/23/ema-raises-77m-as-ai-starts-eating-into-enterprise-software-and-services/)
  • [RVI market performance](https://polygon.io/)
  • [SEC Form 13F methodology](https://www.sec.gov/divisions/investment/13ffaq.htm)

Markdown Watch

100 tracked names flagged for markdown risk — 124 scored nightly, 2399 left unscored (no comp bridge). Down rounds are recorded in the open ledger — receipts only work in public. Live boards: markdown-watch · down-round-ledger.

Click a column to sort · third click restores rank order
#CompanySectorRisk ScoreBandVs CompsLast MarkLast Round
1 Linktree SaaS 86 High +483% $1.3B 54 mo ago
2 Replit Data / Infra 86 High +197% $9.0B 41 mo ago
3 Xendit Financial Services 80 High +1943% $2.7B 53 mo ago
4 Forter Fintech 80 High +1003% $3.0B 65 mo ago
5 Greenlight Fintech 80 High +639% $2.3B 66 mo ago
6 Betterment Fintech 80 High +453% $1.1B 42 mo ago
7 Cross River Bank fintech 80 High +227% $3.0B 54 mo ago
8 Pump SaaS 75 High +1556% $1.5B 28 mo ago

Nightly score: comp-bridge premium (45%) · round staleness (30%) · IPO-readiness drag (15%) · funding deceleration (10%). Companies without a computable public-comp bridge stay unscored — never guessed.

60 markdowns detected all-time · 11 flagged beforehand · 49 missed · hit rate 18.3%

CompanyDetectedEventMarkCalled?
Anchorage Digital 2026-09-21 Mark cut −28.6% $4.2B → $3.0B ✗ Missed
Etched 2026-09-21 Mark cut −51.5% $10B → $5.0B ✗ Missed
Found 2026-09-21 Mark cut −70.0% $2.0B → $600M ✗ Missed
Public 2026-09-21 Mark cut −99.4% $190B → $1.2B ✗ Missed
Upgrade 2026-09-14 Mark cut −30.8% $7.3B → $5.0B ✓ Flagged #64 · Moderate
Applied Intuition 2026-09-14 Mark cut −60.0% $15B → $6.0B ✗ Missed
Axonius 2026-09-14 Mark cut −61.5% $2.6B → $1.0B ✗ Missed
Digital Currency Group 2026-09-14 Mark cut −80.0% $10B → $2.0B ✗ Missed

Down-round & valuation headlines scraped at publication from Google News, Hacker News, CNBC, Yahoo Finance and the wider tech press.

IPO Runway — Latest Deep Dives

Founder & Investor Take

Zero AI rounds is a signal, not a silence

Twelve AI rounds worth $1.0B last week; zero tracked this week. Mega-cap AI marks (OpenAI $122B) haven't moved, so capital hasn't left the category — but early-stage AI founders should expect investors to demand more than a model story. Multiple context pieces this week warn that valuations running ahead of execution get billed at the next round. Price realistically; the Etched (-51.5%) and Found (-70%) cuts are the cautionary ledger.

Tuck-in M&A is open if growth rounds aren't

Groundcover–Wand, Upwind–Aegis and Huspy–Integra all printed within 24 hours. Strategics with balance sheets are buying capability cheaply while late-stage pricing stays contested. If you're a sub-$50M capability asset in security, fintech or infrastructure tooling, inbound interest may be more liquid than a Series B. Just note reported deal sizes ('tens of millions') are thin on terms — verify structure, not just headline.

Validate comps before anchoring your round

Markdown Watch scores Xendit +1,943% and Linktree +483% against public comps — extreme gaps that rarely survive a repricing event. Founders raising now should build their comps deck defensively: pick public comparables, stress the multiple, and model a flat-or-down round. A $50M valuation guarantees nothing, as this week's startup-week panel warned. Raise on the model, not the market.

Outlook

This week's -97.5% tracked-capital drop is likely timing noise around large prior-week Energy/AI rounds, not a freeze — Bessemer, Connect and Carnelian all closed or first-closed capital. Watch whether Island's $6.4B and the Modal/Baseten talks convert to prints; if they do, mega-and-growth appetite is intact while seed/A remains selective. Downside risk: mark cuts widening beyond the 100 on watch.

QuantLogix briefings are educational market commentary generated from live data, not investment advice. Private-market figures come from public reporting and the QuantLogix private-company dataset; amounts and valuations are as-reported, not audited. Markets carry risk of loss.