Good day. Funding announcements trigger new funding rounds almost immediately nowadays, especially in artificial intelligence and when the early investors are brand names.

Take the AI accounting startup Accordance, which in September announced funding rounds led by Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst. The pings from potential new investors started within the hour, said David Yue, the company’s co-founder and chief executive. Soon after, the inquiries turned into generous preemptive Series A offers and then a signed term sheet with a new lead investor.

“We have had a lot of experience rejecting investors,” Yue said. The company sought to select a lead who wouldn’t just provide capital but offer the most tactical support to Accordance long-term, Yue said.

Yue declined to discuss the details of the company’s Series A for now. He said the company would likely want to announce it and perhaps parlay that into additional capital.

Some founders are now delaying sharing information about their rounds for a year or longer to generate new investor interest at the right time, said Jack Altman, founder and managing partner at Alt Capital.

He said it isn’t about staving off investor interest, per se. “It’s more like saving a silver bullet for when you need it versus spending it when you don’t,” Altman said.

And now on to the news...

Nvidia, Microsoft pour $15 billion into Anthropic. Three of the biggest companies in artificial intelligence announced a partnership featuring tens of billions of dollars in spending, adding to an investment spree that is aimed at supercharging AI model development.

• Under the partnership, Nvidia and Microsoft will invest up to $15 billion in Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI whose models are popular with coders and businesses. Anthropic, in turn, said it would buy $30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft Azure running on Nvidia AI systems. The chip titan will also work with Anthropic on design and engineering.

Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence company, xAI, is in advanced talks to raise $15 billion in new equity at a $230 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the plans. The new valuation would represent a significant increase from the $113 billion it disclosed after merging with Musk’s social-media site, X, in March. The terms of the new fundraising were disclosed to investors by Musk’s wealth manager, Jared Birchall, on Tuesday night, the people said. It couldn’t be determined whether the expected new valuation Birchall shared with investors was pre- or post-money.

Meta Platforms’ chief revenue officer, John Hegeman, is leaving the company to build his own startup, according to a Facebook post from the executive. In nearly two decades at the social-media company, Hegeman has held business and technical roles. He served as an engineering leader for the company’s advertising systems for seven years, worked on the Facebook app for five years and then returned to ads and monetization efforts in 2021. He also serves on Robinhood’s board of directors. He is married to Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Li.

People

Team8 appointed Galia Beer-Gabel as a managing partner in New York. She was previously at PayPal.

Financial intelligence platform Terzo appointed Zeyad Rajabi as chief product officer. He was previously at EigenLayer, Coinbase and Microsoft.

Deals

Third-party risk management provider SAFE acquired Balbix, a continuous threat exposure management company.

Venn, a New York-headquartered intelligent operating system for multifamily housing, scored a $52 million Series B round. Led by noa and CIM Group, the investment included participation from Group 11, LocalGlobe and others.

Maxima, a San Mateo, Calif.-based agentic AI platform for accounting automation, raised $41 million in seed and Series A funding from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Audacious Ventures.

Nudge Security, an Austin, Texas-based SaaS and AI security governance provider, landed $22.5 million in Series A funding. Cerberus Ventures led the round, which included additional support from Ballistic Ventures and others. Morgan Mahlock of Cerberus Ventures will join the company’s board.

Sphere, a San Francisco-based global tax compliance platform, secured $21 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.

DealMaker, a New York-based capital-raising technology platform, gathered $20 million in equity and debt funding from investors including Information Venture Partners and CIBC Innovation Banking.

OpenHands, a Boston-based open platform for cloud coding agents, secured $18.8 million in Series A financing. Madrona led the investment, which saw participation from Menlo Ventures, Obvious Ventures, Fujitsu Ventures and Alumni Ventures.

Infracost, a San Diego-headquartered startup helping engineers proactively find and fix cloud cost issues, collected $15 million in Series A funding led by Pruven Capital.

Feroot Security, a Toronto-headquartered compliance and security platform for websites, web apps and mobile applications, raised $14 million in Series A funding. True Ventures led the round, which saw participation from Industry Ventures, Preface Ventures and Y Combinator.

Datum, a New York-based open network cloud startup, was seeded with a $13.6 million investment from Amplify Partners, CRV, Cervin Ventures and others.

Albatross, a Switzerland-based platform that helps with real-time product discovery, snagged a $12.5 million investment. MMC Ventures led the funding, which included contributions from Redalpine and Daphni.

Barker, an asset-backed lending startup, grabbed a $3.5 million investment led by Walkabout Ventures.

• Meta Defeats FTC’s Antitrust Case Alleging Social-Media Monopoly
   
• Google Seeks to Shake Up Chatbot Race With New Gemini Version
   
• Europe Aimed to Set Standards for Tech Rules, Now It Wants to Roll Them Back
   
• Cloudflare Service Resumes After Outage Disrupts X, ChatGPT, Other Sites
   
• AI Bubble Fears Hit Stocks
   
• U.S. Backs $1 Billion Loan to Restart the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant
   
• AI Data Centers Are Banging on Crypto’s Door
   
• Nexstar CEO Says Bigger Is Better in Pitch to FCC

• Google boss says trillion-dollar AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality' (BBC)
   
• Crypto exchange Kraken raises $200 million from Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities to notch $20 billion valuation (Fortune)

This newsletter was compiled by Yuliya Chernova, Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole. 

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.