Good day. Biotech, it turns out, is one of the few sectors where both venture deal value and count are increasing in companies founded by women, according to a PitchBook study on female founders. Still, the industry has struggled to bring women into top executive positions. What has worked and what can be done to expand opportunities for female founders and executives? Please email response to vcnews@wsj.com.

Last week, we asked about your approach to valuing older startups that were invested in at what now look like inflated prices. Here are condensed and edited responses:

• Mark Montgomery, founder and CEO of AI company KYield: “First, let’s start with how not to do it, which is very common today, and that is for deeply conflicted individuals deploying internal follow-on capital or from within tightly woven syndicates to avoid mark-to-market valuations. This behavior started in PE years ago and has caught up to them. Valuations should be done by truly independent third parties precisely to avoid what has become very common conflicts. Furthermore, it should be done by individuals who have the breadth and depth of expertise to understand the risks and opportunities of the particular venture.”
   
• David Spreng, founder and CEO of Runway Growth Capital: “At Runway, we take the debt perspective and don’t spend much time anchoring to prior valuations, especially those set in a very different market. In many cases, if you were to price the company today, it would be below the last round. The question then is how to provide capital without forcing that reset if the business is still fundamentally sound. That’s where structure matters, and we approach these situations from a credit perspective in terms of how to protect downside, generate a return and give the company time to grow into its valuation.”
   
• Will Lee, a principal at SuRo Capital: “2021 and 2025 do indeed have parallels that are hard to ignore but there are unique differences—2021 saw a broad deployment of capital with some reports suggesting over 600 unicorns were minted during the year vs. less than 200 minted in 2025. The capital deployed in 2025 was far more concentrated into specific bets within the private markets, and multiples, while expensive, are far from 1999 levels. Even if you take the stance that 2025 resembles 2021 exuberance, it is hard to deny that 2021 minted numerous market-defining companies at valuations investors wished they had invested at.”

And now on to the news...

‘Agentic twins.’ AI agents can now be used to predict and simulate human behavior—a capability that startup Simile is tapping to help large companies like CVS Health and Gallup replace people for polling and market research. Simile, which recently raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, is part of a new crop of startups using artificial intelligence to upend the way businesses have traditionally gathered feedback from customers and conducted market research.

Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei has apologized for a leaked memo in which he questioned the Trump administration’s motives for declaring his artificial-intelligence company a supply-chain risk and severing its government relationships. But Amodei said Anthropic would challenge the designation in court, saying, “We do not believe this action is legally sound.” The Defense Department on Thursday formally notified Anthropic’s leadership that the company and its AI tools present security threats, a senior Pentagon official said.

• More: Sam Altman Wants Elected Officials, Not OpenAI, to Decide How Military Uses AI

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday moved to dismiss a civil fraud lawsuit it had filed against crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who became a major investor in President Trump’s crypto projects as he pursued leniency from U.S. law enforcers. A company previously affiliated with Sun agreed, without admitting or denying wrongdoing, to pay a $10 million fine to resolve the SEC’s allegations that its employees manipulated the market for a crypto asset known as TRX. The settlement requires court approval.

Funds

Axiom Partners closed its inaugural fund with $52 million in commitments. The new AI-focused early-stage firm was founded by former Khosla Ventures and Social Capital partner Sandhya Venkatachalam.

People

U.K.-based business payments provider Sokin appointed Tom Steer as chief financial officer. He was previously a vice president at FT Partners.

Carbon Upcycling Technologies, a commercial platform provider for clean cement materials, appointed Suzy Taherian as chief financial officer. She was previously CFO at 3Degrees.

Bain Capital Ventures promoted Alysaa Co to partner and Amanda Huang to principal.

Sierra Space, a Louisville, Colo.-based defense tech company manufacturing satellites, spacecraft and space subsystems, scored $550 million in Series C funding, giving the company an $8 billion postmoney valuation. LuminArx Capital Management led the round, which included contributions from existing investors.

Science Corp., an Alameda, Calif.-headquartered neural engineering startup, closed a $230 million Series C round to accelerate commercialization of its brain-computer interface retinal implant. Investors included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures and Quiet Capital.

Nominal, a hardware testing startup, collected $80 million in new funding at a valuation of $1 billion. Founders Fund led the investment, which saw participation from General Catalyst, Lux Capital and others.

Sage, a New York-based care platform for senior living and skilled nursing facilities, secured $65 million in Series C financing led by the growth equity business within Goldman Sachs Alternatives. Existing investors IVP and Goldcrest also participated in the round.

ZyG, an Israel-based agentic e-commerce platform, raised $58 million in seed funding from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Viola Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Disruptive AI, Emerge and others.

Cylake, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cybersecurity platform that doesn’t depend on the public cloud, launched with $45 million in seed funding led by Greylock Partners.

Atavistik Bio, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup developing precision allosteric therapeutics, added $40 million in Series B extension funding from RA Capital Management, bringing the round total to $160 million.

Unleash, an Oslo-headquartered platform bringing autonomous feature management to software delivery, nabbed $35 million in Series B funding led by One Peak.

Lio, a startup building an agentic AI platform for enterprise procurement, snagged a $30 million Series A round. Andreessen Horowitz led the investment, which included additional support from SV Angels and Y Combinator. The company is based in New York and Germany.

Validio, a Stockholm-based agentic data management platform, fetched $30 million in Series A funding led by Plural.

NexCure, a startup providing advanced cancer care in outpatient settings, launched with $19 million in Series A funding. RA Capital Management led the round, which saw additional contributions from Cencora Ventures and Oncology Ventures.

For the latest Deal Talk, we asked Assaf Harel, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, about the $47 million Series B for Nimble, which Norwest led. The startup, co-founded by Uri Knorovich and Menachem Salinas, says it makes real-time web data reliable, scalable and production-ready for AI agents and enterprise workflows.

WSJ Pro: The pitch deck had you at __.

Harel: The pitch deck had us at the realization that while AI models are evolving rapidly, they are still starved for fresh, structured web data. Nimble is the only team we’ve seen solve the "maintenance tax" that usually breaks these systems at enterprise scale.

WSJ Pro: Any stories from meetings with founders?

Harel: We’ve been tracking Uri and Menachem for several years, so our "pitch meetings" felt more like a long-running masterclass on the complexities of the open web. At one point, they walked us through how one global marketplace evaluated 17 different competitors before realizing only Nimble could handle their scale, which was a true "drop the mic" moment for our diligence.
 
WSJ Pro: If you were to compare this startup to a movie or TV show, what would it be?

Harel: “Inception” because while everyone else is focused on the "dream" of what AI agents can do, Nimble is building the multilayered architecture underneath that makes those dreams stable and grounded in reality.

WSJ Pro: Was most of the deal hammered out in person or via video? Was there a meal involved?

Harel: Uri and I discussed the high-level terms in Madison Square Park over bagels since we both live in New York and love being outdoors. After so many years doing Zoom meetings during Covid, I always welcome the chance to meet with founders in person every chance I get.

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This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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