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Jumbo Venture Checks Making Early-Stage Look Like PE
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Good day. The dizzying pace of development at artificial intelligence startups is pushing venture-capital firms to write bigger checks, placing the industry into a stratum of financing typically occupied by private equity.
Eight of the 10 firms most active in leading or co-leading funding rounds of more than $50 million globally in 2025 were venture-capital firms, according to recently released data from Crunchbase.
Large rounds have traditionally been led by private-equity firms investing in later-stage companies that need cash to grow. As recently as 2021, private-equity firms dominated the list of firms most active in leading large rounds; that year, only one venture-capital firm was among the 10 most active firms leading or co-leading rounds above $50 million.
The rapid pace of expansion at many AI startups has necessitated bigger venture investments earlier in a new company’s life cycle.
Menlo Ventures is among a handful of firms that doubled the number of large rounds they led between 2021 and 2025, according to Crunchbase.
Matt Murphy, a partner at the firm, said traditional early-growth investments, often between $30 million and $50 million, used to buy a year to a year and a half of a company’s journey.
“Now, that's like a month for a lot of these high-flying AI companies,” he said, as many startups are skipping incremental funding rounds for early rounds of $100 million or more.
As a result, Menlo Ventures has expanded the size of its early-growth fund and has become more comfortable with larger ownership stakes concentrated on fewer companies.
“You're not going to be a player in those companies with a $15 million venture check,” Murphy said. “You're kind of irrelevant to them.”
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And now on to the news...
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PHOTO: AYAR LABS/REUTERS
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Silicon photonics. Ayar Labs, a decade-old chip startup backed by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, has raised $500 million from investors including Neuberger Berman, MediaTek, Qatar Investment Authority and others in a funding round that values it at $3.8 billion.
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The company, which is trying to revolutionize the way semiconductors are connected inside server racks, has developed some of the most advanced applications of a technology known as co-packaged optics, its investors and executives say.
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Ayar Labs is among a small group of companies working in the obscure field of silicon photonics, seeking to replace copper interconnections with fiber-optic ones, which allow data to zip back and forth between microchips using photons traveling at the speed of light.
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Anthropic’s Feud With Pentagon Earns It Fans Amid the Blowback
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In the last few days, Anthropic’s chatbot Claude hit No. 1 in downloads on the Apple App Store, surpassing OpenAI’s ChatGPT for the first time. On Monday, some of the company’s AI apps briefly crashed because of what it called “unprecedented demand.” Fans are literally taking to the streets to spell out their appreciation. That’s the consolation prize for losing the entire U.S. government as a customer.
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Dimon Thinks the Next Credit Crunch Will Be Worse Than Normal
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Investors are jittery about software and private lending, but JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon thinks it’s too soon to know where the next credit crisis will hit, he said in a pair of television interviews Monday. “In 2000 it was telecom and utilities, the mom stocks that pay dividends” he said on Bloomberg TV. “In ’08 it was Warren Buffett stocks and media stocks. This time maybe it's software, maybe it's not.”
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People
Autonomous cloud data warehouse optimization startup Keebo appointed Eric Shoemaker as chief executive officer. He most recently served as chief revenue officer at Device42.
Brokerage platform Gyde appointed Andrew Shults as chief technology officer. He was previously CTO at Duckbill.
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Smack Technologies, an Austin, Texas-headquartered frontier AI lab for national security, secured $32 million in seed and Series A funding. Geodesic Capital and Costanoa Ventures led the Series A portion.
Handl Health, a Los Angeles-based AI platform that compares prices of carrier networks and healthcare providers to help benefits consultants design and manage health plans, landed $14.2 million in Series A funding led by Arthur Ventures.
Multitude Insights, a startup building software for law enforcement to share intelligence and collaborate in real time, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Primary Venture Partners. The company has offices in Boston and Portland, Ore.
Akave, an Austin, Texas-based startup developing a decentralized alternative to traditional cloud storage, collected nearly $6.7 million in combined seed and Series A funding from investors including No Limit Holdings, Blockchain Builders Fund and Big Brain Holdings.
Pluvo, an AI-native financial analysis and strategic planning platform, nabbed $5 million in seed funding from investors including a16z speedrun. The company is co-headquartered in Canada and San Francisco.
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A new joint venture is combining German manufacturing with Ukrainian engineering to mass-produce the Linza drone. PHOTO: LUCIA BLAHOVA FOR WSJ
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