Jason Ma / Fortune: Sam Altman confirms OpenAI won't go public this year saying “given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public” — Wall Street will have to wait for one of the most highly anticipated initial public offerings as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed it will not happen in 2026.
Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune: Latitude, a Texas-based payments infrastructure company founded by Stripe, Uber, Coinbase and Meta alumni, raised a $35M Series A led by Oak HC/FT — Stablecoins have made it exceptionally easy to move money across borders instantaneously. The problem that remains for users …
Emily Forlini / Fortune: OpenAI quietly updates its evaluation metrics for GPT-6 Astra, making changes that appear to favor Astra and continuing to revise other metrics after launch — OpenAI has changed several evaluation benchmarks for its GPT-6 Astra model since first publishing a blog post announcement mid-afternoon on Sept. 3.
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: Munich-based Atira, which aims to use AI to automate the parsing and generation of complex bid proposals, raised a $15M seed led by Accel and a $2.5M pre-seed — When a company that builds fire trucks, rail-maintenance machinery, or electric vehicle chargers is invited to bid on a big contract …
Sebastian Herrera / Fortune: Amazon raises prices for its Echo smart speakers, Fire TV line, Kindle devices, and eero mesh networking systems to offset increases in memory and storage costs — Amazon has raised prices for several of its first-party devices, including its Echo smart speakers and Fire TV line …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Voice AI startup Wispr raised a $280M Series B led by Menlo Ventures at a $2B valuation, taking its total funding to $361M, and now has 100K business customers — Tanay Kothari saw Iron Man when he was 10 years old. — It was 2008 and he wasn't entranced with Tony Stark.
Camila Grigera Naón / Fortune: River Markets, which gives professional traders a single place to trade across multiple prediction markets, raised an $8.5M seed led by Haun Ventures — Prediction markets are getting serious. Once confined to casual betting, financial institutions now view them as valuable tools to hedge risks and trade on economic events.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Livestream shopping app Whatnot raised a $545M Series G led by Iconiq, Lightspeed, and Avra at a $20B valuation, up from an $11.5B valuation in October 2025 — Whatnot, started in a Funko Pop-flooded rental house, is now a $20 billion company. — The live commerce platform exclusively told Fortune …
Melissa Hancock / Fortune: Ooredoo, Nvidia, Nokia, and Indosat launch Zankore, Indonesia's first dedicated AI compute and neocloud platform; Ooredoo, which owns a 49% stake, commits $800M — Ooredoo Group is positioning itself to capture a multi-billion-dollar AI infrastructure opportunity by developing Indonesia's …
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: HappyRobot, which uses AI to automate freight operator communications, raised a $150M Series C at a $1.2B valuation, after a $44M Series B in September 2025 — Pablo Palafox likes to say his company is “getting started” even as its valuation just crossed ten figures.
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: Foundational Industries, which aims to build AI-run factories for physical products, starting with custom data center rack enclosures, raised a $25M seed — Jonathan Winer thinks the U.S. is fighting the wrong manufacturing war. — His startup, Foundational Industries …
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: Candid Health, which develops tech and AI agents to automate medical billing and claims processing workflows, raised a $120M Series D led by Sixth Street Growth — Candid Health cofounder Doug Proctor spun his laptop around to show me a herd of wild horses grazing behind him in upstate New York during our first Zoom call.
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune: Binance launches trading for 7,000+ US stocks and ETFs for non-US users, with zero commissions and fractional share purchases, as part of its “super app” push — Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Monday that its users will be able to trade more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs.
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Circle cofounder Sean Neville's Catena Labs, which lets users set financial guardrails for AI agents, raised a $30M Series A and applies for a US bank charter — Sean Neville, who cofounded the stablecoin giant Circle, has raised another stash of capital from top-flight venture capitalists.
Beatrice Nolan / Fortune: Viktor, which is developing an AI agent that operates like a virtual coworker embedded inside Slack or Microsoft Teams, raised a $75M Series A led by Accel — Fryderyk Wiatrowski, CEO and co-founder of Viktor, joined Meta with the aim of finding a co-founder.
Jack Kubinec / Fortune: MoonPay acquires DFlow, a platform that facilitates trading on the Solana blockchain, sources say for $100M in stock; DFlow had raised $7.5M across two rounds — The crypto payment and infrastructure firm MoonPay has acquired DFlow, a platform that facilitates trading on the Solana blockchain.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Avoca, whose AI agents let physical services businesses handle inbound calls and dispatch, raised $125M+ across seed, Series A, and Series B at a $1B valuation — Tyson Chen and Apurva Shrivastava were chasing restaurants when they found an HVAC company. — The two engineers had first met …
Sasha Rogelberg / Fortune: Survey of 1,050 Australian teens: ~60% said they retained access to social media accounts after ban; two-thirds say platforms took no action to remove accounts — If teenagers have a will, they will find a way. … Evelyn, a 14-year-old in New South Wales, told The Washington Post in December 2025 …
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: Omni, which is building a “semantic translation layer” for enterprise data, raised a $120M Series C led by Iconiq at a $1.5B valuation, up from $650M in 2025 — For years, companies have poured money into data warehouses, dashboards, and business intelligence tools …
Jack Kubinec / Fortune: Stripe and Paradigm-backed Tempo launches a “stablecoin advisory” for businesses and is working with DoorDash to let delivery workers get paid in stablecoins — Tempo, the new blockchain backed by payments company Stripe and VC firm Paradigm, has launched a “stablecoin advisory” …
Sharon Goldman / Fortune: Artemis, which aims to replace rule-based cybersecurity systems with an AI-driven centralized “brain”, emerges from stealth with a $70M Series A led by Felicis — Artemis, a new cybersecurity startup trying to help defenders fight AI-powered attacks with AI, emerged from stealth today …
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: NY-based Blossom Health, which makes an “AI copilot” to augment psychiatrists' clinical decisions and automate office tasks, raised $20M in seed and Series A — Blossom Health has raised $20 million in seed and Series A funding to bring an AI “copilot” for psychiatry to patients nationwide, Fortune has exclusively learned.
Lily Mae Lazarus / Fortune: Deeptune, which builds high-fidelity reinforcement learning environments that simulate professional workflows for AI agents, raised a $43M Series A led by a16z — AI startup Deeptune has raised a $43 million Series A to build what it calls “training gyms” for AI agents, Fortune has learned exclusively.
Ben Weiss / Fortune: PayPal expands access to its PYUSD stablecoin from the US and UK to 70 countries in total, including new markets in Uganda, Colombia, Peru, and Malawi — PayPal is dramatically expanding the map of countries where users can send and receive its branded stablecoin.
Fortune: Docs: Binance investigators found accounts, including those of VIP Chinese traders and a suspected Iranian gold smuggler, helped move $1B to Iran-linked groups — In early 2025, an embattled Iranian regime was turning increasingly to crypto in order to thwart sanctions choking its economy.
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Crypto accounting startup Cryptio raised a $45M Series B led by BlackFin Capital Partners and Sentinel Global and reports having 450+ clients, including Circle — As large enterprises invest in blockchain technology, they quickly discover the need for accounting software that can help them track a growing hoard of digital assets.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Translucent, a health care finance startup that helps hospitals improve cash management, raised a $27M Series A led by GV, after a $7M seed in August 2024 — Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet — Jack O'Hara has seen a hospital shut down. — It happens via blurry paperwork and running out of time.
Sharon Goldman / Fortune: Caitlin Kalinowski, OpenAI's head of hardware and robotics, resigns over concerns about domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons after OpenAI's DOD contract — Caitlin Kalinowski, who had been leading hardware and robotic engineering teams at OpenAI since November 2024, announced she has left the company.
Ben Weiss / Fortune: NYSE parent ICE invests in crypto exchange OKX at a $25B valuation, without specifying the size of investment, and will take a seat on the company's board — Last summer, Haider Rafique flew out to Atlanta to meet with the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Visa and Stripe's Bridge plan to expand their partnership to issue stablecoin-linked cards in 100+ countries; the cards are currently live in 18 countries — The world's biggest fintech and the world's largest payments network are expanding their stablecoin partnership.
Sharon Goldman / Fortune: Source: Sam Altman told employees the DOD is willing to let OpenAI build its own “safety stack” and won't force OpenAI to comply if its model refuses a task — Sam Altman told OpenAI employees at an all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon that a potential agreement is emerging …
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Bermuda-based crypto trading platform STS Digital, which caters to institutional investors, raised $30M led by CMT Digital, with Kraken and others participating — Even as retail traders flee the crypto markets amid plummeting prices, large financial institutions continue to lean into digital assets.
Jake Angelo / Fortune: A look at Anti Fund, a small VC firm cofounded by YouTuber Jake Paul that has gained access to hot rounds in startups like OpenAI, Anduril, Polymarket, and Ramp — Jake Paul crossed paths with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at President Donald Trump's second inauguration ceremony last year …
Leo Schwartz / Fortune: Bretton AI, formerly Greenlite, which uses GenAI to investigate suspicious transactions and verify internal risk policy compliance, raised a $75M Series B — Early in his career, Will Lawrence worked on the product team at Facebook focused on anti-money laundering.
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: London-based Lawhive, whose lawyers and AI tools help individuals and SMBs automate legal tasks, raised a $60M Series B, after a $40M Series A in December 2024 — Lawhive, a British startup that wants to use AI to transform the business model of law firms that perform routine legal work …
Leo Schwartz / Fortune: TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation — When TRM Labs cofounders Esteban Castaño and Rahul Raina moved to San Francisco in 2018 to create a startup, their mentors told …
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: OpenAI's former Head of Policy Research Miles Brundage announces AVERI, a nonprofit aimed at advocating the idea of external audits for frontier AI models — Former OpenAI policy chief Miles Brundage, who has just founded a new nonprofit institute called AVERI that is advocating …
Ben Weiss / Fortune: Alpaca, which builds software to let companies offer stocks, ETFs, and other financial instruments, raised a $150M Series D led by Drive at a $1.15B valuation — Yoshi Yokokawa, cofounder of Alpaca.COURTESY OF ALPACA — Trading platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood are rushing to offer …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Israeli data security startup Cyera raised a $400M Series F led by Blackstone Growth at a $9B valuation, up from $6B after raising $540M in June 2025 — Senior Finance Reporter And Author Of Term Sheet — Cyera cofounders Yotam Segev and Tamar Bar-Ilan.CYERA
Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez / Fortune: Cursor CEO Michael Truell warns that “vibe coding” advanced projects may create “shaky foundations” and eventually “things start to kind of crumble” — Michael Truell, cofounder and CEO of Cursor.STUART ISETT—FORTUNE — Cursor may utilize AI …
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: Ankar, which develops LLM-powered AI tools to streamline the process of drafting patent applications for patent attorneys, raised a $20M Series A led by Atomico — The company, which just secured a $20 million Series A venture capital round, is using AI to streamline the process of obtaining …
Jeff John Roberts / Fortune: Binance names co-founder Yi He as co-CEO alongside Richard Teng, making her one of the few women leading a crypto company; she also has children with ex-CEO CZ — The world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange announced a significant leadership move on Wednesday, naming longtime executive …
Beatrice Nolan / Fortune: Gravis Robotics, which adds cameras, sensors, and AI to heavyweight construction machines so they can operate autonomously, raised $23M led by IQ and Zacua — Gravis Robotics, a Zurich-based startup that is turning heavyweight construction machines into autonomous robots …
Fortune: Tidalwave, whose AI agents automate mortgage docs checks and give real-time multilingual feedback to borrowers, raised a $22M Series A led by Permanent Capital — Diane Yu remembers getting her first mortgage vividly because it was terrifying. — “I was born in China, English is my second language …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Tala Health, which plans to roll out AI agents to help clinicians improve patient care next year, raised a $100M seed led by Sofreh Capital — Ritankar Das, founder of Titan Holdings. — TITAN HOLDINGS — Ritankar Das wants the holding company to make its comeback.
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Neobank Mercury says it has hit $650M in annualized revenue, up from $500M by end of 2024, and has been GAAP profitable on net income and EBITDA for three years — Mercury's Immad Akhund. — MERCURY — The fintech roller coaster—after a few years of barrel rolls and corkscrews …
Nick Lichtenberg / Fortune: Harvard economist Jason Furman estimates that investments in data centers and information-processing software accounted for 92% of US GDP growth in H1 2025 — U.S. GDP growth in the first half of 2025 was almost entirely driven by investment in data centers and information processing technology …
Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: Supabase, an open-source rival to Google's Firebase, raised a $100M Series E led by Accel and Peak XV at a $5B valuation, bringing its total funding to $500M+ — The vibe coding movement, as Paul Copplestone figures it, started last December—and we're already a few eras in.
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: Synthesized, which is developing AI tools to automate software testing, raised a $20M Series A led by Redalpine — Synthesized, a London- and New York-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to automate software testing, has raised $20 million in new venture capital funding …
Jeremy Kahn / Fortune: CuspAI, which develops AI foundation models for materials discovery, raised a $100M Series A led by NEA and Temasek, a source says at a ~$520M valuation — CuspAI, a startup developing AI models for chemistry that counts several AI luminaries among its scientific advisors, has raised $100 million in new venture capital funding.