← Practical AI · Ep 58
Practical AI · Weekly Funding · Week 43

No Giants. A Heavier Middle.

September 17 – September 23, 2026 · Crunchbase · AI-only analysis
AI raised $5.33B this week, and not one round cleared a billion dollars. Last week had one, Motive’s $1.3B. Strip it out and the everyday AI market went $4.81B to $5.33B. Fewer companies got funded, 103 to 85, but the typical round rose from $13.2M to $18.0M. AI’s share of all venture money fell to 36.0%, because a Caribbean resort chain raised $3B, more than the five biggest AI rounds combined.
$5.33B
AI funding this week
36.0%
of all venture $
85
AI companies funded
$580M
biggest AI round (TEKEVER)
$471.4B
cumulative · 43 weeks
Verified live · grok + web All five top rounds are confirmed by the companies themselves, plus Angle Health, Verda and Firecrawl. EVAS Intelligence is press-only (reported). Heidi’s $340M is a $100M round plus a $240M growth investment. TEKEVER’s $580M is a first close. One row had no location: Aloja ($1.4M), a Spanish startup, placed in Europe. Added to AI: Xingyun ($119.5M, model inference chips). Left out: SB Energy’s $1.5B, which Crunchbase tags as energy. It builds AI data centers; counted in, AI would be $6.83B.
Analysis 1 · Overview

Of 249 funded companies this week, 85 (34.1%) were AI, taking $5.33B of the $14.82B total (36.0%). Seventeen AI rounds of $100M or more took 75.2% of AI dollars. The top five took 38.8%, down from 42.7%. Three non-AI deals over a billion (Sandals $3.0B, SB Energy $1.5B, BMG $1.25B) are why the share looks low. Against 43 weeks, $5.33B is an ordinary week.

Analysis 2 · Regional (AI dollars only)
Analysis 3 · Top 5 AI rounds

1. TEKEVER — $580M

Series D · Lisbon, Portugal · $6.4B valuation · led by UC Investments & Baillie Gifford

TEKEVER builds AI-powered surveillance drones and the software that flies them. The UK Ministry of Defence just picked it to deliver the British Army’s new surveillance system. The week’s biggest AI round went to a European drone maker, and it is only the first close.

2. D-Robotics — $400M

Series C · Shenzhen, China

D-Robotics makes the computing boards, chips and software that go inside robots: humanoids, robot dogs, home robots, warehouse carts. More than 100,000 developers build on its platform.

3. Cyera — $400M

Series G extension · New York · over $12B valuation · Goldman Sachs Alternatives

Cyera finds a company’s sensitive data and controls who can see it, including AI agents. Its pitch: the trust layer companies need before they let agents loose.

4. Snorkel AI — $350M

Series E · San Francisco · $3.5B valuation · led by Insight Partners & S32

Snorkel sells the training data, tests and practice environments that make AI models good at specific jobs. Founded by Stanford AI Lab researchers.

5. Heidi Health — $338.3M

Series C + growth · Melbourne, Australia · $900M valuation · led by Blackbird

Heidi listens to a doctor’s visit and writes the notes, so the doctor can look at the patient instead of the keyboard. Now expanding into the rest of the clinical paperwork.

⚑ $100M is the Series C. The other $240M is a growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, the same fund behind Motive’s $1.3B last week.

Also notable: Enveda $311M (drugs from natural compounds) · EVAS Intelligence $298.5M (self-driving chips, reported) · Angle Health $200M (health insurance) · Verda $189M (European AI cloud) · Xingyun $119.5M (inference chips) · Firecrawl $75M (turns web pages into data AI agents can read) · Spott $21M (recruiting software for staffing firms).

Analysis 4 · Trends