Daily Digest
Daily Digest
Pomegra Startups
Funding rounds, valuations, acquisitions, and IPOs - daily coverage of the companies shaping the private markets
Gatik (US/Canada) — raises $200M Series D led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies to scale its driverless middle-mile freight fleet serving Walmart, Kroger, and PepsiCo.
1X Technologies (Norway) — SoftBank is in talks to acquire a majority stake in the OpenAI-backed humanoid robot maker at a $6B valuation, well below the $10B the company sought last fall.
CivilGrid (US) — raises $26M Series A led by Spark Capital to consolidate utility, ownership, and environmental data for underground infrastructure, with PG&E as a client.
Retro (US) — ex-Instagram engineers raise $21M Series A for a private, friend-focused photo-sharing app that surfaces memories from your camera roll.
Echo acquires Minimus (US) — vulnerability-free container image startup Echo picks up the technology assets of hardened-software company Minimus after the latter winds down operations, despite having raised $51M; Echo integrates Minimus's minimal OS work to become the first distro-agnostic hardened software platform.
Bevel (US) raises $6M seed backed by Bessemer, Resolute, and Shakti VC — the Austin insurtech, born after the 2025 LA Palisades fire destroyed the CEO's childhood home, is pivoting from free wildfire-claims AI tools (used by a quarter of Palisades and Eaton survivors) into a licensed high-net-worth personal lines brokerage.
Yardstik (US) raises $30M Series B led by Harbert Growth Partners — the workforce screening startup is expanding beyond pre-hire background checks into continuous post-hire fraud monitoring, with new tools that give HR teams live risk signals across their entire workforce.
AusperBio (US) closes a $120M Series C bringing total raised to $360M — the San Jose-based biotech is advancing its lead hepatitis B therapy AHB-137 into a Phase 3 registrational trial toward a potential functional cure for chronic HBV.
Valar Atomics Raises $1B Series B at $6B Valuation Sequoia leads a $1 billion Series B in microreactor startup Valar Atomics, valuing the company at $6 billion amid surging AI data center power demand.
Entravel Group (Denmark) raises $7.5M seed co-led by Ethereal Ventures and Finality Capital to scale its white-label hotel booking infrastructure beyond crypto-native clients (Kraken, MetaMask, KuCoin) into mainstream travel, adding a stablecoin settlement layer for treasury and working-capital management.
Cytix (UK) raises $7M Series A led by Northern Gritstone, with KPMG and NCC Group as strategic users, to police AI-generated code changes and flag the security risks introduced by accelerated software development cycles.
Boldr (UK) raises $5M pre-Series A from Unconventional Ventures and Ada Ventures to turn HVAC contractors into grid infrastructure providers by connecting home heating, cooling, and energy devices into flexible distributed grid capacity.
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