VC Funding Top Ten — July 25, 2026: AI, Climate Tech, Robotics

Overview

Saturday, July twenty-fifth. Today's biggest check goes to Sila, the battery materials company, which just locked in a massive three hundred million dollar Private Equity round. The round was co-led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures. We'll break down that deal and the nine others that followed. On the pan

In this show

• Saturday, July twenty-fifth. Today's biggest check goes to Sila, the battery materials company, which just locked in a massive three hundred million dollar Private Equity round. The round was co-led by Atreides Management and Sutter Hill Ventures. We'll break down that deal and the nine others that followed. On the panel today, our Markets and World affairs analysts. Let's get into the numbers.
• Here is the snapshot. Across ten rounds today, venture capitalists disclosed five hundred and two-point-seven million dollars in new funding. The largest round, as mentioned, was Sila's three hundred million dollar private equity deal. The hottest category was AI, with three of the top ten deals falling into the space. There were no notable IPOs or M&A announcements to report. The story of the day is the clear dominance of AI and Climate Tech, with robotics and deep tech startups also securing significant capital.
• Let's dive into that number one deal. Sila raised three hundred million dollars in a Private Equity round. The company is a key player in battery materials, developing silicon-based anodes to replace traditional graphite in lithium-ion batteries. This technology aims to dramatically increase energy density and charging speed. The funding is earmarked to accelerate U.S. production at its plant in Moses Lake, Washington. This move directly addresses the critical need for a domestic supply chain for battery materials, especially as its tech moves from consumer electronics to electric vehicles.
• Next up, Japanese climate tech firm Asuene secured eighty-seven million dollars in a Series D. The round was led by Decarbonization Partners, a joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek. Asuene provides a cloud platform for companies to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions, as well as manage ESG risks in their supply chains. This deal is significant as it marks the first investment in Japan by the BlackRock and Temasek JV. The capital will be used for international M&A, with the goal of positioning Asuene as a global standard in enterprise sustainability.
• At number three, Gritt raised a combined thirty-two-point-four million dollars across its Pre-seed and Series A rounds, emerging from stealth mode. Led by Obvious Ventures, Gritt is tackling the construction industry's labor shortage. The company develops an intelligent system combining robotics and AI that attaches to common construction equipment. This automates labor-intensive tasks, particularly for large-scale infrastructure projects like solar farms. The funding will fuel the expansion and deployment of its physical AI systems, aiming to boost productivity where it has been declining.
• In ag-biotech, Moa Technology closed a twenty-nine-point-eight million dollar Series C. The round was co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Supernova Invest. Moa is focused on a critical problem for global food security: herbicide-resistant weeds. The company uses its proprietary discovery platforms to develop new types of herbicides that can combat this growing threat. With over eighty novel modes of action already discovered, this new capital will help advance its most promising programs toward commercialization, offering a new line of defense for farmers worldwide.
• At number five is climate tech company NxLite, which raised an oversubscribed thirteen-point-one million dollar Series A, led by Crabtree Lane Alt. NxLite manufactures nano-thin coatings for glass and other transparent surfaces. These coatings are designed to be highly energy-efficient, significantly reducing heating and cooling costs in buildings and transportation. As energy costs rise and climate concerns intensify, demand for such solutions is surging. This funding will allow NxLite to scale its production to meet that growing demand.
• Coming in at number six, healthtech startup CARPL.ai has raised ten million dollars in a Series A round led by the International Finance Corporation. CARPL.ai operates a vendor-neutral platform that helps healthcare institutions integrate and manage a wide array of AI-powered applications, specifically for medical imaging. The goal is to simplify the often complex process of adopting AI in clinical workflows. This new funding will be used to expand its global footprint and extend its platform's capabilities into other medical fields like pathology and genomics.
• In the space sector, Beyond Reach Labs also secured ten million dollars, this time in a Seed round led by Interlagos. The company is developing and manufacturing large, deployable solar arrays for satellites and other space infrastructure. Their technology is designed to provide significantly more power in orbit than current solutions. As the space economy expands with ambitions for in-orbit data centers and commercial space stations, the demand for power is becoming a critical bottleneck. Beyond Reach Labs aims to solve that problem for the next generation of space missions.
• At number eight, foodtech company Plantopia raised nine million dollars in a Seed round with backing from Schreiber Foods and Siddhi Capital. Plantopia is using molecular farming to produce animal-free dairy proteins. Crucially, this includes all four types of casein, the proteins that give cheese its melt and stretch. This funding will help the company transition from R&D to commercial production, offering a potentially more scalable and cost-effective alternative to precision fermentation for creating the key functional proteins in dairy products.
• And at number nine, Sofab Inks, an advanced materials company, closed a six million dollar Seed round led by Cloudberry Ventures. Sofab develops and manufactures specialized nanoparticle inks for the next generation of perovskite solar cells. Perovskites have the potential to be more efficient and cheaper than traditional silicon-based solar cells, but reliability has been a major hurdle to mass-market adoption. Sofab Inks' materials are designed to solve these key reliability challenges, potentially unlocking a major advance in solar energy technology.
• Looking ahead, one thing to watch is the AI-powered drug discovery revolution. We're seeing a growing number of startups using machine learning to accelerate the development of new therapies, and they are attracting significant venture capital. Expect to see more large funding rounds in this space, along with strategic partnerships between these AI-native biotechs and major pharmaceutical companies in the coming months. That's all for today's deal flow. We'll be back tomorrow afternoon at three PM Pacific with the next top ten.