The Practical AI Showwith Olga Pechnenko and Chris Pearson
Week 34

Weekly AI Funding Report, Week 34

The Uber Founder Came Back For Robots

One robot company was almost half the week.

Covered on Episode 49 of the Practical AI Show. Source: Crunchbase, AI companies only.

AI funding this week
$3.78B
Share of all venture $
34%
AI companies funded
58
Biggest round
$1.7BAtoms
Tracked so far
$403.8Bacross 34 weeks

The week in brief

AI raised $3.78B across 58 companies, about 34% of all venture dollars. $1.7B of that is Atoms, Travis Kalanick's new physical-AI robotics company, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Uber itself re-investing in its former CEO. Strip that one round and the rest of the AI market was $2.08B, a quiet week. The United States took 81% of all AI dollars. The throughline, again: physical AI. Robots keep writing the biggest checks.

Of 203 funded companies this week, 58 (29%) were AI, taking $3.78B of the $11.22B total raised (34%). Atoms' $1.7B is 45% of the entire AI week. Strip it and AI funding was $2.08B, a soft week with one giant check on top.

Where the money went

  • United States$3.07B

    Swept the week, boosted by Atoms' $1.7B but also deepest on deal count.

  • Europe$320M

    The most companies after the US, small checks; Humanoid's $152M led.

  • China$280M

    Quiet week, led by Yimu Technology's $147.6M.

  • Asia-Pacific (ex$China) — $80M

  • Rest of world$30M

    (incl. Canada).

The top five AI rounds

  1. Atoms $1.7B

    Led by a16z · Los Angeles · physical AI

    Travis Kalanick, the Uber co-founder, is back, building industrial robots and physical AI to automate food, mining, and transport. Led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Uber re-investing.

  2. Meshy AI $400M

    Series B · Sunnyvale · generative 3D

    Turns text and images into 3D models in seconds. Generative AI for games, art, and product design.

  3. Augustus $180M

    Series B · San Francisco · fintech

    An AI-native banking and clearing platform built on stablecoins for financial institutions.

    Edge-case AI, kept it, but the substance is stablecoin banking.

  4. Cathedral $160M

    Washington, DC · defense AI cyber

    AI-powered military cybersecurity, building both offensive and defensive tools for national security.

    Genuinely an AI company, so it counts, flagged as defense.

  5. Humanoid $152M

    Series A · London · robotics

    Builds humanoid robots for factories and warehouses. Part of the same physical-AI wave as Atoms.

Also notable: Yimu Technology $147.6M (physical-world AI infrastructure), Candid Health $120M (healthcare billing automation), Glow $100M (AI endpoint security), Neo Security $75M (agentic-AI security).

  • Physical AI dominates. Atoms $1.7B, Humanoid $152M, Yimu $147.6M, Xynova $73.8M, robots out-raised software again.
  • The US swept the week. 81% of AI dollars and the deepest deal count.
  • AI cybersecurity clustered. Cathedral, Glow, Neo Security, Empirical, Cranium, security built for the agentic era.
  • Founder-brand rounds are back. Kalanick's name pulled a $1.7B round led by a16z.
  • Quiet under the giant. Strip Atoms and the week was $2.08B, the softest in a while.