Big cheques got smaller this week. Modal Labs’ $750M Series D at a $15.75B valuation was the only US round above $200M, while Spain’s ID Finance landed €545M in debt and equity and Stryker put roughly $400M into CMR Surgical with an option to buy. Crunchbase counted just five US rounds of $100M or more. Europe logged 65+ deals worth over €1.8B, India about $236M across 25 deals, and VC fund closes (Sprints €725M, Pear VC $333M) were arguably the week’s strongest signal.
Venture funding rounds this week covers the week of 12–18 October 2026, a week in which investors kept writing cheques but the very largest ones shrank. By Crunchbase’s count, only two US rounds reached several hundred million dollars and only five crossed the $100M line, a sharp contrast with the multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure weeks of late summer. Outside the US, Europe’s 65-plus deals topped €1.8B, Indian startups raised roughly $236M, and Gulf, Israeli and Chinese founders closed a steady stream of mid-sized rounds. This roundup is part of our venture capital and startup finance hub, where we track the deals, the funds behind them and what they mean for founders raising now.
Which was the largest round of the week?
Modal Labs’ $750M Series D led by Accel, valuing the AI infrastructure company at $15.75B post-money as it reported crossing a $1B annualised run rate, according to AI Weekly and Crunchbase News.
Was this a strong or weak week for mega-rounds?
Weaker than the recent average. Crunchbase News described investors as still deploying but with large rounds scaling back: five US rounds of $100M+ versus weeks in September that had four rounds of $1B or more.
What was the most important non-deal signal?
Fund closes. Sprints Capital closed a €725M fifth fund at its hard cap and Pear VC closed a $333M Fund V, while 49 Palms, Oraseya, Nauta and Antares also announced closes, pointing to fresh dry powder for 2027.
Which were the largest venture rounds this week?
Modal Labs’ $750M Series D topped the week, followed by ID Finance’s €545M debt-and-equity package, Stryker’s roughly $400M strategic investment in CMR Surgical and ICON’s $200M Series D.
The Modal round deserves the headline. According to AI Weekly, Accel led the $750M Series D with Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Redpoint, Lux Capital and Bain Capital Ventures participating, taking the New York-based AI infrastructure company to a $15.75B post-money valuation and roughly $1.2B in total funding. The company said annualised run-rate revenue has crossed $1B, with usage reportedly tripling since its Series C only five months earlier. That pace, five months between a $355M Series C and a $750M Series D, is the clearest example this week of the “compute-layer compounding” that investors keep paying up for.
The second-largest number came from Barcelona. Tech.eu reported that ID Finance raised €545M in a mix of debt and equity from Spice Expeditions, WashU, Kingsway Capital and i80 Group to scale Plazo, its consumer app combining payments, rewards and short-term credit. Because the split between debt and equity was not disclosed, we treat this as a “reported” financing rather than a pure venture round; lending platforms typically raise most of such packages as warehouse or credit facilities.
Two more large deals blurred the line between venture and strategic capital. Healthcare IT News reported that Stryker will invest about $400M in Cambridge-based CMR Surgical as preferred equity, take exclusive US sales rights for the Versius robot portfolio and hold an exclusive option to acquire the company outright. And in Austin, Bisnow reported that 3D-printing construction company ICON closed a $200M Series D co-led by BlackRock and Baillie Gifford at a $1.4B valuation, bringing its total raised to around $700M.
Below those, the $100M-plus tier was unusually biotech-heavy for 2026. Per Crunchbase News, Soufflé Therapeutics raised a $135M Series B for RNA therapies, Estuary Biotherapeutics combined a $93M Series A with a $10M seed led by RA Capital for gene therapies, Labelbox closed a $100M Series E led by Infinitum Partners, and Suki added a $90M Series E for its health AI assistant. Stand, a San Francisco insurance startup, reportedly hit a $1B valuation on a $70M Series C led by Saga Ventures.
Where did the money go by sector?
AI infrastructure still took the single biggest cheque, but this week biotech, fintech, medtech and hard-tech manufacturing together outweighed pure software AI in the $100M-plus tier.
Strip out Modal and the picture is unusually diversified. Two of the five US $100M-plus rounds went to therapeutics companies (Soufflé and Estuary), one to AI data tooling (Labelbox) and one to construction robotics (ICON). Add Europe and the pattern holds: Tech.eu’s weekly tally put fintech (€621M, dominated by ID Finance), healthtech (€478M, led by CMR Surgical) and energy (€236.6M) at the top of the continent’s sector table, per Tech.eu weekly recap. AI, in other words, was less a sector this week than a layer running through everything else.
Hardware for AI remained the hottest sub-theme. Oxford’s Salience Labs raised an oversubscribed $125M Series B led by Bullhound Capital, with AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank joining, to scale photonic optical switches that connect GPUs across racks, according to Tech.eu. In Portland, Mueon raised a $65M Series A led by Maverick Silicon for semiconductor systems, and in India, Tessolve Semiconductor secured $75M from Vector Line Capital, per Startup Spotlight India. Three continents, one thesis: the bottleneck in AI is increasingly interconnect and packaging rather than models.
Physical AI and robotics also kept their momentum. Rino.ai, a Chinese Level-4 autonomous delivery developer, raised a $100M Series C led by Hidden Hill Capital with state-backed co-investors, per KrASIA, while Indian construction-robotics startup Origin raised $20M from Accel and Zacua Ventures. For a longer view of how these sector weights have shifted, see our analysis of venture capital investment by sector from 2024 to 2026.
Which regions outside the US raised?
Europe had the busiest non-US week with 65-plus deals above €1.8B; India raised about $236M across 25 deals; the Gulf, Israel, Singapore and China contributed a steady run of $5M–$100M rounds.
Europe. Tech.eu weekly recap counted more than 65 funding deals worth over €1.8B, with the UK (€694M), Spain (€586M) and Ireland (€195M) leading by country. Beyond ID Finance, CMR Surgical and Salience Labs, the notable names were Dougs (€50M, France, accounting agents), Scarlet ($50M Series B, UK, AI medical-device certification), Harmonic Security ($50M Series B, UK, AI governance), Rabot Energy ($50M, Germany, virtual power plants) and Duvo ($32M Series A, Czech Republic, enterprise AI). German solar-and-storage platform 1KOMMA5° was reported to be lining up €100M at a $1.35B valuation. Our guide to the top venture capital firms in the UK and Europe profiles many of the lead investors involved.
India. Inc42 tallied $236.2M across 25 deals for 12–16 October, up 92% week on week, with Accel the most active investor at four deals. Boldfit’s Series B from Bharat Value Fund (about $41.8M), GreenCell Mobility’s $34.6M from Impact Fund Denmark, RapidCanvas’s $29M Series B from Vertex Ventures and Scimplify’s $25M strategic round from Hitachi Ventures led the table. A broader tally by Startup Spotlight India that includes Tessolve’s $75M puts the week at roughly $303M across 28 startups, so the headline number depends on what you count as a startup. Either way, India’s week was dominated by AI applications and D2C consumer rather than fintech.
Southeast Asia and China. Singapore produced a cluster of early rounds: OneByZero’s $20M Series A led by Jungle Ventures, IPID’s $16M Series A led by Foundation Capital with Citi, HSBC and QED, Nexstrom’s $12M seed led by Xora, and NEU Battery Materials’ $7.6M round co-led by Shift4Good and SGInnovate, per KrASIA and DealStreetAsia. In China, KrASIA logged a dozen financings headlined by Rino.ai’s $100M Series C, with eVTOL developer Wefly, tactile-sensor maker Tachin Technology and sports-robotics firm Pongbot each raising rounds in the nine-figure-RMB range. Crunchbase News (Asia Q3) reported that Asian startup funding reached about $38.5B in Q3, roughly 70% of it in China, which makes this week’s mid-sized Chinese deals a quieter continuation rather than a new surge.
Gulf, Israel and Turkey. Saudi B2B autotech platform Autobia raised a $12M Series A led by Artal Capital with Aljazira Capital and Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures, and UAE adtech JustAd took $5M from angel investor Imad Jomaa, per Arab News. The same week, Wamda reported MENA Q3 funding of $1.65B with Saudi Arabia in the lead. In Israel, Zenzap announced a $33M Series A co-led by Bessemer and Lightspeed, Undecimal Bio raised an $18M seed and BloomX a $13M Series A, according to CTech funding list. Turkey had a quiet deal week as the ecosystem gathered for Webrazzi Summit; for the investor landscape across these markets, see our guide to the top venture capital firms in the Middle East, Turkey and Israel.
What seed and Series A rounds stood out?
Estuary’s $103M Series A-plus-seed, Mueon’s $65M Series A, Zenzap’s $33M Series A and a cluster of $5M–$20M Singapore and India rounds were the early-stage standouts.
The early-stage end of the market told two stories at once. At the top, “Series A” increasingly means a nine-figure cheque for a company with a proven team and a capital-intensive plan: Estuary Biotherapeutics ($93M A plus $10M seed, RA Capital), Mueon ($65M A, Maverick Silicon) and, in Europe, Duvo ($32M A) and Turn2X (€20M A, Germany) all fit that mould. In Israel, Zenzap’s $33M Series A from Bessemer and Lightspeed came alongside an $18M seed for Undecimal Bio and a $13M Series A for agtech BloomX, per CTech funding list.
At the other end, genuinely small seeds were plentiful but rarely reported in Western outlets. Inc42 counted $25.9M across 11 disclosed pre-seed and seed deals in India, including Parallel Loop ($6.6M, 3one4 Capital) and Shamrock AI ($5M, Endiya Partners). Singapore’s Nexstrom took $12M at seed for 2D-material semiconductors, and Spain’s Causa Prima raised a $20M seed. Crunchbase News also flagged two US exclusives in the window: Chariot ($10M, consumer legal tech) and Marklo ($5M, AI marketing). The gap between a $5M seed and a $100M Series A is the “barbell” we described in our piece on why startup funding is splitting in 2026, and this week widened it a little further.
Which exits, IPO filings and acquisitions landed?
Intuit agreed to buy a16z-backed Sequence, CrowdStrike was reported in advanced talks to acquire Orion Security for about $500M, Stryker secured an option on CMR Surgical, and Freshworks agreed to acquire Torii.
The week’s M&A was concentrated in enterprise software and security. Tech.eu reported that Intuit will acquire London- and New York-based Sequence, an AI-native billing and revenue-management fintech that had raised about $40M from Andreessen Horowitz, Passion Capital, firstminute and 645 Ventures; the deal size was not disclosed by the companies, though a figure around $200M has circulated. CTech reported that CrowdStrike is in advanced negotiations to buy Israeli data-security startup Orion for roughly $500M, which would be a remarkable outcome for a company founded in 2024 that has raised $38M in total. Freshworks agreed to acquire SaaS-management platform Torii and Infotech acquired Bengaluru-based Zluri, both for undisclosed sums, per Inc42.
Strategic investments with embedded exit paths were the other theme. Stryker’s $400M preferred-equity deal gives it an exclusive option to buy CMR Surgical, effectively pre-negotiating an exit for CMR’s venture backers. In Europe, Accenture acquired UK customer-intelligence firm Sagacity and Mistral bought UK startup New Material, its fourth acquisition in eight months, per Tech.eu weekly recap. In Asia, DealStreetAsia reported Affirma Capital’s exit from travel-tech platform TBO Tek at a 12x multiple, while Zhuoyu Technology weighed a Hong Kong IPO. Late in the week, TechCrunch reported that Disney agreed to hire the majority of Character AI’s workforce, a licensing-and-talent structure rather than a conventional acquisition. No major venture-backed IPO priced in the window; for the historical benchmark, see our ranking of the biggest venture-backed exits by year.
Which VC funds closed?
Sprints Capital closed a €725M Fund V at its hard cap, Pear VC closed a $333M Fund V, and 49 Palms, Oraseya Capital, Nauta Capital and Antares Ventures announced closes or first closes.
For limited partners, the fund side of the ledger was busier than the deal side. Pulse 2.0 reported that London-based growth investor Sprints, an early backer of Revolut and Vinted, closed its fifth fund at a €725M hard cap, up from €525M for Fund IV, with more than half already deployed. In Menlo Park, Law360 reported that Pear VC closed a $333M fifth fund on 14 October, smaller than its $432M Fund IV but accompanied by three partner promotions, a deliberate choice to stay small at pre-seed.
The mid-sized closes tracked by Fund Momentum show where fresh capital is heading: 49 Palms Ventures launched a $100M AI-focused debut fund, Dubai government-backed Oraseya Capital doubled its fund to $272M and extended its mandate past Series B, Barcelona’s Nauta Capital held a €60M first close for Fund VI anchored by the British Business Bank, Singapore deep-tech investor Antares Ventures reached a $50M second close toward a $100M target, and Genesys Capital added hospital LPs to a university life-sciences seed fund in Toronto. We maintain a running list of venture capital funds currently raising in 2026 if you want to time your outreach.
What does this week say about the market?
Capital is still abundant but more selective: a handful of compounding AI-infrastructure names absorb the mega-cheques, while the rest of the market is settling into $50M–$200M rounds priced on revenue rather than narrative.
Three readings stand out. First, the “AI tax” on round size is real but narrowing. In September, Crunchbase counted multiple $1B-plus weeks; this week the only US round above $200M was Modal, and it was priced on a reported $1B run rate rather than on a research roadmap. Investors are paying for metered usage, not for model announcements. Second, biotech is quietly back. Four of the week’s fifteen table rounds were therapeutics or medtech, and RA Capital, Juvia and the Stryker–CMR deal suggest crossover and strategic capital is returning to a sector that spent 2023–2025 in the cold. Third, the Q3 data released during the week tempers any euphoria: Crunchbase News (fintech Q3) reported global fintech funding down 21% year on year to $10.6B on the lowest deal count since 2018, even as Crunchbase News (Asia Q3) showed Asia near a record on the back of Chinese AI.
Put together, this looks like a market that is bifurcating by business model rather than by sector label. Companies with usage-based revenue and hardware moats (Modal, Salience, ICON, Rino.ai) are raising at will; companies selling software seats into crowded categories are being acquired (Sequence, Torii, Zluri) rather than refinanced. The ranking of top venture capital firms in the United States shows how concentrated the lead-investor roster has become: Accel, a16z, General Catalyst and Lightspeed appear in a striking share of this week’s rounds on three continents.
What should founders raising now take from it?
Lead with usage and revenue metrics, target funds that closed in the last six months, and expect strategic investors to ask for options and exclusivity in exchange for size.
If you are raising in Q4 2026, this week offers a practical playbook. Price your round on what the market is rewarding: Modal’s $750M, Labelbox’s $100M and Zenzap’s $33M were all framed around run-rate, workflow counts or customer growth rather than product vision. Target the investors who just closed funds, several of which are named above, and read our step-by-step guide to the venture capital fundraising process and timeline before you open a data room. If a strategic such as Stryker or Hitachi is at the table, understand that exclusivity, sales rights or purchase options are now standard asks for cheques of that size; negotiate the option price and the trigger, not whether an option exists.
Founders in India and Southeast Asia should note that Accel, Jungle, Vertex and Foundation Capital were the active leads this week and that the median disclosed round sat between $5M and $30M; our overview of the top venture capital firms in India and Southeast Asia maps who writes which cheque. And if your company is a software seat-seller in a crowded category, the week’s M&A suggests a credible acquirer conversation may be worth more than another priced round. This is the first edition of our weekly series; from next week we will link back to the previous roundup. Browse all Deals & Insights for the archive as it builds.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a mega-round in venture capital?
A mega-round is generally defined as a single financing of $100M or more. In the week of 12–18 October 2026, Crunchbase News counted five such rounds for US companies, led by Modal Labs’ $750M Series D, with further $100M-plus deals in the UK (Salience Labs), Spain (ID Finance) and China (Rino.ai).
Why does this roundup treat some deals as “reported” rather than confirmed?
Because the figures come from media reports or company statements rather than audited filings. Where a source mixes debt with equity, cites talks that have not closed (such as CrowdStrike and Orion) or publishes a figure only in a URL, we flag it as reported and link to the original source so you can judge it yourself.
Which venture funds closed in the week of 12–18 October 2026?
Sprints Capital (€725M Fund V), Pear VC ($333M Fund V), 49 Palms Ventures ($100M Fund I), Oraseya Capital ($272M), Nauta Capital (€60M first close of Fund VI) and Antares Ventures ($50M second close) were the main closes reported during the week.
How do you choose which rounds to include in the table?
We prioritise the largest disclosed rounds worldwide, then add representative seed and Series A deals from each region so the table reflects geography and stage, not just size. Every row links to the source that reported it, and amounts in euros or rupees are shown as reported rather than converted.