R136 Ventures Growth Digest #9: The Market Picks Sides, xAI-SpaceX Merger, Hard Infrastructure Leads
Your monthly snapshot of late-stage venture: top rounds, valuations, exits, and market insights
The Operator’s Lens
Hey folks, welcome to February’s newsletter, where we track what matters in late-stage venture.
The market isn't rising, it's splitting. February's rounds made that cleaner: tier-1 capital went to hard infrastructure and AI with real moats, while everything else competed on fundamentals and hope.
The revenue bar to raise has never been higher and graduation rates have never been lower. If your story doesn't anchor to one of those winning verticals, your Series C conversation is going to be harder than your Series B was.
Top 5 Tweets
The smartest takes on tech and venture capital this month, pulled from X chaos.
Top 5 Growth-Stage Rounds
Here's a snapshot of where the late-stage VC money went the past month:
Series B
$270M for San Francisco-based Bedrock Robotics with funding from CapitalG, Valor Atreides AI Fund, 8VC, and others.
$230M for Reno-based Positron with funding from ARENA Private Wealth, Jump Trading, and Unless.
$150M for San Francisco-based Goodfire with funding from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and others.
$140M for Scotts Valley, CA-based Heron Power with funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Capricorn Investment Group, and others.
$125M for Boston-based Code Metal with funding from Salesforce Ventures, Accel, B Capital, and others
Series C
$300M for El Segundo, CA-based Skyryse with funding from Autopilot Ventures, Fidelity Management & Research Company, ArrowMark Partners, and others.
$125M for San Francisco-based Kindred with funding from NEA, Index Ventures, Dylan Field, and others.
$100M for San Francisco-based Render with funding from Georgian, Addition, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and others.
$70M for San Francisco-based TRM Labs with funding from Blockchain Capital, Goldman Sachs, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others.
$50M for New York-based Pepper with funding from Lead Edge Capital, ICONIQ, Index Ventures, Greylock, and others.
Series D
$300M for Bellevue, WA-based Temporal with funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and others.
$232M for Mountain View, CA-based Lunar Energy with funding from Activate Capital, B Capital, Prelude Ventures, and others.
$210M for NYC-based Talkiatry with funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, OMERS Ventures, and others
$175M for Dallas-based Island with funding from Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, and others.
$150M for San Francisco-based Harness with funding from Norwest Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, IVP, and others.
Top-10 Market Makers
The 10 companies whose valuations dictate what everyone else thinks they're worth
Our Take
The big story: xAI and SpaceX merged into a $1.25 trillion company, combining AI with space infrastructure. Anthropic raised $30 billion at $380 billion (second-largest venture deal ever), while Waymo pulled in $16 billion at $126 billion for global expansion.
Valuations are scattered. OpenAI trades at $723.12 on secondaries, implying a 61% premium over its $500 billion tender offer. That’s speculation. Compare Databricks ($134 billion, 65%+ revenue growth) and Stripe ($159 billion, profitable, $1.9 trillion payment volume) which are both grounded in real performance. ByteDance ranges $370–491 billion depending on the deal. Tether’s pulled-back fundraising and Ant Group’s slow climb to $103 billion prove regulatory risk still moves markets.
How to Play It
OpenAI's secondary market is the easiest entry. For growth with less speculation, Databricks and Stripe offer strong fundamentals riding AI demand. Waymo's worth a look post-raise. ByteDance depends heavily on entry price; Tether and Ant could be bargains if you're comfortable with regulatory uncertainty.
Top 5 M&A Deals
Here’s five of the M&A deals from the past month that we think matter:
xAI — acquired by SpaceX for an undisclosed amount
Cimulate — acquired by Salesforce for an undisclosed amount
Depop — acquired by eBay for $1.2 billion
Koi — acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $400 million
Silicon Labs — acquired by Texas Instruments for $7.5 billion
Top Venture-Backed IPOs
Just 9 IPOs have priced in the U.S. so far in 2026, down 47% from the same period last year, with total proceeds of $2.6 billion.
February reinforces what January suggested: the window is open, but only at the very top. If even one of the mega-names files in H1, it reshapes the whole market mood
Rank One Computing (ROC) | Denver-based facial recognition and Vision AI company. Raised $24M in IPO.
20/20 BioLabs (AIDX) | Maryland-based AI-powered diagnostics platform. Raised $40M in IPO.
This Month at R136 Ventures
Ventures from the Valley Episode #24: The Scientist Turned VC Funding the Cure for Aging with Omri Amirav-Drory
What if aging isn't a fact of life but the last problem worth solving? In this episode of Ventures from the Valley, NFX General Partner Omri Amirav-Drory makes the case that longevity isn't just a scientific frontier - it's a $38 trillion opportunity to end the root cause behind 9 out of 10 deadly diseases.
That’s all for this month. See you in March!