AI-biotech startup Lila Sciences has hit unicorn status, securing a $235 million funding round that values the company at over $1 billion. The capital will fuel the expansion of its platform, which combines AI with autonomous robotic labs to accelerate the discovery of new drugs and materials.
The round underscores a major investment trend toward 'full-stack' AI companies that own both the intelligence layer and the physical infrastructure. With nearly half a billion dollars raised in under a year, the key question is how Lila's integrated model will compete against established AI drug discovery players like Insitro and Recursion.
In Today’s Startup News Recap:
Lila Sciences raises $235M at a $1B+ valuation
CuspAI lands $100M Series A for materials discovery AI
xAI pivots to 'specialist AI tutors' after laying off 500
Nuclearn secures $10.5M to bring AI to the nuclear industry
AI Biotech Startup Lila Sciences Hits $1B+ Valuation with $235M Raise
AI-biotech startup Lila Sciences has secured $235 million in a funding round led by Collective Global and Braidwell LP, pushing its valuation past $1 billion. The capital will scale its platform that combines AI with robotic labs for accelerated drug and materials discovery.
What’s the Deal?
The funding validates significant investor confidence, bringing Lila Sciences' total capital raised to nearly half a billion dollars in less than a year, following an initial $200 million seed round from biotech incubator Flagship Pioneering.
The company is developing a "scientific superintelligence" platform that uses autonomous robotic labs to automate the entire R&D process, from hypothesis to experimentation, aiming to drastically reduce the time and cost of commercializing new drugs.
Beyond pharmaceuticals, Lila is targeting the sustainable materials market, positioning itself against established AI drug discovery players like Insitro and Recursion by applying its platform to broader industrial and climate-related challenges.
Why care?
This deal highlights the intense venture capital appetite for startups applying AI to physical world problems, particularly in capital-intensive sectors like life sciences and materials science. For investors, Lila's model represents a high-stakes bet on 'full-stack' AI companies that own both the intelligence layer and the physical infrastructure to execute on it, signaling a shift toward vertically integrated solutions.
CuspAI Lands $100M Series A for Materials Discovery AI
UK-based deep-tech startup CuspAI has secured a $100 million Series A co-led by NEA and Temasek to build its AI-driven materials discovery platform, attracting strategic investment from Nvidia's NVentures and Samsung Ventures.
What’s the Deal?
CuspAI's $100 million Series A provides substantial capital to scale its "AI search engine for the material world," backed by a powerful syndicate of top-tier VCs and corporate strategic investors validating its deep-tech approach.
The startup has already secured early commercial validation through partnerships with industrial giants like Hyundai and Meta, demonstrating a clear go-to-market strategy for its technology in sectors ranging from climate tech to semiconductors.
The round includes angel investments from key figures at OpenAI and Hugging Face, signaling strong technical credibility and endorsement from within the core AI research community, a critical asset for attracting top talent.
Why care?
This deal highlights intense investor interest in AI platforms tackling physical-world challenges, shifting focus toward capital-intensive R&D in materials science. The strategic backing from corporate VCs underscores a race to own the foundational AI layer for industrial innovation, signaling a high-value target for future M&A.
Nuclearn Raises $10.5M to Bring AI to the Nuclear Industry
Nuclearn, an AI platform for the nuclear energy sector, has secured a $10.5 million Series A led by Blue Bear Capital. The funding will accelerate the company's mission to automate complex operational workflows for nuclear power plants.
What’s the Deal?
The funding targets a growing market as the nuclear industry expands to meet rising demand for carbon-free power, partly driven by the need for 24/7 energy for data centers.
Nuclearn's platform is already deployed in over 65 reactors worldwide, demonstrating significant traction and product-market fit in a highly regulated industry.
The platform directly addresses a critical industry pain point: an impending workforce shortage, with one in four nuclear workers set to retire, by helping preserve institutional knowledge.
Why care?
This deal validates the investment thesis for vertical AI platforms that solve mission-critical problems in legacy industries with high barriers to entry. It also signals a broader market shift toward specialized AI solutions that tackle tangible operational bottlenecks in critical infrastructure, offering clear ROI beyond general-purpose models.
xAI Lays Off 500 in Data Team, Pivots to 'Specialist AI Tutors'
Elon Musk's xAI is undertaking a major strategic shift, laying off 500 generalist data annotators to pivot away from broad data labeling. The company stated the move is to accelerate its focus on hiring "Specialist AI tutors" to train its Grok model with deep domain expertise
What’s the Deal?
What's the business impact?
The workforce reduction represents one-third of its data annotation team, signaling a significant operational move away from the industry's standard practice of using large-scale, generalized data labeling to train foundational models.
The company is now channeling resources to grow by 10x its "Specialist AI tutor team," actively recruiting experts in high-value verticals like STEM, finance, and medicine to infuse its models with specialized knowledge. Read the official announcement.
This pivot directly challenges the prevailing AI development model that prioritizes data volume, creating a new competitive pressure to source proven domain experts over generalist labelers. See the initial report.
Why care?
This strategic pivot from a major player like xAI signals that the AI market may be maturing from a race for general intelligence to a competition for specialized, monetizable capabilities. For investors, this highlights a growing premium on AI models trained with proprietary, expert-level data, which could command higher margins and create stronger defensive moats.
The Shortlist
Mistral AI closes a monumental €1.7 billion Series C round at a €11.7 billion valuation, co-led by chipmaker ASML, to scale its open-source AI models and solidify its position as a key European competitor to US AI giants.
Perplexity AI raises a reported $200 million in new funding, catapulting the AI search startup to a $20 billion valuation as it scales its conversational answer engine.
PsiQuantum secures a staggering $1 billion Series E led by BlackRock to accelerate the development of its fault-tolerant, million-qubit photonic quantum computers.
Motion raises $38 million in a Series C round led by Scale Venture Partners to expand its AI-powered "work suite" that provides agentic workflows for SMBs.