Modal raised $750 million in a Series D led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation, with annualized revenue above $1 billion. Modal says nearly a third of that revenue comes from Sandboxes, its containers for agents and the code they write.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 34%
- Operator
- Operator 21%
- Investor
- Investor 45%
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption55
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives70
- Confidence65
Applied Intuition is fielding offers that value it at $30 billion or more, double its $15 billion valuation of June 2025. Estimated recurring revenue doubled too, so the multiple stays near 36 times.
Perspective Coverage
5 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 19%
- Operator
- Operator 18%
- Investor
- Investor 63%
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption60
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher Applied Intuition's Vehicle OS moves into Nissan's next-generation software platform
Applied Intuition will put its Vehicle OS into Nissan's next-generation software platform, six years after the two companies began working together on simulation. No production model or launch date is attached, so Nissan's commitment so far covers development work only.
Reality
- Evidence35
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives65
- Confidence45
Venture investors keep stakes and board seats for years after US IPOs
Venture investors held over 5% of the median US venture-backed company for three to four years after listing, a study of 844 IPOs from 2002 to 2020 finds. Their boards run on control shared between funds, founders and outsiders well past the lock-up.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+5
- Incentives30
- Confidence55
Saronic's single round took most of the nearly $3 billion that marine startups raised in a year
Saronic's $1.75 billion Series D is about 58% of the nearly $3 billion venture investors put into marine startups over the past year. In Crunchbase's count the rest of the sector shared about $1.25 billion, so the headline figure mostly tracks one Navy supplier's fundraising.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives35
- Confidence55
Armadin, the AI attack-testing startup run by Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia, raised $255.5 million at a valuation above $2.5 billion. Investors are betting that always-on AI agents will take over the budget companies now spend on periodic penetration tests.
Perspective Coverage
6 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 31%
- Operator
- Operator 32%
- Investor
- Investor 37%
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives80
- Confidence60
buildOne report1 publisher Saronic's $3.2B shipyard targets a 2028 start, the year its Navy landing-craft prototypes begin delivering
Saronic broke ground on Port Alpha, a $3.2 billion shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, built to make the autonomous vessels it designs. Navy contracts give it an early buyer, while the yard's output rate and opening date are still untested.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+25
- Incentives60
- Confidence55
The first customer is also the lead investor, which blunts the validation. What is left is a non-Nvidia inference system buyers can benchmark instead of read about.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 34%
- Operator
- Operator 24%
- Investor
- Investor 42%
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption20
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives70
- Confidence60
Lightspeed and Diffusion co-led $550m at a $15.6bn mark, which added $4.6bn of paper value in six months and only reads as ordinary software if $400m of ARR becomes about $1.56bn. Eighty of the Am Law 100 already buy.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption70
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives60
- Confidence60
The $180m Series D sells roughly the same tenth of the company that $96m bought in February, and the performance figure behind the new price is revenue tripling in six months. Profound counts more than 1,000 enterprise brands.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption45
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence60
Miro clears at 7.7 cents on the dollar against its $17.5B private mark
SaaStr's recap puts a completed sale at $1.35B against a $17.5B private mark. The same recap reports a $1B round at $10B for Instinct, a company priced near $50M pre-money in April.
Reality
- Evidence27
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives78
- Confidence33
Adobe closes $1.9bn Semrush deal as Pew data shows AI summaries cut clicks
Profound raised $96 million at a $1 billion valuation in February and Adobe closed on Semrush in April. Both deals assume presence in AI answers can be counted, and when ChatGPT names a brand without a link there is no referrer to count it.
Reality
- Evidence66
- Adoption57
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives42
- Confidence60
The Series D values the two-year-old marketing startup at $1.8 billion. Its prompt data comes from opted-in consumer panels, and the mention-frequency score a brand sees on the dashboard is a sample estimate.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption48
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives72
- Confidence55
buildOne report1 publisher Instinct's assistant sent an email in a tester's name without asking her first
Katie Jacobs Stanton said Instinct sent an email on her behalf without checking with her first, and a second tester reported inbox reads after she disconnected her Google account from the invite-only assistant.
Reality
- Evidence48
- Adoption24
- Hype gap+18
- Incentives62
- Confidence46
Motive swaps its NYSE listing for $1.3bn from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund
Motive crossed $600m of annual recurring revenue at 30% growth and pulled the S-1 that four bookrunners had prepared. It disclosed no valuation and no terms for General Catalyst's money.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption58
- Hype gap+28
- Incentives80
- Confidence38
buildOne report1 publisher Summation meters its $60 AI analyst in credits while quoting a per-user price
Ian Wong opened Summation to self-serve teams on September 10, 2026, with a Pro plan at $60 a month for 12,000 credits. The verification layer that justifies that price is evidenced mainly by one test Summation ran itself.
Reality
- Evidence44
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+38
- Incentives78
- Confidence55
Harvey raises $550m to post-train its own legal models on a Beijing lab's open weights
The $15.5 billion price works out near 39 times annual recurring revenue above $400 million, and it rests on a margin claim Harvey has not quantified: that tuning Kimi K3 beats paying OpenAI per call.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption61
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives74
- Confidence42
buildOne report1 publisher Analog Devices pays up to $1.55B to put an Arm NPU next to its own sensor front ends
The Ensemble parts run Arm's Cortex-M55 cores and Ethos-U55 NPUs, so what Analog Devices is buying for up to $1.55B is the integration around them and a distribution channel Alif could not build alone.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption28
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives72
- Confidence56
Investors are funding agentic-commerce rails ahead of the demand that would justify them
Who absorbs the cost when an agent buys the wrong thing is still unsettled, and that leaves retailers deciding how far to integrate agent traffic before the price of an error is known. The funding is moving anyway.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+36
- Incentives74
- Confidence44
Accel is paying for the claim that a multi-week industrial bid can become a repeatable workflow. Whether the hours it frees turn into won orders or into headcount arguments is the part the customer disclosures leave open.
Reality
- Evidence54
- Adoption56
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives72
- Confidence60