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AppsFlyer reportedly raised more than $1 billion in a Series E at a $2.7 billion post-money valuation, with Moloco, Google, Meta and Unity each taking minority stakes. The marketing analytics company, founded in 2011 and now at $1.3 billion in known funding, is positioning itself as an independent attribution layer for digital ads and says the round is a step toward a public listing.

Scotch raised a $20 million Series A led by VMG Partners, with First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau and Toba Capital also participating, as the AI-native liquor store operating system said it has grown more than 500% year over year and passed $1 billion in processed payment volume. It matters because the Denver startup is targeting a fragmented market with more than 200 legacy POS systems by combining POS hardware, software, payments and compliance tools, and it says AI can save store owners over a full day of work per week.

Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said AI is now “omnipresent” in music production as Deezer says more than 50,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded every day and tools like Suno are becoming mainstream in musicians’ workflows. The Grammys still exclude AI music from eligibility, making the Recording Academy’s rules a live test case for how major music institutions handle generative AI as it becomes harder to detect and filter.

Crunchbase data shows U.S. startups with a Black founder or co-founder raised about $942 million in 2025, just 0.32% of total venture funding, and $643 million by May 20 in 2026 across 34 deals, helped largely by SambaNova’s $350 million Series E. The numbers underscore how Black founders remain a tiny share of venture dollars even amid the AI funding boom, with 2021’s $5.2 billion peak still representing only 1.5% of U.S. venture investment.

After a five-cycle, three-clinic fertility journey that cost six figures, founder Nader AlSalim built Gaia, a New York startup that uses AI and machine learning to direct patients to “optimal” clinics, forecast IVF outcomes, and underwrite outcome-based financing plans for IVF, egg freezing and embryo transfers. Gaia says it has now raised a $100 million debt facility from Viola Credit on top of a $14 million Series A in January 2025, bringing total equity funding to $37 million, and its model stands out by pricing probability of success instead of charging per procedure.

U.S. venture funding concentrated more than ever in 2025, with 70% of more than $200 billion going to 389 companies that raised $100 million or more and $90 billion flowing to just six companies that each raised over $5 billion, while roughly 6,000 smaller companies split the remaining 30%. The trend is already intensifying in 2026, with 80% of startup investment through April going to 29 companies raising $500 million or more, highlighting how OpenAI- and Anthropic-scale rounds may reshape opportunities for the rest of the startup ecosystem.

Quantum computing startups have raised $1.2 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding so far in 2026, putting the sector on pace to finish below 2025’s record $4.1 billion even as recent big rounds include Photonic’s $200 million at a $2 billion valuation, QuantWare’s $178 million Series B, and Quantum Motion’s $160 million Series C. Public quantum names are much stronger, with D-Wave Quantum, IonQ, Quantum Computing, and Rigetti Computing valued at about $36 billion combined, while Quantinuum has filed to go public after a $10 billion pre-money private round, underscoring investor appetite for the sector despite limited startup profitability.