Robotics Startup Skild AI Lands $1.4B, Tripling Valuation To $14B In Just 7 Months

On the heels of the rise of global venture funding to fintech and financial services startups last year, investors in the space say they expect funding growth to continue to concentrate into pre-IPO companies. Here's what else they said.

Humans&, a new company founded by top researchers from Google, Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI and Meta, among others, announced Tuesday that it has raised a massive $480 million seed round at a staggering $4.48 billion valuation.

The pace of big funding rounds continued to hold up at brisk levels this past week, led by a $1.4 billion financing for “robot brain” developer Skild AI. More big rounds went to startups in sectors including AI chips, brain-computer…

Overall, investors put $18 billion into seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies in Crunchbase security and privacy categories last year. That’s up about 26% from 2024, with particularly pronounced growth at early stage.

Global venture funding to fintech startups climbed in 2025 to its highest level in several quarters, boosted by later-stage deals, Crunchbase data shows.

In total, investors poured $67.5 billion into reported seed- through growth-stage rounds for companies across Asia in last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a decline of about 6% from 2024, and the lowest annual total in five years.

Latin America startup investment climbed by 14.3% in 2025, driven by a boost in both early- and late-stage funding, Crunchbase data shows.