Current Startup and Venture Investment News as of 25 February 2026: AI Mega-Rounds, Growth in Private Liquidity, Investments in Fintech, Robotics, and Climate Tech, New Funds and Global Deals. Analytics for Venture Investors and Funds.
Key Signals for Venture Funds and Investors:
- Private companies are expanding buyback and secondary sale programmes, creating benchmarks for valuations without an IPO;
- AI infrastructure is becoming the main recipient of capital — from chips to MLOps, security and energy efficiency;
- Mega-rounds are intensifying market polarisation: category leaders receive larger cheques, while others must prove their unit economics;
- Robotics and industrial automation are moving from pilots to contracts and serial production.
Fintech and Private Liquidity: Stripe Sets a Benchmark for Late-Stage
The most applicable event of the day for venture capital is the rise in liquidity within the private market. Stripe has announced a tender offer for employees and shareholders, which has raised the company's valuation to $159 billion — over 70% higher than a comparable buyback a year ago. The company is also using its own funds, with the majority of the deal being supported by existing investors.
This is an important precedent for venture investments: funds are returning to portfolios not only through IPOs and M&A but also via regular secondary windows. This reduces pressure on public offering timelines and enhances the value of assets that provide liquidity for teams and early investors while remaining private.
Concurrently, fintech infrastructure is once again attracting significant rounds: the savings platform Vestwell has closed a Series E round of $385 million with a valuation of $2 billion. Such deals demonstrate the market's increasing preference for businesses with long-term contracts and mature economics rather than models growing on subsidies.
Mega-Round Surrounding OpenAI: A New Level of Competition for Capital and Computing
AI remains the primary magnet for venture investments. Currently in focus are negotiations involving OpenAI to raise over $100 billion. Market reports suggest that Nvidia is close to investing around $30 billion, with the overall parameters of the deal implying a valuation of approximately $830 billion (various estimates suggest ranges from "hundreds" to "over eight hundred" billion dollars).
The key here is not only the sum but the architecture of the ecosystem: strategic investors are strengthening computing supply chains and solidifying demand for accelerators. For second-tier startups, this signals a more costly access to GPUs and a rise in differentiation requirements. Teams that can deliver enterprise effects (time and cost savings) and scale through real integrations stand to benefit.
Capital Expenditures on AI Infrastructure: The "Shovels and Picks" Market is Expanding
Capital expenditures among major tech companies are accelerating. According to estimates from Bridgewater, total investments by leading players in AI infrastructure could reach approximately $650 billion in 2026, up from $410 billion in 2025. This expands the addressable market for “infrastructure providers” while simultaneously intensifying competition for resources — energy, sites, and production chains.
Segments where venture capital is more frequently finding a clear path to revenue include:
- MLOps and Observability: cost control on inference, quality and risk monitoring, model versioning management.
- Security and Compliance: data protection, access control, auditing, and managing the risks of AI deployment in corporations.
- Energy Efficiency in Data Centres: cooling, load management, software for optimising energy consumption.
- Chips and Optimisation Tools: specialised accelerators, compilers, and portability of models across architectures.
Against the backdrop of a multi-billion dollar computation race, interest is rising in independent hardware players: today's news highlights a round of over $500 million for the startup MatX, which is developing AI chips and plans series production within the next few years.
A New AI Stack: Spatial Models and Infrastructure for Agents
The "deep" AI segment continues to attract the largest cheques, but increasingly, funds are flowing into a combination of "model + implementation". World Labs, which is working on "spatial intelligence" (models for understanding and generating three-dimensional environments), has raised $1 billion. Notably, Autodesk made a strategic investment of $200 million, demonstrating how corporate players are integrating into future value creation chains.
Simultaneously, demand is growing for infrastructure for AI agents and process automation. Temporal secured $300 million at a valuation of around $5 billion, solidifying the category of platforms that facilitate agent workflow in production: reliable execution, error control, and integration with corporate systems. For venture funds, this is an attractive area with enterprise-SaaS metrics, but with a higher quality bar, as an agent's error turns into a financial and regulatory risk.
Robotics: Apptronik and the Transition from Pilots to Scaling
Robotics remains one of the most capital-intensive but also most commercialisable verticals. Apptronik raised $520 million (expansion of Series A) at a valuation of around $5 billion. The focus is on the industrial deployment of humanoid robots in logistics and manufacturing, where customers are willing to pay for measurable effects: operation speed, reduced defect rates, and workplace safety.
A signal for venture capital: the market is beginning to pay for a "production-first" approach. In due diligence, ownership economics (cost, service, payback) become paramount, alongside the speed of integration into customer processes and the ability to ensure production and certification.
Climate Tech and E-Mobility: More Hybrid Financing Structures
Climate tech maintains investment interest, but deal structures are increasingly leaning towards "mixed capital". Spiro, an electric mobility operator and battery-swapping platform, raised $50 million in debt financing for infrastructure expansion. This confirms a global shift: capital-intensive models are financed not only through equity but also through debt, and venture investors are increasingly viewing capital structure as part of their investment thesis.
A practical takeaway for funds: when assessing climate tech projects, it is crucial to pre-design sources of CAPEX financing to accelerate scaling and reduce dilution in subsequent rounds.
Funds, LPs and Strategy: Mega-Funds Return, Niche Mandates Grow
Fundraising is intensifying the polarisation of the venture market. Thrive Capital has announced the closure of a fund exceeding $10 billion (part allocated for early stages, the remainder for growth), while in the crypto segment, Dragonfly has closed a fund at $650 million. Simultaneously, in Europe and climate tech, there is a rising number of specialised funds focused on deep tech, energy efficiency, and industrial decarbonisation.
What to Do Tomorrow as an Investor — A Checklist for the Investment Committee:
- Disaggregate AI theses: models, infrastructure, and vertical applications require different multipliers and exit scenarios.
- Check computational unit economics: cost-to-serve and access to GPU are becoming part of the "moat".
- Plan for liquidity: secondary transactions and tender offers are the new standard for retaining teams and partially realising portfolios.
- Incorporate M&A logic from the outset: in infrastructure, security, and robotics, strategic exits are often faster than IPOs.
The concluding narrative for the startup and venture capital market as of 25 February 2026: capital exists within the system, but it has become more discerning. Companies that can demonstrate protection around infrastructure and data, discipline in burn-rate, and a clear pathway to liquidity — through secondary deals, M&A transactions, or IPO preparations — are the winners.
