Market & RegulationInvestment · £8m
Magic AI raises £8m for US expansion
Siftedhigh confidence
Why it matters
- →Magic AI secures £8m to expand its AI fitness mirror into the US market.
- →Highlights investor interest in hardware-integrated consumer AI products.
- →Signals continued funding for early-stage startups in the wellness tech sector.
Magic AI has secured £8m in funding to expand its AI-powered fitness mirror into the US market. The startup aims to leverage its proprietary technology to offer personalized workout guidance through hardware-integrated AI. This investment underscores continued investor interest in consumer-facing AI applications that combine physical devices with intelligent software services. The company plans to use the capital for marketing and distribution efforts in North America.
Read originalMore from Sifted
Investment · $140M
Market & Regulationbusiness
Anthropic and Nvidia back Basecamp Research in $140m round
Basecamp Research just closed a $140 million deal with Anthropic and Nvidia as lead investors, marking a decisive shift in how frontier labs secure compute. This isn't about generic cloud access; it is a vertical integration play where model makers own the hardware stack to guarantee training stability. By backing specialized infrastructure, these giants are locking in capacity before scarcity bites harder. The move signals that reliable, optimized silicon is now the primary bottleneck for AI progress, not just algorithms. For the industry, this means compute power is becoming a proprietary asset rather than a commodity. Builders should watch how this consolidation affects pricing and availability for smaller players trying to train competitive models.
Sifted
Investment · $189M
Market & Regulationbusiness
Verda raises $189m for cloud infrastructure
Verda has secured $189 million in a funding round led by Emergence Capital, signaling strong investor appetite for next-generation cloud infrastructure. While the specific technical architecture of Verda's platform remains under wraps in this brief, the size of the raise suggests a significant bet on optimizing cloud operations or reducing costs. This capital injection positions the early-stage startup to scale rapidly against established incumbents in the crowded cloud management space. The deal underscores continued venture confidence in foundational infrastructure plays despite broader market cooling. Investors are betting big that Verda can solve the fragmentation problem in modern cloud stacks. With this war chest, they can finally compete with legacy providers on price and performance. The real test will be whether their tech actually delivers on those promises.
Sifted
Investment · €11m
Market & Regulationbusiness
NIF backs defence AI startup Terasi in €11m raise
The Nordic Innovation Fund is backing Terasi, a defence-focused AI startup, in an €11 million funding round. This signals growing institutional confidence in specialized AI applications within the security sector, particularly as geopolitical tensions drive demand for autonomous systems and intelligence analysis tools. The investment marks a shift towards deeper integration of AI in national defence strategies across Europe. For builders in the defence-tech space, this validates the commercial viability of niche, high-stakes AI solutions. Terasi’s focus on defence-specific challenges sets it apart from general-purpose AI ventures. The capital injection allows for rapid scaling of proprietary models tailored to security operations. This move by NIF suggests a broader trend of public funds supporting strategic tech sovereignty.
Sifted
More in Market & Regulation
© WIRED AIMarket & Regulationother
US-China AI Hotline Faces Delays Amid Policy Friction
The Trump administration is pushing for a US-China AI notification hotline to prevent national security escalations, but the initiative is stalling over fundamental disagreements. Key hurdles include defining what constitutes a reportable incident and securing explicit Chinese commitment, which remains noncommittal. The delay is further complicated by internal debates over enforcement mechanisms and the appointment of a new 'AI czar' to lead interagency coordination. This friction underscores the difficulty of establishing guardrails in an industry defined by rapid technological advancement and geopolitical rivalry.
WIRED AI
© TechCrunch AIInvestment · $311M
Market & Regulationbusiness
Enveda raises $311M for AI drug discovery
Enveda’s $311 million Series E signals that the biotech market is betting heavily on nature-derived AI drugs. By doubling its valuation to $2 billion, investors are backing a strategy that hunts for medicines in plants and microbes rather than synthesizing them from scratch. With candidates already in clinical trials for skin conditions and GLP-1 weight loss maintenance, Enveda moves beyond theoretical promise into human testing. This funding validates the niche of using AI to decode complex natural compounds, a space where few players have reached this stage.
TechCrunch AI
© The Verge AIMarket & Regulationother
California mandates data center energy and water transparency
California has signed seven bills forcing data centers to disclose their electricity and water usage, closing a major information gap that has left communities in the dark about infrastructure impacts. The legislation requires monthly energy reporting and specific water disclosures during permitting, while also directing regulators to create separate power rates to prevent costs from being passed on to general consumers. This marks a significant shift from voluntary sustainability pledges to enforceable transparency, driven by concerns over grid strain and local resource depletion. It signals that the era of opaque AI infrastructure expansion is ending in one of the world's largest tech markets.
The Verge AI