TechCapsules

Fal, a San Francisco-based AI inference platform, secured $1.3 billion in a Series F round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Nvidia, Sound Ventures, and T. Rowe Price participating. The funding doubles the company’s valuation to $16 billion, up from $8 billion in April, and brings total capital raised to $1.65 billion across Series E and F. Fal’s revenue surpassed $800 million annually, reflecting growing demand for inference services from open‑source model users. The deal underscores Fal’s rapid expansion amid a competitive, high‑margin‑challenged market. [...]

EloElo, the Indian startup behind the Story TV micro‑drama app, closed a $80 million Series C round led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, bringing total funding to $130 million and valuing the company at $500 million. Story TV, founded in 2020 by former Flipkart executive Saurabh Pandey, now serves over 33 million active users and hosts more than 5,000 titles in six languages, with users averaging 95 minutes per day. The investment targets expansion in India’s fast‑growing micro‑drama market, which attracts 118 million monthly viewers and [...]

Quint Computing, a quantum hardware startup based in Erlangen, secured €9.1 million ($10.2 million USD) in a seed round, the largest first financing for a German quantum firm. The funding, led by Vsquared Ventures and joined by Quantonation, Nucleus Capital, Faber, Vanagon Ventures, ZOHO.VC, and IQM co‑founder Mikko Möttönen, is complemented by a €2.2 million European Innovation Council Pathfinder grant. The capital will develop Quint’s patented architecture that embeds continuous electrical control into processors, aiming to cut physical error‑correction overhead [...]

Universal Quantum has launched its iQPU, a monolithic trapped‑ion processor that integrates control electronics on the same silicon substrate to remove the external wiring bottleneck that limits scaling. The iQPU will power two quantum computers being delivered to the German Aerospace Center under a €67 million contract. By using a Quantum Charge‑Coupled Device layout with dynamic ion shuttling, the chip executes gates without dedicated laser or RF lines for each qubit, and the UQConnect interface links multiple modules [...]

California startup Voya Energy raised $35 million to develop aluminum‑air generators that convert prepared scrap aluminum, air and water into electricity without combustion. The company targets diesel‑powered backup units at data centres, citing advantages over exhaust, noise and permitting constraints, and also envisions continuous‑power installations at grid‑constrained sites. An aluminum‑air cell consumes metal and produces aluminum hydroxide, requiring a supply chain for fuel delivery and by‑product handling that the firm’s specifications omit. Using Voya’s reported 57 % conversion efficiency, [...]

Tutor Intelligence Inc., a spin‑out of MIT CSAIL, announced a $75 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing its total funding to $117 million. The capital will accelerate training of its frontier robot foundation models and expand manufacturing of its two‑armed “Sonny” and mobile “Cassie” robots. Tutor’s full‑stack platform uses a “data flywheel” that captures real‑world manipulation data from fleets of internet‑connected robots operated remotely by human “tutors,” feeding the data back into AI models to improve capability, [...]

Tokyo‑based Nagoshi Studio announced its closure this week, confirming that its debut title, Gang of Dragon, will not be released. The studio, founded by Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi in 2021, had unveiled a crime‑drama trailer at The Game Awards 2025 featuring actor Ma Dong‑seok. Months earlier, publisher NetEase withdrew a required £33.1 million (≈$44.4 million) investment, leaving the project unfunded. The funding cut reflects NetEase’s broader retreat from overseas game investments, a trend that has also forced studios such [...]

Scottish Widows, the UK workplace‑pension provider owned by Lloyds Banking Group, is channeling members’ savings into a venture‑growth portfolio managed by IP Group. The first allocations will target Oxford Quantum Circuits and Quantum Motion, two quantum‑computing start‑ups, alongside battery firm Nyobolt and AI‑driven health‑tech company Genomics Limited. Aberdeen Investments appointed IP Group to run the portfolio within the CG Scottish Widows Growth long‑term asset fund, aiming to supply “follow‑on” capital for British firms ready to commercialise technology and scale. The [...]