<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><atom:link href="https://at-pulse.com/startups/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><title>AT Pulse · VC &amp; Startups</title><description>Funding, exits, founders &amp; venture data. The VC &amp; Startups desk, connected daily.</description><link>https://at-pulse.com/startups/</link><item><title>Anthropic sets $70–$78 IPO range, Huang exits Nvidia, Uforce and Mercor raise big rounds</title><link>https://at-pulse.com/editions/2026-11-12/#startups</link><guid>https://at-pulse.com/editions/2026-11-12/#startups</guid><pubDate>Thu, 12 Nov 2026 12:00:00 GMT</pubDate><description>Anthropic&apos;s amended S-1 set a $70–$78 range for 825 million shares. A separate $26 billion placement from chip and cloud suppliers comes alongside it, and at the top of the range the fully diluted value is about $1.4 trillion. In the same week, Nvidia&apos;s board accepted Jensen Huang&apos;s resignation after reports tied him to a suspected foreign intelligence effort. Sequoia is closing its London office and is reportedly preparing a large check for AI holding company Sequence. Private round valuations kept rising: Uforce raised $700 million at $6 billion, Mercor $750 million at $20 billion, Nominal $240 million at $3 billion and Imprint $130 million at $1.88 billion. In the Philippines, Series A money nearly disappeared even as GCash parent Mynt completed a record listing. Meanwhile, founders and funds are adjusting to AI-driven screening.</description><content:encoded>&lt;p&gt;Anthropic&amp;#39;s amended S-1 set a $70–$78 range for 825 million shares. A separate $26 billion placement from chip and cloud suppliers comes alongside it, and at the top of the range the fully diluted value is about $1.4 trillion. In the same week, Nvidia&amp;#39;s board accepted Jensen Huang&amp;#39;s resignation after reports tied him to a suspected foreign intelligence effort. Sequoia is closing its London office and is reportedly preparing a large check for AI holding company Sequence. Private round valuations kept rising: Uforce raised $700 million at $6 billion, Mercor $750 million at $20 billion, Nominal $240 million at $3 billion and Imprint $130 million at $1.88 billion. In the Philippines, Series A money nearly disappeared even as GCash parent Mynt completed a record listing. Meanwhile, founders and funds are adjusting to AI-driven screening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6838/&quot;&gt;Dragonfly&amp;#39;s Haseeb Qureshi says founders now send VCs a company.md file for AI screening agents&lt;/a&gt; — Some founders now send VCs a company.md, a markdown summary meant for AI screening agents, alongside the pitch deck, Dragonfly&amp;#39;s Haseeb Qureshi wrote. A This Week in Startups panel weighed the practice, which echoes the llms.txt convention and has no published schema.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6842/&quot;&gt;Anthropic sets $70–$78 IPO range as Nvidia board investigates Jensen Huang and Sequoia closes London office&lt;/a&gt; — Anthropic set its IPO range at $70–$78 a share. Depending on share count, that values it at about $1.02 trillion to $1.4 trillion. The same week, Nvidia&amp;#39;s board opened an inquiry into Jensen Huang, the Nasdaq 100 lost about $2.5 trillion and Sequoia cut back.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6778/&quot;&gt;Sequoia to Invest Hundreds of Millions in Sequence Holdings, the AI Holding Company Taking Baldwin Group Private&lt;/a&gt; — Sequoia Capital is reportedly investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Sequence Holdings, a year-old AI holding company that buys service businesses to keep and rebuild around AI, and is taking insurance broker Baldwin Group private with Michael Dell&amp;#39;s family office.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6759/&quot;&gt;Anorak, founded by former Hutch executives, raises $5M pre-seed from Play Ventures, Backed VC, Supercell and MTG for interactive generative video games&lt;/a&gt; — London–Chengdu startup Anorak, started by former executives of racing-game studio Hutch, raised a $5M pre-seed round to build interactive generative video: AI-generated video that responds to players in real time, aimed at games for niche hobby communities.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6722/&quot;&gt;Colombian Rent-Payments Startup Palomma Raises $10M Series A Led by Cometa, Bringing Total Funding to $14M&lt;/a&gt; — Palomma is a Medellín startup led by a former Nubank Colombia executive. It has raised a $10M Series A led by Mexico&amp;#39;s Cometa, bringing total funding to $14M. It plans to use the rent payments it already processes to offer advances, default coverage and tenant credit.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6836/&quot;&gt;Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz warns that AI investors are repeating Theranos-era diligence failures&lt;/a&gt; — Tyler Shultz helped expose Theranos. He says the AI funding boom has the same weak points: shallow investor checks, products that are easy to fake and NDAs that discourage employees from speaking up. In a new podcast, he details how Theranos suppressed internal dissent.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6832/&quot;&gt;Jensen Huang Resigns as Nvidia CEO Amid Megaspeed Spy Scandal as Anthropic Launches IPO Roadshow&lt;/a&gt; — Nvidia&amp;#39;s board accepted Jensen Huang&amp;#39;s resignation after he admitted infidelity amid reports linking him to Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy. The same week, Anthropic began marketing an IPO implying a valuation of up to about $1.4 trillion.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/7078/&quot;&gt;WeRoad acquires Swiss group-travel startup TravelTribe in first deal of €70M M&amp;amp;A plan&lt;/a&gt; — WeRoad, the Airbnb-backed group-travel company, has bought Zurich-based TravelTribe, a sports-focused community of about 1,600 members, for an undisclosed price. It is the first deal in a plan to add €70 million of revenue through acquisitions over three years.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/7093/&quot;&gt;Philippine Series A funding falls 98% in 2026 as Series B jumps 795%, while GCash parent Mynt completes record ₱60.9B IPO&lt;/a&gt; — Philippine startup capital is pooling in revenue-stage Series B rounds while Series A value has nearly vanished, according to Tracxn and Gobi Partners data. GCash parent Mynt&amp;#39;s record ₱60.9B listing shows public markets can absorb large exits but does little for early-stage founders.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6781/&quot;&gt;METR estimates Anthropic&amp;#39;s AI progress has roughly doubled in pace, and AI 2027 authors move superhuman-researcher forecasts into 2027&lt;/a&gt; — After 11 weeks embedded at Anthropic, METR estimates the company&amp;#39;s internal benchmark gains are arriving about twice as fast as before and attributes most of the speed-up to Claude helping build Claude. Days later, the AI 2027 forecasters moved their timelines into 2027.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/7073/&quot;&gt;Uforce raises $700M Series A at $6B valuation, co-led by Valor Equity Partners and UK National Wealth Fund&lt;/a&gt; — Uforce, a drone maker founded in Ukraine and headquartered in London, raised a $700 million Series A at a $6 billion post-money valuation. Valor Equity Partners and the UK&amp;#39;s National Wealth Fund co-led the round, which will scale production of uncrewed systems and command software.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6723/&quot;&gt;Anthropic sets $70–$78 IPO range and adds a $26B placement from chip and cloud suppliers, for a combined raise of up to $88.5B&lt;/a&gt; — Anthropic&amp;#39;s amended S-1 offers 825M Class A shares at $70–$78 on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. A $26B non-voting placement from compute suppliers, including Google, Nvidia, AMD and TSMC, brings the combined raise to as much as $88.5B.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6837/&quot;&gt;Mercor raises $750M Series D at a $20B valuation and pitches evals to enterprises&lt;/a&gt; — Mercor&amp;#39;s $750M Series D, which includes an employee tender, values the AI training-data company at $20B. That is double the price it set in October 2025. Brendan Foody says Mercor sells reinforcement-learning environments and is now bringing evals and post-training to enterprises.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6721/&quot;&gt;Nominal raises $240M Series C at $3B valuation, triple its March 2026 valuation&lt;/a&gt; — Austin-based Nominal, which builds software for engineers testing complex hardware like aircraft, raised a $240M Series C led by Lightspeed at a $3B valuation. That is triple its March 2026 valuation, and the company is now selling an AI agent that analyzes test data to defense customers.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/stories/6728/&quot;&gt;Imprint Raises $130 Million at $1.88 Billion Valuation as It Adds Big Retail Card Programs and Targets AI Shopping Agents&lt;/a&gt; — Co-branded card company Imprint raised $130 million at a $1.88 billion valuation and projects about $400 million in 2026 revenue, up 150%. It added Shell, Kroger, Albertsons and Fanatics programs and launched an MCP server for AI-agent shopping.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://at-pulse.com/editions/2026-11-12/#startups&quot;&gt;Read the full VC &amp;amp; Startups brief&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content:encoded></item></channel></rss>