The Dealflow by Founders Capital - Edition 38

Key News and Trends

Amazon Commits $50B to Build America’s AI Supercloud

AWS will invest up to $50B from 2026 to massively expand AI and supercomputing infrastructure across its Top Secret, Secret, and GovCloud regions. The build-out adds 1.3 GW of capacity and brings agencies tools like SageMaker, Bedrock, Claude, Nova, plus Trainium and Nvidia hardware. Amazon is positioning itself as the core AI engine of the U.S. government, collapsing weeks of analysis into hours. Read more here 

Anthropic Drops Opus 4.5, Its Smartest Model Yet

Anthropic has launched Claude Opus 4.5, calling it its most capable model to date across coding, agents, reasoning, and everyday productivity. The model posts state-of-the-art results on real-world software engineering benchmarks and beats every human candidate ever tested on Anthropic’s internal engineering exam. It also delivers major improvements in multilingual coding, agentic problem-solving, and robustness to prompt injection attacks. Opus 4.5 is available now across Anthropic’s apps, API, and all major cloud providers, with many new features. Read more here

Polymarket Wins CFTC Approval, Securing Its Regulated U.S. Return

Prediction-market platform Polymarket received an amended CFTC designation, allowing U.S. traders to participate through FCMs and traditional brokerages under full exchange-grade rules. It marks the platform’s first fully compliant path back into the U.S. since restricting American users in 2022, signalling growing regulatory acceptance of prediction markets. Read more here

UK Budget 2025 – Reeves Targets the Wealthiest With £26B Tax Hike

Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled a £26B tax-raising budget focused on the UK’s wealthiest households, funding the end of the two-child benefit cap and cutting energy bills. The plan includes a mansion-tax style council tax surcharge on homes over £2M, a 2p rise on dividend, savings and property income, and a freeze on income tax and NI thresholds for three more years, pulling 1.7M more people into higher tax bands via fiscal drag. Tax as a share of GDP is set to hit a post-war record 38% by the end of the parliament. Markets reacted positively as Reeves doubled fiscal headroom to £21.7B, though critics warned the budget leans heavily on back-loaded tax rises and leaves UK growth weaker than forecast. Read more here

Founders’ Take: What the UK Budget Really Means for Private Markets

This year’s UK budget landed with a muted thud - not disastrous, but far from catalytic. Fears over heavier capital gains or wealth taxes didn’t materialise, so founders who spent recent months weighing relocation plans may feel relief.

The only real white-space for startup and scale-up investors was expanded eligibility for Venture Capital Trust (VCT) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) follow-on funding - a modest but meaningful nudge. For those building or backing companies here, it’s a small win.

Yet the budget sidesteps the deeper competitiveness issues holding the UK back. If private markets are going to thrive, the government needs genuinely forward-looking reforms - not just tweaks to tax advantages.

Top Venture Deals

Revolut: New Raise at $75B Valuation (Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer, Fidelity, a16z, Nvidia NVentures)

• Revolut closed a new round valuing the neobank at $75B, led by Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer, and Fidelity, with participation from a16z, Nvidia NVentures, and others. Revolut continues rapid global expansion and has hit $1B annualised revenue, with $4B revenue logged in 2024. Read more here

Harmonic: $120M Series C at $1.45B Valuation (Ribbit, Sequoia, Kleiner, Emerson Collective)

• AI reasoning startup Harmonic, founded by Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, raised $120M at a $1.45B valuation. Led by Ribbit, with Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Emerson Collective, the round backs Harmonic’s push to eliminate AI hallucinations through its “Mathematical Superintelligence” approach. Its model Aristotle hit IMO-level performance, drawing strong investor interest. Funding will support compute-heavy training as Harmonic targets safety-critical sectors like finance, aerospace, and automotive. Read more here

Model ML: $75M Series A to Scale AI Workflow Automation (FT Partners, YC, QED, LocalGlobe)

• AI workflow platform Model ML raised $75M in a landmark FinTech Series A led by FT Partners, with YC, QED, 13Books, Latitude, and LocalGlobe participating. Just a year after launch, Model ML is already used by major banks, asset managers, consultancies, and two Big Four firms to automate client-ready Word, PowerPoint, and Excel outputs directly from trusted data. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Perishing Square

• Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is preparing a major move for early 2026, as Pershing Square plans to launch a U.S.-listed closed-end fund while simultaneously taking the firm public, targeting a $5 billion raise - an effort to broaden access to hedge-fund-style investing for a wider pool of investors. Read more here

Meesho

• India’s social-commerce giant Meesho will open its IPO on 3 December at a valuation of up to $5.6 billion, reflecting the growing wave of Indian tech firms heading to public markets as investor appetite for the country’s digital economy strengthens. Read more here

See you in the next edition,
The Founders Capital Team

Founders Capital is the trading name of FC Group Holding Ltd. FC Group Holding Ltd is an Appointed Representative of 8point8 Capital Ltd which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (reg. no. 936586). 

This communication is being sent confidentially on a restricted basis for information and discussion purposes only. It does not constitute a financial promotion and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Membership of Founders Capital is restricted to recipients who are eligible to receive exempt financial promotions under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005.