The Dealflow by Founders Capital - Edition 40

Key News and Trends

Anthropic Nears a $350B Valuation

Anthropic is reportedly raising $10B at a $350B valuation, nearly doubling its valuation just three months after its last round. Coatue and GIC are expected to lead, as demand for frontier AI exposure continues to concentrate around a handful of scaled players. The raise comes alongside massive compute commitments with Microsoft and Nvidia, underscoring how capital intensity and valuation are now moving in lockstep at the top end of AI. Read more here

ChatGPT Moves into Healthcare

OpenAI announced ChatGPT Health, a new experience that lets users securely connect medical records and wellness apps directly to ChatGPT. The product is explicitly not for diagnosis or treatment, with health data siloed from other chats and excluded from model training, as OpenAI positions itself carefully inside a regulated vertical. The move signals a broader push to turn ChatGPT into a personal operating system, while trying to pre-empt privacy and compliance concerns. Read more here

Meta’s $2B AI Bet Runs Into Beijing

Meta’s $2B acquisition of AI assistant Manus is drawing little resistance in Washington, but a growing backlash in Beijing. Chinese regulators are reportedly reviewing whether Manus violated technology export controls when it relocated from Beijing to Singapore ahead of the deal. Officials are concerned the transaction could create a playbook for Chinese AI startups to sidestep domestic oversight before selling to US buyers. What looked like a clean cross-border exit is now shaping into a geopolitical test case for global AI M&A. Read more here

WBD rejects Paramount’s debt-heavy Bid

Warner Bros. Discovery has again rejected Paramount Skydance’s $108.4B offer, labelling it a leveraged buyout that would load the company with $87B of debt. The board reiterated support for its $82.7B Netflix deal, arguing Paramount’s financing structure carries materially higher execution risk. The episode highlights how balance sheet strength now outweighs headline price in large-scale media M&A. Read more here

Founders’ Take: ChatGPT goes vertical - without crossing the line

OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT Health isn’t about becoming an AI doctor, it’s about proving ChatGPT can enter regulated industries without triggering regulatory or trust blowback.

The key is restraint. No diagnosis. No treatment. Health data is siloed and excluded from model training. OpenAI is deliberately starting with interpretation and organisation, not decision-making. That’s notable given millions of users already use ChatGPT for health-related questions. This product formalises existing behaviour, but inside compliance guardrails.

Strategically, this signals the next phase of ChatGPT’s evolution into a personal operating system. By securely aggregating medical records and wellness data, OpenAI positions itself as the interface layer through which users understand complex systems, without owning the regulated outcome.

More broadly, this is a playbook we should expect to see repeated across other traditional industries: finance, law, education, insurance. Start with “assistive” use cases. Over-invest in privacy and compliance early. Let user behaviour justify deeper integration over time. By the time regulators catch up, the interface layer is already entrenched.

Top Venture Deals

xAI: $20B (Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, QIA, MGX)

• Elon Musk’s xAI closed a $20B funding round, exceeding its initial $15B target and implying a valuation of ~$230B. Strategic investors Nvidia and Cisco participated alongside sovereign and long-only capital, underscoring continued appetite for scaled frontier AI despite rising regulatory scrutiny. Read more here

LMArena: $150M (Felicis + UC Investments) at $1.7B valuation

• LMArena (formerly Chatbot Arena), the model-comparison platform used for crowd-sourced LLM evals, raised $150M, tripling its valuation to $1.7B in ~8 months. The round was co-led by Felicis and UC Investments, with participation including a16z, Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed. Read more here.

Swap: $100M Series C (DST Global, ICONIQ)

• Just six months after closing a $40M Series B led by ICONIQ, Global commerce OS Swap raised an $100M Series C to consolidate returns, cross-border shipping, tax, and payments into a single platform. The company reports customers retain 12% more cash and see 111% YoY sales growth, positioning Swap as infrastructure rather than a point solution for mid-market brands. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Discord

• Discord has confidentially filed for a US IPO, marking a formal step toward public markets for the Tencent-backed platform with more than 200 million monthly users. The company is working with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, with timing likely tied to continued recovery in the tech IPO window. Read more here

PicPay

• Brazilian fintech PicPay has re-filed for a US IPO after withdrawing its initial attempt in 2022. The company reported $1.37B in revenue and $59M in net profit over the first nine months of 2025, a sharp turnaround from losses during its prior filing. 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.