Edition 44

Welcome back to The Dealflow by Founders Capital - your inside track on the private markets. Each week, we cut through the noise to bring you the latest industry trends - along with our take.

Key News & Trends

SpaceX Buys xAI in $1.25T Power Play

SpaceX has acquired Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, valuing the combined entity at approximately $1.25T and potentially creating the world’s most valuable private company. The strategic goal: build space-based data centres to meet AI’s surging power demands, though the tie-up also pairs SpaceX’s satellite-driven revenue with xAI’s heavy cash burn. Read more here

Super Bowl Becomes AI’s New Battleground

The rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic is spilling into prime-time advertising, with Anthropic airing Super Bowl commercials that mock OpenAI’s move toward ads in ChatGPT. Both companies are racing to secure enterprise adoption while managing enormous infrastructure costs, signalling that the frontier-model war is shifting from research labs to mainstream brand competition. Read more here

Bitcoin: Crypto Rout Deepens

Bitcoin slid below $63,000 this week, extending a sharp sell-off that has erased roughly half its value since late 2025, as investors rotated out of risk assets amid market volatility, regulatory uncertainty, and broader weakness across crypto markets. Read more here

Y Combinator embraces stablecoins

Y Combinator will allow startups in its Spring 2026 batch to receive their standard investment in stablecoins, citing faster settlement, lower friction for international founders, and greater flexibility in moving capital across borders - another signal of crypto’s growing normalisation in startup finance. Read more here

Founders’ Take

When AI Wars Go Mainstream

As AI companies edge into Super Bowl advertising, the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic is spilling out of research labs and boardrooms and into mass-market storytelling. The competition is no longer just about enterprise adoption or benchmark wins, but about who controls the narrative at cultural scale.

Anthropic’s ad - which pokes at OpenAI’s perceived move toward advertising inside ChatGPT - drew a rapid response from Sam Altman, who took to X to argue the framing was misleading and to counter with jabs at user adoption numbers. But the public reaction suggested the exchange had already tilted: Altman’s defence came across as earnest rather than playful, while Anthropic set the tone.

This isn’t really about ads. It’s about psychological positioning. Anthropic succeeded in forcing OpenAI to respond on its terms, pulling the rivalry into the mainstream conversation. With infrastructure costs rising and enterprise contracts now the real prize, brand perception is becoming a strategic weapon - and for now, Anthropic appears to have landed the cleaner blow.

Top Venture Deals

ElevenLabs: $500M (Sequoia, a16z, ICONIQ)

• Voice AI startup ElevenLabs raised $500M at an $11B valuation, more than tripling its value year-on-year, as investors double down on multimodal AI platforms. With ~$330M ARR and rapid enterprise adoption, the company plans to expand globally and move beyond voice into video and agent-based workflows. Read more here

Waymo: $16B Raise (Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, & Sequoia Capital)

• Alphabet-owned Waymo has raised a massive $16 billion investment, valuing the autonomous vehicle pioneer at about $126 billion - nearly triple its 2024 valuation - in the largest funding round in its history. The funds will fuel global robotaxi expansion into over 20 cities this year, including London and Tokyo, building on rapid ride growth and safety gains. Read more here

Cerebras: $1B Series H (Tiger Global, Benchmark, Fidelity)

• AI infrastructure leader Cerebras raised $1B at a ~$23B valuation to accelerate deployment of its Wafer Scale Engine-3, the world’s largest AI processor, designed to deliver dramatically faster training and inference with lower power usage. The round signals sustained investor conviction in next-gen compute as demand for large-scale AI infrastructure intensifies. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Barrick

• Barrick Mining is pressing ahead with plans to IPO a minority stake (10–15%) in its North American gold assets, a unit analysts estimate could be valued near $42B. The listing, expected by late 2026, would still leave Barrick with a controlling stake while crystallising value from flagship projects including Nevada Gold Mines and Pueblo Viejo. Read more here

Visma

• European software group Visma is considering pushing back its planned €19bn London IPO from early 2026 to later in the year, as weakness across listed software stocks clouds market conditions. The move underscores how volatile public-market sentiment is shaping listing timelines, even for highly profitable, late-stage tech companies targeting the London Stock Exchange.. Read more here

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