Edition 45

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

Alphabet Goes Big on AI Debt

Alphabet raised $20B in its largest-ever US dollar bond sale, drawing over $100B in orders, as it taps global credit markets to finance aggressive AI spending. With plans for debut offerings in Switzerland and the UK, including a rare 100-year bond, the move underscores how hyperscalers are increasingly relying on debt to fund data centres and infrastructure amid forecasts that Big Tech capex could reach ~$650B in 2026. Read more here

Stripe Stays Private - Now Worth $140B

Stripe is reportedly arranging a new tender offer valuing the payments giant at no less than $140B, up from roughly $107B implied by a 2025 secondary. Despite profitability and global scale, leadership maintains there is no urgency to IPO, instead using structured liquidity events to reward employees while avoiding public-market scrutiny. Read more here

xAI’s Talent Drain Raises Scaling Questions

A wave of departures, including multiple co-founders, has hit Elon Musk’s xAI following an internal reorganisation aimed at improving execution speed. While Musk framed the exits as a natural evolution, the loss of senior technical talent highlights intensifying competition for frontier AI researchers. Read more here

Founders’ Take

How Do You Finance the Future?

This week showcased two very different approaches to funding the AI race. Anthropic raises $30B in equity at a $380B valuation. Alphabet raises $20B in debt. Same AI race - entirely different fuel.

Startups finance AI by selling ownership. Each round funds compute, talent, and model training - but at the cost of dilution and rising expectations. Hyperscalers fund AI with operating cash flow and cheap credit, layering debt onto already cash-generative businesses without surrendering control. For them, AI investment is capital allocation; for startups, it is capital dependency.

The long-term question isn’t simply who has more capital - but who deploys it better. Incumbents benefit from scale and cost of capital; AI-native challengers benefit from focus, speed, and structural alignment around the frontier. In a cycle defined by both infrastructure intensity and rapid technical iteration, financing advantage matters - but it won’t be the only determinant of who defines the next decade.

Top Venture Deals

Anthropic: $30B Series G (GIC, Coatue)

• Anthropic raised $30B at a $380B valuation, one of the largest private tech rounds ever, as enterprise demand for its Claude models accelerates. Run-rate revenue has reached ~$14B with Fortune 10 adoption and a rapidly expanding base of high-spend customers, reinforcing the view that enterprise AI is emerging as the sector’s primary monetisation engine. Read more here

Apptronik: $935M Series A Extension (Google, Mercedes-Benz, B Capital)

• Humanoid robotics startup Apptronik expanded its Series A to $935M at a ~$5.3B valuation after strong inbound investor interest. Partnering with Google DeepMind and industrial players, the company is building “embodied AI” robots designed for warehouse and machinery tasks, signalling growing capital flows into physical AI beyond software models. Read more here

Harvey: $200M (Sequoia, GIC)

• Legal AI platform Harvey is in talks to raise $200M at an $11B valuation, up from $8B just two months ago. With ~$190M ARR and more than 1,000 customers, including major law firms, the startup is scaling rapidly as AI reshapes high-value white-collar workflows. Read more here

Upcoming Public Offerings

Kraken

• Crypto exchange Kraken has removed its CFO after confidentially filing with U.S. regulators, just months after raising $800M at a $20B valuation. The leadership reshuffle, alongside recent executive promotions, suggests internal restructuring as the company prepares for a long-anticipated public debut. Read more here

SpaceX

• Elon Musk has pivoted SpaceX’s long-term vision toward building a self-sustaining lunar city, a faster path than Mars, as the company readies what could be the largest IPO ever, targeting up to $50B at a ~$1.5T valuation. Investors are expected to focus on nearer-term revenue drivers such as Starlink, launch services, and orbital infrastructure as the company refines its narrative ahead of the offering. Read more here

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