Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI (6/24/26)

By
Christopher Robbins
-
706

This week we continue our series on the top 5 VC-funded deals in AI.

This week our overall AI venture capital activity accelerated again from prior weeks’ strength, with all five of our listed announcements coming in over $250 million and nine announcements total coming in over $100 million.

The biggest announcement, per FinSMEs, came from China-based DeepSeek, which raised more than $7 billion round at a valuation of over $50 billion to “fund extensive compute infrastructure clusters, accelerate next-generation open-weight model pre-training, and scale domain-specific software applications across global enterprise tech stacks,” according to its announcement. DeepSeek made waves over a year ago in announcing ultra-efficient AI models. Our second-place announcement was from San Francisco-based Baseten, which raised a $1.5 billion round to “scale its high-performance graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters, expand its globally distributed open-source model optimization architecture, and accelerate enterprise software engineering team recruitment,” according to its announcement. Baseten is an AI infrastructure provider. The top five also included companies in the materials science, physical AI and cyberdefense spaces.

Smaller funding raises that did not quite make our top 5 this week included announcements from the long-term care, AI infrastructure and data management sectors.

Below, we highlight the top five venture capital deals, ranked from the highest to the lowest funding amounts, showcasing the companies at the forefront of the AI revolution…

Top 5 Venture Capital Deals from June 18 – June 24

1. DeepSeek

  • Location: Hangzhou, China
  • Description: Developer of open-source artificial intelligence foundation models that have emerged as a major competitor in the global AI landscape.
  • Funding Amount: Over $7.4 billion (50 billion yuan)
  • Funding Round: Maiden external funding round
  • Valuation: Over $50 billion post-money

2. Baseten

  • Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Description: Developer of AI model deployment and serverless compute infrastructure that enables organizations to deploy and scale machine learning applications efficiently.
  • Funding Amount: $1.5 billion
  • Funding Round: Venture funding round (reportedly closing)

3. CuspAI

  • Location: Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Description: Developer of AI-powered materials discovery platforms designed to accelerate scientific research and the development of advanced materials.
  • Funding Amount: $400 million
  • Funding Round: Venture funding round (reportedly closing)
  • Valuation: $2.6 billion

4. Odyssey

  • Location: Palo Alto, CA
  • Description: Developer of general world simulation models and physical artificial intelligence platforms that aim to bridge virtual reasoning and real-world environments.
  • Funding Amount: $310 million
  • Funding Round: Series B
  • Valuation: $1.45 billion

5. Dream

  • Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
  • Description: Sovereign AI and cyber defense company providing advanced security capabilities for governments, critical infrastructure operators, and national security organizations.
  • Funding Amount: $260 million
  • Funding Round: Venture funding round

Make sure to check out our Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI right here!

Written & Researched by DWN Staff
VC Deals Synopsized by ChatGPT
Research Source: FinSMEs

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