Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI (7/8/26)

By
Christopher Robbins
-
57

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

This week our overall AI venture capital activity maintained its momentum from prior weeks, with all five of our listed announcements coming in over $800 million and eight announcements total coming in over $100 million.

The biggest announcement, per FinSMEs, came from Houston-based energy developer Joulent, which raised a $1.75 billion round led by National Grid to “advance its high-voltage project pipeline, fund modular generation infrastructure, scale its technical capabilities, and expand its engineering workforce to meet AI data center electricity demand,” according to its announcement. Normally we wouldn’t feature an energy company in our Top 5 announcements, but Joulent’s raise was explicitly linked to addressing AI’s energy needs. Our second-place announcement was from Munich, Germany-based Quantum Systems, which raised a $1.2 billion round to “expand its global physical manufacturing capacity, fortify cross-border supply chain resilience, and accelerate software R&D across its allied defense network,” according to its announcement. For the second week in a row, our second place announcement is from a German defense company. Quantum Systems builds drones and automated defense systems. The top five also included three companies in the AI infrastructure space.

Smaller funding raises that did not quite make our top 5 this week included announcements from the agentic AI, video intelligence and sales 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 July 2 – July 8

1. Joulent

  • Company Location: Houston, TX
  • Description: Developer of multi-gigawatt energy infrastructure and industrial power platforms designed to support large-scale industrial and AI-related power demands.
  • Funding Amount: $1.75 billion
  • Funding Round: Strategic minority investment (led by National Grid)

2. Quantum Systems

  • Company Location: Munich, Germany
  • Description: Developer of AI-powered autonomous drones and software-defined defense systems serving military, government, and commercial customers.
  • Funding Amount: $1.2 billion
  • Funding Round: Series D
  • Valuation: Approximately $8 billion post-money

3. Keyfactor

  • Company Location: Cleveland, OH
  • Description: Provider of trust infrastructure services specializing in public key infrastructure (PKI), machine identity management, and digital certificate lifecycle automation.
  • Funding Amount: More than $1 billion
  • Funding Round: Strategic growth investment (led by Summit Partners)

4. Etched

  • Company Location: San Jose, CA
  • Description: Developer of frontier AI inference clusters and specialized computing infrastructure optimized for large-scale artificial intelligence workloads.
  • Funding Amount: $800 million
  • Funding Round: Multiple unannounced financing rounds (announced upon emerging from stealth)

5. Together AI

  • Company Location: San Francisco, CA
  • Description: Provider of an AI Native Cloud platform that enables developers and enterprises to train, fine-tune, and deploy open-source AI models at scale.
  • Funding Amount: $800 million
  • Funding Round: Series C
  • Valuation: $8.3 billion post-money

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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