Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2026? This weekly roundup breaks down the top funding rounds in the U.S., where capital heavily favored applications in the physical world. While defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries led the pack with a staggering $5 billion financing, other large rounds poured into data center power, robotics, space tech, biotech, and automated farming.
Here are the details of the top eight venture deals announced this week:
1. Anduril Industries, $5B (Defense Tech): Defense tech unicorn Anduril Industries raised another $5 billion in funding at a $61 billion valuation—doubling its $30.5 billion valuation from less than a year ago. The Series H round, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital, brings the Costa Mesa, California-based company’s total raised to date to $11.4 billion.
2. VoltaGrid, $775M (Energy): Houston-based VoltaGrid, a provider of mobile natural gas generators for data centers, microgrids, and industrial applications, secured $1 billion in strategic investment from Halliburton and Blackstone. The investment includes $775 million in capital funding and a $225 million secondary purchase from existing investors.
3. Mind Robotics, $400M (Robotics): Palo Alto, California-based Mind Robotics, developer of an AI-enabled industrial robotics platform, picked up $400 million in new financing led by Kleiner Perkins. The round brings total funding to date to more than $1 billion for the startup, which launched in 2025 as a spinout of Rivian.
4. Cowboy Space, $275M (Space Tech): Cowboy Space, a developer of rockets and satellite infrastructure to power and run AI compute in space, closed on $275 million in Series B funding at a $2 billion valuation. Index Ventures led the financing for the San Carlos, California-based startup, founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt.
5. Oishii, $150M (Indoor Farming): Oishii, operator of highly automated indoor farms for growing strawberries, raised $150 million in Series C funding led by Sparx Asset Management. Founded in 2016, the Jersey City, New Jersey-headquartered startup has raised $370 million in total funding to date.
6. Exaforce, $125M (Cybersecurity): San Jose-based Exaforce, developer of an AI-native security operations platform, secured $125 million in Series B funding from backers including HarbourVest, Peak XV, Mayfield, Khosla Ventures, and Seligman Ventures.
7. Create Medicines, $122M (Biotech): Create Medicines, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup focused on in vivo immunotherapies for autoimmune diseases and cancer, closed on $122 million in Series B funding. Newpath Partners, ARCH Venture Partners, and Hatteras Venture Partners led the financing.
8. HavocAI, $100M (Autonomy): Providence-based HavocAI, a developer of autonomous systems, secured $100 million in new funding to accelerate the deployment of its autonomous technologies.
[AgentUpdate Depth Analysis] This massive funding wave signals a critical paradigm shift: venture capital is moving away from pure-play digital SaaS toward physically embodied AI and hard infrastructure. The multi-billion-dollar backings for Anduril, Mind Robotics, and HavocAI underscore that the ultimate frontier for AI Agents lies in physical interaction and spatial autonomy. Future AI Agents must transcend chat interfaces to operate as physical entities capable of real-time sensing, edge-compute navigation, and physical labor. Furthermore, Cowboy Space's focus on off-planet AI compute highlights a forward-looking necessity: as earthly data centers face power and regulatory constraints, space-based, solar-powered agentic nodes might represent the next stage of decentralized, resilient AI agent networks.
