LIVE · SAT, JUL 25, 2026 --:--:-- ET

Issue Nº 95 COST TOTAL $14950.43 ARTICLES TODAY 3 TOKENS TOTAL 9.66B

Running the wire

Funding Sila raises $300M for Moses Lake silicon anode plant; targets 250 GWh capacity to domicile US battery supply chain Chips Hyundai Motor Group commits 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs for AI factory; $3B physical AI investment in Korea Chips Azure rolls out AMD Helios 72-GPU racks and 500-core Venice CPUs for AI inference; H2 2026 rollout Chips NVIDIA Blackwell ramp delayed; GB200A rework uses single die for CoWoS-S packaging Market NVIDIA H200 shipments to China begin; 700K inventory vs 2M+ chip orders for 2026 Market Microsoft discloses $190B 2026 capex plan; $25B attributed to chip price inflation Market General Catalyst tops Y Combinator in Q2 fintech mega-rounds; $28.6B global fintech raised H1 2026 Market NAVER-NVIDIA Korea AI factory expands to 200MW; SK Group $500B partnership announced Chips NVIDIA, SK Group announce $500B AI partnership; SK Telecom builds 2-gigawatt AI factory in South Korea Breaking AI root-cause analysis shifts from agent reasoning to deterministic context engineering Funding Meshy closes $400M Series B for AI-generated 3D at $1.5B valuation; 12M users, 100M models Funding Sila raises $300M to scale silicon-anode battery production; Moses Lake plant targets 100K+ EV capacity Policy White House accuses Moonshot of distilling Anthropic's Fable for Kimi K3; tech leaders defend open distillation Funding General Compute closes $400M debt on inference chips; first deal with SambaNova ASICs as collateral Market Big Tech's hidden AI debt hits $1.65T; off-balance-sheet commitments dwarf reported figures Research Black Forest Labs FLUX 3: Multimodal Video + Audio + Action in One Model; Beats Seedance, Runway Research Anthropic ships Claude Opus 5 at $5/$25 per Mtok—near-Fable-5 coding at half Fable's price Policy Jensen Huang debuts on X with open-weight AI letter, backing models against Washington restriction Chips Intel Foundry Q2: $5.8B revenue, external customer mix still 5% of total Chips Samsung locks $200B with Broadcom: HBM4 + 2nm foundry through 2030 for AI chips Funding Sila raises $300M for Moses Lake silicon anode plant; targets 250 GWh capacity to domicile US battery supply chain Chips Hyundai Motor Group commits 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs for AI factory; $3B physical AI investment in Korea Chips Azure rolls out AMD Helios 72-GPU racks and 500-core Venice CPUs for AI inference; H2 2026 rollout Chips NVIDIA Blackwell ramp delayed; GB200A rework uses single die for CoWoS-S packaging Market NVIDIA H200 shipments to China begin; 700K inventory vs 2M+ chip orders for 2026 Market Microsoft discloses $190B 2026 capex plan; $25B attributed to chip price inflation Market General Catalyst tops Y Combinator in Q2 fintech mega-rounds; $28.6B global fintech raised H1 2026 Market NAVER-NVIDIA Korea AI factory expands to 200MW; SK Group $500B partnership announced Chips NVIDIA, SK Group announce $500B AI partnership; SK Telecom builds 2-gigawatt AI factory in South Korea Breaking AI root-cause analysis shifts from agent reasoning to deterministic context engineering Funding Meshy closes $400M Series B for AI-generated 3D at $1.5B valuation; 12M users, 100M models Funding Sila raises $300M to scale silicon-anode battery production; Moses Lake plant targets 100K+ EV capacity Policy White House accuses Moonshot of distilling Anthropic's Fable for Kimi K3; tech leaders defend open distillation Funding General Compute closes $400M debt on inference chips; first deal with SambaNova ASICs as collateral Market Big Tech's hidden AI debt hits $1.65T; off-balance-sheet commitments dwarf reported figures Research Black Forest Labs FLUX 3: Multimodal Video + Audio + Action in One Model; Beats Seedance, Runway Research Anthropic ships Claude Opus 5 at $5/$25 per Mtok—near-Fable-5 coding at half Fable's price Policy Jensen Huang debuts on X with open-weight AI letter, backing models against Washington restriction Chips Intel Foundry Q2: $5.8B revenue, external customer mix still 5% of total Chips Samsung locks $200B with Broadcom: HBM4 + 2nm foundry through 2030 for AI chips

Market Saturday, July 25, 2026 at 05:35 PM

General Catalyst tops Y Combinator in Q2 fintech mega-rounds; $28.6B global fintech raised H1 2026

General Catalyst surpassed Y Combinator in Q2 2026 as the most active backer of fintech mega-deals ($5M+), participating in 12 such rounds vs YC's 11 and Index Ventures' 11. This marks the first time in several quarters GC has led YC on the mega-deal metric; it was also GC's busiest fintech quarter since 2021 in rounds of that size, matching Q4 2025's pace. Overall, YC remained more active across all fintech deal sizes (41 total deals vs GC's 13), but the momentum shift in larger rounds signals a strategic rebalancing.

Global fintech funding in H1 2026 reached $28.6 billion, a 22.7% increase YoY but down 17.3% from H2 2025's $34.6B peak. The quarter was led by PE-backed mega-rounds: Ramp ($750M Series F at $50B valuation), Ebury ($748M via Centerbridge), and Alan ($545M at $6.2B). Seed-stage YC remained dominant with 33 fintech investments, but post-seed leadership shifted to GC (5 deals) and a tie of TCV, Portage, Index Ventures, Bessemer, and Accel (3 each).

For investors and operators tracking fintech momentum, this split signals institutional capital (GC, PE) consolidating large rounds while YC maintains seed dominance. The H1 total ($28.6B) suggests sustained investor appetite despite macro volatility, with AI and financial infrastructure remaining hot categories. Deal quality shifted from broad early-stage bets to concentrated mega-round conviction.

Sources

Primary source
Crunchbase: General Catalyst Q2 Fintech
“For the first time in several quarters, General Catalyst in Q2 overtook Y Combinator when it came to participating in the most fintech deals of $5 million or more. Overall, fintech startups raised $28.6 billion globally in the first half of 2026, a 22.7% increase from the first half of 2025.”