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Running the wire
Funding Mirendil closes $200M seed at $1B to build autonomous AI R&D systems, democratizing frontier research Funding Peregrine Technologies raises $250M Series D at $6.8B, triples valuation on government AI demand Chips Onsemi acquires Synaptics for $7B, building physical AI play at intersection of power, sensing, compute Market Apple lobbies Trump admin to buy memory from blacklisted CXMT as component costs soar Breaking OpenAI delays IPO to 2027 after SpaceX stumble; now chasing $1T valuation Funding Onsemi to acquire Synaptics in $7B edge AI deal, pivots toward "physical AI" Funding Peregrine Technologies closes $250M Series D at $6.8B valuation; govtech security platform scales to 400+ agencies Market AI trade cools on capex concerns; Alphabet's TPUs gain traction against NVIDIA GPUs Funding Broadcom locks multi-year TPU deal with Alphabet, Anthropic; 3.5 GW capacity from 2027 Research OpenAI launches GPT-5.6 Sol family with government-gated access; leads TerminalBench at 91.9% Policy Apple lobbies US government for exemption to buy cheaper Chinese memory chips Chips Intel Nova Lake flagship reaches 474W power limit; boards may need three 8-pin CPU connectors Market Google's TPUs emerge as viable NVIDIA alternative; Google Cloud revenue seen surging 64% to $96B Chips onsemi to acquire Synaptics for $7B to expand physical AI edge compute Chips Commodore drops Callback flip phone to $399 by using recycled memory amid crunch Market GE Vernova turbine order book full through 2029 as AI data centers line up Market Memory shortage hits Apple, Microsoft; existential crisis for smaller players Breaking Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic's pre-training team, signal of talent competition Market Amazon custom silicon crosses $20B run rate; CEO estimates standalone $50B opportunity Market Samsung commits $648B to chips, AI, memory over decade in South Korea bet Funding Mirendil closes $200M seed at $1B to build autonomous AI R&D systems, democratizing frontier research Funding Peregrine Technologies raises $250M Series D at $6.8B, triples valuation on government AI demand Chips Onsemi acquires Synaptics for $7B, building physical AI play at intersection of power, sensing, compute Market Apple lobbies Trump admin to buy memory from blacklisted CXMT as component costs soar Breaking OpenAI delays IPO to 2027 after SpaceX stumble; now chasing $1T valuation Funding Onsemi to acquire Synaptics in $7B edge AI deal, pivots toward "physical AI" Funding Peregrine Technologies closes $250M Series D at $6.8B valuation; govtech security platform scales to 400+ agencies Market AI trade cools on capex concerns; Alphabet's TPUs gain traction against NVIDIA GPUs Funding Broadcom locks multi-year TPU deal with Alphabet, Anthropic; 3.5 GW capacity from 2027 Research OpenAI launches GPT-5.6 Sol family with government-gated access; leads TerminalBench at 91.9% Policy Apple lobbies US government for exemption to buy cheaper Chinese memory chips Chips Intel Nova Lake flagship reaches 474W power limit; boards may need three 8-pin CPU connectors Market Google's TPUs emerge as viable NVIDIA alternative; Google Cloud revenue seen surging 64% to $96B Chips onsemi to acquire Synaptics for $7B to expand physical AI edge compute Chips Commodore drops Callback flip phone to $399 by using recycled memory amid crunch Market GE Vernova turbine order book full through 2029 as AI data centers line up Market Memory shortage hits Apple, Microsoft; existential crisis for smaller players Breaking Andrej Karpathy joins Anthropic's pre-training team, signal of talent competition Market Amazon custom silicon crosses $20B run rate; CEO estimates standalone $50B opportunity Market Samsung commits $648B to chips, AI, memory over decade in South Korea bet
Funding

Mirendil closes $200M seed at $1B to build autonomous AI R&D systems, democratizing frontier research

Mirendil, a San Francisco-based AI lab, closed a $200 million seed round at a $1 billion valuation, one of the largest seed financings in AI history. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Kleiner Perkins, with NVIDIA and other investors participating. Founded by former Anthropic researcher Behnam Neyshabur, former Google/Anthropic researcher Harsh Mehta, and teammates Shayan Salehian and Tara Rezaei (also from Anthropic and xAI), the company launched in early 2026 weeks after its founders left Anthropic. The founding team counts 20 researchers across alumni from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and xAI.

Mirendil is building what a16z calls a 'systems problem' in frontier AI: autonomous R&D systems that can generate hypotheses, design experiments, iterate on model training, and improve AI systems with minimal human intervention. The company trains specialized models on the full AI research loop—experimental design, hyperparameter search, model evaluation, debugging—then packages those capabilities as a platform for external organizations. The vision is to democratize frontier AI research, making it accessible to universities, pharmaceutical firms, roboticists, and materials scientists without the infrastructure of big labs.

Mirendil shipped no product and reported no revenue before closing the round, underscoring a structural shift in frontier AI funding: capital is flowing to teams and research direction rather than near-term commercialization. a16z frames the bet as enabling 'anyone to do AI work'—a university biology lab, for example, could build a drug-discovery model without a dedicated ML engineering team. The company plans to release its first model and product in coming months. The $200 million positions the startup at the scale of Series B–C companies, reflecting investor conviction that autonomous AI-driven research acceleration is the next frontier bet, provided the approach delivers results.

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