- Robotics and embodied AI dominated funding, with companies such as X Square Robot and Generalist attracting major investments to bring AI into the physical world.
- Defence tech continued its funding surge, as startups including Mach Industries and Allen Control Systems secured large rounds to accelerate autonomous military technologies.
- 16 startups became unicorns, signalling that investor appetite is shifting from foundation models toward AI infrastructure, enterprise software, healthcare, mobility and real-world automation.
June 2026 offered a glimpse into where venture capital believes AI is headed next, and it extends well beyond chatbots and foundation models.
Robotics startups secured some of the largest early-stage rounds on record, defence technology continued attracting nine-figure investments amid rising geopolitical tensions, while healthcare and enterprise AI companies scaled rapidly as businesses looked to automate complex workflows.
Rather than chasing the next foundation model, investors are placing bigger bets on the infrastructure, applications and autonomous systems that will define AI’s next phase of growth.
Here are 16 AI startups that raised significant funding rounds in June and attained unicorn status.
X Square Robot
Founder/s: Wang Qian
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: Nearly $344M
X Square Robot was founded in 2023 by Wang Qian and is headquartered in Shenzhen, China. The company develops end-to-end embodied AI systems built around its WALL family of foundation models, enabling robots to perceive, judge and perform complex physical tasks autonomously without relying on traditional rule-based programming. Its QUANXTA data pipeline platform addresses one of physical AI’s core bottlenecks: collecting, cleaning and annotating real-world robotic training data at scale.
The company has raised $588 million across four consecutive funding rounds, reaching a valuation of approximately $2.9 billion. Backers include Alibaba, ByteDance, Meituan and HongShan.
The latest funding will be used to deepen investment in core technologies and foundational research in embodied intelligence, supporting the development of general-purpose embodied AI capable of bridging the physical and digital worlds.
Flourish
Founder/s: Thomas Reardon, Rob Williams
Founded year: 2025
Total funding: $500M
Headquartered in New York and founded in 2024 by Thomas Reardon and Rob Williams, Flourish is building Cortex AI, a brain-inspired artificial intelligence system that uses connectomics to design AI architectures targeting an energy draw of just 20 to 50 watts, compared with more than 600 watts for a single server-grade GPU.
In June 2026, Flourish raised $500 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, backed by Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, GV and Catalio Capital. This is a wager on the founding team’s track record and on how urgently the industry needs a different answer to the energy problem.
Allen Control Systems
Founder/s: Mike Wior, Steven Simoni, Luke Allen
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: $242M
Founded in 2022 by Mike Wior, Steve Simoni, and Luke Allen, Allen Control Systems is a defence tech company developing autonomous defence technologies designed to detect, track and neutralise aerial threats such as drones. Its flagship product, Bullfrog, is an AI counter-drone weapon station built to protect military bases and critical infrastructure.
Allen Control Systems raised $200 million in a Series B at a $2.2 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Smash Capital, with participation from existing investors Craft Ventures, Rally Ventures, Inspired Capital and others.
The funding will be used to scale manufacturing and accelerate deployment of Bullfrog for the United States and allied militaries, as well as advance development of new product lines.
Generalist AI
Founder/s: Pete Florence, Andy Zeng, Andrew Barry
Founded year: 2024
Total funding: $528M
Generalist AI was founded in 2024 by Pete Florence, Andy Zeng, and Andrew Barry. The robotics company builds general-purpose foundation models that allow robots to perform complex physical tasks across any hardware form factor, such as humanoids, industrial arms, warehouse machines, without task-specific programming. Its GEN-1 model achieves a 99% success rate across diverse manipulation tasks.
In June, Generalist AI raised $400 million, bringing its total raised to more than $500 million. The round was led by Radical Ventures, with new investors 8VC, Union Square Ventures, Hanabi Capital, and Norwest.
All major existing investors participated, including NVIDIA’s NVentures, Boldstart Ventures, Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions and NFDG. New angel investors named in the company’s announcement include Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin, World Labs founder and ImageNet creator Fei-Fei Li, and Naval Ravikant.
LibLib
Founder/s: Chen Milan
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $185M
Liblib, a unicorn in the AI application layer, was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Beijing, China. Liblib is a product of Evoken, which is the parent company. The platform enables users to create, customise and share AI-generated images and creative content, and has become one of China’s leading AI creator communities, with more than 30 million cumulative users.
It raised $300 million in a Series B+ round at a valuation of over $2 billion. Granite Asia, Tencent and Shunwei Capital jointly led the round, with HT Investment participating as a follow-on investor. Existing shareholders, including Sequoia Capital China, GaoRong Capital and Ant Group further increased their investments.
LibLib will use the funding to accelerate the expansion of its AI application ecosystem rather than invest in a single product.
Mach Industries
Founder/s: Ethan Thornton
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $485M
Mach Industries was founded in 2023 by Ethan Thornton and is headquartered in California. The company develops next-generation defence systems including autonomous weapons, advanced propulsion technologies, and military hardware designed for modern warfare and national security applications.
In June 2026, Mach Industries reached a $1.8 billion valuation after raising $300 million in a Series C round, roughly a fourfold increase from its $470 million valuation a year earlier when it closed its Series B round. The round was led by Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, with participation from existing investor Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures.
The fresh capital will accelerate execution of existing government contracts, expand Mach’s Forge manufacturing network and Mach Propulsion division, advance its next-generation autonomous defence systems, and support talent acquisition as the company scales production for the US military and allied governments.
TensorWave
Founder/s: Darrick Horton, Piotr Tomasik, Jeff Tatarchuk
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $493M
TensorWave was founded in 2023 by Darrick Horton, Jeff Tatarchuk, and Piotr Tomasik. The company provides AI cloud infrastructure powered by AMD GPUs, enabling enterprises and AI startups to train and deploy large language models while offering an alternative to Nvidia-dominated cloud platforms.
In June 2026, TensorWave raised $350 million in a Series B at a $1.55 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Magnetar and AMD Ventures, with continued participation from Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners and Western Frontier.
The capital will support deployment of next-generation AMD Instinct MI355X GPU clusters and the expansion of TensorWave’s global infrastructure footprint.
Norm AI
Founder/s: John Nay
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $256M
Founded in 2023 by John Nay, Norm AI develops AI agents that automate legal, regulatory, and compliance workflows, helping enterprises interpret regulations, assess risks, and ensure compliance with evolving policies.
In June, Norm Ai secured $120 million to put AI legal agents into massive regulated enterprises. It is valued at $1.5 billion and has announced a partnership with Microsoft to build legal and compliance AI tools for enterprise customers.
Redo
Founder/s: Sterling Snow, Tay Brown
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $105M
Redo was founded in 2023 in Utah by Sterling Snow and Tay Brown. The company develops AI-powered commerce technology that automates post-purchase operations for e-commerce businesses, including returns, exchanges, order tracking, warranties, and customer service. It serves more than 5,000 brands.
In June 2026, Redo raised $81 million in a Series B to support its commerce technology expansion. The round was led by Smash Capital, with participation from existing investors Pelion Venture Partners and Cervin Ventures.
The funding will support product development, artificial intelligence initiatives and international expansion as Redo continues building technology to help brands manage customer relationships across multiple commerce touchpoints.
FINN
Founder/s: Max-Josef Meier, Maximilian Wühr, Nikolai Schröder, Andreas Stryz, Max Beyer, Hans-Peter Ringer
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $366M
FINN was founded in 2019 by Maximilian Wühr, Nikolai Schröder, Andreas Stryz, Max Beyer, Hans-Peter Ringer, and Max-Josef Meier in Munich, Germany. It is a car subscription platform offering flexible, all-inclusive vehicle subscriptions for consumers and businesses, bundling insurance, maintenance, and registration into a single monthly payment as an alternative to traditional car ownership and leasing.
Recently, FINN completed a €140 million Series D round, with almost €100 million in equity led by Portage and more than €40 million in debt from BC Partners Credit and Runway Growth Capital. The new funding will help FINN grow its subscription fleet, boost profits, and keep improving its technology platform.
Odyssey
Founder/s: Oliver Cameron, Jeff Hawke
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $337M
An AI lab based in Palo Alto, Odyssey was founded by self-driving car veterans Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke. They developed a multimodal AI system that can simulate persistent, shared environments where many people and AI agents can act simultaneously, and every change affects everyone in the world. It trains its models on physics, cause-and-effect reasoning, and long-term prediction rather than text.
Last month, Odyssey closed a $310 million Series B round at a $1.45 billion valuation. Natural Capital led the round, with Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, and the CIA-affiliated fund In-Q-Tel also joining.
The new funding will accelerate Odyssey’s research into general-purpose world models and support the broader deployment of its technology across robotics, science, healthcare, education, gaming and defence.
Assort Health
Founder/s: Jon Wang, Jeffery Liu
Founded year: 2023
Total funding: $222M
Assort Health was co-founded by Jon Wang and Jeffery Liu in San Francisco. The company builds the most widely used AI agents platform for the patient journey, spanning scheduling, intake, referrals, document processing, medication refills, and payments. Its proprietary model, Synapse, is trained on more than 190 million specialty patient interactions. Revenue has grown 20x in the past 15 months.
In June, Assort Health raised $120 million in a Series C led by Menlo Ventures at a $1.2 billion valuation, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Felicis, and First Round Capital.
The new funding will help the company expand its AI agent platform from specialty practices into large health systems, while accelerating the development of its proprietary AI models. It also plans to scale AI-powered workflows across scheduling, referrals, intake, payments, medication refills, and other patient access functions, enabling healthcare providers to automate more of the administrative burden while delivering a more seamless patient experience.
Collate
Founder/s: Surbhi Sarna, Nate Smith
Founded year: 2025
Total funding: $125M
Developing an AI-powered document automation software for the life sciences sector, Collate was founded by Surbhi Sarna and Nate Smith in San Francisco. It is building large language model applications designed to automate complex regulatory filings, clinical trial documentation, and product development paperwork, with human verification safeguards built in. It has grown to approximately 50 enterprise customers since emerging from stealth.
In June, Collate raised $95 million in a round led by Redpoint Ventures at a valuation approaching $1 billion, bringing total funding to $125 million. The company intends to use the funds to scale its engineering capacity, accelerate its product development timeline, and expand enterprise sales across international pharmaceutical and medical device corporations.
Twenty
Founder/s: Joe Lin, Leo Olson, Skyler Onken, Pete Sorrentino
Founded year: 2024
Total funding: $138M
Twenty was founded in 2024 by Joe Lin, Leo Olson, Skyler Onken, and Pete Sorrentino. It industrialises offensive cyber warfare capabilities for the United States military and Intelligence Community, providing AI-enabled, end-to-end systems that give warfighters the speed and scale to impose costs on adversaries in cyberspace while keeping human judgment at the centre of operations.
In June, Twenty raised $100 million in a Series B led by Caffeinated Capital and Tim Junio at a $1 billion valuation, with participation from General Catalyst and In-Q-Tel.
The fresh capital will be used to accelerate product development, expand engineering and operational teams, and scale deployment of the company’s AI-powered cyber warfare platform across US government agencies and allied defence organisations, while advancing its long-term product roadmap.
Runpod
Founder/s: Pardeep Singh, Zhen Lu
Founded year: 2022
Total funding: $122M
Founded in 2022 by Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh, Runpod is an AI developer cloud platform that allows more than one million developers to experiment, train, fine-tune, run inference, and scale multi-node AI workloads from a single platform with self-serve access, per-second pricing, and no commitment minimums.
In June, Runpod raised $100 million in a growth round led by Summit Partners at a $1 billion valuation. The company intends to use the funds to invest in the platform and developer experience, and expand the team across engineering and developer relations.
Square Yards
Founder/s: Tanuj Shori, Kanika Gupta Shori
Founded year: 2013
Total funding: $207M
Indian proptech unicorn Square Yards was founded by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori. The company operates an integrated real estate platform offering property transactions, home loans, rentals, interiors, and property management across India, the UAE, Australia, and Canada.
In June, Square Yards raised $95 million at a valuation exceeding $1 billion from EAAA Alternatives and Muzinich & Co, entering the unicorn club ahead of a planned IPO. The capital will be used to accelerate market expansion, deepen Square Yards’ technology capabilities, strengthen its balance sheet, and support preparations for its planned IPO.
