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Welcome to another edition of π Startup Researcher - North America, your essential digest delivering the latest news and premium insights on startups and venture capital across the region ποΈ
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π° Important News
- OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, enabling secure connections to medical records and wellness apps for personalized health insights.
- Lucid, Nuro, and Uber unveiled a global robotaxi at CES 2026, advancing autonomous mobility with real-world testing planned in the Bay Area.
- HealthEx partnered with Anthropic, letting Claude users securely unify medical records for personalized health insights via natural language.
- Alloy Therapeutics appointed Christian Cobaugh as CEO of Alloy Genetic Medicines, strengthening leadership to advance nucleic acid therapeutics.
- CraftStory launched Image-to-Video AI (Model 2.0), enabling studio-quality human videos from a single image and script.
πΈ Top Funding Rounds
- Elon Musk's xAI has raised $20 billion in a Series E round to scale its infrastructure and Grok models while facing international investigations.
- Cyera secured $400 million to scale its AI security platform, protecting enterprise data and enabling secure AI adoption.
- Parabilis Medicines landed an oversubscribed $305 million Series F financing to advance FOG-001 (zolucatetide) clinical development.
- BrainCo secured $286.3 million in funding, marking the largest BCI investment outside Neuralink, to advance R&D, production, and delivery.
- Rain secured a $250 million Series C led by ICONIQ, lifting its valuation to $1.95 billion to expand its stablecoin-powered payments globally.
π°οΈ IPO and M&A Watch
- Microsoft acquired Osmos to enhance autonomous data engineering, integrating its tech into Microsoft Fabric to speed AI-ready data preparation.
- Snowflake acquired Observe to embed AI-powered observability into its AI Data Cloud, improving troubleshooting and scalable telemetry management.
- Mobileye acquired humanoid robotics startup Mentee Robotics for $900 million to expand into physical AI and advanced robotics systems.
- Fireblocks acquired TRES Finance to add crypto accounting and build a complete audit-ready operating system for onchain finance.
- OpenAI acquired Convogoβs founders in an all-stock deal to strengthen enterprise AI talent and domain-specific cloud capabilities.
π¦ About Investors
- Andreessen Horowitz secured $15 billion, pushing AUM past $90 billion to back AI and defense-focused American Dynamism strategies.
- Warburg Pincus closed its $3 billion Financial Sector III fund, beating a $2.5 billion target on strong global investor demand.
- Lux Capital finalized a record $1.5 billion fund to double down on frontier science, defense tech, and AI startups.
- Eir Partners Capital wrapped up an oversubscribed $1 billion Fund III in three months to invest in health tech and care services.
- Guidepost Growth Equity closed a $521 million oversubscribed Fund IV to back category-leading technology companies.
π Startup of the Week
Introducing our Startup of the Week π
xAI
Founded in 2023 in the United States, xAI is building frontier artificial intelligence systems focused on advanced reasoning, agency, and real-time understanding at global scale. The company develops the Grok model family, powering text, multimodal, and voice applications deeply integrated with π and Tesla vehicles. Last week, xAI announced a $20 billion Series E, backed by Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, QIA, NVIDIA, and Cisco, to accelerate infrastructure expansion. Led by Musk as CEO, xAI now operates one of the worldβs largest GPU clusters and is actively training Grok 5. Its mission is bold: use AI to understand the universe and reshape how humans interact with intelligence.
πΌ Investor of the Week
Introducing our Investor of the Week π
Andreessen Horowitz
Founded in 2009 in Silicon Valley, Andreessen Horowitz is one of the worldβs most influential venture capital firms, backing companies across AI, crypto, infrastructure, bio and health, defense, and consumer technology. In 2025, the firm raised over $15 billion, spanning strategies from American Dynamism to growth and infrastructure, accounting for nearly a fifth of all US venture capital allocated that year. Led by co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, alongside a deep bench of general partners, a16z pairs capital with policy engagement, talent networks, and operational support. Its positioning is explicit: help America win the next era of technology by funding founders building foundational platforms that shape economic, technological, and geopolitical leadership.
π€ Opportunities Expiring Soon
Scale Your High-Tech Vision with ExciteLab
- π’ Organizer: ExciteLab
- ποΈ Category: Award/Prize, Funding, Accelerator
- πͺ Target Stages: Pre-seed, Seed
- π Focus Sectors: DeepTech
- π Application Deadline: January 13, 2026
RIOT Startup Accelerator
- π’ Organizer: RIOT
- ποΈ Category: Accelerator
- πͺ Target Stages: Stage Agnostic
- π Focus Sectors: Sector Agnostic
- π Application Deadline: January 16, 2026
LACI Startup Programs
- π’ Organizer: Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI)
- ποΈ Category: Incubator, Funding
- πͺ Target Stages: Pre-seed, Seed
- π Focus Sectors: Energy & Environment
- π Application Deadline: January 16, 2026
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