The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Defense Tech, AI Tools And Infrastructure Lead The Way

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This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here. Startup investors were busily closing on big rounds this week, with AI and defense among their favored target sectors. The biggest financing went to Castelion, a defense tech startup developing a hypersonic missile. Other sizable rounds went to companies developing AI inference technology, a video-creation platform, data centers and voice-to-text tools. 1. Castelion, $800M, defense tech: Castelion, a defense tech startup developing a hypersonic strike missile, raised new Series C funding consisting of $800 million in equity capital along with $250 million in debt financing. JPMorgan Chase, Andreessen Horowitz and Carlyle led the equity financing, which set a $13 billion valuation for the Torrance, California-based company. 2. Etched, $700M, semiconductors: San Jose, California-based Etched, a developer of inference clusters to accelerate AI computing, secured $700 million in a new funding round led by Jane Street and joined by a long list of prominent investors. The financing set a $21 billion valuation for the 4-year-old company. 3. Higgsfield, $400M, AI video tools: AI video- and image-creation platform Higgsfield closed on $400 million in Series B financing at a $5.4 billion valuation. DST Global led the round for the San Francisco-based company, with the financing drawing at least 18 investors. 4.