Enterprise IT financing widened across the entire stack this week, with capital moving from foundational data storage to the silicon, networking, cloud and observability layers that sit above it. A $1 billion Series F for an AI data platform, a $380 million round for a Dutch chip metrology specialist, a $190 million extension for an AI networking pure-play, and follow-on rounds for an AI developer cloud and an observability platform all closed within five days. Three of the five rounds saw Nvidia, AMD Ventures or Databricks Ventures on the cap table, a reminder that strategic silicon and platform capital is now as relevant a signal as the lead VC.
Vast Data
Round: Approximately $1B Series F (post-money valuation $30B) | Sector: Data Storage / AI Data Platform
Vast Data closed its Series F at a $30 billion valuation, more than triple its $9.1 billion mark from late 2023, in a primary and secondary transaction totaling roughly $1 billion. Drive Capital led with Access Industries as co-lead, joined by existing backers Fidelity, NEA and Nvidia. The company is no longer positioned as a storage vendor: it now markets itself as an AI operating system, selling unified infrastructure to enterprises training and deploying production AI workloads at hyperscale.
Nearfield Instruments
Round: $380M Series D (post-money valuation $1.6B) | Sector: Semiconductors
Netherlands-based Nearfield Instruments raised $380 million in a Series D led by Fidelity Management and Research, lifting it to unicorn status at a $1.6 billion valuation. The round is the largest investment ever in a Dutch deep-tech firm and arrives as advanced node chipmaking faces mounting metrology and process control bottlenecks. With AI accelerators driving demand for tighter yields at sub-3nm nodes, Nearfield sits adjacent to the ASML supply chain in a category increasingly treated as strategic European infrastructure.
Upscale AI
Round: $190M Series A-1 (post-money valuation $2B) | Sector: Networking
Upscale AI added a $190 million Series A-1 extension led by Premji Invest with Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Temasek and Seligman Ventures joining alongside existing backers. The round brings total funding to roughly $500 million and the valuation to $2 billion, all within eighteen months of emerging from stealth. The Santa Clara company builds open-standard networking fabric and switch silicon designed to connect heterogeneous GPUs and XPUs at high speed, positioning itself as a direct alternative to incumbent AI cluster networking stacks.
Runpod
Round: $100M Series A (post-money valuation $1B) | Sector: Cloud / AI Developer Cloud
Runpod raised $100 million in a Series A led by Summit Partners, reaching unicorn status with more than one million developers on the platform. The Newark-based company rents GPU capacity to AI developers through a self-serve interface and reportedly turned down $500 million in buyout offers earlier this year. Summit’s involvement, atypical for early-stage AI infrastructure, signals that the AI developer cloud category is maturing toward growth-equity economics rather than purely venture risk.
Tsuga
Round: $35M Series A | Sector: AIOps / Observability
Paris-based Tsuga closed a $35 million Series A led by Singular with General Catalyst returning and DST Global Partners, QuantumLight, Picus Capital and Databricks Ventures joining. The platform delivers AI-native observability inside the customer’s own cloud, keeping telemetry on application traces, AI workloads and agent call graphs within the security boundary. With enterprise AI agents moving into production, observability tooling that does not exfiltrate sensitive prompt and token data is becoming a procurement requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
The Weekly Funding Pulse tracks the most significant IT infrastructure, cloud, semiconductor, networking, and ITSM funding rounds each week. Coverage is curated for enterprise IT professionals and decision-makers.
