AI Dominates: Instinct Lands $1B at $10B Valuation in Week's Top Deals

Instinct, a San Francisco startup building a personal AI assistant for everyday tasks, raised $1 billion in a Series C round that valued the year-old company at $10 billion. Sequoia Capital, Benchmark and Coatue backed the financing, which topped the week's list of largest U.S. startup funding rounds for the period of Sept. 26-Oct. 2, 2026, tracked by Crunchbase.

The week belonged almost entirely to AI. Beyond Instinct, the Top 10 included EliseAI, which deploys AI in the home rental sector, and Armadin, an AI-native cybersecurity startup — plus fundraisers spanning AI infrastructure, physical AI and foundational models.

EliseAI, $350M, AI for housing. New York-based EliseAI completed a $350 million round at a $4 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners led the financing for the company, which is also expanding into healthcare.

Armadin, $255.5M, cybersecurity. Palo Alto-based Armadin, an AI-native cybersecurity company focused on autonomous security, raised $255.5 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel. The round set a valuation of more than $2.5 billion for the year-old startup.

Kahua, $250M, project management. Kahua, an Alpharetta, Georgia-based platform for enterprises managing complex capital projects, picked up $250 million in growth funding from Bain Capital Tech Opportunities. The financing valued the company at over $1 billion.

GMI Cloud, $223M, AI infrastructure. Mountain View-based GMI Cloud, a provider of GPU cloud infrastructure used by AI teams to train and run models, closed $223 million in Series B funding plus $445 million in debt financing. Archiv led the round, with participation from Nvidia.

General Intuition, $220M, foundational AI. General Intuition, a New York company developing AI models trained on videos and virtual worlds to build skills for physical environments, secured $220 million at a $6.2 billion valuation. Valor Equity Partners and Atreides Management were lead backers.

SiMa.ai, $150M, physical AI. San Jose-based SiMa.ai, developer of a software platform for scaling physical AI applications, raised $150 million in Series C financing at a $1.45 billion valuation. Fidelity and Amplify led the round.

Supabase, $150M, agentic app development. Supabase, provider of an AI-enabled open source Postgres platform for app developers, announced $150 million in new funding led by GIC. The San Francisco startup also said it is acquiring database architecture startup Turso.

CScale, $145M, AI infrastructure. CScale, a Palo Alto developer of optical interconnect technology for AI data centers, emerged from stealth and said it secured $145 million in Series C funding. Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners and Premji Invest led the round.

Homeward, $120M, real estate. Austin-based Homeward, which helps homeowners buy before selling their existing homes or get cash offers for their properties, closed $120 million in Series D equity funding led by Saluda Grade. The 8-year-old company also secured $330 million in debt financing.

Crunchbase notes its methodology tracks the largest announced rounds raised by U.S.-based companies, with a possible small lag as some rounds get reported late in the week.

The pattern is hard to miss. With nine of ten megadeals tied to AI — from consumer assistants to data center interconnects — venture dollars continue to concentrate in a single theme, and next week's board will show whether that grip tightens or loosens.