Private Markets: Big name AI unicorn valuations balloon

This week, an AI web crawler startup and one developing self-driving software were among the notable fundraisers.

In other news, OpenAI and Anthropic – two of the most well-known, widely-lauded and highly-valued companies in artificial intelligence – were reported to be eying eye-popping valuations in possible sales of their privately-held shares.

Some of the most notable capital raises by private companies this week include:

• Firecrawl – The AI web crawler startup said it raised a $14.5M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners. “We’re putting the web’s knowledge on tap for AI, with more than 350,000 developers already signed up, our open source project crossing 48k stars on GitHub, and companies like Zapier, Shopify, and Replit using us to power their apps. We’ve grown 15x in the past year and this is just the beginning,” the company said.
• Nuro – The startup, which develops self-driving software for delivery and ride-hailing services, announced the closing of a $203M Series E funding round at a $6B valuation. The round includes Uber (UBER), returning investor Baillie Gifford, and new investors Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Nvidia (NVDA), and Pledge Ventures. The additional $97M in funding follows the first tranche of $106M announced in April 2025. Investors announced in April included accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Fidelity Management & Research Company, Tiger Global Management, Greylock Partners, and XN. “The closing of our Series E reinforces the strong conviction our investors and strategic partners have in Nuro’s technology, our scalable approach to commercialization, and our vision for the future of autonomy. With this new capital, we’re well-positioned to continue our next phase of growth, which will see us focus on delivering new commercial partnerships to realize autonomy at global scale,” said Dave Ferguson, Co-Founder and President of Nuro.
• Overhaul – Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MS) announced that the 1GT climate private equity strategy participated in the $105M Series C equity financing of Overhaul Group, a provider of in-transit cargo risk management solutions. The Series C funding round was led by Springcoast Partners with participation from existing investor Edison Partners. “This growth investment will support Overhaul’s continued technological advancement and strategic acquisition roadmap to establish a leading real-time supply chain risk management and intelligence platform,” MSIM stated.
• Wellth – The digital health solution provider announced it has closed a $36M Series C financing. The March funding round was oversubscribed, demonstrating investor confidence in Wellth’s differentiated model and expanding market opportunity, the company stated. Wellth’s platform focuses on using daily motivation to help health plan members change their behavior and improve health outcomes.
• Upstage – The AI company specializing in enterprise-grade generative AI solutions completed a $45M Series B bridge round backed by Korea Development Bank, Amazon (AMZN), and AMD (AMD). The raise brings total capital to $157M and will accelerate development of its next-generation Solar language model, advance document AI products, and go-to-market expansion in the U.S. and APAC, the company stated. The new funding will also advance R&D efforts to enhance Solar’s capabilities and expand enterprise use cases, including document parsing, agentic task execution, and workflow automation, Upstage added.

Unicorns to watch this week:

• OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT that is backed by investors including Microsoft (MSFT) and SoftBank (SFTBY), is in talks to sell $6B in shares owned by its current and former employees in a deal that would value the company at about $500B, making it the world’s most valuable privately held company, according to The New York Times‘ Cade Metz and Natallie Rocha, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. OpenAI has seen its valuation jump from $157B in October to $300B in March to potentially $500B in this latest secondary market sale, the report noted.
• Crusoe, the developer behind OpenAI’s first Stargate data center, is in talks about raising funds at a $10B valuation, which would represent a value more than three times where it was pegged less than a year ago, two people with knowledge of the talks told The Information‘s Anissa Gardizy and Natasha Mascarenhas. The company, which wants to raise at least $1B to help become a more formidable player in cloud computing, has bought a Tel Aviv-based cloud computing startup, Atero, which develops software to improve the utilization and efficiency of graphics processing units, the report also noted.
• AI startup Anthropic is close to an agreement to raise as much as $10B in a new funding round, a higher-than-anticipated amount and one of the biggest megarounds to date for an AI startup, Bloomberg’s Ryan Gould and Shirin Ghaffary reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Talks are ongoing and the final sum could change, the authors say, noting that Bloomberg previously reported Anthropic was in talks for a $5B fundraise at a $170B valuation, but the amount increased due to strong investor demand.

“Private Markets” is The Fly’s new recurring series of stories on the latest moves in the private sector, largest unicorn companies and initial public offerings to watch. Fly subscribers, add $PRIVATE to your portfolio for alerts on breaking news in the startup and venture capital space.