Tootfinder

Snap says its direct revenue business has reached a $1B ARR, driven primarily by Snapchat surpassing 25M subscribers since its 2022 launch (Aisha Malik/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/snapchat-tops-25m-subscribers-driv…

Snapchat+ tops 25M subscribers, driving company's direct revenue ARR to $1B | TechCrunch
The revenue milestone comes as Snap has added additional paid offerings outside of its core Snapchat+ subscription over the past year to diversify its revenue streams.

Sources: Kalshi is raising ~$1B led by Coatue at a $22B valuation, up from the $11B valuation announced in December, and has a revenue run rate of ~$1.5B (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kalshi-cinc…

Why MAGA Hates H-1B Visas by Hasan Minhaj
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ6bNCijt3g

Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B from a16z, Nvidia, AMD, and others to advance its world models focused on robotics and scientific discovery (Alicia Tang/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/ai-pion…

Docs: DHS has signed a five-year, $1B blanket purchase agreement with Palantir, allowing agencies like ICE to skip the competitive bidding process (Makena Kelly/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/department-homeland-security-ice-billion-dollar-…

DHS Opens a Billion-Dollar Tab With Palantir
“If you are interested in helping shape and deliver the next chapter of Palantir’s work across DHS, please reach out,” a Palantir executive wrote to employees about the massive purchasing agreement.

Last September, the Trump administration imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1B applicants,
stirring confusion around the program.
Then in late February, another hurdle was introduced:
The Department of Homeland Security turned this game of chance into one that prioritizes higher salaries.
Now, if there are more H-1B applicants than spots available, U.S.C.I.S. will conduct a weighted lottery system based on new criteria:
wage levels that are calculated with governme…

As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S.
As the Trump administration cracks down on the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States, foreign professionals are debating whether to stay and build careers or quit the American Dream.

Robinhood launches an IPO for Robinhood Ventures Fund I, a $1B closed-end fund to provide retail investors access to private markets, offering 40M shares at $25 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-17/ro…

Q&A with Ramp CEO Eric Glyman on scaling the expense management company to over $1B revenue, the "SaaS apocalypse", using AI agents to review expenses, and more (Cheeky Pint)
https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/ramp-founder-eric-glyman-on-the-many

Ramp founder Eric Glyman on the many ways AI is changing corporate spending
Eric Glyman is the cofounder and CEO of Ramp, the finance automation platform that now powers over 2% of all corporate spend in the US.

ZaiNar, a developer of a GPS alternative that uses Wi-Fi and 5G to provide location data, raised $10M at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $100M (Katie Roof/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/st

Startup Developing GPS Alternative for Physical AI Earns $1 Billion-Valuation
Over the last two years, investors and researchers have flocked to startups helping bring AI into the physical world, from developing robot hands to the AI models that train robots to software to train self-driving cars.Now one startup says it can solve a perennial problem for robots and other ...

Xbow, which uses AI to probe apps for security vulnerabilities, raised $120M led by DFJ Growth and Northzone at a $1B valuation, and reports 100 clients (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-18/ai…

As H-1B Visa Program Changes, Skilled Foreign Workers Consider Leaving U.S. (Nailah Morgan/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/video/h-1b-visa-skilled-workers-trump.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/260403/p126#a260403p126

Interviews with News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson and Dow Jones CEO Almar Latour, who say they expect Dow Jones to earn $1B in annual profit within five years (Sara Fischer/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/16/dow-jones-news-corp

Dow Jones projects $1 billion EBITDA within five years
Dow Jones has managed to carve out a niche that's working — serving business professionals.

Sources: Ineffable Intelligence, founded by Google DeepMind's former principal scientist David Silver, is raising a $1B seed led by Sequoia at a $4B valuation (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/dffe72d0-4064-4412-8ebc-50198a30d40e
…

India approves a $1.1B state-backed VC fund to finance high-risk areas like AI and advanced manufacturing, doubling down on an effort that debuted in 2016 (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/14/india-doubles-down…

India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund | TechCrunch
India’s $1.1B fund-of-funds will invest through private VCs to support deep-tech and manufacturing startups.

Advanced Navigation, which makes AI-assisted hardware to let ships and aircraft navigate even when GPS is jammed, raised a $110M Series C at a $1B valuation (Stuart Condie/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/art…

Mobile gaming company Scopely buys a majority stake in Istanbul-based studio Loom, maker of puzzle game Pixel Flow!; a source says the deal values Loom at $1B (Georg Szalai/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Mobile Gaming Firm Scopely Buys Majority Stake in Istanbul-Based Studio Behind ‘Pixel Flow!’
"It’s been a privilege to have a front row seat to the team’s rapid growth and success and see them become the latest Turkish startup to reach unicorn-level status," says previous investor Arcadia.

Hey America, your President just spent $1 billion of your money in order to NOT get more energy from offshore wind.
TotalEnergies accepts $1B offshore wind buyout, pivots to oil and gas in US 😠 https://www.utilitydive.com/news/trump-administra…

Trump administration plans $1B buyout for offshore wind leases: NYT
TotalEnergies purchased the Carolina Long Bay and Attentive Energy leases for a total of $955 million in 2022. The Trump administration wants to offer the company $928 million to give them up.

Solar was poised to help Puerto Ricans survive blackou
ts — until Trump axed nearly $1B in funding
The money is being redirected to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority,
a government-owned utility with a checkered past.
https://grist.org/energy/puerto-rico-s

Solar was poised to help Puerto Ricans survive blackouts — until Trump axed nearly $1B in funding
The money is being redirected to the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, a government-owned utility with a checkered past.

@… seems like people can understand 1K -> 1M better than 1M -> 1B

Sources: the NFL and Paramount begin talks to keep Sunday games on CBS through 2033-34; NFL is pushing for an increase of ~50% over the $2.1B CBS already pays (Alex Sherman/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/13/nfl-media-deal-paramount.html

Since September last year, Trump has announced several changes to the H1-B visa category, which allows highly skilled immigrants to live and work in the U.S. for up to six years.
From higher costs to increased scrutiny in the process,
the uncertainty has made applicants and companies wary.
FY2027 applications will close at the end of February 2026, and the lottery will run after that.
A presidential proclamation subjects new H-1B applications to a $100,000 fee,

What it takes to get an H-1B visa in Trump’s America
An immigration lawyer explains the behind-the-scenes challenges of getting the coveted U.S. visa in 2026.

Sources: Amazon, Google, and others plan to skirt Trump's $100K H-1B fee by finding workers in categories that don't include the fee, like existing H-1B holders (Amrith Ramkumar/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.co…

Sources: data labeling startup Handshake's gross annualized revenue hit ~$1B, vs. $550M in January; Mercor hit a $1B gross annualized revenue pace this year (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/handshake-merc…

Handshake, Mercor Revenue Surges on Demand for Human Contractors to Train AI
AI firms’ voracious appetite for more data has lifted sales for obscure startups doing the industry’s unglamorous work: contracting with lawyers, PhDholders and medical doctors who grade the answers AI models generate. The latest is Handshake, a 12-year-old startup that began as a job site for ...

RIAA: Latin music revenue reached $1B in 2025, up from $140M in 2015, 98% of it from streaming; the segment generates 8.8% of total US recorded music revenue (Andrew Flanagan/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/music/news/latin-music-2025-us-revenue-1…

Latin Music's 2025 U.S. Revenue Topped $1 Billion, Per RIAA Report
Powered by Bad Bunny, Karol G and many others, Latin music's U.S. revenue topped $1 billion in 2025, according to the RIAA's new report.

Senator Elissa Slotkin:
We are going to have to grapple with the unbelievable corruption that is coming out of this administration.
His kids have earned $1B since he became president.
A lot of my peers do whatever the president tells them to do.
They've ceded power as a separate branch of government.
ht…

Blue Georgia (@bluegeorgia.bsky.social)
Elissa Slotkin: We are going to have to grapple with the unbelievable corruption that is coming out of this administration. His kids have earned $1B since he became president. A lot of my peers do whatever the president tells them to do. They've ceded power as a separate branch of government.

Trading firm Jane Street takes an additional $1B stake in CoreWeave, and plans to spend ~$6B to access CoreWeave's Vera Rubin chips to build and deploy AI (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-15/ja…

Online DTC luxury brand Quince raised a $500M Series E led by Iconiq at a $10.1B valuation; it recently launched in Canada and its revenue topped $1B in 2025 (James Manso/WWD)
https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/quince-10-1-billion-v…

EXCLUSIVE: Quince Closes $500 Million Series E at $10.1 Billion Valuation
Quince reached a $10.1 billion valuation for its $500 million series E, following 2025 revenues of over $1 billion.

Sources: Tencent mulls rejoining Paramount's WBD deal as a passive investor with several hundred million; filing: Tencent withdrew a $1B commitment in December (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Sources: cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise ~$1B at an $18B valuation, up from $7.5B when it raised money earlier in 2026 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-14/jane-street-in-talk…

Sources: crypto exchange Backpack, built by ex-FTX and Alameda leaders, is in talks to raise $50M at a $1B pre-money valuation, reports $100M in annual revenue (Ryan Lawler/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/fintech-deals/2026/02/09/backpack-ex…

Scoop: Backpack Exchange raising at $1B valuation
Former FTX and Alameda leaders are raising for the compliance-first exchange.

Glydways, a robocar startup backed by Sam Altman, Khosla, and others, says it is in talks to raise $250M at a $1B valuation, following a ~$170M Series C (Min-Jeong Lee/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04…

Anthropic opposes an Illinois bill backed by OpenAI that would shield AI labs from liability, even for "critical harms" like 100 deaths or $1B in damage (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-opposes-the-extreme-…

Anthropic Opposes the Extreme AI Liability Bill That OpenAI Backed
Anthropic and OpenAI are clashing over a proposed Illinois law that would let AI labs largely off the hook for mass deaths and financial disasters.

USA Today's US digital-only paid subscriptions in Q4 fell 30% YoY but digital revenue in 2025 was flat at $1.1B; CEO Mike Reed expects more AI deals in 2026 (Bron Maher/A Media Operator)
https://www.amediaoperator.com/news/usa-to

USA Today CEO Says Higher Pricing Strategy Working, Micropayments Showing ‘Interesting’ Results
USA Today Co.’s push to get readers paying higher prices for journalism is working and despite a nearly one-third drop in its…

Sources: Binance has fired its employees in late 2025 who uncovered evidence that Iran received $1B through Binance between March 2024 and August 2025 (Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/binance-investigators-fired-iran-sanctions-potentia…

Exclusive: Binance fires top investigators who claim to have uncovered evidence of Iranian sanctions violations
Internal findings by the fired investigators reviewed by Fortune pointed to over $1 billion in Tether flowing through Binance to Iran-linked wallets.

NYT's profile of Medvi, glorified as a two-employee startup with $1B in revenue, ignored info that the startup is a warning sign, not a poster child, for AI (Gary Marcus/Marcus on AI)
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-back-story-behind-the-first-18

The back story behind the first “$1.8 Billion” dollar “AI Company”
AI isn’t the only thing behind Medvi

PitchBook estimates that 25% of VC-backed unicorns have become "undercorns," startups once valued at $1B or more by VCs but now valued below that threshold (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/vc-unicorn-companies

VC-backed unicorns are losing their horns
A quarter of "unicorn" startups have likely seen their market value drop below $1 billion, per PitchBook.

Docs: Binance investigators found accounts, including those of VIP Chinese traders and a suspected Iranian gold smuggler, helped move $1B to Iran-linked groups (Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/03/12/binance-accounts-iranian-entities-sa…

Inside the Binance accounts internal investigators say helped transfer more than $1 billion to Iran-linked entities: A 79-year-old VIP Chinese trader and a suspected Iranian gold smuggler
Compliance experts expressed surprise that Binance did not immediately restrict the accounts, most of which have since been offboarded.

Sources: Mirendil, founded by former Anthropic researchers to develop AI models for scientific research, is in talks to raise $175M at a $1B valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/ex-anthropic-r…

Ex-Anthropic Researchers Are Raising Capital For New Startup at $1 Billion Valuation
Former Anthropic researchers are in talks to raise $175 million at a $1 billion valuation for a new startup that aims to conduct AI-driven research and development for scientific fields such as biology and materials science, according to people who have spoken to them. Andreesseen Horowitz and ...

Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html

xAI all-hands: Nikita Bier says X hit $1B in ARR from selling $3 to $40 per month subscriptions, but offered no details on ad revenue or other xAI financials (Theo Wayt/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/x-subscriptio…

X Subscriptions Hit $1 Billion in Annualized Revenue, Exec Says
X recently hit $1 billion in annualized recurring revenue from selling subscriptions, head of product Nikita Bier said in an xAI all-hands meeting on Tuesday. The subscriptions X sells include Basic, Premium and Premium+ plans that range from $3 to $40 per month. The social media site, formerly known as Twitter, has ramped up efforts to sell subscriptions after Elon Musk’s acquisition of the

Sources: Together AI is in talks to raise ~$1B at a $7.5B pre-money valuation, up from $3.3B in 2025; its annualized revenue has hit ~$1B, up 3x from mid-2025 (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-cloud-ally-…

Nvidia Cloud Ally Together AI in Talks to Raise at $7.5 Billion Valuation
Together AI, one of several up-and-coming cloud providers renting out Nvidia chip servers to AI developers, is in talks with investors to raise around $1 billion in funding at a $7.5 billion valuation before the investment, according to two people with knowledge of the fundraise. The funding ...

DMGT reports revenue down 1% YoY to £1.1B, adjusted operating profit up 11% to £97M, and digital ad revenue down 15% to £148.3M due to Google's AI Overviews (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_busin

DMGT reports revenue dip as Google changes hit traffic for Mail publisher
Digital advertising revenue at the publisher of the Daily Mail fell by 15% last year, results for the year to 30 September 2025 show.

SEC filing: Oracle sets aside an additional $500M for restructuring, bringing FY total to $2.1B, as it prepares to cut jobs and hails efficiencies from AI tools (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/ce1c8fd9-5aae-4026-a883-aeba00b6e9e0

Replit raised a $400M Series D led by Georgian Partners at a $9B valuation and says it's on track to hit annual recurring revenue of $1B by the end of the year (Richard Nieva/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/

Meet The $9 Billion AI Company Reimagining Vibe Coding
Amjad Masad’s Replit allows users to work together like they’re doodling on a white board. It also made him a billionaire along the way.

Grab agrees to acquire US fintech company Stash Financial in a deal initially valued at $425M and forecasts FY 2026 revenue of $4.04B-$4.1B, below $4.13B est. (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-tr…

Sources: Alibaba-backed PixVerse, which develops AI video generation tools, raised a $300M Series C led by CDH; the company says the round values it at $1B (Olivia Poh/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-1…

AI Chipmaker Cerebras raised a $1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation, up from $8.1B in September 2025 (Ian King/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-04/cerebras-raises-1-billion-in-funding-at…

Inside OpenAI's race to catch up with Claude Code, based on interviews with 30 sources; a source says Codex had $1B in annualized revenue by January's end (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-codex-race-claude-code/

Inside OpenAI’s Race to Catch Up to Claude Code
Why is the biggest name in AI late to the AI coding revolution?

Sources: OpenAI plans to launch Sora AI in ChatGPT soon to help boost weekly active users, now at 920M, short of the 1B goal the company targeted last year (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-plans-launch-sora-vide…

OpenAI Plans to Launch Sora Video AI in ChatGPT in Strategy Shift
OpenAI plans to soon launch its Sora AI-generated video capabilities in ChatGPT, according to people with knowledge of the effort. The strategy shift could increase the chatbot’s usage as well as its costs. The move comes about five months after OpenAI released a Sora mobile app, which lets ...

Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch says the startup's annualized revenue run rate was "north of $400M", up from $20M a year ago, and it is set to hit $1B ARR by 2026-end (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/664249e7-e8d5-4425-b397-ad3ed590b305

Docs: London-based AI chip startup Olix, founded by James Dacombe, CEO of brain monitoring startup CoMind, raised $220M led by Hummingbird at a $1B valuation (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/b3e70…

A look at Aaru, a startup founded by teens that uses AI agents to simulate human responses for product development, polling, and more, recently valued at $1B (Suzanne Vranica/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/ai-startup-aa

Kalshi says it registered over $1B in trades related to the Super Bowl; Piper Sandler analysts say Kalshi and Polymarket saw ~$1.2B in total trading on Sunday (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-10/sup…

South Korean online travel platform Myrealtrip aims to hit a $1B valuation in a Seoul IPO as early as H2 2027, per CEO Donggun Lee, amid a boom in tourism (Jihye Lee/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj…

Sources: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta and ex-Meta CRO John Hegeman seek to raise $1B for a holding company to acquire at least one firm and infuse it with new tech (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

OpenAI backs an Illinois bill shielding AI labs from liability even for "critical harms," like 100 deaths or $1B damage, if safety reports were published (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-backs-bill-exempt-ai-firms-model-ha…

OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters
The ChatGPT-maker testified in favor of an Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable—even in cases where their products cause “critical harm.”

Health care navigation startup Solace, which matches patients with 2K advocates, raised $130M led by IVP at a $1B valuation, taking its total funding to $211M (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Lyft reports Q4 revenue up 3% YoY to $1.59B vs. $1.76B est., forecasts Q1 adjusted EBITDA below est., announces a $1B share buyback; LYFT drops 13% after hours (Akash Sriram/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/lyft-flag

Vinted reports 2025 revenue up 38% YoY to €1.1B, Gross Merchandise Value up 47% YoY to €10.8B, and net profit down 19% YoY to €62M, as it expands in Europe (Andrea Figueras/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/busin…

Neara, which builds digital twins of critical infrastructure to help prepare for disasters, raised a AU$90M Series D, a source says at a AU$1.1B valuation (Rhiannon Hoyle/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/ar…

Sources: Apollo nears a $3.4B loan deal to a Valor-led investment vehicle to buy and lease Nvidia chips to xAI; through fall 2025, xAI was burning $1B per month (Miles Kruppa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apollo-nears-3-bil…

Apollo Nears $3 Billion Chip-Funding Deal Tied to XAI
Apollo Global Management, one of Wall Street’s biggest private credit firms, is nearing a deal to lend about $3.4 billion to an investment vehicle that will purchase Nvidia chips and lease them to Elon Musk’s xAI, which just merged with SpaceX, said a person with knowledge of the deal. The deal ...

Uber agrees to buy Getir's delivery operations from Mubadala, without giving the terms; a November 2025 report said it would value Getir's business at up to $1B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Source: Thrive Holdings has landed $1B in commitments for a new fundraising deal and is considering raising at least another $1B after strong investor interest (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-26/kus…

Source: Benchmark invested at least $225M in Cerebras' ~$1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation; Benchmark led Cerebras' $27M Series A in 2016 (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/06/benchmark-rais…

Benchmark raises $225M in special funds to double down on Cerebras | TechCrunch
Benchmark Capital has been an investor in the Nvidia rival since 2016.

Sources: Anthropic plans to invest $200M in a new venture with PE firms to sell AI tools to their portfolio companies; it's in talks to raise $1B for the effort (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/…

Los Angeles-based Hermeus, which aims to build unmanned hypersonic fighter aircraft, raised $200M led by Khosla Ventures and $150M in debt at a $1B valuation (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/07/hermeus-raises-350m-to-bui…

Hermeus raises $350M to build unmanned hypersonic fighters | TechCrunch
The defense aviation startup is coming off two successful flight demonstrations, and with the next one, it's aiming to go supersonic.

Sources: Palmer Luckey's ModRetro, which wants to sell updated versions of 1990s consoles like the Nintendo 64, is in talks to raise funding at a $1B valuation (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/77e330a5-8e59-4a36-b08b-c18010a2383b

Palmer Luckey’s $1bn pitch to reboot 1990s video game consoles
From AI weapons to Game Boys, defence tech billionaire is in talks to raise funds for new gaming venture ModRetro

Sources: London-based 9fin, a data provider for debt markets, is in talks to raise as much as $150M at a pre-money valuation of $1B, about 20x its ARR of ~$50M (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-06/cred…

Credit Data Firm 9fin Seeks $1 Billion Valuation in Fund Talks
Debt intelligence provider 9fin Ltd. is in talks to raise fresh capital at a valuation of as much as $1 billion as it seeks to gain a stronger foothold in the highly competitive market for credit research.

Indian IT giant Wipro agrees to buy Mindsprint, the IT services arm of Singapore-based Olam, for $375M, and strikes an eight-year, $1B contract with Olam (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indias-wipro-ris…

Medvi, glorified by the NYT as a two-employee startup with $1B in revenue, is a warning about how AI can be misused for shady business and marketing practices (Gary Marcus/Marcus on AI)
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-back-story-behind-the-first-18

The back story behind the first “$1.8 Billion” dollar “AI Company”
AI isn’t the only thing behind Medvi

Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html

Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings and revealed strong guidance and $1 billion buyback
Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday in which the social media company beat on the top and bottom lines.

Nominal, which makes software for the defense, space, energy, and automotive sectors, raised an $80M Series B extension led by Founders Fund at a $1B valuation (Paayal Zaveri/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Elliott injects $1B into Pinterest to fund stock buybacks, buying convertible senior notes with an initial conversion price of $22.72 per share, a 30% premium (Nicholas G. Miller/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/…

Sources: US-based Arcee AI is pitching investors on a $200M funding round valuing it at over $1B, as it plans to train an open-weight model with 1T parameters (Anna Tong/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/02…

The Top Open AI Models Are Chinese. Arcee AI Thinks That’s A Problem.
The American startup is pitching investors on a $1 billion+ valuation to train a model over a trillion parameters, aiming to reclaim the open-weight lead from Chinese labs like Moonshot and DeepSeek.

KKR and Singtel agree to acquire the remaining 82% stake in data center operator STT GDC for ~$5.1B, giving the company an enterprise value of ~$10.86B (Lee Ying Shan/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/04/kkr-and-singtel-stake-in-stt-gdc-for-over-5-bi…

KKR and Singtel to acquire remaining stake in data center firm STT GDC for over $5 billion
The deal pegs the enterprise value at S$13.8 billion.

Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.4B, above $14.32B est., Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M profit, below est. (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/busin…

Tomorrow.io raised $175M at a $1B valuation to deploy an AI-driven LEO satellite network for weather forecasting, bringing its total funding to ~$500M (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj67r5yvze

Tomorrow.io raises $175 million at over $1 billion valuation to build AI-driven weather satellite network
DeepSky constellation aims to replace aging government infrastructure and close global forecasting gaps.

TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/trm-labs-blockchain-analytics-fundi…

Crypto crime-fighting startup TRM Labs notches $1 billion valuation with new $70 million funding round
With its blockchain analytics tools, TRM Labs helps private companies and agencies like the FBI track illicit finance.

Resolve AI, which offers autonomous AI agents to monitor source code and infrastructure to resolve outages, raised $125M led by Lightspeed at a $1B valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Filing: PayPay is seeking to raise up to $1.1B at a valuation of up to $13.4B in its US IPO, selling nearly 55M shares priced between $17 and $20 apiece (Arasu Kannagi Basil/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/p…

Grow Therapy, which connects patients with therapists covered by their insurance, raised a $150M Series D at a $3B valuation and hits $1B in annual revenue (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

A US bill seeks to ban exports of DUV lithography tech to China, whose imports of chipmaking equipment reportedly grew from $10.7B in 2016 to ~$51.1B in 2025 (Jared Perlo/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/senate-bill-ban-…

Senate bill would ban sale of key AI chipmaking machines to China
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill that would severely limit the sale of advanced semiconductor machinery to China used for AI systems.

Sources: Alphabet plans a new complex in Bengaluru, India, which can accommodate up to 20K extra staff, amid US visa restrictions and proposed H-1B fee hikes (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet…

Microsoft says it is on track to invest $5.5B in cloud and AI infrastructure in Singapore through 2029, after announcing plans to invest $1B in Thailand (Kimberley Kao/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft…

Inside Physical Intelligence, a startup co-founded by Stripe veteran Lachy Groom that is building general-purpose robotic foundation models and has raised $1B (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/30/phys…

A peek inside Physical Intelligence, the startup building Silicon Valley's buzziest robot brains | TechCrunch
If co-founder Lachy Groom has any doubts, he doesn’t show it. He’s working with people who've been working on this problem for decades and who believe the timing is finally right, which is all he needs to know.

Binance says it will convert $1B in stablecoin reserves held in its SAFU into bitcoin over the next 30 days, as BTC falls to its lowest level since November (Danny Park/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/387786/binance-1-billion-safu-bitcoin

Micromobility delivery startup Also, a Rivian spinoff, raised $200M led by Greenoaks at a $1B valuation and enters a multiyear partnership with DoorDash (Edward Ludlow/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Space data center startup Starcloud raised a $170M Series A led by Benchmark and EQT at a $1.1B valuation, and plans to launch Starcloud 2 later in 2026 (Tim Fernholz/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/30/starcloud-raises-170-mil…

Starcloud raises $170 million Series Ato build data centers in space | TechCrunch
Starcloud becomes the fastest Y Combinator startup to reach unicorn status, just 17 months after demo day.

Satya Nadella says Windows 11 reached 1B users during Q2, growing over 45% YoY and at a faster rate than Windows 10 did (Tom Warren/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/869889/microsoft-windows-11-1-billion-users

Windows 11 has reached 1 billion users faster than Windows 10
Microsoft says 1 billion people are now running Windows 11. The operating system has reached this milestone quicker than Windows 10.

Sources: Granola, which makes an AI-based note-taking app, aims to raise $100M led by Index Ventures at a $1B valuation, up from a $250M valuation in May 2025 (Iain Martin/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

VCs’ Favorite Note-Taking App Granola In Talks To Hit $1 Billion Valuation
The London-based AI startup aims to raise a new round of at least $100 million led by Index Ventures, making the popular note-taking app the latest AI unicorn.

Insurance tech company Ethos raised ~$200M in its Jan. 29 IPO, selling 10.5M shares at $19 each; it reached a $1.1B market cap, below its 2021 $2.7B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/29/how-sequoi…

How Sequoia-backed Ethos reached the public market while rivals fell short | TechCrunch
The profitable life-insurance platform was one of the first major tech companies to test the 2026 public markets.

Sources: Thrive invested $1B in OpenAI in 2025 at a $285B valuation in a transaction akin to a call option; OpenAI was separately raising at a $830B valuation (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

Apple reports Q1 revenue up 16% YoY to $143.76B, vs. $138.48B est., net income up 16% to $42.1B, and China net sales up 38% to $25.53B (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/apple-aapl-earnings-report-q1-2026.html

Apple set to report earnings: iPhone growth, AI, memory costs will be in focus in first quarter
Apple's fiscal first quarter ended in December and the company has already signaled last year it's expecting a big earnings report.

Dow plans to cut 4,500 staff to save costs and will rely on AI to boost productivity, resulting in $1.1B to $1.5B in charges; it currently employs ~34,000 staff (Rob Curran/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/dow-<…

Montreal-based Stay22, which helps publishers and creators earn money from online sales, raised $122M from Summit Partners and reports $1B in 2025 transactions (Mathieu Dion/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

How Binance staffers found $1B was sent to sanctioned Iranian entities via the exchange, which dismantled their probe and suspended them after Trump pardoned CZ (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/bin

AI sales startup Clay launches its second employee tender offer in under nine months, valuing it at $5B, up from $3.1B in August and $1.5B in its May 2025 offer (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/dealbook…

Clay, an A.I. Sales Start-Up, Lets Employees Cash Out. Again.
The company is part of a newer generation of software upstarts holding multiple tender offers where workers can sell stock before going public.

Chinese-language crypto laundering networks processed ~$16.1B in 2025, or $44M per day on average across 1,799 wallets, representing 20% of laundering activity (Chainalysis)
https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2026-crypto-money-laundering/

The Chinese-language Underground Crypto Money Laundering Ecosystem
Chinese-language money laundering networks processed $16.1 billion in illicit funds in 2025, dominating over 20% of crypto money laundering activity.

Investment in Austin-based startups grew to a record high of $7.19B in 2025, up from $4.37B in 2024 and topping a pandemic peak of $6.1B in 2021 (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/all-time-high-f…

Austin's Star Is Still Shining Bright: Venture Funding To City's Startups Hits All-Time High
Austin’s startup scene is stronger than ever. That’s the consensus among investors in the city, and it’s borne out by Crunchbase data, which shows startups headquartered in the Lone Star State’s capital raised a record $7.19 billion in venture funding in 2025.

Crypto payments network Mesh raised a $75M Series C led by Dragonfly at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $200M (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/387241/crypto-payments-net…