Private money is paying for hardware, drones, and the road to a listing
Nominal raised $240 million at a $3 billion valuation. Zipline raised $1.5 billion at $21.5 billion and added 300 Walmart sites. May Mobility is heading for Nasdaq with a $120 million PIPE.
- Nominal raised $240 million in a Series C funding round at a $3 billion valuation, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Insight Partners. m:…6251
- Zipline raised $1.5 billion at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation, and Zipline and Walmart signed a multi-year agreement to add 300 drone delivery sites nationwide. m:…2053
- Anthropic filed for its initial public offering on October 26, 2026, and Vista Equity Partners assesses that enterprise AI adoption is currently in its early stages. m:…4704
- May Mobility is pursuing a business combination with ACP Holdings Acquisition Corp, supported by a fully committed $120 million PIPE. m:…7190
- Fizz has raised $40 million in funding and is currently live on 800 campuses, expecting to be live on 1,500 campuses by the end of the fall. m:…1436
Hardware intelligence, funded
Nominal has secured 240 million dollars in Series C funding, valuing the hardware intelligence platform at 3 billion dollars. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Insight Partners, and the company says the money will support AI agents and applications for the full machine lifecycle. More than 80 commercial and government organisations use Nominal, and it counts five of the seven largest defence contractors among its customers. Anduril Industries has over 300 engineers using Nominal across programmes, according to the company, and the Air Force selected Nominal for a 71.2 million dollar STRATFI award. m:…6251
Nominal also acquired Fid Labs and Pull Systems, and its first AI agent, Nominal Analyst, investigates engineering data. The platform supports hardware development environments including cloud, on-premises, air-gapped and edge devices. The combination matters for investors reading this round: the valuation rests on defence and industrial customers already using the product, not on a consumer launch, and the acquisitions add to the engineering data the agent works with. m:…6251
Drones at retail scale
Zipline has secured 1.5 billion dollars in new funding at a 21.5 billion dollar valuation to expand its autonomous drone delivery network. The company plans to use the capital to expand US manufacturing and hiring, and it has flown 150 million commercial autonomous miles. Zipline and Walmart signed a multi-year agreement to add 300 drone delivery sites nationwide, and Walmart has completed more than 2 million drone deliveries to date. The newsletter notes that 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, which is the distribution argument for the deal. m:…2053
Zipline also partnered with Uber to target one million drone deliveries per day by the end of 2029, and the newsletter puts the potential saving from drone and robotic delivery at about 90% of last-mile delivery costs. Those are targets and estimates, not results, and they sit alongside the concrete numbers: 150 million miles flown, 2 million Walmart deliveries completed, and 300 new sites agreed. The funding round prices the network on that mix of flown miles and promised scale. m:…2053
What the public filing shows
Vista Equity Partners analysed Anthropic's S-1 filing and says the filing provides transparency into AI economics, specifically revenue, cost and compute demand. Anthropic filed for its initial public offering on October 26, 2026, according to Vista. The firm assesses that enterprise AI adoption is currently in its early stages, that the AI and software technology ecosystem is expanding rather than functioning as a winner-take-all contest, and that value will likely accrue to solutions that embed AI into enterprise workflows. That last point is the lens Vista applies to the private rounds above: the money is going to products inside existing workflows, not to standalone models. m:…4704
Two smaller items round out the picture. Social media platform Fizz has raised 40 million dollars to support expansion across college campuses, and is currently live on 800 campuses, expecting to reach 1,500 by the end of the fall. CEO Teddy Solomon moved the Fizz team from the Bay Area to New York, and the company built an advertising business without disrupting the product, according to the account. May Mobility will host an Investor Day on November 12, 2026, as it advances toward a Nasdaq listing through a proposed business combination with ACP Holdings Acquisition Corp, supported by a fully committed 120 million dollar PIPE, and it has completed more than half a million commercial autonomous rides. m:…1436 m:…7190
What is still unresolved
- Whether Zipline's 300 new Walmart sites open on the schedule the multi-year agreement implies.
- Whether Nominal's defence-heavy customer base converts the Series C into broader industrial adoption.
- What Anthropic's S-1 actually shows on revenue, cost and compute once investors read the filing itself.
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