VC Deal Flow — Week of May 28–June 1, 2026
Sequoia co-leads Anthropic's $65B Series H at a $965B valuation — its first confirmed deal in this digest. YC backs Corgi's $106M Series B1 in AI insurance. A16z and Founders Fund had no publicly confirmed new deals this week. Plus: XCENA's $135M memory-chip bet, Groq's reported $650M raise, and an IPO pipeline beginning to take shape.
Sequoia makes its first appearance in this digest with a co-lead on Anthropic's $65B Series H. Outside that headline-grabbing round, the week was unusually quiet for a16z, Founders Fund, and most YC-backed companies — just one confirmed YC deal closed, and no new Founders Fund check was announced publicly.
AI / foundation models
Anthropic — $65B Series H | ~$965B post-money | Sequoia co-lead
The week's single defining event: Anthropic closed what it describes as its last private fundraise before an IPO, bringing its post-money valuation to $965 billion.
Co-leads: Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia Capital, Capital Group, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners. Institutional participants include Baillie Gifford, Blackstone, Brookfield, D.E. Shaw Ventures, DST Global, and Fidelity. Strategic participants: Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron. A $15B slice of the round reflects previously committed hyperscaler investments, including $5B from Amazon. 1
What Anthropic does: Develops the Claude family of AI models and enterprise AI tools, including Claude Code.
The company's run-rate revenue crossed $47B earlier this month, and The Wall Street Journal reported it expects a 130% year-on-year revenue surge to reach its first operating profit. 2 The round landed the same day Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8.
For Sequoia, this is their first confirmed check in this digest since its launch. Sequoia co-led, rather than simply participating — a signal of conviction at a valuation that rivals those of major public-market tech incumbents.
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InsurTech / AI insurance
Corgi — $106M Series B1 | $2.6B valuation | YC + Kindred Ventures
InsurTech startup Corgi closed a $106M Series B1, three weeks after announcing a separate $160M Series B at a $1.3B valuation — a doubling that drew scrutiny in LP circles over the pace of internal markups. 3
Investors: Kindred Ventures (lead), Y Combinator, Prime Capital, Leblon Capital, Alumni Ventures.
What Corgi does: Provides business insurance for startups, covering newer risk categories including AI liability — policy language for when an AI system causes financial loss, misinformation, or operational failures. Corgi counts Deel and Artisan among its customers and has now raised $378M in total.
Notably, the investor set is the same across both rounds — Kindred Ventures GP Kanyi Maqubela cited revenue growth as justification. The speed of the step-up is an emerging pattern in AI-adjacent rounds and one that several LPs told TechCrunch they are monitoring closely.
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Notable deals this week without top-tier VC involvement
A few larger rounds announced this week did not include a16z, Sequoia, YC, or Founders Fund, but are worth flagging for sector context:
| Company | Round | Amount | Lead investor(s) | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| XCENA | Series B | $135M at $570M val. | Atinum, IMM Investment | Deep Tech / AI memory chips |
| Groq (reported) | Internal round | ~$650M | Disruptive, Infinitium | AI infrastructure / inference |
| Airwallex | Undisclosed | at $12B val. | Addition (Lee Fixel) | FinTech / payments |
XCENA is a South Korea / US chip startup betting that AI inference is bottlenecked by memory, not compute — its MX1 chip places compute capabilities inside DRAM modules. 4 Mass-production chips are scheduled off Samsung's foundry lines by end of 2026; revenue expected in 2027.
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Groq, after its $20B Nvidia "not-acqui-hire" deal in December, is reportedly raising $650M from existing investors to fund its inference neocloud business. No new institutional names were disclosed. 5
IPO watch
With SpaceX targeting a $2T valuation IPO and Anthropic describing this $65B round as its last private raise, the late-2026 IPO window is starting to fill. ClickHouse — backed by Dragoneer at a $15B valuation in January — also flagged IPO readiness this week after tripling ARR to $250M. 6 None of these three have set formal timelines, but the framing has shifted from "eventually" to "within the next year or two."
Digest notes
- a16z: No new investments confirmed this week.
- Sequoia: Co-led Anthropic's $65B Series H.
- YC: Co-investor in Corgi's $106M Series B1.
- Founders Fund: No new investments confirmed this week.
References
- 1
- 2
- 3Corgi announces $106M raise at $2.6B valuation
techcrunch.com
- 4XCENA secures $135M at $570M valuation
techcrunch.com
- 5Groq reportedly raising $650M
techcrunch.com
- 6
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