VC deal flow, October 12–18: $2.09B, and $1.85B of it went to one fintech round
Eight rounds naming a16z, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund or Y Combinator reached at least $2.09 billion, with Ramp's Founders Fund co-led $1.85 billion taking 88% of it, while Intuit agreed to buy the a16z-backed Sequence.
Eight rounds announced between October 12 and October 18, 2026 name at least one of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund or Y Combinator as an investor. All eight disclosed an amount, and the eight add to at least $2.09 billion. Ramp's $1.85 billion alone is 88% of that total.
Andreessen Horowitz appears in four of the eight rounds, Y Combinator in two, Sequoia Capital in one and Founders Fund in one. Three of the four firms spent the week on small checks and follow-ons. Founders Fund's single appearance was a co-lead in the largest round of the week.
The week's exit ran in the opposite direction from its financings. Intuit agreed to buy Sequence, a London billing company backed by Andreessen Horowitz, in a deal The Times reported at around $200 million. Anduril, meanwhile, opened a $1.3 billion employee share sale that values the defense company at about $90 billion.
Confirmed top-four deals
| Sector | Company | Round and terms | Tracked-firm role | What the company does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fintech | Ramp | $1.85B primary round, announced October 15; $60B valuation | Founders Fund: co-lead; Dragoneer Investment Group led | Corporate cards and expense software for 85,000 businesses. 1 |
| AI training data | Labelbox | More than $100M Series E including a credit facility, announced October 14; valuation undisclosed | Andreessen Horowitz: participating; Infinitum Partners led | Reinforcement-learning environments for AI labs, plus managed agents for enterprises. 2 |
| Home healthcare | Abby Care | $82M Series C, announced October 15; valuation undisclosed | Sequoia Capital: returning investor; Transformation Capital led | Trains family members as paid caregivers and runs the care as a Medicaid provider. 3 |
| Public safety software | Sharp Performance | $18M Series A, announced October 16; valuation undisclosed | Andreessen Horowitz: participating; Hidden Variable led | Confidential performance coaching for police officers, firefighters and paramedics. 4 |
| Industrial inspection | HyLight | $14.5M round, announced October 13; valuation undisclosed | Y Combinator: participating; no single lead named | Hydrogen-powered airships that inspect power lines, gas pipelines and railways. 5 |
| Manufacturing software | Forgepoint | $9.8M seed, announced October 15; valuation undisclosed | Andreessen Horowitz speedrun: co-lead with Primary Venture Partners | An AI sales rep that prices machine-shop quotes from each shop's own cost model. 6 |
| Business video | Clueso | $10M Series A, announced October 13; valuation undisclosed | Y Combinator: participating; Dharana Capital led | AI agents that produce and update company training videos. 7 |
| Sales software | Othello | $8M seed, announced October 14; valuation undisclosed | Andreessen Horowitz speedrun: co-lead with Owl Capital | Live coaching prompts for salespeople while a call is happening. 8 |
Fintech and financial operations
Ramp: $1.85 billion, co-led by Founders Fund
Ramp raised $1.85 billion in a primary round led by Dragoneer Investment Group, with Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital and Avenir Growth as co-leads. The New York company said the round values it at $60 billion, up from $44 billion when it raised $750 million in June. 19
The company reports more than $2 billion in annualized revenue with positive cash flow, and counts 85,000 customers processing over $275 billion in annualized purchase volume, up 175% from a year earlier. Total equity raised now stands at about $5 billion. 1
Ramp's pitch to this round is AI cost control as much as card spend. Recent products include AI Token Spend Management, which tracks spending across providers and API keys, and Router.com, which the company says cuts inference costs by up to 40%. The customer list includes Visa, Uber, Shopify, Notion and Cursor. 1
For a founder or angel reading this digest, the round sets a price for late-stage business software: 30 times the disclosed revenue run rate, and 36% higher than the June valuation. Founders Fund's participation is a co-lead rather than a lead, and it is the firm's only appearance in the window.
AI training data and evaluation
Labelbox: more than $100 million for reinforcement-learning environments
Labelbox raised more than $100 million in Series E financing, including equity and a credit facility, announced October 14. Infinitum Partners led, with Wipro Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, B Capital, Tau Ventures and Snowpoint Ventures participating. The company did not disclose a valuation. 2
The eight-year-old San Francisco company now sells two products. Horizon builds the simulated environments, expert feedback and evaluation infrastructure that AI labs use to train models on multi-step work such as coding and research. Recursion Managed Agents deploys fleets of agents inside the applications a company already uses, with each run feeding the next. 2
Labelbox says it has more than 400 customers, including more than 90% of leading US AI labs, that it reached profitability in 2026 and that revenue grew more than fivefold year over year. It runs more than 50 of its own agents across engineering, research, sales and finance. 2
Andreessen Horowitz joined this round as a participant. A week earlier it led a round in Preference Model, another seller of reinforcement-learning environments, which this digest covered in its October 5–11 issue. 10
Vertical AI: sales calls and machine-shop quotes
Othello: $8 million to coach a rep mid-call
Othello raised an $8 million seed round from a16z speedrun, Owl Capital and Long Journey Ventures, announced October 14. Angel investors include DoorDash co-founder Andy Fang, Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf. 8
A desktop app starts when a sales call begins and shows prompts without joining the meeting as a participant. The prompts come from Hamlet, Othello's own model, which the company says returns suggestions in under 500 milliseconds, and cover the next discovery question, missed methodology steps and objection handling. Othello says it is deployed at more than 50 large enterprises, including Microsoft, Capital One and Lyft. 8
Forgepoint: $9.8 million to quote a machine shop's job
Forgepoint raised $9.8 million in seed funding led by Primary Venture Partners and a16z speedrun, announced October 15, with angel investors joining. The New York company sells an AI inside-sales rep to manufacturers, starting with quoting. 6
The product, called Frank, reads customer part files, asks for missing requirements, prices the job using the shop's own cost model, pulls up similar past jobs, routes engineering review and drafts the quote document. Chief executive Jack Strauss and chief technology officer Alex Pareto lead the company. 6
Both companies took money from a16z speedrun, the venture firm's accelerator program, which co-led each round. These are the only two rounds Andreessen Horowitz helped lead this week, and both are under $10 million.
Healthcare and public safety
Abby Care: $82 million for paid family caregivers
Abby Care raised an $82 million Series C led by Transformation Capital, Fortune reported on October 15. CVS Health Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures and Pivotal Ventures are new investors, while Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital and Sequoia Capital increased their positions. The company did not disclose a valuation. 3
Founder and chief executive Havi Nguyen started the company in 2022. Abby Care trains family members to become certified, paid caregivers for a relative with complex medical needs, then supports them afterwards, and it operates as a Medicaid provider working with health plans. 3
Justin Brock, a general partner at CVS Health Ventures, told Fortune that a traditional private-duty nurse program fills 65% of authorized shifts, which leaves medically complex members without consistent coverage. Abby Care's bet is that the family member already in the home can be trained and paid to close that gap. 3
Sequoia Capital's only appearance this week is this follow-on. The firm's most recent published lead was Catalyst, whose round Sequoia wrote about on October 8. 11
Sharp Performance: $18 million for first-responder coaching
Sharp Performance raised an $18 million Series A led by Hidden Variable, announced October 16, with Andreessen Horowitz, Commonweal Ventures, the Wolfson Group, FJ Labs and the Ford Foundation participating. The round brings total funding to $30 million. 4
The Carlsbad, California company matches police officers, firefighters and paramedics with coaches who have first-responder or special-operations backgrounds, schedules sessions around shifts and gives departments anonymized reporting. Founders Ben Curley and Andrew Sakmar built it for the full career, from academy to retirement. 4
Video and industrial inspection
Clueso: $10 million for company videos
Clueso raised a $10 million Series A led by Dharana Capital, announced October 13, with Y Combinator, f7 Ventures, Founders Future and Neotribe Ventures joining. Total funding reached $12 million, and the company said more than 80% of the new money came from existing investors. 712
Clueso's agents turn a company's documents and screen recordings into training and product videos, then update them when the underlying material changes. The company is a Y Combinator graduate. 7
HyLight: $14.5 million for hydrogen airships that inspect pipelines
HyLight raised $14.5 million, announced October 13, with Rubio Impact Ventures, DRW, Teampact Ventures, Y Combinator and Ring Capital participating. Total funding is about $18.6 million. 5
The French company designs and operates hydrogen-powered autonomous airships that fly over power lines, gas pipelines and commercial railways to collect inspection data, aiming to replace helicopter patrols at lower cost and with no emissions. It is based in Brétigny-sur-Orge, south of Paris. 5
Exit watch
Intuit agrees to buy Sequence
Intuit signed an agreement to acquire Sequence, a London- and New York-based revenue management company, the companies announced on October 15. The price was undisclosed; The Times reported a figure of around $200 million, which tech.eu relayed. 1314
Sequence was founded in 2021 by Riya Grover and Eamon Jubbawy and automates billing, payments and revenue recognition for startups, with Legora and Cognition among its customers. It raised around $40 million in total from Andreessen Horowitz, Passion Capital, firstminute capital and 645 Ventures. Grover will join Intuit's mid-market product organization. 14
On the reported price, the sale returns roughly five times the capital Sequence raised. That is a deal-level multiple for the whole company, and it says nothing about what Andreessen Horowitz's own stake was worth.
Anduril opens a $1.3 billion employee share sale
Anduril will let employees sell shares at $94.80 each through a tender offer that values the company at about $90 billion. The offer opened October 13, closes November 9 and is capped at $1.3 billion, with employees in 16 countries eligible. 15
The price is 48% above the $61 billion valuation Anduril took in a $5 billion round in May. Andreessen Horowitz co-led that May round with Thrive Capital. 1516
This is a liquidity event for employees and existing shareholders. No new money reaches the company, so the tender sits outside the week's financing total.
Labeled non-top-tier context
| Sector | Company | Disclosed transaction | Lead or key investors | Why it is here |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI infrastructure | Modal Labs | $750M Series D at a $15.75B valuation | Accel led; Kleiner Perkins joined | The largest round of the week with no tracked-firm participation named. 17 |
| Construction technology | Icon | $200M Series D | Baillie Gifford and BlackRock led | Robotic construction systems, a sector the tracked firms have also funded. 17 |
| RNA therapies | Soufflé Therapeutics | $135M Series B | Juvia Group led | Biotech's largest round in the window. 17 |
| Insurance | Stand | $70M Series C at a $1B valuation | Saga Ventures led | Home insurance for disaster-exposed areas, at unicorn pricing. 17 |
| Semiconductor systems | Mueon | $65M Series A | Maverick Silicon led; Intel Capital joined | Modular hardware for AI data centers, another infrastructure bet. 17 |
Digest notes
- One round is most of the week. Ramp's $1.85 billion is 88% of the $2.09 billion confirmed total. The other seven rounds average $34.6 million, and four of them are under $15 million.
- Andreessen Horowitz made four appearances, none of them a growth lead. It co-led Othello and Forgepoint through a16z speedrun, its accelerator program, and took participant positions in Labelbox and Sharp Performance. Its most recent led round was TypeSafe AI on October 9.
- Sequoia Capital made one appearance, as a returning investor. Sequoia increased its position in Abby Care's Series C. The firm has published no new investment post since October 10.
- Founders Fund made one appearance, and it was the week's biggest. The firm co-led Ramp's $1.85 billion round alongside Thrive Capital, Sands Capital and Avenir Growth, with Dragoneer leading.
- Y Combinator sat in two participant lists. HyLight and Clueso both raised early-stage rounds led by other firms.
- Four of the eight companies sell AI software directly. Labelbox, Othello, Forgepoint and Clueso all sell AI products to other businesses. A fifth, Abby Care, is described by Fortune as AI-native.
- Correction to the October 5–11 issue. Catalyst's round, recorded there as an undisclosed seed, was a $30 million Series A led by Sequoia Capital, reported on October 10. 11
- Two of the week's events were not financings. Intuit's purchase of Sequence moves ownership, and Anduril's tender moves existing shares. Neither adds capital to a company's balance sheet.
Coverage note
This issue covers financing announcements dated October 12 through October 18, 2026. The confirmed total counts rounds announced inside that window whose participant lists name Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund or Y Combinator: eight rounds, all with a disclosed amount, adding to at least $2.09 billion. Labelbox is counted at its $100 million floor because the round combines equity with a credit facility the company did not break out.
Three kinds of item stay outside that total and are labeled where they appear: the Intuit acquisition of Sequence, because it is an exit; Anduril's tender offer, because no new capital reaches the company; and the rounds in the context table, because their participant lists name none of the four tracked firms.
a16z speedrun is Andreessen Horowitz's accelerator program, and its two co-led rounds are counted as appearances by Andreessen Horowitz. Each is labeled as speedrun in the table so readers can separate the program's early-stage checks from the firm's growth rounds.
Dates and terms come from the company or investor announcement where one exists. Abby Care's round rests on Fortune's October 15 report, and the company has not published a release. Forgepoint, Sharp Performance and HyLight rest on FinSMEs reports dated October 15, October 16 and October 13. Sequence's price rests on The Times report relayed by tech.eu, because neither Intuit nor Sequence disclosed it.
Crunchbase News's weekly roundup, used only for the context table, runs its own period of October 10–16, which is one day wider than this digest's window.
References
- 1
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- 4
- 5HyLight Raises $14.5M in Funding
finsmes.com
- 6Forgepoint Raises $9.8M in Seed Funding
finsmes.com
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10Investing in Preference Model
a16z.com
- 11AI Startup Catalyst Raises $30m in Series A Round Led By Sequoia
crowdfundinsider.com
- 12Clueso raises $10M Series A to build the agentic video platform for businesses
markets.businessinsider.com
- 13Intuit to Acquire AI-Native Revenue Management Platform Sequence
investors.intuit.com
- 14
- 15
- 16Anduril Industries: a16z portfolio
jobs.a16z.com
- 17
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