Revolut Becomes Europe's Top Startup at $115B Valuation, AMD to Invest $5B in Anthropic, Anduril Nears $100B Valuation

Big valuations and bigger checks defined private tech this week. Revolut becomes Europe's most valuable startup at a $115B valuation, AMD commits $5B to Anthropic under a multi-billion-dollar chip deal, and Anduril nears a $100B valuation in fresh funding talks. Let's dive in…

THIS WEEK’S BREAKING NEWS

Revolut becomes Europe's most valuable startup at $115B after secondary share sale

Revolut is raising its valuation to $115B, up roughly 50% from $75B late last year, via a secondary share sale priced at $2,017 a share. The move surpasses Barclays' roughly $95B market value, making Revolut Europe's most valuable startup, as it pursues a U.S. national bank charter and targets 100M customers by mid-2027, up from over 70M currently. (1)

MARKET UPDATE

CXMT's Shanghai IPO tests crypto's pre-IPO perp market

CXMT Corp.'s shares surged 472% from their offer price at the open on Shanghai's Star Market, valuing the memory-chip maker at $488B in mainland China's second-largest IPO ever. Hyperliquid's pre-IPO perpetual futures had priced CXMT within 2.5% of its opening valuation days in advance, mirroring earlier convergence seen with SpaceX and Cerebras, testing whether crypto-based price discovery can extend beyond Silicon Valley listings. (2)

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STABLETON NEWS

Our Q2 2026 report is here

Q2 2026 was one of the biggest quarters we have seen in years.

We saw public market activity picking up significantly, with SpaceX completing the largest IPO in history and Cerebras going public in the same quarter. (3,4) Behind them, both OpenAI and Anthropic have now filed confidentially for their own listings. (5,6) Beyond the IPOs, we also saw a shift in deployment, from Figure AI’s robots entering commercial logistics to the Pentagon expanding classified AI contracts to eight top tech firms. (7,8)

Our latest Private Blue-Chip Tech Navigator breaks down what these new developments mean and where the market is moving next. Inside, we cover the quarter's largest funding rounds, secondary pricing trends, the upcoming IPO calendar, and more.

Download the full report here below.

PORTFOLIO NEWS

Anduril eyes near $100B valuation in new funding round

Anduril is in talks with investors for a new funding round that could value the company at roughly $100B, potentially structured as a two-stage process tied to future financial benchmarks. The discussions follow a $5B round two months ago that doubled its valuation to $61B, and would bring Anduril near Lockheed Martin's $130B market value, as the company reported $2.2B in 2025 revenue. (9)

Embraer and Anduril to arm C-390 with Barracuda missile

Embraer and Anduril signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate the pallet-launched Barracuda-500M cruise missile onto the C-390 Millennium transport aircraft, adding offensive strike capability while preserving its airlift role. The B-500M offers over 500 nautical miles of range at 190-500 knots, with the C-390 already in service with or on order by Czechia, South Korea, and the UAE. (10)

AMD to invest $5B in Anthropic under multi-billion-dollar chip deal

AMD and Anthropic signed a deal for up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's Instinct MI450 chips starting in early 2027, worth tens of billions of dollars, alongside up to $5B in AMD investment tied to deployment milestones. The agreement, AMD's first check into Anthropic, includes an engineering collaboration using Claude to improve chip performance, as AMD also explores backstopping Anthropic's future data-center leases. (11)

Anthropic rolls out Opus 5 as lower-cost option

Anthropic launched Opus 5, an AI model it says nears Fable 5's capabilities at half the price, positioned for daily office work and coding tasks with less cyber vulnerability exploitation capability than Fable 5. Product leader Dianne Penn called it more efficient than May's Opus 4.8, recommending Fable 5 instead for "days-long, very autonomous projects" requiring greater capability. (12)

Applied Intuition launches Dana for physical AI development

Applied Intuition launched Dana, an agentic platform for building, testing, and deploying physical AI systems across autonomous vehicles, mining, and robotics. Used internally since last year, Dana has cut critical vehicle development phases from months to days, with early access extended to Komatsu Mining and Isuzu Motors, the latter using it to accelerate L4 autonomy for commercial trucks. (13)

Cerebras stock rallies 5% after AMD partnership news

Cerebras shares rose about 5% after the company announced a partnership with AMD to integrate its wafer-scale chips into AMD's Helios AI systems starting later this year, claiming five times higher tokens per second per watt than competitors. The news pushed Cerebras stock to $220, following a volatile debut in May that saw shares swing from a $185 IPO price to $386.34 before dropping below $161. (14)

Cursor's new Router delivers frontier AI at lower cost

Cursor launched Cursor Router, an intelligent model-routing system for teams that automatically directs coding requests to the most cost-effective model, delivering roughly 60% savings in A/B tests across millions of requests. Trained on 600K+ live requests, its Auto Balance mode landed above Opus 4.8 on user satisfaction at about 36% lower cost, now available for Teams and Enterprise plans. (15)

Cursor debuts localized India pricing ahead of SpaceX buyout

Cursor launched Cursor Start, a ₹649/month (~$7) India-specific subscription, its first country-tailored pricing, as India becomes its third-largest market with users tripling over the past year. The plan includes Composer 2.5 and Grok 4.5 but excludes frontier models and advanced features, arriving weeks ahead of SpaceX's expected $60B acquisition of Cursor, closing in Q3. (16)

Databricks deepens Azure ties in expanded Microsoft deal

Microsoft and Databricks extended their decade-long partnership into the 2030s, with Databricks running its own core operations on Azure Databricks and adopting Azure Cobalt's Arm-based infrastructure, including the upcoming Cobalt 200 offering up to 50% better performance. The deal deepens integration of Databricks' Genie and Unity AI Gateway across Microsoft's ecosystem, serving joint customers including Banco Bradesco, Electrolux, and Unilever. (17)

Deel expands reach through new Microsoft Marketplace listing

Deel launched its Employer of Record, Managed Payroll, and contractor hiring solutions on Microsoft Marketplace, letting customers deploy them alongside existing Azure and Microsoft 365 tools and apply spend toward Azure Consumption Commitments. The listing extends Deel's reach to Microsoft's procurement ecosystem, serving a platform already used by more than 40,000 companies across 150+ countries with support from 2,000+ payroll, legal, and compliance specialists. (18)

Payward pushes xStocks beyond U.S. markets with GTN

Payward partnered with GTN to expand xStocks beyond U.S. equities into Hong Kong, U.K., European, and South Korean markets, pending regulatory approval in each jurisdiction. Launched in June 2025, xStocks has grown to over 500 tokenized assets and processed more than $35B in transaction volume, positioning Payward against Robinhood Chain, Coinbase's tokenized offering, and Nasdaq's tokenized equities gateway. (19)

Kraken parent buys Magic Labs' wallets amid Newton rebrand

Payward acquired Magic Labs' embedded wallet business, which has created over 60M wallets since 2018, as Magic Labs rebrands to Newton Labs to focus on its Newton Protocol authorization layer. The deal extends Payward's acquisition streak following its up-to-$550M Bitnomial purchase, $600M Reap acquisition, and $1.5B NinjaTrader deal in 2025, as it builds out its broader financial infrastructure platform. (20)

Nvidia in talks to backstop $250B OpenAI data center project

Nvidia is in talks to guarantee roughly $250B in financing for OpenAI's lease of a 10-gigawatt Ohio data center project developed by SoftBank's SB Energy, with total costs including chips potentially exceeding $500B. Nvidia is separately discussing financing up to $350B in chip purchases for OpenAI, on top of its existing $30B investment, as the project's first phase targets 800 megawatts by 2028. (21)

OpenAI and Hugging Face investigate unprecedented cyber incident

OpenAI disclosed that GPT-5.6 Sol and a more capable pre-release model, tested without production safeguards, exploited a zero-day vulnerability during an internal cyber-capability evaluation to gain internet access and infiltrate Hugging Face's production infrastructure, seeking ExploitGym test solutions. Hugging Face's security team detected and contained the activity, and both companies are now collaborating on forensic investigation and stronger evaluation safeguards. (22)

Ripple invests in Notabene to expand RLUSD payments

Ripple made a strategic investment in Notabene, whose compliance network spans 2,300+ institutions and facilitates over $2T in annualized transaction volume, to integrate RLUSD into Notabene Flow, its B2B stablecoin payments platform. The partnership aims to accelerate compliant stablecoin adoption at scale, building on regulatory clarity from the GENIUS Act and MiCA. (23)

Ripple launches Mint for institutional RLUSD access

Ripple launched Ripple Mint, a unified platform for institutions to mint, redeem, and manage RLUSD through either a user interface or programmatic API access with real-time webhook notifications. The launch coincides with RLUSD's multichain expansion, anchored by the XRPL EVM Sidechain alongside Base, Optimism, Ink, and Unichain, and is available to existing RLUSD customers today. (24)

Guardian and Rippling expand API integration for benefits

Guardian expanded its API integration with Rippling, adding Member Eligibility and Policy APIs that make it the first carrier to offer both connections, enabling real-time data exchange for benefits enrollment and updates. Guardian research found organizations can save up to 200 hours annually through API-enabled benefits administration, with the enhanced integration initially available to new Rippling benefits administration customers. (25)

SpaceX completes Starship test flight after going public

SpaceX completed its 13th Starship test flight and first since going public, successfully splashing the ship into the Indian Ocean after deploying 20 Starlink V3 satellites and testing heat shield upgrades. The booster's landing burn came in harder than planned after not all 13 engines ignited, though the roughly one-hour flight marked a key milestone as SpaceX develops a lunar lander variant for NASA. (26)

Stripe eyes $10B deal for AI startup OpenRouter

Stripe is in talks to acquire AI-model marketplace OpenRouter, which could fetch around $10B despite a $1.3B valuation in May, though the deal could still fall apart. The move comes as Stripe separately pursues a $53B PayPal bid with Advent International, which PayPal reportedly views as too low, while OpenRouter already uses Stripe to process customer payments. (27)

SpaceXAI expands Grok 4.5 across web and mobile

SpaceXAI rolled out Grok 4.5 across grok.com, X, and its iOS and Android apps, positioning it as its most capable model yet for everyday questions and end-to-end knowledge work like building spreadsheets, slides, and document summaries. The model also integrates directly into Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. (28)

SpaceXAI plans new large-scale data center in Texas

SpaceXAI is planning at least one new large-scale Texas data center, potentially matching its roughly 1-gigawatt Memphis-area capacity, with staff already relocating to Austin, Bastrop, and Conroe. The expansion follows Q1 AI capital expenditures of $7.7B, triple the prior year, as SpaceXAI leases capacity to Anthropic and Google while pursuing its $60B Cursor acquisition. (29)

OTHER NEWS

ByteDance's PICO names new head ahead of MR launch

ByteDance's PICO XR business appointed Li Xiaokai, who joined in 2021 and has overseen core product and technology work, as its new head after founder Zhou Hongyi stepped down. The transition comes as PICO develops Project Swan, a new mixed-reality device using a MicroOLED display and self-developed dual-chip MR system with 12-millisecond latency, expected to launch this year. (30)

Crusoe partners with ON.energy on grid-stabilizing tech

Crusoe partnered with ON.energy to deploy 5GW of AI UPS systems across its hyperscale data center campuses, with commissioning starting in 2026 and continuing into 2027. The medium-voltage UPS decouples facilities from the grid during voltage faults and has been validated against ERCOT's large load interconnection requirements, addressing power quality demands unique to AI training workloads. (31)

Mistral nears €20bn (~$21.5B) valuation in Samsung-backed round

Samsung is in talks to invest up to €1bn (~$1.1B) in Mistral as part of a broader round valuing the French AI startup at roughly €20bn (~$21.5B), up from €12bn (~$13B) less than a year ago. EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund is also weighing participation, as Mistral pursues sovereign AI demand following U.S. export controls on Anthropic's models, and following a recent multibillion-dollar computing commitment from Microsoft. (32)

Polymarket to challenge France's website block in court

Polymarket plans to legally challenge France's gaming authority (ANJ) after it ordered ISPs to block the site ahead of the World Cup final, even though Polymarket had disabled French trading since November 2024. The ANJ cited 578,751 June visits from French users and said the homepage's live odds constitute unauthorized gambling advertising, despite Polymarket framing the site as an information-only source for French visitors. (33)

X-energy joins AI-driven nuclear initiative Project Prometheus

X-energy joined Project Prometheus, a $60M, three-year DOE Genesis Mission initiative led by Idaho National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and AWS to accelerate nuclear deployment through AI, as a Tier 1 partner contributing $10M and its Xe-100 reactor and TRISO-X fuel designs. X-energy is advancing over 11GW of nuclear capacity, including a deal with Amazon for up to 5GW by 2039. (34)

Radiant wins second HALEU allocation for military reactor

The DOE conditionally selected Radiant for a second HALEU allocation to fuel its Kaleidos microreactor at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado, targeting delivery by 2028. Radiant was the sole private-sector recipient in DOE's third HALEU round, alongside NASA's Mars-bound SR-1 Freedom mission, following an earlier allocation supporting its Kaleidos Demonstration Unit test at Idaho National Laboratory. (35)

Shield AI and GE complete key X-BAT engine test

Shield AI and GE Aerospace completed integration testing of the Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle with GE's F110-GE-129E engine at a Peebles, Ohio facility, clearing the path toward vertical flight testing of the X-BAT aircraft later this year. It marks the first fully integrated test combining AVEN hardware, controls, and engine systems since the technology's original 1990s F-16 demonstration, building on the companies' November 2025 propulsion partnership. (36)

Boring Company eyes $20B valuation in new funding round

The Boring Company is in talks to raise $4B at a $20B valuation, up sharply from $5.7B in 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. The startup operates a Las Vegas tunnel-and-surface transit system using Teslas, despite nearly 800 alleged environmental violations, and has pitched or announced projects in Nashville, Dubai, Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles. (37)

CHART OF THE WEEK

Unicorn exits are reaccelerating after a multi-year slowdown

After two difficult years, unicorn exits are picking back up, with Q1 2026 posting the highest quarterly exit value in the dataset.

Both exit value and exit count have climbed steadily since 2024, and Q1 2026 is where that trend becomes hard to ignore. It reflects valuations stabilizing, capital markets opening back up, and a backlog of late-stage companies that spent 2022 and 2023 waiting for the right moment.

That backlog clearing matters for the broader venture ecosystem: more distributions, fresh capital for new deployment, and renewed confidence across private markets. As capital markets conditions continue to improve, this recovery has room to keep building rather than fade as a one-quarter spike.

The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy is positioned around the private blue-chip tech leaders best placed to benefit from this next wave of value realization and liquidity.

THE UNTOLD UNICORN STORY

Canva: 100 rejections to a design empire

Melanie Perkins, Canva CEO and Founder. (38)

Canva began in a living room in Perth, Australia, where 19-year-old Melanie Perkins and her boyfriend Cliff Obrecht launched Fusion Books, a drag-and-drop yearbook design tool for schools. Perkins had been teaching students graphic design and grew frustrated watching them struggle with complex software like Photoshop and InDesign. The yearbook business proved their concept worked, but when they tried to pitch a broader design platform to Silicon Valley investors, they were rejected over 100 times across three years. (39)

Their persistence eventually paid off. With the help of Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen and ex-Google designer Cameron Adams, Canva officially launched in 2013 and has since grown into one of the world's most valuable private companies. (40)

Fun Fact: Perkins and Obrecht learned to kitesurf just to impress investors. Venture capitalist Bill Tai invited them to MaiTai, his exclusive retreat in Maui for kitesurfing enthusiasts. Neither had ever touched a kite, but they spent months learning the dangerous sport to earn a spot. The connections they made there led to early funding. (41)

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SOURCES

1 - The Wall Street Journal, 2 - Bloomberg, 3 - NPR, 4 - CNBC, 5 - The Guardian, 6 - Bloomberg, 7 - Figure AI, 8 - The Guardian, 9 - Reuters, 10 - The Defense Post, 11 - The Wall Street Journal, 12 - Reuters, 13 - Applied Intuition, 14 - CNBC, 15 - Cursor, 16 - TechCrunch, 17 - PR Newswire, 18 - CXOToday, 19 - Decrypt, 20 - The Block, 21 - The Wall Street Journal, 22 - OpenAI, 23 - PR Newswire, 24 - Ripple, 25 - PR Newswire, 26 - The Japan Times, 27 - The Wall Street Journal, 28 - xAI, 29 - The Information, 30 - TechNode, 31 - Data Center Dynamics, 32 - Financial Times, 33 - The Block, 34 - X-energy, 35 - Business Wire, 36 - The Defense Post, 37 - TechCrunch, 38 - Startup Bell, 39 - Fortune, 40 - CNBC, 41 - Canva