Good morning. The money is moving fast in AI this week, science is getting its own model moment, and a master filmmaker finally gets her flowers.
Manus just raised over $500 million, weeks after walking away from Meta. The Chinese AI agent startup completed the round, co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, after Beijing ordered Meta to unwind its $2 billion-plus acquisition.
Why it matters: an AI agent company nearly doubled its value by going independent, and autonomous software is now the hottest corner of tech.
TypeSafe AI raised $870 million at a $7.5 billion valuation, 24 days after its seed round. Led by Andreessen Horowitz with Sequoia and DCVC, the round prices the company at 37.5 times its September valuation, on the strength of its Jev decision model.
Why it matters: Jev does not write text, it returns calibrated decisions, and investors are betting the next AI wave is machines deciding, not machines chatting.
Axiom Solutions secured $2 billion to build the power underneath AI. Flex sold convertible preferred stock in its cloud and power infrastructure spinout to General Catalyst and Koch Equity at a $37.5 billion enterprise value, ahead of a planned early 2027 listing.
Why it matters: the AI race is now a power and cooling race, and the biggest checks are going to the companies feeding the data centers.
A $1.8 billion coalition wants to build a virtual cell. Biohub expanded its Virtual Biology Initiative with over $500 million from the US Department of Energy, $300 million combined from Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta, and NIH datasets, aiming for AI models that predict how a human cell responds to a drug.
Why it matters: this is the AlphaFold playbook applied to all of biology, and the first open dataset lands in about a year.
Ann Hui received the 2026 Camellia Award at Busan. The 79-year-old Hong Kong New Wave pioneer was honored at the opening ceremony of the 31st Busan International Film Festival, in partnership with Chanel, for elevating women in cinema across 27 features.
Why it matters: a lifetime of quiet, humane filmmaking gets its moment, and her films are the perfect watchlist for festival season.
