Raison Venture Digest

The past six weeks were eventful: record revenue at Anthropic, the close of SpaceX's $60 billion Cursor deal, Kraken's application for a banking license, and a full pivot at Groq. Here is what happened across Raison's portfolio companies.

SpaceXAI

The Cursor deal closes, a new Grok model, and a chip plant in Texas

The $60 billion acquisition of Cursor, which we covered in the last issue, has officially closed. Almost immediately, SpaceXAI released Grok 4.6, its new flagship model. On the Artificial Analysis composite index, it sits on par with OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 and one point behind Claude Fable 5. The model is available through Cursor, so the acquisition immediately became a distribution channel.

To secure future compute, the company is building its own manufacturing. Tesla and SpaceX are starting construction of the Terafab chip plant in Texas, with an initial investment of $16.8 billion, though the full project could cost as much as $119 billion. The site will produce processors for Optimus robots, Cybercab self-driving taxis, and space-based data centers.

Separately, it emerged that Google holds a stake in SpaceX worth $94.1 billion — roughly 6% of the company. And the SPCX listing drove tokenized equities trading to a record $3.86 billion in June, with almost a third of that volume coming from SpaceX tokens alone.

Anthropic

IPO preparations, record revenue, and the race for compute

The company’s revenue in the second quarter grew 14-fold year over year and passed $11.5 billion. That is actual revenue for the quarter, not the annualized run rate (ARR) that AI companies usually report. Against this backdrop, IPO preparations are gathering pace: the underwriters from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan have begun meeting with investors, and a listing could come as early as October.

Most of the company’s spending goes on compute, and here Anthropic is lining up suppliers on several fronts at once. It will buy up to two gigawatts of capacity from AMD, while AMD, in turn, will invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic. In parallel, early-stage talks are underway with Meta about leasing compute capacity worth roughly $10 billion, and with TeraWulf,, the company has leased a data center under construction for 20 years at $19 billion, without raising a dedicated round for the deal. Anthropic has also confirmed that it is developing its own chip, designed around the company’s future models.

The business around the models is expanding too. Together with Blackstone and other investors, Anthropic launched Ode, a $1.5 billion company that embeds AI into the workflows of corporate clients. The bet is that the implementation market will prove no less valuable than the market for the models themselves. Meanwhile, an unreleased model from the company made progress on the Riemann hypothesis, a problem that has remained unsolved for more than 150 years.

The dispute with the government continues as well. A judge questioned the grounds for banning Anthropic’s technology across federal agencies, and it is now being decided whether the temporary lifting of that ban will become permanent. The company itself, meanwhile, disclosed two unreleased models already in use internally and raised its assessment of the risks associated with them in a 186-page report.

Kraken

A European banking license application, new derivatives, and a bet on AI

Kraken is pursuing a full banking license in Europe and has filed its application in Lithuania. If it succeeds, the exchange will become the only crypto platform with that status, able to open accounts, issue loans, and provide access to equities trading across the European Economic Area. This continues a consistent strategy: back in May, Payward secured VARA authorization in the UAE, which we covered in the last issue.

The derivatives lineup is growing too. After perpetual futures, the exchange has launched USD-settled options on bitcoin and ether. Such instruments were once available mainly to professionals; now there is no need to manage crypto collateral.

In parallel, the exchange is moving into the realm of artificial intelligence. Kraken is rebuilding its app around agentic trading: AI will monitor the market, assemble a draft portfolio, and propose trades, though they will only be executed once the user confirms them. Similar tools have already appeared at Coinbase and Gemini. And parent company Payward is expanding its xStocks tokenized equities platform to Hong Kong, the UK, Europe, and South Korea.

Talking to Kraken should be like talking to your well-informed best friend who knows a lot about finance but also knows a lot about you, knows about your goals.

Kamo Asatryan

Chief Data Officer at Kraken, Payward

Mercury

Cards for AI agents and a new spend management system

Mercury has launched Spend, a corporate spend management system with purpose-based budgets, automatic transaction categorization, and receipt capture. Separately, companies can issue dedicated cards for AI agents so they can make approved transactions while the business sees every move they make. Spend is also available to companies that bank elsewhere.

Bolt

Booking rides through ChatGPT and package delivery

Bolt is broadening its range of services. Alongside rides, the company has launched Bolt Send, a delivery service for small packages, with orders placed just like a regular trip. The other notable update is its integration with ChatGPT across all markets it operates in: Bolt has become the first European ride-hailing service available through the chatbot. In the conversation, you can see the upfront price, compare route options, check the driver's arrival time, and complete the booking in the app. Payment directly inside ChatGPT is promised later this year.

People don’t plan their evening in five different apps anymore. Much of that planning happens in a single conversation with AI.

Paddy Partridge

Senior Vice President

Groq

A $350M round and a pivot toward data centers

Groq has raised $350 million to fund a pivot. The company used to develop its own inference chips, but in December, Nvidia hired its founder and core team as part of a $20 billion licensing deal, with the proceeds going to investors. Groq now operates data centers powered by Nvidia hardware: 13 sites, with plans to scale from 54 to more than 200 megawatts by 2027. The new round values the company at $3.5 billion, down from $6.9 billion previously, though the company stresses that this is not a down round but rather a valuation of the business in its new configuration.

Signal of the Period

AI enters a new investment phase

Anthropic is preparing for an IPO, continuing a new trend of AI companies going public. After the SpaceXAI listing and the debuts of several Chinese model developers, this is another signal of sweeping change across the industry.

Against this backdrop, the direction of investment is shifting as well. The capital cycle flowing directly into AI model development is gradually approaching its peak, while infrastructure and physical AI are only picking up speed. Valuations are rising for the companies building the “body” for AI: from robotics and chips to data centers and compute infrastructure.

For the AI labs themselves, an IPO may turn out to be the last major funding round for several years to come rather than a steady source of new capital. Going public will allow them to raise substantial funds and continue growing without having to return to private investors regularly.

The result is a striking shift: private capital financed the creation of AI models for years, and now the largest labs are entering public markets already holding a vast pool of resources. Meanwhile, the new investment cycle is moving toward infrastructure and physical AI.

Infrastructure and physical AI still remain private markets, and these are exactly the shifts in the cycle we watch for when we select deals. Want to learn more about our investment solutions and gain access to exclusive Pre-IPO deals? Please contact our expert to get a personal consultation.