Qualcomm

Horizon3 Raises $250M Series E at $2B Valuation

Horizon3, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup, raised $250 million in a Series E at a $2 billion valuation. Returning investors NightDragon and NEA participated, and new strategic backers include Singapore’s EDBI, defense contractor SAIC, and Qualcomm. Horizon3 says it is approaching $100 million in annual recurring revenue with 120% year-over-year growth, has run 310,000 production security tests with no disruptions, and has invested roughly $100 million in R&D to build automated, controllable security testing. Its NodeZero platform performs continuous, live scans across full infrastructures without shutting down operations. The funding will support international expansion (Amsterdam, Australia, Singapore), partner network development, and continued R&D amid rising AI-driven attack concerns and recent AI model breaches at research labs.

AI Funding Risks: Hedge Fund Collapse and Nvidia Financing

A recent rout in AI and chip stocks exposed fragilities in the AI funding boom, illustrated by Situational Awareness — a leveraged San Francisco hedge fund led by Leopold Aschenbrenner — which sold its public stock portfolio to Citadel after margin calls created a liquidity crisis. The piece flags vendor financing risks as Nvidia has made large, hardware-linked investments and commitments (including a reported $5 billion commitment to Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence and reported talks to guarantee up to $250 billion for OpenAI). Corporate venture capital and new financial actors (big managers and private credit) now dominate AI financing, while special purpose vehicles (SPVs) are outpacing direct secondary trades on some platforms, underscoring evolving—and potentially systemic—financing risks for the AI buildout.

EU launches €30B AI Gigafactories programme

The European Commission has opened a competitive call to fund the construction of up to seven AI “gigafactories” — large, chip-equipped data centers for training advanced AI models — to boost Europe’s compute capacity. The programme aims to mobilize more than €30 billion in total financing: roughly €5 billion from the EU, about €5 billion from national governments (up to €10 billion public) and at least €20 billion from private investors. Projects will be selected in two lots (up to four sites eligible for grants up to €500 million each, and up to three sites eligible for grants up to €1 billion each). Applications close November 2026, with initial decisions expected in early 2027, construction starting in 2027 and first facilities operational within about 18 months. Seventy-six consortia have expressed interest; ten countries and several German bidders (Schwarz Digits, Deutsche Telekom, IONOS) have signalled participation.