Duvo raised USD 15 million in a seed round. Index Ventures led the round. Credo Ventures, Northzone, and Puzzle Ventures took part too. A few angels joined, including Roy Reznik, David Singleton, Ajay Kavan, and Kieran Flanagan.

The company makes an AI platform that automates day-to-day operations for retail teams. It works across tools retailers already use, like SAP, supplier portals, emails, and spreadsheets.

The money will go toward hiring, building more product features, and reaching more large retail customers. They also plan to expand into other complex industries later.

Tomas Čupr, the CEO and co-founder, said retail teams often spend hours moving data between old systems and portals. He said Duvo lets business users set up AI agents themselves in weeks, without big IT projects. The funding will help them move faster and serve more enterprises.

Jan Hammer from Index Ventures said most AI tools are general, but Duvo is built just for retail using the founders’ years of experience in the industry.

Duvo is an AI-native automation platform for retail operations. It helps commercial, supply chain, and finance teams in large retail and consumer goods companies cut manual work. The company is based in the United States.

InfiniteWatch raised EUR 3.4 million in a pre-seed round. The deal was led by Base10 Partners. Sequoia, a16z scouts, Kfund, Kibo, and LifeX also invested. InfiniteWatch is a startup based in Madrid. It was founded in 2025. The company operates in Spain.

Blinq Mobility raised INR 4.3 crore in a pre-seed round. The deal was led by 8i Ventures. IIMA Ventures, AIC Banasthali Vidyapith, Pharos Ventures, and Operators Studio took part. A group of angel investors also joined, including Neil Shroff, Arun Kumar Mahala, and Sarita Ahlawat.

The cash will go toward product development and vehicle engineering. It will also help build battery systems and swapping stations. Some will fund pilot programs with ride-hailing partners. The Blinq team said the best way to handle EV power is to swap batteries fast instead of charging.

Blinq Mobility builds electric vehicles with battery swapping for city use. The setup targets high-use fleets like logistics and ride-hailing to cut costs and downtime. The company works in India with support from places like ARAI.

Zipline, the autonomous drone delivery company, raised USD 600 million in new funding. This round values the business at USD 7.6 billion. Investors include Fidelity Management & Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Valor Equity Partners, and Tiger Global, among others both new and returning.

The funds will support expansion across at least four U.S. states this year. Zipline plans to start operations in Houston and Phoenix soon, then move into more areas. This builds on recent growth where the company has seen U.S. deliveries rise about 15% week-over-week for the past seven months.

Zipline will keep improving its platform. It uses smaller Platform 2 drones for home deliveries of food and retail items up to eight pounds within 10 miles. Larger Platform 1 drones handle longer trips for bigger clients. The company already works with partners like Walmart, Panera, Chipotle, and others in places such as Arkansas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, with Seattle coming next.

Zipline builds and runs an autonomous drone system for fast, emission-free delivery. It started by delivering medical supplies like blood in places such as Rwanda back in 2016. Now it serves customers in Africa, Japan, and the United States with food, retail goods, agriculture items, and health products. The company focuses on making delivery quicker, cleaner, and more reliable for everyday needs and enterprise clients.

WanderOn has closed a INR 54 crore Series A round. The company calls it one of the largest institutional raises in India’s experiential travel space. DSG Consumer Partners and Client Associates Alternate Fund led the round together.

The capital will go toward expanding globally and creating new kinds of experience-led trips. The team also plans to improve technology and community features to make trip planning simpler and more connected.

Investors from DSG Consumer Partners said the WanderOn team understands how consumers now prefer experiences over material things. The community approach has driven steady growth, and they are happy to back the next steps in global reach and product work.

From Client Associates Alternate Fund, they noted that WanderOn has built a standout platform focused on authentic travel and real connections. The strong growth and active community put it in a good spot to shape experiential travel in India.

Govind Gaur, CEO, said young people are choosing to spend on genuine experiences rather than flashy items. For many, travel has become a regular part of life. The announcement comes directly from the company on their blog.

WanderOn organizes group trips built around shared experiences and community. It serves young travelers who want authentic connections on their journeys. The company is based in Gurugram and runs trips to over 40 domestic and international destinations.

San Francisco-based Higgsfield announced an $80 million Series A extension, bringing its total Series A funding to over $130 million. The round included participation from Accel, AI Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, and other investors, valuing the company above $1.3 billion.

The funding follows rapid growth for Higgsfield. Since launching in April 2025, the platform has gained over 15 million users and now generates 4.5 million videos per day. Its content has reached more than 3 billion social media impressions, making it one of the top GenAI platforms for reach.

Most of Higgsfield’s usage comes from social media marketers, with 80% of that segment producing commercial content. The platform is increasingly used as a full production tool, letting teams handle ideation, storyboarding, animation, editing, and publishing all in one system. Some customers are already spending over $200,000 annually on the platform.

CEO Alex Mashrabov said traditional video production can’t keep up with modern marketing needs. He explained that Higgsfield lets creators iterate quickly, giving smaller teams or individuals a chance to outperform large studios online.

Board member Jeff Herbst noted the platform is moving from pilot projects to daily production use across enterprises, signaling real adoption. Antoine Blondeau of Alpha Intelligence Capital said the company has turned speed into a major advantage, letting teams build, ship, and iterate in days instead of weeks.

Higgsfield plans to use the new funding to expand internationally, grow its enterprise offerings, enhance AI models for commercial video, and continue R&D. The company is also improving its API and marketing automation tools for high-volume video production workflows.

Source: Higgsfield ai

San Francisco-based Transition Metal Solutions has raised $6 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Transition Ventures, with backing from SOSV, Dolby Family Ventures, Astor Management AG, Juniper VC, Climate Capital, and new investors including Possible Ventures, Understorey Ventures, New Climate Ventures, Essential Capital, and Kayak Ventures.

The startup develops chemical additives that enhance naturally occurring microbes in copper ores. Its platform studies the microbial communities already present in a mine and predicts which nutrients or chemicals will unlock higher copper yields. Early lab tests on low-grade sulfide ores improved copper recovery from 60% to 90%, while more complex ores showed metal leaching three times faster than conventional methods.

Founder and CEO Dr. Sasha Milshteyn said the company’s approach taps into what nature already provides, without the need for lab-grown microbes or extra infrastructure. COO Alexandra Shiluk added that the platform is designed to be cheap, fast, and easy for miners to adopt at scale.
The funding comes as global copper demand rises, driven by renewable energy, electric vehicles, and AI data centers. Copper is now on the U.S. Critical Minerals List, and richer deposits are nearly depleted. Transition Metal Solutions aims to help miners extract more copper from low-grade and challenging ores.

The company, founded in 2023 as Transition Biomining and rebranded to reflect its chemical-biological approach, is based at UC Berkeley’s Bakar Labs for Energy & Materials. Its leadership includes Dr. Suzan Yilmaz heading R&D, Vania Grandi leading go-to-market efforts, and Dr. Peter Kondos on the board.

Clara Ricard, partner at Transition Ventures, said the company offers a low-emission, scalable alternative to smelting that could reshape the industry. SOSV partner Pae Wu highlighted how the scientific insight behind the platform can translate directly to higher returns for miners without extra overhead.

The seed funding will support scaling from lab tests to industrial pilot trials, including 3-meter column experiments planned for the first half of 2026. Transition also plans to extend the platform to other critical metals, such as nickel, cobalt, gold, and zinc.