AI startups raised more than $2 billion across three major funding announcements between February 2 and February 4, underscoring relentless investor appetite for artificial intelligence infrastructure, autonomous systems, and multimodal AI platforms. The capital surge reflects continued concentration of venture funding into AI companies despite broader market volatility affecting traditional software stocks, with voice AI, autonomous vehicles, and construction robotics emerging as particularly attractive investment categories.
ElevenLabs closed a $500 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital at an $11 billion valuation on February 4, Waabi secured a landmark $750 million Series C on February 2 to power Uber's robotaxi future, and Bedrock Robotics raised $270 million in Series B funding to deploy autonomous construction equipment. The combined $1.52 billion across these three deals alone demonstrates the AI sector's ability to attract capital at unprecedented scale even as concerns mount about deployment timelines and return on investment.
ElevenLabs Triples Valuation in 13 Months
London-based voice AI startup ElevenLabs announced its $500 million Series D on Wednesday, valuing the company at $11 billion—more than triple the $3.3 billion valuation it achieved just 13 months earlier during a $180 million Series C in January 2025. Sequoia Capital led the round, with Sequoia partner Andrew Reed joining the company's board of directors.
Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ—which led the Series C—significantly increased their stakes, with a16z quadrupling its investment amount and ICONIQ tripling its position. New investors included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, and Bond, with the company indicating it would disclose additional strategic investors later in February.
Co-founder Mati Staniszewski revealed that Nvidia had invested in the company in September, joining a roster of strategic backers including Deutsche Telekom, LG Technology Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and RingCentral Ventures. ElevenLabs closed 2025 with over $330 million in annual recurring revenue, with Staniszewski telling Bloomberg it took just five months to grow from $200 million to $300 million in ARR.
The rapid revenue growth reflects enterprise adoption by major corporations. Tech giants Meta and Salesforce use ElevenLabs' voice infrastructure to develop products and experiences, while enterprise customers include Deutsche Telekom and fintech unicorn Revolut. The company now operates offices across Europe, Brazil, Mexico, India, South Korea, Japan, and the United States, with locally embedded go-to-market teams supporting global enterprise adoption.
Expanding Beyond Voice Into Multimodal AI Agents
ElevenLabs plans to deploy the $500 million to expand beyond its core voice synthesis technology into multimodal AI agents capable of conversing, typing, and taking action. The company indicated plans to incorporate video capabilities, having announced a partnership with LTX in January to produce audio-to-video content.
"This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether," Staniszewski stated. "We plan to expand our Creative offering—helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents—enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action."
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski—an ex-Google machine learning engineer—ElevenLabs initially developed AI text-to-speech models before expanding into speech-to-text, sound effects, dubbing, music, and conversational AI. The company now offers ElevenAgents for enterprise voice and chat deployment and ElevenCreative for content creators, supported by research across the full audio stack.
Staniszewski indicated the company is building toward an initial public offering, stating: "When we started ElevenLabs, we couldn't have imagined the scale and impact we've reached today. Yet we stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is, as we build toward IPO and beyond."
Waabi Secures Largest Canadian Tech Fundraise Ever
Toronto-based autonomous vehicle startup Waabi closed an oversubscribed $750 million Series C on February 2, marking the largest technology fundraising in Canadian history. Khosla Ventures and G2 Venture Partners co-led the round, which included strategic participation from Uber alongside a milestone-based future investment to support exclusive deployment of Waabi-powered robotaxis on Uber's platform.
The partnership targets deployment of more than 25,000 Waabi-powered robotaxis on Uber's platform over time, representing Waabi's first expansion beyond autonomous trucking. The company's "Physical AI Platform" uses a unified AI model that can generalize across different vehicle types, geographies, and environments, enabling the same AI "brain" to power both autonomous trucks and robotaxis.
Strategic investors joining the round included NVentures (Nvidia's venture capital arm), Volvo Group Venture Capital, and Porsche Automobil Holding SE. Financial investors included funds managed by BlackRock, Radical Ventures, HarbourVest Partners, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Linse Capital, and Incharge Capital. Canadian investors participating included BDC Capital's Thrive Venture Fund, Export Development Canada, TELUS Global Ventures, and BMO Global Asset Management.
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, stated: "We invest in the companies that are leading the AI era. Waabi has developed a truly groundbreaking Physical AI platform that represents a fundamental leap forward in how next generation driverless technology is being developed."
Founded in 2021, Waabi combines a verifiable end-to-end AI model capable of reasoning alongside what it describes as the world's most advanced neural simulator. This simulation-first approach aims to overcome the scaling challenges facing autonomous vehicles by combining simulation and real-world learning to accelerate deployment timelines.
Bedrock Brings Autonomy to Construction Sites
Bedrock Robotics closed a $270 million Series B on February 4 to deploy autonomous construction equipment, addressing severe labor shortages in the heavy construction industry. CapitalG (Google's growth fund) and the Valor Atreides AI Fund co-led the round, with participation from NVentures, Eclipse, 8VC, Emergence Capital, Xora, Tishman Speyer, and others. The raise brings Bedrock's total funding to over $350 million.
The company builds retrofit kits that convert heavy construction machinery like excavators into autonomous, coordinated fleets. Multiple machines can operate as connected systems to boost efficiency and safety, with Bedrock targeting fully operatorless excavator operations in 2026 as it expands beyond single-machine deployments to complete autonomous fleet coordination.
The construction industry faces persistent labor shortages and safety challenges that make autonomous systems particularly attractive. Bedrock's approach—retrofitting existing equipment rather than requiring completely new machinery—lowers adoption barriers for contractors while addressing immediate operational needs.
The Broader AI Funding Landscape
The three deals represent only a fraction of February's AI funding activity. Additional notable rounds included Cerebras Systems' $1 billion raise at a $23 billion valuation, Lunar Energy's $232 million across Series C and D rounds, and Positron's $230 million Series B to ramp production of AI inference chips.
January 2026 saw global venture funding reach $55 billion according to Crunchbase data, with AI accounting for more than 40 percent of all venture capital deployed. The funding concentration reflects investor conviction that AI infrastructure, autonomous systems, and multimodal platforms represent fundamental shifts in technology architecture rather than cyclical trends.
The capital deployment continues despite mounting questions about AI return on investment timelines. While software stocks have plunged on fears of AI disruption and Big Tech companies face scrutiny over massive infrastructure spending, investors continue backing AI-native companies at valuations that assume sustained exponential growth in enterprise adoption and revenue generation.
For now, the message from venture capital markets remains clear: AI companies with proven technology, strong revenue growth, and paths toward market leadership can raise capital at scale regardless of broader market turbulence.
