E216: Anthropic targets $100B valuation; Anthropic launches Claude 4 financial tools; Thinking Machines raises $2B at $12B valuation; OpenEvidence secures $210M at $3.5B valuation; Xtend adds $30M to reach $100M total funding; Cognition acquires Windsurf

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. AG Dillon is closing six pre-IPo stock funds in September of 2025. and real xai grok lambda labs together ai and a space economy company use these single stock funds to build bespoke pre-ipo stock portfolios you select the pre-ipo stock company exposures and weight allocations to each pre-ipo stock to express your unique investment thesis available for purchase at charles schwab fidelity and directly at ag dylan funds 2 500 minimum investment Financial advisors only. Email Aaron.Dillon at agdillon.com to invest. Again, that's A-A-R-O-N.D-I-L-L-O-N at agdillon.com to invest.

0:47All right. And now the pre-IPO stock update for July 18, 2025. Anthropic, an AI large language model company, is currently exploring a new funding round that could establish an evaluation exceeding$100 billion, representing a substantial uplift from its prior$61.5 billion post-money valuation achieved and an earlier$3.5 billion raise led by Lightspeed Venture Partners earlier this year. While formal fundraising efforts have not commenced, Anthropic has fielded unsolicited offers from venture investors at valuations north of$100 billion, implying a 25x multiple on its current ARR. The Claude chatbot launched in March of 2023 has driven significant revenue momentum with AR quadrupling from a billion at the start of 2025 to 4 billion by July 2025, including a recent monthly increase from 3 billion to 4 billion.

1:40Monthly revenues surpassed 115 million in early 2025, reaching a$3 billion run rate by May, underpinned by a 60 % gross margin, projected to expand at 70%, 300 % year-over-year growth, and anticipated full-year 2025 revenue of$2.2 billion. Anthropic commands a 3.91 % market share and generative aid of market. Key investors include Amazon, Alphabet, Menlo, Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures. Anthropic had a$77 billion secondary market valuation fired at the news. If this new round closes at$100 billion, that's going to be a 29.9 % increase versus the pre-news secondary pricing. Anthropic also unveiled its financial analysis solution and Claude for financial services, leveraging its latest Claude 4 models and Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4.

2:32These tools are designed to support financial professionals in critical functions, including investment decision-making, market analysis, research, due diligence, portfolio management, and financial modeling. The platform offers real-time data integration from more than 10 sources, including Box, PitchBook, Databricks, S &P Global, Snowfake, FactSet, and Morningstar, and is immediately accessible via AWS Marketplace and Google Cloud Marketplace integration forthcoming. Excuse me, Google Cloud Marketplace integration is forthcoming. This initiative targets accelerated adoption in the financial sector, where Anthropic already counts prominent clients such as Bridgewater Associates, AIG, and Norge's Bank Investment Management, while prioritizing data security by refraining from using client inputs and model training.

3:19Thinking Machines, an AI large language model company, secured a historic$2 billion seed round on July 15, 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by NVIDIA, Excel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street, yielding a$12 billion post-money valuation. The company was founded in February of 2025 by Miriam Marati, former OpenAI CTO. The round surpasses June 2025 estimates of the$10 billion valuation with an initial February target of$1 to$9 billion, marking the largest seed financing in Silicon Valley history. It's four times the prior record. As a five-month-old public benefit corporation with no current products, revenue, or disclosed details, the 30-person team comprises Mirati and co-founders John Shulman, Barrett Zoff, Lillian Wang, Andrew Tulak, and Luke Metz, augmented by talent from OpenAI, Meta, and Mistral AI.

4:19Variety retains majority board control via weighted voting, with founder shareholders' votes amplified 100-fold, emphasizing multimodal AI to advance collaborative general intelligence. The firm has secured a Google Cloud partnership and anticipates debuting its inaugural product by September of 2025, so not too far away, incorporating a substantial open-source element for researchers and startups while disseminating insights on frontier AI. Recent acquisition discussions with Meta yielded no proposal. Positioning Thinking Machines is a formidable challenger to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

4:58Open Evidence, an AI-driven medical assistant platform, closed a$210 million Series B in July of 2025 at a$3.5 billion valuation co-led by Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins with participation from Sequoia Capital. Sequoia was the lead on its February 2025$75 million Series A at a billion-dollar valuations. Code 2, Conviction, Thrive, Buyer Capital, and Mayo Clinic also participated. Founded in 2022 by Daniel Nader, which is the founder of Kinsho Technologies, which sold for$700 million in 2018, this elevates the total funding above$300 million, rendering Nadler a billionaire. The HIPAA-compliant tool offered gratis to verified U.S.

5:47clinicians via iOS and Android has penetrated over 40 % of U.S. positions, exceeding 440 ,000 users by June 2025. That's up from 250 ,000 in January. And spanning 10 ,000-plus hospital clinics with 65 ,000 monthly registrations and that's over 2 ,000 % year-over-year growth. It processes 8.5 million consultations monthly, and that's up from 358 ,000 in July of 2024 and is averaging 358 ,000 per workday, delivering evidence-based responses in 5 to 10 seconds via collaborations with the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA, and its 11 specialty journals. Against the backdrop of medical research doubling every five years and a projected U.S.

6:37physician deficit nearing$100 ,000 by 2030, Open Evidence introduced Deep Consult this month in a complementary AI agent for PhD caliber evidence thesis that parallel processes hundreds of peer-reviewed studies generating reports in hours rather than months. This aligns with AI-enabled digital health startups securing 62 % of the$162 billion in U.S. venture funding for the sector in the first half of 2025. Extend, a drone technology company, extended its Series B with a$30 million infusion in July, co-founded by Aliar Capital Partners and Protego Ventures alongside incumbent Caltech, Lynn Latavix, excuse me, investment vehicle, boosting the Series B to$70 million and total funding to$100 million since inception.

7:35following a$40 million initial Series B in 2024 and$20 million Series A in 2021. The firm, founded in 2018 by brothers Aviv and Mateo Chapria, employs 120 staff across its Tel Aviv headquarters and a newly inaugurated 8 ,000-square-foot manufacturing site in Tampa, Florida, opened in July. Its NDAA-compliant U.S.-manufactured drone portfolio encompasses the Xtender Scorpio 500, Scorpio 1000 and Honey Badger operating system, or excuse me, and is also powered by AI enabled XOS operating system for streamlined training and operations in defense strike reconnaissance, counter UAS and precision scenarios.

8:22Initial Tampa output prioritizes group one surveillance drones for the US Department of Defense, mitigating dependence on Chinese components that control 78 to 80 percent of the global UAV market. Extend's contract wins include a$8.8 million DOD award in December 2024 for strike drone R &D, a$20 million multi-year exclusive deal in January 2023 for multi-drone systems, and delivers the Israeli Defense Forces with over 100 ,000 missions since October of 23, U.S. military and Ukrainian forces, where drone proliferation supports Ukraine's goal of 4 million units in 2025. That's doubling 2024 production and enabling strikes up to 1 ,800 kilometers into Russian territory.

9:10Cognition, an AI code assistant for software developers, disclosed its acquisition of Windsurf's IP, AI-powered IDE brand, and over 200 employees for undisclosed some. Windsurf is also an AI code assistant. The transition ensures full financial participation for Windsurf staff with waived vesting cliffs and accelerated vesting. The deal follows Google's$2.4 billion reverse acquihire earlier in July of 2025 of Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and 10 to 20 researchers. Shortly after OpenAI's$3 billion, Windsurf bid collapsed, leaving a residual entity for Cognition to absorb and integrate with its Devon AI coding agent.

9:54Cognition was launched in November of 2023 by scott woo with 196 million aggregate funding including 21 million series a in march of 24 350 million um 175 million in april excuse me 2024 at 2 billion dollar valuation and hundreds of millions in march of 2025 at 4 billion dollar valuation led by 8vc windsurf originally codium which was founded in 2021 and rebranded in 2024, is reporting 82 million ARR in July of 2025. That's down from 100 million in April due to Anthropics' June clawed access restrictions, but up from 40 million in the prior year. With enterprise AR doubling quarter over quarter, 350 enterprise clients and hundreds of thousands of DAUs and 1.3 million paid users.

10:42The combination Enhances Cognition's position in the AI code tools market amid competition from Cursor, which is 500 million ARR, tripling to 300 million in four months to May 2025, and$9 billion valuation post$900 million raise. GitHub Copilot's got 45 % market share, 1.3 million paid users, and forecasts AI agents managing 20 % of coding in 2026. That's a great pickup by the Cognition team. Via Transportation, an Uber-like ride-sharing company submitted a confidential S1 draft to the SEC on July 16, 2025 for a prospective IPO. Its second such filing after an unexecuted 2021 attempt with share count and pricing TBD.

11:29VIA delivers on-demand transit solutions and dynamic routing to over 650 cities across 30 countries, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Miami, London, Arlington, Texas, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for example. with partnerships like Jersey City's program, averaging 14 ,000 weekly rides in 2023. Internal projections indicate$326 million in 2025 revenue, bolstered by six acquisitions, including acumen.io in July of 23. The company has 42 investors, including BlackRock, Janice Henderson, McCrory, Shell, Brookside, Equity Partners, and Common Fund and OG Ventures. polymarket a prediction market platform it's a betting platform uh resolve doj and cftc probes in early july 2025 with no action letters nine months after october 2024 fbi seizure of ceo shane copeland's uh device uh devices sand charges aligns with trump administration's rollback of biden-era crypto enforcement the company incurred a 1.4 million dollar cftc penalty in January 2022 for unregistered derivatives and U.S.

12:46exclusion commitments. Polymarket processed$3.6 billion in 2024 U.S. election wagers. 2025 sports bets hit$1 billion with 30 % year-over-year volume state growth via the mainstream uptake. XAI, the AI large language model company, clinched up to$200 million two-year contract from the DOD's chief digital and AI office for prototyping agentic AI, deploying large language models and customizing tools like a government-tailored Brockport chatbot for warfighting intelligence, security, business, and enterprise applications, potentially extending to agencies like the GSA. Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI received similar mandates from the DOD.

13:28XAI is also pursuing an infrastructure deal with the Saudi Arabia Data center uh humane the saudi data center has a multi-gigawatt bid it's pif backed with and one gigabyte of uh gigawatt of powers 900 000 homes just yearly just to kind of give you an idea and a 200 megawatt uh immediate facility the company has a 112 excuse me 121 billion secondary market valuation it's up 7.2 versus its march 2025 merger with x scale ai data labeling company for AI model training announced reduction of 200 full-time roles. That's 14 % of the staff and 500 contractors, chiefly in generative AI labeling, attributing the move to overhiring, induced inefficiencies, bureaucratic overhead, client losses.

14:19It's really Google, OpenAI and Google amid shifting demand. Meta invested$14.3 billion for a 49 % ownership at a$29 billion valuation in June of 25. That was up from$13.8 billion round that they did in April of 25 and hired Scales CEO and several top engineers. The firm plans a second half of 2025 hires in high margin enterprise and government vehicles. Scales reported$870 million in 2024 revenue. interim CEO Jason Drush stressed pivots to profitable domains like coding languages and audio to recapture clients and optimize operations. It will be interesting to see where revenue will go after this pivot.

15:04The secondary market valuation is$26.6 billion. And I wouldn't be surprised to see this valuation drop to below$10 billion in a few months' time as the special dividend related to Meta. The Meta deal gets paid out to investors. The customer base shuffle settles out and new product pivot is built and released. Okay. That's it for me this week. Thanks and see you all next week.