E227: Klarna's $15.1B IPO + Up in Public Markets (as of Thu, Sep 11); Cognition's $400M Raise at $10.2B Valuation; ElevenLabs' $100M Tender at Doubled $6.6B Valuation; Replit's $250M Funding at $3B Valuation; X Square Robot's $140M Raise, New Robot OS Rel

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. AG Dillon is closing six pre-IPo stock funds in September 26, 2025. andrel 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 to 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 aaron.dillon at agdillon.com to invest all right now the pre-ipo stock update for september 12 2025 clarna the consumer credit and online payments company ipo'd on wednesday september 10 2025 the ipo price was 40 per share that's a 15.1 billion dollar valuation existing shareholders Sold$1.2 billion worth of stock in the IPO and the company raised$222 million.

1:09That's$1.4 billion in total. We're writing this on Friday morning, which is the 12th pre-market. And Klarna is at 42.74 per share. That's 6.85 % versus the IPO price. That's$16.15 billion market cap. SoftBank invested in the Klarna in 2021 at a$45 billion valuation. Its last primary market funding round was in June of 2022, was at$6.7 billion valuation. So it's up from there, but down from the top point. Early investors in the company were Sequoia in 2010 and General Atlantic in 2011. Cognition, the AI software engineering startup behind Devon AI Agent, closed a$400 million funding round at a$10.2 billion valuation led by Founders Fund with participation from Lux Capital, 8VC, Bain Capital Ventures, Iliad Gill, and Definition Capital, and Swish Ventures, marking an entry into the$10 billion plus AI club alongside OpenAI and Anthropic.

2:16The round comes two months after acquiring AI coding startup Windsurf for an undisclosed amount in July of 2025 following Windsor's founders joining Google in a$2.4 billion licensing and compensation deal after a failed OpenAI acquisition talks. Post-acquisition Cognition's annual recurring revenue has more than doubled as the company invests in integrating Devon and Windsor products for enhanced customer benefits. Eleven Labs, the AI audio startup specializing in generating realistic sounding voices in any language is conducting a tender offer allowing employees with at least one year of tenure tender excuse me tenure to sell up to 100 million in stock at a 6.6 billion dollar valuation that's doubling its previous valuation replit the ai coding platform founded in 2016 by amjad massad uh ferris massad and haya uh odai I probably say that wrong.

3:14Apologies. Raised$250 million in a funding round at a$3 billion valuation, nearly tripling its$1.16 billion post-money valuation from$100 million raised in 2023. The round was led by Prism Capital with participation from Amex Ventures, Google's AI Futures Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Bloomberg Beta, Kraft, Co2, and Paul Graham. Total funding for the company is now at$478 million. The company's annualized revenue surged to$150 million from$2.8 million in less than a year. It's got 40 million users. Replit announced a July 2025 partnership with Microsoft Azure. Replit also launched Agent 3, which is a new version of its product that can test and fix code, decide when to check its work, and operate autonomously for more than three hours.

4:05XSquare Robot, the China-based robotic startup raised$140 million in a funding round co-led by Alibaba. Alibaba has committed$53 billion to AI infrastructure over the next three years amid China's push in AI and robotics. The company showcased its Quanta X2 robot at the 2025 World Robot Conference in Beijing, demonstrating advancements in robotic applications. X-Square Robot really focuses more on robotics AI models versus hardware. The company also unveiled the Wall OSS open source foundation model this week as well. Mistral AI, the AI large language model company behind the Le Chat chatbot in France, finalized a$1.5 billion investment from ASML at a$11.7 billion valuation, building on its prior$1.1 billion raise from Injury St.

4:56Horowitz and General Catalyst at a $6.2 billion valuation in June of 2024 last year. Mistral is at the center of the sovereign AI trend where nations and regions aim to develop their own AI capabilities to reduce dependency on U.S. technology. Perplexity, the AI search business finalized a$200 million funding round at a$20 billion valuation up from$18 billion just two months prior and a$14 billion a year earlier in 2025. That's a lot of growth in a short period of time. The company's annual recurring revenues approaching$200 million, up from over$150 million last month. Databricks, the AI data management and analytics company, finalized its$1 billion raise for its latest financing round and$100 billion valuation with investors, including Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, and UAE-backed MGX.

5:46The company also announced an annual revenue run rate exceeding$4 billion as of July of 2025. That's a 50 % year-over-year increase with approximately 650 customers spending a million dollars annually on its products and services. $4 billion in revenue at a$100 billion valuation is a 25x revenue multiple. Ramp, the corporate expense management and financial software provider, achieved a$1 billion in annualized revenue as of September 2025, up from$700 million in March. That's a 42.9 % increase in just six months. The company remains cash flow positive. Ramp raised$500 million at a$22.5 billion valuation in July of 2025.

6:27That was up from$16 billion 45 days earlier. That's a quick turnaround on the rounds. That was led by Iconic and Founders Fund and D1 Capital. Total funding is now$1.9 billion. RAMP is advancing AI agent-led autonomous finance, launching its first AI agent and planning many more, predicting it will become the norm by 2028. spacex and space payload delivery and satellite internet company agreed to acquire wireless spectrum licenses aws4 and hblock from ecostar for approximately 17 billion 8.5 billion in cash and 8.5 billion in spacex stock plus coverage of about 2 billion in ecostar debt interest payments through november of 2027 the move enables expansion of starlink's direct-to-sell 5g services and boosting cell network capacity over 100 times via upgraded laser-connected satellites.

7:23Since 2020, SpaceX has launched more than 8 ,000 Starlink satellites, including roughly 600 cell towers in space since January of 2024. The deal follows FCC approval of the supplemental coverage from space framework in 2024 and resolve prior spectrum disputes. 2024 U.S. mobile data surge data usage hit 132 trillion megabytes. It's up 35 % year over year. SpaceX has a$413.6 billion secondary market valuation. That's up 3.4 % versus its July 2025 tender round. Andrew, the AI defense technology company, secured a$1.1 billion five-year contract with Australia for its Ghost Shark Extra Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle.

8:12XLUUV, that's a program, covering delivery, maintenance, and development for long-range stealthy surveillance and strike operations. The first prototype was delivered in April of 2024, 12 months ahead of schedule. Andrew also announced that it was awarded a$159 million contract by the U.S. Army for initial prototyping period to develop a night vision and mixed reality system as part of the Soldier Born Mission Command. This is formerly the IVAS NEXT program. This award represents the largest effort of its kind to equip every soldier with superhuman perception and decision-making capabilities, fusing the best of night vision, augmented reality, and AI into a single system.

8:56Andrel has a$51.9 billion secondary market valuation. That's up 70.3 % versus their February 2025 round. alter ego a wearable device company introduced silent sense the world's first near telepathic wearable that detects brain scent muscular excuse me neuromuscular signals to the speech system for silent communication at the speed of thought without reading raw thoughts enabling applications like keyboard free typing hands-free app interaction silent web searching real-time language translation, that's like English to Mandarin, and environmental queries via cameras and restoring speech for impaired individuals through collaboration with patients and clinicians.

9:42The company showcased the product on X this week, demoing silent texting and translation that requires mouth movements like silent whispering, achieving full spectrum speech detection from mouthing to motionless intent, positioning as a frictionless interface over keyboards and voice in public settings. OpenAI, the AI large language model company, signed a$300 billion cloud computing contract with Oracle over approximately five years, starting in 2027. One of the largest ever for AI data center compute. The deal is expected to drive most of Oracle's new revenue growth. These AI data centers support OpenAI's expansion beyond its$12 billion annualized revenue from 800 million weekly active ChatGPT users as of July 2025.

10:29five open ai has a 507.3 billion dollar secondary market valuation it's up 1.5 versus its august 2025 tender open ai and microsoft announced a non-binding agreement granting microsoft's blessing for open ai to transition its for-profit arm to a public benefit corporation a structure pending california and delaware regulatory approval the deal will allow open ai to more easily raise capital and opens the door for a potential public listing. The OpenAI nonprofit will retain a stake worth over$100 billion. Thinking Machines Lab, an AI large language model company founded by former CTO Mira Murati with ex-OpenAI researchers unveiled that its first product for researchers and startups is coming soon.

11:19The company launched Connectionism. It's a new research series on its blog and code to foster open collaboration, contrasting open AI shift to close practices. The company focuses on reproducible AI models via reinforcement learning for business customization and defeating non-determinism in large language model inference caused by GPU kernel orchestration. Thinking Machines has raised$2 billion in seed funding at a$12 billion valuation in July of 2025. Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks, and see you guys next week.