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SpaceX sets IPO share price: Bloomberg reports that the rocket, satellite, and also by the way AI concern is looking to raise around $75 billion in its initial public offering. (They’re looking to sell 555.6 million shares at $135 apiece, though of course these details can still change.) Outside of the sheer scale of the offering, some other aspects of SpaceX’s IPO are getting a lot of media attention. Several major index providers — including Nasdaq and FTSE Russell — have altered long-standing regulations, allowing SpaceX to enter several primary indexes after just five trading days, far sooner than has been the standard following similar IPOs. (Tesla, for example, was public for 10 years before joining the S&P 500.) That means a number of 401(k)s, pension funds, and retirement accounts that mirror and track benchmarks like the Nasdaq-100 are likely on the verge of buying a whole lot of SpaceX shares.
Collate nears unicorn status: The startup — which emerged from stealth just a year and a half ago — develops AI tools that simplifies administrative tasks for the life sciences. (Companies in this space include Big Pharma, medical device manufacturers, and biotech firms.) Their brand of high-level experimental work brings with it a mountain of clinical trials and regulatory filings, documents that can run tens of thousands of pages in length. Collate estimates that they can save 50-90% of the time currently dedicated to these tasks, while (mostly) avoiding the errors and hallucinations that might make life science professionals dubious of an AI helper. The company raised $95 million at a valuation edging up toward $1 billion, in a new round led by Redpoint Ventures.
Town reimagines AI assistants as connected pals: The company creates personalized AI assistants with names, avatars, and personalities, that are mandatorily connected to your email and calendar at sign-up. Co-founders Jean-Denis Gréze and Tony Vincent’s thesis is: your AI agent needs access to your everyday life and preferences before it can become truly useful. Anyone interacting with AI purely via chatbots is missing out on the core experience. “Townies” on the other hand quickly build a complete picture of their human counterpart, proactively observe patterns, learn tasks, and then begin suggesting additional ways that they can help. The startup recently closed a $55 million Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

TWiST 500

AlphaSense is a market research platform that uses AI to process and analyze a vast array of financial documents, corporate filings, news articles, and other key indicators, based on natural language prompts. Essentially a smart search engine for business and financial intelligence. If you’re an investment banker, asset manager, consultant, or working at a private equity or VC firm, this is the kind of tool that can theoretically save you and your team not just hours but days (before perhaps eventually coming for your job).

The TWiST 500 member raised $350 million this week from investors including PE firm Vitruvian Partners, consulting interest Accenture, and major players in the banking world like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Accenture is also partnering with AlphaSense more broadly, and will make the tool available to corporate clients.

The enthusiasm here is understandable. According to Alpha CEO Jack Kokko, the company hit $500 million in annual recurring revenue last fall, and has reached $600 million ARR already this year. He tells WSJ that there are no specific IPO plans at this time, but leaves open the possibility, perhaps sooner than later.

In other T500 fundraising news, AI music generator Suno grabbed an additional $400 million at a $5.4 billion valuation. They’re going to use the funds to continue expanding their team and product line-up. (The company now counts around 200 employees but expects to see that jump by around 70% by the end of 2026.)

Suno’s user base keeps expanding at a healthy pace; they’ve surpassed 2 million subscribers in 2026, and are reportedly on pace to hit $300 million in annual sales this year.

But not ALL the signals are so healthy. While it’s clear a lot of people enjoy using tools like Suno to MAKE music, what remains to be seen is whether or not there’s a real marketplace or audience for the outputs. A number of high-profile recent studies suggest that, while AI-generated songs are flooding platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud — and most people have difficulty telling the difference between AI and human-generated tunes — they’re not being greeted enthusiastically when accurately labeled. Will interest in making AI music sink if creators become convinced that audiences still prefer the real thing? Or are these just growing pains for the burgeoning AI music industry? The answer depends on who you ask. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2295: On a two-part TWiST, Alex chats with Cortical Labs founder Dr. Hon Weng Chong about how they’re using human neurons alongside silicon hardware to create “Synthetic Biological Intelligence.” Find out why neurons are more efficient than GPUs at reinforcement learning, and delve into some of the technological and ethical implications of this groundbreaking work. THEN, we welcome Pyka co-founder/CEO Michael Norcia to explore the various uses for his startups’ autonomous aircraft, and why he’s developing the tech all the way down in Brazil.

E2294: It’s an all Ask Jason TWiST special, in which JCal responds to the best user queries submitted in our new X super-fan group chats. (Want to join? Follow us on X and let us know why you belong in there in the DMs.) Discussions include how you should approach your seed round funnel, why investors are more open to hardware concepts than ever before, how to differentiate your startup when you’re competing with frontier labs, and the possibilities for “Founder Community College.” PLUS highlights from Lon’s extended trip to Italy and Greece!

E2293: The "Ryanair of drone delivery" just raised $50 million and plans to bring its technology from Europe to the United States. Manna founder Bobby Healy explains to TWiST how his Dublin-based company completed 300,000 deliveries while some rivals are still publishing blog posts, and why low-cost airline economics will decide who wins the autonomous skies. Sticking to the drone theme, TWiST welcomed Theseus co-founder Ian Laffey, who called in from Kyiv to tell us about his company’s drone guidance system. It runs off a simple camera and Google Maps. The technology could rewrite the modern, GPS-jammed battlefield, and bring more firepower to smaller nations fending off larger foes.

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