Weekly TOP Startup / VC news of November 20, 2025

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AI coding leader Cursor secured $2.3 billion in Series D funding. The valuation hit $29.3 billion, a dramatic threefold increase within months. Major investors like Nvidia, Google, and Coatue joined the round. This San Francisco-based firm dominates the booming AI developer tools market. It generates over $1 billion in annualized revenue. This capital injection fuels deep technical research, cutting-edge product innovation, and significant global enterprise expansion. Cursor's powerful agentic system transforms software development. It accelerates code generation, explanation, and modification. This pivotal investment underscores AI's profound and rapid impact on modern programming workflows, reshaping how engineers build.

Virometix, a pioneering Swiss biotech, completed a $15 million financing round. Existing investors demonstrated strong confidence. This vital capital propels V-212, their lead vaccine candidate. V-212 targets Streptococcus pneumoniae, offering a fully synthetic, serotype-independent solution. The vaccine is in Phase I clinical trials. Early 2026 will bring key safety and immunogenicity data. Funding also advances Virometix's innovative Synthetic Virus-Like Particle (SVLP) platform. This includes next-generation pneumococcal programs and broader synthetic vaccine development for infectious diseases and cancer. The investment validates a novel, highly scalable approach to modern vaccine creation.

London's FinTech giant Zilch secured over $175 million in debt and equity. This significant funding round, led by KKCG, propels Zilch's brand expansion, new product launches like Intelligent Commerce and Zilch Pay, and strategic mergers and acquisitions. The capital also boosts platform enhancement, strengthening Zilch's market position. It reflects strong investor belief in the firm's consumer payments model and its mission to disrupt high-cost credit. The move solidifies Zilch's status in the competitive UK and EMEA financial technology landscape, targeting accelerated growth and customer engagement. Zilch aims to deepen its market penetration.

d-Matrix secured $275M Series C funding, pushing its valuation to $2 billion. Total capital raised now stands at $450M since 2019. This substantial investment powers the firm's global expansion, accelerates its product roadmap, and enables massive deployments. d-Matrix provides cutting-edge generative AI inference compute solutions for data centers. Its platform integrates compute-memory, high-speed networking, and optimized software. It delivers 10x faster performance, 3x lower cost, and 5x greater energy efficiency than traditional GPU systems. The technology excels at handling Llama 70B models, achieving 30,000 tokens per second. This innovation addresses critical sustainability and economic challenges in the rapidly expanding AI inference market. Hyperscalers and enterprises gain significant benefits. The funding round drew a global consortium of investors, signaling strong confidence in d-Matrix’s vision for next-generation AI infrastructure.

WisdomAI, a San Francisco innovator, announced a $50 million Series A funding round. This brings total capital to $73 million. Kleiner Perkins led the investment. NVIDIA's NVentures also participated. WisdomAI develops a pioneering AI Data Analyst. This tool transforms enterprise business intelligence. It replaces outdated static dashboards. The AI Data Analyst offers autonomous, conversational, and proactive insights. It leverages an Enterprise Context Layer. This delivers accurate, real-time insights from all data types. Fortune 500 companies already benefit. Funds will boost engineering, accelerate product development, and scale market operations. WisdomAI is shaping the future of AI-driven decision-making.

Elon Musk's xAI faces controversy over a reported $15 billion funding round, which Musk denies. This unfolds as the broader tech market suffers its worst sell-off in over a month. Major indexes plummet. Investor concerns about high AI valuations escalate. Federal Reserve rate cut expectations shift dramatically. A lengthy government shutdown concluded, but economic data remains uncertain. Bitcoin also falls, though new crypto ETFs emerge. Musk's interconnected AI ventures, X, and Tesla navigate these turbulent financial waters, highlighting widespread market volatility and uncertainty.

Dresden-based FMC raises $107M to advance its innovative memory chip technology. The funding aims to reduce AI data center energy consumption and challenge global memory chip dominance. FMC's DRAM+ and 3D CACHE+ chips promise faster, more efficient AI.

Scripta Therapeutics, an Oxford-based techbio startup, has raised $12 million in seed funding. This capital propels its innovative biology-first platform. The system leverages AI, advanced imaging, and patient-derived models. It precisely targets aberrant transcriptional networks. The core mission is to reprogram biology, developing transformative disease-modifying therapies. Initial focus areas include Alzheimer's disease and other challenging neurodegenerative conditions. Oxford Science Enterprises and Apollo Health Ventures co-led the substantial investment round. Biotech veteran Ray Barlow has also joined Scripta's board as a Non-Executive Director. This significant funding advances a novel strategy. It seeks to halt or even reverse disease progression, moving beyond current palliative approaches. Scripta aims to redefine drug discovery for complex, often intractable conditions.

Berlin-based Peec AI secured $21M in Series A funding. The company helps brands gain visibility in AI search results. The funding will fuel expansion and product development. Peec AI's platform analyzes brand presence across AI platforms. It targets the growing need for AI-driven marketing tools.

Flatpay, a Danish fintech firm, hits unicorn status. It secured $170M. The valuation now stands at $1.7 billion. The company offers POS solutions for SMBs. It plans further European expansion.

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