E235: Kalshi fields $10B+ valuation offers post-$5B raise; Crusoe $1.38B raise at $10B+ valuation fuels AI infra expansion; Redwood Materials $350M Series E at $6B valuation boosts battery recycling; OpenEvidence $200M Series C at $6B valuation drives med
E235: Kalshi fields $10B+ valuation offers post-$5B raise; Crusoe $1.38B raise at $10B+ valuation fuels AI infra expansion; Redwood Materials $350M Series E at $6B valuation boosts battery recycling; OpenEvidence $200M Series C at $6B valuation drives med
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Note: AI-generated summary based on third-party content. Not financial advice. Read more.
Quick Insights

Consider premier AI leaders OpenAI and Anthropic, which are demonstrating dominant market positions with massive revenue growth and secondary market valuations of $570.5B and $214.6B respectively. Crusoe offers a "picks and shovels" opportunity on the AI boom, providing essential energy-efficient data centers with strategic backing from NVIDIA and Supermicro. In defense technology, Anduril Industries is a compelling investment, with its secondary market valuation surging 90% to $58.1B after securing major government contracts. For a more direct valuation signal, Cohere is conducting a tender offer at a $7 billion valuation, representing a 20% premium to its current secondary price. Finally, Redwood Materials sits at the intersection of the EV and AI megatrends, with its battery recycling and energy storage solutions now strategically backed by NVIDIA.

Detailed Analysis

Kalshi

  • Kalshi is a prediction market platform where users can trade on the outcome of real-world events. It has gained significant traction since successfully suing the U.S. regulator (CFTC) to enable its operations.
  • The company recently raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation from top-tier venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Coinbase Ventures.
  • Following this raise, Kalshi is reportedly fielding new investment offers that would value the company at $10 billion to $12 billion, potentially doubling its valuation in a very short period.
  • Key Metrics:
    • Annualized trading volume: $50 billion (up from $300 million last year)
    • Weekly Active Wallets: 200,000
    • Monthly Contracts Traded: 2 million
  • The surge in interest is partly driven by the high valuation of its rival, PolyMarket, which was valued at $10 billion after an investment from the owner of the New York Stock Exchange.

Takeaways

  • Kalshi is a leader in the rapidly growing and newly regulated U.S. market for event-based trading. The potential for its valuation to double so quickly after a major funding round indicates extremely high investor demand and momentum.
  • An investment in Kalshi is a bet on the "financialization of everything," where users can trade on a wide range of outcomes from economic data to political elections.
  • The backing by elite VCs provides strong validation of its business model and market position.

Crusoe

  • Crusoe is an AI data center operator focused on building energy-efficient computing infrastructure. It is partnering with OpenAI and Oracle on a massive data center complex.
  • It just raised $1.38 billion in a funding round that values the company at over $10 billion.
  • The investor list is a who's-who of technology and finance, including strategic investments from AI giants NVIDIA and Supermicro Computer, as well as Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, and Salesforce Ventures.
  • The company's technology helps solve the massive energy consumption problem in the AI industry. Its proprietary liquid-cooled racks are 30% more efficient than traditional air-cooled systems.
  • The new capital will be used to expand its Texas facility, which is designed to deliver gigawatt-scale capacity optimized for AI workloads.

Takeaways

  • Crusoe is a "picks and shovels" play on the AI boom, providing the essential infrastructure needed to power AI models.
  • The strategic investments from NVIDIA and Supermicro are a massive vote of confidence, suggesting Crusoe's technology is critical to the AI hardware ecosystem.
  • By focusing on energy efficiency, Crusoe addresses a major bottleneck and cost center for the entire AI industry, giving it a significant competitive advantage in a $200 billion market that's growing at 35% per year.

Redwood Materials

  • Founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, Redwood Materials is a leader in battery recycling and cathode production.
  • The company raised $350 million in a Series E round at a $6 billion valuation. The round included a strategic investment from NVIDIA's venture arm.
  • Redwood dominates the North American market, recovering over 70% of used battery packs and processing scrap from major battery and auto manufacturers like Panasonic, GM, and Toyota. It achieves an impressive 95% material recovery rate.
  • The company has expanded into the energy storage business, targeting AI data centers and industrial sites with grid-scale batteries, linking the EV and AI megatrends.

Takeaways

  • Redwood is a critical player in building a sustainable, domestic U.S. supply chain for batteries, reducing reliance on foreign materials.
  • The strategic investment from NVIDIA is highly significant. It signals that the power-hungry AI industry sees Redwood's energy storage solutions as a key enabling technology for data centers.
  • This company sits at the intersection of two major secular growth trends: electric vehicles and artificial intelligence.

OpenEvidence

  • Dubbed the "ChatGPT for Doctors," OpenEvidence is an AI medical assistant that provides verified answers for patient treatment.
  • It raised $200 million in a Series C round at a $6 billion valuation, led by Google Ventures. This comes just three months after a raise at a $3.5 billion valuation, showing explosive growth.
  • The platform is experiencing massive adoption among medical professionals, with usage nearly doubling from 8.5 million to 15 million clinical consultations per month in just a few months.
  • Its key differentiator is trust and accuracy; the AI cites over 10,000 peer-reviewed sources and demonstrated 98% factual accuracy in trials. It is also HIPAA compliant.

Takeaways

  • OpenEvidence is tackling the enormous $100 trillion healthcare market with a tool that solves a real-world problem: providing fast, reliable, and verifiable medical information to clinicians.
  • The incredibly rapid increase in its valuation highlights intense investor excitement and the company's strong execution and adoption rates.
  • An investment here is a bet on AI's ability to transform the healthcare industry by improving the speed and quality of clinical decisions.

Cohere

  • Cohere is an AI company that specializes in building large language models (LLMs) for enterprise customers, competing with OpenAI and Anthropic.
  • The company is conducting a tender offer that will allow employees to sell shares at a $7 billion valuation. This is a 20% premium to its current $5.5 billion secondary market valuation.
  • It has strong financial traction, having reached $150 million in annualized revenue, and counts NVIDIA as an investor.
  • Cohere focuses on providing secure, customizable AI models for industries like finance and healthcare, which have specific privacy and performance needs.

Takeaways

  • Cohere's focus on the enterprise market provides a potentially more stable and lucrative path than consumer-facing AI apps.
  • The tender offer at a premium valuation is a bullish signal, suggesting strong insider confidence and providing a way to retain top talent.
  • This is an opportunity to invest in a major AI player that is tailored for business use cases, a segment of the market that is growing rapidly.

Synthesia

  • Synthesia is a London-based startup that uses AI to generate realistic video content with avatars, which helps businesses create training and marketing videos at a much lower cost.
  • The company is in talks for a new funding round at a $4 billion valuation, which would double its valuation from its last raise.
  • It previously held acquisition talks with Adobe for $3 billion, indicating strong interest from major industry players.
  • The company is growing extremely fast, with $50 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), up 300% year-over-year, and serves over 50,000 customers, including 85% of the Fortune 100.

Takeaways

  • Synthesia is a leader in the $50 billion generative media market. Its high growth rate and the previous acquisition interest from Adobe underscore its strong competitive position.
  • The company's focus on ethical AI and enterprise-grade compliance (SOC 2 Type 2) gives it an edge in winning large corporate clients.
  • An investment in Synthesia is a bet on AI's disruption of video production, making content creation faster, cheaper, and more scalable for businesses.

Suno

  • Suno is an AI music generation platform that has seen explosive user growth, attracting 10 million monthly active users since its launch.
  • The company is in talks to raise over $100 million at a valuation exceeding $2 billion. This would be a 4x increase from its $500 million valuation just five months prior.
  • It is already generating $20 million in annualized recurring revenue from its premium subscription and is in licensing negotiations with major music labels like Sony and Universal.
  • Suno has a distribution partnership with Spotify, giving it access to 600 million potential listeners.

Takeaways

  • Suno is at the forefront of the generative AI wave in the creative industries. Its rapid user growth and valuation jump indicate it has a leading product in a new and exciting category.
  • Securing licensing deals with major music labels would be a game-changer, providing legitimacy and a massive dataset for training its AI models.
  • This is a high-risk, high-reward investment. Success depends on navigating complex copyright issues and continuing its viral growth, but the potential to disrupt the music industry is enormous.

Anduril Industries

  • Anduril is a defense technology company using AI and modern software to build advanced military systems.
  • The company's secondary market valuation is $58.1 billion, a staggering 90% increase from its primary funding round in February 2025.
  • Anduril has been winning major government contracts, including taking over Microsoft's $22 billion IVAS headset program for the U.S. Army.
  • It recently acquired an infrared solutions company to enhance its threat-detection capabilities within its core Lattice OS software platform.

Takeaways

  • Anduril is successfully disrupting the slow-moving, traditional defense industry with a Silicon Valley approach to technology.
  • The massive jump in its secondary market valuation reflects its success in winning large, multi-billion dollar government programs and proving out its technology.
  • This is an investment in the modernization of Western military capabilities, driven by AI and autonomous systems.

Revolut

  • Revolut is a global fintech and online bank with 65 million customers.
  • The company is demonstrating strong financial health, reporting $4 billion in revenue for 2024 (a 72% increase) and $1 billion in net profit.
  • It continues its aggressive global expansion, having just secured a full banking license in Mexico and recently entering India.
  • Its secondary market valuation is $70.4 billion, which is down 6.1% from a previous funding round.

Takeaways

  • Unlike many fintechs, Revolut is already highly profitable while still growing revenue at a rapid pace. This is a very strong sign of a mature and well-run business.
  • The continued global expansion into large markets like Mexico and India provides a clear path for future growth.
  • The slight dip in its secondary market valuation could present a more attractive entry point for investors, though it may also reflect broader market concerns about the fintech sector or regulatory hurdles in key markets like the UK.

X / XAI

  • X, the social media platform, is attempting to create new revenue streams by launching a marketplace for inactive usernames. This is an effort to offset declining core business revenue, which was down 10% year-over-year.
  • The real story is XAI, the parent AI company. Its secondary market valuation is $147.3 billion, up 30.4% since its March 2025 funding round.
  • The social media platform X is being used as a data source and distribution channel for XAI's ambitions.

Takeaways

  • An investment in this entity is not a bet on the turnaround of the social media platform X, which faces business challenges.
  • The investment thesis is a direct bet on Elon Musk's XAI and its ability to compete in the AI race against giants like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.
  • The rising valuation of XAI shows that investors are pricing in the potential of its future AI developments, not the current performance of the social media app.

Anthropic

  • Anthropic is a top-tier AI research company and a primary competitor to OpenAI, known for its AI assistant, Claude.
  • The company has secured massive strategic partnerships with Google and Amazon, who are collectively investing billions and providing critical access to computing power.
  • It recently signed a multi-year, "tens of billions of dollars" deal to extend its partnership with Google Cloud, giving it access to up to 1 million of Google's advanced AI chips.
  • Anthropic is showing strong business momentum, with its Claude Code product hitting $500 million in annualized revenue within two months of launch.
  • Its secondary market valuation is $214.6 billion, up 17.3% since its last funding round in August 2025.

Takeaways

  • Anthropic is firmly established as one of the few companies with the resources to compete at the highest level of AI development.
  • The backing of Google and Amazon not only provides capital and computing power but also a massive distribution channel through their cloud platforms.
  • The rapid revenue growth of its products demonstrates strong demand for alternatives to OpenAI, particularly from enterprises. This is a premier asset in the AI space.

OpenAI

  • OpenAI remains the dominant leader in the AI industry, known for ChatGPT and its foundational models.
  • The company continues to scale aggressively, announcing a $15 billion AI data center campus in partnership with Oracle. Its total infrastructure spending could reach $350-$500 billion.
  • It is generating a massive $12 billion in annualized revenue with 800 million weekly users.
  • Its secondary market valuation is $570.5 billion, up 14.1% since its August 2025 funding round, reflecting its continued leadership.
  • OpenAI is also making strategic acquisitions, buying the team behind an unreleased AI desktop interface, signaling a move towards more integrated, OS-level AI assistants.

Takeaways

  • OpenAI is the blue-chip leader in the AI revolution. Its valuation, revenue, and user metrics are in a class of their own.
  • The company's focus is on securing a long-term competitive advantage through massive infrastructure build-outs and acquiring key talent to define the next generation of AI applications.
  • An investment in OpenAI is a direct investment in the company that is currently leading and defining the future of artificial intelligence.
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Episode Description
Send us a text 00:00 - Intro 00:07 - Kalshi Fields $10B+ Valuation Offers Post-$5B Raise 01:12 - Crusoe $1.38B Raise at $10B+ Valuation Fuels AI Infra Expansion 02:31 - Redwood Materials $350M Series E at $6B Valuation Boosts Battery Recycling 04:04 - OpenEvidence $200M Series C at $6B Valuation Drives Medical AI Adoption 05:35 - Cohere $7B Tender Offer Amid $150M ARR Enterprise LLM Growth 06:40 - Synthesia $4B GV-Led Round Talks Post-Adobe $3B Acquisition Bid 08:05 - Suno $100M+ Raise at $2B+ Valuation in AI Music Surge 09:04 - Anduril Acquires AIRS to Bolster Multi-Domain Infrared Sensing 10:13 - Revolut Mexico Banking Launch Amid $4B Revenue Expansion 11:18 - X Launches Inactive Handle Marketplace for Premium Monetization 12:10 - Anthropic Tens of Billions Google TPU Deal Expands Compute Footprint 13:08 - OpenAI $15B Wisconsin Data Center Partnership with Oracle 14:17 - OpenAI Acquires Sky AI Mac Interface Team in Consumer Push
About This Week in Pre-IPO Stocks
This Week in Pre-IPO Stocks

This Week in Pre-IPO Stocks

By AG Dillon & Co

This Week in Pre-IPO Stocks reports on pre-IPO stock research, trends, trading, and venture capital funds. Visit www.agdillon.com for more.