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Good morning VC enthusiasts. It’s Data Thursday again. Today we’re looking at a $500M ElevenLabs round, SpaceX acquiring xAI, Waymo’s $16B raise, and Inside/VC becoming an official media partner of the DDVC Summit 2026. Let’s jump in!
In today’s Data Thursday edition:
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BREAKING
The Inside: ElevenLabs just raised $500M at an $11B valuation after closing 2025 with $330M+ in ARR, putting it in a very small group of AI companies with nine-figure recurring revenue and broad enterprise penetration.
What the data shows:
ElevenLabs closed 2025 with $330M+ ARR, largely driven by enterprise usage of ElevenAgents.
The round is led by Sequoia Capital. Andreessen Horowitz quadrupled down and ICONIQ Capital tripled down.
New investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, BOND, and Evantic Capital.
Product updates include faster response times, improved turn taking, and a more expressive conversational model built on Eleven v3.
Why it matters: ElevenLabs is valued at roughly 33x ARR, which only makes sense in the context of its speed: $0 → $330M ARR in ~4.5 years. That puts it in the same growth conversation as companies like Lovable that reached nine figure run rates in record time. Investors are not paying for “voice AI”. They are paying for a company that is compounding revenue faster than almost anything else in software right now.
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ELON AGAIN
Image Source: Samuel Boivin
The Inside: SpaceX has officially acquired xAI, valuing the combined company at $1.25T and creating the most valuable private company in the world. The long term plan: data centers in space.
The details:
Elon Musk says the strategic rationale is building space based data centers to power future AI workloads.
xAI is currently burning around $1B per month.
SpaceX generates up to 80% of revenue from Starlink, according to Reuters.xAI previously acquired X and claimed a $113B combined valuation for the two companies.
Musk says building orbital data centers would require a constant stream of satellites, creating a long term internal revenue loop for SpaceX launches.
Why it matters: This is vertical integration on steroids. Instead of buying compute, Musk is trying to own the entire stack: energy source, launch vehicle, satellites, networking layer, and AI model. If it works, SpaceX becomes critical infrastructure for next generation compute. If it doesn’t, xAI is still burning $12B per year with very little margin for error.
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SHORTS
UpScrolled says it has grown past 2.5 million users globally after gaining prominence following TikTok’s U.S. ownership change in January, according to founder Issam Hijazi speaking at Web Summit Qatar.
The company launched roughly six months ago, positions itself as a mix of Instagram and X, claims it does not shadowban or selectively censor content, and says it grew from about 150k users before January to over one million and now 2.5M in just a few weeks.
Two Stanford students have launched Breakthrough Ventures, a new accelerator program backed by $2M to fund businesses founded by college students and recent graduates across the US.
The program will provide up to $10k in grants, compute credits via Microsoft and Nvidia Inception, legal support, mentorship, and potential $50k follow on investments, with a goal of incubating at least 100 companies over the next three years.
FUNDRAISING
Everything else in fundraising today
Skyryse raised $300M+ Series C at a $1.15B valuation led by Autopilot Ventures to push FAA certification and roll out its SkyOS flight automation system across helicopters and military aircraft.
Waymo raised $16B at a $126B valuation led by Dragoneer, DST Global, and Sequoia to expand its robotaxi fleet across the U.S. and into international markets like London and Tokyo.
Positron raised $230M Series B led by Qatar Investment Authority to scale high speed memory and inference focused AI chips positioned as lower power alternatives to Nvidia.
Gruve raised $50M in a Series A follow on led by Xora Innovation to stitch together unused data center power and scale AI inference infrastructure across the US.
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IN COOPERATION WITH DDVC
Inside/VC is now an official media partner of the Virtual DDVC Summit (March 23–25). 30+ expert speakers will share their workflows, tool stacks, and the latest insights on AI for VC. First 10 speakers and headline partners Affinity & Foresight are already confirmed.
👉 Grab one of the last SUPER EARLY BIRD tickets → [HERE]
See you soon,
Jannis & Felix — the humans behind Inside/VC