CB Insights noted that the ongoing race to build various foundation models has evolved into battles across different agent platforms, infrastructure layers, and vertical apps. CB Insights also mentioned that 2025 saw the emergence of 1,000+ agentic AI offerings promising the so-called next evolution of software. Although horizontal applications such as coding have gained traction with “companies generating 100M+ ARR, the market is moving toward industry specialization.”
CB Insights further noted that the AI surge is resulting in “a massive data center buildout, with multi-GW facilities in the works (equivalent to powering a major city). Power bottlenecks are fueling innovation across the value chain.”
According to research reports from CB Insights, GenAI is now said to be moving from digital workflows into “physical operations and specialized domains.”
The report also stated that humanoid robots are “entering factories and warehouses, while healthcare is seeing generative AI reshape clinical operations and drug discovery timelines.”
Other key updates from CB Insights revealed that “mega-round funding of $34.6B marks a shift toward AI’s physical economy. ”
AI companies captured nearly “three-quarters of mega-rounds last month, with Anthropic’s $15B Series G accounting for nearly half of all AI funding.”
Beyond Anthropic, 8 mega-rounds totaling “$7.7B flowed to physical applications across manufacturing, robotics, and defense, signaling investors’ conviction that the next phase of AI is physical.”
Using CB Insights’ predictive signals, their Book of Scouting Reports provides an in-depth analysis of every private tech company “that has raised a $ 100M+ funding round.”
It spotlights where private capital is “concentrating, startups gaining momentum, and which companies are becoming tomorrow’s AI disruptors.”
Some other key takeaways shared by CB Insights:
- Industrial AI was the breakout theme of the month, attracting $7.7B in mega-rounds and revealing a clear investor shift toward physical AI. Two investment clusters dominated: defense AI and humanoid robotics. Europe’s push for strategic autonomy drove major rounds for NestAI ($115M Series A) and Quantum Systems ($209M Series C-II), while humanoid and industrial robotics startups like Apptronik ($331M Series B) and Robotera ($141M Series A-II) attracted sizable funding for manufacturing and logistics applications. The pattern signals growing conviction that AI in the physical world — from defense systems to factory-floor robots — is one of the nearest-term commercialization opportunities.
- Consumer & retail showed the strongest momentum in November, posting the highest average Mosaic score (922) among mega-rounds, led by Skims (963) and Gopuff (956). But despite similar momentum signals, their valuations moved in opposite directions: Skims rose to $5B (up from $4B), while Gopuff fell to $8.5B (from a $15B peak). The divergence underscores a broader market reset — investors are rewarding capital-efficient, brand-driven growth (Skims) and penalizing high cost models (Gopuff), even when commercial traction remains strong.
- Specialized model developers are attracting $100M+ rounds despite early commercial maturity, signaling long-term bets on AI’s remaining technical challenges. The AI infrastructure category overall holds a median Commercial Maturity score of 3 — the lowest of any major category across last month’s mega-rounds. Companies like AA-I Technologies (Commercial Maturity score of 1: Emerging) and Harmonic (2: Validating) are building next-generation reasoning models to address limitations in complex problem-solving and abstract reasoning, while Physical Intelligence (2: Validating) focuses on embodied AI to enable robots to learn and adapt in real-world environments.
- Data center infrastructure companies captured $2.4B in mega-rounds, reflecting the buildout required to support AI compute demands. The category spans the full value chain: from AI chips (d-Matrix, $275 Series C) and cloud GPUs (Lambda, $1.5B Series E) to data center facilities (Centra, $230M round), cooling systems (Firmus, $326M round), and optical networking (Celero Communications, $100M Series B). These mega-rounds reflect the growing recognition that data center infrastructure is necessary to scale to enable AI’s next phase of growth.