Year-old AI lab Flapping Airplanes raises $1B at a $6B valuation
The Next Web · 2026-10-21
San Francisco AI research lab Flapping Airplanes, founded in late 2025, raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation. Index Ventures and Lux Capital led, with Sequoia, GV, Kleiner Perkins and Nvidia joining. The valuation has quadrupled since its $180 million seed round in January, and it has no product on sale yet, showing how much top VCs will still pay for AI research teams.
Vocabulary
Read source ↗- seed rounda startup's first formal funding round
- led the roundacted as the main investor setting terms for the round
- quadrupledgrew to four times its earlier level