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Startups & Venture·August 3, 2026·1 min read

Sequoia Leads $1 Billion Funding Round for Nuclear Startup Valar

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A $1 billion round to take Valar from demo reactors to volume production is a bet that reliable nuclear baseload will be a gating factor for AI and industrial growth. If your long-term roadmap assumes cheap, abundant power, you should be tracking which next-gen nuclear vendors are likely to survive to deployment.

Startups & Venture

Mariana Minerals, which builds and operates mines using its MarianaOS software platform, raised a $310M Series B, bringing its total funding to $400M

A $310M Series B into a software-led mining operator is a bet that control of upstream metals—via operating systems like MarianaOS—will be a core AI-era bottleneck. Hardware and infra builders should treat critical minerals sourcing as a strategic function, not procurement—map your exposure to metals supply and who actually controls the mines.