AI FUNDING SLOWS: Startup Investors Scale Back Giant Rounds This Week...

AI infrastructure drew the week's largest check: Modal Labs, a cloud platform for AI inference, raised $750 million at a $15.75 billion valuation after crossing $1 billion in annual revenue run rate. The funding round, led by Accel, reflects ongoing investor appetite for companies building the computational backbone that powers AI applications, though overall deal activity slowed—only two of the week's top ten rounds exceeded $200 million. Beyond infrastructure, biotech and healthcare AI also attracted significant capital, with RNA therapy developer Soufflé Therapeutics raising $135 million and clinical AI tool Suki securing $90 million.