AI Infrastructure Sees Billion-Dollar Deals
The AI infrastructure gold rush is accelerating, with Together AI closing a landmark $1B round to scale its cloud platform. Meanwhile, German robotics firm Neura Robotics is raising ~$1.2B led by Tether to build its humanoid robots. The mega-rounds show investors are betting big on the "picks and shovels" underpinning the AI economy.
Together AI's latest funding infusion brings its total capital raised to over $534 million across four rounds since its first funding on May 16, 2023. The company, founded in 2022, was valued at $3.3 billion as of a February 2025 Series B round. Key investors have included prominent names like General Catalyst, Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins. The company is a key player in the GPU cloud platform sector, competing with firms like CoreWeave and Crusoe. It provides essential services for training, fine-tuning, and operating powerful AI models, positioning itself as a crucial utility for the growing number of companies building on AI. Together AI has also been acquisitive, purchasing companies like Refuel and CodeSandbox to expand its offerings. On the robotics front, Neura Robotics' reported ~$1.2 billion raise is led by Tether, the issuer of the world's largest stablecoin. This investment is part of Tether's broader strategy of diversifying its large cash reserves into "frontier tech," which also includes brain-computer interface companies. The deal is expected to value the German firm at approximately €4 billion. Neura Robotics, founded in 2019, already boasts a significant order book of nearly $1 billion from customers like Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Omron. The new capital is earmarked to accelerate the development and production of its AI-powered humanoid robots. These mega-deals highlight a significant trend where investors are pouring capital into the foundational infrastructure of the AI economy, a strategy often compared to selling "picks and shovels" during a gold rush. The thesis is that while it's hard to predict which specific AI applications will win, the underlying need for computing power and specialized hardware is a certainty. The market for AI infrastructure is experiencing explosive growth, with spending on data centers, cloud services, and hardware expanding rapidly. Some analysts project that the five largest cloud computing companies could spend between $660 billion and $690 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. This massive capital expenditure cycle is expected to last for a decade, creating a long-term opportunity for the companies providing these essential services.
