The Daily Deal
Tuesday 20 October 2026
OpenAI's ad run-rate hits $1B
- Chart of the day Unicorn cities in North America.
- Just raised Tenstorrent $1.5B, Neolix $400M, AaltoSemi $206M.
- Just founded Cedari AI, GasLab, Altitude.
- In the news OpenAI's ad run-rate hits $1B as it poaches Meta talent, chases $2.4B target, and two more stories.
Chart of the day
Open the chartUnicorn cities in North America
The map plots every North American tech hub, with each city sized by the number of unicorns headquartered there. Next to it sit the region's top ten cities in the Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2026, ranked as Global Champions, Density Leaders and Rising Stars.
Just raised
All funding news-
TenstorrentSanta Clara$1.5B Series EBuilding a new processor engineered to power machine learning and smart hardware.
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NeolixChina$400M Series EDeveloping level-4 autonomous delivery vehicles for urban logistics and smart-city infrastructure. Led by Boyu Capital.
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AaltoSemiNanjing City$206M Series AA manufacturer of packaging substrate products. Backed by Heli Capital and Lushan Science and Technology Investment.
By country
- US$63B
- South Korea$2.7B
- China$2.1B
- India$1.3B
- UK$1.1B
- Spain$643M
By sector
- Enterprise$55B
- Health$6.4B
- Fintech$5.4B
- Hosting$4.4B
- Semiconductors$3.3B
- Energy$3B
$75B across 837 rounds in October so far, by headquarters and by sector.
Just founded
View all from this week-
Cedari AISan Francisco
Agentic commerce API for real product transactions.
VR
YYVikrant Ramteke & Yadi Yasheng founded it. Ramteke previously founded TotSpot and Finderous. Yasheng worked at Amazon and Firaxis Games. -
GasLabAmsterdam$1M raised
Generative AI music platform ensuring artist attribution.
TE
RZThijs Emondts & Reinier Zonneveld founded it. Emondts worked at Lehman Brothers and The Financialist. Zonneveld studied at University of Amsterdam. -
AltitudeLisbon
Compact laser modules for unmanned platforms and space.
MPMarco Piccardo founded it after working at Optical Society of America.
In the news
View all news stories- OpenAI's ad run-rate hits $1B as it poaches Meta talent, chases $2.4B target
OpenAI is building a dedicated advertising business inside ChatGPT, hiring aggressively from Meta's ads organisation as it scales the effort.
- Banks and retailers start blocking AI shopping agents, including Meta's Muse
A growing list of banks, brokerages, and retailers are blocking AI shopping and banking agents from acting on their sites — including Meta's new Muse agent.
- Hacker used AI agents to breach 100+ sites — including John Deere — at $50 each
A single hacker used a swarm of AI agents to break into more than 100 websites, including ones linked to John Deere, SharkNinja, and Cummins, according to security firm NorForge.
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