Weekly Tech Pulse
Palo Alto Networks pays $3.3B to acquire Chronosphere, Watchfire Ventures launches Fund III, Cavela lands $6.6M, Luma AI raises $900 million & More!
US & International Startup & Tech News
Palo Alto Networks paying $3.3B to acquire observability startup Chronosphere, which has roots in Seattle
Palo Alto Networks announced it will acquire Chronosphere for $3.35 billion to meet the massive data demands of modern AI workloads.
Founded in 2019 by former Uber engineers Martin Mao and Rob Skillington, who met at Microsoft in Seattle, Chronosphere sells observability software that helps engineering teams spot problems and keep cloud applications running.
The company has over 250 employees across hubs in New York City, Seattle, and Vilnius, reporting more than $160 million in annual recurring revenue with triple-digit growth rates and delivering observability at one-third the cost of leading competitors.
Source: GeekWire
Watchfire Ventures launches Fund III, targeting $150m
Watchfire Ventures has launched its third fund with a target of $150 million, focusing on early-stage B2B software companies.
The Kansas City-based venture capital firm typically invests in seed and Series A rounds with initial check sizes ranging from $2 million to $5 million.
The fund plans to back approximately 25-30 companies across sectors including fintech, healthcare IT, and enterprise software.
Source: Venture Capital Journal
Cavela lands $6.6M to help brands beat pre-tariff manufacturing costs
Cavela raised $6.6 million in seed funding co-led by XYZ Venture Capital and Susa Ventures to help brands automate supplier sourcing using AI agents.
The startup’s platform connects companies with manufacturers across over 40 countries, using AI to analyze product specifications and negotiate pricing via WhatsApp, email, or text.
Cavela claims customers save an average of 35% on production costs and find suppliers offering prices below pre-tariff levels, addressing growing concerns about manufacturing in China amid new tariff threats.
Source: TechCrunch
Luma AI raises $900 million in funding round led by Saudi AI firm Humain
Video generation startup Luma AI raised $900 million in funding led by Saudi Arabia’s Humain, with participation from AMD Ventures and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company above $4 billion.
The companies announced a partnership to build Project Halo, a 2-gigawatt AI supercluster in Saudi Arabia that will be among the world’s largest GPU deployments for training multimodal world models.
Luma, which develops AI models that learn from text, video, audio, and images, released Ray3 in September, a reasoning video model that CEO Amit Jain says benchmarks higher than OpenAI’s Sora 2, and will also focus on building the world’s first Arabic video model through the Humain Create initiative.
Source: CNBC
LATAM Startup & Tech News
Community Investment grants $50 million credit line to Mexican fintech Aviva
Mexican fintech Aviva secured a $50 million credit line from San Francisco-based Community Investment Management to expand its microloans in underserved communities of fewer than 500,000 inhabitants.
The company aims to triple its size and serve half a million new customers, using AI-powered chatbots in physical kiosks to assess creditworthiness through seven-minute video conversations with unbanked borrowers.
Aviva, which launched in 2022, has served 200,000 clients across 100 cities with a 3.1% delinquency rate and plans a Series A funding round next year to expand beyond Mexico.
Source: Bloomberg Linea
Unergy raises $4 million and secures financing for new solar mini-farms in Colombia
Colombian startup Unergy raised $4 million in its pre-Series A round, marking the first Latin American investment by a European climate infrastructure fund, with an additional $80 million commitment for solar mini-farms deployment.
The company plans to build 80 new distributed generation solar mini-farms across Colombia and scale to over 1 GW of installed capacity across Latin America within five years.
Unergy has already helped quadruple Colombia’s solar mini-farm count from four in 2023 to 72 in 2025, positioning the country as the region’s fastest-growing market in this segment.
Source: Yahoo! News
Opportunities with Us
Browse all available opportunities here!
Special thanks to our sponsor:
Axented helps businesses design, build, and scale their products and teams worldwide.
With over 10 years of experience and a diverse portfolio of more than 300 projects delivered in over 15 countries, Axented has established itself as a trusted partner in the tech industry.
Renowned for its expertise and commitment to excellence, Axented provides innovative solutions to help businesses thrive in a digital world.
