LIGHTSPEED VENTURE PARTNERS

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Global VC firm. Major investor in AI companies including Anthropic and Mistral.

Recent News about Lightspeed Venture Partners

• Stability AI secures $76M Series B from music and gaming giants

  On August 26 2026, Stability AI announced that it has raised a $76 million Series B round, bringing total funding under CEO Prem Akkaraju to $232 million. The round is backed by Electronic Arts, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, AMD Ventures and others to expand professional creative AI products like Stable Audio.

  Source: Stability AI2026-08-25T19:00:00.000Z

• Celeris unveils Celeris-1 diffusion LLM for real time AI

  San Francisco startup Celeris announced Celeris-1 on July 27, 2026, a diffusion-based large language model that aims to match near GPT-5 performance while delivering up to 15 times faster responses. The company says Celeris-1 can generate around 1,664 tokens per second and is available immediately through an OpenAI-compatible API for latency sensitive workloads like agents and real time voice.([prnewswire.com](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/celeris-unveils-celeris-1-unlocking-real-time-ai-through-diffusion-based-language-generation-302835273.html))

  Source: PR Newswire2026-07-27T13:41:00.000Z

• OpenAI’s Miles Wang targets $2B valuation for new AI drug discovery startup

  On July 14, 2026 (July 15 UTC), TechCrunch reported that OpenAI researcher Miles Wang is leaving to found an AI drug discovery startup and is in talks to raise about $200 million at a $2 billion valuation, with Lightspeed Venture Partners in discussions to lead. Wang publicly disputed those specific funding figures but did not provide alternatives.

  Source: TechCrunch2026-07-15T00:27:00.000Z

• Helsing raises $1.8bn Series E to scale European defense AI

  On July 13, 2026, German defense AI company Helsing announced a $1.8 billion Series E round valuing the firm at $18 billion. The capital, backed by Dragoneer, Lightspeed, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, JPMorgan Chase and others, will fund new AI platforms and integrations with partner nations’ defense systems.

  Source: Helsing2026-07-13T10:00:00.000Z

• Patronus AI secures $50M Series B to build digital world models

  On June 25, 2026, Patronus AI announced a $50 million Series B funding round led by Greenfield Partners, bringing its total capital raised to $70 million. The San Francisco startup is using the funds to develop large-scale “Digital World Models,” simulated environments that train and evaluate AI agents across complex digital workflows before deployment. The round includes participation from Lightspeed, Notable Capital, Datadog, Samsung and other strategic and financial backers.

  Source: PR Newswire2026-06-25T20:33:00.000Z

• Assort Health raises $120M to expand AI patient journey agents

  Assort Health announced on June 24, 2026 a $120 million Series C round led by Menlo Ventures at a $1.2 billion valuation. The company plans to use the funds to expand its AI agents platform, which automates patient access and administrative workflows across scheduling, intake, referrals and payments for health systems and specialty practices.

  Source: PR Newswire2026-06-24T11:30:00.000Z

• Reactor raises $59M to power real‑time AI world models on AWS

  On May 28, 2026 AWS announced that startup Reactor emerged from stealth with $59 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company is building a platform for real‑time “world model”–based generative video and interactive experiences, with early adopters like Overworld already building on it.

  Source: AWS Global Press Center2026-05-28T00:00:00.000Z

• ElevenLabs raises $500M Series D to scale voice and agentic AI

  On February 5, 2026, ElevenLabs announced a $500 million Series D round at an $11 billion valuation, led by Sequoia Capital with heavy participation from Andreessen Horowitz and Iconiq. The company says it will use the capital to expand its ElevenAgents conversational AI platform, invest in “audio AGI” research and grow teams in hubs including Tokyo, Bengaluru, London and New York. ([prtimes.jp](https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000023.000160611.html))

  Source: PR TIMES2026-02-05T01:00:00.000Z

• ElevenLabs raises $500M Series D to scale voice and agentic AI

  ElevenLabs announced on February 4, 2026 that it raised a $500 million Series D round valuing the company at $11 billion, led by Sequoia Capital with major follow‑on investments from Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ. On February 5, 2026, outlets including eWeek and Music Business Worldwide reported the funding as one of the largest private generative‑AI deals to date.([elevenlabs.io](https://elevenlabs.io/blog/series-d))

  Source: ElevenLabs2026-02-04T00:00:00.000Z

• Inferact raises $150M seed to commercialize vLLM inference

  On January 23, 2026, Caproasia reported that Inferact, the new startup formed by the core maintainers of the open‑source vLLM inference engine, raised a $150 million seed round at an $800 million valuation. The round is led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, ZhenFund and others. Inferact plans to keep vLLM open-source while building a commercial platform to run large language models more cheaply and efficiently at scale.

  Source: Caproasia2026-01-23T14:17:39.816Z