Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI (1/30/26)

By Christopher Robbins · Jan 29, 2026 Views: 1

Our Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI featured funding announcements from Humans&, Ricursive Intelligence, Baseten, Upwind Security and OpenEvidence

This week we continue our series on the top 5 VC-funded deals in AI.

While no $1 billion-plus announcements landed this week, we did see a total of 14 fundraising deals come in above the $100 million threshold, the most we've seen while tracking AI venture capital activity.

The top reported deal, per FinSMEs, came from San Francisco-based Humans&, which raised $480 million in a seed round, yes, a seed round, with a nearly $4.5 billion valuation. Humans&, an AI lab, will use the funds to "expand operations and its development efforts," according to its announcement. Our second announcement is from Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI lab Ricursive Intelligence, which raised $300 million in a Series A to "scale its research and engineering team and expand its compute infrastructure," according to its announcement. The top five was more than AI labs, also including companies in the healthcare, cloud security and AI inference spaces.

Smaller funding raises that did not quite make our top 5 this week included announcements from the AI infrastructure, video generation and AI inference sectors.

Below, we highlight the top five venture capital deals, ranked from the highest to the lowest funding amounts, showcasing the companies at the forefront of the AI revolution...

Top 5 Venture Capital Deals from Jan. 22 - Jan. 28

1. Humans&

Location: San Francisco, CA
Description: A human-centric frontier AI lab building foundational technology with a focus on responsible development and alignment.
Funding Amount: $480 million
Funding Round: Seed
Valuation: $4.48 billion

2. Ricursive Intelligence

Location: Palo Alto, CA
Description: AI lab focused on developing self-improving systems, starting with advanced chip design powered by AI.
Funding Amount: $300 million
Funding Round: Series A
Valuation: $4 billion

3. Baseten

Location: San Francisco, CA
Description: AI infrastructure company helping teams deploy and scale inference for AI applications efficiently.
Funding Amount: $300 million
Funding Round: Undisclosed
Valuation: $5 billion

4. Upwind Security

Location: San Francisco, CA
Description: Provider of a real-time cloud security platform designed to secure modern DevOps environments.
Funding Amount: $250 million
Funding Round: Series B

5. OpenEvidence

Location: Miami, FL
Description: AI platform helping doctors access trusted medical knowledge and automate decision-making with high accuracy.
Funding Amount: $250 million
Funding Round: Series D
Valuation: $12 billion

Make sure to check out our Top 5 VC Deals of the Week in AI right here!

Written & Researched by DWN Staff

VC Deals Synopsized by ChatGPT Research Source: FinSMEs