September’s activity reflected continued movement from hype to scaled execution as leading players doubled down on infrastructure and distribution. OpenAI advanced on multiple fronts, closing a $6.6B secondary sale at a $500B valuation, striking a landmark $300B compute deal with Oracle, and expanding U.S. datacenter plans, while Nvidia drove aggressive dealmaking including up to $100B in future GPU supply and the acquihire of Enfabrica.
Financing remained strong, with more than $10B across 140+ deals. Europe stood out as Mistral AI’s $2B round and Nscale’s $1.1B Series B fueled sovereign and hyperscale AI build-outs, joined by major U.S. raises from Cerebras, Groq, and Filevine. Concentrated late-stage capital continued to favor infrastructure depth and proven platforms over broad experimentation.
Stepmark Partners 