A quick tour of the week’s notable money moves — from billion-dollar listings to the funds raising fresh capital.

By the numbers

Beyond the headline stories, the week brought a flurry of deals across venture capital, buyouts and the public markets. Here is a quick, plain-English tour of the moves worth knowing — all drawn from Axios Pro Rata’s June 18 edition. Individually, each is a single transaction; together, they sketch a map of where money is moving right now.

IPOs are stirring

After a long drought, companies are testing the public markets again — and investors are showing up.

• Kardigan, a cardiovascular-drug developer, raised $400 million in its IPO — pricing above expectations by selling 25 million shares at $16, more than the 23.3 million it had planned at $14–$16. It listed on the Nasdaq.
• Deep Fission, which is developing underground nuclear reactors, raised $40 million in a downsized IPO (Nasdaq: FISN).
• Form Energy, a developer of multi-day grid batteries that has raised nearly $2 billion in venture funding, picked JPMorgan and Jefferies to lead its planned listing.
• Looming over it all, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are lining up to lead the year’s most anticipated debuts — the rival AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic.

Where venture money went

Private fundraising stayed brisk, with defense, robotics, healthcare and crypto infrastructure all drawing big cheques.

• Dream, an Israeli sovereign-AI and cyber-defense company, raised $260 million at a $3 billion valuation.
• XDOF, a robot-training-data company, raised $70 million from investors including Thrive Capital and a16z.
• Rylo, a communications platform for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, raised $85 million at a $500 million valuation.
• Trace Finance, a cross-border stablecoin-infrastructure start-up, raised $32 million, led by CoinFund.
• Gradial, a Seattle-based agentic-marketing start-up, raised $65 million in Series C funding led by Insight Partners.
• Convey, a San Francisco developer of enterprise AI agents, raised $38 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
• Frontier Health, which builds AI agents for the UK’s NHS, raised about £9.7 million led by Atomico.

Mergers, acquisitions and a SPAC

Dealmakers stayed busy across payments, construction, healthcare, autos and the quantum frontier.

• Deluxe agreed to buy payment processor Celero Commerce for $625 million.
• Obayashi agreed to buy Multiplex — the firm that built London’s Wembley Stadium — for up to $650 million from Brookfield.
• KKR is in talks to buy a majority stake in the Indian hospital unit of Sweden-listed Medicover for at least $1 billion.
• Carro, a Singapore-based online car marketplace, acquired Australia’s CarPlace, extending its reach across the Asia-Pacific region.
• Platinum Equity agreed to sell Heat Controller, a US maker of heating and cooling equipment, to Lennox (NYSE: LII).
• EigenQ, a quantum-technology company, agreed to go public via a SPAC at an implied $3 billion valuation.

Fresh funds raised

And the firms that supply the capital topped up their own coffers.

• Anti Fund, the venture firm led by Jake Paul and Geoffrey Woo, raised $100 million for a growth fund.
• Earlybird and AVP launched E2D, a €500 million growth fund focused on defense and dual-use technology.
• Hoxton Ventures, of London, secured $60 million toward a fourth fund targeting $125 million.

The thread that ties it together

Step back, and a pattern emerges. Money is flowing back into IPOs after a quiet stretch, and pouring into defense, artificial intelligence and physical infrastructure — the themes that increasingly define this market cycle. Notice how often defense and “dual-use” technology appears, from Dream’s raise to Earlybird and AVP’s new fund; it is fast becoming one of the most fashionable corners of finance. For everyday investors, this steady drumbeat of deals is an early read on where professional money believes the next decade of growth will come from.

Source: Axios Pro Rata (Dan Primack), June 18, 2026.