Flapping Airplanes raises $1B Series A at reported $6B valuation

Index Ventures and Lux Capital co-led the $1 billion Series A, which the company announced on Wednesday. Earlier backers Sequoia Capital, GV and Kleiner Perkins returned, and Valor, Atreides Management, A* and Nvidia also appear among the investors. Bloomberg reported the round at a $6 billion valuation. The lab was founded by Aidan Smith and the brothers Asher and Ben Spector. Its $180 million seed round in January valued the company at $1.5 billion, so the valuation has quadrupled in nine months. The stated aim is building models that need less training data. For founders, the deal signals that investors will pay a premium for a research thesis around data efficiency before any product revenue appears. Teams with limited data access may find the capital market for research-first labs more open than in past cycles.