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title: Disney loves AI
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| Small language models.  November mega-rounds.  2025 unicorns.   View in browser December 18, 2025 Size matters Hi there,   Here is this week's Hot or Not. Hot: Industrial mega-rounds   November's 40 mega-rounds totaled $34.6B, with industrial companies claiming over a fifth of the funding.   Two investment clusters dominated:  Defense AI: NestAI’s $115M Series A, Quantum Systems’ $209M Series C Humanoid robotics: Apptronik’s $331M Series B, Robotera’s $141M Series A Learn more about last month’s biggest deals in CB Insights’ monthly mega-round report. Not: Oversized language models   The small language model (SLM) market ranks in the top 2% of all tech markets by average Mosaic score, a CB Insights predictive measure of private company health and likelihood of success.    The edge: lower inference costs, on-premises deployment, and more visibility over AI decision-making.    That's resonating in regulated industries, highlighted by notable relationships forged over the last 2 years:  EdgeRunner.ai partnering with the US army to develop SLM capabilities for robotic platforms Dnotitia partnering with Fainders.ai to apply SLMs to insurance analytics Arcee partnering with Activeloop to develop PatentPT, a SLM-based system for patent search and generation Track the SLM developers and use cases driving momentum in our recent report. Hot: AI in Hollywood   Disney just made a $1B investment in OpenAI.    The 3-year deal grants the AI giant access to 200+ Disney characters for use in Sora video generation and ChatGPT Images.     This also makes Disney a major OpenAI enterprise customer, deploying ChatGPT company-wide and using OpenAI APIs to build new Disney+ experiences.   CB Insights customers can learn more about Disney's AI strategy and interact with Disney's live strategy map here. Not: Unicorn success   Across 1,300+ unicorns, 53% are worse off today than a year ago based on Mosaic score trajectory, a CB Insights measure of company health and growth potential.      But AI-era unicorns are pulling ahead of their ZIRP-era peers, driving the average Mosaic score across all companies valued $1B+ up 1.5%. See which unicorns are winning (and losing) across the full cohort in CB Insights' $1B+ market map. The +1 Growing pains. The legend needs a legend.     I love you.   Anand @asanwal  Co-Founder & Exec Chair   P.S. Want to learn what this year’s venture landscape means for 2026? ? Register for our 2025 State of Venture briefing here. Get started with CB Insights Start your free trial CB Insights' emerging technology insights platform provides all the analysis and data from this newsletter. Our data is the easiest way to discover and respond to emerging tech.  Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here Copyright © 2025 CB Insights, All rights reserved. 498 7th Avenue, NY, CB Insights, New York,10018 About Us \| Update Preferences \| Research \| Newsletter |
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