May 21, 2026

Droning on

Hi there,

Here is this week’s Hot or Not.

Hot: Mistral AI’s industrial strategy 

Mistral AI just acquired Emmi AI, expanding its industrial AI capabilities to target aerospace, automotive, and semiconductor manufacturers.

Emmi AI specializes in AI models for industrial physics simulations, targeting sectors where legacy computational tools remain slow and expensive, including aerospace, automotive, energy, and semiconductors.

The move positions Mistral as a full-stack industrial AI partner. See where the company is heading next in our Mistral AI Strategy Map.

Not: Legacy defense contractors

Anduril just raised $5B at a $61B valuation, doubling its value in under a year.

The company’s autonomous Fury fighter jet is already in Air Force contention, and new contracts span space-based missile defense, the Dutch military, and the US Army.

Anduril has now raised more than $11B from investors altogether, after doubling revenue to $2.2B in 2025.

YTD, funding to the broader drone space has already hit a record $13.8B.

Find out who's winning in our drone tech market map.

Hot: Robotic coordination

Physical AI hit a record $78B in funding in 2025, and the next problem to solve is coordinating fleets, not just single units.

Three companies in the Physical AI category of CB Insights' AI 100 2026 are tackling multi-robot coordination:

• InOrbit: vendor-agnostic robot orchestration, grew customer base 200% last year
• FieldAI: built for multiple robots to operate cohesively, raised a $314M Series A at a $2B valuation
• Gravis Robotics: one operator supervises multiple machines, deployed across 7 countries

Interact with the full list of 100 AI startups here. 

Not: S&P 500 AI laggards

30% of the S&P 500 has zero documented external AI activity, and the window to catch up is closing.

While the other 70% is active, most are participating at the edges: the median company has just 3-4 documented AI partner relationships.

In fact, per CB Insights' analysis of S&P 500 AI activity from 2023-2025, just 5 companies account for a third of all enterprise AI activity:

• NVIDIA
• Microsoft
• Amazon
• Alphabet
• Salesforce

Read the full enterprise AI buildout report here.

The +1

Source: u/broseph_swagamuffin via Reddit

Flu-like curve. St. Louis is the Y-axis?

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Want to learn about the future of SaaS with AI agents? Register for the briefing here.

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