Flapping Airplanes has raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation, four times its valuation in January, Quartz reported on 21 October. The funding backs a San Francisco AI research startup founded in late 2025 that is working on ways to train models with less data and computing power.
Index Ventures and Lux Capital led the round. Sequoia Capital, Alphabet’s GV and Kleiner Perkins participated, and Nvidia is among the company’s backers. Flapping Airplanes belongs to a group of startups focused on research before launching products and building revenue.
Co-founder Aidan Smith said Flapping Airplanes is developing its own code to run Nvidia’s graphics processing units. He said it would let Flapping Airplanes use the chips more efficiently and deploy them more flexibly. Co-founder Asher Spector said the company plans to commercialise its technology.
