Year-Old AI Lab Flapping Airplanes Raises $1 Billion Series A at Reported $6 Billion Valuation

Flapping Airplanes, an AI research lab founded about a year ago, has announced a $1 billion Series A round co-led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital, at a reported $6 billion valuation — roughly four times the $1.5 billion valuation of its $180 million seed round just nine months ago, which was backed by GV, Sequoia and Index. Sequoia, GV, Kleiner Perkins, Valor, Atreides, A* and Nvidia also participated. Founded by Aidan Smith and brothers Asher and Ben Spector, the lab works on training large AI models with far less data, and has built a "megakernel" GPU framework that can handle training, inference and other tasks in a single kernel, aiming to cut the cost of developing and running AI.

Source: TechCrunch (reported 21–22 Oct 2026)

Tags: Flapping Airplanes, AI, Series A, Index Ventures, Lux Capital, Sequoia