Venture Capital & Startup Funding Roundup, September 28, 2026: Amplify Partners, Fidelity Management, Insight Partners, Toyota Ventures & More

Venture funding on September 28, 2026, highlighted a concentrated investor push into physical AI and autonomy, with two headline rounds totaling $290 million aimed at maritime sensors and edge AI chips. Quartermaster raised $140 million in a Series B at a reported ~$200 million valuation, led by Insight Partners with participation from Overmatch Ventures and earlier backer First Round Capital (plus Stifel debt), bringing total capital to roughly $183 million. SiMa.ai closed a $150 million Series C co-led by Fidelity Management & Research and Amplify Partners at a post-money valuation near $1.45 billion; the Sunnyvale firm builds low-power chips and tooling for on-device AI in robotics and autonomous systems. Both deals were announced on Sep. 28, 2026.

“SiMa.ai is positioning their chips as the ‘NPUs for physical AI’,” the company’s fundraising narrative explained, framing the round as a bet on embedding vision and neural inference into energy-constrained machines like drones and factory robots.

Quartermaster: maritime domain awareness draws defense and enterprise capital

Quartermaster, headquartered in Arlington, VA, deploys AI-enabled sensor “SmartMasts” on ships and buoys to capture HD imagery and radio-frequency data, feeding analytics that aim to improve tracking, anomaly detection and maritime security. The $140 million Series B—led by Insight Partners with Overmatch Ventures participating—underscores significant investor interest in maritime domain awareness amid heightened geopolitical tensions and crowded shipping lanes. The company’s network creates a “mesh” of low-cost satellites and ship-mounted devices that produces continuous, actionable maritime intelligence for navies and commercial operators.

• Startup: Quartermaster
• Investors: Insight Partners (lead), Overmatch Ventures, First Round Capital, Stifel (debt), others
• Amount raised: $140M
• Total raised: ~$183M (including debt)
• Stage/Date: Series B, Sep 28, 2026
• Headquarters: Arlington, VA
• Sector: Maritime Defense / AI Sensors

SiMa.ai: edge AI chips for robots and drones

SiMa.ai’s $150 million Series C, co-led by Fidelity Management & Research and Amplify Partners, valued the company at about $1.45 billion post-money. The Sunnyvale startup promotes a hardware-software bundle—custom “AI Fire” chips and supporting tooling—that lets machines run computer vision and neural networks on-device with low power consumption. Investors framed the raise as part of a broader “physical-AI hardware arms race,” arguing that many autonomy and robotics use cases do not require datacenter-scale GPUs but instead need efficient inference at the edge.

• Startup: SiMa.ai
• Investors: Fidelity Management & Research; Amplify Partners (co-leads)
• Amount raised: $150M
• Post-money valuation: ~$1.45B
• Stage/Date: Series C, Sep 28, 2026
• Headquarters: Sunnyvale, CA
• Sector: Edge AI chips for robotics/autonomy

These rounds illustrate a wider investor preference for applied-AI deployments tied to hardware and infrastructure rather than purely cloud-native model plays. In the near term, expect capital to continue favoring startups that combine devices, sensors and on-device compute to deliver measurable outcomes in logistics, defense and industrial automation. For founders and limited partners, the message is clear: specialized chips, resilient sensor networks and tightly integrated hardware-software stacks remain core targets for large checks from established investors.