22 Oct 2026 5 min read

Can AI Learn on a Diet?

Hi, and welcome to a new edition of The Daily Dealflow — the 5-minute briefing that gives you clear context on capital flows and market-moving trends across the Americas, from Silicon Valley to Buenos Aires. Let’s dive in.

🏆 Deal of the Day

Flapping Airplanes, a year-old lab whose mission is to train large models with less data, announced on Wednesday a $1B Series A co-led by Index and Lux, reportedly at a $6B valuation. Sequoia Capital, Alphabet’s GV and Kleiner Perkins also joined, and the valuation, which includes the new money, is four times what it was in January. The team of founders are Ben Spector, Asher Spector and Aidan Smith.

Why This?: Cheaper training and inference is the one AI thesis that helps everyone downstream, from a Series A startup in São Paulo renting GPUs by the hour to a hyperscaler in Virginia. A $1B bet that the next breakthrough comes from efficiency, not just more chips, could reshape what AI costs across the Americas.

Positive Context:

The round lands in a record quarter for billion-dollar AI rounds, with AI taking 64% of global venture funding in Q3, and the company has now raised $1.18B across two rounds.
Lux partner Brandon Reeves argued that squeezing more out of existing resources is key to AI’s next frontier, and called Flapping Airplanes probably the best-positioned team to do it.

Yes, but:

There is no product, benchmark or open-source release yet, making this a pure research-stage neolab bet.
The neolab lane is getting crowded: Safe Superintelligence reportedly raised $5B and TypeSafe AI closed an $870M Series B at a $7.5B valuation.

“The young person’s AGI lab,” wrote Sequoia partner David Cahn, as reported by TechCrunch.

Sequoia partner David Cahn (Courtesy: Sequoia Capital)

💰 Venture Capital

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Otter.ai (US) – $320M, non-equity growth financing, AI meeting notes and transcription that is evolving into agents that act on what was said. The money comes from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund and involves no equity sale; CEO Sam Liang said Otter must repay it with interest as its sales and marketing spending generates revenue. Think of it as a growth loan for a company that passed $100M in annual recurring revenue in 2025 – Tech Startups. techstartups techstartups

Peso (Bolivia) – undisclosed amount, pre-seed, USDT accounts for saving, spending, investing and sending money abroad. Tether led the round, and Peso will build on- and off-ramps in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina, plus merchant point-of-sale tools and virtual accounts that connect USDT to Bolivia’s banks through QR and ACH rails. That makes it Tether’s second LatAm fintech check in two days – CryptoRank.

Baba (US) – $40M, Series A, AI plus human care coordinators for Medicare and Medicaid patients juggling specialists, meds and insurance. FirstMark Capital led, with CVS Health Ventures, Valtruis, General Catalyst, Genius Ventures and Ground Up Ventures. The demand signal is loud: Baba has supported more than 10,000 patients and families and has over 100,000 families on its waiting list – Tech Startups.

One of the more interesting shifts in travel is that booking no longer signals a decision has been made. Travelers are still comparing options, changing plans, and revisiting earlier stages after they've booked, turning the customer journey into an ongoing cycle rather than a linear path. As decisions become more fluid, growth depends less on winning a single transaction and more on staying relevant throughout the entire journey.

🏛️ Private Equity

Carlyle / LightStream (US) – $7.7B, loan-portfolio carve-out. Truist agreed to sell roughly $7.7B of unsecured consumer loans, substantially all of its LightStream platform, to Carlyle; the deal was signed October 14 and should deliver about $7.2B in net proceeds, mostly to cut wholesale funding. It is Truist’s second big lending exit in weeks, after the $5.5B sale of its Regional Acceptance auto-loan book. One fine-print note: the $7.7B is the size of the loan book, not the disclosed sale price – Dealroom.

Colibri / Qnow + Cannoli (Brazil) – undisclosed, bolt-on acquisitions by a restaurant POS and management software group. Cannoli, founded by ex-Linx executive Samuel Carvalho, brings CRM, loyalty and cashback, while Qnow covers queues, reservations and parking. The valet trick is the fun part: once the bill starts closing, the valet has already gone to fetch your car. Founder Rodrigo Soares’s RS Solutions took over Colibri from NCR in September 2024 in a deal valued at R$100M (about $18M), and he says more deals are on the radar – Startups.

Platform Accounting Group (US) – $355M, growth equity for a roll-up. The Salt Lake City- and New York-based operator and acquirer of boutique accounting firms raised the round led by Treville Capital Group, with Vista Credit also involved. Accounting is the new dental practice for buy-and-build investors – Dealroom.

📈 Public & Capital Markets

Market Closing Figures, Wed 22 Oct, 2026.

Tesla (US, Nasdaq) – Q3 earnings, autos, energy and AI. Tesla posted adjusted EPS of 48 cents against 43 cents expected and revenue of $28.05B against $27.9B, but core automotive revenue fell 3% to $20.56B and energy revenue dropped 16% to $2.88B. Free cash flow fell 62% year over year to $1.53B, and the stock slid more than 3% after hours. The report came a day after Musk floated the SpaceX merger. Context: Tesla listed in 2010 at $17 a share – CNBC.

IBM and Lam Research (US, NYSE and Nasdaq) – Q3 earnings, enterprise tech and chip equipment. IBM reported adjusted EPS of $2.95 versus $2.86 expected and now sees 2026 free cash flow rising by more than $1B, yet the shares slipped 2%; Lam guided to revenue of $8.60B, plus or minus $400M, for its next quarter. IBM, founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, still knows how to beat a number – CNBC.

Nvidia, Capital One and Cloudflare (US, Nasdaq and NYSE) – daily movers, AI infrastructure, banking and cybersecurity. Nvidia rose 2.54% after unveiling Vera Rubin DSX Pods, a data center system built to deploy in days; Capital One gained 2.53% on a $3.5B quarterly profit; and Cloudflare jumped 5.38% after critical PHP vulnerabilities boosted demand for security. Not bad for a chipmaker that started in 1993 over a booth at Denny’s – Brew Markets.

📅 ICYMI

Spotify has pulled more than 50 million “AI-generated slop and spam” tracks from its recommendations so far in 2026; the songs stay on the platform, they just stop getting pushed to you – Dealroom.
PrizePicks is moving beyond sports predictions into collectibles, and the grand prize is an absurdly valuable Cooper Flagg card – Brew Markets.
“Made in China” is becoming a flex: photographers, pen snobs and sneakerheads now go out of their way to buy certain Chinese brands. Lens maker Viltrox spent years as the familiar budget Chinese alternative to the established Japanese makers, until investments in materials and manufacturing about four years ago sharpened its quality – Bloomberg.

See you tomorrow,

Katherine Castelán & Jose Kont
The humans behind The Investor Society