Everyone’s watching chatbots. The smart money went to factories

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

Arda, the manufacturing AI startup cofounded by former OpenAI research chief Bob McGrew, came out of stealth with a $160M Series A at a $1.5B valuation. Altimeter, Accel and Khosla Ventures co-led, with XYZ Venture Capital, 8VC, SV Angel and Felicis participating, on top of a $72M seed led by Accel and Founders Fund, for $232M raised in total. Its AI models are already deployed with defense tech company Anduril.

Why This?: If AI can cut the time it takes to retool an assembly line, the math behind where factories go (Ohio, Monterrey or Shenzhen) changes. That makes this round relevant to every reshoring and nearshoring bet in the Americas, not just Silicon Valley.

Positive Context:

• In March, Arda was raising $70M at a $700M valuation, so its price more than doubled in about seven months.
• Its software already runs inside Anduril’s ArsenalOS manufacturing environment, and the company is chasing electronics, defense manufacturing and the data center supply chain.

Yes, but:

• Robotic assembly lines that adapt on their own when designs change are still a development goal, not a proven commercial result.
• Anduril is the marquee customer, which means a lot of the story rests on one defense partner for now.

Arda’s agent “does for manufacturing engineers what Claude or Cursor does for programmers,” said Bob McGrew, cofounder of Arda, to CNBC.

💰 Venture Capital

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ASI (US) – $325M, Series C, at a $3B valuation. The Boston company, formerly called Air Space Intelligence, builds AI that forecasts and coordinates operations across air traffic, energy grids, logistics and national security. Spark Capital led, with affiliates of Citadel Securities, Meritech, Craft Ventures, Energy Impact Partners and Andreessen Horowitz participating. CEO Phillip Buckendorf’s team holds an FAA modernization program with a reported $875M ceiling. That is the maximum the program could be worth, not revenue already earned – TechStartups.

Qualitate (US) – $25M, Series A, an AI interviewer that runs expert calls with B2B buyers and industry insiders and turns them into searchable research. Insight Partners led, with existing investors IA Ventures and Crew Capital, and founder and CEO Sagar Kadakia runs the company. The lead investor was a customer before it was a backer. Qualitate says its run rate grew more than tenfold this year and its net revenue retention tops 300% – FinSMEs.

Rebill (Argentina) – $5.4M, pre-Series A, payment infrastructure that lets companies accept local payment methods in multiple countries without setting up a local entity in each. Vercel founder and CEO Guillermo Rauch joined the round, along with SpaceX executives investing personally. Earlier backers include Tiger Global, Y Combinator and Dropbox cofounder Arash Ferdowsi. From January to September 2026, active merchants quadrupled and monthly payment volume grew 3.1x – Startups Latam.

🏛️ Private Equity

Cencora / American Oncology Network (US) – $2.4B enterprise value, majority acquisition. AON is a physician-led network of more than 350 oncology providers in 21 states, and the deal adds 12 states to Cencora’s MSO platform. Cencora already owns about 4% of AON. The price is $2.3B at closing plus up to $100M in contingent payments, and Cencora expects to spend about $1.7B to reach 75% if physicians roll over the rest. This is the drug distributor’s third big specialty-care bet in under two years. The playbook is to buy the clinic so you also sell the drugs – Inquirer.

ENAP / Pluspetrol Ecuador (Chile / Ecuador) – $207M, cross-border acquisition. Chile’s state oil company agreed, through Enap Sipetrol, to buy 100% of Pluspetrol Ecuador B.V., which holds an interest in Block 10 in Pastaza province. The deal would raise ENAP’s Ecuador output 26%, from 27,000 to 34,000 barrels a day, and lift its proven reserves there 34%, from 50M to 67M barrels. Ecuadorian crude already accounts for more than 20% of what ENAP’s Chilean refineries normally process – CNN Chile.

Maximus / Agile Defense (US) – $660M, PE exit to a strategic buyer. Maximus will pay $660M in cash, minus Agile’s debt and certain deal expenses, plus up to $50M more if the business hits revenue milestones in its first year. Agile Defense was founded in 1998, brings about 1,100 cleared personnel and cybersecurity and intelligence-community work, and is backed by Enlightenment Capital. In government contracting, cleared headcount is the scarce asset. You can’t hire 1,100 security clearances overnight, so you buy them – SEC.

📈 Public & Capital Markets

Lycia Therapeutics (US, Nasdaq) – IPO terms set, biotech. The Phase 1 company, which targets allergies and Graves’ disease, plans to offer 14.7M shares at $16 to $18 to raise about $250M at the midpoint, with pricing expected this week under the ticker LYCA. Jefferies, TD Securities, Evercore ISI and Guggenheim lead the book. It would join the 132 IPOs priced so far in 2026, excluding units, and it is a sizable check for a company still in its first human trials – IPOScoop.

Philip Morris International (US, NYSE) – Q3 earnings, consumer staples. Adjusted EPS of $2.36 and revenue of $11.4B both topped estimates, and adjusted operating income passed $5B for the first time. Shares still slipped about 2%, as Goldman’s Bonnie Herzog asked why a beat came with guidance pointing to the lower half of the full-year range. Smoke-free products now make up more than 40% of sales, a big shift for the company Altria spun off in 2008 – Investing.com. Earnings call transcript: Philip Morris tops Q3 2026 estimates, shares fall By Investing.com +2

Berkshire Hathaway (US, NYSE) – stock milestone, conglomerate. Shares hit their first record high since Warren Buffett announced he would step down as CEO, a 17-month wait during which the S&P 500 gained more than 35%. The day before, the stock climbed 1.43% as investors rotated out of AI names into defensive plays, drawn to Berkshire’s $350B cash pile. That’s a long way from the New England textile mill Buffett took over in the 1960s – Yahoo Finance and Brew Markets. Yahoo Financebrewmarkets

📅 ICYMI

Hasbro’s real wizard is a card game. Magic: The Gathering sales topped $600M last quarter, up 34%, and the trading card market is expected to grow from $8.4B last year to nearly $17B by 2035 – Brew Markets.

Lego is growing up. The brand is building products around passions like Formula One, Olivia Rodrigo and bonsai trees instead of demographics, and first-half revenue rose 21% to $6.27B while net profit climbed 32% – The Hustle.

You can trade futures on almost anything in the US except onions. Congress banned onion trading in 1958 after a market-rigging scandal bankrupted farmers, and a group of University of Chicago students is now campaigning to bring it back – Brew Markets.

See you tomorrow,

Katherine Castelán & Jose Kont
The humans behind The Investor Society