Code Metal’s $125M Standard — Trustworthy AI Code 🔒

AI Funds Has Now Reached The Trillions, Investors Demand Progress

Author

Lauren Brandt
February 20, 2026

Hey there,

AI is now ran by competitions on advancement, billion funds, custom chips, and verifiable code surging simultaneously. These are for the teams that move fast while still proving trust and ROI.

Stay close to the foundation and the hardware, or risk competing from the sidelines.

AI TOOL SPOTLIGHT

Jasper

Jasper is an AI agent workspace for marketing teams, combining more than 100 AI’s and content pipelines to automate planning, creation, and publishing while keeping brand voice consistent.

Best for

  • Marketing teams needing fast, high-quality, localized content production, with proven time savings like 10,000+ hours annually for enterprise clients.

  • Teams across performance, products, brands, contents, PR/comms, and field marketing for automating SEO’s, campaigns, and personalization.

How to use it

  • Use Canvas & Studio; Jasper IQ to plan campaigns and build workflows.

  • Set up automated pipelines for blogs, ads, pages, and press releases.

  • Connect Jasper to your data and channels to personalize and distribute.

When not to use it
Avoid it for non-marketing or deeply technical analytics work, where specialized AI or data tools are without manual interaction.

Pro tip
Turn on and apply the ‘Trust Foundation’ features to meet enterprise security and governance needs while you expand AI usage.

FEATURE STORY

📈 Astounding AI Funds: Dwarfs Apollo, Manhattan in Trillions

Al Jazeera visualizes AI's $2.5T 2026 forecast exploding 44% ‘YoY’ per Gartner, competing with Manhattan Project ($36B), Apollo ($250B), and US Highways ($620B) combined in just over a decade via private capital. US dominates with $471B (62% global) since 2013, fueling 6,956 startups; infrastructure claims $1.37T lead.

Key Takeaways:

  • 💰 Trillion Surge: $1.6T corporate AI invested (2013-2024) now surges to $2.5T total 2026 forecast, per Gartner and Stanford Index.

  • 🌍 US Hegemony: US leads with a whopping $471B (62% global share) since 2013 fueling 6,956 startups, China trails at $119B.

  • 🏗️ Infra Dominates: $1.37T infrastructure drives 2026 cost ahead of $589B services and $452B software, powers data centers.

  • 🔒 Security Rises: AI cybersecurity hits $51B allocation with models at $26B in 2026, addressing current risks amid explosive growth.

🔧 Taalas Bags $169M to Forge AI Chips Challenging Nvidia

Reuters reports Toronto startup Taalas raising $169M (total $219M from Quiet Capital, Fidelity) for custom silicon hardwiring AI models like Meta's Llama, delivering faster and cheaper inference than Nvidia via SRAM-heavy design akin to Groq and Cerebras; CEO Bajic highlights speed from bespoke of ‘100-layer chips.’

Key Takeaways:

  • 🛠️ Custom Chip Edge: Hardwires into AI models onto silicon with SRAM for faster, cheaper inference than conventional GPUs.

  • 🪙 Funding Momentum: $169M fresh raise totals $219M, after Nvidia's $20B Groq IP license reigniting inference competition.

  • ⚡ Speed Secret: Bespoke design on 100-layer chip is customized in 2 TSMC months compared; Nvidia's 6-month Blackwell fab.

  • 🔮 Frontier Ambition: Running on simpler models now, plans a GPT-5.2 -processor by end-2026 amid Groq/Cerebras rivalry.

🔒 Code Metal’s $1.25B Valuation & $125M for Trusted AI Code

Code Metal secures $125M Series B led by Salesforce Ventures (Accel, RTX, others joining) plus ex-Tableau CEO Ryan Aytay as President/COO, bridging AI code generation's trust gap via neuro-symbolic verification for defense, automotive, semis—proven with U.S. Air Force, Toshiba, L3Harris, RTX customers demanding compliant, production-ready translation.

Key Takeaways:

  • 🔬 Trust Bridge: Neuro-symbolic AI mathematically proves code correctness for mission-critical safety/compliance beyond generation.

  • 💼 Funding Fuel: $125M scales engineering, partnerships post-Series A, hitting unicorn status amid defense adoption surge.

  • 👨‍💼 Exec Boost: Ryan Aytay (ex-Tableau CEO) drives ops in defense and auto, accelerate GTM for hardware optimizations.

  • ⚙️ Customer Wins: The U.S. Air Force, RTX, L3Harris, Toshiba translates and optimizes code for regulated environments.

Rapid Fire Resources

PR & Media Outreach

AI-assisted targeting and tracking of pitches.

AI Media Outreach

AI press release generation and journalist matching.

Media Monitoring

AI crisis detection with React Score analytics.

Journalist Discovery

AI personalized outreach and media list automation.

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Why It Matters

If used correctly, this wave of progressive infrastructure and trusted code platforms are able turn your AI stack into a durable system, having faster models, safer automation, and cleaner audits in even the most regulated arenas.

Sustainable executions will be proof, not promises, that your AI can be trusted.

Until next time,

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