The i-Index ranks sectors. This ranks ideas — the lanes where several separate companies raised money for the same thing. Ranked by how many companies, not by how much money, because one $2bn round can make any lane look like the story of the quarter.
If you are raising, this is the answer to “am I alone in this, or is a partner already looking at three of us?” If you are investing, it is a comp set you did not have to assemble.
30 Apr – 28 Jul · 45 companies raised · 6 contested lanes · rumours excluded · share ↓
We have been collecting since 17 Jul 2026, so this window is only as deep as that — it is everything we hold, not ninety days of it.
3 companies · $2bn reported
3 companies · $500m reported
3 companies · $100m reported
Machines that move, pick and handle physical goods inside warehouses, factories and fulfilment centres.
Builds industrial robots powered by AI ('physical AI').
TechCrunch ↗Builds industrial humanoid robots.
Tech.eu ↗Warehouse robots that can pick and handle items they have not been trained on beforehand.
Tech.eu ↗Small reactors built in a factory and shipped to where the power is needed, rather than constructed once, on site, as a bespoke power station.
Compact nuclear reactor technology; its demonstration reactor recently reached criticality.
Tech in Asia ↗Compact nuclear power systems that replace steam turbines with jet-engine-style high-temperature turbines.
EU-Startups ↗Portable nuclear reactors built on barges, towed to wherever power is needed.
TechCrunch ↗Software that carries out a multi-step business task end to end — booking, onboarding, chasing, resolving — instead of answering a question and handing back.
Enterprise software with AI agents that run customer onboarding and service workflows inside banks and insurers.
Inc42 ↗Autonomous AI agents that run core business workflows for enterprises.
UKTN ↗Payment rails built for AI agents that buy and sell on their owner's behalf.
TechCrunch ↗Cutting the cost of answering each request once a model is live — compression, serving infrastructure and the arithmetic of inference, as distinct from training.
AI model-compression technology that makes large AI models run faster and cheaper for enterprises.
EU-Startups ↗Infrastructure that runs AI models faster and more cheaply when they are answering live requests.
TechCrunch ↗Refuelling, repositioning and powering satellites that are already up there, instead of replacing them.
Helping a shopper find the right thing, and helping the retailer describe it — search, listings and product data.
We hold a list of 36ideas and the words that identify each one, and a company joins a lane when our one-line description of it matches. The alternative — letting an algorithm group the descriptions by shared vocabulary — was built first and thrown away: it proposed a lane called “scale” containing a farm-waste plant, a gene-therapy company and a quantum computer, and it merged AI agents with estate agents. A machine still proposes candidates; a person decides what gets a name.
The count is of companies, never of news stories. A round reported by two outlets on two days is one company in one lane. Money is the sum of what each company's most recent report said — never added up across repeat sightings, which would inflate it.
A company can be in two lanes at once — a payments rail built for AI agents is both. That is deliberate, and it means there is no total to take a share of. So this page counts and adds, and never says “X% of deals”. The eighteen sectors are the mutually-exclusive classification; these are not.
Medals need enough companies in the window that a quiet fortnight cannot reorder the table, and enough lanes with 3 or more companies that coming first means something. Below either, the lanes are still listed — as a tally, with no medals and no ranking claim.
The list of lanes grows as the market shows us new ones, and this table is recomputed from it every time the site is rebuilt — so adding a lane can make it appear in past windows too. That is the honest behaviour (the companies were always there; we had no name for what they shared), but it means this is a live view and not a fixed historical record. Lexicon v1, 36 lanes.
Every figure is what a news outlet reported, not a verified or audited number. Rounds tagged “rumoured” are excluded entirely. This page is general information — not investment advice, and not a recommendation of any company on it. Spotted a lane we have missed, or a company in the wrong one? Tell us.