Together AI has closed an $800 million Series C at an $8.3 billion post-money valuation, led by Aramco Ventures with participation from Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, NVIDIA, March Capital, Pegatron, and S Ventures (SentinelOne), among others. The round is one of the largest yet for a company positioned squarely in the open source AI infrastructure layer, and it lands at a moment when the economics of running AI at scale have become a defining concern for anyone building on top of frontier models.

The 2026 conference calendar for technology and finance reflects an industry in a transitional phase — neither the expansionary euphoria of the 2021 cycle nor the contraction discipline of 2023, but something more deliberate. Capital is moving again, selectively, and the event calendar tends to follow capital. Where summits cluster, deal flow typically concentrates shortly after. Several themes organize this year’s gathering schedule. Smart urban infrastructure has matured from a speculative vertical into a procurement category — the Barcelona congress is no longer a venue for concept presentations but for municipal contracting decisions with multi-year budget lines behind them.

Something has clearly shifted in the AI video space, and this funding round makes it hard to ignore. Video Rebirth, backed by AMD and a cluster of heavyweight strategic investors across Asia, has closed an $80 million round—quietly stacking another $30 million on top of an already substantial $50 million raise from late last year. But the tone here isn’t startup hype or another generative demo cycle; it feels much closer to infrastructure being laid down, almost like the early cloud days when nobody quite realized how foundational it would become.