AI News: April 22, 2026

1. Project Prometheus Nears $10B Round at $38B Valuation With BlackRock and JPMorgan

Project Prometheus. Jeff Bezos’s physical-AI lab is closing a roughly $10 billion round at a $38 billion valuation with JPMorgan and BlackRock among the lead investors, per FT and Bloomberg reporting. The deal, if finalized, takes total funding past $16 billion — including the $6.2 billion raised at the November 2025 launch — and marks Bezos’s first operational role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021. Prometheus is building models that understand the laws of physics for industrial, engineering, and manufacturing use cases, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich and Vikram Bajaj as co-CEO. Reporting also surfaces a separate Bezos effort to raise up to $100 billion for a holding company that would buy industrial businesses so their operational data feeds Prometheus’s models. Source

2. SoundHound Buys LivePerson for $250M to Consolidate Conversational AI

SoundHound AI. SoundHound agreed to an all-stock acquisition of LivePerson for roughly $250 million including debt, combining SoundHound’s voice stack with LivePerson’s Conversational Cloud. Management said the combined entity serves 25 of the Fortune 100 and 12 of the top 15 global banks, and projected 2027 revenue of $350–$400M with upside to $500M via cross-sell. The market wasn’t impressed — SoundHound shares fell 5.65% on 107% of average volume — reflecting concerns about dilution and integration risk in a space where hyperscalers and model labs are moving fast on voice agents. Source

3. AcuityMD Raises $80M Series C to Push Agentic AI Into MedTech Sales

AcuityMD. AcuityMD closed an $80M Series C led by existing investor StepStone, with Benchmark, Redpoint, ICONIQ, and Atreides participating, at a $955M valuation. The company supports 16 of the top 20 MedTech firms and says it has helped customers identify $34B in pipeline. The new round funds three priorities: agentic AI for sales reps, leaders, and marketing; deepening its MedTech ontology; and extending the platform beyond commercial teams. It’s a concrete signal of how narrowly focused vertical agents are finding paying enterprise customers. Source

4. Reliable Robotics Lands $160M at Near-$1B Valuation for FAA-Certifiable Autonomous Aircraft

Reliable Robotics. The Mountain View autonomy company raised $160M led by Nimble Partners — with Eclipse, Lightspeed, Coatue, Pathbreaker, and new investors including Island Green, Cox’s Socium Ventures, AE Ventures (Boeing), RTX Ventures, and Sumitomo’s Presidio — at a valuation approaching $1 billion. The capital scales production of the Reliable Autonomy System, pitched as the first FAA-certifiable system for fully automated aircraft operation, with over 200 commitments from commercial and military customers already on the books and selection into the DOT “eIPP” advanced aviation pilot program. Source

5. NeoCognition Raises $40M Seed to Build Agents That Learn Like Humans

NeoCognition. Ohio State AI researcher Yu Su pulled in a $40M seed co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst, with Vista Equity Partners joining and angels Lip-Bu Tan (Intel CEO) and Ion Stoica (Databricks co-founder) on the cap table. The pitch is explicit about the reliability gap — Su says current agents complete intended tasks about 50% of the time — and aims to close it with self-learning agents that specialize via autonomous domain exposure rather than static tool schemas. Source

6. European Commission Earmarks €63.2M for AI in Health and Online Safety

European Commission. The Commission on April 21 opened €63.2 million in calls to back AI innovation in health and online safety, part of the post-AI-Act support scaffolding. The funding sits alongside a live AI Act Service Desk and Single Information Platform offering an interactive Compliance Checker and direct channel to AI Office experts, with market surveillance authority designations still uneven across member states as the August 2 implementation date approaches. Source