Last week of October: physical AI and prediction markets lead Crunchbase's biggest-rounds list

Crunchbase News runs a weekly feature on the ten largest announced US funding rounds. In the edition published at the end of October 2026, physical AI and prediction markets led the lineup, with Bedrock Robotics among the names. Earlier editions of the same feature had quite different leaders: AI and energy in early October, then biotech, insurance and AI in mid-month.

The feature is paired with a separate board tracking $100 million-plus venture deals to US companies. That threshold shows where market attention sits — the very top of the deal stack — while the leading sector rotates week to week, a sign that sector appetite now turns faster than most founders' fundraising cycles.

Of the two leading themes this week, only one travels to Vietnam. Physical AI sits inside factories, warehouses and quality inspection — exactly the part of the economy where Vietnamese angels have a due-diligence edge, because they know industrial buyers and can verify a purchase order in an afternoon. The practical consequence: for hardware startups, an angel cheque should come with a follow-on reserve at least equal to the initial cheque, and the next tranche should be tied to a paid factory order, not a pilot demo. Prediction markets, by contrast, run into Vietnam's betting rules; the model should not be copied over simply because it is raising large rounds in the US.