{"slug": "why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack", "title": "Why AI's money is moving down the stack", "summary": "Investors are shifting AI funding toward infrastructure companies, with Valar Atomics, a builder of small-modular nuclear reactors, announcing a $1 billion Series B at a $6 billion valuation led by Sequoia, and Mariana Minerals, a critical minerals miner, raising a $310 million Series B led by Khosla Ventures. These investments signal a market move deeper into the AI stack, as AI's compute crisis drives demand for energy and materials. Chad Seiler of KPMG noted that investors increasingly recognize AI as fundamentally an infrastructure story.", "body_md": "I investing might not be all about powerful models and chips anymore.\n\nThe blast radius of rapid AI innovation is starting to extend throughout industries, digging further and further into markets like energy and materials as the industry's so-called \"[five-layer cake](https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/why-ai-may-be-more-like-electricity-than-software)\" continues to bake. Now, investors are starting to put their money where their mouth is.\n\nOn Monday, two early-growth stage startups announced massive funding rounds from some of AI's most prominent investment firms, including Sequoia, a16z and Khosla Ventures. The catch: neither of these startups work directly on AI models or chips.\n\n[Valar Atomics](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/sequoia-leads-1-billion-funding-round-for-nuclear-startup-valar), a company that is building small-modular nuclear reactors, announced a $1 billion Series B funding round, with Bloomberg reporting the valuation to be $6 billion. The company has had previous partnerships with Nvidia, in which it's developing a waterless 30 megawatt AI factory.[Mariana Minerals](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mariana-minerals-raises-310-million-series-b-led-by-khosla-ventures-to-accelerate-critical-minerals-production-302840889.html), a company that mines critical minerals for \"modern energy, AI, and defense,\" raised a $310 million Series B funding round, though the valuation wasn't disclosed. In addition to supporting AI, the company's software, MarianaOS, uses AI and machine learning to cut mining execution timelines in half.\n\n\"Critical minerals are the materials that decide whether America builds its own future or keeps depending on China to build it instead,\" Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, said in Mariana Minerals' announcement.\n\nThese investments are the latest sign that the market is shifting their dollars deeper into the AI stack. Nuclear companies have seen significant traction in recent months, including Antares, which raised [$470 million](https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/27/antares-raises-470m-to-build-nuclear-reactors-for-the-u-s-military/), and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, [which raised $1 billion](https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/30/when-will-fusion-power-startup-commonwealth-fusion-systems-go-public/), both to support the buildout of small nuclear reactors. And on the minerals side, companies like [Terra AI](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/terra-ai-raises-20m-to-accelerate-mineral-and-reservoir-exploration-to-meet-global-critical-mineral-and-energy-demands-302789531.html) and [EnergyX](https://energyx.com/press-release/energyx-eni-strategic-investment/) are also attracting investor attention.\n\nIt comes as no surprise that investors are pointing their funds towards these endeavors. AI has created a compute crisis that drills all the way down the stack, and existing infrastructure is not ready to meet the demand. Along with data centers creating a stark demand for energy, the crunch for compute has led to a hastened buildout of AI data centers, which require critical minerals for chips and other parts of the infrastructure.\n\n\"For the last few years, AI has been defined by models and apps. What's changing is our understanding of where value will be created. Investors increasingly recognize that AI is fundamentally an infrastructure story,\" Chad Seiler, industry leader for KPMG's Technology, Media, and Telecommunications group, told The Deep View. \"The companies that supply the compute, energy, networking, cooling, and industrial capacity required to scale AI may ultimately be just as important as the companies building the models themselves.\"\n\n## Our Deeper *View*\n\nThere is potentially another reason that investing in the foundational elements of AI seems sound to investors: The further down the stack you go, the more stable the investment. Things like energy and critical mineral mining are likely to have longevity and utility beyond AI. Additionally, crisis is the birthplace of invention, and AI is most certainly creating crises. That means that the industry is looking to quickly solve the energy and materials supply chain problems that AI has wrought. And as keen investors know, the best place to put your money is with the people that are solving core problems. All of this to say, even if AI doesn't deliver on its grandiose promises of complete societal transformation, the innovations that emerge as a result of trying to get there could offer immense benefits of their own.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack", "canonical_source": "https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack", "published_at": "2026-08-04 04:01:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-04 04:52:52.792668+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Valar Atomics", "Sequoia", "Mariana Minerals", "Khosla Ventures", "Nvidia", "Vinod Khosla", "Chad Seiler", "KPMG"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/why-ai-s-money-is-moving-down-the-stack.jsonld"}}