MENLO TIMES

ZaiNar , building the foundation layer for physical AI, led by Daniel Jacker, Alexander Hooshmand, Eric Roselli, Philip Kratz, Jake Levy, and the team, has announced  commercial availability of its 5G positioning technology, the first 5G location system that operates entirely independent of device makers, using the network as a sensor (i.e., connectivity signals that devices already transmit) to deliver sub-10cm accuracy at ranges up to 1.5km. The network-side solution delive

Tamarind Bio , developing state-of-the-art molecular AI models usable out of the box, with no ML or infrastructure expertise required, so scientists can focus on drug discovery and research, led by Deniz Kavi and Sherry Liu, has announced  $13.6M fundraise, including a $12M series A led by Dimension Capital , with participation from Y Combinator . As AI becomes embedded in real drug discovery workflows, no longer confined to experimental projects, life sciences organizations

Nimble , real-time intelligence powered by web search agents, Uriel Knorovich , Menachem Salinas, and the team, has raised  $47 Million Series B led by Norwest  with participation from returning investors Target Global , Square Peg , Hetz Ventures , Slow Ventures , R-Squared Ventures , J-Ventures, and InvestInData .  The Missing Infrastructure Consumer search was built for convenience. Enterprises need precision, completeness, and governance. Smarter models don’t fix incomple

Rowspace , the best way for investors to scale their edge with AI, led by Michael Manapat and Yibo Ling, has announced  its launch with $50M in backing from Sequoia , Emergence , Stripe , Conviction, Basis Set , Twine, and angels from across finance. Top investors build an edge over the years through institutional knowledge, memos, models, committee notes, emails, deal histories, and trading data, which captures what worked, what didn’t, and why. At most firms, this knowledge

SolveAI , helping you build enterprise software through conversation, led by Steve Basher and the team, has raised a $45M Series A led by GV  and a previously unannounced $5M pre-seed round led by Accel . Northzone , Mantis VC , and Never Lift  also participated in the round, along with angel investors including Mike LoSapio, CISO of Palantir, Pushmeet Kohli, and Olivier Godement. The funding will support team growth, expand global enterprise partnerships, and enhance the pla

Profound , an optimization platform for AI and LLM search for brands, led by James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs, has raised  a $96M Series C funding at a $1B valuation, led by  Lightspeed Venture Partners , alongside Sequoia Capital ,  Kleiner Perkins ,  Evantic ,  Saga Ventures , and  South Park Commons . Introducing Profound Agents Profound gives marketing teams AI-powered visibility into brand mentions, sentiment, and performance. Previously, turning insights into action re

BeyondMath , offering the world's first foundational AI model of physics, led by Alan Patterson, Darren Garvey, Wasil Rezk, David Sharp, and Dan Horner, has closed  a $10 million Seed extension led by Cambridge Innovation Capital , alongside existing investors including UP.Partners , Insight Partners , and InMotion Ventures . This closes the Seed Round at $18.5 million.  Engineering and industrial companies face mounting pressure to design increasingly complex systems with gr

Basis , building the next era of accounting with agentic AI, led by Matt Harpe, Mitchell Troyanovsky, and the team, has raised  $100 million led by Accel  alongside GV  (Google Ventures). Basis was founded on the belief that AI agents will soon become central to knowledge work, with accounting emerging as one of the first and most critical domains. Structured, high-stakes, and essential to every business, accounting remains one of the most underbuilt areas in technology. Thre

Straion , building AI coding agents that follow your rules, led by Lukas Holzer, Katrin Freihofner, and Fabian Friedl, has raised   €1.1 million in seed funding led by Marathon Venture Capital . The company previously raised €280,000 in pre-seed support through government grants and the AWS startup program. As organizations increasingly adopt AI coding agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and Cursor, Straion provides the critical layer of organizational context that en

VoiceLine , transforming the efficiency of field sales operations through cutting-edge voice collaboration and AI technology, led by Nicolas Höflinger, Sebastian Pinkas, and the team, has closed  a Series A funding round of €10 million led by Alstin Capital  and Peak Capital , with participation from existing investors Scalehouse Capital , Venture Stars , and NAP . With Series A funding, VoiceLine will scale its AI platform, expand internationally, and accelerate growth acros

Rapidata , a company that accelerates AI development through scalable, on-demand data labeling via digital ads, led by Jason Corkill , Luca Strebel , Marian Kannwischer , Mads Alber , and the team, has raised  an $8.5 million seed round co-led by Canaan Partners  and IA Ventures with participation from Acequia Capital  and BlueYard . Rapidata addresses a key AI bottleneck: the slow manual collection of human feedback used to train and improve models. Its platform provides fas

Cognee , AI Agents that adapt and learn from your feedback, led by Vasilije Markovic and the team, has raised  a $7.5 million seed round led by  Pebblebed , with participation from  42CAP  and  Vermilion Ventures , and angel investors from  Google DeepMind ,  n8n , and  Snowplow . Cognee was founded in 2024 in Berlin to address why AI agents forget context between sessions despite patched RAG pipelines and vector stores. Drawing on cognitive science and research from the Univ

Grotto AI , an AI that supercharges leasing teams in the moments that matter most, led by Nick Deveau and Ben Epstein, has raised  a $10 million seed round led by  ICONIQ . Advisors and angel investors also include industry veterans David Dear (BILT, formerly Equity Residential), Caren Maio (Co-founder, Get100 and Funnel Leasing), and Avi Dorfman (Co-founder, Compass), with participation from Asymmetric Capital Partners . While many industries attempt to replace frontline wor

Stacks , helping reinvent the financial close, led by Albert Malikov  and the team, has raised  $23M Series A led by Lightspeed , with EQT Ventures , General Catalyst , and S16VC  doubling down. The round comes less than a year after Stacks’ $12 million seed financing led by General Catalyst, underscoring the company’s rapid traction and momentum. Finance is becoming the next major enterprise function to be rebuilt with AI, following multibillion-dollar transformations in cus

Flinn , leading the way in medtech compliance, led by Markus Mueller, Bastian Krapinger-Ruether, Hasib Samad, MBA, and the team, has raised $20 million in additional funding led by HV Capital , followed by US-based healthcare specialist BHI - Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments , with continued support from existing investors Cherry Ventures , Speedinvest , and SquareOne . With the new funding, Flinn will expand its platform across the full MedTech and Pharma lifecycle, from r

Unicity Labs , building Agentic marketplaces for machine-speed commerce, led by Mike Gault and the team, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Tawasal Al Kaleej , a Middle East-based communications super app, and Outlier Ventures , a leading Web3 early-stage investor. The funding aligns with the emergence of AI agents as economic participants, with the global agentic AI market projected to exceed $100 billion by 2032. Unici

Temporal , revolutionizing backend software engineering, led by Samar Abbas and Maxim Fateev, has raised  a $300M Series D at a $5B post-money valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners , Sapphire Ventures , Sequoia Capital , Index , Tiger, GIC , Madrona , and Amplify. Raghu Raghuram  joins as a board observer. AI and other long-running processes expose the limits of traditional backends. Durable Execution preserves state, reco

Render , an intuitive infrastructure to scale any app or agent from your first user to your billionth, led by Anurag Goel , Meagan Gamache , Michael Greer , Eli Staykova , and Shuting Zhang , has raised  $100M in an extension of its Series C, valuing the company at $1.5B. Led by Georgian , who also led the Series C, the round includes strong participation from all the major partners, including Addition, Bessemer , General Catalyst , and 01A , and brings the total funding to $

Koyeb , a high-performance serverless infrastructure for intensive workloads, led by Yann Léger, Edouard Bonlieu, Bastien Chatelard, and the team, has entered  into a definitive agreement to join  Mistral AI  to advance cutting-edge AI infrastructure. Koyeb will bring its platform, technology, and team to accelerate  Mistral Compute  offering. Compute is designed to provide leading teams across the globe with the same state-of-the-art infrastructure Mistral AI uses to build,

Braintrust , the AI observability platform helping teams measure, evaluate, and improve AI in production, led by Ankur Goyal and the team, has raised  $80M in Series B funding led by ICONIQ , with participation from prior investors Andreessen Horowitz , Greylock , Elad Gil, Basecase Capital , and others. Like many founders, building Braintrust came from a personal pain point. While at Impira and Figma, internal tools had to be created just to run evals. That repeated experien

Sphinx , the company building browser-native compliance agents for financial institutions, led by Alexandre Berkovic and Chrisjan Wust, has raised a $7.1 million seed round led by Cherry Ventures , with participation from Y Combinator , Rebel Fund , Deel Ventures, and Singularity Capital. Unlike traditional RegTech platforms, Sphinx does not require teams to adopt a new system. Its AI agents operate directly within existing tools, case management systems, third-party portals,

ScyAI , building AI-powered risk intelligence for companies with large real asset portfolios, led by Bernhard Rannegger and Alex Sidorenko, has raised a €2 million pre-seed round from AENU  and PT1 . The round also attracted unicorn founders, including David Helgason (Unity), Maex Ament and Philip Stehlik (Taulia, Centrifuge), alongside the angel investor alliance Better Ventures .  For manufacturers, energy producers, and companies with large physical asset portfolios, clima

Neysa , purpose-built systems and services to help you accelerate AI adoption and integrate AI seamlessly into your operations, led by co-founders Sharad Sanghi, Anindya Das, and the team, has announced that private equity funds affiliated with Blackstone  (collectively, “Blackstone”) and co-investors have entered into definitive agreements to invest in Neysa, enabling a $1.2 billion capital raise. Blackstone and co-investors have provided equity capital of up to $600 million

Sitegeist , delivering easy-to-use, modular construction robots that boost productivity, led by Claus Carste, Nicola Kolb, Julian Hoffmann, and Dr. Lena-Marie Pätzmann, has raised  €4M in a pre-seed funding round co-led by  b2venture  and  OpenOcean , with participation from UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators  and several angel investors, including Verena Pausder, Lea-Sophie Cramer, Alexander Schwörer, and additional strategic backers from the construction and robotics sec

Simile AI , a simulation platform for human behavior, led by Joon Sung Park, Michael Bernstein, Lainie Yallen, Percy Liang, and the team, has raised  $100 million in Series A led by Index Ventures with participation from Hanabi Capital , A* , Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) , Andrej Karpathy , Fei-Fei Li , Adam D'Angelo , Guillermo Rauch , Scott Belsky , and others. Joon, an oil painter turned entrepreneur, combines creativity with operational excellence, ambition with realism, a

Simmetry.ai , providing high-quality, annotated training data for your machine learning applications, led by Kai von Szadkowski, Anton Elmiger, and Prof. Dr. Stefan Stiene, has raised €330,000 from NBank , the investment and development bank of the German state of Lower Saxony, as part of the High-Tech Incubator (HTI) accelerator programme. simmetry.ai generates photorealistic, annotated synthetic data to train computer vision models for robotics, autonomous machines, and in

Didero , the leading AI procurement agent, led by Tim Spencer, Lorenz Pallhuber, Tom Petit, and the team, has raised  a $30 million Series A financing round co-led by Chemistr y and Headline , with participation from  M12 , Microsoft’s Venture Fund. The Problem - Procurement teams at manufacturers and distributors handle thousands of supplier interactions across email, ERP systems, and spreadsheets, with much of the work still done manually. The Solution - AI agents work with

Blockbrain , where AI-powered process automation meets knowledge management, boosting efficiency, security, and profitability, led by Antonius Gress, Mattias Protzmann, and Nam Hai Ngo, has raised  €17.5 million in Series A funding led by Alstin Capital  and 13books Capital , with participation from the HARTING Family Foundation . Existing investors Giesecke+Devrient Ventures , Landesbank Baden-Württemberg Ventures , and Mätch VC  have also increased their financial commitmen

Meridian , the AI-powered modeling layer for Excel that automates the work behind financial models, helping teams move faster without losing precision, led by John Ling, George Fang, and Zach Kirshner, has raised  $17 million in seed funding, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz  and The General Partnership , to bring Meridian to more finance teams. Why Meridian Was Built Excel remains foundational in finance, but manual modeling is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone. Existing

Trener Robotics , building the foundational intelligence layer for software-defined robotics, led by Dr. Asad Tirmizi, Dr. Lars Tingelstad, and others, has raised  a $32 million Series A round co-led by Engine Ventures  and IAG Capital Partners , with participation from strategic investors Cadence  and Geodesic Capital , through Nikon's NFocus Fund.  Shanda Ventures , Emergent Ventures , Fitz Gate Ventures , Techable VC , Radius Capital Ventures , and Raisewell Ventures  also

Clearly AI , automating security and privacy assessments, reducing backlogs, and improving visibility without sacrificing trust, led by Emily Choi-Greene and Joe Choi-Greene, has raised  $8.4 million in Seed funding from Basis Set Ventures , Crosspoint Capital Partners , Argon Ventures , Ritual Capital , and Y Combinator . Security teams are facing increasing strain. Each new feature, third-party vendor, and AI deployment demands thorough evaluation across security, privacy,

driveblocks , unlocking off-road autonomy through advanced perception, led by Dr. Alexander Wischnewski, Dr. Stephan Matz, Leonhard Hermansdorfer, Dr. Thomas Herrmann, Dr. Felix Nobis, and Dr. Tim Stahl, has raised  a 3.5M Pre-Series A investment led by FORWARD.one , a European industrial technology venture capital firm, and with strong participation of existing investors Bayern Kapital , rethink Ventures  and angel investor Joachim Drees. The funding will accelerate product

Entire , building the world’s next developer platform where humans and agents collaborate, learn, and ship together, led by Thomas Dohmke, and others, has announced  its launch with $60 million seed investment led by Felicis , with support from Madrona , M12 , Basis Set , 20VC , Cherry Ventures , Picus Capital , and Global Founders Capital . Entire is further backed by a slate of international investors, including Gergely Orosz, Theo Browne, Jerry Yang, Olivier Pomel, Garry T

Allonic , reimagining how robotics are made and where they can go, led by Benedek Tasi, Dávid Pelyva, David Holló, and others, has raised $7.2M in pre-seed funding, led by Visionaries Club  and with backing from Day One Capital , RoboStrategy , Prototype, SDAC Ventures , and TinyVC . The round also includes more than a dozen angel investors from leading US and European tech companies, including OpenAI and Hugging Face, as well as top research institutions such as ETH Zurich a

Dragonfly AI , helping you maximize your omnichannel creative performance, powered by a patented biological algorithm, has launched  two new creative effectiveness metrics, Emotion and Memory, expanding its patented AI platform beyond Attention measurement to give brands a more complete understanding of what drives performance. Each metric unlocks a distinct capability. Combined with Dragonfly AI’s Attention metric, they form a three-part framework that can improve response r

Naboo , an AI-powered corporate events (MICE) procurement platform, led by Maxime Eduardo, Antoine Servant, Lucien Bredin, and Jean-Louis Villeminot, has raised  a $70M Series B led by  Lightspeed Venture Partners , with participation from its existing investors  Notion Capital , ISAI  and Ternel , less than a year after a €20M Series A (February 2025). The announcement coincides with the opening of a New York office as Naboo’s new North American hub following Montreal, build

Gather AI , bringing deep learning, autonomy, and computer vision to the supply chain, led by Sankalp Arora, Daniel Maturana, Geetesh Dubey, and Andrew Hoffman, has raised  $40M in Series B funding led by  Smith Point Capital Management . Activity between the receiving and shipping docks is often only partially visible. While systems track planned operations, the true flow of goods through the facility remains largely hidden, an insight Physical AI is designed to reveal. Phys

Goodfire AI , a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems, led by Eric Ho, Daniel Balsam, Tom McGrath, and others, has announced  a $150 million Series B funding round at a $1.25 billion valuation led by B Capital , with participation from Juniper Ventures , DFJ Growth , Salesforce Ventures , Menlo Ventures , Lightspeed Venture Partners , South Park Commons , Wing Venture Capital , Eric Schmidt, and others. Goodfire was founded t

Sapiom , giving AI agents trusted access to the API economy, led by Ilan Zerbib, has raised  a $15.75M Seed round, led by Accel , with participation from Gradient , Array Ventures , Okta Ventures , Menlo Ventures , Anthropic , Coinbase Ventures , Formus Capital , and Operator Collective . For two decades, the internet economy has been built for humans; interfaces, authentication, payments, and risk models all assume a person is present to sign up, manage access, and approve s

ElevenLabs , an AI research and product company transforming how we interact with technology, led by Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, has secured  $500 million in a Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital , with Andrew Reed joining the board. Andreessen Horowitz  quadrupled down while ICONIQ  tripled down, both with significant super pro-rata participation. New investors Lightspeed Venture Partners , Evantic Capital , and BOND  are also joining the round. Existing

Fibr AI , empowering marketers to focus on what matters, led by Ankur 'AJ' Goyal and Pritam Roy, has raised  $7.5 million in a seed funding round led by Accel , with support from WillowTree Ventures , MVP Ventures , and some incredible operator angels. This funding represents validation of a future built around intelligent, adaptive, and context-aware web experiences. It enables a shift beyond static pages toward dynamic, personalized agents at every URL, adapting in real tim

Resolve AI , helping you resolve incidents, optimize costs, and code with production context using AI that works across your code, infra, and telemetry, led by Mayank Agarwal and Spiros Xanthos, has secured  $125 Million Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners , with pro-rata or above participation from Greylock , Unusual Ventures , Artisanal , and A* . The non-blended Series A round values Resolve AI at $1B, bringing the total funding to more than $150M. Resolve

Duna , the AI-native platform that accelerates business onboarding, automates manual work, and grows revenue, led by David Schreiber and Duco van Lanschot, has announced  a €30 Million Series A funding round led by CapitalG , Alphabet’s independent growth fund. Existing investors Index Ventures , Puzzle Ventures , and Snowflake Chairman Frank Slootman also participated in the round.  Founded in 2023 and based in Germany and the Netherlands, the company was started by former S

Midship , the company on a mission to augment audit professionals with AI, led by Kieran Taylor, Aahel Iyer, and Max Maio, has secured   $4.15 million in seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures , with participation from Seguin Ventures  and Y Combinator . SOX compliance is mandatory for public companies, yet testing remains largely manual. Audit teams spend months gathering evidence, testing controls, and assembling documentation, pulling high-impact teams away from core work a

From Left to Right: Dmitry Zakharov (CEO and Co-founder),  Dima Ivanouski (CRO and Co-founder), David Klassen (CTO and Co-founder), Anna Bunina - HRD. Naoma , an AI video sales agent that runs personalized demo calls 24/7 in any language, led by Dmitry Zakharov, Dima Ivanouski, David Klassen, and Anna Bunina, has announced the launch of the first AI video sales agent that runs instant personalized demo calls, with no sales representative required. The launch is supported by a

Linda AI , an AI receptionist for dental clinics, led by India Healy O’Connor, Portia Healy O'Connor, and Lucio Tudisco, has raised a €2.6M ($3M) pre-seed round led by 6 Degrees Capital . Linda AI was founded by sisters India and Portia Healy O’Connor, repeat founders and former Goldman Sachs professionals with early exposure to healthcare operations, alongside Lucio Tudisco, a former Amazon, Patreon, and Circle engineer with deep enterprise systems experience. Voice AI adopt

Phylo , collaborative agents designed for biologists to make more discoveries, faster, led by Kexin Huang, Yuanhao Qu, Jure Leskovec, Le Cong, and others, has announced  Biomni Lab and a seed funding of $13.5 million co-led by a16z  and Menlo Ventures ' Anthology Fund with Anthropic.  Zetta , Conviction , SV Angel , Valkyrie also supported, along with world-class angel investors. Scientists pursue biology to understand life and eliminate disease, yet fragmented, manual workfl

Optivian , an AI sales execution platform, led by Roope Heinila, Visa-Pekka Laurila, Jesse Haka, Johanna Rauhala, and Duy Duong, has emerged  out of stealth, backed by a $2M pre-seed round led by  Failup Ventures  and Tero Ojanperä, former Executive Chair and co-founder of Silo AI, which was acquired by AMD in Europe's largest AI exit. Ojanperä joins the board alongside Topias Soininen, General Partner at Failup Ventures. Enterprise sales have long scaled by adding headcount,

Arbor , the AI research platform for enterprise operations, led by Veronica Ma, Kelly Zhou, and Ashish Dsa, has raised  $6.3 million in combined seed and pre-seed funding. The seed round was led by  645 Ventures , with participation from  Next Play Ventures  (led by LinkedIn Executive Chairman and former CEO Jeff Weiner),  Chaac Ventures ,  Comma Capital , and notable angel investors, along with a previously unannounced pre-seed round. Those closest to enterprise operations h

Polaron , harnessing the power of AI to accelerate the development of the materials that are critical to modern life, led by Dr Isaac Squires, Dr Steve Kench, and Dr Sam Cooper, has raised  $8 million led by Racine2 , an impact focused fund led by Serena and Makesense, with co-investment from  Speedinvest  and  Futurepresent , plus angel backing from senior figures across the Industrial AI ecosystem.  The capital will support the expansion of Polaron’s engineering team, accel