MENLO TIMES

Stuut AI , an AI coworker that autonomously handles collections, cash application, payments, and deductions across SMS, email, and voice, led by Tarek Alaruri, Miraj Mohsin, and Ben Winter, has secured $29.5M in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Activant Capital , Khosla Ventures , 1984.vc , Page One Ventures , Vesey Ventures , Carya Venture Partners , and Valley Ventures. Companies lose up to 5% of EBITDA to manual AR tasks. Traditional so

NcodiN , the deep-tech startup pioneering optical interposer technology with integrated nanolasers, led by Francesco Manegatti, Bruno Garbin, Fabrice Raineri, Yacine Halioua, and Carlo Guareschi, has secured  €16 million in an oversubscribed Seed financing round led by MIG Capital , with participation from Maverick Silicon , PhotonVentures , and Verve Ventures , alongside continued support from existing backers Elaia , Earlybird , and OVNI . To strengthen its foundation, Ncod

Suno , building a revolutionary creative platform powered by the world's best music model, led by Mikey Shulman, Martin Camacho, and Georg Kucsko, has secured  $250M Series C at a $2.45B post-money valuation, led by Menlo Ventures , with participation from NVentures  (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Hallwood Media , Lightspeed , and Matrix.  Music has always been humanity’s most powerful form of expression, yet creating it has often been inaccessible. Suno is changing that: ov

Jiga , an AI-native platform transforming the entire sourcing workflow, led by Adar Hay, Assaf Geuz, and Yonatan Wolowelsky, has closed a $12M Series A led by Aleph , with participation from Symbol  and Y Combinator . The team has spent years solving sourcing challenges, streamlining RFQ workflows, standardizing drawings, and enabling direct manufacturer communication, to ensure custom parts procurement no longer slows innovation in rockets, robots, satellites, and other cutt

Maxima , maxizing every company’s long-term financial performance by making their financial data accurate, accessible, and actionable through real-time accounting, led by Yogi Goel, Akshaya Srivatsa, and Jack Liao, has announced $41 million in Seed and Series A funding, led by Redpoint , Kleiner Perkins , and Audacious Ventures . The accounting function is under unprecedented strain: record-high restatements, record-low talent inflow, and rising complexity across standards an

Automat , simplifying business process automation, led by Gautam Bose and Lucas Ochoa, has raised  a $15.5M Series A led by  Felicis , with participation from  Initialized ,  Khosla Ventures , and  Y Combinator , with follow-on from K5 Global  and Input Capital , bringing the total capital raised to $19.25M. Automat delivers a simple way to build AI agents that operate computers like humans, offering a modern alternative to legacy RPA tools. Operators can demonstrate workflow

Agentio , the AI-native platform for creator advertising, led by Jonathan Meyers , Arthur Leopold , Catherine Etter Bailey , Hilary Anne Hyman , and others, has raised a $40 million Series B led by Forerunner, with continued backing from Benchmark , Craft Ventures , AlleyCorp  and other leading investors, bringing the total funds raised to $56 million and valuing the company at $340 million, just 2 years after launching the platform and following 5x year-over-year growth. Cre

Sphere , the AI-native cross-border compliance engine, led by Nicholas Rudder, has raised $21 million in Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Y Combinator  and Felicis Ventures . The raise reflects rising demand for scalable tax solutions as companies globalize earlier and face increasing regulatory complexity. Regulators are tightening enforcement, EU authorities now require platforms like Stripe and Adyen to report tax evasion, and many countries a

Peec AI , the marketing platform built for the age of AI search, led by Marius Meiners, Tobias Siwonia, and Daniel Drabo, Peec AI has raised  a $21 million in Series A, led by European VC firm Singular , with participation from Antler , Combination VC , identity.vc , and S20. The round follows the seed financing led by 20VC in July 2025 and brings total funding to $29 million, marking one of the largest Series A financings in AI search to date. AI search is becoming the new d

PowerLattice , the company reimagining power delivery for next-generation AI accelerators, led by Dr. Peng Zou, Gang Ren, and Sujith Dermal, has announced its emergence from stealth with $25 million in Series A funding jointly led by Playground Global  and Celesta Capital . The company’s power-delivery chiplet tightly couples power and compute, cutting total power needs by over 50% and effectively doubling performance. PowerLattice has raised $31 million to date. AI accelerat

Luminal , compiling AI models to give you the fastest, highest throughput inference cloud in the world, led by Joe Fioti, Matthew Gunton, and Jake Stevens, has secured  a $5.3 million seed round led by Felicis Ventures , with incredible angels like Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and many more. Compute demand is soaring, and chips are advancing faster than ever. But software isn’t keeping pace, leaving large portions of modern accelerators underutilized. Reaching peak performan

Sakana AI , building a world-class AI research lab in Tokyo, led by David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito, has raised 20 Billion Yen (135 million US Dollars) from new and existing investors, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group  (MUFG), Khosla Ventures , Factorial, Macquarie Capital , Fundomo , Mouro Capital , New Enterprise Associates , Geodesic Capital , Lux Capital , Ora Global , MPower Partners , Shikoku Electric Power , and In-Q-Tel (IQT) . Record levels of capital are

Runlayer , making enterprise AI secure, compliant, and fully connected, led by Andy Berman, Tal Peretz, and Vitor Balocco, has secured  $11 million seed round from Khosla Ventures  and Felicis . Teams are increasingly wiring their preferred AI tools directly into production databases via MCP, just like thousands of others. But with more than 18,000 MCP servers in the wild, an estimated 10% are outright malicious, and most of the rest remain exploitable. Enterprises face a dan

AirOps , the only platform that takes you from insights to action to increase your brand's visibility in AI search, led by Alex Halliday  and Matt Hammel , has secured  $40 million in Series B funding led by Mike Duboe at Greylock . Information discovery has changed more in the past year than in the previous three decades, as billions now get direct answers from AI instead of clicking through search results. This shift is upending how brands are found and rendering traditiona

Forterra , defining the next domain of operations creating an ecosystem where intelligent systems coordinate and prevail across the battlefield, led by Josh Araujo, Joseph Putney, Scott Sanders, Colin Chisholm, Taylor Smith Baisey, and Alberto Lacaze, has announced  a $238 million Series C comprised of both equity and debt led by Moore Strategic Ventures with participation from new investors Salesforce Ventures , Franklin Templeton , Balyasny Asset Management , 645 Ventures ,

Netic , the complete AI-growth engine for service enterprises, led by Melisa Tokmak, has secured $23 million in a Series B funding round led by Founders Fund , valuing the company at $450 million. Its seed round was led by Greylock Partners with Founders Fund participating, and its Series A was led by Founders Fund with participation from Greylock , Hanabi Capital , Day One Ventures , SV Angel , and several angel investors. Netic is equipping regional businesses, home service

Parallel Web Systems , building the web infrastructure for AI, led by Parag Agrawal and Travers Nisbet, has secured $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation co-led by Kleiner Perkins  and Index Ventures , with participation from Spark Capital  and support from existing investors Khosla Ventures , First Round Capital , and Terrain . Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins joins Vinod Khosla, Shardul Shah, and Josh Kopelman on the board. Two years ago, when the company was fou

Litmus , simplifying Industrial Data complexity and making it more accessible, led by Vatsal Shah, John Younes, Sacha Sawaya, Vishvesh Shah, Parth Desai, and others, has secured  additional strategic investment led by Insight Partners , with participation from Munich Re Ventures . Manufacturers are striving to move from AI pilots to large-scale, multi-site deployment, but progress is limited by data, not models. Machine data is often siloed, inconsistent across plants, and ha

CommerceClarity , building AI agents that turn raw data into intelligent retail automation, led by Alessandro Angelini, Daniele Vella, Federico Sargenti, and Michele Sampieri, has secured  a €2.7 million ($3.1M) oversubscribed pre-seed round, led by  IFF (Italian Founders Fund)  and  Entourage , with participation from  Euregio+ (Alpine VC) ,  Redstone ,  Vento (Exor) ,  Ithaca Investment , and Vesper Holding . The funding will accelerate the growth of the AI-driven e-commerc

Attentive AI , the company behind Beam AI, led by Shiva Dhawan, Rishabjit Singh, Shikhar Tripathi, and others, has announced  a $30.5 million Series B funding round led by Insight Partners , with participation from Vertex Ventures , Tenacity Ventures , and InfoEdge Venture Fund . As large-scale infrastructure, industrial, and data center projects surge across the U.S., construction firms face mounting pressure to build faster and more efficiently. While AI has revolutionized