MENLO TIMES

Boom Supersonic , the company building the world’s fastest airliner, led by Blake Scholl, Rachel Devine, Jeff Mabry, Megan Young, and others, has announced  a backlog of more than $1.25 billion for its Superpower turbine and revealed its launch customer, Crusoe . The company also closed a $300 million funding round led by Darsana Capital Partners , with participation from Altimeter Capital , ARK Invest , Bessemer Venture Partners , Robinhood Ventures , and Y Combinator . Supe

Empromptu , creating accurate AI applications automatically, led by Dr. Sean Robinson and Shanea Leven, has secured $2 million in funding, led by Precursor Ventures , with participation from Alumni Ventures , Founders Edge, Rogue Women VC , South Loop , and Zeal Capital , as well as angel investor Edith Harbaugh, Co-founder of LaunchDarkly. Shanea Leven, Founder and CEO of Empromptu, remarked: “SaaS apps shouldn’t need rewrites to become intelligent; they should modernize in

Solve Intelligence , building intelligence for drafting, prosecution, claim charts, invention harvesting, and more, led by Chris Parsonson, Angus Parsonson, and Sanj Ahilan, has secured $40 million in Series B co-led by  Visionaries  and  20VC , with Thomson Reuters ,  Y Combinator ,  Operator Collective  (led by ex-Cisco IP chief Mallun Yen), and angels like the founders of Tinder, Canva, Deel, Ironclad, Base44, Cleo, Hugging Face, Pigment, and Higgsfield, as well as  Kevin

Unconventional AI , rethinking the foundations of a computer to optimize energy efficiency for AI, led by MeeLan Lee , Sara Achour , Michael Carbin , and Naveen Rao , has secured  $475 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed  and Andreessen Horowitz , with participation from Sequoia , Lux Capital , DCVC , Future Ventures , Jeff Bezos, and many other amazing investing partners, valuing the company at $4.5 Billion. Naveen Rao, cofounder and CEO, will personally be investing $

Besimple AI , building the data layer for AI, led by Yi Zhong and Bill Wang, has secured  $3M in a seed round from Y Combinator , Surgepoint Capital , Porterfield Ventures, Amino Capital , WELIGHT Capital , Multimodal Ventures , Script Capital , and several amazing angel investors. The concept originated from challenges encountered at Meta, where training advanced AI models demanded vast amounts of high-quality data, an increasingly difficult resource to obtain. After years o

Yoodli , the company on a mission to help people communicate with confidence, led by Varun Puri, Padmashree Koneti, Esha Joshi, Derek Sessions, Andy Larson, Betsy McKibbin, and others, has secured  a $40M Series B fundraise, led by  WestBridge Capital  with participation from Neotribe  and  Madrona . This funding marks Yoodli’s rapid progression to Series B, arriving just months after its Series A announcement in May and bringing total capital raised to nearly $60 million. Th

Imper.ai , a pioneer in real-time cyber impersonation prevention, led by Noam Awadish, Anatoly Blighovsky, and Rom Dudkiewicz, has announced its public launch and $28 million in new funding from Redpoint Ventures  and Battery Ventures , with participation from Maple VC , Vessy VC , and Cerca Partners. Imper.ai ’s platform identifies impersonation risks in real time, maintaining privacy and accuracy across widely used communication platforms including Zoom, Teams, and Slack. B

Curvestone AI , the platform for regulated firms to automate complex tasks with code‑simple AI flows, led by Dawid Kotur and Sebastian Kotur, has secured $4 million in seed funding, led by  MTech Capital  with participation from  Boost Capital Partners ,  D2 Fund , and  Portfolio Ventures . The funding round will advance Curvestone AI’s mission to make AI automation truly dependable for financial services, legal, and insurance teams. Most AI tools excel at isolated tasks but

Alinia AI , the company on a mission to make the deployment of Generative AI safer, led by Ariadna Font Llitjós and Carlos Muñoz Ferrandis, has secured  a $7.5 million seed round led by  Mouro Capital , with participation from  Raise Seed For Good ,  Speedinvest , and  Precursor Ventures . Development of the enterprise-grade Guardrails API and AI Compliance Platform is set to accelerate, enabling regulated organizations to deploy generative AI with embedded real-time auditing

Verkada , an American leader in cloud-based physical security, led by Filip Kaliszan, Hans Robertson, James Ren, and Benjamin Bercovitz, has secured  an investment from Alphabet's independent growth fund, CapitalG ,  valuing the company at $5.8 billion, a $1.3 billion increase from Series E earlier this year. More than 2 million devices from Verkada are now deployed across 171 countries, unifying video security, access control, sensors, intercoms, and alarms on a single platf

Lumia , an AI Security and Governance platform helping enterprises safely adopt AI and autonomous agents, led by Omri Iluz and Bobi Gilburd, has secured  $18 million seed round led by Team8  with support from New Era . As part of the announcement, the company is appointing Admiral Michael Rogers, former Director of the NSA and Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, to its Advisory Board. Enterprise use of AI agents is rising quickly, with Gartner expecting 40% of enterprise applica

Autolane , developing hardware & software infrastructure for autonomous commerce, led by   Ben Seidl and Andy Seidl, has secured  $7.4 million in funding co-led by Draper Associates  and Hyperplane , with participation from LAUNCH and Feld Ventures . The funding will accelerate Autolane’s expansion across retail, restaurant, and commercial properties. Supporting autonomous ride-hailing and delivery vehicles, its infrastructure has demonstrated up to 50% reductions in curbside

Donna , eliminating the admin burden for field sales, led by Nicolas Christiaen, Jonas Deprez, Xander Berkein, and others, has secured $4.8 M seed round, led by Frontline Ventures , with participation from existing funds: Pitchdrive , Fortino Capital , WeLoveFounders , Syndicate One , New School , Everywhere Ventures , and a group of seasoned angel investors. The funding will be used to deepen Donna’s product leadership and scale go-to-market operations across Europe and the

Orq.ai , the all-in-one platform to build reliable LLM apps, led by Sohrab Hosseini  and Anthony Diaz , has secured raised €5 million in seed funding, led by  Seed + Speed Ventures  and  Galion exe , with continued support from  Curiosity VC ,  Spacetime ,  XO Ventures ,  xdeck ventures ,  Waves Capital , and  GoldenEggCheck , bringing the total funding to €7.3 million since the company’s founding in 2022. Strategic advisors joining include industry leaders such as Sam Bourto

Ricursive Intelligence , the first frontier AI lab addressing the most fundamental constraint in AI progress: chip development timelines that can’t keep up with algorithmic advancement, led by Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, announced  its launch and a $35 million seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital( Stephanie Zhan ), along with other investors, including Modern Capital( Suhail Nimji , Jennifer Campbell ), 49Palms( Madhavan Ramanujam , Joshua Bloom ), and Striker ( M

PermitFlow , the leading AI pre-construction platform built for construction and trades, led by Francis Thumpasery and Samuel Lam, has secured  a $54 million Series B funding round, led by  Accel  with participation from  Kleiner Perkins ,  Felicis ,  Initialized Capital ,  Altos Ventures ,  Y Combinator , and other existing investors. Since its 2021 launch, PermitFlow has scaled its construction platform and AI agents to manage over $20 billion in construction value nationwi

Gradium , building the technological backbone, models, and infrastructure to support all voice applications, led by Olivier Teboul, Alexandre Défossez, Neil Zeghidour, and Laurent Mazaré, has announced its launch with a $70 million seed funding round led by FirstMark Capital  and Eurazeo  with participation from DST Global Partners , Eric Schmidt, Xavier Niel, Rodolphe Saadé, Korelya Capital, Amplify Partners, Liquid2, Drysdale Ventures, and angels including Yann LeCun, Olivi

Synopsys , the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products, led by Sassine Ghazi, Shelagh Glaser, Ravi Subramanian, Shankar Krishnamoorthy, and others, announced  an expanded, strategic partnership to revolutionize design and engineering across industries. R&D teams across sectors, from semiconductors to aerospace, automotive, and industrial, face growing workflow complexity, rising development costs, and

Complir , bringing clarity and speed to product compliance, led by Tine Kühnel , Gustav Bang , Marc Kaa Brejner , and Rasmus Lind , has secured €1.7 million in pre-seed funding led by  Vendep Capital , with participation from Likeminded , Plug and Play , Xpress , JHJ Seed Capital, and business angels including Kraen Østergaard Nielsen, Per Thau, and Neil S. W. Murray. Retailers now face a landscape where cross-border selling is both a commercial and compliance challenge. Ever

Raindrop , Sentry for AI Agents, led by Zubin Singh Koticha , Alexis Gauba , and Ben Hylak , has secured  $15M in seed funding from Lightspeed  and leading AI companies, including Figma Ventures, Vercel Ventures , founders of Replit (Amjad Masad and Michele Catasta), Cognition (Walden Yan), Framer (Koen Bok and Jorn van Dijk), Speak (Andrew Hsu), Notion (Akshay Kothari), and YC . Over the past two years, the landscape has shifted from simple chatbots to agent systems capable