MENLO TIMES

Onfire , AI revenue intelligence for technical-buyer GTM, led by Tal Peretz (CEO), Shahar Shavit (CTO), and Nitzan Hadar (CPO), has secured $20 million initial round led by Grove Ventures  and TLV Partners  with participation by IN Venture  and Leumi 77 Ventures. Onfire is redefining how revenue teams engage with technical buyers through a purpose-built vertical AI platform. Trained on years of proprietary contextual data, it enables precise targeting of engineering, data, an

Mercor , a platform powering AI Research led by Brendan Foody, Adarsh Hiremath, and Surya Midha, has secured  $350 million Series C funding, led by Felicis  with participation from Benchmark , General Catalyst , and Robinhood Ventures , and values Mercor at $10 billion, 5x its Series B valuation. Despite rapid advances in AI over the past three years, it still falters on the nuances that define meaningful work: judgment, intent, taste, and prioritization. This is the space wh

Crusoe , the AI infrastructure company led by Chase Lochmiller, Cully Cavness, Matthew DeNezza, Nitin Perumbeti, Chris Dolan, Tara Green, and others, has announced  the initial closing of its anticipated $1.375 billion Series E round, bringing the company's expected valuation to over $10 billion. The oversubscribed round was co-led by technology investors Valor Equity Partners  and Mubadala Capital , with participation from 137 Ventures , 1789 Capital , Activate Capital , Alt

Wonder Studios , a global network of artists, directors, and technologists exploring the creative frontier of AI, led by Xavier Collins and Justin Hackney, has secured  $12 million in seed funding led by Atomico , alongside existing investors LocalGlobe  and Blackbird , and builds on Wonder’s pre-seed investment, which included executives from ElevenLabs, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI.  Wonder will use the new funding to double its engineering team and accelerate original conte

Newton , the AI workflow platform for dental, led by Rohit Chaparala and Sam Detjen, has secured  $3.8 million in seed funding from Y Combinator ,  Twenty Two Ventures,   The Transpose Platform ,  Phosphor Capital , and a cohort of prominent angels, including Bo Jiang of Lithic. Newton serves as an AI-powered communications layer for dental practices, handling outbound and inbound tasks like reactivating unscheduled patients, verifying insurance benefits, and filling last-min

Riff , an Oslo-based vibe coding platform, led by Viral Shah, Trygve Karper, and Martin Skow Røed, has secured  $16 million in Series A funding led by Northzone , with backing from existing investors Skyfall Ventures ,  Maki.vc ,  Sondo Capital ,  Global Founders Capital , and new investor  Illusian .  Riff empowers professionals across organizations to build AI applications and agents that enhance productivity and outcomes. Addressing the gap between rapid AI innovation and

Starbridge , delivering unique go-to-market data on your public sector accounts, led by Justin Wenig, has raised  $42 million in Series A funding led by Craft Ventures . Starbridge’s AI-driven GTM intelligence platform helps public sector sales teams track hundreds of thousands of government agencies and schools in real time, monitoring bids, meetings, contracts, grants, budgets, procurement rules, and contacts. Over 160 enterprise teams, including Instructure, SimpliGov, and

Tempo , a visual editor for React that gives PMs, designers, and engineers the ability to collaborate visually on code, led by Kevin Michael and Peter Gokhshteyn, has secured $5 million in seed round from Golden Ventures ,  Y Combinator ,  Box Group ,  Webflow Ventures ,  Inovia ,  General Catalyst ,  Singularity Capital , Union Capital, 89 Christopher, Lenny Rachitsky, and many others. As AI advances, design and engineering are converging faster than ever, but existing tools

Saturn OS , the AI technology company transforming financial advice by slashing the cost to serve and broadening access to wealth management, led by Amal Jolly, Michael Ettlinger, and Rohit Vaish, has secured  a $15m Series A   funding round led by European VC Singular , with participation from Shapers , Y Combinator , and Zeno Ventures . The investment will fast-track product development and scale Saturn’s platform, enabling advisers to serve more clients with greater effici

Keycard , building identity infrastructure for AI agents, led by Matt Creager, Jared Hanson, and Ian Livingstone, has secured  a $38 million combined inception round led by  Andreessen Horowitz , Acrew Capital , and  Boldstart Ventures  with participation from Mantis VC ,  Tapestry Ventures ,  Essence Ventures ,  Exceptional Capital , Modern Technical Fund ,  Vermillion Cliffs Ventures , and many incredible angels. A new era of computing is emerging, where software evolves in

Dedalus Labs , building an infrastructure layer for shipping AI agents at a rocket-fast speed, led by Catherine Di and Windsor Nguyen, has raised  $11 million in seed funding co-led by   Kindred Ventures  and  Saga Ventures , with participation from  E14 Fund , Emergence Capital ,  Sunshine Lake ,  Transpose Platform ,  Liquid 2 Ventures ,  FPV Ventures ,  Twenty Two Ventures ,  Telescope Foundation ,  Spot VC ,  Operator Partners , and  Y Combinator . Dedalus Labs is also ba

Liberate , harnessing technology to help insurers and agents deliver fast, led by Amrish Singh, Ryan Eldridge, Jason St. Pierre, and others, has secured  a $50 million Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures , with participation from new investor Canapi Ventures  and returning backers Redpoint Ventures , Eclipse Ventures , and Commerce Ventures , bringing the total funding to $72 million. Battery General Partner Marcus Ryu, the co-founder and former CEO of Guidewire So

Enspired , Europe’s leading optimizer for battery energy storage systems (BESS), led by Jürgen Mayerhofer, Wolfgang Eichberger, Cornelia Habetler, Jürgen Pfalzer, Johann Schütz, and Christoph Schreiber, has secured  EUR 40 million in Series B funding. The round brings in Future Energy Ventures  as a new partner, alongside renewed commitments from Zouk Capital , EnBW New Ventures , Banpu NEXT , PUSH VC , and 360 Capital , following enspired’s rapid expansion into multiple new

Dexory , the leading provider of real-time warehouse intelligence, led by Andrei Danescu, Adrian Negoita, Oana Jinga, Kristen Shannon, and others, has secured  $165 million. Eurazeo , through its Growth team, led the $100M Series C round, with participation from LTS Growth and Endeavor Catalys t, alongside existing investors DTCP , Atomico , Lakestar , Elaia , Latitude Ventures, Wave-X , and others. In addition, Bootstrap Europe expanded the existing growth debt facility.  Si

FleetWorks , an always-on dispatcher that calls, emails, or texts you when high-paying loads match your truck, led by Paul Singer and Quang Tran, has secured  $17 million in funding led by First Round Capital  with participation from Y Combinator , Saga Ventures , and LFX Venture Partners . In the U.S., over 200,000 truckloads are coordinated daily, yet 80% are still booked manually via phone, email, and text. Carriers, especially small operators, waste hours chasing loads, w

SiC Systems , developer of Industrial Agentic AI, led by Christopher Savoie and Christopher Brown, has secured  €2 million led by Dutch quantum investment fund  QDNL Participations , with additional backing from Propagator Ventures , Plug and Play , and Wavepeak Ventures. The company is a spinout from the Technical University of Denmark  (DTU).  SiC Systems develops intelligent, adaptive AI agents designed to orchestrate complex physical systems in real time. Its proprietary

Exa , the search engine built for AI, led by Will Bryk, Jeff Wang, and others, has introduced  Exa 2.0, the next generation of search endpoints. Specifically, Exa 2.0 includes three major updates: Exa Fast:  the fastest search API in the world at sub350ms Exa Auto:  the default search type is now much higher quality Exa Deep:  a new search type that agentically retrieves the highest quality results Exa’s mission is to build the perfect search engine, one that delivers exactly

Reducto , offering robust and reliable document ingestion for any workflow, led by Adit Abraham and Raunak Chowdhuri, has secured  a new $75M Series B led by a16z , alongside existing investors Benchmark , First Round Capital , Y Combinator , and BoxGroup . Less than two years after launching the first Parse API that combined traditional computer vision with Vision-Language Models (VLMs), Reducto has set a new benchmark for transforming complex documents into LLM-ready data w

Afori , a new AI platform specifically for insurance brokers, led by Fabian Wesemann and Sergi Baños, has emerged from stealth mode with a €4 million pre-seed funding round led by  General Catalyst , with participation from Yellow  and  Booom . Individual backers include industry leaders Christopher Lohmann (founder of Mulberry Ventures, former CEO of HDI and Gothaer), Chris Leifeld (founder of Thinksurance), and Garrett Koehn (CIO, CRC), as well as AI pioneers Mustafa Suleym

Sensi AI , the pioneer in Care Intelligence, led by Romi Gubes, Nevo Elmalem, and Alon Brener, has secured  $45 million Series C funding...