MENLO TIMES

TwelveLabs, a video intelligence platform and API led by Jae Lee, Aiden Lee, Dave Chung, Soyoung Lee, and Sungjun Kim, has raised $100 million, co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, alongside Radical Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, Index Ventures, Quadrille Capital, and Red Bull Ventures. The Bet. Five years ago, a simple observation shaped the company's direction: The world does not happen in text. It happens in motion. Language compresses re

Together AI, the AI native cloud, led by Vipul Ved Prakash, Ce Zhang, Chris Ré, Tri Dao, and Percy Liang, has announced Series C funding of $800 million from Aramco Ventures, NVIDIA, Vista Equity, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Schneider Electric, Pegatron, Salesforce Ventures, March Capital, DTCP Growth, Lux Capital, Geodesic, PSP Partners, and others. In addition to the equity capital, Together AI has secured commitments for over 500 MW of compute capacity to be capit

Venice AI, building private AI for unlimited creative freedom, led by Erik Voorhees and Jesse Proudman, has raised a $65 million Series A led by Dragonfly, with backing from Coinbase Ventures, F-Prime, North Island Ventures, and others, at a $1 billion valuation, its first outside capital, to scale private, unrestricted AI globally. Privacy-First AI. As AI becomes central to how people think, create, and make decisions, the privacy of user interactions is becoming increasingl

EquiLibre Technologies, building the next generation of algorithmic trading, led by Martin Schmid, Ph.D., Matej Moravcik, Ph.D., and Rudolf Kadlec, Ph.D., has raised Series A, now valued at $500 Million. The round was led by Creandum, and, although the VC also declined to disclose the size of the round, vice president Cameron Sellers confirmed that it was the largest single investment the firm “has ever made in one go into a company,” he told TechCrunch. Reinforcement Learni

Taxwire, a global sales tax automation platform led by Andrew Rea and Steven Schmatz, has announced $25M in Seed and Series A funding from Headline Ventures, XYZ VC, Vinyl, Recall Capital, and Nomo Ventures. The platform automates the complexities of sales tax collection, allowing businesses of all sizes to save time, reduce financial liabilities, and seamlessly manage compliance in the US and over 100 other countries. Addressing Tax Compliance Complexity. Indirect tax compli

8090 AI, an AI-native software factory for regulated enterprises, led by Chamath Palihapitiya and Sina Sojoodi, has raised $135M in Series A, led by Salesforce Ventures and joined by WNDR, Craft Ventures, The Production Board, and LAUNCH, with support of a group of esteemed angels including Nikesh Arora, Cliff Robbins, Adam D’Angelo, Shyam Ravindran, Abhi Arun, and Thomas Laffont. Use of Capital and Customer Impact. The capital will be allocated primarily toward expanding th

Engram, scaling compute on your context, led by Dan Biderman, Scott Linderman, Jessy Lin, Sabri Eyuboglu, and the team, has raised $98M from General Catalyst, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Factory, Modern, Amplify, Neo, SV Angel, and others, including advisors and investors Assaf Rappaport, Andrej Karpathy, and Pieter Abbeel. The Missing Context for AI. Most AI models are trained primarily on publicly available information, giving them broad knowledge across topics such as open-s

Base44, helping you build apps with AI in minutes, led by Maor Shlomo and the team, has announced a major milestone: its own model, Base1. Engineering Philosophy. Base44 believes that modern software companies are defined by the engineering challenges they choose to solve and the technologies they are willing to build in-house. Since its inception, the company has focused on taking on ambitious engineering projects, with a long-term commitment to owning the core technologies

Warp, an AI-native payroll, compliance, and benefits platform, led by Ayush Sharma and the team, has announced a $60 million Series B led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Peak XV, Sound Ventures, and Y Combinator, bringing the total funding to $85 million in just under a year. Support and Market Context. The company is backed by leaders from some of the most influential technology organizations of the past two decades, including Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, former Stri

Netris, the leading provider of network automation and multi-tenancy for AI infrastructure, led by Alex Saroyan, Tigran Martirosyan, Arsen Arakelyan, and the team, has announced a $15M Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The round follows 800% ARR growth and 35+ live deployments over the last 12 months, as AI cloud operators worldwide standardize on Netris’ NAAM (Network Automation, Abstraction, and Multi-Tenancy) platform to turn their GPUs into revenue. AI Infrastruc

Sail Research, infrastructure for long-horizon agents, led by Neil Movva and Samir Menon, has officially announced its launch, with a seed round led by Sequoia and a Series A led by Kleiner Perkins. Infrastructure for Long-Horizon Agents. Sail is building infrastructure designed specifically for long-horizon AI agents, combining highly efficient inference for open models with sandbox environments capable of running workloads for days or weeks at a time. The platform focuses o

Mutiny, your AI agent for creating anything customer-facing, led by Nikhil Mathew and Jaleh Rezaei, has launched one agent that takes an account from cold to closed, running 3 important functions: accessing all your data and tools to automate workflows, creating breakthrough buying experiences that track engagement, and working out of the box for any rep, not just the AI experts. Product Vision. The company is building an AI-native platform that enables go-to-market teams to

Mirendil, an AI research lab building self-accelerating systems that turn compute into scientific and engineering breakthroughs, led by Behnam Neyshabur, Harsh Mehta, Shayan Salehian, and Tara Rezaei, has announced its launch with $200 million seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins, followed by an investment from NVIDIA, among others. Mirendil is building frontier AI systems designed to accelerate AI research and development through increasingly autonomou

Sazabi, the AI-native observability platform for fast-moving engineering teams, led by Sherwood Callaway, has announced its $8 million seed round led by J2 Ventures, Village Global, and Y Combinator, with participation from Orange Collective and more than 60 angel investors from leading AI, developer tools, and infrastructure companies. Open Beta Launch. Alongside the funding announcement, Sazabi has launched its open beta, giving engineering teams immediate access to the pla

Patronus AI, developing simulation research and infrastructure to accelerate progress toward human-aligned AGI, led by Anand Kannappan and Rebecca Qian, has announced its $50M Series B led by Greenfield Partners, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Datadog, Samsung, Gokul Rajaram, Factorial Capital, and a cohort of AI leaders across the labs and neolabs. The company is also releasing a preview of the first Digital World Model. Background. Sin

HealthLeap, a leading AI clinical screening startup, led by Josiah Meyer and Jemima Meyer, RD(SA), announced it has launched its AI-driven clinical screening platform across Houston Methodist’s system to help address this issue earlier and more consistently among at-risk inpatients. HealthLeap is the first and only validated AI-powered malnutrition screening tool with an EHR-integrated screening layer for hospitals. Developed by clinicians for clinicians, the platform continu

OpenAI and Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) have unveiled Jalapeño, OpenAI’s first Intelligence Processor: an accelerator architected around OpenAI’s vision for the future of LLM inference, and the first AI accelerator in a multi-generation compute platform the companies are building together to make advanced AI faster, more reliable, and more accessible to more people. Building the AI Stack In-House. OpenAI has taken delivery of its first custom AI chip, Jalapeño, from partners Broad

NaukNauk, helping you animate your world, led by Daniel Liu, has recently raised $20M in venture capital to advance its vision of establishing a creative community that celebrates the fandoms and collectibles people love. Building an AI-First Social Network for Collectors. The new funding will support NaukNauk’s vision of creating an AI-first social network for collectors, hobbyists, and fandom communities. Designed by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, the platform aims to connect

Coval, building AI evaluation for voice AI, led by Brooke Hopkins and the team, has raised a $28 million Series A, led by Norwest, with participation from Base10 Partners, Twilio Ventures, Y Combinator, MaC Ventures, and Swift Ventures, which brings the total raised to $31 million since the company was founded in 2024. Building the Infrastructure for Reliable Voice AI. Before founding Coval, CEO Brooke Hopkins worked at Waymo, where a central challenge was determining when a

Gracia, the company building end-to-end infrastructure for 4D Gaussian Splatting (4DGS) volumetric video, led by Georgii Vysotskii, Andrey Volodin, and the team, launches its free app for Apple Vision Pro, available worldwide. It is the first application that brings streamable, fully volumetric moving captures to visionOS in mixed reality. The first public hands-on appearance will take place at AWE USA 2026, where the company will present Apple Vision Pro demos for attendees.