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Why You Haven’t Raised Startup Funding (Yet)
By Julia Sabitova If you’re the CEO of Lovable or Higgsfeld and reached $100 million in ARR in under a year, this article isn’t for you — enjoy being a unicorn as thousands of investors beg to fund you. But if you’re not, then let’s be honest: raising in 2026 is tough. Although global venture funding is growing, raising capital isn’t any easier for the average startup. According to Crunchbase data, more than a third of global funding in 2025 went to just 629 companies, compared to 24% of funding in 2024. This highlights a growing concentration of capital, making most of that funding effectively inaccessible to early-stage startups. So what can founders do to fix that? We don’t invite strangers to our houses, and we don’t hire them for important jobs either. For thousands of years, trust and credibility were the most important factors in forming relationships, both business and personal. In 2025, Silicon Valley companies attracted nearly 50% of the entire U.S. venture funding. Silicon Valley is also home to 312 unicorns, over half of all U.S.-based unicorns. Julia Sabitova It’s not because San Francisco Bay Area founders are inherently smarter — it’s largely about being close to capital and networks. When you’re in constant proximity of MAG7 companies and hundreds of VCs, connections happen organically, through social gatherings, meetups and referrals. This is how credibility is formed: through connections and exposure. So, is networking the secret to raising capital? Partially, but it doesn’t scale. You can’t just meet the whole industry and invite them all to a 1-1. So instead, you have to build your reputation. Here are my top four pieces of advice on how to build it right. Be visible Make your growth visible. Whenever you reach a significant milestone — raising a round, hitting a user target, or achieving revenue growth — the market should hear about it. We’ve seen countless companies reach a huge target and then fail to spread the word about it. Make sure to plan all media coverage in advance, keep exclusive news up your sleeve, and have an extensive media strategy. Once the word is out through your company’s social media, pitching to journalists becomes significantly harder. Everybody wants exclusives, and no one wants to write about old news. Global media outlets are all about relationships. Make sure to form a meaningful connection with journalists covering your particular niche. Focus on customers The second priority when raising funds is your company’s place in the overall market landscape. Be where your customers are. Many founders make the same mistake: chasing investors instead of customers. Remember that investors will always find good investment opportunities. Your job is to make sure that your company is one of them. Investors have to see that your company has a sustainable customer acquisition approach and is able to continuously grow its user base. Chasing investors can even damage your public picture. If VCs see you spending heavily to attract investors rather than customers, it may signal misaligned priorities. Be a thought leader Important thing No. 3: thought leadership. You have to prove your credibility through actively participating in conferences and meetups. Speaking at industry events signals credibility at scale. Conferences are highly selective. Being on stage implies that organizers have already vetted your expertise. Getting on the stage and delivering your core message will help your credibility more than any degree or a title. Raise symbolic capital The fourth significant factor is symbolic capital — the way your company is perceived by the market. A great way to acquire symbolic capital is through various ratings and features. They’re usually put together by the larger media outlets and include programs such as Forbes’ 30 Under 30, TechCrunch Startup Battlefield and Slush100. Similar to conferences, participating in different features shows potential investors that a credible player with a good reputation has already done a background check on you and is ready to endorse you. One well-known logo in your endorsements list can go a long way in securing the next round of funding for your startup. A somewhat unexpected benefit of getting into the biggest ratings and roundups is your AI visibility. Your company being featured in one of these lists will significantly improve the odds that AI will highlight your company in relevant conversations. AI visibility is increasingly important for user acquisition, considering that according to Feedonomics, 39% of users already use AI instead of traditional search engines for shopping. Reputation: You can’t buy it Reputation is one of the rare things in the business world that you can’t just buy. One of our longstanding partners received an invitation to a dinner with the Royal Family of the United Kingdom, which is something that no amount of marketing budget will give you. It takes a lot of coordinated work and effort that won’t result in exact KPIs on day one, which is why many startups just don’t have the patience and strategy it takes to build credibility. As development and compute costs fall, the number of startups continues to grow. In that environment, reputation becomes the key differentiator between companies that attract capital — and those that don’t. Julia Sabitova is a communications strategist and serial entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience. She co-founded CloEE, an AI adviser for smart manufacturing, and leads BeGlobe, a PR agency for tech startups and VCs. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck Accelerator. Illustration: Dom Guzman
Don’t Just Talk About AI. Measure Business Outputs. Here’s How.
By Bob Morse and Dario Fanucchi Last year felt like the Year of the AI Pilot. Companies bought LLM subscriptions, managers checked on employee usage, and coffee chats abounded with the “AI wrote my memo” motif. Looking around today, there is widespread disappointment with the impact of these AI pilots. Add to this the recent sell-off in SaaS stocks, and the question is no longer “Are we using AI?” but rather “Is this thing working?” AI is an invention that is in the process of becoming an innovation. An invention is a new capability; it is not an innovation until it has a business model. In that light, experimentation last year was the sensible move. Bob Morse It is becoming clear now that the form that innovation takes will be AI systems trusted with real decisions — what Peter Drucker would call executives, and what are today referred to as agentic AI. As we turn to the question at hand, Is this thing working?, we can look to one of Drucker’s intellectual disciples for a framework to take us forward. Andy Grove, the legendary former CEO of Intel, turned Drucker’s writings into a hard-nosed, pragmatic approach to managing knowledge-worker organizations. His book, “High Output Management,” provides the classic framework for measuring the outputs of middle managers. This is not an easy thing to measure. But Grove is relentless in insisting it can and must be measured. Dario Fanucchi As we address the question of whether AI agents are delivering tangible value, we have to shift our focus away from activities, anecdotes and initiatives. These are inputs. Grove argues that organizations must instead focus on outputs. If we try to think like Grove, we would first define the business outcome we wanted to achieve, and then measure our agentic AI only by whether this performance metric is better. A mathematical approach As we began working on this several years ago across our software portfolio, I had the great good fortune to meet Dario Fanucchi, a mathematician who was using AI to solve real-world problems in a very similar way. He is also co-founder and CTO of Isazi 1, a decade-old, 70-plus-person team of mathematicians and engineers who have completed hundreds of projects for leading companies around the world. His approach to these has a singular focus: improving core business metrics. Isazi came to the same idea of measuring outputs, although starting from the field of mathematics rather than organizational behavior. The idea is to approach AI projects as though they are mathematical optimization problems: Define a target measure (such as throughput or working capital), ask what variables influence that metric, and model the mechanism by which the target measure is moved. Then all initiatives are aligned to this target measure, and success is measured by its improvement. This aligns well with how AI models are built and improved: benchmarks and evals are always the core measure of success. Here, these evals are directly aligned to business metrics. You must begin with the output you want to measure. And then you watch that output measurement, as a gauge, and see how long it takes until that gauge is reading changes, how much it changes, in what direction, and whether it sustains. The time it takes to see (and sustain) a material movement is called “Time To Production.” Our theory on why so many pilots fail is that companies tend to pick an AI tool and a pilot duration and qualitatively check in with users at the end of that time. While we at Strattam and Isazi appreciate experiments and pilots, we have found that results are best when that process is reversed. We choose the output we want to see improved, vary the AI tools until one moves the dial, and measure the time it takes to change the output positively and in a sustainable way. The shorter the Time To Production, the better. A real-world example Let me share an example. One of Strattam’s portfolio companies, Trax Technologies, is in the business of helping very large multinationals manage their global shipping. A key part of the offering is ensuring that freight bills are complete, match the contract, are approved for payment, and are properly accounted for. Trax works across all geographies and all shipping modes, with thousands of carriers. Discrepancies between the bill and the shipper contract are common. Handling those “exceptions” at scale is a key part of the service, and historically, Trax has had a large in-house team that resolves those. In 2024, it identified AI’s ability to resolve some of those exceptions as a key opportunity and developed the AI Audit Optimizer in-house. The output goal was clear: the fraction of exceptions resolved without human intervention. The first quarter after its release, the Trax AI Audit Optimizer resolved some 826,000 exceptions that otherwise would have required human intervention. That was a good start, but not worth writing home about just yet. In Q2, however, the system remained stuck at that same level, rather than improving. So Trax rapidly experimented to see what would improve outcomes. In Q3, the company discovered that a human prompt engineer interacting with the system made a big difference. As a result, in Q4, resolved exceptions tripled to 2.5 million. Now we’re talking. With the output gauge firmly in mind, Trax is moving forward by adjusting interaction points of the prompt engineer and the system. It used data from successful and unsuccessful resolutions to retrain the system. The company also set quarterly goals; next quarter, it will aim for the Trax AI Audit Optimizer to resolve more than any previous quarter. This story shows how studying an output gauge allowed the company to tune and adapt the AI tooling to deliver the outcomes that actually matter. Trax is intent on fixing its customers’ problems so it can earn market share. Its use of AI helped it do that, and its output measurements prove the real-world value of the AI innovation. Measure what matters Amidst all the hype, we all care that our companies actually adapt, actually deliver customer value, and actually succeed. We know that we cannot keep doing what we are doing as we have been doing it, that our futures may well depend on our ability to adapt. But this is different from actually adapting. To adapt successfully, resist the urge to buy tools and run pilots and tell anecdotes and report on activities. Those are just inputs. Instead, determine the outcome measurement that matters, and watch it like a hawk to see if AI is delivering cold hard business results. If it’s not, change your AI until the dial moves. Drawing on the time-tested wisdom of Drucker and Grove in this way, you’ll ensure AI earns its keep at your firm. Bob Morse co-founded Strattam Capital in 2014 and is managing partner. He has served on numerous private and public technology company boards, and currently is a director of CloudHesive, Contegix, Daxtra Technologies, Green Security, Resource Navigation and Trax Group. Previously, he was a partner and member of the investment committee at Oak Hill Capital Partners. He also worked at GCC Investments and Morgan Stanley. Morse serves on the board of directors of Austin PBS and as member of the advisory board for the HMTF Center for Private Equity Finance at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. He attended Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude with a B.S.E., and Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he earned his MBA and was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Morse lives in Austin. Dario Fanucchi contributed to this article. He is chief technology officer at Isazi, a Johannesburg-based applied artificial intelligence firm purpose-built to deliver production-grade AI software solutions for clients. Fanucchi has excelled academically in the fields of computer science, mathematics and physics throughout his career. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
After Swarmer’s Soaring Debut, Here Are 12 Other Potential Defense Tech IPOs
Defense technology startups are on a tear. If that wasn’t already obvious, it became clear this week when shares of AI drone company Swarmer soared 520% in their first day of trading on the Nasdaq. Swarmer’s debut is modest by tech IPO standards. The Austin, Texas-based startup sold 3 million shares at $5 apiece, raising about $15 million in the process and giving it an initial market cap of $60 million. But by the close on Tuesday, its market cap had soared to more than $382 million. Its IPO, of course, comes at a prescient time, with the U.S.’ war in Iran spiraling into a larger regional conflict even as the Russia-Ukraine war continues into its fifth year. Public-market investors’ reception for Swarmer mirrors the fervor with which venture investors have backed defense tech startups in recent years. Investment to venture-backed companies in the sector — which we define as the industries of military, national security and law enforcement — topped $8.4 billion last year, an all-time record and more than double 2024’s total, per Crunchbase data. Among 2025’s top venture-funded defense companies were Southern California-based Anduril Industries, which raised a $2.5 billion Series G led by Founders Fund; Germany-based Helsing, which raised about $693 million in a round led by General Catalyst, Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners and other investors; and Austin-based Saronic, a maker of unmanned maritime security vessels that raised $600 million in an Elad Gil-led round. Potential defense tech IPOs Swarmer’s impressive public-market entrance could pave the way for other defense tech startups to pursue IPOs. Using Crunchbase’s predictive intelligence tools, we’ve put together a list of 12 other defense startups that are deemed likely IPO candidates. Methodology Crunchbase’s IPO predictions utilize Crunchbase data — including funding and valuation, and milestones such as financial growth, key leadership hires, market share expansion and headcount growth — to forecast the likelihood of a private company launching an IPO, providing a probability score and its supporting evidence. Read more about Crunchbase’s Predictions & Insights and its methodology for IPO predictions here. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Stripe Alum Raises $9M For Meadow To Help People Plan Funerals Online
A few years ago, Sam Gerstenzang sat in a funeral home after the death of his grandfather. Gerstenzang’s family was asked to choose between “Silver, Gold, or Platinum” packages. The pricing was ambiguous, the logistics were overwhelming, and the final result felt like a generic, expensive commodity that failed to represent the man his grandfather actually was. In that moment, “you’re in a very tough spot mentally and emotionally,” Gerstenzang recalled about the experience. “To feel taken advantage of — and then feel that the person you love isn’t being honored the way they should — it’s not a good feeling.” Emma Gilsanz and Sam Gerstenzang, co-founders of Meadow Memorials. (Courtesy photo) The experience left the serial entrepreneur so disappointed that he felt compelled to offer others in similar situations better options. So in January 2024, he teamed up with Emma Gilsanz to launch New York-based Meadow Memorials, which describes itself as a “contemporary funeral home without the home.” When a person is overcome with grief, making so many decisions related to what is often the biggest unplanned purchase of many people’s lives can be daunting. Meadow aims to make it as simple as possible by allowing families to arrange funerals over the phone or online. The startup also partners with a curated set of venues so funerals can happen, for example, at a wedding venue that’s only booked on Saturday nights or at a local chapel rather than a funeral home. “Because we’re software-enabled and not stuck in the way things used to be, we can offer honest pricing and unmatched hospitality,” Gerstenzang told Crunchbase News in an interview. Meadow recently raised a $9 million Series A funding round led by Lachy Groom and Haystack, following a $2 million seed round in 2024, it told Crunchbase News exclusively. Uniquely, the initial capital for both Meadow and Moxie came from the founders’ own permanent capital firm, Boulton & Watt, a vehicle they use to lead their own seed rounds. Lower costs, more software Meadow operates by stripping away the most expensive part of the business: the real estate. By forgoing physical storefronts and using software for administrative tasks, Meadow claims it can offer dramatically lower prices. The national median cost of a funeral with a viewing and burial in 2023 was $8,300, while the median cost of a funeral with cremation was $6,280, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. Meadow says that its services are significantly more affordable. A typical funeral can cost around just $1,300, according to Gerstenzang. “There are a lot of markups on coffins [at funeral homes], because of the increased rate of cremation,” he explains. “So a lot of funeral homes really want you to do a burial. They want you to do an elaborate service because that’s how they make their money. And there’s a ton of markup embedded in that.” From fintech to funerals Gerstenzang is no stranger to scaling complex systems. An alumnus of payments giant Stripe, where he led product teams for consumer payments, he and Gilsanz in 2022 also co-founded Moxie, which helps nurses open medspas. In founding both companies, Gerstenzang has noticed a pattern: highly regulated markets that impact millions of people but haven’t seen meaningful innovation in decades. In the funeral industry, he saw a landscape dominated by private-equity rollups. He claims that some large corporations buy up local family funeral homes, keep the original names on the doors to build false trust, and then quietly hike prices. Meadow’s business model seems to be resonating. The company grew its revenue 3x from 2024 to 2025 and is on track to triple it again in 2026, according to Gerstenzang. The company worked with more than 400 families in February alone, he said. After becoming the largest independent funeral home in California, the company recently expanded into Texas and Washington, with Arizona and five other states on the horizon this year. Today, nearly a third of Meadow’s business comes from “pre-planning” – from people who, for example, have just navigated the process of burying their own parents, and want to spare their children the same burden. It also offers both a direct cremation and a funeral, depending on a family’s wishes. “We fundamentally care about the quality of what we do,” Gerstenzang said. “We believe we can actually increase quality as we scale because our software allows our team to spend their time working directly with customers, rather than dealing with paperwork the same way it’s been done for 50 years.” Semil Shah, founder and general partner at Meadow investor Haystack, noted that that his firm was also among the earliest investors in DoorDash and Instacart. Backing ‘broken, unsexy’ industries “We know when there’s a broken, unsexy industry that hasn’t adapted to serve the modern consumer,” he wrote via email. “Meadow’s combination of software operations with unmatched hospitality is exactly what the deathcare industry needs and what families deserve.” Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Candex Extends Series C To $40M+ To Help Enterprises Easily Onboard Global Vendors
For companies operating around the world, hiring vendors for one-off purchases in other countries can be a complicated process, eating up time and resources. Onboarding new vendors often requires tax forms, compliance checks and obtaining bank information. For smaller, one-off tasks — say, ordering flowers for a one-time corporate event — all that overhead can prove more trouble than it’s worth. Enter Candex. The New York-based startup aims to help large companies pay small, one-time, or irregular vendors without the administrative headache or risk that comes with onboarding them. Candex essentially acts as a tech-based master vendor. A large company sets Candex up in its system once and when it wants to make a purchase from a small supplier, it pays Candex, which then handles the compliance, tax and payment delivery to the actual supplier. Today, the company shared exclusively with Crunchbase News that it has raised funding from longtime customer London-based bank HSBC to extend last July’s 9Yards Capital-led $33 million Series C to $40 million. The company says the financing brings its total funding to over $120 million since its 2011 inception. Existing backers include Goldman Sachs Asset Management, JP Morgan, American Express Ventures and 9Yards Capital. The raise comes amid a wider surge in funding to fintech startups. Global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled around $53 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s a roughly 27% increase from 2024. Like Candex, many of the more heavily funded fintech startups in recent quarters focus on helping companies automate and streamline their processes, often through use of AI. Bigger footprintShani Vaza and Jeremy Lappin, co-founders of Candex. (Courtesy photo) Founded by Jeremy Lappin and Shani Vaza, Candex says it surpassed $1 billion in payments in 2025. While it did not disclose hard revenue figures, the company makes money primarily through transaction fees on purchases made through its platform, similar to how a credit card interchange fee works. It counts hundreds of Fortune 2000 companies among its customers, including HSBC, Sanofi, Diageo, Roche, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone and Dell Technologies, among others. The company claims its biggest value proposition is that it solves tail spend (the majority of a company’s suppliers that account for a small percentage of its total spend) in a way that is “simple, compliant, and fully integrated into existing enterprise systems.” “Candex does not ask companies to change how they buy,” said Lappin. “It works within their existing procure-to-pay process.” The startup also says one of its biggest differentiators is that it uses automation and AI for invoice and tax verification. It plans to use the new capital to expand globally, particularly its footprint in Asia and the Middle East, and further automate its offering. Presently, it has more than 270 employees and operates in more than 50 countries. For its part, HSBC says its decision to invest comes after years of being a Candex customer. “We see Candex as a differentiated solution for helping large organizations improve vendor management and operational efficiency at scale,” Craig Cuffie, group chief procurement officer at HSBC, said in a press release. Related Crunchbase query: Illustration: Dom Guzman Correction: This story has changed since its original publication to clarify terms of the deal.
The Rising Investors Behind The New Unicorn Class
The race to back the next generation of billion-dollar startups accelerated last year as the stable of unicorn startups filled up again. A total of 187 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in 2025 — up 61% from the previous year — driven largely by the AI boom. For venture firms, landing early investments in these companies is one of the clearest signals of long-term performance. An analysis of Crunchbase data shows Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz once again dominated the latest unicorn cohort, backing the most deals in companies that reached billion-dollar valuations in 2025. But Crunchbase data also highlights a set of rising investors — including Redpoint, Felicis 1, Ribbit Capital, 8VC 2 and Amplify Partners — that appear to be gaining ground in the race to fund the next wave of category leaders. Unicorns advance Last year was a strong one for new unicorns — well above the post-pandemic lull and slightly ahead of pre-pandemic norms. The pace of new unicorn creation also picked up each quarter in 2025 and has shown no signs of slowing in 2026, per Crunchbase data. Trending investors AI-native companies accounted for 47 of last year’s new unicorns, or 25% of the total, and that percentage seems likely to grow in 2026 as companies in that sector continue to draw significant investment. Notably, nearly half of the new unicorns are also very young: 94 of them are less than 5 years old. The most-active investors in terms of deal count in last year’s new unicorn class were two VC heavyweights: Sequoia and a16z, which made 51 investments across 21 and 20 companies, respectively. Notable investments for Sequoia — where the firm led early at seed or Series A rounds and continued to back later rounds — include OpenEvidence, a clinician-focused medical AI platform, prediction markets platform Kalshi, and frontier intelligence lab Reflection AI. For Andreessen, three of its most-notable investments were for automated coding platform Fal, health customer support service Hippocratic AI, and Decagon, which provides AI for customer support. Following those two firms, General Catalyst was a close third with 49 investments across 23 companies, which was the highest count of companies for an investor in the unicorn class. Its investments include trucking insurance startup Nirvana Insurance, Mercor, an expert training data platform for AI, and Black Forest Labs, a frontier lab for visual content. Accel, Y Combinator and Lightspeed Partners rounded out the leading six unicorn investors of 2025, with 37, 36 and 34 deals, respectively. Portfolio companies where these firms led early and kept investing include: Rounding out the top 10 were Redpoint with 28 investments, seed investor SV Angel 3 and growth investor Founders Fund, each with 23 and 22 deals, respectively. Ribbit Capital and Felicis shared the top 10 spot, each with 20 deals. Newer entrants What’s compelling is not just the investors with a track record of backing formidable companies, but those that have climbed the ranks by identifying the next wave early. The investors in the 2025 class of billion-dollar startups include quite a few firms who were not in the overall top 20 investors for current private unicorn companies. Crunchbase data shows Redpoint, Thrive Capital and Kleiner Perkins moved up from the top 30 while Ribbit Capital, Felicis and 8VC made their move from the top 50. Nvidia, the single corporate investor on this list, and Meritech Capital both moved up from the top 60. Amplify Partners vaulted up to the top 20 from the 175th-ranked investor slot in current unicorns. Its thesis is to invest in technical founders in applications, models, tools and infrastructure, and includes video and image generator Luma AI, customer data platform Hightouch, and workflow documentation platform Scribe. Higher values, faster cycles In 2025, The Crunchbase Unicorn Board expanded in both company count and total value as cloud and AI continued to unlock new opportunities. The leading companies have decisively separated from the pack, with billions in revenue and a strong runway. The race to back the next generation of companies defining new opportunities has accelerated, but markets are moving faster than ever. Cutting-edge companies in today’s market risk being taken over by AI developments which erode their advantage and wipe away their lead. Investors who want to back the next market winners need to keep investing. Related Crunchbase unicorn lists: Related reading: Methodology The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter. Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board. Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits. Deal counts reported here reflect deals disclosed in Crunchbase. Crunchbase, like all databases of private-market transactions, has a documented pattern of reporting delays. It can sometimes take between weeks and months for some rounds to be announced publicly and subsequently get added to Crunchbase. As data is added to Crunchbase over time, some of the numbers in this report may shift. Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price. Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: AI, Robotics And E-Commerce Top The Ranks
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding deal roundup here. Busy week, big checks, lots of AI and robotics. That, in ultra-brief synopsis form, characterized the general startup fundraising environment this week. Notably, the two largest global rounds were U.K.-based Nscale and Paris-based Advanced Machine Intelligence, which raised $2 billion and $1.03 billion, respectively. In the U.S., meanwhile, e-commerce platform Quince, AI networking developer Nexthop AI and industrial automation startup Mind Robotics each picked up $500 million. 1. (tied) Quince, $500M, e-commerce: Quince, an online fashion and home goods retailer with an affordable luxury theme, said it secured $500 million in Series E financing led by Iconiq Capital. The round sets a $10.1 billion post-money valuation for the 8-year-old, San Francisco-based company. 1. (tied) Nexthop AI, $500M, AI infrastructure: AI networking startup Nexthop AI raised $500 million in Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Andreessen Horowitz joining as a major investor alongside other backers. The Santa Clara, California-based company develops switching technology built on open-source operating systems for AI and cloud networking. 1. (tied) Mind Robotics, $500M, robotics: Rivian spin-out Mind Robotics closed on a $500 million Series A round, co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The Palo Alto, California-based company is developing an AI-enabled industrial robotics platform, with a focus on automating industrial and manufacturing tasks at scale. 4. Rhoda AI, $450M, robotics: Palo Alto, California-based robotics startup Rhoda AI emerged from stealth with $450 million in Series A funding reportedly led by Premji Invest. The startup trains robots using hundreds of millions of videos to develop intelligent models for operating in complex and changing environments. 5. Replit, $400M, AI software creation: Replit, an agentic AI software creation platform, picked up $400 million in Series D funding at a $9 billion valuation, up from $3 billion just six months ago. Georgian led the financing for the Foster City, California-based company, joined by a long list of venture and celebrity investors. 6. (tied) Eridu, $200M, AI networking: AI startup Eridu emerged from stealth with over $200 million in a newly announced Series A round led by Socratic Partners, John Doerr, Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group and Matter Venture Partners. Saratoga, California-based Eridu develops a high-performance network switch for AI data centers. 6. (tied) Axiom Math AI, $200M, artificial intelligence: Palo Alto, California-based Axiom Math AI, a developer of AI systems that can perform automated verification of computer code, raised $200 million in Series A funding at a $1.6 billion valuation. Menlo Ventures led the round, joined by Madrona, Greycroft, B Capital and Toyota Ventures. 8. Sunday, $165M, robotics: Sunday, a startup planning a beta launch for a household robot called Memo later this year, raised $165 million in Series B funding. Coatue led the financing, which set a $1.15 billion valuation for the Mountain View, California-based company. 9. Kai, $125M, cybersecurity: San Jose, California-based Kai, developer of an agentic AI cybersecurity platform, announced that it secured $125 million in funding led by Evolution Equity Partners. 10. Oro Labs, $100M, procurement: Oro Labs, developer of a procurement platform for enterprise customers, raised $100 million in Series C funding. Brighton Park Capital and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity led the financing, which the company said follows a year of 300% revenue growth. Global financings The week’s largest rounds went to European startups. Nscale, $2B, AI infrastructure: Nscale, an AI infrastructure hyperscaler, secured $2 billion in Series C funding. Aker and 8090 Industries led the financing, which set a $14.6 billion valuation for the London-based company. Advanced Machine Intelligence, $1.03B, artificial intelligence: Advanced Machine Intelligence, a startup co-founded by computer science pioneer and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun, said it has raised $1.03 billion to develop “world models,” or AI designed to learn from and interact with the physical world. The funding for the Paris-based company represents the largest seed round ever for a European startup. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of March 7-13. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week. Illustration: Dom Guzman
5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Blood-Drawing Robots, Inboxes For AI Agents, Franchised Defense Manufacturing, And More
This is a monthly column that runs down five interesting startup funding deals every month that may have flown under the radar. Check out our latest entry here. February was the biggest month on record for venture funding. And while the vast majority of that capital went to just three companies — OpenAI, Anthropic and Waymo — a whole host of under-the-radar startups also drew investor checks. Among those that most piqued our interest: A phlebotomy robot, a company that aims to revive precision manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe with a small-business franchise model, and a health beverage made from seaweed. Let’s dive in. $70M for robotic blood draws If you’re squeamish about needles or blood, you might want to stop reading now. This week, Dutch startup Vitestro raised $70 million in Series B funding for its phlebotomy robots, which are designed to autonomously perform diagnostic blood draws. Vitestro was founded in 2017 and has raised more than $104 million to date, per Crunchbase. Its Series B investors include Sutter Health, Sonder Capital, Puma Venture Capital, Mayo Clinic and LabCorp Venture Fund, among others. The new funding will be used to advance its Autonomous Robotic Phlebotomy Device, to seek regulatory approvals in the U.S. and to scale commercialization. Blood draws are one of the most routine and important processes in healthcare, investors noted, but have undergone little to no technical innovation, despite chronic industry staffing shortages. Vitestro’s device is designed to be installed in phlebotomy departments and combines imaging technology, AI and advanced robotics to identify suitable veins for a blood draw, guide needle insertion and collect blood samples, according to the company. “Vitestro is redefining one of the largest and most under innovated clinical workflows with a first-of-its-kind autonomous robotic platform for diagnostic blood collection addressing an enormous unmet global market need,” Dr. Fred Moll, co-founder and partner at Sonder Capital and former co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Surgical and Auris Health, said in a statement. “I believe this technology has the potential to establish a new standard of care, much as robotic surgery did in its early days.” Related Crunchbase query: Global Funding To AI Health Tech Companies In 2026 $50M for a franchise model for precision manufacturing Two of the hottest startup industries right now are defense and space tech. At the same time, domestic manufacturing in the U.S. and Europe, particularly for military and defense applications, has come under renewed focus amid global trade tensions and intensifying wars. Against that backdrop, manufacturing startup Isembard said earlier this week that it raised a $50 million Series A, less than a year after its seed round. The London-based company says it plans to open 25 factories by the end of 2026 and launch into Germany, France and Ukraine. Isembard makes technology to manufacture precision components that are used in the defense, aerospace, energy and robotics sectors. Interestingly, it operates as a franchise model that lets existing machine shops and new businesses use its proprietary software and AI system. It noted that component manufacturing is a $1.8 trillion a year industry. Yet, 95% of production is done by small businesses. The typical owner of one of those small machine shops is more than 65 years old and 40% plan to retire within five years, according to the company. Union Square Ventures led Isembard’s Series A investment, which included participation from Tamarack Global, Notion Capital, IQ Capital, CIV, and individual investors Matt Briers, Andrei Danescu and Alex Bouaziz. “Isembard is redefining the process of owning and running a factory,” Rebecca Kaden, managing partner at Union Square, said in a statement. “By embedding deep operational expertise into an agentic OS, MasonOS lowers the barrier to operating high-performance manufacturing businesses and enables a networked, capital-efficient path to scale. At a moment when demand for advanced manufacturing is accelerating and interest in SMB ownership is rising, Isembard brings both forces together.” Related Crunchbase queries: Space Tech Startup Funding and Global Defense Tech Funding $13M for seaweed beverages While overall funding to food and beverage startups has plummeted since their pandemic-era heights, products that offer unique health benefits do still attract investor attention. One recently funded company in that space is Aqua Theon, a Torrance, California-based startup that makes wellness-oriented drinks from seaweed. The company secured $13 million in seed funding led by Sparx Asset Management with participation from Beyond Next Ventures and WiL (World Innovation Lab). Founded in 2019 by Alissa Miky, Aqua Theon’s first product is OoMee, a seaweed-based beverage marketed as supporting gut health and satiety. Its star ingredient, agar-agar, has reportedly seen a surge in social media interest. Beverages marketed as healthful or beneficial are forecasted to be a more than $192 billion market by the end of this year. Among funded startups, that has included a heavy emphasis on products that orient themselves around offering protein, fiber or an energy boost, a review of Crunchbase data shows. Related Crunchbase query: Beverage Startups Funded In 2025, Sample List $6M for an email provider for AI agents They grow up so fast, don’t they? Less than four years into the AI boom, AI agents are already asking for their own email addresses. That’s the premise behind AgentMail, a San Francisco-based startup that this week said it has raised $6 million in seed funding from a long list of investors to build the tech stack for software agents, starting with their inboxes. “AI agents are already starting to function as virtual employees across industries,” Yuri Sagalov, partner at General Catalyst, said in a statement. “These agents need their own identity and email is the heart of identity on the internet. Traditional identity services were not built with agentic use cases in mind, and AgentMail is building that part of the stack, starting with email.” To that end, AgentMail said it’s launching its onboarding API to let AI agents get email addresses without human assistance. “The next billion users of the internet will be AI agents,” AgentMail co-founder Haakam Aujla said in a statement. “We’re building infrastructure that treats agents as first-class citizens, starting with email. The demand is so intense that the agents themselves are finding us and signing up.” Related Crunchbase query: Global Venture Funding To AI Startups In 2026 $1.3M for AI for wastewater treatment Nyad, an AI software company that helps the wastewater industry manage complex systems and make critical decisions, raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding. The deal exemplifies a common theme among funded AI startups: Many operate in very niche industries and promise to automate process-heavy workflows. Nyad said its tool is designed to help plant operators in the wastewater industry, which faces a looming labor shortage as nearly half of the sector’s U.S. workforce is expected to retire in the next decade. The round for the Birmingham, Alabama-based startup was led by Boost VC and included participation from Draper Associates, Halogen Ventures, Ollin Ventures, Apprenti, First Avenue Ventures and angel investor Troy Wallwork. Nyad was founded in 2024 by British entrepreneurs Virginia Szepietowski (CEO) and Christopher Braithwaite after the two reportedly experienced poor water quality during triathlon training in the U.K. They later moved the company to the U.S. after seeing early customer demand through pilot programs in the Birmingham area. Nyad’s technology helps plant operators maintain compliance and troubleshoot issues. “Operators are the final line of defense for public health and the environment,” Szepietowski said in a statement. “As experience retires out of the industry, we need tools that support operators in the moment when decisions matter most.” Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman