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Fintech Plaid Completes Tender Offer At $8B Valuation
Fintech infrastructure company Plaid revealed on Thursday that it has completed a new fundraise to provide liquidity to employees at a valuation of $8 billion. That valuation is up 31% from the $6.1 billion the San Francisco-based company was valued at in April 2025 when it completed a separate tender offer. At its peak in 2021, Plaid was valued at $13.4 billion. Founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey, Plaid got its start as a company that connects consumer bank accounts to financial applications. It has since gradually expanded its offerings to include lending, identity verification, credit reporting, anti-fraud and payments. The company has raised about $1.3 billion in funding over its lifetime and, at one point, was set to be acquired by Visa before that deal fell apart due to regulatory concerns. Plaid’s backers include Citi Ventures, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, Silver Lake, Ribbit Capital, Spark Capital, AmEx Ventures, BlackRock and Fidelity, among others. Its customers include Citibank, Amex, Robinhood, Coinbase, The RealReal, Block and Affirm. New AI focus The increase in valuation, the company says, “reflects momentum from the past year, as well as Plaid’s increasing relevance in the age of AI.” Last week, Plaid said it was entering a new phase of development centered on artificial intelligence. It unveiled a new foundational model as part of its goal to power the next phase of “intelligent finance.” It added: “As AI penetrates financial services, Plaid’s relevance compounds. Last year, AI firms made up 20% of the companies onboarded as new customers.” Tender offers have become more common as an increasing number of startups choose to stay private longer. Earlier this week, payments giant Stripe announced its own tender offer at a $159 billion valuation. Generative AI company Anthropic is also believed to be working on a tender offer at a valuation of at least $350 billion. Total global funding to VC-backed financial technology startups totaled $51.8 billion in 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s a fairly significant — 27% — increase from 2024’s total of $40.8 billion raised. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
How This GV Investor Looks For The Next Stripe And Other ‘Compounding’ Startups In Fintech And AI
Elena Sakach is on a roll. A partner at GV (Google Ventures), Sakach has helped lead the firm’s investments in high-profile startups such as Humans&, Ramp, Stripe, Tennr and Basis. Unsurprisingly, considering her involvement in so many significant fintech deals, Sakach followed a fairly traditional path into finance. She started in the technology, media and telecom investment banking group at Goldman Sachs before moving into investing roles. Sakach began her investing career at TPG, focusing mainly on software and fintech businesses across buyouts and minority investments. Over time, she transitioned more toward growth and venture investing, joining Coatue in 2021. In May 2024, Sakach landed at GV, where she now focuses on growth-stage companies, and in her view, her fintech background gives her an introspective lens to examine different verticals. “Across my investments, the common thread is solving large structural problems with technology and data advantages,” she said. Crunchbase News recently spoke with Sakach to find out more about her investment thesis, her thoughts on what defines winning fintech and AI companies, how AI is affecting traditional software businesses, and how she determines what truly is a large opportunity. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity. Crunchbase News: Do you consider yourself a fintech investor or more of a generalist? Elena Sakach, partner at GV. (Courtesy photo) Sakach: I consider myself an investor first. Some venture investors define themselves by sector, but I’ve always wanted to be the best investor possible, regardless of category. I’ve worked across stages and strategies — from banking to buyouts to growth equity to venture. Those experiences are interconnected. For example, banking exposes you to companies at every lifecycle stage, buyouts focus on mature businesses, and venture focuses on emerging leaders. At GV, we invest in hyper-scaling businesses early in their lifecycle that we believe could become public companies. What does it take to build a successful fintech company today? I think a lot about compounding businesses — companies that naturally grow in value as customers use them over time. The best fintech companies share several characteristics: trust-based customer relationships because once customers trust a financial platform switching becomes difficult; expansion economics because over time, companies can upsell and cross-sell additional products; and a core infrastructure role, which allows them to become embedded in essential financial workflows. For example, Monzo compounds through customer engagement and product expansion. Stripe continues to grow as a core infrastructure provider for global payments. Even today, modern payment service providers still handle a minority of global payment volume, which highlights how much growth opportunity remains. How do you evaluate fintech opportunities now compared to a few years ago? Today, companies tend to fall into two categories: very early, highly novel ideas, often AI-driven, or late-stage compounding businesses with strong retention and expansion dynamics. Execution quality is critical. Many fintech successes come from doing the fundamentals exceptionally well. There’s also a large opportunity in automation within financial institutions — AI-driven efficiency improvements inside banks and financial operations. How is AI affecting traditional software businesses? AI has reduced technology as a durable moat. Many software products can now be rebuilt quickly. As a result, defensibility is shifting toward proprietary data, distribution channels, customer relationships and talent and research capabilities. Companies that succeed will preserve or expand their distribution advantage, rebuild their product stack for an AI-native world, and learn from proprietary usage data faster than competitors. The dividing line is roughly pre- and post-ChatGPT. Companies built before must replatform. Companies built after must start with the right architecture. What excites you most about AI’s long-term impact? I think about two categories of impact: cost reduction and expansion of possibilities. The most exciting outcomes come from expanding what’s possible, not just reducing costs. AI can increase access, scale services, and grow total output. For example, healthcare automation doesn’t just reduce expenses — it enables providers to serve more patients. I focus on opportunities that expand outcomes dramatically rather than simply making existing processes cheaper. Are current AI valuations sustainable? The key difference between today and 2021 is the presence of a true platform shift. In 2021, capital surged and there was no comparable technological shift. Today, AI represents a foundational technology transition. So, capital is flowing toward transformative opportunities. Another major change is structural. Venture capital has grown dramatically as an asset class. Large funds must deploy capital, which increases competition and deal sizes. The critical question is not valuation alone. It’s whether investors are backing category-defining opportunities. How do you determine what qualifies as a truly large opportunity? You cannot make a small idea large simply by investing more capital. Investors evaluate things like market scale, structural tailwinds, timing (asking “why now?”), team capability and potential for industrywide change. We’re looking for ideas that can reshape entire systems if they succeed. Those opportunities are relatively rare, which is why selectivity matters so much. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
IPOs Are Holding Up In 2026, But SaaS Debuts Aren’t Happening
Predictions of a grand IPO rebound in 2026 have yet to come true in the form of new filings and major debuts. Nonetheless, the first couple months of the year have brought a steady stream of market entries from companies in sectors such as construction tech, space tech and biotech. Noticeably absent, however, are new offerings from SaaS companies, long an IPO market staple. Per Crunchbase data, 11 venture- or seed-backed U.S. companies went public on major exchanges so far this year, raising just over $3 billion. Comparatively, that’s a fairly robust showing for the first couple months of the year, which tends to be a reasonably active period for IPOs. Looking at recent years charted below, the first couple months of 2026 are well above the bottom ranks, but still far below the 2021 market peak for volume of offerings and total raised. Leading offerings weren’t your typical VC-backed deals The lineup of companies going public so far this year, however, includes many that don’t look like your typical VC-backed offering. This includes the year’s largest VC-funded IPO: EquipmentShare, a service that provides construction equipment rentals and support for building projects. The 11-year-old, Columbia, Missouri-based company raised more than $700 million in its January offering and had a recent market cap of over $7 billion. The second-largest debut was also somewhat of an outlier: space tech company York Space Systems, which is majority-owned by private equity firm AE Industrial Partners. It’s down from its initial trading price but recently valued around $3.4 billion. Per Crunchbase data, there have been six IPOs of venture-backed companies this year that raised $200 million or more, which we list below. SaaS squashed It’s also noteworthy who isn’t on the list. For years, enterprise software companies have been among the more reliable IPO market entrants. This year, however, they’ve been notably absent as the sector contends with an extended selloff fueled partly by concerns of AI-abetted disruption. We’re also not seeing SaaS companies in the immediate IPO pipeline. A perusal of new IPO filings so far this year showed no venture-backed SaaS unicorns that submitted a new IPO filing in 2026. It’s a sharp contrast to just a few months ago. One of last year’s splashiest IPOs — design software platform Figma — is now down more than two-thirds from its peak. Another of the more recent big SaaS offerings — business travel and expense platform Navan — has shed more than half its value. Meanwhile, Blackstone-backed Liftoff, which provides tools for marketers and app developers, withdrew its planned IPO this month, amid the software route. It’s likely a delay, as Reuters reported that Liftoff filed a new confidential plan shortly afterward. IPO market in an odd place Overall, the IPO market is in an odd place at the moment. It’s an unfriendly scene for companies with business models viewed as vulnerable to AI-driven displacement. At the same time, there’s still continued buzz around the potential for record-setting offerings from SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI. Of those, the one rumored to be closest on the horizon is SpaceX, newly combined with xAI at a reported $1.25 trillion valuation. The company is said to be eyeing a market debut as early as this summer. If that happens, and the current SaaS squeeze continues, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a pattern of record-setting IPO returns coinciding with a very small number of actual debuts. Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Plant-Based Clothing Dyes, A Shoebox-Picking Robot, And Power Generated On The Moon
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 December entry here. A host of interesting, under-the-radar recently funded startups caught our attention in the past month, including one that’s developing nuclear-waste generated electricity on the moon, another that aims to use AI to extract business intelligence from enterprise contracts, and a shoebox-picking warehouse robot. Let’s take a closer look. $55M to turn contracts into business intelligence AI-driven contract intelligence platform Ivo said last month that it raised $55 million in a Series B round led by existing investor Blackbird, with participation from Costanoa Ventures, Uncork Capital, Fika Ventures, GD1 and Icehouse Ventures. The funding for the San Francisco-based company comes amid record-breaking funding for legal tech startups, particularly those that apply AI-driven automation to the notoriously paperwork-heavy profession. All told, venture funding to legal tech startups in 2025 nearly doubled year over year to more than $4 billion, per Crunchbase data. Ivo itself has now raised $77.2 million from investors, per Crunchbase. Its latest funding comes as in-house legal teams face mounting pressure from rising contract volumes and growing compliance demands. Even as contracts increasingly serve as the backbone of revenue, vendor relationships and risk management, much of the data inside those agreements remains locked in PDFs and legacy systems, which are difficult to search or analyze without manual review. Ivo’s platform automates contract review and transforms agreements into structured, searchable data. Its review product uses lawyer-built playbooks to standardize positions and flag deviations, with customers reporting time savings of up to 75% compared to manual review, per the company. Its intelligence layer also reportedly allows teams to surface obligations, renewal terms and risk exposure across entire contract libraries in seconds. Since its previous funding round, Ivo says it has grown annual recurring revenue by 500%, increased its total customer count by 134%, and expanded adoption within the Fortune 500 by 250%. Its customers include Uber, Shopify, Atlassian, Reddit and Canva. “Our goal has always been to make interacting with contracts fast, accurate, and enjoyable,” CEO and co-founder Min-Kyu Jung said in a statement. “Every key relationship in a business is defined by an agreement, yet most organizations struggle to extract the insights inside them. Our focus is to give in-house teams a trustworthy solution that helps them work faster and gives them visibility into their contracts that was previously impossible.” Related Crunchbase query: Legal And Legal Tech Startup Funding, 2025 $10M for warehouse robots, including one that picks shoeboxes Amid record robotics investment, we perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised to see some very specialized bots get funding. One is from Nomagic, a Polish warehouse robotics company that last month raised a $10 million Series B extension led by Cogito Capital Partners. Along with its new funding, the Warsaw-based company unveiled its Shoebox Picker robot, designed to “reliably pick two-piece, unsealed shoeboxes.” That might sound like a niche task, but the company said shoeboxes account for up to 20% of SKUs in U.S. fashion e-commerce, yet have long resisted automation. The Shoebox Picker can pick up to 450 units per hour when it’s only handling shoeboxes, and up to 600 units per hour for mixed bins, per the company. It can handle more than 98% of the shoeboxes on the market, according to Nomagic. Nomagic’s vision is “to bring physical AI into the heart of warehouse and logistics operations, where intelligent, autonomous systems can finally bridge the gap between digital optimization and real‑world execution,” CEO and co-founder Kacper Nowicki said in the funding announcement. The company was founded in 2017 and has raised $84.6 million to date, per Crunchbase. Venture funding to robotics-related startups overall totaled nearly $14 billion last year, per Crunchbase data. That’s a 70% increase over 2024 and eclipses even the peak funding year of 2021. Related Crunchbase query: Robotics Startup Funding $5M to replace synthetic dyes with plant-based alternatives Sparxell, a startup developing plant-based color technology, raised $5 million in a pre-Series A round led by Swen Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean 2 fund, with participation from Alpha Star Capital Management and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures. The Cambridge, U.K.-based startup is tackling one of the fashion and chemical industries’ dirtiest secrets: synthetic dyes. An estimated 17% to 20% of industrial water pollution stems from textile dyeing and fabric finishing treatments. Sparxell’s funding seems timely, as regulators globally are tightening scrutiny of chemical substances. The European Union has moved forward with restrictions on intentionally added microplastics, and policymakers are weighing broader bans on PFAS “forever chemicals.” In the U.S., the FDA has also been reassessing certain synthetic color additives in food and consumer products. Spun out of the University of Cambridge, Sparxell aims to replace petroleum-based pigments and heavy metals with wood pulp-derived coloring. The company says that arranging cellulose crystals to reflect specific wavelengths of light produces 100% plant-based pigments, glitters and inks designed as direct replacements for conventional dyes. The startup says its process can cut water use by up to 90% compared to traditional dyeing methods and eliminate microplastics and toxic runoff. Unlike synthetic dyes, Sparxell’s cellulose-based pigments are also biodegradable, per the company. “Our technology isn’t just an alternative — it is here to stay because it delivers superior performance due to its nature-inspired features. This funding takes us from proof of concept to production and commercial launches,” CEO and founder Benjamin Droguet said in a statement. “We’re at an inflexion point. Brands are under pressure to eliminate synthetic toxins from their supply chains.” Founded in 2022, Sparxell has now raised $10.2 million, per Crunchbase. The new funding will help it scale from pilot projects to tonne-scale manufacturing by 2026, per the company. Apparel-related venture funding totaled about $1.5 billion globally last year and in 2024, per Crunchbase data, down significantly from the peak year of 2021 when it totaled $9.2 billion. Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Fashion-Related Startups $2.6M for AI-driven M&A deal-sourcing Singapore-based GrowthPal, an M&A sourcing platform for corporations and high-growth startups, recently raised $2.6 million in a funding round led by Ideaspring Capital, with participation from angel investors. The startup is targeting one of the most relationship-driven corners of corporate strategy: deal origination. While acquisitions have become a key growth lever for companies of all sizes, sourcing targets, especially in the mid-market and sub-$70 million range, remains slow, opaque and heavily dependent on banker networks and in-market listings. GrowthPal says its AI-driven platform acts as an “M&A copilot” that translates a buyer’s strategic objective — say, entering a new geography or acquiring a specific capability — into a structured acquisition thesis. AI agents then scan a database of more than 4 million technology companies, analyzing signals including hiring trends, funding history, web activity and public filings to surface high-fit, often off-market targets. “M&A sourcing is where most time and effort is wasted, especially for smaller and mid-market deals,” Maneesh Bhandari, co-founder and CEO of GrowthPal, said in a statement. “Teams spend weeks researching, filtering, and chasing opportunities that never go anywhere. We built GrowthPal to help buyers focus only on high-intent, high-fit targets and move from mandate to meaningful conversations far faster.” GrowthPal, which has raised $4 million total, per Crunchbase, says it has already supported 42 completed transactions and facilitated more than 210 letter-of-intent-stage conversations across North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America. Its clients reportedly span large enterprises, PE-backed firms and growth-stage startups across SaaS, fintech, IT services and other sectors. In one case, the company says, a single client closed seven acquisitions in 18 months using the platform. Its funding seems prescient: There were more than 2,300 M&A deals globally involving venture-backed startups last year, per Crunchbase data, up only slightly from the year prior, but insiders who spoke with Crunchbase News said they expect strategic acquisitions for talent and technology to surge this year. Related Crunchbase query: Global Venture-backed M&A in 2025 $411K to generate energy on the moon Talk about a moonshot. Deep Space Energy, a Latvia-based startup, this month said it has raised €350,000, or about $411,000, in pre-seed funding to generate electricity on the moon. The company said the funding was led by Outlast Fund and angel investor Linas Sargautis. Along with the equity round, Deep Space says it secured another €580,000 (about $682,000) in public contracts and grants by the European Space Agency, NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator and the Latvian government. The company aims to develop a novel generator based on radioisotopes — materials derived from nuclear waste that generate energy through natural decay — to power moon surface exploration and for military satellite reconnaissance. “Our technology, which has already been validated in the laboratory, has several applications across the defence and space sectors,” Deep Space CEO and founder Mihails Ščepanskis said in a statement. “First, we’re developing an auxiliary energy source to enhance the resilience of strategic satellites. It provides the redundancy of satellite power systems by supplying backup power that does not depend on solar energy, making it crucial for high-value military reconnaissance assets.” Ščepanskis noted in the statement that while Deep Space’s technology wouldn’t be used for weaponry, the Russia-Ukraine war was a motivating factor for its development. That became even clearer last year, when Ukraine lost its beachhead in Russia’s Kursk Oblast as the U.S. temporarily ceased the sharing of satellite intelligence. “As Europe is trying to become more independent, it is imperative to produce satellites with advanced capabilities on our own,” Ščepanskis said. “Our technology provides an auxiliary energy source for satellites, which makes them more resilient to non-kinetic attacks and malfunctions.” Venture funding to space- and defense-related technologies, which often overlap, soared last year. Global funding to space tech totaled $14.2 billion in 2025 — more than double the annual totals in 2023 and 2024 — per Crunchbase data. Funding recipients included a mix of defense tech, satellite and rocket developers, and startups finding innovative use cases for geospatial data. Related Crunchbase queries: Space Tech Startup Funding and Global Defense Tech Funding Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: World Labs Leads Another AI-Heavy Lineup
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. This week’s largest U.S. funding rounds once again featured an AI-heavy cohort, along with sizable financings around fintech and energy tech. By far the largest deal was a $1 billion financing for World Labs, developer of AI models that interact with the 3D world, followed by a $385 million round for savings platform Vestwell. 1. World Labs, $1B, spatial AI: San Francisco-based World Labs, a startup founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li that develops foundational models to generate and interact with the 3D world, raised $1 billion in fresh funding. Investors in the round include AMD, Autodesk, Emerson Collective, Fidelity, Nvidia and Sea. 2. Vestwell, $385M, fintech: Vestwell, an online provider of multiple types of savings accounts and tools, raised $385 million in Series E funding at a reported $2 billion valuation. Blue Owl Capital and Sixth Street Growth led the financing for the 10-year-old, New York-based company. 3. Temporal Technologies, $300M, workflow management and fault tolerance: Bellevue, Washington-based Temporal Technologies, a provider of tools that allow developers to make workflows more reliable and fault-tolerant, closed on $300 million in Series D funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the financing, which set a $5 billion valuation for the 7-year-old company. 4. Heron Power, $140M, energy tech: Heron Power, a developer of hardware designed to move electricity from renewable sources into the grid and data centers, picked up $140 million in a funding round backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The Scotts Valley, California-based company is founded by former Tesla SVP Drew Baglino. 5. Code Metal, $125M, AI coding: Code Metal, a provider of verifiable code translation tools, raised $125 million in Series B financing led by Salesforce Ventures 1. The round comes just three months after the Boston-based startup secured its Series A. 6. (tied) Render, $100M, cloud for developers: Render, a cloud provider for application development teams, secured $100 million in Series C extension funding. Georgian led the financing for the San Francisco-based company, which said it now has over 4.5 million developers on its platform. 6. (tied) Utility Global, $100M, clean energy: Houston-based Utility Global, developer of a technology to produce hydrogen and capturable carbon from industrial gases, raised $100 million in Series D funding. Ara Partners and APG Asset Management led the financing for the 8-year-old company. 6. (tied) ZaiNar, $100M, location tracking: ZaiNar, developer of a technology for wireless networks to sense the location of things without satellites, cameras or heavy compute power, emerged from stealth and disclosed that it has drawn over $100 million in investment to date and a valuation of over $1 billion. Backers in the Belmont, California-based company include Steve Jurvetson, Jerry Yang, Tom Gruber and Jaan Tallinn. 9. Jump, $80M, fintech: Salt Lake City-based Jump, developer of an AI agent for financial advisers and financial services providers, raised $80 million in a Series B round led by Insight Partners. 10. Braintrust, $80M, AI observability: San Francisco-based Braintrust, a developer of AI observability software for development teams, raised $80 million in a Series B round led by Iconiq Capital. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Feb. 14-20. 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
AI Seed Trends: More Multimedia, Backend Automation, Agentic Security, And Yes, Robots
Every so often at Crunchbase News, we take it upon ourselves to review every sizable seed round of the past few months, seeing what trends arise. This time around, given the excitement around artificial intelligence, we honed in exclusively on AI-focused startups. The goal was to pick out a few themes that appear to be resonating. Turns out, the hard part was narrowing it down. Investors poured over $9 billion into global AI-focused seed rounds over the past six months, per Crunchbase data. Areas they favored include cybersecurity, multimedia AI, robotics and desk work automation. Below, we look at these seed hotspots in greater detail. No. 1: Cybersecurity The intersection of AI and cybersecurity has two main areas of interest. One is tools that use AI to do established security tasks more efficiently and effectively. The other is applications aimed at security issues that AI itself itself brings to the fore, such as tracking and verifying autonomous agents. Put together, it adds up to a well-funded sector for seed, with more than $400 million invested at this stage in the past six months. Using Crunchbase data, we put together a sample list of eight AI and security-focused startups that raised some of the more significant recent seed rounds. Silicon Valley-based Armadin Security, a stealth startup, picked up one of the bigger rounds for tools using AI to automate security testing and identify vulnerabilities that hackers could use AI to exploit. Another standout was identity management startup Opti. No. 2: Robotics and drones Robotics features frequently in our roundups of seed trends, and this time is no exception. Per Crunchbase data, investors poured more than $850 million into seed rounds for AI-enabled robotics and drone startups over the past six months. It’s a geographically diversified lineup, with many of the largest rounds going to China-based startups. To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to put together a list of seven recently funded companies from multiple countries. Per Crunchbase data, the largest recent seed funding recipient is Mochi Intelligence, a Chinese company developing a universal humanoid robot that can do household work. Another high-profile round went to Mind Robotics, a spin-out of EV maker Rivian that is focused on AI-powered industrial robots. No. 3: Multimedia and content creation tools for AI Seed-stage startups are also innovating around how to better incorporate more language and multimedia features in AI offerings, including audio, translation and video. To demonstrate, we used Crunchbase data to assemble a list of six companies in these areas that raised sizable seed financings in the past few months. The biggest round on our list went to Paris-based Gradium, which picked up $70 million in initial funding in December to scale audio language AI models designed to deliver voice with ultra-low latency. Others are moving quickly up the funding ladder. San Francisco-based Runware, developer of an API for image, video and audio generation, raised a $13 million seed round in September and a $50 million Series A in December. No. 4: Automating niche desk work The notion that AI tools can perform a lot of tedious screen-facing work is now fully embedded in the public consciousness. In addition, many earlier pioneers in bringing these tools to market are already well-established unicorns, including AI legal tech company Harvey and clinical note-taking platform Abridge. But it’s not game over for newly launched startups that want to play in this space. Of late, we’re seeing seed funding to various ventures around this theme, with a particular focus on upstarts taking on niches within the vast realm of traditional deskwork. This includes areas like claims processing, procurement, healthcare call centers and building plan review. To illustrate, we aggregated a sample of 10 companies that raised seed investment in the past six months with $10 million or more in total funding. ClaimSorted, a New York-based insurtech startup that uses AI to do what its name suggests, is the most heavily funded on our list, securing a $13.3 million seed round in October. Another big round that month was a $10 million seed financing for Spacial, an AI-enabled structural engineering startup that reviews building plans to enable faster permitting. Big picture: More things we don’t pay attention to get automated One of the intriguing things about this particular AI seed-funding data dive is that it didn’t provide many startups that triggered an immediate “I want that” reaction. For the most part, it wasn’t a highly consumer-facing sample set. To the extent upstarts are disrupting established spaces, it was in areas the average person doesn’t think about much, like healthcare recordkeeping or next-gen security. So efficiency gains will likely be more apparent for enterprises than end users. There are some exceptions, of course, like household robots. But these aren’t innovations likely to make it into our shopping carts anytime soon. Related Crunchbase lists: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Ownwell Lands $30M To Help Homeowners Lower Their Property Tax Bills
Ownwell, an AI-powered startup that appeals property taxes on behalf of homeowners, has secured $50 million in financing, including $30 million in equity and $20 million in debt, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively. With the latest Series B raise, Austin-based Ownwell says it has now raised $54 million in total equity funding since its 2020 inception. Alpha Edison and Mercato Partners co-led its latest round, which included participation from Intuit Ventures, Left Lane Capital, First Round Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Proof Fund and Wonder Ventures. Western Alliance Bank provided the $20 million in debt financing. CEO Colton Pace said he and CTO Joseph Noor started Ownwell to “democratize access to the tools and resources real estate experts use to build wealth and financial freedom.” As a former asset manager, Pace said he worked for some of the wealthiest families and individuals in the world on the investment management side. Colton Pace and Joseph Noor, co-founders of Ownwell. (Courtesy photo) “I saw firsthand how billionaires manage their 28 homes and their apartment complexes and their retail across the country, and how everything is perfectly optimized,” he told Crunchbase News in an interview. “And so we built software for the purpose of providing tools for everyone, regardless of the value of their asset.” Ownwell launched for customers in 2021, initially handling the property-tax appeal process. Pace said its tech automates “complex steps and analyzes millions of local records” to surface the strongest case to present to local municipalities to argue for a lower home assessment and, in turn, a lower property tax bill. “We market to people that are typically very underserved,” Pace said. “That law firm down the street doesn’t want to help a $200,000 home [owner] appeal their property taxes. They want the skyscraper.” Pace claims that Ownwell is the only multistate company of its kind. It currently operates with local tax consultants in about a dozen states: Texas, New York, Florida, California, Illinois, Georgia, Washington, Maryland, Colorado, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Part of the newly raised capital will go toward expanding to other markets, and “going deeper” into existing markets, he said. A million appeals Ownwell doesn’t charge customers unless it lowers their tax bill. Depending on the market, its contingency fee is 25% to 35% of the savings it earns for property owners. (The fee depends on its cost to operate in that market.) “The majority of homeowners do not appeal or even think to appeal, so bringing consistent awareness to this for the average homeowner is the biggest challenge,” Pace said. Recently, the company surpassed more than 1 million appeals processed, and says it has saved its customers over $400 million in property taxes. Over the years, Ownwell has expanded its offering to include helping people get property exemptions, compare insurance providers and explore refinancing options. The company is also integrated with Realtor.com, and has partnerships with Valon Technologies and Amplify Credit Union. Ownwell gets commissions from carriers or lenders that it refers homeowners to, similar to Credit Karma’s model, Pace said. The startup also markets a nationwide property tax packet to help people outside of the 12 states in which it is operating to file their own appeals. “We’re taking the internal data that we’ve collected over the past six years and over hundreds of thousands of appeals across the country, and figuring out what wins,” Pace told Crunchbase News. “We’re prompting AI tooling with all this proprietary data that we have to give customers a useful packet that basically is the ultimate ‘how to appeal’ in markets that we are not in yet.” Ownwell has over 500,000 customers, including residential and commercial property owners throughout the country, in addition to homeowners. Since inception, Ownwell has maintained an annual growth rate of over 100% every year, according to Pace. In 2025, it grew customers by over 180%. Pace said the company is currently profitable (both cash flow and net income positive) but “is prioritizing growth.” A ‘customer-obsessed experience in a much larger market’ In 2025, global real estate-related startups pulled in about $10.5 billion in seed- through growth-stage financing, per Crunchbase data. That’s up about 17% from $9 billion in 2024. For its part, Ownwell is not sharing its current valuation, with Pace saying only that it “has grown significantly from round to round.” Presently, it has 108 employees. Vinny Pujji, managing partner at Left Lane Capital, which led Ownwell’s Series A round, notes that he served on Truebill’s board during its $1.5 billion acquisition by Rocket. “I’ve seen firsthand that helping consumers save money never goes out of style,” he wrote via email. Ownwell, in Pujji’s view, has built a “customer-obsessed experience in a much larger market.” “With a tech-enabled agentic product built for complex, local markets, “the team has achieved something you rarely see: tripling customers served annually at scale.” In a blog post, Intuit Ventures said it was impressed with Pace’s vision “to help millions of homeowners and save money for the consumers who need it most.” The firm added: “We’re proud to support the Ownwell team as they continue to deliver a product that creates holistic, money-saving experiences for consumers.” Related Crunchbase queries: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Innovation Is A Game Of Two Halves
Somewhere in the past 25 years, we began to confuse two things that are not the same. We started treating “innovation” as something that only happens in private markets, and “funding innovation” as a synonym for venture capital. The creation myth is familiar: founders in a garage, a seed check and then (many years, and many rounds later) an IPO that serves as a liquidity event for insiders. In this story, the public markets are where the startup goes to retire. But this is historically illiterate. Amazon went public in 1997, three years after founding, at a market cap of $438 million. It had $15.7 million in revenue. Nearly everything Amazon would become (the marketplace, AWS, the logistics empire) was built after it became a public company. The same is true of Microsoft, Cisco and Nvidia, the latter of which went public at under $1 billion and has since become the most valuable company on Earth. In the 1990s, the median tech company went public when it was 4 to 7 years old. Public investors didn’t buy the tail-end of innovation — they funded the vast majority of it. It remains true today. Just look at the “Magnificent 7.” Amazon vs. WeWork When the dot-com bubble burst, Amazon’s stock collapsed to single digits. That crisis forced Jeff Bezos to restructure the cash conversion cycle, close distribution centers and lay off 15% of staff. Amazon posted its first profitable quarter in Q4 2001. The public market’s ruthlessness was the forge that hardened the business model. Now compare this to what the “Private-for-Longer” era has produced. By 2024, the median VC-backed company went public at age 14, a full decade later than many 1990s counterparts. Shielded from quarterly accountability, short sellers and skeptical analysts, companies like WeWork accumulated $47 billion valuations while hiding behind metrics like “Community Adjusted EBITDA.” When WeWork finally tried to list, the market rejected it instantly. But by then, billions had been wasted. Private market opacity had delayed diagnosis until the rot was terminal. Discipline creates strength The data is damning across the board. The 2010–2020 cohort of VC-backed IPOs generated a negative 9.5% return relative to the S&P 500. In 2021, only 25% of IPOs were profitable. Instacart went public at a 77% discount to its 2021 valuation. Bird went bankrupt. The Renaissance IPO ETF fell over 50% from its peak. Meanwhile, Hamilton Lane’s research shows that roughly 90% of a company’s lifetime value creation now occurs in private markets, accessible only to institutional investors. The returns to innovation have been privatized while the risks have been socialized. The central paradox is that more private funding has not produced more innovation, it has simply inflated consensus. Abundant capital allowed “blitzscaling,” promoting growth over efficiency, far longer than the market would naturally tolerate. In the 1990s, a company could burn cash for three or four years before facing discipline. Today, it’s well over a decade and the result is companies that eventually go public with slower growth, less profit and greater risk. None of this means venture capital is unimportant. Early-stage risk absorption remains vital. But innovation is a lifecycle, and the lifecycle includes a public chapter that is not optional. What matters is the handoff, the transition from private incubation to public maturation, where ideas are tested, funded and held accountable by the broadest possible base of investors. The most consequential companies in technology history made that handoff early. The generation that delayed it has delivered the worst returns and the most spectacular failures. If innovation is the goal, the handoff matters. And we have been fumbling it. Dan Gray, a frequent guest author for Crunchbase News, is the research lead at Odin, a platform that allows VCs and angel syndicates to raise and deploy capital globally. Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman