Silicon Valley is foaming at the mouth with the promise of AI 'agents.' These are the startups to watch.
iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, has prophesied that this may be the year the first "agents" β a set of artificial intelligence tools that can perform tasks on their own β "join the workforce." Investors whose job it is to back new technologies before they become ubiquitous are swooning with the promise of these digital coworkers.
The rise of agents offers a fertile ground for a select group of startups to establish themselves as the front-runners of this shift. In that spirit, Business Insider reviewed viewed press releases, news articles, and PitchBook data for startups exploring the application of agents across various sectors and then filtered for those companies that raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024. The result is a list of 20 startups that seem positioned to scale this year on the back of new funding.
"If 2024 was the year of LLMs, we believe 2025 will be the year of agentic AI," said Praveen Akkiraju, a managing director at Insight Partners, whose agentic plays include Writer, Jasper, and Torq.
The last wave of artificial intelligence brought copilots, a type of virtual assistant designed to work side-by-side with a user. Some write code, some recap meetings or emails, and some scribe notes on a physician's behalf. Copilots require some human hand-holding but significantly amplify productivity and efficiency.
Since that breakthrough, a new generation of virtual assistants has emerged. Agents describe an artificial intelligence that can complete tasks without much human supervision. They don't just assist β they take charge. Agents can break down complex tasks into smaller sub-tasks, make decisions, execute plans, and adjust their approach based on outcomes.
Here's a simple way to think about the difference: a copilot can assist with crafting a tailored vacation itinerary, while an agent can go further by booking the flights, reserving the hotel, and organizing activities β all without a user needing to intervene at each step.
With Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI's significant investments in agentic models and the subsequent investor hysteria around this technology, it's clear that agents are the flavor of the season. PitchBook data shows startups exploring the application of agents have alone raised $8.2 billion in 2024.
Jill Chase, a partner at CapitalG, a growth fund under Alphabet, said software infrastructure that makes agents work "will be poised for explosive growth." Aaron Jacobson, a partner at NEA and early investor in Databricks, said enterprises will deploy agents at large to "make a real business impact." Seema Amble, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, suggested that agents will change how professionals use software.
"In the short term, human workers will be the reviewer in the loop," said Amble, an enterprise software investor. "In the future, as trust is established over time, I expect many data-derived actions will shift toward being entirely a set of narrowly defined task-driven agents."
Here's a list of agentic startups who have raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024, ranked from the least amount raised to the most amount raised.
Maven AGI
What it is: Maven AGI reimagines enterprise customer support by leveraging agents.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $28 million
Notable deal: Maven AGI launched from stealth with $28 million in Series A funding led by M13 in May of 2024.
Wordware
What it is: Polish-British startup Wordware is building a software platform that can develop and deploy agents using plain English rather than code.
Founded: 2021
Total funding: $30 million
Notable deal: At $30 million, Wordware's November 2024 fundraise is one of the largest seed rounds in Y Combinator's history, the startup. said. Spark Capital led the funding round, with YC and VC firm Felicis participating.
Decagon
What it is: Decagon is developing agents that act as customer support representatives for enterprise customers.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $35 million
Notable deal: Decagon emerged from stealth in June of 2024 and announced both its $30 million Series A and $5 million seed rounds. The startup's investors include Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Elad Gil.
Resolve AI
What it is: Resolve AI is building a production-engineer agent that troubleshoots errors and solves production issues, freeing up human engineers' time to create new products and features.
Founded: 2024
Total funding: $35 million
Notable deal: Greylock led Resolve AI's $35 million seed round in November 2024. Unusual Ventures also participated in the round alongside angel investors 'Godmother of AI' Fei-Fei Li, Google DeepMind's Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and executives from OpenAI, GitHub, AWS, and Notion also participated in the round.
Norm Ai
What it is: Norm Ai enables corporate compliance chiefs to convert regulations, from public laws to company policies, into working computer code.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $38 million
Notable deal: Norm Ai raised a $27 million Series A round led by Coatue in June of 2024, following an $11 million seed round earlier in the year.
MIT Leadership Center/YouTube
What it is: Founded by two cybersecurity veterans, 7AI is building a "swarm" of agents that monitor for threats and protect enterprise companies from cyberattacks.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $36 million
Notable deal: 7AI launched from stealth in June of 2024 with a $36 million seed funding round led by Greylock. CRV and Spark Capital also participated in the round.
Robin
What it is: Buzzy legaltech startup Robin offers a copilot for lawyers to help draft and revise contracts.
Founded: 2019
Total funding: $39 million
Notable deal: Singapore investment company Temasek led Robin's $26 million Series B funding round in January 2024, and VC firms QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners also participated in the round.
Braintrust
What it is: Developers at companies like Airtable, Instacart, and Stripe use Braintrust to build, monitor, and troubleshoot their artificial intelligence applications.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $45 million
Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $36 million Series A round of funding for Braintrust in August of 2024.
Lawhive
What it is: Lawhive's artificial intelligence-powered legal assistant, Lawrence, automates routine legal tasks, from client onboarding and compliance checks to document drafting.
Founded: 2019
Total funding: $52 million
Notable deal: Lawhive closed two rounds of funding just eight months apart, with a $10 million seed round in April of 2024 and a $40 million Series A round in December.
Qodo
What it is: Formerly known as CodiumAI, Qodo deploys agents into the coding process to take over tasks such as generation, testing, review, and documentation.
Founded: 2022
Total funding: $50 million
Notable deal: Qodo raised a $40 million Series A funding round in September of 2024 led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg. Firestreak Ventures, ICON Continuity Fund, TLV Partners, and Vine Ventures also participated in the round.
Rox
What it is: Rox's agents assist sales teams by monitoring customer activity, identifying risks and opportunities, and recommending action plans for human employees.
Founded: 2024
Total funding: $50 million
Notable deal: Rox completed its seed and Series A rounds in stealth. The deals β totaling $50 million from investors including GV, Sequoia, and General Catalyst β were announced in November of 2024.
Decart
What it is: Decart builds enterprise and consumer products on top of its own infrastructure stack, designed to reduce some of the costs of building or using artificial intelligence models.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $53 million
Notable deal: Decart emerged from stealth with $21 million in seed funding from Sequoia Capital and Zeev Ventures in October of 2024, and raised another $32 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark in December.
HeyGen
What it is: HeyGen, a generative AI video creator for enterprises, launched agents as virtual avatars that can provide around-the-clock customer support.
Founded: 2020
Total funding: $60 million
Notable deal: Benchmark led HeyGen's $60 million Series A in June of 2024. Other investors in the round included Thrive Capital, Bond Capital, Conviction, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Aviv Nevo, Neil Mehta, and SV Angel.
11x/Nordlys Photography
What it is: 11x builds artificial intelligence-powered sales development reps for handling the workflows of traditional revenue teams.
Founded: 2022
Total funding: $76 million
Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $50 million Series B round for 11x in November of 2024, just two months after the startup grabbed $24 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark.
Astrix Security
What it is: Astrix Security is creating a security platform to shield an enterprise customer's agents from cyberattacks.
Founded: 2021
Total funding: $85 million
Notable deal: Astrix closed a $45 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures in December of 2024. Workday Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, and F2 Venture Capital also participated.
Ema
What it is: Ema is building agents called "personas" that complete complex business tasks for their human employee counterparts.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $61 million
Notable deal: Ema increased its Series A funding round to $50 million in July of 2024, and counts Accel, Section 32, Prosus Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Wipro Ventures, SCB 10X, Colle Capital, and Frontier Ventures among its investors.
You.com
What it is: You.com's multi-agent system enables knowledge workers to conduct research, create content, and build custom agents on top of any artificial intelligence model for virtually any task.
Founded: 2020
Total funding: $99 million
Notable deal: Georgian led a $50 million Series B round of funding for You.com in September of 2024.
Anysphere
What it is: Anypshere, the startup behind the artificial intelligence-powered code editor, Cursor, allows developers to turn terse directives into working code.
Founded: 2022
Total funding: $171 million
Notable deal: Anysphere raised back-to-back rounds of funding just four months apart, with a $60 million Series A round in August of 2024 and a $100 million Series B round in December. The latest round crowned Anyshere a unicorn with a valuation of $2.6 billion.
Torq
What it is: Torq's multi-agent system enables security professionals to create and deploy sophisticated workflows, triage alerts, and respond to security events.
Founded: 2020
Total funding: $192 million
Notable deal: Torq closed two separate rounds of funding in the last 12 months, including a $42 million Series B round and a $70 million Series C round led by Evolution Equity Partners.
Legion
What it is: Legion, a workforce management platform used by companies like Barry's and Five Below, has developed agents to predict customer demand across locations, create and analyze schedules and timesheets, and reduce human bias.
Founded: 2016
Total funding: $195 million
Notable deal: Legion won $50 million in financing from Silicon Valley Bank in December of 2024, following a $50 million growth round led by Riverwood Capital earlier last year.
