• Rune, a defense tech startup, raised $6.2 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
• Founded by former Anduril employees, Rune develops software to manage military field logistics.
• Investors are increasingly backing defense tech startups to modernize military capabilities.

Rune, a defense tech startup based in Roslyn, Va., emerged from stealth Wednesday with $6.2 million in seed funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round. Point72 Ventures, XYZ Venture Capital, and several defense industry executives, including Anduril's senior VP of software engineering Gokul Subramanian, participated.

Founded in 2024 by former Anduril employees David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough, Rune is developing software to help the military manage field logistics. The current process of deciding whether a particular unit needs more food, fuel, or ammunition is "almost entirely a manual, human-centric process" that "runs off Excel spreadsheets," Tuttle, cofounder and CEO of Rune, told Business Insider.

TyrOS, Rune's software named after the Norse god of war Tyr, gathers data manually tabulated by frontline units. It then autonomously tracks supplies such as food or equipment, predicts future resupply needs, and helps the military determine when and where to restock, especially for resource—and location-constrained environments. An AI model that Rune is currently building enables its predictive modeling capabilities, but the company is also having initial conversations with "larger AI providers" to explore potential partnerships, Tuttle said.

The 11-person company has developed a prototype of the software, which "has already been in the hands of actual warfighters" in training exercises, Tuttle said. While Rune's software currently relies on manual data entry, TyrOS can integrate with government-owned software to automate logistics data collection, a capability that could become increasingly standard as other defense tech companies develop such technologies.

While several companies manage commercial logistics, TyrOS is built for the unique challenges of military operations. Rune is developing the software to work in areas with limited or disrupted communication, known as DDIL environments. It also enables military units to share data with each other, ensuring connectivity even if one unit's connection is compromised.

In recent years, investors in Silicon Valley have increasingly doubled down on defense tech startups, reflecting a growing commitment to companies hoping to strengthen national security and modernize military capabilities. "What we're seeing is a moment in time where technology can shift the balance between countries," Chris Morales, a partner at Point72 Ventures who also served in the US Navy for eight years, said. "And we're seeing teams that can actually take advantage of the moment."

Defense contractors and startups are also building in the military logistics space. Lockheed Martin, for example, develops battle management and equipment logistics software. Adyton, another startup, is working on mobile tools to streamline communication about equipment and other needs across the military.

Before cofounding Rune, Tuttle led the command and control hardware business at Andruil, where he met cofounder and CTO Peter Goldsborough. Tuttle previously worked at the Joint Special Operations Command, a special missions unit, and in investment banking at Citi. He also served as a field artillery officer in the US Army.

Goldsborough also worked in command and control at Anduril, where he was a chief engineer.

"We spent a lot of time on what we say, how do you fight the force?" Tuttle said. "But equally important and more so, even now is, how do you sustain the force? How do you keep the force fighting past the first day, two days — past the first 72 hours in an actual conflict?"

Almost a year into building the company, the cofounders will use Rune's new funding to continue building out its engineering, business development, and product teams, Tuttle said.

"July Fourth was actually our first official day as Rune employees, which is pretty cool," Tuttle said. "We've been off to the races since."

• OpenAI's former CTO, Mira Murati, debuted her new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, last week.
• The startup is aiming to raise $1 billion at a roughly $9 billion valuation, people familiar said.
• A spokesperson for Murati declined to comment.

Mira Murati's new startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is aiming to raise a $1 billion funding round at a roughly $9 billion valuation, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

The round is still in progress, and details could change. A spokesperson for Murati declined to comment.

A $9 billion valuation is unusually high for a startup less than a year old, but investors have been eager to back AI startups, especially those founded by former OpenAI employees.

Murati previously spent 6 ½ years at OpenAI, where she served as the chief technology officer, working on the development of ChatGPT and other AI research initiatives. She was briefly appointed interim CEO in November 2023 after OpenAI's board abruptly fired Sam Altman, a move that sparked turmoil within the company. After Altman's reinstatement as CEO, Murati resumed her role as CTO.

What exactly Murati would do after leaving OpenAI last year has been a favorite Silicon Valley parlor game in recent months, with few details until the company emerged from stealth last week.

In a blog post, Murati positioned the startup as an artificial intelligence research and product lab focused on making AI more accessible.

"To bridge the gaps, we're building Thinking Machines Lab to make AI systems more widely understood, customizable and generally capable," the post said.

Murati has recruited a long list of engineers and AI researchers from her former employer OpenAI, as well as Meta and Anthropic. Several of Murati's former coworkers, including John Schulman, who co-led the creation of ChatGPT; Jonathan Lachman, formerly the head of special projects at OpenAI; Barret Zoph, a cocreator of ChatGPT; and Alexander Kirillov, who worked closely with Murati on ChatGPT's voice mode, are also working at Thinking Machines Lab.

Murati is one of a handful of former OpenAI executives who have gone on to launch their own companies. Ilya Sutskever, the former OpenAI chief scientist and cofounder, left the company in May 2024 and started Safe Superintelligence soon after leaving. Dario and Daniela Amodei also worked at OpenAI and founded Anthropic in 2021.

• Kapta Space secures $5 million in seed funding led by MetaVC Partners.
• The startup develops electronically steerable, radar-based imaging technology for space.
• Kapta aims to launch low-cost satellites for improved imaging and analytics.

Kapta Space, a space tech startup, emerged from stealth Friday with $5 million in seed funding. MetaVC Partners led the round, with participation from Entrada Ventures and Blue Collective.

Before this round, the Seattle-based startup raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding in 2023 from MetaVC and other venture firms, along with a $1.8 million grant from the Department of Defense in 2023.

The five-person company is developing an electronically steerable, radar-based imaging technology for space. Unlike conventional antennas that rely on mechanical steering to capture images, Kapta's antenna steers its beam electronically. This approach expands its field of view, enabling faster, more precise scanning of large areas. The system can also rapidly switch between modes to capture images at different resolutions, gathering more high-resolution images in less time than conventional synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, potentially lowering costs per image and providing a diverse set of data to its customers.

"We're taking something that's mature and productized for the counter-UAS radar sector," Adam Bily, Kapta cofounder and CTO, told Business Insider. "And we're applying it to some of the needs within the spaceborne radar, Earth observation, imaging, and tracking sectors."

Kapta's technology could improve radar data used across commercial industries. For example, mining companies rely on space-based radar data from high-end satellites, but these satellites pass over the same location on Earth's surface once every two weeks or so — too infrequent to meet their needs, Bily said. Kapta aims to launch a network of low-cost satellites that will work together to increase imaging and analytics while reducing the time between visits. Kapta's system also supports a three-dimensional imaging technique, which can allow mining companies to track changes in the Earth's surface.

The company's radar also has defense applications, such as tracking ground targets. In 2024, Kapta received a high-level security designation from the Department of Defense to enable future space missions at scale, CEO and cofounder Milton Perque said. Kapta is also working with one of the prime defense contractors on a radar mission, signaling interest from the government to partner with startups on such technology, Perque said.

Perque has worked on multi-function radar systems for over 25 years, most recently at Echodyne, a radar technology company. There, he met Adam Bily, who went on to work at Apple then Astranis Space Technologies, where he led the antenna team and helped develop communications satellites before cofounding Kapta.

While Northrop Grumman, a major defense contractor, has been developing SAR systems and other intelligence technologies for decades, startups are increasingly entering the radar technology market. Capella Space, a San Francisco-based startup, for example, makes satellite radar imagery technology for both commercial and governmental purposes.

With the new funding, Kapta hopes to bring on business development hires who can help navigate deals with government and commercial customers. They also aim to perform demonstrations of their technology in orbit.

"Space is becoming another warfighting domain," Perque said. "There are going to be lots of other missions that would be enabled by a low-cost, sophisticated sensor like this."

• Artificial intelligence has led to a boom in new startup creation and dealmaking.
• Business Insider researched startups that have strong founding teams and investor dollars.
• These are our top picks, listed alphabetically, of startups you could bet your career on in 2025.

After years of contraction, cost-cutting, and layoffs, there's been a resurgence of tech dealmaking in Silicon Valley thanks to the AI boom. Business Insider rounded up a number of technology and AI startups that are growing. Here are our top picks.

Abridge

HQ: Pittsburgh

Total raised: $462.5 million

What it does: The medical scribe startup translates patient-doctor interactions into clinical notes in electronic medical records.

What makes it promising: Abridge's business exploded in 2024 as investors rushed to fund companies automating administrative tasks in healthcare. The startup, which is backed by top VC firms, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, just raised $250 million in new funding at a million valuation. Its deals with top health systems, such as Kaiser Permanente, and its partnership with medical records giant Epic have made Abridge the healthcare AI startup to beat.

Anysphere

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $176 million

What it does: Anysphere makes AI coding software

What makes it promising: You may not have heard of Anysphere but you are likely familiar with its popular AI coding assistant, Cursor, that can predict a user's next line of code. The company recently raised $105 million at a $2.5 billion valuation. Notable investors include Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, and OpenAI.

Attention

HQ: New York

Total raised: $17.1 million

What it does: Attention uses natural language processing to fill out CRM programs and generate action items from sales calls.

What makes it promising: Some companies spend millions of dollars on customer relationship management programs, which are essentially software for sales teams that house crucial information about current and potential customers. The problem? Many teams don't properly fill out their CRM, rendering the investment useless. That's where Attention comes in — the startup uses AI to listen in on sales calls, fill out company CRMs with crucial information, and generate action items so a sales team member has the info they need to go back and close a deal.

Attention raised $14 million from Alven, Eniac, Frst, Liquid 2 Ventures, 645 Ventures, and Aglaé in October 2024.

Clasp

HQ: Boston

Total raised: $30 million, according to the company

What it does: Clasp helps employers secure critical talent before graduation, tackling workforce shortages in hard-to-hire fields like healthcare. Think of it like ROTC for critical professions. If a hospital system is facing a shrinking pipeline of nurses, it can partner with Clasp to access a national network of universities and training programs, match with current nursing students, and commit to repaying their student loans over a multi-year word period.

What makes it promising: Founded in 2018, Clasp has over 10,000 individuals on its platform and plenty of room to grow. While it's currently focused on building critical talent pools for the healthcare industry, the company plans to expand into other hard-to-hire industries. In 2024, Clasp raised over $10 million in a funding round led by Crosslink Capital and is actively investing in its growth team to scale employer and school partnerships.

CodaMetrix

HQ: Boston

Total raised: $95 million

What it does: CodaMetrix uses AI to analyze clinical notes and derive medical codes for billing and claims.

What makes it promising: Coding is a critical step of the revenue cycle management process for hospitals, typically requiring providers to manually assign numerical codes to medical services and diagnoses to ensure they get paid for their care.

CodaMetrix spun out of Mass General Brigham in 2019 to automate those administrative tasks and reduce provider burden, and it's captured a wave of investor interest in the sector, last raising a $40 million Series B round in March. The startup has worked with top health systems like Mayo Clinic and Yale Medicine to develop new revenue cycle management solutions, and it added some key hires to its executive team last year, including a new chief technology officer and COO.

Cohere Health

HQ: Boston

Total raised: $106 million

What it does: Cohere Health automates the pre-authorization process for medical treatments.

What makes it promising: Cohere Health works with health plans like Humana and Geisinger to make the prior authorization process more efficient and accurate, using AI to save money for the plans and reduce the number of unnecessary denials for patients. The startup last raised a $50 million Series B extension in February 2024, led by Deerfield Management and including existing investors, including Define Ventures and Flare Capital Partners.

Cohere has announced a number of new products in the last year, including tools released in January to help health plans meet prior authorization compliance standards set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Coram AI

HQ: Sunnyvale, California

Total raised: $30 million

What it does: Coram AI puts agentic AI software into existing security systems and cameras.

What makes it promising: The US is filled with businesses and buildings that have non-operational security systems, Coram says. The startup's solution is an AI software that ports onto existing security hardware systems to provide generative AI visual security via AI agents that can identify and track threats in real time.

Coram raised $13.8 million in January from Battery Ventures, 8VC, and Mosaic Ventures.

Cortica

HQ: San Diego

Total raised: Over $300 million

What it does: Cortica provides virtual and in-person pediatric care for autism, as well as commonly co-occurring conditions like behavioral issues and sleep disorders.

What makes it promising: Cortica has set itself apart by going after value-based care contracts with health plans and employers that pay the startup for better patient outcomes, a rarity in specialized mental healthcare. The startup employs more than 2,000 providers that help care for children with autism at its clinics, in the home, or virtually, aiming to deliver "whole-child care" through everything from physical therapy to speech-language pathology to neurology. Cortica most recently raised an $80 million round in November, co-led by JP Morgan's healthcare investment fund Morgan Health and Nexus NeuroTech Ventures.

Daedalus

HQ: Karlsruhe, Germany

Total raised: $32.6 million

What it does: Daedalus helps factories and their production robots operate more efficiently.

What makes it promising: Launched by ex-OpenAI engineer Jonas Schneider, who was a key part of the AI juggernaut's robotics team, Daedalus was part of Y Combinator's winter 2020 cohort. The startup, which also has an office in San Francisco, uses AI robotics technology to cull the need to reprogram production robots constantly. Instead, it automates a lot of the tasks associated with the manufacturing process; for example, if clients give Daedalus a CAD drawing, it will render a fully-completed version of the drawing.

In February 2024, the startup raised a fresh $21 million Series A. The funding will help Daedalus in its mission of automating the manufacturing process across various industries, from semiconductors to healthcare.

Decagon

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $100 million

What it does: Decagon develops AI support agents that autonomously resolve customer inquiries over chat, email, or voice calls.

What makes it promising: The company raised $100 million, including a $65 million Series B, late last year. Bain Capital Ventures led the Series B round, and Elad Gil, A*, Accel, Bond Capital, and Acme Capital participated. According to the company's blog, the fundraise quadrupled Decagon's valuation. Bilt, Duolingo, Eventbrite, Notion, and Rippling use Decagon to manage interactions with customers by gathering data and reviewing conversations.

Decart

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $53 million, according to the company

What it does: Decart is an AI research lab focused on efficiency. Its infrastructure platform aims to dramatically cut the costs of training and running foundation models.

Why it's promising: Last fall, Decart emerged from stealth with $21 million in seed funding from Sequoia and Oren Zeev and launched a demo, Oasis, that captivated the tech world. Oasis's video platform enables users to create interactive, open-world experiences from a single uploaded image and generates content in real time based on user input. In December, the Israeli-founded startup secured an additional $32 million from Benchmark and other investors. Since then, Decart has doubled its team size and continues developing new products.

Elise AI

HQ: New York

Total raised: $172 million

What it does: EliseAI sells AI assistants, primarily to housing operators, as well as healthcare providers. These speed up menial tasks such as maintenance requests and scheduling appointments.

What makes it promising: The startup hit a unicorn valuation in 2024 with a $75 million Series D. Its technology is revolutionary for the housing sector, which previously suffered from inefficient technology, resulting in consumers absorbing additional costs, said founder and CEO Minna Song.

When arranging house viewings and meetings, keeping up with messaging prospective tenants can take up a lot of time and energy. Elise AI's chatbot automates these interactions so they free up time for management teams to pursue more meaningful work. The tech has also been embraced by the healthcare industry, which experiences similar pain points for managing invoices and bills, as well as patient appointments.

Flo Health

HQ: London, United Kingdom

Total raised: $300 million

What it does: Flo is a digital women's health company, which provides a period tracking and wellness app.

What makes it promising: Flo became the first digital women's health company to hit a unicorn valuation in 2024, following a $200 million raise from General Atlantic.

The startup, which launched in 2015, ballooned in popularity as it offered a comprehensive suite of products, such as period tracking and personalized insights into reproductive health via its app. After Roe v. Wade was repealed, Flo developed an 'Anonymous Mode' setting that would allow users to access the app without associating any identifying information with their health data.

Following its fundraise in 2024, the startup is making a big hiring push in Lithuania — recruiting for over 100 roles in Vilnius. It will also expand its user base and double down on offerings for those with menopause.

Glean

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $560 million, according to the company

What it does: Glean makes search chatbots and agents for businesses, allowing workers to search for information across various systems and applications and create and summarize content.

What makes it promising: Glean's business is taking off as organizations seek quick productivity gains. Founded by a group of former Google Search engineers, Glean topped $100 million in annual recurring revenue last fiscal year, up from $50 million earlier in the year. The company plans to expand into new markets and verticals in 2025 to keep up its momentum.

Grow Therapy

HQ: New York City

Total raised: $178 million

What it does: Grow Therapy works with independent therapy practices to streamline their administrative tasks and connect patients with therapists covered by their insurance.

What makes it promising: Grow helps therapists start and run their own mental health practices. SignalFire founder and CEO Chris Farmer named Grow Therapy to Business Insider's list of the most promising healthcare AI startups of 2024, citing the startup's focus on handling administrative tasks "so therapists can focus on their patients and control their own schedule instead of being underworked and underpaid at someone else's practice."

Grow Therapy most recently raised $88 million in Series C funding in April, led by Sequoia Capital.

Harvey

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $500 million

What it does: Harvey is a developer of a generative AI legal tech platform for lawyers and paralegals to help with contract analysis, due diligence, litigation, and regulatory compliance.

What makes it promising: Many startups are attempting the herculean task of disrupting the legal industry, but Harvey is in the pole position. Backed by big-name investors like Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, Harvey has ridden the AI wave to recently double its valuation to $3 billion in a fresh $300 million round of funding. In 2024, Harvey saw 4x annual recurring revenue growth and now has 235 customers in 42 countries.

Hue

HQ: Remote

Total raised: $4.5 million

What it does: Hue helps brands and retailers sell online by collecting user-generated video reviews and embedding that content into product pages.

What makes it promising: Hue is bringing the power of TikTok-style video reviews to brands and retailers, significantly increasing conversion rates and time spent on-site. Founded by a trio of women who come from the consumer industry they now serve, Hue closed on $4.5 million in seed funding last year from Fika Ventures, Underscore VC, and others.

Knime

HQ: Zurich, Switzerland

Total raised: $53.8 million

What it does: Knime has built a low-code, open-source data analytics platform for businesses.

What makes it promising: The startup is headquartered in Switzerland but has a global presence, with offices in Texas and Berlin. Its mission is to democratize data analytics and utilize generative AI to make that mission more accessible, cofounder and CEO Michael Berthold previously told Business Insider.

The startup raised $30 million in equity funding from Invus in August 2024 and serves over 400 enterprise customers — including the likes of Audi, Novartis, and P&G.

Landbase

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $12.5 million

What it does: Landbase uses AI agents to automate businesses' go-to-market procedures.

What makes it promising: Launched in 2023, Landbase has quickly applied the use of agentic AI to automating GTM strategies, training its GTM Omni model on billions of data points.

In July 2024, it raised a fresh $12.5 million from First Minute Capital and 8VC. It also recently acquired LavaReach, an AI-powered prospect research tool.

Legora, formerly Leya

HQ: Stockholm with offices in London

Total raised: $37 million

What it does: Lawyers use Legora to streamline legal work across reviewing, drafting, and research.

What makes it promising: Just months after graduating from the storied startup accelerator Y Combinator, Legora raised back-to-back rounds of funding from investors like Benchmark, Redpoint, and Jack Altman's fund Alt Capital. The company has so far grown its business in Europe and the US and is now quickly expanding to new markets. The website's careers page shows the company is hiring go-to-market managers in New York, Madrid, and London.

Midi Health

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $100 million

What it does: Midi partners with employers and health systems to provide virtual care for menopause.

What makes it promising: Midi is leading a growing market for menopause support as women's health investors expand their reach beyond fertility and maternal care. 18% of employers surveyed by Mercer said they plan to provide menopause benefits to employees in 2025, up from a measly 4% in 2023. Midi provides virtual services, including hormonal-replacement therapy and lifestyle support for those struggling with hormonal changes as they age, navigating symptoms like hot flashes and weight gain through perimenopause and menopause.

Midi also works with health systems to offer specialized telehealth services and coordinate care alongside a patient's in-person doctors. The startup raised a $63 million Series B round last year from dozens of angel investors, including actress Amy Schumer and former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, as well as VC firms like GV (Google Ventures) and Emerson Collective.

Neubird

HQ: Redwood City

Total raised: $44.5 million

What it does: Uses artificial intelligence to monitor, analyze, and resolve IT issues for companies.

What makes it promising: Hawkeye, the startup's AI-powered ITOps engineer, automates the detection and resolution of IT issues, freeing software engineers from routine troubleshooting. The startup's growing customer base includes both startups and large financial institutions, according to TechCrunch. The startup raised a $22.5 million seed extension round led by Microsoft's M12 in December, just eight months after raising a $22 million seed round from Mayfield, TechCrunch reported.

Nimble

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $221 million

What it does: Nimble develops fully autonomous e-commerce fulfillment centers powered by its warehouse robots that can retrieve inventory, pick items, pack orders, and sort packages.

What makes it promising: Backed by FedEd and Accel, Nimble is building a national network of next-generation robotic warehouses to provide faster, lower-cost logistics. It aims to solve a critical pain point for customers like Puma and AdoreMe, who are attempting to scale operations while facing a national shortage of warehouse workers. The company most recently raised $106 million in a round co-led by FedEx and Cedar Pine that propelled its valuation to $1 billion.

Norm Ai

HQ: New York

Total raised: $38 million

What it does: Builds AI agents to automate compliance tasks and regulatory assessments.

What makes it promising: Norm's AI platform takes complex regulations and converts them into code that can be parsed by computers, allowing companies to clearly explain compliance findings, for example. The startup raised three rounds of funding — a Series A and two follow-on investments — in just 11 months. Coatue Management led its $27 million Series A, and Bain Capital Ventures, Blackstone Innovations Investments, and others participated.

Please, formerly MultiOn

HQ: Palo Alto, California

Total raised: Undisclosed

What it does: Please develops an AI assistant that helps consumers with their plans, using agents to complete actions like booking trips and managing reservations.

What makes it promising: The startup, which rebranded from MultiOn to Please in January, develops web-based AI agents that are powered by LLMs. Major players like Amazon and General Catalyst invested in the company in a round that valued it at $100 million, The Information reported.

Reality Defender

HQ: New York

Total raised: $40 million

What it does: Reality Defender has developed a deepfake detection platform that spots AI-generated content.

What makes it promising: As the use of AI-generated content burgeons, the technology has also been increasingly used to create fraudulent content and misinformation. Reality Defender's platform can detect if something is AI-generated in images, text, video, and audio.

In particular, the startup has found a niche in providing its services to enterprise clients to help identify deepfakes. It has developed an API and web app that allows users to analyze content and gauge if it's been modified by AI; however, it doesn't directly discern if something is a deepfake. Rather, users are given inference points so they can determine the extent to which AI has altered something.

In October 2024, the startup raised a fresh $33 million to grow its offerings in the financial sector.

Remark

HQ: Boston

Total raised: $10 million

What it does: Remark develops a shopping guidance platform that connects shoppers with online product experts.

What makes it promising: Remark helps shoppers make purchase decisions by allowing them to asynchronously chat with product experts, both human and AI, simulating the experience of chatting with a sales associate at a brick-and-mortar store. The two-year-old company helps consumers looking to purchase items in the fashion, home goods, outdoor, baby products, beauty, and skincare industries, Remark told Business Insider. And it's already seeing promising results: Brands using Remark have seen a 10-12% revenue lift and a 30+% conversion rate, according to the company.

Robin AI

HQ: London and New York

Total raised: $71 million

What it does: Robin AI develops an AI legal assistant that drafts and analyzes contracts for companies and their legal teams.

What makes it promising: Robin AI announced not one but two rounds of funding in 2024: a $26 million Series B, led by Temasek, and a $25 million follow-on investment, with participation from Paypal Ventures and Cambridge University. The company's AI-powered platform helps in-house counsel teams and enterprises streamline their contract review processes. Richard Robinson, who worked as a lawyer at Clifford Chance, and James Clough, previously a machine learning researcher, founded the company in 2019.

Rogo

HQ: New York

Total raised: $27 million

What it does: Rogo develops an AI agent that helps Wall Street professionals with tasks such as company research and memo drafting.

What makes it promising: Investment banking may look high-octane on HBO's "Industry," but working on Wall Street is a grind. Enter Rogo. The AI-powered platform helps analysts quickly analyze earnings, construct market maps, and other tasks. Two of Rogo's cofounders, Gabe Stengel and John Willett, previously worked in investment banking. Investors include Khosla Ventures, Jack Altman's AltCapital, AlleyCorp, and BoxGroup.

Rox

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $50 million

What it does: Rox's team of AI sales assistants automates tasks and provides data-driven insights for sales teams.

What makes it promising: AI-powered tools like Rox are gaining traction with sales teams by reducing administrative work and improving deal execution. The company streamlines CRM updates, summarizes relevant news events, and drafts outreach in its platform, helping sales reps focus on closing deals rather than on tedious tasks. As of November 2024, over 35 enterprise sales teams from companies such as MongoDB and Ramp have used Rox. The startup raised both its seed round, led by Sequoia with participation from Google Ventures, and its Series A, led by General Catalyst, in stealth. It's currently in public beta.

Sierra

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $285 million

What it does: Seirra's AI-powered conversational agents interact with customers.

What makes it promising: Founded by OpenAI chairman and ex-Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and former Google executive Clay Bavor, Sierra's valuation soared to $4.5 billion at the end of 2024. Just don't call it a chatbot, as Taylor prefers to be thought of as "conversational AI." Whatever you call it, companies like ADT, Casper, and Sonos have used Sierra to handle customer service inquiries.

Skyfire

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $8.5 million

What it does: Skyfire is a payment network that lets AI agents autonomously spend money on behalf of their human counterparts.

What makes it promising: With AI agents expected to be a big theme in 2025, investors are excited about the types of tasks they can take over from humans. While other AI agents are handling customer service and sales calls, Skyfire is an early agentic player in the fintech space and is tackling the regulatory and societal considerations that come with giving a robot license to swipe a credit card.

Skyfire launched from stealth last summer and raised $8.5 million in seed funding from financial firms Neuberger Berman, DRW, and Brevan Howard Digital, plus Intersection Growth Partners, Arrington Capital, RedBeard Ventures, and others.

Smartcat

HQ: Amsterdam

Total raised: $75 million

What it does: Smartcat provides AI-generated translation services for businesses.

What makes it promising: For companies that want to scale globally, Smartcat offers a more cost-effective solution than hiring a gaggle of human translators. Smartcat's AI can translate both written and spoken words into more than 280 languages, making it easier to deploy corporate content, such as marketing materials and internal training videos, to office locations around the world.

Smartcat raised a $43 million Series C last year from Left Lane Capital, Koro Capital, Marbruck Investments, and Chrome Capital.

StackGen

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $12.3 million

What it does: StackGen uses AI to auto-generate infrastructure such as servers, databases, and networking from code.

What makes it promising: The AI revolution is coming for developers, with plenty of startups cropping up to help — and in some cases, replace — software engineers designing apps and building websites. StackGen is unique because it operates at the infrastructure layer of software development: Its AI reads code created by human developers and uses the information to generate technical infrastructure like servers and databases. StackGen raised $12.3 million last fall from a group of investors, including Thomvest Ventures, FireBolt Ventures, WestWave Capital, and Secure Octane.

Sublime Security

HQ: Washington, DC

Total raised: $94 million

What it does: Sublime's email security platform detects and prevents malicious behaviors in the inbox, enabling organizations to defend against phishing, email fraud, and other cyberattacks.

What makes it promising: Sublime's business has exploded as generative AI gives attackers a way to rapidly produce mass spear-phishing campaigns. The company has quadrupled its customer base over the past year and added enterprise customers like Elastic, Benteler, and SentinelOne to a roster of existing customers like Spotify, Reddit, and Brex. The company has won backing from top investors, including IVP, Index Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

SuperAGI

HQ: Newark, Delaware

Total raised: $15 million

What it does: SupaerAGI develops AI Agents for fully automated sales, marketing, support, and app development.

What makes it promising: SuperAGI got a big boost last year, picking up funding from Newlands VC, the secretive firm started by WhatsApp cofounder Jan Koum. Aiming to supercharge business teams, SuperAGI is used by developers at Google, Tesla, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

Synthesia

HQ: London

Total raised: Over $350 million

What it does: Synthesia is an AI video creator that helps companies with tasks such as employee training, customer support, and sales.

What makes it promising: Founded in 2017, Synthesia was early to the generative AI boom. It reportedly doubled its valuation in 2024 and moved beyond video creation to help businesses solve a wider range of needs. More than 5,000 companies use Snythsia, from Heineken to Dupont to Zoom.

Together AI

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $232 million

What it does: Together AI has created an open-source generative AI and infrastructure platform for developing AI models. The company runs data centers suited specifically for AI workloads.

What makes it promising: The company most recently raised $106 million in a round led by Salesforce Ventures that saw its valuation cross the $1 billion mark. Other big-name investors include Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Greycroft, and Nvidia. The startup is reportedly raising another round of funding that would value it at $3 billion.

Torq

HQ: New York

Total raised: $192 million

What it does: Torq has created autonomous security operations to help companies guard against cyber attacks.

What makes it promising: Torq achieved 300% revenue growth and increased its headcount by 200% in 2024, according to the company. It recently hired a new head of sales Usman Gulfaraz, to help the company get to $100 million in annual recurring revenue for 2026. Customers include Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inditex, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Siemens.

Unify

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $18.2 million

What it does: Unify is a developer of a performance management system for sales teams.

What makes it promising: Backed by OpenAI and Thrive Capital, Unify helps salespeople tailor "warm outbound" emails that are less likely to get lost in crowded email boxes. Unify's growing team includes ex-staffers from Spotify, Airbnb, and Ramp.

Vapi

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $20 million

What it does: Vapi is building an infrastructure tool for developers to build AI voice agents.

What makes it promising: Investors are foaming at the mouth to back promising AI agents, and one group of startups is specifically using the tech to understand spoken commands. One of these so-called AI voice agent startups is Vapi, which is creating a tool for developers to create, test, and deploy AI voice agents of their own that can be applied in a number of business settings, from reception desk to employee training to sales call.

Vapi raised $20 million at the end of 2024 from Bessemer Venture Partners. Abstract Ventures, AI Grant, Y Combinator, Saga Ventures, and Michael Ovitz.

Writer

HQ: San Francisco

Total raised: $326 million

What it does: Writer is a full-stack generative AI platform that gives businesses tools to create their own AI applications and automate other workflows.

What makes it promising: Writer has carved out a niche in enterprise AI and offers a secure, customizable generative AI platform tailored for businesses — which sets it apart from more generalist models like OpenAI. The company has attracted major clients, including Fortune 500 firms, by focusing on data privacy, compliance, and domain-specific AI solutions, and its recently released AI model emphasizes control, security, and enterprise-grade performance.

Writer raised a $200 million Series C in November 2024 from Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Workday Ventures, Accenture, Balderton, Insight Partners, and Vanguard. The round valued the startup at $1.9 billion.

7AI

HQ: Boston

Total raised: $36 million

What it does: 7AI uses AI agents to autonomously respond to alerts and investigate cyber threats on behalf of security operations teams.

What makes it promising: 7AI cofounders Lior Div and Yonatan Striem Amit previously cofounded Cyberreason, another cybersecurity company. 7AI raised a $36 million seed round in June 2024 that valued the company at over $100 million. The financing was led by Greylock Partners, with participation from Spark Capital and CRV.

• Hightouch raised an $80 million Series C round to become a newly minted unicorn.
• The startup uses companies' existing data and AI to enhance marketing and sales.
• Hightouch competes with Salesforce and Twilio in the crowded customer data platform space.

Hightouch, a data activation platform for sales and marketing teams, has raised $80 million in Series C funding. Sapphire Ventures led the round, which values Hightouch at $1.2 billion. Iconiq Growth, Bain Capital Ventures, Amplify Ventures, and NVC also participated in the financing.

The San Francisco-based company makes a "composable" customer data platform and AI-powered marketing tools. The customer data platform uses existing company data to help marketers run tailored campaigns, enhance sales leads, and support customer service teams. It operates on top of a company's existing data infrastructure and integrates with over 250 tools, including Databricks.

"CDP [customer data platform] is all about putting all of that data in the hands of marketing teams so they can understand their customers better and execute on their marketing ideas," Tejas Manohar, cofounder and co-CEO, said.

In the summer of 2024, the company rolled out its AI decision-making product, an extension of the original platform. This product uses AI agents to help marketers automate and personalize communication with customers. Companies can set business goals, like increasing repeat purchases, and Hightouch's AI decision-making product will determine the best messaging and timing to send outreach.

"Relevance is becoming super important right now," cofounder and co-CEO Kashish Gupta told Business Insider. "If you think about how many emails and text messages you get, it's like a hundred a day. So each CMO is thinking, 'How can I send only the most relevant message instead of spamming my customers?'"

Before starting Hightouch, Manohar worked at Segment, a customer data platform company acquired by Twilio in 2019. There, Manohar managed the platform team, which allowed customers and developers to build on top of Segment, according to his LinkedIn.

Manohar and Josh Curl, Hightouch cofounder and CTO, met while working at Segment. Curl introduced Manohar to Kashish Gupta, who lived with Curl in a San Francisco hacker house. Before Hightouch, Gupta completed his master's in machine learning at the University of Pennsylvania. The three started working on Hightouch in 2020, Manohar said.

Some of Hightouch's customers include PetSmart, Spotify, and Grammarly, the company said. PetSmart uses Hightouch to send personalized communication to members of its loyalty program, Treats Rewards. Hightouch powers a range of communication used by PetSmart, from emails to messages on printed receipts, Bradley Breuer, a vice president of marketing at PetSmart, said. The AI decision-making product also helps PetSmart's marketing team determine the content, timing, sequence, and priority of its messaging to customers.

Breuer says that the biggest advantage of using Hightouch at PetSmart is its ability to execute campaigns autonomously and at scale. For example, the company uses Hightouch to promote its grooming service to customers who shop for dog food and toys. "What used to be human decisions, business rules, the marketing calendar—we now use AI decisioning to make the right choices for our 70 million members," he told Business Insider.

The customer data platform space is "incredibly and intensely competitive," Rajeev Dham, a partner at Sapphire Ventures, said. Hightouch competes with legacy marketing cloud providers like Salesforce and Twilio, and newer platforms. Braze, a Sapphire portfolio company that went public in 2021, also helps corporations with customer engagement.

Manohar met Dham, who is joining Hightouch's board, while he was working at Segment, another Sapphire portfolio company. "The holy grail of marketing is, how do you target the right customer at the right time?" Dham said. "All this data is flowing through Hightouch."

• After leaving the ChatGPT maker last year, the ex-OpenAI CTO is building a new startup.
• She has recruited talent from OpenAI, as well as other AI startups.
• Murati is among a handful of former OpenAI execs to leave and launch their own companies.

Since leaving OpenAI in the fall of 2024, former exec Mira Murati has wasted no time starting her next venture.

Less than a month after leaving OpenAI, Murati was already engaging in early talks to raise money for her new AI company, Reuters reported, with venture capitalists clamoring to meet with her.

She's also been quietly hiring researchers and engineers for her stealth startup.

As of January, Murati had recruited about 10 people for her company from competitors, including Character AI, Google DeepMind, and her former employer, Wired reported. Murati told some people she plans to call the startup Thinking Machine Labs, The Information reported.

Murati spent six and a half years at OpenAI, where she served as CTO, working on the development of ChatGPT and other AI research initiatives. She was briefly appointed interim CEO in November 2023 after OpenAI's board abruptly fired Sam Altman, a move that sparked turmoil within the company. After Altman's reinstatement as CEO, Murati resumed her role as CTO.

Murati is one of a handful of former OpenAI executives who have gone on to launch their own companies. Former OpenAI chief scientist and cofounder Ilya Sutskever left the company in May 2024 and started Safe Superintelligence Inc. soon after leaving. Dario and Daniela Amodei, who also both worked at OpenAI, founded Anthropic in 2021.

The flurry of departures to start and join new companies, coupled with plans to convert the company to a for-profit company, adds to the uncertainty surrounding the ChatGPT maker.

OpenAI and a spokesperson for Murati did not respond to a request for comment.

Here are the OpenAI employees who are known to have left the company so far to join Murati's startup.

• Index raised over $2 million in seed funding led by Bain Capital Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.
• The company offers tools for product managers to track ideas and build roadmaps.
• The Australia-based startup's beta app is now open to all customers on its waitlist.

Australia-based startup Index, which makes a planning tool for product managers and software engineering teams, recently raised over $2 million in seed funding.

Bain Capital Ventures and Blackbird Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Australia and New Zealand, led the round. Bond Capital and Y Combinator also participated.

Index allows product managers and their teams to track ideas, manage feedback, and build roadmaps for their products using tools like virtual whiteboards and tables. It's compatible with Linear, an engineering delivery software. Index also connects to CRM platforms Hubspot and Attio, customer messaging software Intercom, revenue intelligence platform Gong, and others.

Index's customers tend to be product managers at B2B companies with 50 to 500 employees. After Index's launch on LinkedIn in November, product managers signed up in droves, creating a waitlist of at least 1,000 people who work at startups like Ramp, Index cofounder and CEO Simon Kubica told Business Insider. As of Tuesday, though, Index's beta app is now accessible to all customers who had pre-ordered Index and were on the company's waitlist.

Before starting Index, Kubica spent four years as a product manager at Atlassian, the Australian company known for developing project management tools like Jira, a popular software among teams at many tech companies.

At Atlassian, Kubica led multiple teams and product strategy, but he found it difficult to oversee his products while using "a mix of spreadsheets, documents, whiteboard tools, and essentially trying to stitch together" product workflows, Kubica said. "Atlassian is the preeminent collaboration tools maker, but I found that exceptionally hard to do."

Kubica then contacted his friend, Christian Iacullo, to see if he also found it difficult to manage products across various tools at his job. At the time, Iacullo was a software engineer at Canva, where he worked on the company's developer platform and education product, according to his LinkedIn. Before Canva, Iacullo had also worked at Atlassian. "Christian was kind of my first user research call," Kubica said.

Shortly after the call, the duo began brainstorming ways to simplify product planning. Soon after, they applied and were accepted to Y Combinator's winter 2023 cohort. Iacullo is now Index's cofounder and CTO.

The product management tools industry is crowded. A handful of these include public companies like Monday.com and Atlassian, which both saw recent share price spikes after reporting quarterly earnings.

Privately held competitors include Productboard, which last raised $125 million in Series D funding in January 2022. Productboard allows teams to road map products and integrates with workplace productivity tools such as Jira and Slack. There are also earlier-stage competitors in the space, such as Fibery, another product management platform, which has raised $8.3 million in funding.

Index will use the new funding to accelerate hiring in engineering and other roles across the company, Kubica said. In addition to Kubica and Iacullo, Index employs two software engineers. "We did our viral social media launch in November," Kubica said. "That really blew up, and so now we want to pour fuel on the fire and go faster."

• Alma, a nutrition startup, launched on Apple's app store Wednesday.
• The company uses AI to track and analyze eating habits as well as suggest new foods.
• Alma received pre-seed funding from Menlo Ventures with participation from Menlo's partnership fund with Anthropic.

Alma, a nutrition startup that uses artificial intelligence to track users' eating habits, debuted its mobile app on Wednesday funded by Menlo Ventures and the Anthropic Anthology Fund.

Alma founder and CEO Rami Alhamad began working on Alma in early 2024 and was part of the VC firm's fellowship program, which offers early-stage founders mentorship and guidance as they build companies. Currently, Menlo has about 100 fellows, Menlo Ventures partner Shawn Carolan told Business Insider.

Through participating in Menlo Labs, the firm's incubator program, Alma received $2.9 million in pre-seed funding led by Menlo. The firm's Anthology Fund, a $100 million partnership fund with Anthropic, also participated in the round.

Alma uses artificial intelligence to analyze eating patterns. Users can text, talk, or upload pictures of nutrition labels or recipes to the app to log meals and snacks. As Alma gathers data on dietary preferences, it sends food intake reports and recipe suggestions that match users' health goals.

Alma currently exclusively references Harvard University's nutrition source because the company wanted to use trusted sources for nutrition advice, Alhamad said. The startup also has a nutrition science advisory board, which includes Harvard nutrition scientist Dr. Eric Rimm.

Previously, Alhamad worked on product at Whoop after his workout device, Push, was acquired by the fitness tracker company in 2021.

At Menlo, Alhamad and Carolan bonded over their use of health and wellness apps. While they both find it easy to log exercise with wearables and applications, the process of doing the same for eating seemed manual and outdated, Alhamad said.

The nutrition app space is crowded. MyFitnessPal, which was founded in 2005, lets users manually input calories and macros. Noom gives users eating recommendations as well as tracks fitness and meals. Cal AI, a calorie-counting app started by an 18-year-old entrepreneur, is seeing $12 million in annual recurring revenue, Forbes reported in November 2024. And Hexis, another AI nutrition app, raised $2 million in pre-seed funding in May 2024, Sports Business Journal reported.

"We both tracked our nutrition for so long," Alhamad told Business Insider. "When it comes to nutrition, you have to put so much effort in, but so little out."

"It's just tons of work to eat well," Carolan said. "The dream of this company is that it doesn't have to be that way."

Alma is available on Apple's app store for a subscription of $19 a month or $199 a year.

• Google updated its ethical AI guidelines in a blog post on Tuesday.
• The post omitted a 2018 statement that Google wouldn't use AI for weapons or surveillance.
• The announcement follows other Silicon Valley companies seeking to partner with the US on defense tech.

Google updated its ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence in a blog post on Tuesday, removing the company's previous vows to not use its technology to build weapons or surveillance tools.

In 2018, the company outlined AI "applications we will not pursue." These included weapons and "technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms," as well as "technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm" and "technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights."

The 2018 post now includes an appended note at the top of the page that says the company has updated its AI principles in a new post, which does not mention the previous guidelines against using AI for weapons and some surveillance technologies.

The company first published these AI guidelines in 2018 after thousands of Google employees protested its involvement in Project Maven, an AI project that Google and the US Department of Defense collaborated on. After over 4,000 workers signed a petition demanding that Google stop working on Project Maven and promise never to again "build warfare technology," the company decided not to renew its contract to build AI tools for the Pentagon.

James Manyika, Google's senior vice president for technology and society, and Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, said in a blog post that democratic nations and companies should work together in leveraging AI that strengthens homeland security:

"There's a global competition taking place for AI leadership within an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape," the executives wrote. "We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided by core values like freedom, equality, and respect for human rights. And we believe that companies, governments, and organizations sharing these values should work together to create AI that protects people, promotes global growth, and supports national security."

A spokesperson from Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Although many in Silicon Valley previously steered clear of US military contracts, this move — in the backdrop of the Trump administration, rising US-China tensions, and the Russian-Ukraine war — is part of a broader shift among tech companies and startups moving toward offering their proprietary technology, including artificial intelligence tools, for defense purposes.

Defense tech companies and startups have been optimistic that the industry is poised for success during President Donald Trump's second term. In November of last year, Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey said in an interview with Bloomberg TV of Trump that it is "good to have someone inbound who is deeply aligned with the idea that we need to be spending less on defense while still getting more: that we need to do a better job of procuring the defense tools that protect our country."

Late last year, Palantir and Anduril, which makes autonomous vehicles for military use, held discussions with other defense companies and startups, including SpaceX, ScaleAI, and OpenAI, to form a bidding group for the US government's defense contracts.

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said he's optimistic about the disruption brought about by Elon Musk's DOGE.
• Karp said he thinks it will be good for the US and Palantir, which has large government contracts.
• CTO Shyam Sankar said Palantir's real competition was "lack of accountability in government."

Alex Karp, the cofounder and CEO of software company Palantir, said he thinks Elon Musk's Department of Governmental Efficiency will disrupt the US government — and that it will be good for Americans and the company he leads.

"We love disruption, and whatever is good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir," Karp said in response to a question about DOGE during the company's quarterly earnings call on Monday.

"Disruption, at the end of the day, exposes things that aren't working," he said. "There will be ups and downs. There's a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off. We're expecting to see really unexpected things and to win."

Two weeks into President Donald Trump's second term, the DOGE-induced disruptions have included moves to dismantle USAID, the agency that handles US foreign aid, and buyouts for federal workers.

Palantir has contracts with government organizations, both in the US and abroad, many of which use its software for military operations and intelligence. In the US, Palantir has contracts with the US Army and the Department of Defense, including some worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Palantir's earnings report on Monday beat analyst expectations, with US revenue for the quarter growing 52% year-over-year. The company said its US government revenue for fiscal year 2024 grew 30% year-over-year to $1.2 billion. Palantir shares were up almost 24% after-hours amid earnings news.

Palantir has a close, and at times complicated, relationship with the US government. In 2016, Palantir sued the US Army, accusing it of bias in its bidding process. Palantir won the case and has since secured several contracts with the Army. In December, Palantir announced it secured a contract with the Army for more than $400 million.

The stated priority of DOGE, now a White House office led by Musk, is to make the government more efficient by cutting spending and reorganizing some federal agencies. In its first week, DOGE said it canceled $420 million worth of federal government contracts.

Karp recently defended Musk against criticism that a gesture he made resembled a Nazi salute. He told CNBC that calling Musk a Nazi was "completely absurd and a complete rewrite of history."

Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar also said on Monday's earnings call that DOGE would be good for the company.

"Palantir's real competition is a lack of accountability in government," Sankar said. "DOGE is going to bring meritocracy and transparency to government."

• Roboforce raised $10 million in funding to make an AI robotic workforce.
• The startup, founded in 2023, develops robots for manufacturing and outdoor tasks.
• The funding will be used to expand the team, scale robot development, and launch pilot projects.

Robotics startup Roboforce has raised $10 million in an early-stage funding round led by Nobel laureate economist Myron Scholes. Gary Rieschel, who previously spearheaded Softbank's U.S. venture capital group, and Carnegie Mellon University, the alma mater of Roboforce co-founders Leo Ma and Calvin Zhou, also participated in the round.

The Milpitas, Calif.-based startup, which launched in 2023, makes AI-powered robots that carry out manufacturing tasks. The company's robots use artificial intelligence to move themselves and perform duties that require fine motor skills, like screwing in nuts and bolts, with one millimeter of accuracy, Ma told Business Insider.

The robots are also capable of working on physical projects in tough outdoor conditions, like installing solar centers in deserts, he said. They are controlled by an AI model, developed in-house at Roboforce, and some human intervention, though the company intends for the robots to reach full autonomy.

The 15-person company will use the funding to double the size of its team, scale its robot development, and roll out pilot projects with early customers. Currently, Roboforce has a fleet of under ten robots and hopes to reach double digits this year. Veeral Hardev, who runs business development, said the robots will be leased to customers through a subscription model.

Ma previously co-founded and led engineering at Cyngn, an autonomous industrial vehicle company that went public in October 2021. "Building AI robotics is all I do," Ma said. "My heart is in building AI robotics."

Ma, whose parents work in manufacturing, has been interested in automating production since childhood. Over the past decade, he has visited over 200 factories to study industrial automation. "The most tedious, demanding, repetitive, and dangerous work—we really shouldn't have to have a human do it," Ma said.

Ma and Roboforce's co-founder and vice president of engineering, Calvin Zhou, met while they were studying computer science at Carnegie Mellon. Zhou previously worked at Cruise, a self-driving robotaxi subsidiary of General Motors.

A handful of other companies are also developing robots with human-like capabilities. Elon Musk unveiled his robot, Optimus, at Tesla's Robotaxi Day in October 2024. Figure, which raised a $70 million Series A in 2023, builds robots that can complete general tasks autonomously. And Sanctuary AI, another labor market-focused robot startup, is on the market for more funding, The Logic reported on Tuesday.

Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck Roboforce used to raise $10 million.

• Fintech startup Crowded raised $7.5 million in funding led by Flashpoint.
• The fintech startup aids nonprofits in financial management, boasting over 35 institutional clients.
• Crowded's fundraise comes as the White House withdraws its federal grant freeze.

Miami-based fintech startup Crowded, which provides financial management for nonprofits, just closed a new funding round.

The 35-person company clinched $7.5 million in Series A funding led by London-based firm Flashpoint, the startup told Business Insider exclusively. Florida Opportunity Fund and Wilson's Bird Capital also participated in the funding round, along with Sarona Ventures and The Garage.

Crowded helps nonprofits track spending, deposit funds, and generate tax forms. The startup has over 35 customers, including the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity and Harvard Athletics, which uses the platform to manage funds for student-athletes.

Crowded will use the funding to build out its sales and marketing teams, co-founder and CEO Daniel Grunstein said. "We really want to double down on what's worked for us, which is that in-person, field sales approach," he said.

The investment follows a $6 million seed round led by The Garage in October 2022, bringing Crowded's total funding to $13.5 million.

Before co-founding Crowded, Grunstein worked in financial services at JP Morgan, where he helped out with products for donor-advised funds. There, he noticed that nonprofits lacked resources on how to manage finances, like banking and tax filing. "This recurring theme kept coming up," Grunstein said. "There was a lot on how to get money and not a lot on how to manage the money you've raised."

Grunstein's co-founder, Darryl Gecelter, previously worked for Graduway, an alumni networking startup that merged with Gravyty, a fundraising startup, in 2021. Gecelter's higher education contacts from Graduway helped Crowded secure collegiate clubs and fraternities as early clients, Grunstein said.

Crowded's fundraise comes amid increasing uncertainty for government funding of nonprofits, says Grunstein. President Donald Trump's administration temporarily paused the payment of billions of dollars of federal grants and loans on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the White House Office of Management and Budget pulled the memo.

Still, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that President Trump's executive order on federal funding would "remain in full force and effect," adding to confusion over the funding freeze.

Many nonprofits depend on these federal grants for their operations. While the funding freeze memo was scrapped, the sudden shakeup is "coming out of left field," Grunstein said.

Despite the potentially uncertain future for government funding for some nonprofits, Grunstein still expects these organizations to see an uptick in reporting and compliance requirements.

Crowded is one of a handful of companies attempting to streamline nonprofit financial management. Givefront, a startup in Y Combinator's Winter 2024 cohort, also does bookkeeping for nonprofits.