AlleyWatch sat down with F2 Founder and CEO Don Muir to learn more about the business, its future plans, and recent $14M seed round that brings total funding to $24M.

Who were your investors and how much did you raise?

F2 raised $24M in total equity capital, including a $14M seed round. The seed round was led by HighlandX, with participation from Left Lane Capital, NFX, Y Combinator, and Torch Capital.

Tell us about the product or service that F2 offers.

F2 is a compounding intelligence platform for private markets investors. It delivers end-to-end agentic workflow automation across:

• Screening
• Underwriting
• Portfolio monitoring

The platform transforms a firm’s deal history into a persistent, queryable knowledge asset and evaluates new opportunities using full contextual data (precedent deals, data rooms, market data). The platform is powered by an Excel-native financial analysis engine and includes tools like Adam (AI deal associate), Deal Intelligence, and Institutional Knowledge.

What inspired the start of F2?

F2 was founded to solve the needs of Arc’s lender customers as they reviewed and underwrote debt deals on the Arc capital markets platform.The system was initially an internal agentic underwriting tool, developed to address operational pain points firsthand. After proving effective, Don Muir presented it as a standalone commercial opportunity, leading to the creation of F2 with backing from prior investors.

In addition, private markets are at an inflection point, where firms embedding AI into sourcing, underwriting, and monitoring can build a structural competitive advantage over time.

How is F2 different?

F2 differentiates itself by: doing the following:

• Embedding directly into deal workflows used by investment teams.
• Delivering customized deployments for each enterprise.
• Using a multi-model, LLM-agnostic architecture (Opus, ChatGPT, Gemini, and proprietary tools).
• Achieving up to 60% better performance vs. generic agents and 5x token efficiency.
• Providing enterprise-grade data privacy (zero-day retention, no training on client data).

What market does F2 target and how big is it? 

F2 targets:

• Private credit funds
• Commercial banks
• More broadly, private markets investors

The company operates within the global private markets ecosystem, a roughly $15 trillion asset class, where much of the investment process remains manual and under-digitized. F2 is already deployed across 100+ funds and banks globally.

What’s your business model?

F2 is an enterprise AI platform for private markets investors (private credit, PE, commercial banking), providing workflow automation across the deal lifecycle. F2 sells an enterprise SaaS platform that helps investment teams move faster, standardize decision-making, and improve outcomes across the deal lifecycle.

• It provides end-to-end workflow automation across key investment processes – screening, underwriting, and portfolio monitoring.
• The platform embeds directly into firms’ existing deal workflows, rather than sitting as a standalone tool.
• It converts raw deal materials and historical transactions into structured analysis and a persistent “institutional knowledge” layer, which compounds value over time.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?

F2 customers need technology regardless of market direction.

When capital markets were hot, the speed to underwrite and time to term sheet were important levers to win deals in a competitive market. F2 allows our clients to move faster. When they inevitably slow down – risk mitigation, and proactive risk monitoring become key. In that case, F2 helps identify risk faster and more effectively.

What was the funding process like?

F2 had early backing from about 50 investors tied to Arc. It has then continued to raise capital, including a recent fundraise tied to strong market demand for vertical AI in finance.

Funding has been largely driven by our credibility and direct product-market fit within private credit workflows.

What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?

The biggest challenge is shifting investor thesis on the application layer in the era of AI.

Will frontier labs win, or will vertical AI software? It has become increasingly clear throughout our process that the market believes that in complexly regulated areas like finance and healthcare, where “last mile” accuracy matters, “good enough” generic horizontal LLMs aren’t enough. It has become obvious that expert vertical solutions, like F2,  are then necessary.

What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?

Craig Driscoll, who led the investment for HighlandX said, “Private markets are at an inflection point. The firms that build AI into the core of how they source, underwrite, and monitor will compound an advantage that becomes structural over time.” What sets F2 apart is its ability to embed directly into deal workflows and fit naturally into how serious investment teams operate.”

F2 has been able to demonstrate real traction and a clear path to sustainable growth. In this environment, there’s a higher premium on capital efficiency and strong unit economics, and we built the business with that discipline from the start. Combined with a differentiated product and a focused team, that gave investors confidence in both our near-term execution and long-term upside.

What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months? 

In the next few months we hope to chive the following:

• Scaling deployments across credit funds and banks.
• Expanding the product suite.
• Growing our engineering and enterprise teams globally.

What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?

The rules of the game have changed in the last 12 months, and the bar on growth and revenue have increased as new AI native companies have shown that it’s possible to build big companies much faster. Growth and scale aren’t the only metrics though: durability and defensibility is critical. That means proving high usage, sticky customers, and deep workflow. Tomorrow’s companies aren’t just building products, they are delivering product augmented service. That means aligning and tailoring product to your end customer not just giving them a turnkey solution.

Where do you see the company going now over the near term?

In the near term, F2 is focused on scaling adoption across leading lenders globally, while continuing to deepen its position within private credit and broader private markets. The company aims to become core infrastructure for investment teams, embedding AI directly into how firms source, underwrite, and manage deals. At the same time, F2 will continue expanding its platform capabilities and enterprise footprint, reinforcing its role in shaping the next generation of credit and investment workflows.

What’s your favorite spring destination in and around the city?

There is nothing quite like the Hamptons before Memorial Day!

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AlleyWatch sat down with Alex Wendland, Cofounder and Co-CEO of Adaptive Innovations, to learn more about the business, its future plans, recent funding round, and much, much more…

Who were your investors and how much did you raise?

We raised a $50M Series A led by Felicis, along with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Optum Ventures, Sunflower Capital, BoxGroup, Dorm Room Fund, Constellation VC, SV Angel, and prominent angel investors across healthcare services and AI labs. We also raised a previously undisclosed $10M in seed funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, bringing our total funding to-date to $60M.

Tell us about the product or service that Adaptive Innovations offers.

Adaptive Innovations is an AI-native healthcare provider, starting in home health. We combine AI-native operations with clinicians-in-the-home to get every patient the care they need, including the 40% of patients legacy home health providers turn away.

What inspired the start of Adaptive Innovations?

There are many AI healthtech companies, but care can’t be delivered through a screen. Real care happens physically, between a clinician and a patient. And as a country, we don’t deliver enough of it. In post-acute care, the clinicians exist and patients exist, but 40% of patients are turned away due to the high admin burden and care coordination problem. Adaptive exists to solve this.

How is Adaptive Innovations different?

We’re not a software vendor. We’re the provider, and we’ve rebuilt the entire end-to-end operations that care runs on with AI at the core. This allows us to say yes to the patients that other providers turn away, and also get them better quality care – our rehospitalization rate is less than half the industry average.

What market does Adaptive Innovations target and how big is it?

We’re starting in home health, but targeting the entirety of post-acute care. Home health is a >$100B market and one of the fastest-growing outpatient sectors on pace to nearly double over the next 5-6 years.
We’re not stopping at skilled nursing visits. Home health is the coordination layer through which the rest of post-acute care flows including home infusion, dialysis, durable medical equipment deployment, hospice, and specialty pharmaceuticals. Today, these verticals are fragmented and disconnected, but as we build density, we are building the only platform capable of solving the full post-acute coordination problem.

What’s your business model?

Because our AI operating system removes most of the heavy administrative burden, we can serve the patient referrals that other agencies reject. Being able to expand care to patients drives physical network effects which in turn fuels durable growth.
More patients leads to more patient density, meaning clinicians drive less between visits, which raises their productivity and total take-home compensation. This also means that we build more trust with hospitals and referral sources, making them want to refer more patients to us. And finally, as we reach more patients, we’ll be able to thoughtfully partner with payers on innovative contracting models that align with our ability to shift outcomes at the population level.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?

People need care in any economy.
But also, when budgets tighten, health systems and payers get more cost-sensitive. Because AI removes most of our admin cost, we earn a far wider margin on every visit than a traditional agency does. That margin is a buffer: we can keep delivering care at reimbursement levels that would put a legacy agency underwater.

What was the funding process like?

Investors are looking for a new class of startup that benefits from AI but isn’t consumed by it. The SaaS companies of the past are no longer interesting, because AI lets anyone vibecode software. Investors saw that we’re an early player in this new wave of real businesses that gets better as AI gets better.

What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?

Investors are still learning how to think about this new era of AI-not-SaaS businesses. We found that the sharpest investors understood this paradigm shift quickly, while others are still figuring it out.

What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?

Adaptive is solving an important problem (caring for patients), at a massive scale (>$100B market), with a rare team combining the best engineers in tech and the best operators from healthcare.

What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?

This new funding accelerates our expansion to new states.

What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?

AI lets you do more with less. We’ve found that the best operators and engineers can do more than 2x what the next best can do simply because they know how to leverage AI more effectively.

Where do you see the company going now over the near term?

We plan to continue expanding within Texas as well as new states.

What’s your favorite spring destination in and around the city?

The High Line, hands down. I love greenery & architecture, so I’m a big fan of the defunct rail infrastructure reimagined into something green and walkable.

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Honeycomb – $40.0M

Chicago-based Honeycomb provides insurance products for landlords, condominium associations, and residential property owners. Founded by Adam Cherubini, Itai Ben-Zaken, and Nimrod Sadot in 2019, Honeycomb has now raised a total of $94.7M in total equity funding and is backed by Alpha Partners, Harris Barton, Ibex Investors, Meitar Liquornik Geva Leshem Tal, and Peakline.

Generalist AI – $400.0M

San Mateo-based Generalist AI develops AI and robotics systems that enable robots to perform physical tasks in real-world environments. Founded by Andrew Barry, Andy Zeng, and Pete Florence in 2024, Generalist AI has now raised a total of $540M in total equity funding and is backed by 8VC, Bezos Expeditions, Bin Lin, boldstart ventures, and Eric Yuan.

Terra AI – $20.0M

Palo Alto-based Terra AI develops AI software for mining, energy, and subsurface resource exploration and operations. Founded by Anthony Corso and John Mern in 2023, Terra AI has now raised a total of $23.4M in total equity funding and is backed by BHP Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

Supabase – $500.0M

San Francisco-based Supabase provides an open-source backend platform with managed PostgreSQL databases, authentication, storage, and developer tools. Founded by Anthony Wilson and Paul Copplestone in 2020, Supabase has now raised a total of $1B in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, Coatue, Craft Ventures, Felicis, and Georgian.

Veritas Aortic Solutions – $12.0M

Costa Mesa-based Veritas Aortic Solutions develops medical devices for the treatment of complex aortic diseases. Founded by Arshad Quadri and Brent Ratz in 2025, Veritas Aortic Solutions has now raised a total of $12M in total equity funding and is backed by Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Company, Chad Martinson, and Judd Nordquist.

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The Ryl Company – $20.0M

Cedar Knolls-based The Ryl Company produces ready-to-drink iced teas made with real tea and natural sweeteners. Founded by Blodin Ukella in 2022, The Ryl Company has now raised a total of $49.2M in total equity funding and is backed by Purchase Capital.

Helion Energy – $465.0M

Everett-based Helion Energy develops fusion power technology designed to generate carbon-free electricity. Founded by Chris Pihl, David Kirtley, George Votroubek, and John Slough in 2013, Helion Energy has now raised a total of $1.5B in total equity funding and is backed by Alta Park Capital, Anti Fund, BoxGroup, Capricorn Investment Group, and Good Ventures.

Auger – $200.0M

Bellevue-based Auger provides AI-powered logistics software that helps businesses manage and optimize supply chain operations. Founded by Dave Clark in 2024, Auger has now raised a total of $300M in total equity funding and is backed by Insight Partners and Oak HC/FT.

Alitheon – $8.0M

Bellevue-based Alitheon provides optical AI software that identifies, authenticates, and tracks physical objects. Founded by David Ross and Scot Land in 2017, Alitheon has now raised a total of $38.7M in total equity funding and is backed by eBay Ventures and Emerald Technology Ventures.

Highland Electric Fleets – $75.0M

Beverly-based Highland Electric Fleets provides electric school bus solutions, fleet management, and charging infrastructure for school districts. Founded by Duncan McIntyre in 2018, Highland Electric Fleets has now raised a total of $225M in total equity funding and is backed by Galvanize Climate Solutions.

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Layup Parts – $42.0M

Huntington Beach-based Layup Parts manufactures composite components and tooling for aerospace, defense, and industrial applications. Founded by Elisa Suarez, Hanno Kappen, and Zack Eakin in 2024, Layup Parts has now raised a total of $51M in total equity funding and is backed by Cerberus Ventures, Founders Fund, Haystack, Lux Capital, and Marlinspike Capital.

Novellia – $18.0M

New York-based Novellia develops healthcare software that helps individuals collect, organize, and manage their medical information. Founded by Elliot Katz and Shashi Shankar in 2023, Novellia has now raised a total of $18M in total equity funding and is backed by Acrew Capital, Bling Capital, Khosla Ventures, Spark Capital, and TMV.

Subtle Medical – $33.0M

Menlo Park-based Subtle Medical develops AI-powered medical imaging software that improves image quality and workflow efficiency. Founded by Enhao Gong and Greg Zaharchuk in 2017, Subtle Medical has now raised a total of $88.3M in total equity funding and is backed by BlueRun Ventures, EnvisionX Capital, Fusion Fund, Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, and Samsung Ventures.

ZutaCore – $100.0M

Foster City-based ZutaCore develops direct-to-chip liquid cooling technology for data centers and AI computing infrastructure. Founded by Erez Freibach and Nahshon Eadelson in 2016, ZutaCore has now raised a total of $100M in total equity funding and is backed by Carrier Ventures, Mitsubishi Electric, and Samsung Ventures.

Ramp – $750.0M

New York-based Ramp provides corporate cards, expense management, bill payment, and financial operations software for businesses. Founded by Eric Glyman, Gene Lee, and Karim Atiyeh in 2019, Ramp has now raised a total of $2.9B in total equity funding and is backed by 137 Ventures, 1789 Capital, 8VC, Alpha Wave Global, and Avenir.

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Mach Industries – $300.0M

Huntington Beach-based Mach Industries develops defense systems, autonomous platforms, and military infrastructure technologies. Founded by Ethan Thornton in 2023, Mach Industries has now raised a total of $484.7M in total equity funding and is backed by Bedrock, Infinite Capital, Khosla Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia Capital.

Binti – $6.0M

Oakland-based Binti provides software that helps child welfare agencies, nonprofits, and families streamline foster care and adoption processes. Founded by Felicia Curcuru and Gabe Kopley in 2013, Binti has now raised a total of $63M in total equity funding and is backed by SJF Ventures.

Suno – $400.0M

Cambridge-based Suno provides AI software that enables users to create original music and songs from text prompts. Founded by Georg Kucsko, Keenan Freyberg, Martin Camacho, and Mikey Shulman in 2022, Suno has now raised a total of $775M in total equity funding and is backed by Alkeon Capital, Bond, Forerunner, IVP, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

AlphaSense – $350.0M

New York-based AlphaSense provides an AI-powered market intelligence platform that helps professionals research companies, industries, and markets. Founded by Jack Kokko and Raj Neervannan in 2008, AlphaSense has now raised a total of $1.7B in total equity funding and is backed by Accenture Ventures, CapitalG, D. E. Shaw & Co., Goldman Sachs Alternatives, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

Scotch – $20.0M

Denver-based Scotch provides point-of-sale and retail management software for liquor stores. Founded by Jake Bolling and Kevin Hodges in 2024, Scotch has now raised a total of $30M in total equity funding and is backed by First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Toba Capital, and VMG Partners.

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Town – $60.1M

San Francisco-based Town develops an AI personal assistant that manages email, scheduling, and administrative tasks. Founded by Jean-Denis Greze and Tony Vincent in 2024, Town has now raised a total of $78.1M in total equity funding and is backed by Alt Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Conviction, First Round Capital, and Forerunner.

Forage – $40.0M

San Francisco-based Forage provides payment technology that enables merchants to accept SNAP EBT and EBT Cash payments online and in stores. Founded by Justin Intal, Ofek Lavian, and Victor Esteban Fimbres in 2020, Forage has now raised a total of $62M in total equity funding and is backed by FJ Labs, Intuit Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Mouro Capital, and NextLadder Ventures.

Axiom Space – $175.0M

Houston-based Axiom Space develops commercial space infrastructure, human spaceflight services, and orbital platforms. Founded by Kam Ghaffarian and Michael Suffredini in 2016, Axiom Space has now raised a total of $1B in total equity funding and is backed by MUFG Bank.

Findigs – $32.0M

New York-based Findigs provides rental screening and verification software for property managers and renters. Founded by Keith Gilvar and Steve Carroll in 2018, Findigs has now raised a total of $59M in total equity funding and is backed by Frontier Venture Capital, Nyca Partners, RPM Ventures, and Western Technology Investment.

Plot – $10.0M

New York-based Plot provides AI-powered social listening software that helps brands and marketers analyze video-driven consumer trends. Founded by Megan Duong and Phuoc Phan in 2022, Plot has now raised a total of $13M in total equity funding and is backed by ACME Capital, Mischief, Seven Seven Six, and XYZ Venture Capital.

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Cyera – $300.0M

New York-based Cyera provides an AI-native data security platform that helps organizations discover, classify, govern, and protect sensitive data. Founded by Tamar Bar-Ilan, Yonatan Itai, and Yotam Segev in 2021, Cyera has now raised a total of $2B in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, Coatue, Cyberstarts, Evolution Equity Partners, and Georgian.

Impulse Space – $500.0M

Redondo Beach-based Impulse Space develops spacecraft and in-space transportation systems for satellite and payload mobility. Founded by Tom Mueller in 2021, Impulse Space has now raised a total of $1B in total equity funding and is backed by 137 Ventures, Banner VC, Founders Fund, Linse Capital, and Lux Capital.

Sekai – $20.0M

Sunnyvale-based Sekai provides an AI-powered platform for creating, sharing, and interacting with no-code interactive content and applications. Founded by Ziang Zhang in 2023, Sekai has now raised a total of $29M in total equity funding and is backed by 359 Capital, 645 Ventures, A*, A16Z GAMES Speedrun, and Connect Ventures.

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AlleyWatch sat down with Kubera Health Founder and CEO Roja Garimella, MD to learn more about the business, its future plans, recent $6.5M seed round that brings total funding to $9.5M, and much, much more…

Who were your investors and how much did you raise?

We raised a $6.5M seed round, led by Upfront Ventures, with Company Ventures, Dria Ventures, and SemperVirens Venture Capital participating.

Tell us about the product or service that Kubera Health offers.

Kubera Health is the contract-to-payment system of record for American healthcare — contract and payment intelligence for providers and the organizations that serve them. We turn every payor-provider contract into structured rules that run against claims and financial data, so that payment issues can be audited and reconciled against the contract itself.

What inspired the start of Kubera Health?

I trained as a medical doctor and started my career on the clinical side, but I’d had a long-standing frustration with why the administrative side of healthcare is so hard. Working inside large enterprises like Humana and Commonwealth Care Alliance, I saw firsthand how difficult the operations around contracts and data really were — the hardest problems weren’t clinical, they were financial. Kubera exists to fix one of the biggest issues within healthcare: how care gets paid for and how expensive that process is.

How is Kubera Health different?

Most companies in this space work downstream — in the claim queue, the denial workflow, the billing staff. We work upstream, at the contract layer where the rules originate. Providers lose revenue because they don’t fully know what their contracts say, can’t model what they should be paid, and have no systematic way to tell when a payment deviates from contracted terms. By making those contract terms computable, measurable, and enforceable, we help prevent that leakage structurally rather than chasing it after the fact. We’re building infrastructure, not another workflow tool.

What market does Kubera Health target and how big is it?

U.S. healthcare spending is around $5 trillion a year, and roughly a quarter of that — close to $1 trillion — goes to administration rather than care. We’re focused on the financial layer inside that: the contracts, claims, and payments that move money between payors and providers, which alone runs about $200 billion a year across more than nine billion claims. It’s a massive market, and it’s still remarkably dominated by very old and disconnected technology.

What’s your business model?

We charge a subscription fee based on volume, scale, and complexity, and we’ve increasingly been moving into upside arrangements and shared-risk models alongside that.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?

We’re full steam ahead on growth right now. Healthcare generally fares well in challenging markets, and administrative spend has only continued to increase. As conditions get tougher and government funding to healthcare programs comes under pressure, hospitals and clinics feel every dollar more acutely — so we’re preparing to help more of them recoup the payments they’re owed and negotiate stronger contracts to weather harder economic times.

What was the funding process like?

We’d worked closely with most of these investors for over a year prior, so there was already a foundation of trust and a shared understanding of what we were building that made the process efficient.

What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?

Raising capital is always a distraction from the core business, and everything else keeps moving full steam ahead regardless, so the hardest part was keeping all the balls in the air at once. There’s also a real education curve: this is a complex, unglamorous corner of healthcare, and part of the work is helping investors understand why the contract layer is the right place to build.

What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?

We had strong pilot conversion and net revenue retention across our first batch of customers, and we’d proven we could get deep into sales processes with some of the largest healthcare enterprises in the country.

We had strong pilot conversion and net revenue retention across our first batch of customers, and we’d proven we could get deep into sales processes with some of the largest healthcare enterprises in the country.

What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?

We have several flagship feature releases coming over the next few months — including work in agentic revenue recovery that I’m especially excited about.

What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?

Build for your customers, and keep your team in the loop every step of the way. It sounds simple, but those two habits are what keep you honest and aligned when you don’t have a fresh injection of capital to paper over mistakes.

Where do you see the company going now over the near term?

We’re building toward becoming the system of record that healthcare payments actually run on. Near term, that means supporting more customers and variations of contracts/payment models.

What’s your favorite spring destination in and around the city?

Red Hook — best views in the city, great food, and so many fun places to explore.

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New York City venture capital delivered $2.01 billion across 75 companies in May 2026, a 12.0% increase from April fueled by one of the city’s strongest multi-deal months on record. Seven NYC startups each raised $100 million or more — a concentration of large rounds rarely seen outside months anchored by a single outlier raise. Modal Labs led with $355 million for its AI cloud infrastructure platform, but the month’s character was defined less by any one deal than by the breadth of capital flowing into mature, revenue-stage companies across healthcare, insurance, fintech, and AI infrastructure. Four of the top 10 deals — Vi Labs, Reserv, Garner Health, and Nourish — collectively raised $471 million, underscoring a quiet but substantial reorientation of NYC late-stage capital toward health and insurance technology. AI-identified companies captured 66% of all funding deployed, with $1.32 billion spread across 32 startups spanning clinical AI, insurance automation, investment management, and cybersecurity.

NYC Venture Capital Activity by Stage — May 2026

Top 10 NYC Venture Capital Deals — May 2026

Modal Labs Leads a Strong Month for AI Infrastructure

Modal Labs’ $355M late-stage round was the defining deal of May, cementing the company’s position as one of NYC’s most heavily backed AI infrastructure plays. The serverless cloud platform, which enables developers to run machine learning and data processing workloads without managing infrastructure, has become a critical layer in the AI development stack. At 17.7% of all NYC capital deployed in May, Modal’s raise single-handedly elevated the month’s headline figure and anchored a broader pattern: AI infrastructure and tooling companies attracted a disproportionate share of late-stage investment in May.

OpenRouter’s $113M Series B added another dimension to the AI infrastructure story. The platform, which routes AI applications to large language models and cloud hosting providers, raised at a moment when enterprises are actively building out multi-model strategies. Together, Modal and OpenRouter alone accounted for $468M — nearly 23% of all NYC capital in May.

Series B Activity Surges on Retail and AI Bets

May’s Series B cohort stood out as the most active by average deal size, with nine rounds totaling $454.9M at a $50.5M mean — well above what the stage typically produces in NYC. RADAR’s $170M raise was the key driver. The retail technology company, which uses computer vision and RFID to automate in-store inventory tracking and checkout, raised one of the larger Series B rounds seen in the NYC market this year. RADAR and OpenRouter together represented 61.2% of all Series B capital in May, which skewed the stage average significantly; the median of $33.0M is a more representative figure for the rest of the cohort.

AI Captures Two-Thirds of NYC Capital

Thirty-two of 75 funded NYC companies in May were identified as AI-focused, accounting for $1.32B — 66% of all capital deployed locally. The concentration is notable not just for its magnitude but for its spread across verticals: Vi Labs ($146M) applies AI to healthcare and life sciences, Reserv ($125M) uses it for insurance claims processing, Moment ($78M) for investment management, and Frame Security ($50M) for cybersecurity. The month illustrated how AI has moved from a descriptor for foundational model companies to an operational layer embedded across insurance, health, finance, and enterprise software.

Of the top 10 NYC deals in May, seven involved companies with AI at the core of their product — a ratio that reflects both investor appetite and the continued maturation of AI-native business models in the city’s startup ecosystem.

NYC vs. US National Venture Capital Activity — May 2026

NYC accounted for 3.0% of US venture capital by dollars in May 2026, a figure significantly compressed by Anthropic’s $50B Series H — the largest venture round in recorded history — which single-handedly concentrated the national headline. Stripping out Anthropic, NYC’s share of the remaining $17.03B in US activity would be approximately 11.8%, a more historically representative reading of the city’s standing. NYC’s 18.3% share of national deal count reflects a market that punches above its weight at the volume level. The city’s strongest competitive position was at Series B, where it captured 18.1% of national capital across 22.5% of deals.

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Looking Ahead

With $2.01B deployed in May, NYC has now posted back-to-back months above $1.7B — a level of consistency that signals healthy underlying demand rather than episodic spikes. The Series B cohort’s strength is worth watching: nine rounds at a $50.5M average suggest a group of companies that raised Series A capital in 2023 and 2024 are now reaching the scale inflection where larger follow-on checks are warranted. If that pipeline holds, June could see continued Series B activity as more of that cohort completes their fundraising cycles. The health and insurance verticals, each producing two top-10 deals in May, have emerged as recurring themes in NYC’s late-stage market and bear watching as AI-native applications in both spaces continue to attract investor interest.

Methodology

Data for this report is sourced from AlleyWatch proprietary funding data (funding.alleywatch.com) and covers venture capital rounds announced or closed in May 2026 by NYC-headquartered startups. Deals are classified into four stages: Early-Stage (pre-seed, seed, angel, accelerator, and incubator rounds); Series A; Series B; and Late-Stage (Series C and beyond). AI company classification is based on the presence of relevant keywords across company description and industry fields. All figures are in USD.