19. Oratomic $300.0M

Round: Series A
Description: South Pasadena-based Oratomic develops neutral-atom quantum hardware and error-correction architectures for utility-scale fault-tolerant quantum computers. Founded by in 2026, Oratomic has now raised a total of $310.0M in total equity funding and is backed by General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, and Spark Capital.
Investors in the round: 7i Capital, ARCH Venture Partners, Baiju Bhatt, Bain Capital Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, David Aaronson, Formation 8, General Catalyst, Global Frontier Investments, Index Ventures, Infleqtion, Khosla Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Nebular, Scott Aaronson, Spark Capital
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Enterprise Software, Machine Learning, Optical Communication, Quantum Computing
Founding year: 2026
Total equity funding raised: $310.0M

19. Walden Robotics $300.0M

Round: Seed
Description: Cambridge-based Walden Robotics builds wheeled, two-armed semi-humanoid robots using Physical AI for manufacturing and logistics. Founded by Adrien Gaidon, Ben Burchfiel, Dave Johnson, Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Rareș Ambruș, and Russ Tedrake in 2026, Walden Robotics has now raised a total of $300.0M in total equity funding and is backed by Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, The Boeing Company, Toyota Ventures, and Calibrate Ventures.
Investors in the round: AE Ventures, Calibrate Ventures, Colle Capital Partners, CoreWeave Ventures, Deviation Capital, KAS Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, NextView Ventures, NVIDIA, One Madison Group, Prologis Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Shine Capital, Squarepoint Capital, The Boeing Company, Toyota, Toyota Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Logistics, Robotics
Founders: Adrien Gaidon, Ben Burchfiel, Dave Johnson, Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Rareș Ambruș, Russ Tedrake
Founding year: 2026
Total equity funding raised: $300.0M

19. Xsight Labs $300.0M

Round: Series E
Description: Kiryat Gat-based Xsight Labs manufactures chipset semiconductors for data center and automotive sector applications. Founded by Erez Shaizaf, Gal Malach, and Guy Koren in 2017, Xsight Labs has now raised a total of $400.0M in total equity funding and is backed by Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Intel Capital, and Fidelity.
Investors in the round: Aliya Capital Partners, Artisan Partners, Atreides Management, Battery Ventures, Diagonale Capital, Fidelity, Intel Capital, Key 1 Capital, Maverick Capital, Sienna Venture Capital, T. Rowe Price, Union Tech Ventures, Valor Equity Partners
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Machinery Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Semiconductor
Founders: Erez Shaizaf, Gal Malach, Guy Koren
Founding year: 2017
Total equity funding raised: $400.0M

19. Etched $300.0M

Round: Series C
Description: San Jose-based Etched designs and manufactures hardware systems optimized for artificial intelligence model inference workloads. Founded by Chris Zhu, Gavin Uberti, and Robert Wachen in 2022, Etched has now raised a total of $925.4M in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, SK Hynix, and Fundomo.
Investors in the round: Andreessen Horowitz, Argo, Jane Street Capital, Sequoia Capital, SK Hynix
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer, Hardware, Semiconductor
Founders: Chris Zhu, Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $925.4M

18. AdvanCell $315.0M

Round: Series D
Description: Sydney-based AdvanCell develops targeted alpha radiopharmaceutical therapies for cancer and supports their development and manufacturing. Founded by Andrew Adamovich in 2019, AdvanCell has now raised a total of $439.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Eli Lilly, Alpha Wave Global, Catalio Capital Management, Bain Capital Life Sciences, and SV Health Investors.
Investors in the round: Abingworth, Ally Bridge Group, Alpha Wave Global, Bain Capital Life Sciences, Brandon Capital, Catalio Capital Management, Eli Lilly, Eventide, Fidelity, Morningside, Piper Sandler, Proto Axiom, Sanofi Ventures, SV Health Investors, SymBiosis, Tenmile, TIME BioVentures, T. Rowe Price, Velosity Capital
Industry: Biotechnology, Clinical Trials, Oncology, Pharmaceutical
Founders: Andrew Adamovich
Founding year: 2019
Total equity funding raised: $439.5M

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17. Antares $370.0M

Round: Series C
Description: Los Angeles-based Antares Industries designs and manufactures transportable nuclear fission microreactors for terrestrial and space applications. Founded by Jordan Bramble and Julia DeWahl in 2023, Antares has now raised a total of $471.0M in total equity funding and is backed by Paradigm, BoxGroup, Caffeinated Capital, Industrious Ventures, and Banter Capital.
Investors in the round: Caffeinated Capital, Industrious Ventures, Paradigm, Point72 Ventures, Shine Capital
Industry: Energy, Industrial, Machinery Manufacturing, Manufacturing
Founders: Jordan Bramble, Julia DeWahl
Founding year: 2023
Total equity funding raised: $471.0M

16. Chai Discovery $400.0M

Round: Series C
Description: San Francisco-based Chai Discovery develops artificial intelligence models and software for protein engineering and molecular design. Founded by Jack Dent, Jacques Boitreaud, Joshua Meier, and Matthew McPartlon in 2024, Chai Discovery has now raised a total of $630.0M in total equity funding and is backed by OpenAI, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Investors in the round: Avenir, Avra Capital, Baillie Gifford, Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, BDT & MSD Partners, Dimension Capital, General Catalyst, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lachy Groom, Menlo Ventures, Oak HC/FT, OpenAI, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Yosemite
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Foundational AI, Health Care, Life Science
Founders: Jack Dent, Jacques Boitreaud, Joshua Meier, Matthew McPartlon
Founding year: 2024
Total equity funding raised: $630.0M

16. Meshy AI $400.0M

Round: Series B
Description: Sunnyvale-based Meshy AI is an AI platform that enables users to generate and edit 3D models from text descriptions, images, and conversational prompts. Founded by Ethan Hu in 2021, Meshy AI has now raised a total of $450.0M in total equity funding and is backed by HSG, Matrix Partners China, Granite Asia, Source Code Capital, and BAI capital.
Investors in the round: BAI capital, Granite Asia, HSG, IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China, Monolith Capital, Source Code Capital
Industry: 3D Printing, 3D Technology, Art, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gaming, Generative AI, Machine Learning
Founders: Ethan Hu
Founding year: 2021
Total equity funding raised: $450.0M

15. Proxima Fusion €411.0M

Round: Series B
Description: Munich-based Proxima Fusion is a fusion energy company developing stellarator-based fusion power plants to deliver safe and carbon-free electricity. Founded by Francesco Sciortino, Jorrit Lion, Lucio Milanese, and Martin Kubie in 2023, Proxima Fusion has now raised a total of €598.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, HTGF (High-Tech Gruenderfonds), Cherry Ventures, Balderton Capital, and CDP Venture Capital.
Investors in the round: Balderton Capital, Bayern Kapital, Brevan Howard Asset Management, Burda Principal Investments, CDP Venture Capital, Cherry Ventures, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, DST Global, East X Ventures, Elaia, European Innovation Council Fund, Google, HTGF (High-Tech Gruenderfonds), KfW Capital, Leitmotif, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Plural Platform, redalpine, RWE, SPRIN-D, UVC Partners, XTX Ventures
Industry: Clean Energy, Energy, Nuclear, Power Grid
Founders: Francesco Sciortino, Jorrit Lion, Lucio Milanese, Martin Kubie
Founding year: 2023
Total equity funding raised: €598.5M

14. K2 Space $500.0M

Round: Series D
Description: Torrance-based K2 Space develops high-power satellite platforms for orbital missions, using vertically integrated hardware and manufacturing processes. Founded by Karan Kunjur and Neel Kunjur in 2022, K2 Space has now raised a total of $925.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital, and T. Rowe Price.
Investors in the round: Altimeter Capital, ARK Investment Management, CapitalG, ICONIQ Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, T. Rowe Price
Industry: Aerospace, Machinery Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Space Travel
Founders: Karan Kunjur, Neel Kunjur
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $925.5M

13. Antora Energy $550.0M

Round: Series C
Description: San Jose-based Antora Energy develops thermal energy storage systems that store renewable energy as heat for industrial applications. Founded by Andrew Ponec, David Bierman, and Justin Briggs in 2018, Antora Energy has now raised a total of $750.0M in total equity funding and is backed by Temasek, BlackRock, Eclipse, Trust Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures.
Investors in the round: Activate Capital Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Decarbonization Partners, Eclipse, G2 Venture Partners, Impact Science Ventures, John Doerr, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, StepStone Group, The Westly Group, Trust Ventures
Industry: Energy, Energy Storage, Renewable Energy
Founders: Andrew Ponec, David Bierman, Justin Briggs
Founding year: 2018
Total equity funding raised: $750.0M

12. Multiverse Computing €500.0M

Round: Series C
Description: Donostia-San Sebastián-based Multiverse Computing develops AI model compression and quantum-inspired optimization software for enterprise applications. Founded by Alfonso Rubio Manzanares, Enrique Lizaso, Román Orús, and Samuel Mugel in 2019, Multiverse Computing has now raised a total of €735.5M in total equity funding and is backed by CDP Venture Capital, Redstone.VC, Creative Destruction Lab, Inveready, and Forgepoint Capital.
Investors in the round: BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture fund, Bullhound Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, Forgepoint Capital, Gestion De Capital Riesgo Del Pais Vasco, HP, Kutxa Fundazioa, NAventures, Orange Ventures, Qatar Development Bank, Santander Alternative Investments, Scania Invest, SETT, Tikehau Capital, Zouk Capital
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, Software
Founders: Alfonso Rubio Manzanares, Enrique Lizaso, Román Orús, Samuel Mugel
Founding year: 2019
Total equity funding raised: €735.5M

11. Wonder $650.0M

Round: Series D
Description: New York-based Wonder operates a mealtime platform offering restaurant meals, meal kits, and food delivery through a unified ordering experience. Founded by Juan Cappello and Marc Lore in 2018, Wonder has now raised a total of $3.1B in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, General Catalyst, New Enterprise Associates, Forerunner, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Investors in the round: Accel, AllianceBernstein, ARK Investment Management, Google Ventures, Kayne Anderson Rudnick (KAR), New Enterprise Associates
Industry: E-Commerce, Food and Beverage, Food Delivery, Restaurants
Founders: Juan Cappello, Marc Lore
Founding year: 2018
Total equity funding raised: $3.1B

10. Neko Health $700.0M

Round: Series C
Description: Stockholm-based Neko Health develops scanning technology for preventive healthcare and early detection of disease. Founded by Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne in 2018, Neko Health has now raised a total of $1.0B in total equity funding and is backed by General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lakestar, Positive Sum, and BDT & MSD Partners.
Investors in the round: Alexis Ohanian, Alex Tew, Ariel Emanuel, Atomico, BDT & MSD Partners, Claudia Schiffer, Danny Meyer, Gary Vaynerchuk, General Catalyst, Jessie Inchauspé, Jimmy Iovine, Katie Haun, Lakestar, Liberty City Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Marco Perego Saldaña, Maria Sharapova, Mark Zuckerberg, Matthew Vaughn, Michael Acton Smith, O.G. Venture Partners, Positive Sum, Priscilla Chan, Raj Shamani, Steven Bartlett, Thierry Henry, Timothy Ferriss, William Adams, Zoe Saldana
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Health Care, Hospital, Medical
Founders: Daniel Ek, Hjalmar Nilsonne
Founding year: 2018
Total equity funding raised: $1.0B

9. Chang Guang Satellite Technology (CGSTL) ¥5.0B

Round: Venture
Description: Changchun-based Chang Guang Satellite Technology develops remote-sensing satellites and provides satellite data and information services. Founded in 2014, Chang Guang Satellite Technology (CGSTL) has now raised a total of ¥7.7B in total equity funding and is backed by Shenzhen Capital Group, Matrix Partners China, CAS Star, CICC Capital, and Puhua Capital.
Investors in the round: Changfa Group, China Chengtong Fund, Haitong Innovation Securities Investment, Landstone Capital, Orient Assets Management, Shenzhen Capital Group
Industry: Commercial, Information Services, Information Technology, Satellite Communication
Founding year: 2014
Total equity funding raised: ¥7.7B

8. Together AI $800.0M

Round: Series C
Description: San Francisco-based Together AI provides a cloud platform for developing, training, fine-tuning, and deploying generative AI models. Founded by Ce Zhang, Chris Re, Percy Liang, Tri Dao, and Vipul Ved Prakash in 2022, Together AI has now raised a total of $1.3B in total equity funding and is backed by Vista Equity Partners, NVIDIA, General Catalyst, Alumni Ventures, and Factory.
Investors in the round: Aramco Ventures, DTCP, Emergence Capital, General Catalyst, Geodesic Capital, Lux Capital, March Capital, NVIDIA, Pegatron, PSP Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Schneider Electric, S Ventures, Vista Equity Partners
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, IT Infrastructure, Machine Learning, Open Source
Founders: Ce Zhang, Chris Re, Percy Liang, Tri Dao, Vipul Ved Prakash
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $1.3B

7. SambaNova $1.0B

Round: Series F
Description: Palo Alto-based SambaNova delivers AI inference and scalable solutions, providing seamless integration for agentic AI applications. Founded by Christopher Re, Kunle Olukotun, and Rodrigo Liang in 2017, SambaNova has now raised a total of $2.5B in total equity funding and is backed by Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Temasek, BlackRock, and Battery Ventures.
Investors in the round: A&E Investments, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, BlackRock, Cambium Capital Partners, Capital Group, General Atlantic, Intel Capital, Kabila Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, QFO Capital, Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Vista Equity Partners, Volantis Capital Management
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Semiconductor, Software
Founders: Christopher Re, Kunle Olukotun, Rodrigo Liang
Founding year: 2017
Total equity funding raised: $2.5B

6. Quantum Systems $1.2B

Round: Series D
Description: Gilching-based Quantum Systems builds AI-powered eVTOL drones for defense, security, and surveying, specializing in aerial intelligence solutions. Founded by Armin Busse, Florian Seibel, Michael Kriegel, and Tobias Kloss in 2015, Quantum Systems has now raised a total of $1.8B in total equity funding and is backed by European Investment Bank, Wellington Management, Advent International, DTCP, and Bond.
Investors in the round: Advent International, Airbus Defence & Space, A.P. Moller Holding, Balderton Capital, Blackstone, Bond, Elephant Ventures, Elevat3 Capital, Fidelity, HV Capital, Noteus Partners, Wellington Management
Industry: Aerospace, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Drones, Government, Manufacturing, Mapping Services
Founders: Armin Busse, Florian Seibel, Michael Kriegel, Tobias Kloss
Founding year: 2015
Total equity funding raised: $1.8B

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6. Ant International $1.2B

Round: Series A
Description: Singapore-based Ant International is a digital payments and financial technology company that promotes inclusive financial growth for partners and customers globally. Founded in 2023, Ant International has now raised a total of $1.2B in total equity funding and is backed by Alibaba Group and Ant Group.
Investors in the round: Alibaba Group, Ant Group
Industry: Financial Services
Founding year: 2023
Total equity funding raised: $1.2B

5. Fireworks AI $1.5B

Round: Series D
Description: Redwood City-based Fireworks AI is an advanced platform that enables users to build, tune, and scale AI applications using open-source models. Founded by Chenyu Zhao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov, Dmytro Ivchenko, James Reed, Lin Qiao, and Pawel Garbacki in 2022, Fireworks AI has now raised a total of $1.8B in total equity funding and is backed by Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Investors in the round: Atreides Management, Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lone Pine Capital, Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Operator Collective, Original Capital, Prysm Capital, QuantumLight, TCV, The Twenty Minute VC, Time Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Management, Infrastructure, SaaS, Software
Founders: Chenyu Zhao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov, Dmytro Ivchenko, James Reed, Lin Qiao, Pawel Garbacki
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $1.8B

4. Atoms $1.7B

Round: Venture
Description: Los Angeles-based Atoms develops industrial robotics and physical AI systems to automate tasks across various industries. Founded by Sky Dayton and Travis Kalanick in 2016, Atoms has now raised a total of $3.0B in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, A*, Abstract, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Investors in the round: A*, Abstract, Alpha Square Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Chemistry, Fifth Wall, K5 Global, SV Angel, Uber
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Commercial Real Estate, Industrial, Information Technology, Infrastructure, Mining Technology, Real Estate, Robotics
Founders: Sky Dayton, Travis Kalanick
Founding year: 2016
Total equity funding raised: $3.0B

3. Joulent $1.8B

Round: Venture
Description: Houston-based Joulent develops large-scale energy systems that provide firm baseload power and grid integration for AI data centers and industrial loads. Joulent has now raised a total of $1.8B in total equity funding and is backed by National Grid Ventures.
Investors in the round: National Grid Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Infrastructure, Data Center, Energy, Energy Management, Energy Storage, Industrial
Total equity funding raised: $1.8B

2. Helsing $1.8B

Round: Series E
Description: Munich-based Helsing develops artificial intelligence software, autonomous systems, and defense technologies for military and government applications. Founded by Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Köhler, and Torsten Reil in 2021, Helsing has now raised a total of $3.3B in total equity funding and is backed by General Catalyst, Accel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Disruptive, and Greenoaks.
Investors in the round: Accel, CPP Investments, Disruptive, Dragoneer Investment Group, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Greenoaks, ICONIQ Capital, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lightspeed Venture Partners, Plural, Prima Materia, The Stepstone Group
Industry: Advanced Materials, Aerospace, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Autonomous Vehicles, Drones, Electronics, Information Technology, Military, Robotics
Founders: Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Köhler, Torsten Reil
Founding year: 2021
Total equity funding raised: $3.3B

1. Kling AI $2.8B

Round: Venture
Description: Beijing-based Kling AI is an AI-powered creative studio for generating images and videos using state-of-the-art generative AI methods. Founded in 2024, Kling AI has now raised a total of $2.8B in total equity funding and is backed by Shenzhen Capital Group, Qiming Venture Partners, BlueFive Capital, Legend Capital, and Tencent.
Investors in the round: Alibaba Cloud, Atypical Holdings, Baidu, Beijing CAS Generation Equity Investment Fund Partnership (LP), Beijing Haipu No.1 Technology Development Partnership (LP), Beijing Panmao Investment Management, Beijing Zhuoyue Lingbo Enterprise Management, BlueFive Capital, CCB Equity, Changsheng Investment, China Internet Investment Fund, Chongqing Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Private Equity Investment Fund Partnership (LP), CITIC Securities, Co-Stone Venture Capital, CPE Yuanfeng, Guangdong Dakang Lanwu Equity Investment Partnership Enterprise (LP), Guofang Venture Capital, Haitong Leading Capital Management, Hangzhou Hengshi Asset Management, Hony Capital, Houwei Capital, Houwei Ruida (Dalian) Capital Management, Huace Film & TV, Huatai Zijin Investment, Hundreds Capital, ICBC Capital, Legend Capital, LIGHTHOUSE, Neumann Intelligence, Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area Atlas Investment Management, Ningbo Meishan Bonded Port Area Ruiyuan Investment Management, Parallel Mars Investment, Polaris PMF Select Investment, Primavera Capital Group, Qiming Venture Partners, Shanghai Guofang Digital Technology Enterprise Management Partnership (LP), Shanghai Qishan Investment, Shenzhen Capital Group, Tencent, Thinkfund Investment Management, Tianjin Lisi Mingtang Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership, Zhongguancun Science City Science
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Creative Agency, Generative AI, Video
Founding year: 2024
Total equity funding raised: $2.8B

AlleyWatch sat down with WashWise Founder Maria Cabral Menezes 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?

WashWise raised a $1.2M pre-seed round. Investors include FJ Labs, Singh Capital, and Brown Girls Invest, alongside an incredible group of founders and operators including Jack Abraham, Founder of Atomic, Hims & Hers; Alex Jekowsky, Founder and CEO of Cents; Brian Tate, Founder of Oats Overnight; Gigi Howard, Founder of SIO Beauty; Nina Farran, Founder of Fashionkind; and others.

We were very intentional about building a cap table of people who could contribute far beyond capital. I wanted to be able to reach for my phone whenever I had a question—whether about content, distribution, manufacturing, the laundry industry, or something completely unexpected—and know there was an investor I could call who had relevant experience and would be willing to jump on the phone with me.

Tell us about the product or service that WashWise offers.

WashWise is reinventing laundry for the way we live today. We’re traveling more, working out more, investing more in our clothing, and increasingly buying secondhand—yet the way we care for our clothes has barely changed.

Our first focus is the space between wear and wash. Reset Spray, which I often describe as “dry shampoo for clothes,” cleanses, neutralizes odors, and reduces wrinkles so you can refresh and rewear clothes instead of automatically washing or dry cleaning them after every wear.

It’s water-based, bio-based, vegan and non-aerosol, and comes in both full and TSA-friendly travel sizes. The goal is simple: help people wash less, rewear more, and take better care of the clothes they already own.

What inspired the start of WashWise?

Before starting WashWise, I was a trader at Citadel, and I was constantly overspending on dry cleaning, traveling for conferences and trying to figure out how to rewear the clothes I had packed. At home, I had what I now call my “chairdrobe”—a huge pile of clothes that were too clean to wash but somehow didn’t feel fresh enough to rewear. As a result, I kept overwashing clothes that really weren’t dirty.

I remember looking at that pile and thinking: why don’t we have dry shampoo for clothes? We had completely changed the way we think about extending time between washes in beauty, but we were still caring for our clothes in essentially the same binary way: wash them or dry clean them. That frustration became the starting point for WashWise.

How is WashWise different?

While much of the laundry industry is focused on innovating inside the washing machine, we’re focused on the 99% of the time our clothes spend outside of it. We believe there is an enormous opportunity to rethink how we care for clothes between wears, while traveling, in our closets, gym bags and everywhere else they actually live.

What market does WashWise target and how big is it?

We’re creating a new behavior and, ultimately, a new market that we believe could be huge. Today, the U.S. laundry care products market alone is estimated at roughly $26 billion, while U.S. dry-cleaning and laundry services represent another $10+ billion market.

But our ambition isn’t to start by fighting for a slice of the existing laundry pie. We want to expand the pie by creating demand for innovative products that address moments in garment care that traditional laundry products have largely ignored—starting with the space between wear and wash. If we can establish that new behavior and make WashWise synonymous with modern garment care, we believe it gives us the right to eventually enter and innovate within the traditional laundry categories as well.

What’s your business model?

We’re starting DTC-first, with Amazon and TikTok Shop next. Right now, there’s very little product discovery in the traditional laundry aisle—it’s a sea of established brands and bright orange detergent bottles. Because we’re introducing a new behavior, we want to build consumer recognition and demand before going into big-box retail.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Laundry is a relatively resilient category because, regardless of the economic environment, people still need to care for their clothes. While WashWise sits within the broader premiumization of laundry, Reset Spray also has a very tangible value proposition: a $29 can can replace up to $300 worth of dry cleaning, while helping people wash less and potentially extend the life of the pieces they already own.

What was the funding process like?

It was a pretty humbling dose of reality. I went from trading billions of dollars at Citadel to raising my first million, and those are two completely different experiences. I also knew I wanted to be extremely strategic about the expertise I brought onto our cap table, so I intentionally took my time rather than just optimizing for getting the round closed as quickly as possible.

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

The reality is that raising pre-seed, pre-revenue and pre-product in CPG is hard. A lot of funds are happy to take the meeting, but very few actually invest that early in consumer—especially when you’re introducing a product that requires a new behavior rather than slightly tweaking something consumers already understand. Most investors want data proving that the behavior works before taking the risk.

I understand where that comes from, but I also think it can be an extremely conservative way to approach early-stage investing. I would have loved to see PayPal’s earnings before earnings day when I was a trader so I could decide whether to go long or short, too—but that’s simply not how risk and reward work. The biggest opportunities often exist precisely because the outcome hasn’t been proven yet.

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

The idea, the size of the opportunity and the vision for WashWise all mattered, but I think more than anything, a lot of our earliest investors were betting on me. Many of them had known me before WashWise and knew how I approach something when I decide I’m going to make it work. I genuinely believe that half of our cap table would have taken the call regardless of what I was building. They weren’t investing because I could show them years of revenue or prove that this new consumer behavior already existed—we couldn’t. They were investing because they knew how relentlessly I go after something I believe in and wanted to be part of building it with me.

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

The milestone I care most about is behavioral. I want every time someone takes off a piece of clothing for there to be a mental decision: Is this clean? Is this dirty? And if it’s somewhere in between—let’s WashWise it. If we can own that in-between moment and make WashWise a verb, that’s much more powerful to me than any single six-month metric.

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

We act like we don’t have one either. I will never treat $1 of investor capital differently than I treated $1 when I was bankrolling WashWise out of my own savings—not today, and not when we’re profitable.

We’re incredibly scrappy and crafty about how we spend. Raising capital shouldn’t suddenly give you permission to solve every problem by throwing money at it. Constraints force creativity, and some of the best things we’ve done have come from asking, “How can we make this happen without spending a fortune?” My advice is to protect that mentality regardless of how much money you have in the bank.

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

We’re thinking about the entire lifecycle of our clothes and turning common laundry grievances into innovative products built around the 99% of time our clothes spend outside the washing machine.

Do you hate traveling with a suitcase full of dirty clothes? Or carrying around a workout bag filled with sweaty gear? We may have a solution for that launching very soon.
Ultimately, I want WashWise to be a company that listens obsessively to the everyday frustrations people have with their clothes and builds products to solve them. So if you have a laundry grievance, email me—we may just build the solution.

What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
I love walking over to Nolita, grabbing the salted brown butter gelato from Caffè Paradiso, and sitting in Elizabeth Street Garden. It’s one of my favorite little summer rituals in the city—highly recommend.

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12. Simile $200.0M
Description: Palo Alto-based Simile develops AI agents and communication infrastructure designed to automate and improve customer interactions, collaboration, and relationship-based workflows. Founded by Joon Park, Lainie Yallen, and Michael Bernstein in 2025, Simile has now raised a total of $300M in total equity funding and is backed by Index Ventures, A*, Factory, Bain Capital Ventures, and Greenoaks.
Investors in the round: A*, Bain Capital Ventures, CVS Health Ventures, Definition, Factory, Greenoaks, Hanabi Capital, Index Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Customer Service, Online Portals
Founders: Joon Park, Lainie Yallen, Michael Bernstein
Founding year: 2025
Total equity funding raised: $300.0M

11. Etched $300.0M
Description: San Jose-based Etched develops purpose-built AI chips and systems optimized for transformer inference, designed to deliver high-performance compute for large-scale generative AI workloads. Founded by Chris Zhu, Gavin Uberti, and Robert Wachen in 2022, Etched has now raised a total of $925.4M in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Hummingbird Ventures, SK Hynix, and Fundomo.
Investors in the round: Andreessen Horowitz, Argo, Jane Street Capital, Sequoia Capital, SK Hynix
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer, Hardware, Semiconductor
Founders: Chris Zhu, Gavin Uberti, Robert Wachen
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $925.4M

11. Oratomic $300.0M
Description: South Pasadena-based Oratomic develops neutral-atom quantum computing hardware and fault-tolerant architectures designed to scale quantum systems through error correction. Founded in 2026, Oratomic has now raised a total of $310M in total equity funding and is backed by General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, and Spark Capital.
Investors in the round: 7i Capital, ARCH Venture Partners, Baiju Bhatt, Bain Capital Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, David Aaronson, Formation 8, General Catalyst, Global Frontier Investments, Index Ventures, Infleqtion, Khosla Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Nebular, Scott Aaronson, Spark Capital
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Enterprise Software, Machine Learning, Optical Communication, Quantum Computing
Founders:
Founding year: 2026
Total equity funding raised: $310.0M

11. Walden Robotics $300.0M
Description: Cambridge-based Walden Robotics develops wheeled, dual-arm robots and physical AI systems designed to automate material handling and other logistics and industrial tasks. Founded by Adrien Gaidon, Ben Burchfiel, Dave Johnson, Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Rareş Ambruş, and Russ Tedrake in 2026, Walden Robotics has now raised a total of $300M in total equity funding and is backed by Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, The Boeing Company, Toyota Ventures, and Calibrate Ventures.
Investors in the round: AE Ventures, Calibrate Ventures, Colle Capital Partners, CoreWeave Ventures, Deviation Capital, KAS Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, NextView Ventures, NVIDIA, One Madison Group, Prologis Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Shine Capital, Squarepoint Capital, The Boeing Company, Toyota, Toyota Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Logistics, Robotics
Founders: Adrien Gaidon, Ben Burchfiel, Dave Johnson, Kerri Fetzer-Borelli, Rareş Ambruş, Russ Tedrake
Founding year: 2026
Total equity funding raised: $300.0M

10. Antares $370.0M
Description: Los Angeles-based Antares develops factory-produced nuclear fission microreactors designed to provide compact, reliable power for defense, remote, industrial, and other strategic applications. Founded by Jordan Bramble and Julia DeWahl in 2023, Antares has now raised a total of $471M in total equity funding and is backed by Paradigm, BoxGroup, Caffeinated Capital, Industrious Ventures, and Banter Capital.
Investors in the round: Caffeinated Capital, Industrious Ventures, Paradigm, Point72 Ventures, Shine Capital
Industry: Energy, Industrial, Machinery Manufacturing, Manufacturing
Founders: Jordan Bramble, Julia DeWahl
Founding year: 2023
Total equity funding raised: $471.0M

9. Meshy AI $400.0M
Description: Sunnyvale-based Meshy AI provides an AI-powered 3D creation platform that turns text, images, sketches, and conversational prompts into textured, rigged, and export-ready 3D models. Founded by Ethan Hu in 2021, Meshy AI has now raised a total of $450M in total equity funding and is backed by Matrix Partners China, HSG, Source Code Capital, Granite Asia, and BAI capital.
Investors in the round: BAI capital, Granite Asia, HSG, IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China, Monolith Capital, Source Code Capital
Industry: 3D Printing, 3D Technology, Art, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gaming, Generative AI, Machine Learning
Founders: Ethan Hu
Founding year: 2021
Total equity funding raised: $450.0M

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9. Chai Discovery $400.0M
Description: San Francisco-based Chai Discovery develops multimodal foundation models for molecular structure prediction and design to accelerate drug discovery and biological engineering. Founded by Jack Dent, Jacques Boitreaud, Joshua Meier, and Matthew McPartlon in 2024, Chai Discovery has now raised a total of $630M in total equity funding and is backed by OpenAI, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Investors in the round: Avenir, Avra Capital, Baillie Gifford, Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, BDT & MSD Partners, Dimension Capital, General Catalyst, Glade Brook Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lachy Groom, Menlo Ventures, Oak HC/FT, OpenAI, Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Yosemite
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Foundational AI, Health Care, Life Science
Founders: Jack Dent, Jacques Boitreaud, Joshua Meier, Matthew McPartlon
Founding year: 2024
Total equity funding raised: $630.0M

8. K2 Space $500.0M
Description: Torrance-based K2 Space develops high-power, large satellite platforms designed to deliver greater payload mass, power, propulsion, and resilience across low, medium, and geostationary Earth orbits. Founded by Karan Kunjur and Neel Kunjur in 2022, K2 Space has now raised a total of $925.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, and T. Rowe Price.
Investors in the round: Altimeter Capital, ARK Investment Management, CapitalG, ICONIQ Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sands Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, T. Rowe Price
Industry: Aerospace, Machinery Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Space Travel
Founders: Karan Kunjur, Neel Kunjur
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $925.5M

7. Antora Energy $550.0M
Description: San Jose-based Antora Energy develops thermal energy storage systems that convert renewable electricity into high-temperature heat and deliver industrial heat and power on demand. Founded by Andrew Ponec, David Bierman, and Justin Briggs in 2018, Antora Energy has now raised a total of $750M in total equity funding and is backed by Temasek, BlackRock, Eclipse, Trust Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures.
Investors in the round: Activate Capital Partners, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Decarbonization Partners, Eclipse, G2 Venture Partners, Impact Science Ventures, John Doerr, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Ribbit Capital, Salesforce Ventures, StepStone Group, The Westly Group, Trust Ventures
Industry: Energy, Energy Storage, Renewable Energy
Founders: Andrew Ponec, David Bierman, Justin Briggs
Founding year: 2018
Total equity funding raised: $750.0M

6. Wonder $650.0M
Description: New York-based Wonder operates a mealtime platform combining delivery, pickup, dine-in, meal kits, and chef-driven restaurants, including multi-restaurant ordering through a single experience. Founded by Juan Cappello and Marc Lore in 2018, Wonder has now raised a total of $3.1B in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, General Catalyst, New Enterprise Associates, Forerunner, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Investors in the round: Accel, AllianceBernstein, ARK Investment Management, Google Ventures, Kayne Anderson Rudnick (KAR), New Enterprise Associates
Industry: E-Commerce, Food and Beverage, Food Delivery, Restaurants
Founders: Juan Cappello, Marc Lore
Founding year: 2018
Total equity funding raised: $3.1B

5. Together AI $800.0M
Description: San Francisco-based Together AI provides a full-stack AI cloud for inference, GPU compute, fine-tuning, model shaping, and pre-training of open-source and generative AI models. Founded by Ce Zhang, Chris Re, Percy Liang, Tri Dao, and Vipul Ved Prakash in 2022, Together AI has now raised a total of $1.3B in total equity funding and is backed by Vista Equity Partners, NVIDIA, General Catalyst, Alumni Ventures, and Factory.
Investors in the round: Aramco Ventures, DTCP, Emergence Capital, General Catalyst, Geodesic Capital, Lux Capital, March Capital, NVIDIA, Pegatron, PSP Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Schneider Electric, S Ventures, Vista Equity Partners
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Generative AI, IT Infrastructure, Machine Learning, Open Source
Founders: Ce Zhang, Chris Re, Percy Liang, Tri Dao, Vipul Ved Prakash
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $1.3B

4. Commonwealth Fusion Systems $1.0B
Description: Cambridge-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems develops commercial fusion energy systems using high-temperature superconducting magnets, including the SPARC demonstration tokamak and planned ARC grid-scale power plant. Founded by Dan Brunner, Martin Greenwald, and Robert Mumgaard in 2017, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has now raised a total of $3.9B in total equity funding and is backed by Temasek, Khosla Ventures, Coatue, Quiet Capital, and HOF Capital.
Investors in the round: Not disclosed
Industry: Clean Energy, Electrical Distribution, Energy, Environmental Engineering, Nuclear, Renewable Energy
Founders: Dan Brunner, Martin Greenwald, Robert Mumgaard
Founding year: 2017
Total equity funding raised: $3.9B

4. SambaNova $1.0B
Description: Palo Alto-based SambaNova provides an integrated AI platform combining its RDU processors, systems, and software to deliver high-speed, energy-efficient inference and enterprise agentic AI deployments. Founded by Christopher Re, Kunle Olukotun, and Rodrigo Liang in 2017, SambaNova has now raised a total of $2.5B in total equity funding and is backed by Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic, Temasek, BlackRock, and Battery Ventures.
Investors in the round: A&E Investments, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, BlackRock, Cambium Capital Partners, Capital Group, General Atlantic, Intel Capital, Kabila Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, QFO Capital, Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price, Vista Equity Partners, Volantis Capital Management
Industry: AI Infrastructure, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Semiconductor, Software
Founders: Christopher Re, Kunle Olukotun, Rodrigo Liang
Founding year: 2017
Total equity funding raised: $2.5B

3. Fireworks AI $1.5B
Description: Redwood City-based Fireworks AI provides an AI infrastructure platform for building, fine-tuning, and deploying generative AI models with high-performance inference and production-scale model serving. Founded by Chenyu Zhao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov, Dmytro Ivchenko, James Reed, Lin Qiao, and Pawel Garbacki in 2022, Fireworks AI has now raised a total of $1.8B in total equity funding and is backed by Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, NVIDIA, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Investors in the round: Atreides Management, Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, Evantic Capital, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lone Pine Capital, Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Operator Collective, Original Capital, Prysm Capital, QuantumLight, TCV, The Twenty Minute VC, Time Ventures
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Management, Infrastructure, SaaS, Software
Founders: Chenyu Zhao, Dmytro Dzhulgakov, Dmytro Ivchenko, James Reed, Lin Qiao, Pawel Garbacki
Founding year: 2022
Total equity funding raised: $1.8B

2. Atoms $1.7B
Description: Los Angeles-based Atoms develops industrial robotics and physical AI systems designed to automate labor-intensive operations across industries including food, mining, transportation, and logistics. Founded by Sky Dayton and Travis Kalanick in 2016, Atoms has now raised a total of $3B in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Craft Ventures, A*, Abstract, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Investors in the round: A*, Abstract, Alpha Square Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, Chemistry, Fifth Wall, K5 Global, SV Angel, Uber
Industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Commercial Real Estate, Industrial, Information Technology, Infrastructure, Mining Technology, Real Estate, Robotics
Founders: Sky Dayton, Travis Kalanick
Founding year: 2016
Total equity funding raised: $3.0B

1. Blue Origin $10.0B
Description: Kent-based Blue Origin develops reusable launch vehicles, rocket engines, lunar systems, and space technologies designed to lower the cost of access to space and enable expanded human activity beyond Earth. Founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, Blue Origin has now raised a total of $10B in total equity funding and is backed by Coatue, E1 Ventures, NASA, United States Space Force, and Jeff Bezos.
Investors in the round: Coatue, Jeff Bezos
Industry: Aerospace, Manufacturing, National Security, Renewable Energy
Founders: Jeff Bezos
Founding year: 2000
Total equity funding raised: $10.0B

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Flagler Health – $50M

HEALTHTECH AI

Flagler Health, an AI-native platform that coordinates clinical and administrative workflows for musculoskeletal healthcare providers, has raised $50M in Series B funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from SignalFire, Alumni Ventures, Streamlined Ventures, 186 Ventures, PROOF, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Offscript. Flagler Health was founded by Albert Katz, Leon Anijar, and Will Hu in 2022. The company has now raised a total of $63M in reported equity funding.

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Institutional buy-side equity research has long been one of the most information-intensive jobs in finance: analysts tracking 20 to 40 companies in their core coverage while monitoring hundreds more must constantly synthesize earnings calls, SEC filings, conference transcripts, news flow, and internal thesis documents–largely by hand. The volume of data demanding analyst attention has grown sharply, while research cycles have compressed and pressure on returns has intensified, creating a widening gap between what analysts are expected to know and the hours they have to know it. General-purpose AI tools have filled some of that gap, but institutional funds operate with proprietary data, house investment styles, and output formats that off-the-shelf chatbots cannot accommodate. Pinegap addresses this by building custom AI agents tuned directly to each fund’s workflow–learning how a specific fund thinks, then delivering earnings previews, company primers, thesis updates, and news summaries proactively, before the analyst asks. Since launching commercially in early 2025, the platform has deployed more than 1,000 agents across 100+ institutional clients, generating upward of 50,000 research reports per month for hedge funds, long-only mutual funds, and RIAs.

AlleyWatch sat down with Pinegap Cofounder & CBO Ankit Varmani to learn more about the business, its future plans, recent $8M Series A round that brings total funding to $10.5M, and much, much more…

Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Pinegap raised an $8M Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Inventus, Silicon Valley Quad, and DeVC.

Tell us about the product or service that Pinegap offers.

Pinegap is an AI-powered equity research platform that automates the daily workflows of institutional buy-side analysts. The platform was created for buy-side analysts that have to pull insights from market and internal data on many companies in a timely fashion. We work directly with these companies to build end-to-end automation and AI agents tuned to each fund’s investment style, private data, and output formats.

What inspired the start of Pinegap?

The idea for Pinegap originated from when my cofounder Deepak Sharma an IIT alum (Indian Institute of Technology a highly regarded university in India) reached out to me in late 2023 to learn more about equity research, To help him, I taught Deepak the way any good analyst would with real assignments – the kind that keep junior analysts at their desks until midnight. Working through the tasks I gave him, Deepak turned to the LLMs of the time, which were just beginning to show real capability. We both quickly realized that this wasn’t a shortcut. It was an insight: the most mundane, repetitive parts of equity research, the very tasks that consume an analyst’s day, could be automated with AI.

I brought my analyst experience (which includes years at JP Morgan) to the table while Deepak brought the engineering instinct to automate it. Together we developed Pinegap and by early 2025, we launched it commercially.  As of now, we have deployed more than 1,000 agents across 100+ institutional clients, generating upwards of 50,000 research reports per month.

How is Pinegap different?

Pinegap is different because it is neither a data vendor nor a chatbot. Instead it is a platform that learns how a specific fund thinks, everything from its investment style, private data, and output formats This is important because for institutional research analysts, general-purpose AI tools fall short because they pull too much info – which leads to inaccurate answers.

Pinegap stands out in the market because it is purpose-built for a single niche, we have growing base of proprietary data, and we offer flexibility to both “buy” and “build” customers.

What market does Pinegap target and how big is it?

As mentioned, we target buy-side analysts (hedge funds, long-only funds, and RIAs), a market that represents more than a billion dollars in opportunity before expanding into adjacent markets.

What’s your business model?

We generate recurring revenue through seat-based subscriptions. As customers expand usage across teams and workflows, those relationships naturally grow into larger, multi-year enterprise contracts.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?

We do believe that we have some counter-cyclical characteristics. During periods of economic uncertainty, investment firms tend to scrutinize spending more closely and prioritize products that deliver measurable ROI. We believe that dynamic positions us well and could serve as a tailwind for our business.

What was the funding process like?

We were delighted to meet Alok Goyal from Stellaris Venture Partners and immediately saw him as a great fit for our cap table. Our existing investor, Inventus Capital, also doubled down in the round. We were equally excited to welcome several of our customers as investors, reflecting their confidence not only in our product but also in our long-term vision as a company.

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

Finding the right partner was of paramount importance to us. After receiving seed funding from funds backed by Silicon Valley legends such as Kanwal Rekhi and BV Jagadeesh, we were looking for a partner who could help us expand our horizons even further.

We were excited to meet Alok early in our fundraising process. Having spent nearly a decade leading one of the world’s largest software companies, he brings tremendous value to our team as an investor, advisor, and board member.

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

I think what our investors liked about our company was how we identified analyst’s pain points and how effective we’ve been so far in solving them.  Though it’s still early days for Pinegap, we have already received strong positive customer feedback – even from funds with their own in-house AI capabilities – because of how our AI is so closely tuned to how they actually work.  I think what also appealed to them was our experience and execution capability. I lived in this world for fifteen years across the sell side and buy side and Deepak brings the technical velocity to build that institutional knowledge into an intelligent platform.

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

We are looking to rapidly expand our GTM efforts and expand customer success teams.

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

 Be as frugal as possible until you achieve product-market fit. Scaling something that isn’t working rarely leads to good outcomes.

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

I envision Pinegap using this funding to build out our go-to-market and sales capabilities, expand our engineering team, and set up an in-house team of former equity research analysts.  I also see the product continuing to evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of equity analysts, who are constantly looking to incorporate new sources of information into their research process.

What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
We’re a tennis family, so the US Open is always a highlight of our summer. Otherwise, I’m happiest staying local, taking long walks along the Hudson and enjoying dinner outside with family or friends.

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Antioch – $31.4M

AI

Antioch, a simulation platform that enables robotics teams to build, test, and deploy autonomous systems entirely in software, has raised $31.4M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that the total offering is for $32M and there were eight investors in this close. Founded by Harry Mellsop, Alex Langshur, Colton Swingle, and Collin Schlager in 2025, Antioch has now raised a total of $44M in reported equity funding.

Ambrook – $30M

FINTECH

Ambrook, an agricultural fintech platform that provides accounting and financial management tools for farmers, ranchers, and rural businesses, has raised $30M in Series B funding from investors that include Lachy Groom, Thomson Reuters Ventures, Thrive Capital, Field Ventures, and Cameron Ventures. Founded by Mackenzie Burnett, Dan Schlosser, and Jeff Anders in 2021, Ambrook has now raised a total of $59M in reported equity funding.

Baselayer – $20M

FINTECH

Baselayer, an AI platform that automates business risk assessment and fraud prevention for financial institutions and government agencies, has raised $20M in Series A funding from investors that include Koro Capital and M13. Founded by Jonathan Awad, Timothy Hyde, and William Slessman in 2023, Baselayer has now raised a total of $47M in reported equity funding.

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Advocate Technologies – $18M

INSURTECH

Advocate Technologies, a commercial insurance benchmarking platform that standardizes pricing and coverage data for brokers, lenders, and risk managers, has raised $18M in Seed funding from investors that include Vestigo Ventures, Brewer Lane Ventures, and MetaProp. Advocate Technologies was founded by Ashwin Agarwal and Dimitris Psaropoulos in 2020.

Dili – $15M

AI

Dili, an AI-native compliance platform that automates prevailing wage monitoring and certified payroll review for infrastructure, construction, and energy projects, has raised $15M in Series A funding from investors that include Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Allianz, Brick and Mortar Ventures, and Rebel Fund. Founded by Anand Chaturvedi, Brian Fernandez, and Stephanie Song in 2023, Dili has now raised a total of $21.7M in reported equity funding.

Malachyte – $10M

AI ENTERPRISE

Malachyte, a behavior intelligence platform that delivers real-time personalization for e-commerce brands, has raised $10M in Seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient Ventures with participation from Harpoon Ventures. Malachyte was founded by Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha in 2024.

AlleyWatch broke the news on this round exclusively.

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Pinegap – $8M

AI

Pinegap, an AI-powered equity research platform that automates buy-side analyst workflows for hedge funds and mutual funds, has raised $8M in Series A funding led by Stellaris Venture Partners, with participation from Inventus, Silicon Valley Quad, and DeVC. Founded by Ankit Varmani and Deepak Sharma in 2024, Pinegap has now raised a total of $10.5M in reported equity funding.

Othello – $6.85M

AI

Othello, an AI sales coaching platform that provides real-time in-call guidance and automation for sales teams, has raised $6.85M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that there were thirty-five investors in this round. Othello was founded by Jared Zelman in 2025.

Furnace Systems Corp – $3.55M

ENTERPRISE

Furnace Systems Corp, a stealth startup that has not yet disclosed its product founded by three Brown University alumni, has raised $3.55M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that there were nine investors in this round. Furnace Systems Corp was founded by Matthew Siff, Andrew Siff, and Gabriel Rizk in 2025.

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Claryx – $3.5M

HEALTHTECH

Claryx, a genomic intelligence platform that detects and traces infection transmission outbreaks in hospitals, has raised $3.5M in Pre-Seed funding led by Outlander VC, with participation from Company Ventures, Boost VC, Neon, Mana Ventures, 640 Oxford, and Precursor. Claryx was founded by Kurt Hackenberger and Dirk Hackenberger in 2025.

Unplugs Hearing – $3.4M

HEALTHTECH

Unplugs Hearing, a consumer hardware company that makes mechanical earplugs with a transparency mode that allows wearers to toggle between hearing protection and ambient sound, has raised $3.4M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that the total offering is for $6.6M and there were forty-three investors in this close. Unplugs Hearing was founded by Tom Worcester in 2023.

Fair Warning – $2.5M

ENTERPRISE

Fair Warning, a members-only mobile auction platform that sells curated fine art one lot at a time, has raised $2.5M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that the total offering is for $2.5M and there were two investors in this close. Founded by Loic Gouzer in 2020, Fair Warning has now raised a total of $5.6M in reported equity funding.

Actualyze AI – $7.0M

Pasadena-based Actualyze AI provides an enterprise AI control plane that sits between applications and model inference to govern access, enforce security policies, manage budgets, monitor usage, and optimize model routing. Founded by Rafi Khardalian and Sean Lynch in 2025, Actualyze AI has now raised a total of $7M in total equity funding and is backed by AME Cloud Ventures, Canaan Partners, Morado Ventures, and Storm Ventures.

Aurelius Systems – $40.0M

San Francisco-based Aurelius Systems develops autonomous directed-energy counter-drone systems that combine high-power lasers, optical sensing, artificial intelligence, and automated targeting to detect and neutralize unmanned aerial threats. Founded by John Marmaduke and Michael LaFramboise in 2024, Aurelius Systems has now raised a total of $50M in total equity funding and is backed by Alumni Ventures, Bravo Victor Venture Capital, Decisive Point, Detroit Venture Partners, Draper Associates, General Catalyst, Hanwha Asset Management, KAS Venture Partners, and Outlander VC.

Avatar Robotics – $6.5M

San Francisco-based Avatar Robotics operates human-supervised robot fleets for industrial work, using remote operators to control robots in real-world environments while generating data that can improve autonomous performance. Founded by Colin Webb in 2025, Avatar Robotics has now raised a total of $6.5M in total equity funding and is backed by AlleyCorp, Headline, Henry Ford III, Jack Huffard, Paul Vogel, REFASHIOND Ventures, and Samuel Udotong.

Base Power – $1.0B

Austin-based Base Power provides residential battery storage and electricity services, installing and operating home batteries that deliver backup power while also supplying flexible capacity to the electric grid. Founded by Justin Lopas and Zachary Dell in 2023, Base Power has now raised a total of $2.27B in total equity funding and is backed by Addition, Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, CapitalG, Coatue, D1 Capital Partners, Energy Impact Partners, JP Morgan Chase, Layer Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Thrive Capital, Trust Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners.

Blaze.tech – $5.0M

Los Angeles-based Blaze.tech provides an AI-powered no-code platform for healthcare organizations to build secure, HIPAA-compliant applications, workflows, portals, and internal tools with EHR and API integrations. Founded by Nanxi Liu and Tina Denuit-Wojcik in 2021, Blaze.tech has now raised a total of $9.25M in total equity funding and is backed by Friale.

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Buzz Solutions – $20.0M

Palo Alto-based Buzz Solutions provides AI-powered infrastructure inspection software that analyzes visual data from drones, helicopters, and field inspections to detect faults and anomalies across electric utility assets. Founded by Dennis Chang, Kaitlyn Albertoli, and Vikhyat Chaudhry in 2017, Buzz Solutions has now raised a total of $29.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Blackhorn Ventures, GoPoint Ventures, HearstLab, and S3 Ventures.

Convex – $57.0M

San Francisco-based Convex provides a full cloud backend for application developers that combines a reactive database, serverless functions, real-time data synchronization, file storage, scheduling, and authentication. Founded by James Cowling, Jamie Turner, and Sujay Jayakar in 2021, Convex has now raised a total of $110.6M in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Etna Labs, Insight Partners, Justin Kan, and Spark Capital.

Dash Bio – $30.0M

Boston-based Dash Bio provides automated bioanalysis services for drug development, combining laboratory automation and software to accelerate sample processing, assay execution, and analytical workflows. Founded by Ander Tallett, Dave Johnson, and Ely Porter in 2024, Dash Bio has now raised a total of $47.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Freestyle Capital, Oak HC/FT, and Swift Ventures.

Delightree – $25.0M

San Francisco-based Delightree provides an AI-powered franchise operations platform that unifies launches, training, SOPs, tasks, audits, communications, and corrective actions across multi-location brands. Founded by Madhulika Mukherjee and Tushar Mishra in 2020, Delightree has now raised a total of $53.6M in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, Emergent Ventures, Innovius Capital, and Timber Grove Ventures.

Faye – $50.0M

Richmond-based Faye provides digital travel insurance and assistance through a mobile-first platform that combines coverage, real-time support, claims management, and travel services. Founded by Daniel Green, Elad Schaffer, and Motti Bebchuk in 2019, Faye has now raised a total of $99.64M in total equity funding and is backed by BRM Capital, F2 Venture Capital, Lumir Ventures, Madrona, Portage Ventures, and Viola Ventures.

Hadrian – $1.4B

Torrance-based Hadrian builds automated factories for aerospace and defense manufacturing, combining software, robotics, automation, and skilled labor to produce precision components at scale. Founded by Chris Power in 2020, Hadrian has now raised a total of $1.8B in total equity funding and is backed by 137 Ventures, 1789 Capital, Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Apollo, Baillie Gifford, CapitalG, Construct Capital, Founders Fund, JP Morgan Chase, Lux Capital, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, T. Rowe Price, Valor Equity Partners, Washington Harbour Partners, and WCM Investment Management.

HappyRobot – $150.0M

San Francisco-based HappyRobot provides AI workers that automate enterprise communication and operational workflows, including voice and digital interactions across logistics and other complex industries. Founded by Javier Palafox, Luis Paarup, and Pablo Palafox in 2022, HappyRobot has now raised a total of $210.6M in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Bankinter, Base10 Partners, Endeavor Catalyst, Eurazeo, K Fund, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Orange, Prysm Capital, T.Capital, WaVe-X, and Y Combinator.

Lumilens – $700.0M

San Jose-based Lumilens develops photonic interconnects for AI infrastructure, including high-density pluggable, near-packaged, and co-packaged optical technologies designed to scale GPU clusters and compute systems. Founded by Ankur Singla, David Friedman, Ritesh Kapahi, and Samuel Liu in 2024, Lumilens has now raised a total of $739.2M in total equity funding and is backed by Addition, Alkeon Capital, Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, EDBI, HarbourVest Partners, JP Morgan, Mayfield Fund, Meritech Capital Partners, MVP Ventures, Peak XV Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, Redpoint, Seifdune, Seligman Ventures, and Spark Capital.

Mariana Minerals – $310.5M

Houston-based Mariana Minerals develops technology-enabled critical mineral projects designed to expand supplies of materials needed for energy, artificial intelligence, defense, and advanced manufacturing. Founded by Baker Tilney, Juan Lozano, and Turner Caldwell in 2022, Mariana Minerals has now raised a total of $395.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Earthshot Ventures, General Innovation Capital Partners, Greenoaks, Greycroft, IQT, Khosla Ventures, Mitsubishi Hc Capital America, Pax Ventures, StepStone Group, The Halo Fund, and Washington Harbour Partners.

Obsidian Security – $85.0M

Newport Beach-based Obsidian Security provides SaaS and AI security software that helps enterprises discover applications and integrations, manage posture and permissions, detect threats, protect data, and govern AI agents. Founded by Ben Johnson, Glenn Chisholm, and Matt Wolff in 2017, Obsidian Security has now raised a total of $204.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Crescent Cove Advisors, Google Ventures, Greylock, IVP, Menlo Ventures, Norwest, and Wing Venture Capital.

Ordway – $20.0M

Washington-based Ordway provides billing and revenue automation software for businesses with complex pricing, subscriptions, invoicing, payments, revenue recognition, and customer account management needs. Founded by Sameer Gulati in 2018, Ordway has now raised a total of $32.5M in total equity funding and is backed by Harbert Growth Partners.

Oxide Computer Company – $445.0M

Emeryville-based Oxide Computer Company builds integrated cloud computers that combine purpose-built hardware and open-source software to deliver public-cloud-style infrastructure in on-premises environments. Founded by Bryan Cantrill, Jessie Frazelle, and Steve Tuck in 2019, Oxide Computer Company has now raised a total of $839M in total equity funding.

PineGap – $8.0M

New York-based PineGap provides an AI-powered equity research platform that helps institutional investors and Wall Street professionals analyze companies, financial information, and investment research. Founded by Ankit Varmani and Deepak Sharma in 2023, PineGap has now raised a total of $10.5M in total equity funding and is backed by DeVC, Inventus Capital Partners, Stellaris Venture Partners, and SVQUAD.

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RWX – $12.0M

Columbus-based RWX develops software tools for engineering teams to improve build and test performance, continuous integration reliability, and developer productivity. Founded by Dan Manges in 2022, RWX has now raised a total of $19M in total equity funding and is backed by Bryan Johnson, DV, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Kohsuke Kawaguchi, Quiet Capital, R1 Capital, and The O.H.I.O. Fund.

Sapiom – $35.0M

San Francisco-based Sapiom provides infrastructure for deploying, governing, and orchestrating AI agents across models, tools, compute resources, credentials, and external services. Founded by Ilan Zerbib in 2025, Sapiom has now raised a total of $50.75M in total equity funding and is backed by Accel, Anthropic, Array Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, Formus Capital, Gradient, Menlo Ventures, Okta Ventures, Operator Collective, and VanEck.

unspun – $10.2M

Emeryville-based unspun develops automated apparel manufacturing technology using AI-powered 3D weaving to produce garments directly from yarn and enable more localized, on-demand production. Founded by Elizabeth Esponnette, Kevin Martin, and Walden Lam in 2015, unspun has now raised a total of $66.24M in total equity funding.

Valar Atomics – $1.0B

El Segundo-based Valar Atomics develops and plans to operate advanced nuclear energy systems designed to provide industrial-scale power and heat for data centers, manufacturing, and other energy-intensive applications. Founded by Isaiah Taylor in 2023, Valar Atomics has now raised a total of $1.46B in total equity funding and is backed by Apandion, Atreides Management, Conviction, Dream Ventures, HOF Capital, Point72 Ventures, Riot Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Snowpoint Ventures, and Valor Equity Partners.

Volta – $300.0M

Palo Alto-based Volta provides vertically integrated AI infrastructure designed to deliver compute capacity and supporting systems for large-scale artificial intelligence workloads. Founded in 2026, Volta has now raised a total of $300M in total equity funding and is backed by Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Azora, Matter Venture Partners, Michael Dell, and NVIDIA.

Whatnot – $545.0M

Los Angeles-based Whatnot operates a live shopping marketplace that connects buyers and sellers through interactive livestreams, auctions, product discovery, and online storefronts. Founded by Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head in 2019, Whatnot has now raised a total of $1.52B in total equity funding and is backed by Alkeon Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Avra Capital, Bond, CapitalG, DST Global, Durable Capital Partners, Greycroft, ICONIQ Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, S32, Standard Capital, Wellington Management, and Y Combinator.

WindBorne Systems – $37.0M

Redwood Shores-based WindBorne Systems operates a global atmospheric sensing network using long-duration smart weather balloons to collect data for weather forecasting, climate intelligence, and environmental monitoring. Founded by Andrey Sushko, John Dean, Kai Marshland, and Paige Brown in 2019, WindBorne Systems has now raised a total of $63M in total equity funding and is backed by Galvanize Climate Solutions, Khosla Ventures, Lux Capital, and Translink Capital.

AlleyWatch sat down with Malachyte Cofounder and CEO Siddharth Motwani 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 $10M in seed funding. The round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient Ventures, with participation from Harpoon Ventures.

Tell us about the product or service that Malachyte offers.
Malachyte offers Behavior Intelligence Infrastructure for e-commerce.
We build a live profile of every shopper — including the roughly 90% who never log in — from what they do in the moment: what they search for, click on, compare, and skip past. That profile updates continuously and powers search, recommendations, and product pages, so the experience adapts while someone is still on the site rather than after they come back. For brands, it shows up as revenue per visitor. Their merchandising team also gets no-code control over the live model, so they can promote inventory or change what it optimizes for and see the effect in minutes instead of after tonight’s batch job. It installs on Shopify in about 30 days with no replatforming.

What inspired the start of Malachyte?
Ian Anderson (cofunder) and I spent years at Spotify focused on one problem: proactively predicting what a user actually wants to listen to right now based on their intent and likely next action, rather than purely on their listening history. With 800 million users and a billion-song catalog, solving that meant building a different kind of recommendation technology built on two-headed user vectors.
The two-headed model indicates two things about a listener at once:

1. Long‑term taste (slow head): what they generally gravitate to over weeks and months, tuned toward keeping them subscribed and discovering new music for years (the metric that matters for lifetime value).
2. In‑the-moment intent (fast head): what they’re actually doing right now through their behavior on the app, which can shift by the minute.

The hard part was reading both, simultaneously, and being able to adapt fast enough to matter.
Solving this led to an interesting insight.  The same way the two-headed vector  reads intent for known listeners, it also accurately predicts the intent for a brand new listener with no history. In e-commerce, this is known as the “cold start” problem.
Armed with this new approach to cold start, Ian and I started talking about our own personal, digital experiences and where they felt frustrating or broken. Retail stood out immediately. It’s the one large category where most of your traffic is a stranger and nobody had built anything to handle cold start in real time. Instead, what retailers had was batch technology: a catalog and a set of rules refreshed overnight, not a system reacting to what’s happening on the site right now. The idea for Malachyte was born, which was to apply a two-headed user vector in a novel way.

How is Malachyte different?
While we weren’t trying to solve for “cold start” at Spotify, it turns out that our novel application of user vector technology not only reads long-term taste, but also predicts in-the-moment intent. This is exactly what is needed for e-commerce use cases, preference and intent prediction based on real-time behavior. We call it behavior intelligence and it beats demographic and other forms of profiling for anonymous users every single time.
The challenge is that commerce signals are not captured; most e-commerce platforms are built to track identity logins, cookies, and purchase history, not real-time behavior. The stakes are also higher for e-commerce than for music. In this industry, a wrong recommendation costs a sale, not just a skipped track. Inventory and pricing shift daily, and shopping has a purchase goal, so optimizing for a different level of engagement is essential. In e-commerce, visits that are weeks or months apart instead of back-to-back days or hours apart require a robust system that learns.
Unlike most AI solutions, we are not using a large language model. We’re not predicting the next word in a sentence. We’re using vector AI to predict the next product a shopper wants, from real-time behavior. We leverage our own proprietary two-headed transformer; one head is a slower base model that learns a shopper’s general taste over time. The other fine-tunes continuously on what they’re doing in this exact session. Most personalization systems have a version of the first, but nothing like the second, which is why they require a login to know who you are, but lack insight into what you’re doing right now. This is the hard part: training a model that learns in real time and serving it to every shopper fast enough that nobody notices.
Point-solution vendors (e.g. Bloomreach, Algolia) are solving real, adjacent problems like search and merchandising. We don’t think we’re in the same category as them, and a feature-by-feature comparison undersells what we’re actually building. Most require user login or cookies to personalize results and, frankly, consumers are just tired of the barrage of pop-ups and spending half their shopping experience x-ing out of them or wondering what personal info is being tracked without their knowledge.
We built Malachyte so any brand can get access to cutting-edge technology that is trained on their user traffic without having to invest tens of millions of dollars in computing and building deep expertise in behavior intelligence.

What market does Malachyte target and how big is it?
We sell to consumer e-commerce brands and retailers, from mid-market DTC through large established retail. The immediate market is what brands already spend on search, recommendations, and personalization software, which is a multibillion-dollar category — but that understates it, because those are line items on a website budget. What we’ve built sits underneath merchandising and, over time, the marketing spend as well, which is a far larger pool. The shift toward AI agents handling routine buying makes real-time behavioral understanding an infrastructure rather than a feature; McKinsey has put agent-orchestrated retail spend at $3–5 trillion by 2030.
Beyond e-commerce, we see other use cases in travel, elearning, streaming, and others, where this behavior intelligence infrastructure will be crucial in the future.

What’s your business model?
Malachyte has a subscription software model making user vector technology available for e-commerce. To accelerate time-to-value, we offer native integration on Shopify with new integration partners coming soon, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud and others. Most of our customers are live within a matter of days. Brands can also use our API for custom integrations.
Because Malachyte replaces several disparate point solutions — search, recommendations, and new use cases we’re building now — the effective cost tends to be lower than the stack it displaces.

How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
Candidly, our category tends to do better in one. When acquisition gets expensive, brands stop trying to buy more traffic and start trying to get more out of the traffic they already have, which is exactly what we do. When consumer spending starts to drop, it becomes even more essential that brands leverage technology to ensure a strong revenue per visitor. We believe Malachyte’s tech will soften the blow of a downturn and help some brands survive the storm.

What was the funding process like?
Faster and more focused than I expected, mostly because the investors who moved had already formed a view on this shift. Bessemer had published on agentic commerce being the next step and function change in consumer behavior, and Gradient is Google’s AI fund, so we weren’t spending meetings explaining why real-time behavioral infrastructure matters. The conversations went straight to the two questions that actually mattered: whether this specific team could build it, and whether the early production results were real. That kept the process tight rather than sprawling across dozens of firms. We also had so much internal momentum from existing investors that generated buzz and great initial metrics from pilots with our first few customers.

What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Explaining a category that doesn’t have a name yet. The instinct is to describe us as a personalization or recommendations company, because those are the words people already have — but that drops us into a bucket of point solutions and undersells what we’ve built. The technology we’re commercializing runs in production at only a handful of companies in the world presently; Spotify and TikTok are two of them. Getting someone from “so it’s a recommendations tool” to “this is infrastructure” inside a single meeting took real work. What consistently moved people wasn’t the pitch, it was the results on first-time, anonymous visitors — because everyone in the room knew that’s the part nobody else solves.

What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Three factors.
First, the team had built this exact system before: Ian led the creation of the user vector to unlock Discover Weekly as a prominent personalization experience, and together we pioneered the technology into Spotify’s user representation platform (the advanced user vector), so this wasn’t a research bet. Along with our co-founder Shivaditya Sinha (COO), who brought the operational knowledge we needed to execute, we made an undeniable, experienced team.
Second, the approach is documented in published research rather than resting only on our own claims. We worked with Stanford University early on to ensure we could bring this technology to e-commerce effectively.
Third, and most important, we had production results before the raise — including a head-to-head against a customer’s existing stack where our largest gain came from brand new visitors the system had never seen before. That last one carried the most weight, because it was evidence that the hardest technical claim we make is actually true.

What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Believe it or not, brands aren’t using their most valuable dataset: what customers actually do inside their own shopping experience. Every hover, click, scroll, search refinement, and add-to-cart is a signal, and most systems either never act on it in the moment or aggregate it into a segment overnight. We read it continuously, so each action makes the user’s vector more confident about both preference and current intent. The second underused layer is context: time of day, device, and where someone arrived from. A phone visitor at 11pm from an email link is in a different state of mind than the same person on a laptop mid-morning, and most systems treat them identically. None of this requires identifying anyone. It’s how someone behaves, not who they are.

Believe it or not, brands aren’t using their most valuable dataset: what customers actually do inside their own shopping experience. Every hover, click, scroll, search refinement, and add-to-cart is a signal, and most systems either never act on it in the moment or aggregate it into a segment overnight. We read it continuously, so each action makes the user’s vector more confident about both preference and current intent. The second underused layer is context: time of day, device, and where someone arrived from. A phone visitor at 11pm from an email link is in a different state of mind than the same person on a laptop mid-morning, and most systems treat them identically. None of this requires identifying anyone. It’s how someone behaves, not who they are.

First, we will be incorporating signals that no brand is capable of personalizing yet. So much of the most valuable context comes from what the user was seeing and doing before they arrived, like the search or ad that brought them to the site. Personalizing that first impression based on where someone came from is next.

What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Sell before you raise. We spent 2024 testing the technology with more than twenty enterprises across travel, grocery, and retail before we settled on e-commerce, and that did two things: it told us where the problem was most acute, and it meant that, when we did raise, we were talking about customers instead of hypotheses. The other piece of advice is to be honest with yourself about which of your claims is genuinely the hard one, and go prove that one first — investors and customers both quietly discount everything else until the central claim is demonstrated. New York City helps here, too. The customers are physically close, and you can get in a room with them in a way you can’t from most places.

Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Longer term, the same real-time understanding of a shopper that decides what they see should also inform what a brand spends to reach them. Those run as separate systems today, on a much coarser signal, and they shouldn’t. Bringing merchandising and marketing onto one behavioral profile is where this goes next. It’s gold for brands and retailers.
While we focus on retail today, we’ll also expand across digital categories, including travel, finance, gaming, and more.

What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
It’s hard to pick just one! Weekdays it’s Madison Square Park when I need twenty minutes of not looking at a laptop, and Central Park when I need considerably more than twenty. Weekends are usually Greenpoint, which has quietly become my favorite corner of the city. Then there’s the escape tier: Jones Beach when I want the ocean without much effort, hiking around Storm King when I want to feel like I actually left New York, and I have never once said no to a weekend in the Hamptons.

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Malachyte – $10M

AI
EnterpriseMalachyte, a behavior intelligence platform that delivers real-time personalization for e-commerce brands, has raised $10M in Seed funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient Ventures with participation from Harpoon Ventures. Malachyte was founded by Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson, and Shivaditya Sinha in 2024.

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Furnace Systems Corp – $3.55M

EnterpriseFurnace Systems Corp, a stealth startup that has not yet disclosed its product founded by three Brown University alumni, has raised $3.55M in funding according to a recent SEC filing. The filing indicates that there were nine investors in this round. Furnace Systems Corp was founded by Matthew Siff, Andrew Siff, and Gabriel Rizk in 2025.

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