Artificial Intelligence

Drip Capital: Trade Finance Platform Raises $113 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Drip Capital, a leading digital platform for trade finance, announced it has secured $113 million in new funding. And this includes $23 million in equity from Japanese institutional investors, GMO Payment Gateway and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), and $90 million in debt financing, led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and East West Bank.

Sedric AI: $18.5 Million (Series A) Closed To Advance Compliance Platforms For Financial Institutions

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Sedric AI, a pioneering compliance-dedicated AI platform for financial institutions, announced it has closed a $18.5 million Series A funding round to further its efforts to transform compliance operations across the industry. This funding round - which was led by Foundation Capital with participation from Amex Ventures - brings the total amount raised by the company to date to $22 million. This funding will be used to grow Sedric's AI lab in Tel Aviv and expand its global go-to-market teams.

Agree: $3 Million (Pre-Seed) Raised To Transform How Contracts And Payments Come Together

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Agree, an all-in-one agreements platform that seamlessly integrates money movement, announced a $3 million pre-seed round. Better Tomorrow Ventures led the funding round, which included participation from 8-Bit Capital, Everywhere Ventures, Expedite Ventures, Firsthand Alliance, Hustle Fund, NEA, Singh Capital Partners, and Trust Fund. With this funding, the company aims to become an end-to-end agreements platform that allows consumers to securely send, sign, and automatically generate invoices and payments from any agreement.

Inventive AI: RFP Optimization Platform Raises $4 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Inventive AI, an AI-based tool for streamlining and optimizing RFP (Request for Proposal) and sales questionnaire workflows, announced the successful closure of its seed funding round, raising $4 million. Sierra Ventures led this funding round, which included Y Combinator, SOMA Capital, and General Catalyst. The funding will accelerate Inventive AI's goal of enhancing RFP processes through generative AI, empowering businesses to respond more effectively and efficiently to RFPs and questionnaires.

Angel Kids AI: Kid-Friendly Browser Company Raises $1.1 Million (Seed Extension)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Angel Kids AI, an AI-based browser designed to provide children with a safe and age-appropriate internet experience, announced that they have raised an additional $1.1 million of funding in an extended seed round. This funding round was from three investors Magnify Ventures, City Light, and Atland Ventures and brought Angel Kids AI's total amount raised to $5.85 million. This additional funding will be used to accelerate Angel Kids AI's hiring, product development, and marketing initiatives.

Vida: Interview With Founder & CEO Lyle Pratt About The Carrier-Grade AI Voice Agent Company

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 6, 2024

Vida is a company that builds AI phone agents for businesses. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Vida CEO and founder Lyle Pratt to learn more about the company.

Safe Superintelligence: $1 Billion Raised To Create Secure AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 5, 2024

Safe Superintelligence (SSI), a company founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in funding. This funding was provided by Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, SV Angel, and NFDG. NFDG is an investment partnership that is led by Nat Friedman and SSI CEO Daniel Gross. Sources with Reuters suggested that this funding was at a valuation of $5 billion.

You.com: AI-Based Productivity Engine Company Secures $50 Million (Series B)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 4, 2024

Today AI-based productivity engine You.com announced a $50 million Series B funding round led by Georgian. This funding round included participation from Salesforce Ventures, NVIDIA, SBVA (formerly Softbank Ventures Asia), DuckDuckGo, and Day One Ventures, bringing You.com’s total funding to $99 million.

Revefi: AI Data Engineer Company Closes $20 Million (Series A) And Launches Raden

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 4, 2024

Today Revefi announced that it has raised $20 million in a Series A funding. This funding round was led by Icon Ventures, with participation from Mayfield, GTM Capital and StepStone Group.

CeresAI: Series D Funding Raised To Help Insurers Reduce Farming Risks

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 4, 2024

Ceres Imaging - a data and analytics provider that helps growers, lenders, and insurers reduce their farming risk and improve yields - announced today its rebranding to CeresAI. This rebranding highlights the company’s foundation and leadership in computer vision and machine learning, which are essential in enabling all participants in the agricultural industry - particularly large agribusinesses and financial services customers - to access quality data to make faster and more accurate data-driven decisions.

Yellow.ai: Empowering Enterprises To Create Memorable Customer Conversations

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 3, 2024

Yellow.ai is an AI-first customer service automation company that empowers enterprises to create memorable customer conversations through a generative AI-powered customer service automation platform. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Yellow.ai co-founder and CEO Raghu Ravinutala to learn more about the company.

Bland AI: Conversational Platform Secures $16 Million (Series A)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 3, 2024

Bland AI - a platform automating phone calls for the enterprise using hyper-realistic AI agents - announced it emerged from stealth with a $16 million Series A funding round led by Scale Venture Partners. Other investors include: Y Combinator and angel investors Max Levchin the founder of Paypal, Piotr Dąbkowski the CTO of Eleven Labs CTO, Jeff Lawson the founder of Twilio, and others. With this funding, Bland AI has raised a total of $22 million.

Codeium: AI-Based Code Acceleration Platform Raises $150 Million (Series C) At $1.25 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 3, 2024

Codeium, an AI-based code acceleration platform, announced it has secured $150 million in Series C funding, raising the company's valuation to $1.25 billion and bringing the startup to unicorn status in under two years since being founded. The funding round was led by General Catalyst, with continued support from existing investors Kleiner Perkins and Greenoaks.

Noetik: AI-Based Biotech Company Raises $40 Million (Series A) To Develop Cancer Therapeutics

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 1, 2024

Noetik - an AI-based biotech company leveraging self-supervised machine learning and high-throughput spatial data to develop next-generation cancer therapeutics - announced that it closed an oversubscribed $40 million Series A financing round. This funding was led by Polaris Partners and managing partner Amy Schulman, who will join the board of directors, with participation from new investors Khosla Ventures, Wittington Ventures, and Breakout Ventures.

Skyfire Systems: AI-Based Financial Stack Company Raises $8.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Sep 1, 2024

Skyfire Systems has launched the world's first payment network built to enable fully autonomous transactions across AI Agents, LLMs, data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. The company has also announced $8.5 million in funding from Neuberger Berman, Brevan Howard Digital, Intersection Growth Partners, DRW, Inception Capital, Arrington Capital, RedBeard Ventures, Sfermion, Circle, FBG, Gemini, Crossbeam Venture Partners, EveryRealm, Draper Associates, ARCA, and Ripple.

Buzz Solutions: Interview With Co-Founder & CEO Kaitlyn Albertoli About Their AI-Powered Power Utility Infrastructure Inspection Solution

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 30, 2024

Pangeam: Enterprise Social-Spatial Analytics AI Platform Company Secures $4.25 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 30, 2024

Workplace intelligence company Pangeam announced it has launched an enterprise B2B SaaS platform designed to transform office environments by deeply understanding occupants' needs and behaviors. Pangeam also announced the completion of a $4.25 million Series Seed fundraise led by Neotribe, alongside SNR Ventures, DVC, and Niremia Capital.

Wethos: AI-Based Team Optimization Company Raises $7.5 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 29, 2024

Wethos AI, a pioneer in AI-driven team optimization, announced it has raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round led by Jeff Herbst at GFT Ventures.

Agency: AI Agent Development Company Raises $2.6 Million (Pre-Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 29, 2024

Agency, the creators of the industry-leading AgentOps.ai platform, announced it had raised $2.6 million in pre-seed funding led by prominent investors 645 Ventures and Afore Capital. This funding round will enable the company to develop and scale its AI agent observability and testing platform further, ensuring reliability and safety for enterprises deploying large language model (LLM) enabled autonomous agents.

Katara: AI-Agent Workflow Automation Company Secures $2.6 Million (Pre-Seed And Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 28, 2024

Katara, an AI-agent workflow automation platform, announced it raised $2.2 million in seed funding co-led by Diagram Ventures and Sparkle Ventures, with participation from StreamingFast and other strategic angels. This brings the total amount raised to $2.6 million, which is inclusive of the pre-seed round.

eXeX: $5.8 Million (Seed) Raised To Optimize Surgical Procedures

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 28, 2024

eXeX, a medical technology company utilizing AI and spatial computing to optimize surgical procedures, announced the closing of a $5.8 million seed round.

DEFCON AI: Defense Tech Raises $44 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 27, 2024

DEFCON AI, an insights company building a next-generation modeling, simulation, and analysis (MS&A) toolset for the modern military environment, announced that it had raised $44 million in Seed funding. This funding round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Fifth Growth Fund and Red Cell Partners, etc.

Harmonyze: Over $2 Million (Pre-Seed) Raised To Automate Compliance And Legal Tasks

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 27, 2024

Harmonyze (previously known as Legal Hat) - which is an AI-first platform designed to increase franchisor's profit margins - announced the closing of over $2 million in pre-seed funding. The fundinground was led by Bowery Capital, with participation from Focal.VC, and individual investors that include CXOs at franchisors, AI companies, and private equity firms.

Siepe: $30 Million (Series B) Raised To Advance Private Credit Platform

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 27, 2024

Siepe, a provider of software and technology-enabled services for private credit and CLO managers, announced it has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by WestCap, a strategic operating and investing firm with $6 billion in assets under management (AUM). This funding will drive a multi-product roadmap, expand AI/ML capabilities, and strengthen strategic partnerships.

Viggle AI: $19 Million (Series A) Raised To Transform Character Animation With GenAI

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 26, 2024

Viggle AI, a Canada-based company transforming character animation through generative artificial intelligence, today announced it has raised $19 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from additional investor Two Small Fish. This funding round round will enable Viggle AI to continue to scale, accelerate product development, expand its team, and solidify its position as a leader in controllable video generation and AI animation.

LandingAI: Making Computer Vision Easier For Various Applications

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 26, 2024

LandingAI is a company that provides a cutting-edge software platform that makes computer vision easier for a wide range of applications across all industries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed LandingAI’s Senior Director of Partnerships Carl Lewis to learn more about the company.

Otto: Travel-Based AI Agent Company Raises $6 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 25, 2024

Otto, a company that is building an intelligent and autonomous AI travel agent for business travelers, announced that it has raised a $6 million seed round led by Madrona Ventures, with participation from Direct Travel and angel investors from across the business travel industry like Erik Blachford (former CEO of Expedia), IAC Travel and Couchsurfing; Barney Harford (former CEO of Orbitz and COO of Uber); and Hugh Crean (CEO of Operix and former CEO of Farecast-acquired by Microsoft).

Kubiya: Conversational AI Solution Company Raises $12 Million (Seed)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 23, 2024

Kubiya, a leading Conversational AI solution for DevOps teams, announced it has closed a $12 million seed round with a $6 million extension of equity and debt financing and launched a new platform, AI Teammates. Heavybit led Kubiya’s current financing, with Hyperwise VC participating.

Lendbuzz: $400 Million Forward Flow Agreement Signed With Viola Credit

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 23, 2024

Lendbuzz, an AI-based fintech company that helps consumers obtain better access to credit when buying a vehicle, announced that it has secured a new $400 million forward flow program with Viola Credit, a global alternative asset manager specializing in providing asset-based lending solutions to innovative technology-enabled lenders.

Consensus: AI-Based Scientific Research Search Engine Raises $11.5 Million (Series A)

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 21, 2024

Consensus, an AI-based search engine for scientific research, announced that it raised $11.5 million in new Series A funding. This funding round was led by Union Square Ventures, whose previous Series A investments include Twitter, Coinbase, and MongoDB. USV is joined by other investors, including Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, and previous Seed investors Draper Associates, Kevin Carter, Path Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.