AI Startup Funding Pulse

US Early-Stage Vertical AI

• 🔥 Moritz: US-based AI-native law firm Moritz raised $9M in seed funding from Y Combinator, 20VC, Urban Innovation...

Moritz, YC-backed AI-native US law firm, raises $9M seed from 20VC, Urban Innovation Fund, Inception, and 20+ unicorn founders (Dropbox, Reddit,...

Hanomi raises $3M seed to automate tedious 2D technical drawings:

• Produces ASME Y14.5:2018-compliant drawings in <5 min, integrating with...

Moonlight AI AG closed a $3.3M seed round to develop an AI-powered diagnostic software for hematology.

Bret Taylor's AI agent startup Sierra raises $950M Series E, tripling its valuation to $13.5B+ from $4.5B in September. Founded in early 2024, this mega-round signals huge bets on applied AI agents.

Early-stage AI startups are raising record seed rounds amid a 2026 VC frenzy to back the next AI unicorns. A key trend: extremely large seed-stage funding rounds are surging.

London no-code innovator CodeWords raises $9M seed to launch Cody, automating workflows for non-technical teams.

Key angles:

• Natural language...

Brain-CA Technologies scores oversubscribed $5M seed:

• Sarasota startup with Cincinnati ties targets energy-efficient chip tech
• Innovation draws from cellular automata inspiration
• Early bet on hardware tackling AI's power hunger

Skeleton Technologies, a European AI firm, closed the first €33M of a larger round—lifting total VC to €392M—to tackle data center power constraints amid the AI infra boom.

London-based Kohort raised €5.9M ($7M) Series A to advance its mobile gaming analytics, forecasting, and UA optimisation platform. A prime early-stage bet on applied AI for gaming growth.

AI Agents Momentum

• 🔥 Fazeshift: Fazeshift announced $17M in Series A funding for its AI-native platform deploying autonomous agents to execute...

Trend alert: Early-stage funding heats up for applied AI solving gaming bottlenecks like user acquisition and rising moderation costs.

• Kohort...

Fazeshift, an AI-native platform deploying autonomous agents for end-to-end accounts receivable workflows, raises $22M in Series A funding to power autonomous finance.

• Stealth exit funding: Stockholm's Pit raises €13.6M/$16M led by a16z to launch AI product teams as a service.
• Targets enterprise ops chaos:...

Plurio has closed a $3.5M seed round in the performance marketing AI space, drawing close scrutiny from insiders who've reached out to CEO Seva Ustinov for the real story behind the MarTech push.

Bessemer Venture Partners leads $13M seed for AI-native startup Illoca, poised to reinvent architectural design workflows. A strong early bet on applied AI transforming a key vertical.

AstralQ, a U.S.-incorporated startup, has closed a seed funding round to accelerate its AI-driven end-to-end materials development cloud lab. This boosts cloud-based innovation in materials science.

Chinese startup ORITEK Semiconductor completed a Series C funding round on May 6, scaling AI chip ambitions in automotive and robotics sectors.

Paris/London-based OpsMill raises $14M Series A led by IRIS, with BGV and existing investors Serena, Partech.

• Infrahub platform live at TikTok and...

US Early-Stage Applied AI

• VideoTutor: VideoTutor, a Sunnyvale, California-based AI tutoring startup, raised $11M in seed funding to expand its...