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“You’re going to LOVE these founders” is always a great message to receive from folks who know us well. Typically it means that regardless of *what* they’re working on and how *hot* the deal is (or not), we’re going to learn something from talking with them. We’re going to be impressed not just by what they’re building, but how and why. And we’re going to leave the conversation thinking about how we might be able to help, even before an investment has been made. This was the case with Scrunch, which just announced its $15 Million Series A.

What does Scrunch do? It helps brands (and other website owners) prepare for a future where agents are visiting their pages as much, or more, than humans. To do this they’re launching AXP, the Agent Experience Platform, which creates a parallel AI-ready version of your website, optimized for LLMs and served invisibly to AI agents. Smart, right? You can learn more about Scrunch AXP at their website (video demo and sign up ready!).

If building the future of AI-enabled web infrastructure sounds exciting to you, Scrunch is hiring.

Stripe is known as a company with a very high bar for bringing talent into its organization. This is true not just for individuals they hire, but for teams they add via acquisition as well. We’ve had the chance to work with the Orum team for several years and so it didn't surprise us that they and their money movement platform were on Stripe’s radar as well. As Orum founder & CEO Stephany Kirkpatrick shared last week, it made too much sense for the two to join up.

While we’re excited for the team to make a big impact at Stripe, we also know that relationships span companies, and Stephany, we can’t wait to work with you again down the road!

It’s always fun to say ‘we’re in’ as an investor, and we did so pretty quickly after meeting the Airweave team while they were finishing up YC. The team had identified a real problem faced by many developers and companies hoping to get the most out of AI agents. And the solution they had in mind was novel and the beginning of a vision for enabling the agent economy. Fortunately, their response to our interest was ‘great, we’d love to have you involved’ and we ended up participating in their recently announced $6 million seed round.

In their own words, “Airweave started as a solution to our own frustration: agents couldn’t meaningfully search or understand our apps, limiting their potential to do useful work. This funding accelerates our mission to empower agents with critical knowledge and unlock the agent economy’s full potential.”

Powerful right? You don’t need to talk to some SDR to learn more - just hit their github.

Of course they’re hiring, so if this sounds like a problem you want to solve, let them know.

In some ways it’s quite simple. We were fortunate enough to back Quinten and Evan when they previously built Even, and we were excited to do so again. More broadly though, what they’re attempting with Tolan is conceiving AI Companionship with a thoughtful, responsible and fun POV. That feels important and, along with their third cofounder Ajay, we can’t imagine a team better suited to do this well. Early evidence suggests that they’ve discovered something novel, as more than 100,000 people are paying for the Tolan app. Now they also have a $20 million Series A to continue developing their vision.

As Wired writes when asking what ‘healthy’ AI could look like, “Tolans were designed to offer a different kind of AI companionship. Their cartoonish, nonhuman form is meant to discourage anthropomorphism. They’re also programmed to avoid romantic and sexual interactions, to identify problematic behavior including unhealthy levels of engagement, and to encourage users to seek out real-life activities and relationships.”

We look forward to seeing the future of Tolan! If you want to try the app, download Tolan here. And if joining the team excites you, they’re hiring.

Why does someone build a company and what do they hope success brings them? For some, the impact is largely aimed at their bank account and speaker bio. That’s fine, monetary reward and notoriety aren’t incompatible with impact, but we’ve always been attracted to founders for whom the end goal is bigger. Founders like Mackenzie Burnett and startups like Ambrook fall into that latter camp. And so, from the first time we met her as the company was just getting started, at every opportunity we’ve been offered to support the company, we’ve enthusiastically said YES.

Ambrook builds financial software for family run businesses, starting with agriculture. Mackenzie, and her cofounders Jeff and Dan, have always contended that the foundation for Many Good Things™️ is financial sustainability. That if you cannot run your business with security, confidence and data, you cannot plan for the future; you cannot invest in new people, equipment, or techniques; you cannot become a leader in your community. They’ve been building quietly for several years, out of sight of most Silicon Valley thought leadership, but not invisibly. Certainly their customers have noticed the speed with which they ship. And a select number of investors felt the gravitational pull as well, resulting in the recently announced $26.1 Million Series A financing.

But it’s just the beginning - as Mackenzie writes, “We still believe in the American Dream. And we’re here to build for the people living it.”

If Ambrook can help you live the American Dream, as a customer, or as a team member, they’d love to hear from you.

You founded a startup to:

1. Change the world
2. Build a great team
3. Live the American Dream
4. Manage payroll, compliance, and benefits. Plus a whole bunch of other back office tasks.
5. All of the above

Probably not (d), which it what Warp solves for you - the only payroll platform built to automate your back-office and save you from penalties – in under 15 minutes. And now it has an $18 million Series A to continue building out the agentic tech underlying its modern software. No annoying forms. No designs that look like they were built in the 1990s. No feature sets originally built for 600 person legacy businesses. Warp is built for startups.

We’re thrilled to be a small supporter of Warp and excited about what’s ahead.

If you’re a startup that wants to spend more time on (a), (b) and (c) , Warp is ready for you.

And if you want to join a fast growing startup in NYC, Warp is hiring.

71% of the earth’s surface is water but our public and private sectors still have few modern systems to help answer the question ‘what’s out there?’ This creates security, industrial and commercial blind spots, ranging from the inconvenient to the mission critical. Andrenam intends to solve this problem.

How? Creating an AI-powered distributed sensing network. That sounds awesome but challenging, right? Yes, which is why it takes a special founding team from places like SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir to pursue this vision. And a first funding of $10 million, led by our friends at First Round Capital, and with support from us (among others).

If building the networked platform serving as the base layer for future maritime intelligence and autonomy sounds cool to you, Andrenam is hiring.

Wait, $17 million of funding to do stuff with PDFs? Doesn’t [insert generic LLM foundation model] do that ok already? The answer is yes, but they do it just ok. What they don’t do - and never will - is build a full stack pipeline that turns documents into data, with 99%+ reliability, configurability and custom workflows, for a long tail of formats. And that’s where Extend comes in.

Already relied upon by sophisticated customers in markets where ‘just ok’ won’t cut it (such as Brex, Square, Checkr, Flatiron Health and multiple Fortune 500s), Extend is proud to announce the next phase of its growth: a sandbox where ANYONE can simply come to its site and start running documents through the Extend platform. Oh yeah, and $17 million of funding.

We’re thrilled to be supporters of Extend since its YC days, and are consistently impressed by the team's execution. Built in NYC, the team is growing, so if working at a technology-forward, fast-moving AI business process startup is for you, Extend is definitely hiring.

Stop. It’s such a simple street sign but one that many drivers ignore, creating safety issues that result in pedestrian injuries, car crashes, and even needless deaths. Obvio seeks to make roads safer, using an end-to-end product combining software and hardware. It begins with camera devices installed near intersections by local government partners. Then Obvio’s platform takes care of monitoring, educating and enforcing - and with the most egregious violations, helping issue tickets to the drivers.

In the company’s own words, “we’re on a mission to curb reckless driving and reduce the 40,000 annual deaths that happen on our roadways. Our first 5 cities went live earlier this year, and we’ve been excited to see the results: 50% reduction in unsafe driving events in just the first couple months of the program.”

The Obvio cofounders met while working together at an earlier company in the dashboard camera space. We were introduced to them during their seed phase and were immediately struck by the combination of technical excellence and customer focus. And the immense potential for the business was also apparent to other investors, resulting in a robust Series A fundraise led by Bain Capital.

If working at a well-funded, mission-driven startup appeals to you, Obvio is hiring.

It seems like just a few months ago we were writing about Thread helping public and private sector enterprises to implement AI workflows easily and securely. It WAS just last fall Thread unveiled Lemma, their infrastructure platform. On the momentum of that launch, and continued growth in the business, Thread raised an additional $20 Million in a Series A, in which Homebrew eagerly continued its support.

As the founders note, you shouldn’t have to blow up your whole existing tech stack just to implement AI. “Lemma is designed to democratize AI infrastructure. It’s a composable platform that allows enterprises to design, deploy, and scale AI-powered workflows by connecting AI models, data sources, and business logic into adaptable, end-to-end processes aligned with their specific needs.” Well, yes, that is how it should all work.

If helping organizations push towards AI’s future is your speed, Thread is hiring. Or if you’re more likely to be a customer than team member, just check them out.

Why does software often have less information on what’s inside than a generic multivitamin? Manifest is built to automate the discovery and tracking of bugs, security flaws and other vulnerabilities in your software and AI. By delivering a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) to customers, Manifest can help identify the issues that would result in massive security incidents if uncorrected.

So it comes as no surprise that organizations of all sizes rely on Manifest, including Anduril, several Fortune 500 corporations and multiple US government agencies. This has allowed the company to grow its revenue 5x YoY alongside a 100% customer renewal rate. Growth like this attracts investors, and Manifest recently announced a $15 million Series A in which Homebrew was happy to continue participating as an investor.

Interested in Manifest’s product? Check them out here. And if a startup like Manifest could be where you’d like to continue your career, well, they’re hiring.

Windfall has built an incredible business off a simple premise - that data can help you find better customers, constituents, or donors. And they deliver this software platform to 1,000+ companies, organizers, non-profits and others who do targeted marketing or outreach. So we weren’t surprised when Windfall shared the news of a $65 million Series B led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital. Congratulations to the Windfall team!

If you believe Windfall’s product can help your organization, book a demo. And of course, they’re hiring.

Education is being transformed by AI and we’re no strangers to the ways teachers, parents, and students are embracing the change. SchoolAI is focused on bringing AI into the classroom, delivering personalized learning that works WITH the child and the educator, not against them. So it’s no surprise that their growth has attracted the attention of investors, most recently announcing a $25 million Series A led by Insight Partners.

If you are interested in joining a well-funded startup at the intersection of edtech and artificial intelligence, well, they’re hiring.

Russ and Jim have spent the last 25+ years building enterprise technology companies together, so when they told us the band was getting back together for Larridin, we were in. Many of our other friends raised their hands too and a $17 million fundraise has the company off to a quick start.

Larridin enables organizations to continuously measure and optimize workforce & AI agent productivity. In Russ’ own words:

Over the last year, they talked with thousands of our former customers and partners. Again and again we heard the same thing from CEOs, CFOs, Heads of HR, as well as other business leaders - the current tools to measure and understand corporate productivity are severely outdated and not helpful in a world of AI.

Every company now has humans working alongside AI and, in some cases, machines / robots.

Our solution is designed to fill the measurement void and help prioritize investment decisions across people, processes, and deployment of AI.

At Homebrew, we too believe that software gives superpowers to humans, helping them do their best and most meaningful work. Larradin is building with this mission in mind. If you’re interested in learning more, or even joining the team, visit their website.

“Take a low NPS industry and make it better” was a startup idea trope at one point. Well, it’s kinda true. And financial services has typically been a frustrating product category for startups and SMBs. No longer.

Mercury has seen incredible growth the last few years, providing an increasingly expansive stack of banking tools to over 200,000 customers. And building a durable company these clients can trust. Namely,

• Ten consecutive quarters of profitability based on both EBITDA and GAAP net-income
• $500 million in annual revenue in 2024
• 40% growth in customers year-over-year
• $156 billion in annual transaction volume, up 64% year-over-year.

So it’s not surprising that the venture capital community continues to take notice, most recently leading a $300 million Series C financing for the company.

We’re excited to be small existing investors in Mercury and that the team can now move forward even faster to their full potential.

If you’d like to join a well funded financial software company, they’re hiring.

“Email is dead.” That’s what dozens and dozens of investors told TheSkimm founders when they started out. These mostly male financiers didn’t care that Carly and Danielle had created a word of mouth sensation, growing virally, with daily open rates that were eye popping. And the same VCs were surprised the product was hard news in a digestible format.

Now of course email newsletters are well understood to be a powerful medium, and millions of subscribers later TheSkimm (which has broadened to podcasts, video, etc) was just acquired by Ziff Davis for its Everyday Health unit. The brand (and brand voice) you love will continue on, with an even bigger platform to build upon.

At Homebrew, the relationship transcends the company, and so while we wish Carly and Danielle well, we know it’s not the end for the four of us, just another milestone. Congrats to them and the team!

We had the pleasure of meeting the Graphite team in the weeks leading up to the COVID outbreak. Hunter spent time with them first, and then Satya followed up. When we were debriefing on that second conversation, Satya expressed his opinion clearly: “Let’s get them a termsheet before anyone else does.” And we did.

It’s been an incredible journey seeing this team navigate the idea maze, find PMF, and just press down the pedal with their AI Developer Platform. Whether your code is written by a human, by AI, or in a hybrid model, it all ends up in Graphite to ensure only quality end product ships. Revenue grew 20x in 2024, representing 10,000+ engineers at over 500 companies, including Shopify, Snowflake, Figma, and Perplexity.

This success, and the aggressive roadmap ahead, earned them the attention of the investor community and the team recently shared news of a $52 Million Series B, led by Accel. In Accel’s diligence they were blown away:

When speaking to Graphite users across enterprises, we were struck by how frequently adoption begins bottoms-up: individual developers and engineering leaders will champion the platform’s impact, and usage will organically spread to a company-wide rollout. One IC made her team a whole deck to convince them to use Graphite. Another threatened to quit if his team didn’t make the switch. It is rare but powerful to see engineers so passionately evangelize a tool with paradigm shift implications across an entire engineering organization.

In other words, everyone who interacts with Graphite is blown away - whether it be people who write code or people who write checks.

Graphite has also built an amazing culture in NYC - a true magnet for technical talent in the city. If you like working with smart engineers and selling a great product to smart engineers, well, they’re hiring.

Sometimes a startup makes a lot of public noise as it develops. And sometimes it just works away, popping its head up every once in a while to announce a meaningful milestone. MatX is the latter. Founded by two ex-Google Tensor Flow engineers, they’ve been quietly building specialized LLM chips optimized for a world being changed by AI. And while they tend to not speak at conferences, or write a Substack, or, well, say much of anything beyond their website, they did share a bit of good news this week, namely a $100+ Million Series A led by Spark Capital.

MatX is now fully capitalized to bring their systems to market with an amazing, highly technical team of 50+ people! And of course if you are passionate about building the best chips for LLMs, well, they’re hiring.

Shield AI doesn’t fit in your typical ‘defense tech’ box. For one, it was cofounded by a Navy SEAL vet, so there’s no glorification of the traumas conflict can cause to its combatants and civilians. Second, it was founded in 2015 when “gov tech” was a dirty word to most VCs and very few wanted anything to do with our nation’s military needs. And lastly, they long for a world without war - as they often tell their team, investors, and customers, their mission is “Autonomy for the world. The greatest victory requires no war.”

We can speak to these truths because we were fortunate enough to be the largest investor in their seed round and Satya sat on their Board for many years, through critical milestones in the company’s trajectory. And so it’s with pride and admiration that we see them well on their way to becoming one of the most important public sector startups of the 21st century.

There are many more challenges and tremendous work ahead to fulfill that promise, but it’s galvanizing to see financial and strategic investors get behind the Shield vision. Most recently this support has taken the form of a $240 million funding round, at a $5.3 billion valuation. As Bloomberg notes in its coverage of the round,

ShieldAI’s Hivemind software aims to make it easier for more developers and businesses to create autonomous hardware. The company’s tools can also help pilot autonomous vehicles ranging from one-way attack drones to F-16s, and support swarming operations. Shield says its software can allow vehicles to execute complex missions autonomously, including when GPS and communications are jammed.

Onward Shield AI! And if working for a transformative, mission-driven, well-capitalized American company appeals to you, they are definitely hiring.

From our earliest days working with the Albert founders it felt like there was the potential for something special. And while we can certainly debate whether venture funding is a leading or lagging indication of success (we’d argue the latter), it was great to see them get a strong Series A done last year. Well, we’re back to this blog sooner than we expected to share some additional financing news. Namely, an expansion of the round with $20 million more led by JP Morgan at a $270 million valuation, twice the valuation of the previous close.

The Albert team is spending zero time celebrating though. Instead, they just see this all as the opportunity to move quickly to address overwhelming customer demand for its software. That’s why their own announcement of the financing was more focused on upcoming demo sessions than patting themselves on the back.

Want to see how AI is transforming chemistry and materials science? Join their upcoming webinars:

🔬 How Scientists Invent Faster with Albert

📅 Wednesday, March 12, 2025, with sessions at 10AM PT and 3PM CET

🇺🇸 Register for the USA session: https://lnkd.in/eX5TZTSi

🇪🇺 Register for the EU session: https://lnkd.in/eD2RBvrP

And if working at an exciting, well-funded company like Albert appeals to you, they’re hiring.