Adonis: AI revenue collection for healthcare providers
Bling Capital
Startup: Adonis
Recommended by: Ben Ling, Bling Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $22.9 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Adonis uses AI to automate and create intelligent revenue-collection software between healthcare providers such as doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies.
Why it’s on the list: Adonis’ platform has the capacity to displace end-to-end revenue-collection workflows and automate individual tasks, Ling said.
“They are trending to significantly exceed revenue expectations in 2023 and is considered one of the fastest growing healthcare software companies in the United States. As a result, Adonis is overseeing the processing of billions of dollars of claims and impacting revenue outcomes for thousands of the nation’s providers,” Ling said.
Agapé: an app to build stronger personal relationships
Harlem Capital
Startup: Agapé
Recommended by: Gabby Cazeau, Harlem Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $1.8 million, according to the company
What it does: Agapé is a mobile platform that uses five steps — communication, affirmation, reflection, investment, and council — to provide a way to strengthen daily relationships in under three minutes.
Why it’s on the list: “They’ve gone viral on TikTok and are resonating with a new generation that’s excited to build stronger, healthier relationships — with their romantic partners, friends, and family,” Cazeau said. “There are a lot of products that focus on our individual mental health and wellness, but very few that focus on improving relationship wellness with the people we care about most.”
AlphaSense: business data intelligence platform
CapitalG
Startup: AlphaSense
Recommended by: James Luo, CapitalG
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $623 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: AlphaSense aggregates over 10,000 qualitative and quantitative data sources in one platform, with an intuitive search interface and generative-AI capabilities that allow users to quickly find and summarize insights across content, including earnings calls, financial reporting, expert-call transcripts, industry journals, and research vendors.
Why it’s on the list: “AlphaSense has built out significant infrastructure for utilizing generative AI and is one of the first companies to realize these capabilities in a commercial capacity,” Luo said. In April, the company announced it had raised $100 million from investors, including Viking Global and affiliates of Alphabet and Goldman Sachs. And more recently, the company is in talks to raise $150 million more in funding this year at a $2.5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported.
AppOmni: security for SaaS applications
CapitalG
Startup: AppOmni
Recommended by: James Luo, CapitalG
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $123 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: AppOmni helps keep organizations secure by monitoring their software-as-a-service applications for potential misconfigurations or breaches.
Why it’s on the list: “SaaS applications are the new frontier of critical infrastructure for enterprises, and maintaining their security will only become more important as they’re further embedded in organizations and workflow,” Luo said. “AppOmni has built deep integrations with critical SaaS applications that enterprises use every day — applications like Salesforce and ServiceNow, which also contain an organization’s most sensitive information.”
Armis: cybersecurity for IoT devices
David Dines Photography.
Startup: Armis
Recommended by: Derek Zanutto, Capital G
Relationship: Investor
Total raised: $540 million, according to the company
What it does: Armis’ cybersecurity platform helps companies and government agencies see and secure their managed and unmanaged assets — IT cloud, Internet of Things devices, IoT medical devices, operational technology, industrial control systems, 5G and more.
Why it’s on the list: “Based on our conversations with industry leaders, the single biggest issue holding back larger scale IoT deployments is cybersecurity risk,” Zanutto said. “Armis addresses the cybersecurity pain points emerging from the growth in IoT with a unique solution that allows enterprises to discover and identify all connected devices, analyze devices for threats, and automatically protect the network by removing suspicious devices.”
Axis: digital banking platform for small businesses in Egypt
Everywhere Ventures
Startup: Axis
Recommended by: Jenny Fielding, Everywhere Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $8.25 million, according to the company
What it does: Axis is a digital banking platform for small businesses in Egypt.
Why it’s on the list: Small businesses contribute up to 80% of Egypt’s gross domestic product, but they don’t have access to digital banking services which affects their ability to scale, Fielding said. “Axis solves this by providing small businesses with a digital banking alternative starting with payroll,” she said.
Beehiiv: newsletter publishing platform
Everywhere Ventures
Startup: Beehiiv
Recommended by: Jenny Fielding, Everywhere Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $16.66 million, according to the company.
What it does: Beehiiv is a newsletter-publishing platform that has tools to help users create, monetize, and scale.
Why it’s on the list: “I love the big vision to integrate ads and ultimately become the programmatic ad network for newsletters,” Fielding said.
Bobsled: Consumer data sharing across cloud providers
Greycroft
Startup: Bobsled
Recommended by: Brentt Baltimore, Greycroft
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $24.4 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Bobsled lets companies share consumer data across different cloud-data providers, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Why it’s on the list: With the ongoing AI boom, more and more companies will need to find ways to share and analyze data to train various AI models, Baltimore said, and Bobsled can be a key tool in making sure this happens. “In a world where AI models need fresh and specific data to improve their algorithms, unlocking the right data at significant scale while enabling easy ways to share it is paramount,” Baltimore said. Bobsled announced in April that it had raised a $17 million Series A round that Greycroft and Madrona co-led.
Butter: payments service to prevent lost subscriptions revenue
Norwest
Startup: Butter
Recommended by: Edward Yip, Norwest
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $12.5 million, according to the company
What it does: Butter is a payments startup that helps companies prevent lost revenue from accidentally canceled subscriptions.
Why it’s on the list: Butter was built because Vijay Menon, its cofounder and CEO, realized how many subscriptions lapsed due to payment issues such as expired credit cards. The former Microsoft employee, who initially problem-solved for Xbox Live subscriptions, eventually set out to build Butter and help other subscription companies recover revenue and slow down customer churn.
Butter’s model presents a “clear product ROI for any subscription company,” Yip said, adding that the startup, which raised a $9 million Series A in late 2022, is already a “top performing product in the space” since launching in 2020.
Canvas Medical: electronic medical records platform
Inspired Capital
Startup: Canvas Medical
Recommended by: Mark Batsiyan, Inspired Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $50.2 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Canvas Medical is an electronic medical-records platform for healthcare providers.
Why it’s on the list: Whether it’s a small private practice or a massive health plan, Canvas Medical offers a platform for recording and tracking patient records, complete with built-in payment solutions and insurance reimbursements. The company aims to make the process of documenting care and navigating complex payment arrangements easier and more efficient, allowing for more useful insights and freeing up time and energy for providers to focus on serving patients. “From the start, Canvas has been incredibly tech-forward and is at the forefront of defining the next generation of healthcare infrastructure,” Batsiyan said.
Chainguard: security for product software
Insight Venture Partners
Startup: Chainguard
Recommended by: Thomas Krane, Insight Partners
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $50 million, according to the company
What it does: Chainguard provides a suite of tools and services to guarantee the security of every piece of software a company includes in its product, regardless of if the company made the software or not.
Why it’s on the list: “Modern software development is best characterized as the process of assembling ready-made components rather than building from scratch,” Krane said. “That means faster development cycles but also more places for things to go wrong. Chainguard is helping companies safeguard every step of that software supply chain, allowing them to incorporate third-party and open-source components without sacrificing peace of mind.”
Cinder: centralized trust and safety workflows
Accel
Startup: Cinder
Recommended by: Sara Ittelson, Accel
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $14 million, according to the company
What it does: Cinder helps companies manage all of their trust and safety work by organizing workflows for processes including content-moderation enforcement, policy management, and investigations, all in one place.
Why it’s on the list: Ittleson said that oftentimes, trust-and-safety teams will be managing all of their important work using multiple disconnected spreadsheets and documents, so by using Cinder, they can save a lot of time on the organization by having these files all in one system. “The work of trust and safety teams is too important to be supported by a patchwork of tools,” she said.
Cribl: custom solutions for data
Sai Senthilkumar
Startup: Cribl
Recommended by: Sai Senthilkumar, Redpoint Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $406.2 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Cribl’s platform allows companies to come up with custom solutions for observing, analyzing, and controlling their raw data.
Why it’s on the list: Cribl refers to its product as “enterprise software that doesn’t suck.” The platform allows companies to design custom solutions for their raw data, reducing costs and improving efficiency. Its products are designed to help companies turn their data into actionable insights in an intuitive and adaptable way. Senthilkumar said this is particularly important in the current macroeconomic environment where executives are looking for any cost advantage they can find.
DNSFilter: defense against cyberattacks
Insight Venture Partners
Startup: DNSFilter
Recommended by: Thomas Krane, Insight Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $47 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: DNSFilter allows any network to monitor traffic for threats and inappropriate content.
Why it’s on the list: Krane referred to DNSFilter as “a critical first line of defense” to protect against cyberattacks. DNSFilter helps protect users from phishing, malware, ransomware, and botnet attacks.” Krane said. “The company combines plug-and-play functionality with state-of-the-art AI and machine-learning technology as well as a global anycast network spread across 75 data centers in dozens of countries to ensure speed and reliability.”
Dorsia: restaurant booking platform
Atomic
Startup: Dorsia
Recommended by: Chester Ng, Atomic
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: Undisclosed
What it does: Dorsia is a membership restaurant-booking platform that secures reservations at highly exclusive and sought-after restaurants in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City.
Why it’s on the list: “Thanks to Dorsia, I was able to try a delicious new sushi restaurant in NYC during my birthday trip recently,” Ng said. “It’s simple, but the whole process from getting a reservation at a hot new restaurant to checking out without waiting for and dealing with the bill was seamless — almost reminded me of the first time I walked out of an Uber without having to deal with payment.”
Durable: AI for business services
Kleiner Perkins
Startup: Durable
Recommended by: Josh Coyne, Kleiner Perkins
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $6.25 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Durable uses AI to quickly build websites and other business services.
Why it’s on the list: Running a business can be difficult, and Durable is gaining traction by using AI to help companies quickly build websites and manage other business functions in a matter of seconds.
“In practice, this takes the form of a suite of different tools (e.g. website builder, CRM, marketing automation, invoicing, spend management, AI copilot) purpose-built to help business owners focus on what they do best — generating revenue — and offloading the rest,” Coyne said.
The startup raised a $6.25 million seed round at the end of 2022.
Entos: using AI to design and discover drugs
Norwest Venture Partners
Startup: Entos
Recommended by: Tiba Aynechi, Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $56 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Entos uses generative AI and machine learning to design and discover drugs.
Why it’s on the list: “Entos has used their NeuralPlexer platform to advance multiple drug candidates from hit identification to preclinical studies in under two years, a rapid pace for what is typically six or more years,” Aynechi said. “They are planning to enter clinical studies soon with a differentiated lead candidate that has been optimized by their AI-driven multi-parameter platform.”
EvenUp Law: AI for personal injury cases
Bling Capital
Startup: EvenUp Law
Recommended by: Ben Ling, Bling Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $65 million
What it does: EvenUp Law uses AI to parse through medical records, police reports, and bills to generate demand packages for personal-injury cases and lawyers
Why it’s on the list: EvenUp Law has an “applied use case for AI with continued strong commercial traction,” Ling said.
Exponential Exchange: tradable financial products for mobility investors
MaC Venture Capital
Startup: Exponential Exchange
Recommended by: Marlon Nichols, MaC Venture Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $8.8 million, according to the company.
What it does: Exponential Exchange has created a set of tradable financial instruments to manage exposure and risk for mobility-industry investors.
Why it’s on the list: The rise of electric vehicles has led to volatility in the value of internal-combustion engines. For those who own fleets of vehicles that use these engines, this volatility leaves the value of their assets uncertain, Nichols said.
“By focusing on building smart markets and incorporating top-tier security achieved through smart contracts, Exponential Exchange is positioned to create the first derivatives market for the automotive industry — an opportunity estimating $3.5 trillion of value annually,” Nichols said.
Forage: digital payments infrastructure to accept EBT
Greylock Partners
Startup: Forage
Recommended by: Mike Duboe, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $22.5 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Forage sets up the payment infrastructure for online sellers to accept EBT payments, expanding access to online shopping.
Why it’s on the list: Forage’s CEO, Ofek Lavian, is a tried-and-true leader in the payments space. He built payments infrastructure at Uber and led the payments team at Instacart before leaving to focus on Forage full-time.
It’s also a service that’s desperately needed in the growing online-grocery space, Duboe said. “The Forage team took a set of valuable experiences building this payments infrastructure within Instacart and is expanding it to a broader set of grocers who do not yet accept EBT online,” which he said is nearly 99% of the 250,000 grocers in the US.
GPTZero: detects AI-generated text
Asheem Chandna
Startup: GPTZero
Recommended by: Asheem Chandna, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $3.5 million, according to the company
What it does: GPTZero analyzes text and determines if it was AI-generated or written by a human.
Why it’s on the list: Initially billing itself as an anti-cheating detector for educators, GPTZero has since expanded its vision for a much broader range of possibilities for the need to detect AI-generated text.
“Detecting AI-generated voice, video, text, etc. will be critical to preventing fraud,” Chandna said. “LLMs have been the story of 2023, and while they offer many benefits, understanding when content has been produced by them is useful to many different businesses.”
Grafana Labs: open source software for developer dashboards
GGV Capital
Startup: Grafana Labs
Recommended by: Glenn Solomon, GGV Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $570 million, according to the company
What it does: Grafana Labs is the company behind Grafana, an open-source project for dashboards and visibility. Developers can use Grafana’s tools to monitor their IT infrastructure, their servers, their containers, and their workloads.
Why it’s on the list: “Grafana Labs is going after observability, which is a very large market, with a differentiated, open source and free trial approach that has made them wildly popular,” Solomon said. He added that there are more than 3,000 Grafana Labs customers, including Bloomberg, Citigroup, Dell Technologies, Salesforce, and TomTom, and that the company has an excellent team that is executing very well.
Habi: residential real estate platform
Courtesy of LearnVest
Startup: Habi
Recommended by: Alexa von Tobel, Inspired Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $527.7 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Habi is a residential real-estate platform.
Why it’s on the list: The Bogotá, Colombia-based Habi is only the second tech unicorn to come out of the country. “Habi is truly transforming the entire experience of real estate in Latin America,” von Tobel said. The company’s platform seeks to help streamline the homebuying process and promote the orderly function of the residential real-estate market. It helps buyers navigate the complexities of buying real estate and helps owners access the equity in their homes more easily and without onerous expenses. The company said it has helped more than 30,000 families buy or sell their homes and recently received $50 million from the Inter-American Development Bank to fuel its expansion across Colombia and Mexico.
Hex: data science collaboration platform
David Dines Photography.
Startup: Hex
Recommended by: Derek Zanutto, Capital G; Brennt Baltimore, Greycroft
Relationship: No financial interest for either investor
Total funding: $101 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: A data platform for collaborative analytics and data science.
Why it’s on the list: “We believe that the ‘front end’ of the data stack is ripe for consolidation, and platforms like Hex make this vision a reality by enabling democratization of insights across stakeholders via collaborative notebooks and lightweight, interactive data apps,” Zanutto said.
HqO: office experience platform
Insight Venture Partners
Startup: HqO
Recommended by: AJ Malhotra, Insight Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $106 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: HqO is a workplace-experience platform that helps make the office more inviting and productive with a set of tools for employers and commercial landlords to get the most out of their office space.
Why it’s on the list: Corporate America is coming to the realization that the old model for how to run an office may be gone forever. HqO deploys its products in nearly 700 properties in over 30 countries. More than half of the Fortune 100, as well as some of the largest real-estate developers and brokerages in the world, including Vornado, Savills, Cushman, and Wakefield, use HqO.
“HqO’s innovative technology and humanizing vision for real estate set it apart in an industry that historically neglected the needs of tenants and employees,” Malhotra said.
Impulse Space: final stage spacecraft propulsion
Twitter/@ScottNolan
Startup: Impulse Space
Recommended by: Scott Nolan, Founders Fund
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $30 million, according to the company
What it does: Impulse Space provides economical and nimble last-mile space-payload delivery. Its vehicles act as a final stage of propulsion to move spacecraft to their desired orbits.
Why it’s on the list: “The company was founded by Tom Mueller, former VP of Propulsion at SpaceX, who has expanded the team with other legends from the modern aerospace world,” Nolan said. “Their in-space propulsion capabilities are unmatched, ensuring their in-orbit vehicles will have the highest performance of anyone in the sector and always the top choice for customers. In 2023, they closed multiple large commercial customer contracts pre-launch, a sign of the industry’s faith in their execution, and they are preparing for their first mission in October 2023.”
Kodem: cybersecurity risk detection
Asheem Chandna
Startup: Kodem
Recommended by: Asheem Chandna, Greylock
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $25 million, according to the company
What it does: Kodem is a cybersecurity startup that can detect risks during an application’s runtime.
Why it’s on the list: Kodem’s risk detection during an application’s runtime has led to a dramatic decrease in “false positive” security threats, Chandra said. Additionally, Kodem’s leadership team has decades of combined experience in operations security working for private industry and government defense, such as the Israeli Defence Forces’ cybersecurity division, Unit 8200.
Kojo: materials management software for contractors
CapitalG
Startup: Kojo
Recommended by: Jesse Wedler, CapitalG
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $79 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Kojo provides an end-to-end materials-management solution for contractors to have full visibility into their material orders and inventory. The startup’s platform connects office teams, field crews, warehouse managers, and materials vendors to ensure that the procurement process is seamless from start to finish.
Why it’s on the list: “Despite the rise in horizontal-procurement tech, construction materials procurement today is manual and inefficient given the complexity and need for vertical-specific workflows to drive value,” Wedler said. “Kojo not only provides a seamless, automated ordering experience for field employees but a platform for ordering managers to keep track of all orders placed and received, warehouse inventory, and select vendors.”
Langchain: framework for building applications using large language models
Navin Chaddha
Startup: Langchain
Recommended by: Navin Chaddha, Mayfield Fund
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $10 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Langchain has created a framework for developing more complex applications powered by large language models.
Why it’s on the list: Langchain launched last October as an open-source project by Harrison Chase while he worked as an engineer at the machine-learning startup Robust Intelligence. The startup scored a $10 million seed round earlier this year — led by Benchmark — and Insider reported that it raised another round between $20 million and $25 million, led by Sequoia. “The company is very early, but I am nominating it based on the problem it is solving and the quality of the founding team,” Chaddha said.
Leal: platform for cancer patients to navigate treatment options
Insight Partners
Startup: Leal
Recommended by: Scott Barclay, Insight Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $27.7 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Leal’s platform helps cancer patients navigate treatment options.
Why it’s on the list: Leal started out as a platform to help pharmaceutical companies identify promising candidates for clinical trials of cancer treatments. Today, Leal has grown into an end-to-end, AI-powered platform for helping patients navigate some of the most challenging and complex corners of the healthcare system. “Leal has taken a new approach to an old problem,” Barclay said, adding that Leal is helping promote “patient empowerment.” Time magazine has recognized Leal as one of the best inventions of 2020, and Fast Company recognized it as a “world-changing idea” in 2021.
LindusHealth: digital hub for clinical trials
Greycroft
Startup: Lindus Health
Recommended by: Ellie Wheeler, Greycroft
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $6.5 million, according to the company
What it does: Lindus Health is a digital-contract service for conducting clinical trials.
Why it’s on the list: While there are multiple startups looking to change how clinical trials are run, Lindus Health’s approach is focused on executing the whole trial process end-to-end, from designing the studies to recruiting sign-ups and delivering data during the trials. Wheeler said that Lindushealth has seen “some promising early results with smaller trials” so far, and the startup recently received a government grant from the UK to continue expanding its early trials.
LlamaIndex: LLM-powered search for large databases
Greylock Partners
Startup: LlamaIndex
Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $8.5 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: LlamaIndex provides the tools for developers to use large language models for searching large, private, or proprietary databases.
Why it’s on the list: With LlamaIndex, businesses can use large language models, also called LLMs, to search and generate results from their own internal proprietary data, such as emails, documents, databases, and more.
Greylock Partners recently led LlamaIndex’s $8.5 million seed round. “It is the key technology to make LLMs useful for enterprise apps,” Chen said.
Lucky: ecommerce inventory software
MaC Venture Capital
Startup: Lucky
Recommended by: Marlon Nichols, MaC Venture Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $3.3 million, according to the company.
What it does: Lucky’s software connects the inventory systems of major retailers with the e-commerce sites of direct-to-consumer brands. If a customer orders a product online, they can choose to have it shipped or see if it’s available for pickup at a local retailer.
Why it’s on the list: The startup works with retailers including Nordstrom and Sephora and can therefore work with the brands that sell at these retailers, Nichols said.
The market opportunity in this space is about $300 billion “and growing exponentially as consumers want products faster and brands and retailers want to be more sustainable and improve efficiency,” Nichols said.
Luma AI: App to create 3D imagery using AI
(Courtesy of Lucy Deland)
Startup: Luma AI
Recommended by: Lucy Deland, Inspired Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $25.5 million, according to the company
What it does: Luma AI lets users create realistic 3D images on their phones using AI.
Why it’s on the list: Thanks to the AI boom, more companies than ever are leveraging the technology to expand the average user’s ability to create visual effects. Luma, which raised a $20 million Series A this spring, is no different.
“Luma’s vision is an incredibly compelling use case for AI,” Deland said, adding that the startup is “adding a new dimension to how we experience photos and video. Having cofounded Paperless Post, I’ve long been interested in the interplay between digital and real-world mediums and think Luma’s approach is an exciting one.”
Lumachain: real time food supply chain platform
Bessemer Venture Partners
Startup: Lumachain
Recommended by: Tess Hatch, Bessemer
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $22 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Lumachain’s real-time food supply-chain platform tracks the origin, location, and condition of goods.
Why it’s on the list: Food production is one of the oldest industries in the world, but it hasn’t been touched by software — until Lumachain came in, Hatch said. The startup raised $19.5 million in Series A funding last year and has netted some big-name clients in the food-processing industry.
“The company is already working with the biggest meat processing companies, including JBS and Tyson, and is on track to 5.5 times ARR this year,” Hatch said.
Maza: digital banking services for immigrants
Harlem Capital
Startup: Maza
Recommended by: Gabby Cazeau, Harlem Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $13.8 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Maza offers digital-banking services to immigrants with an emphasis on undocumented immigrants.
Why it’s on the list: What sets Maza apart from other consumer digital banks is that it provides immigrants with an individual tax-identification number, or ITIN, which acts as a substitute for a social-security number. With that ITIN, a Maza customer automatically gets a bank account and a debit card, which opens up financial opportunities that may not have otherwise been available to them as an undocumented immigrant, such as building credit or applying for loans.
“So much of consumer fintech is about building a strong brand that resonates, and the Maza team has done that in a meaningful and authentic way,” Cazeau said. “Beyond the brand, the product is incredibly slick, easy to use, and sets a gold standard for the next generation of consumer-fintech companies.”
Mercury: banking services for startups
Twitter
Startup: Mercury
Recommended by: Pejman Nozad, Pear VC
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $177.4 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Mercury provides banking services for startups.
Why it’s on the list: Banking is a major pain point for startups, and Mercury’s “product-first approach” is solving this problem, Nozad said. The fintech also benefited from a bump in customers after the fall of Silicon Valley Bank, and Mercury is now working to keep its new users around.
The startup, which last year jumped into the debt-lending game, raised a $120 million Series B funding round in 2021 with a $1.62 billion valuation.
Milo: AI-powered organizer app for parents
Accel
Startup: Milo
Recommended by: Sara Ittelson, Accel
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $5.2 million, according to the company
What it does: Milo is the AI-powered family-organizer app that generates reminders and calendar invites for parents after they input their notes and documents, all via text.
Why it’s on the list: AI is particularly useful for synthesizing “unstructured data,” Ittleson said, so applying it to help organize a parent’s calendar is a savvy use case. “Permission slips, sports game schedules, camp registrations, doctors appointments, birthday party invites — the barrage of content at parents comes in all directions and in all form factors,” she said.
Modulo Bio: treatments for neurodegenerative diseases
Eddie Eltoukhy
Startup: Modulo Bio
Recommended by: Eddie Eltoukhy, Pear VC
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $11.9 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Modulo develops treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, including ALS and dementia, and creates therapeutic drugs that can halt or reverse disease progression.
Why it’s on the list: The company has an innovative approach to developing drugs in the historically intractable area of neurodegenerative disorders, Eltoukhy said.
Neon: serverless PostgreSQL databases for developers
Greylock Partners
Startup: Neon
Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $54 million, according to the company
What it does: Neon gives developers the option to access PostgreSQL databases as a service without needing their own servers.
Why it’s on the list: By separating storage from compute, Neon offers autoscaling, branching, and bottomless storage for software developers at software-as-a-service companies to increase their engineering velocity while reducing costs, Chen said. Neon launched its serverless product in 2023 and already has landed partnerships with top cloud-computing companies including Vercel.
Next Insurance: Insurance for small businesses
CapitalG
Startup: Next Insurance
Recommended by: Jesse Wedler, CapitalG
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $881 million, according to the company
What it does: Next Insurance’s platform provides small businesses with insurance coverage.
Why it’s on the list: “Small businesses have been underserved historically by traditional insurance carriers who are focused on landing contracts with large customers, leaving this large tail market without access to the right coverage,” Wedler said. “Next Insurance leverages automation and AI to make the insurtech business model work for this small business segment.”
Nucleus Security: cybersecurity for companies
Avery Rosin
Startup: Nucleus Security
Recommended by: Avery Rosin, Lead Edge Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $23.1 million, according to the company
What it does: Nucleus Security manages cybersecurity for companies through one holistic platform.
Why it’s on the list: As cybersecurity remains a big risk for companies, Nucleus Security allows them to do more with less, Rosin said, thanks to its platform that filters out the most important notifications for review and handles the rest itself.
“Nucleus has been growing rapidly over the past few years, more than doubling every year, with many impressive enterprise accounts and a growing federal presence as well,” Rosin said of the startup, which raised a $20 million Series B funding round last year.
Octave: personalized mental health care
Greycroft
Startup: Octave
Recommended by: Ellie Wheeler, Greycroft
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $86 million, according to the company
What it does: Octave connects patients with targeted, personalized mental-health care, either virtually or in person in New York and San Francisco.
Why it’s on the list: Investors have been excited about Octave’s promise of accessible, targeted mental-health care. The startup recently closed a massive $52 million Series C round in May 2023 amid a dismal funding climate for growth-stage startups. The team also has plans to expand to more regions later this year, and nationwide in 2024, Wheeler said.
“The demand for mental-health services is as high as ever, and Octave focuses on meeting that need while ensuring that care is effective for the patient and sustainable for the provider,” she told Insider.
Orby AI: AI for repetitive work tasks
Arash Afrakhteh
Startup: Orby AI
Recommended by: Arash Afrakhteh, Pear VC
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $4.5 million, according to the company.
What it does: Orby’s generative-AI technology observes a user’s activities, identifies repetitive work steps, and automatically generates code that automates those tasks.
Why it’s on the list: Orby has a “world class team that has been executing on their vision of automating any repetitive tasks, leaving the innovation to humans and performing the mundane by machines. Large enterprises are adopting their robust AI solution,” Afrakhteh said.
Parallel Systems: electric vehicles for the freight rail industry
Twitter/@ScottNolan
Startup: Parallel Systems
Recommended by: Scott Nolan, Founders Fund
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $53 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Parallel Systems is electrifying and automating the freight-rail industry with its zero-emissions vehicles.
Why it’s on the list: Based in downtown Los Angeles, the company is doing “systems-level engineering to unlock a step function in performance and economics for a huge industry,” Nolan said. “The team is experienced in building hard engineering systems from their time at SpaceX and other great startups.”
Pinecone: AI vector database
Sai Senthilkumar
Startup: Pinecone
Recommended by: Sai Senthilkumar, Redpoint Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $138 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Pinecone is an AI-vector database for capturing and storing representations of unstructured data such as audio, images, and video.
Why it’s on the list: Senthikumar called Pinecone “the database for the AI revolution.” As AI and machine-learning models rapidly become more powerful, developers are feeding vastly more complex datasets into their models. Storing and managing these massive data assets, which don’t necessarily fit easily into traditional databases, has become a significant chokepoint for many startups. Pinecone’s products are designed to help developers deploy complex machine-learning applications at scale with ease. “It serves a crucial component of the next-generation AI infrastructure stack, fueling a range of use cases from object recognition to recommendation systems,” Senthilkumar said.
Pomelo: remittance payments and international money transfer service
GGV Capital
Startup: Pomelo
Recommended by: Hans Tung, GGV Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $60 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Pomelo makes it easy to send remittance payments and international money transfers and helps customers build a positive credit history at the same time.
Why it’s on the list: “Pomelo provides a fresh approach to cross-border remittances utilizing credit cards,” Tung said. “The company is scaling rapidly and is exploring new remittance corridors beyond the US into the Philippines.”
QA Wolf: quality assurance for software
(Courtesy of Lucy Deland)
Startup: QA Wolf
Recommended by: Lucy Deland, Inspired Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $20 million, according to the company
What it does: QA Wolf provides end-to-end tests to help companies with quality assurance and catch bugs before software releases to consumers.
Why it’s on the list: Though quality-assurance testing is necessary for all tech companies, it can be a huge time and resource suck. That’s where QA Wolf comes in: its full-service platform is a better option for companies’ QA needs.
“QA Wolf offers QA as a Service, getting companies to end-to-end test coverage in months and is a sustainable solution for tech companies both large and small,” Deland said.
The startup came out of stealth last fall with a $20 million Series A funding round.
Quanterra: climate ecosystem monitoring
Bessemer Venture Partners
Startup: Quanterra
Recommended by: Tess Hatch, Bessemer
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $140,000, according to PitchBook
What it does: Quanterra provides monitoring services for water, carbon, and energy flows to measure ecosystem health.
Why it’s on the list: Quanterra is making a name for itself in the climate-tech vertical thanks to its use of eddy covariance towers — a technology used to measure carbon-dioxide fluctuations at the treetop — to produce data on how gasses move in an ecosystem.
“This will be vital for the nature-based solution value chain, which currently lacks data on how much carbon dioxide stays in soils,” Hatch said, adding that the startup “produces eddy covariance towers and a software platform that is less than 20% the cost of traditional eddy covariance towers and 5x more robust and easy to maintain” all in an effort to find nature-based solutions that can combat the climate crisis.
Quince: direct-to-consumer ecommerce brand
GGV Capital
Startup: Quince
Recommended by: Hans Tung, GGV Capital
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $141 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Quince is a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand that sells apparel, home goods, and jewelry at discounted prices.
Why it’s on the list: “Quince is a fast-growing D2C e-commerce brand with innovative approach to supply chain to ensure highest quality products at lowest prices,” Tung said. “The company continues to expand into more retail categories and increase international sales presence.”
Ray Therapeutics: developing gene therapies for genetic diseases
Norwest Venture Partners
Startup: Ray Therapeutics
Recommended by: Tiba Aynechi, Norwest Venture Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $106 million, according to the company.
What it does: Ray Therapeutics is developing novel optogenetics gene therapies for patients with genetic diseases that cause blindness.
Why it’s on the list: “Norwest is passionate about improving access and outcomes for underserved populations. Ray Therapeutics shares that vision in their work developing new gene therapy medicines to address the unmet medical need of patients with inherited diseases that cause blindness,” Aynechi said.
Re-Leased: property management software
Insight Venture Partners
Startup: Re-Leased
Recommended by: AJ Malhotra, Insight Partners
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $10.1 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Re-Leased is a cloud-based software platform for landlords and property managers that allows them to track all relevant tasks and details from a single, cloud-enabled dashboard.
Why it’s on the list: Though Re-Leased offers services for property owners of all kinds, Malhotra sees the greatest potential for the product in the commercial real-estate sector, which COVID-19 and some companies’ embracing of remote work have devastated. “Insight is excited about the potential for a cloud-first solution like Re-Leased and is looking forward to tracking the company as they continue to scale,” Malhotra said.
Replicant: AI customer service
Atomic
Startup: Replicant
Recommended by: Chester Ng, Atomic
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $113 million, according to PitchBook.
What it does: Replicant uses AI to replicate a human customer-service agent and engage in natural and nuanced conversations to resolve customer-support issues.
Why it’s on the list: “During this seminal moment for AI, getting customers off being on hold forever is definitely what AI should be used for — saving costs for businesses while increasing their customer satisfaction,” Ng said. “Replicant is transforming the $1.3 trillion customer service industry by solving an urgent business need with proven ROI, brand-name customers, and an impressive growth trajectory.”
Replicate: run machine learning models on the cloud
Felicis
Startup: Replicate
Recommended by: Aydin Senkut, Felicis Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $17.9 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Replicate runs machine-learning models on the cloud with just a few lines of code.
Why it’s on the list: With Replicate, a company doesn’t need a team of experienced engineers to harness the power of AI and machine learning — and that promise has helped the startup sign up a “huge number of users in mere months,” Senkut said.
“Replicate lets you run machine-learning models with a cloud API without having to understand the intricacies of machine learning or manage your own infrastructure,” he said. “You can run open-source models that other people have published or package and publish your own models.”
Run:AI: software to boost GPU performance
Mike Bradley/Visualanties
Startup: Run:AI
Recommended by: Lonne Jaffe, Insight Partners
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $118 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: The Tel Aviv-based Run:AI helps companies do more with their graphics-processing units, allowing engineers to perform complex tasks, such as training language-learning models more quickly and for less.
Why it’s on the list: As the AI revolution continues apace, many companies are scrambling to amass the computing power needed to train and run AI models. And Run:AI’s software helps companies beef up that computing power. The company recently announced a partnership with Nvidia, the world’s leading producer of GPUs. “With the increasing use of GPUs for AI systems, the global GPU shortage and rationing, inflationary pressures, and the need for companies to reduce spend, there is extraordinary pent-up demand for their product,” Jaffe said.
Rupa Health: software for medicine practitioners
Eric Bahn/Hustle Fund
Startup: Rupa Health
Recommended by: Eric Bahn, Hustle Fund
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $43 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Rupa Health provides software for functional-medicine practitioners to manage lab ordering and other patient infrastructure.
Why it’s on the list: “As the US medical system becomes increasingly broken and expensive, American patients are taking their care into their own hands with alternative-medicine clinicians,” Bahn said. “Rupa is providing the modern infrastructure to allow these clinicians to serve their patients with the same kind of infrastructure in hospital systems.”
Truehold: homeowner sale-leaseback platform
Inspired Capital
Startup: Truehold
Recommended by: Mark Batsiyan, Inspired Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $63.8 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Truehold is a sale-leaseback platform for homeowners.
Why it’s on the list: Originally envisioned as a way to help seniors stay in their homes longer, Truehold provides a solution for homeowners who want to unlock the economic value of their property while continuing to live in the place they know and love. Under the sale-leaseback model, homeowners sell their property and lease it back from Truehold. It provides financial liquidity and logistical flexibility to those who may be over homeownership but not quite ready to uproot. “Truehold is an innovative solution to a wide-reaching (and growing) problem,” Batsiyan said.
Truepic: photo and video verification platform
Mike Bradley/Visualanties
Startup: Truepic
Recommended by: Lonne Jaffe, Insight Partners
Relationship: No financial Interest
Total funding: $36.4 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Truepic’s technology verifies and ensures the authenticity of photos and videos.
Why it’s on the list: Misinformation, a long-standing problem on the internet, has been supercharged by the rise of generative AI, which makes it harder to verify the authenticity of a photo or video. Truepic’s technology captures, signs, and seals critical details in a photo or video, such as date, time, location, and the true pixels captured. “Similar to ‘zero-trust networking’ in cybersecurity, ‘zero-trust authenticity’ like Truepic may become a key ingredient in enjoying the benefits of generative AI while mitigating some of the challenges,” Jaffe said.
Secureframe: automated security and compliance services
Kleiner Perkins
Startup: Secureframe
Recommended by: Josh Coyne, Kleiner Perkins
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $79 million, according to the company
What it does: Secureframe offers automated security-and-compliance services with AI.
Why it’s on the list: Secureframe is well-positioned to tackle the “deceptively large market” of cybersecurity thanks to Shrav Meta, the firm’s seasoned founder who’s worked on several unicorns such as Scale AI and Ramp.
“Secureframe has built an AI-powered platform that streamlines enterprise compliance adherence while continuously monitoring security postures and automatically remediating any gaps or vulnerabilities,” Coyne said.
The startup raised a $56 million Series B last year.
Superhuman: email app to streamline and automate inboxes
Eric Bahn/Hustle Fund
Startup: Superhuman
Recommended by: Eric Bahn, Hustle Fund
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $123 million, according to the company
What it does: Superhuman is an email app that has gained a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley. It allows users who pay $30 a month to streamline and automate their inboxes.
Why it’s on the list: “Superhuman saves its users several hours a week by providing a highly streamlined experience for handling emails at scale,” Bahn said. “Personally, this might be the most important piece of software I use every day. It gives me so much time back.”
Treat: generative AI for product photos
Greylock Partners
Startup: Treat
Recommended by: Mike Duboe, Greylock
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $8.5 million, according to the company
What it does: Treat uses generative AI to make customized product images for e-commerce brands based on targeted demographic data to create ads.
Why it’s on the list: “In the face of sweeping changes and headwinds across ad platforms over the past two years, great creative and accurate measurement are the last remaining sources of alpha for advertisers,” Duboe said about Treat’s specific combination of customer analytics and generative AI.
Treat has already claimed some noteworthy direct-to-consumer brands as customers, including the trendy cookware startup Caraway and the salon-quality hair-care brand Briogeo. Earlier this year, the startup raised an $8.5 million seed round, which Greylock Partners led.
Todyl: cloud-first security platform
Avery Rosin
Startup: Todyl
Recommended by: Avery Rosin, Lead Edge Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $33.9 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Todyl is a cloud-first security platform that makes it simple to implement an end-to-end program.
Why it’s on the list: Rosin said that when it comes to choosing a cybersecurity platform, one that offers a holistic approach, like Todyl — which raised $28 million last year — serves companies best.
“Cybersecurity affects every business, and the need for unified platforms is especially important in today’s environment where people have so many vendors offering disparate value,” he said. “As vendors consolidate and companies need to retain strong cybersecurity, Todyl will be well-positioned to grow its footprint and the value it provides to its partners and their customers.”
Unit: banking-as-a-service API
Courtesy of LearnVest
Startup: Unit
Recommended by: Alexa von Tobel, Inspired Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $168.9 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Unit is a banking-as-a-service API that companies can embed into their products.
Why it’s on the list: In many ways, financial services haven’t changed much in the past three decades. The infrastructure is clunky, compliance is a nightmare, and the same massive incumbents have dominated the industry for generations. With the landscape so ripe for disruption, more companies are looking to embed banking-and-payments services into their products. Von Tobel said that Unit “continues to drive momentum in building banking infrastructure, which is particularly important in this economic climate.” With tools and pre-built components designed to streamline technical integrations, banking partnerships, and compliance challenges, Unit makes it easier than ever for startups to offer robust financial services.
Vanta: platform to centralize company security needs
Twitter
Startup: Vanta
Recommended by: Pejman Nozad, Pear VC
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $203 million, according to the company
What it does: Vanta helps companies simplify and centralize their security needs.
Why it’s on the list: In the red-hot cybersecurity space, Vanta is another startup helping companies keep track of their security processes all in one place. The startup is now a leading trust-management platform focusing on companies both big and small, Nozad said.
“Thousands of companies rely on Vanta to build, maintain and demonstrate trust in a way that’s real-time and transparent,” he said. “They also launched Vanta Community for peer-to-peer support. From automating compliance to building the future of trust management, I’m confident the Vanta team is just getting started!”
WellSaid: AI for corporate presentations and ad campaigns
Norwest
Startup: WellSaid
Recommended by: Edward Yip, Norwest
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $12 million, according to the company
What it does: WellSaid uses AI to create corporate training presentations, advertising campaigns, and more.
Why it’s on the list: When accounting for recording, voice acting, and post-production, both internal and external company presentations can be costly and time-consuming. But WellSaid is using AI to cut down on the time and money traditionally associated with training presentations, advertising campaigns, and other use cases. Yip said the startup is a “top performing product” in the space.
Xilis: precision therapy technology for cancer patients
Eddie Eltoukhy
Startup: Xilis
Recommended by: Eddie Eltoukhy, Pear VC
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $94.8 million, according to the company.
What it does: Xilis is developing technology to guide precision therapy for cancer patients. The startup’s platform helps guide oncologists’ treatment decisions and allows for drug discovery and development with pharmaceutical companies.
Why it’s on the list: Xilis has strong pharmaceutical-partner traction, including a collaboration with the renowned Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and has been featured in top medical journals, Eltoukhy said.
