Sep 9, 2024

Abridge: AI transcription for doctors and providers Marisa Bass (left) is a principal at Primary, and Shravan Narayen is a partner at IVP. Primary; IVP Startup: Abridge Relationship: Primary has no financial interest in Abridge. IVP is an investor in Abridge. Total funding: $212.5 million What it does: Abridge's generative AI tech transcribes patient-doctor interactions and documents those visits in electronic health records. Why it's on the list: In February, Abridge raised a $150 million Series C round to continue developing its tech and relieve clinicians' administrative burdens as healthcare's labor crisis continues. Narayen and Bass highlighted Abridge's partnership with EHR giant Epic, which could help the startup gain more traction with hospitals this year. "Abridge has a lot of the necessary ingredients (capital, early commercial traction, strong ecosystem partners, high caliber team) to support provider workflows, help improve communication with patients while also serving as a scaled GenAI business, that could spur additional investment in the space," Bass said. Advertisement Relationship: Khosla is an investor in AliveCor. Total funding: $350 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: AliveCor helps people remotely manage their heart health with connected devices like personal electrocardiograms. Why it's on the list: In June, AliveCor launched its FDA-approved AI, which can detect 35 cardiac conditions including heart attacks. That AI will be powered by its new pocket-sized ECG to measure the electrical impulses of a patient's heart. "Because the device is compact and easy to use, this new device can be used in places that don't already have ECG machines on hand, and in particular, will accelerate decision-making around heart attacks," Morgan said. Advertisement Astasia Myers and Vivek Ramaswami Felicis; Madrona Startup: Braintrust Relationships: No financial interest; investor Total funding: $8.3 million, according to PitchBook What it does: Braintrust is the infrastructure stack for enterprise AI products. The company helps enterprise customers through the AI development process, supporting with evaluations, logging, data management, and prompting. Braintrust also provides customers with access to top AI models via an API. Why it's on the list: Braintrust is "critical infrastructure for leading technology companies like Zapier, Coda, Airtable, and Instacart" and "boosts AI accuracy by over 30%," said Narayen. "The founder and CEO Ankur Goyal is a second-time founder who sold his last company to Figma, where he then led AI," said Riley. "The speed at which he and the team have shipped products and the mindshare they have developed amongst leading builders in the AI community is truly unique." Advertisement Relationship: Investor What it does: An integrated platform for running the full AI stack Why it's on the list: Cake offers a library of ready-to-install components designed specifically for generative AI that allow developers to build and rebuild their AI infrastructure quickly and securely. From cloud providers to hardware to vector databases to large language models, Cake helps companies navigate the complex universe of AI tools and services and easily stitch them together into efficient systems. Though it may be less sexy than developing state of the art models, Cake is helping companies do the messy work of actually deploying AI. "One of the fastest growing companies in the Primary portfolio," said Citron. Advertisement Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures Cowboy Ventures Startup: Clay Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $66 million, according to Pitchbook. What it does: It helps teams enrich their data, automate personalizing outreach, and implement any idea for a go-to-market strategy. Why it's on the list: Clay just raised a new round of funding from Sequoia and Meritech, valuing the company at $500 million. "Clay allows users to run AI prompts on each cell within a spreadsheet, focusing on GTM," said Lee "Clay has consolidated onto one platform a process that used to require go-to-market teams to subscribe to many expensive data sources and write custom code." Advertisement Relationship: Investor Total funding: $32 million, according to Pitchbook. What it does: Allows organizations to ensure the security and compliance of their AI and GenAI systems. Why it's on the list: Cranium was developed within KPMG's startup studio and was eventually spun out. Last year, the company raised $25 million from Telstra Ventures with participation from KPMG. "They are on an incredible journey emerging from stealth in 2023 and spinning out of KPMG and securing $25M in Series A in October," York said. Advertisement Scott Beechuk Norwest Venture Partners Startup: Connect the Dots Relationship: Investor Total funding: Undisclosed. What it does: Connect the Dots is an AI-powered relationship management platform for sales teams. Its AI maps generate a list of warm introductions for sales development representatives, business development representatives, and account executives. Why it's on the list: "Software buyers are exhausted with cold inbound emails and calls -- relationship-based selling is the future of B2B sales," said Beechuk. The company's "professional relationship graph uses AI to determine 'who really knows who' in your network and chooses the best path into each buyer," said Beechuk. It generates ROI for customers within the first month of purchase, said Beechuk. Advertisement S. "Soma" Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group Madrona Venture Group Startup: Continua AI Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: Undisclosed What it does: Continua AI is developing what it calls "always-on, deeply integrated LLMs" to create personal AI assistants that augment individual productivity and help with everything from generating new ideas to recalling forgotten information. Why it's on the list: Continua is led by David Petrou, a longtime Google software engineer who has been steeped in AI for decades and who helped deploy machine learning capabilities on Android devices. 'Continua is redefining traditional search companies and leveraging LLMs to revolutionize how people interact with information, services, and each other," said Somasegar. Advertisement Meera Clark, principal, Redpoint Ventures Redpoint Ventures Startup: Cove Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Cove operates AI-driven coworking spaces. Why it's on the list: Backed by Thrive Capital and Elad Gil, Cove's founding team worked on the trust and safety team at Meta. "With its infinite canvas designed for collaboration, Cove offers consumers one of the most powerful thought partners and exploration experiences they've ever seen, which can be seamlessly applied across a broad range of projects and tasks," Clark said. Advertisement Astasia Myers and Jon Chu. Felicis; Khosla Ventures Startup: Datology Relationship: Felicis is an investor, Khosla has no financial interest Total funding: $57 million, according to Pitchbook. What it does: Datology helps companies identify the best data to train and fine tune their AI models. Why it's on the list: Earlier this year, Datalogy raised $46 million in new funding led by Felicis, with Elad Gil, M12, the Amazon Alexa fund, Amplify and Radical Ventures participating. Datology is helping to solve a core problem in the development large AI models, how to find and curate the best data for your particular task. "Models are what they eat. And Datology helps companies feed their ML models the best data," said Chu. Datology can help developers sift through petabytes of unlabeled data without humans in the loop, pulling out the raw material needed to turn an underperforming model into a more powerful technology. Advertisement Dave Zilberman Northwest Venture Partners Startup: Datavolo Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $21 million, according to the company. What it does: Datavolo helps customers access all their data, including the unstructured files that large language models rely on, and build secure multimodal data pipelines. Why it's on the list: Investors are buzzing about the "picks and shovels" that make artificial intelligence more powerful and easier for people to use. Datavolo does just that. "Most data pipeline solutions and gen AI models are based on structured data sets, but there's a plethora of unstructured data that's not being captured and used for model training," said Zilberman, who invests in enterprise and infrastructure. "Datavolo leverages an open-source solution called NiFi that the founders established many years ago, but now used for gen AI." Advertisement Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $35 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Decagon builds AI agents for customer support automation. Decagon's AI agents can respond to a range of support requests based on enterprise customers' workflows and data sources. The company also recommends improvements based on its AI-powered analytics. Why it's on the list: "Unlike many companies in the customer support space, Decagon moves past the traditional chatbot," said Riley. The company takes a " very differentiated AI-first approach which has allowed them to achieve early customer wins." Decagon works with companies like Rippling, Eventbrite, Motion, and Vanta. Advertisement Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $41 million, according to Pitchbook. What it does: Ezra's AI tech pairs with full-body MRI scans for early detection of health conditions like cancer. Why it's on the list: Deshpande highlighted Ezra's focus on preventive care, a rarity in the US healthcare system, and personalized access to health data. Ezra's tech is making MRI scans faster, too — the scans currently take thirty minutes, and CEO Emi Gal told Business Insider in February at the time of Ezra's $21 million Series B raise that the company is aiming to get that down to 10 minutes. Deshpande noted that the accuracy of Ezra's tech should continue to improve over time. Advertisement Fiat Ventures managing partner Marcos Fernandez. Fiat Ventures Startup: Finally Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Finally uses AI to provide automated bookkeeping software. Why it's on the list: Miami-based Finally recently raised $10 million in new funding and signing on 1,000 new businesses a month. "Finally has had incredible traction, growth and product development," Fernandez said. "The opportunity to provide a full-stack solution for the millions of SMBs in the United States gives Finally a clear path to becoming a Decacorn in the coming years." Advertisement 122 West Ventures co-founder AJ Solimine 122 West Ventures Startup: Gamma Relationship: Investor Total funding: $21.5 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Gamma is an AI-powered content creation tool for enterprise customers. The tool enables users to create presentations, websites, and documents quickly. Why it's on the list: "In just a few short years, Gamma has already amassed 18M+ users, 60M+ gammas created, and is profitable," said Solimine. "They are revolutionizing how individuals and businesses take ideas, create powerful content, and share it with colleagues and the world." Advertisement BoldSTART Ventures general partner Ed Sim Boldstart Ventures Startup: Glean Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Enterprise AI platform for all a company's data. Glean just raised $200 million from Kleiner Perkins and Lightspeed, and was reportedly valued at $2.2 billion. Customers include Sony Electronics and Databricks. Why it's on the list: "An early leader in the space, growing quickly with a highly differentiated product preserving the privacy and security of enterprise data while providing a ChatGPT- like experience to end users," Sim said. Advertisement Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Automatic stress testing of large language models. Why it's on the list: Haize promises to "robustify" any large language model through automated red-teaming that continuously stress tests and identifies vulnerabilities. As AI models become more powerful and perform tasks on a scale an order of magnitude beyond what a human mind alone can contain, the question of how to make sure they're secure becomes increasingly difficult to answer. "[It's a] novel technology and [Haize had] an amazing launch, led by a super smart founder with ambitions to build a generational company," said Citron. Advertisement Alex Kayyal Lightspeed Venture Partners Startup: HeyGen Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Uses generative AI to create videos. Why it's on the list: HeyGen recently raised $60 million in a new round of funding, which valued the startup at more than $500 million. "Content creation is being democratized by AI," said Kayyal. "HeyGen has built a truly incredible product that allows for mass personalization of video content at scale. The growth the company is experiencing is truly unprecedented." Advertisement Alex Kayyal Lightspeed Venture Partners Startup: Intenseye Relationship: Investor Total funding: $94 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: An AI-powered health and safety platform that uses computer vision to prevent workplace accidents. Why it's on the list: Earlier this year, Intenseye raised $64 million led by Lightspeed. "Nearly 3 million people die every year from workplace accidents," said Kayyal. "Intenseye is now processing over 20 billion images daily to in real-time to prevent such accidents, for companies like Heineken, Siemens, Unilever and AngloAmerican." Advertisement Startup: InWorld AI Relationship: Investor What it does: AI engine for gaming. Why it's on the list: AI gaming startup InWorld AI raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation last year. Other investors include Meta and Disney. The company boasts a huge roster of partnerships and customers, including Microsoft Xbox, Nvidia, Sony, Epic Games, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Roblox. This is the "best-funded and highest-valued AI gaming startup globally," according to Baier-Lentz, who adds InWorld is "using AI not only to make video games cheaper or easier to produce, but to create completely novel, previously impossible player experiences." Advertisement Navin Chaddha and Dave Munichiello. Mayfield; GV Startup: Langchain Relationship: No financial interest What it does: Langchain is a platform that helps developers construct LLM-powered apps. Why it's on the list: Earlier this year, Langchain raised $25 million in funding led by Sequoia at a $200 million valuation. LangChain has over 100K developers using its products to build AI apps. They are getting over 5 million monthly downloads, and over 50,000 apps have been built on their framework, Chadda explained. LangChain's open framework benefits from the force of the community; it keeps pace with the cutting edge, so that companies can too. With 100+ tool integrations, 60+ models supported, and easy adoption of the latest cognitive architectures, LangChain gives companies choice, flexibility, and a build-kit to move fast, said Chaddha. Advertisement Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $23 million, according to the company. What it does: Modal helps customers deploy code and large language models in the cloud, eliminating their need to set up cumbersome and costly infrastructure. Why it's on the list: Engineers at Ramp, Substack, and Suno use Modal to run some of their most data-intensive projects, while finance chiefs love it because customers pay only for the compute power they use. Chen calls Modal's solution "the next-generation infrastructure cloud." "Modal has won a new generation of developers not only in AI but cloud and data in general where they need to scale up and run large batch jobs or queues," Chen said. Advertisement Relationship: Investor What it does: Modular's system helps streamline the process of developing and deploying AI systems. Why it's on the list: Last year, Modular raised $100 million in fresh funding led by General Catalyst, with GV, SV Angel, Greylock and Factory participating. "Modular is the fastest way to run AI, period," said Munichiello. The company's MAX framework helps generative AI systems run more efficiently and more smoothly, allowing developers to get the most out of their hardware and their cloud providers. "With their vision for making AI accessible for all developers, Modular's co-founding team has attracted the best software compiler and AI infrastructure talent across the industry," added Munichiello. Advertisement Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures Cowboy Ventures Startup: Mutiny Relationship: Investor Total funding: $72 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: An account-based AI platform that helps companies unify sales and marketing to generate pipeline and revenue from their target accounts at scale. Why it's on the list: In 2022, Mutiny raised $50 million co-led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners at a $600 million valuation, according to TechCrunch. The startup has also raised funding from Sequoia Capital and Cowboy, and customers include Snowflake, 6sense, and Qualtrics. "Most marketing teams can't play a meaningful role in breaking through to target accounts because the 1:1 marketing strategies that work don't scale, and what scales doesn't work," Lee said. "Mutiny leverages AI to help B2B companies generate pipeline and revenue from their target accounts through AI-powered personalized experiences, 1:1 microsites, and account intelligence - which is more important than ever in the current software consolidation cycle / market and budget environment." Advertisement Felicis founder and managing partner Aydin Senkut Felicis Startup: Norm AI Relationship: No financial interest Total funding: $38 million, according to the company. What it does: Norm AI is the pocket tool of compliance officers. It uses generative artificial intelligence to identify and mitigate risks and automate some regulatory tasks. Why it's on the list: Norm AI brings together top lawyers, general counsels, regulatory gurus, and technologists with the mission of making life easier for chief compliance officers. "Compliance is an area that sorely needs AI solutions, and Norm is one of the most promising teams in this space," Senkut said. "They are pioneering research on how to get LLMs to follow the rules and be more reliable, privacy-enhanced, and able to follow specific legal guidance." Advertisement Ann Miura-Ko, cofounder and partner at Floodgate Floodgate Startup: Nox Relationship: No financial interest Why it's on the list: Founder Molly Cantillon dropped out of Stanford at 20 to develop Nox. "Nox is a personal AI company that is your personal assistant – garnering all the context needed to make you the most effective, proactive and productive in your day-to-day life," said Miura-Ko. "We are at an interesting inflection point at the intersection of data and AI especially with our own personal data. Molly, [Nox's founder] has captured the ability to seamlessly understand the consumer with all of the necessary context to fulfill daily tasks. Advertisement Chris Morales is a defense tech partner at Point 72 Ventures. Point 72 Ventures Startup: Overland AI Relationship: Investor What it does: Developer of autonomous navigation for off-road autonomous vehicles, specifically for defense. Why it's on the list: The startup was founded just last year, but it's already gaining traction with the Department of Defense, which has awarded it several contracts, Morales said. Overland's autonomy software called OverDrive, was designed to control uncrewed vehicles in any terrain and "purpose-built for defense applications," Morales said. "Through its work with DARPA and the U.S. Army, Overland AI is building intelligent capabilities to power modern ground operations, now and for decades to come," he added. Advertisement BoldSTART Ventures general partner Ed Sim Boldstart Ventures Startup: Protect AI Relationship: Investor What it does: Security for AI and machine learning Why it's on the list: Last year, Protect AI raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Acrew Capital, boldstart ventures and others. Prior to founding Protect AI, co-founders Ian Swanson and Daryan Dehghanpisheh worked at AWS and Oracle. "Protect AI is the platform for AI and ML Security. Protect AI is the broadest and most comprehensive platform to secure your AI. It enables you to see, know, and manage security risks to defend against unique AI security threats, and embrace MLSecOps for a safer AI-powered world," said Sim. "Amazing team, amazing product, ramping up customer base quickly," Sim said. "This is one of the most important areas of AI." Advertisement Basis Set Ventures founder Xuezhao Lan Basis Set Ventures Startup: Sakana AI Relationship: Investor Total funding: $155 million, according to PitchBook What it does: Sakana is an AI research lab building a foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence. Why it's on the list: Founded by two former Google AI researchers, Sakana was recently rumored to be valued at $1 billion in a new funding round. "This is one of the strongest research teams out there building for the next-gen, nature-inspired AI in Asia," Xuezhao said. Advertisement Relationship: Investor What it does: Sema4.ai is building enterprise AI agents that can reason, collaborate, and act. Why it's on the list: During its launch out of stealth, the company announced $30.5 million in funding from Mayfield and Benchmark, along with the acquisition of open-source automation leader, Robocorp. Sema4.ai says it's trying to close the "automation gap" within companies, whereby skilled knowledge workers have to fill the gaps left by AI-powered systems that are "all talk, no action." The company is developing AI agents that can move beyond simple repetitive tasks and actually solve real-world problems, taking into account the unique context of the organization and working seamlessly with existing teams. "The company paves the way for enterprises to realize the full potential of AI," says Chaddha. Advertisement Relationship: Investor Total funding: $36 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Uses an AI agentic approach to hunt and investigate cyber threats in a security operations center. Why it's on the list: Seven AI recently raised $26 million from Greylock, and was reportedly valued at over $100 million. "Seven AI uses an AI agentic approach to hunt and investigate cyber threats in a security operations center (SOC). GenAI is transforming the attack landscape, allowing attackers to probe defenses and replicate attacks at a scale not seen before. Fighting this level of AI requires AI," said Risch. "There is a significant shortage of cybersecurity professionals in the US and globally, leaving security operations teams understaffed to deal with the inundation of alerts - timely and effective triage is nearly impossible manually," Risch said. Advertisement Relationship: Investors What it does: Slang.ai uses conversational AI to improve customer service. Why it's on the list: Hundreds of restaurants are using Slang's technology to power their phones, according to Fast Company. The startup's backers include Homebrew, Stage 2 Capital, Wing VC, Underscore VC, Active Capital and Collide Capital. "There are tailwinds around small businesses needing voice support but not being able to afford it," Hollins said. The founder is incredible, and he is effectively creating the SquareSpace for voice, so you can turn it on in a week instead of months, at a fraction of the cost." Advertisement Ann Miura-Ko is a top seed investor. Courtesy Startup: SmarterDx Relationship: Investor Total funding: $71 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: SmarterDx is a clinical AI company that discovers, delivers and drives revenue and care for hospital systems. Why it's on the list: "SmarterDx's clinical AI is solving an issue that has been complex for many years in healthcare," said TK. "Their technology's ability to unlock 'found' revenue becomes a no-brainer for hospital systems. The team, led by Michael Gao, also makes us incredibly excited for a company that is still just getting started. Mike and Josh are not just technologists but also former clinical leaders – enabling them to bring a first-hand experience that hospital systems appreciate." Advertisement Hustle Fund co-founder Elizabeth Yin Hustle Fund Startup: Superwhisper Relationship: No financial interest Why it's on the list: Yin said Superwhisper's AI capabilities for offline audio transcription and copyediting can dramatically speed up the writing process. "What used to take me hours to write a blog post, I can now do in less than 30 minutes with a combination of talking and proofreading the article Superwhisper creates," she said. Advertisement S. "Soma" Somasegar, managing director at Madrona Venture Group Madrona Venture Group Startup: Typeface AI Relationship: Investor Total funding: $165 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Typeface develops multi-modal generative AI tools to create customer-facing content that aligns with a company's brand identity and voice. Why it's on the list: Since its founding in 2022, the company has soared to a billion-dollar valuation and built partnerships with some of tech's biggest companies, including Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce. Somasegar calls it "truly one of the first generative AI companies for the enterprise." Advertisement Relationship: Investor Total funding: $68 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Unstructured is an open-source product that makes messy, unstructured data available for use in LLMs and vector databases. Why it's on the list: Unstructured's open source product is well-loved by developers at large and small companies like MongoDB, Langchain, Weaviate and many others, says Ramaswami. "Unstructured takes the 80% of data that lives in messy, complex, hard-to-use formats (think PDFs, CSVs, HTML etc) and makes that data accessible for use inside LLMs and vector databases," he said. "They are quickly getting adoption within enterprises and become a key part of the AI developer stack. The reason it is special in 2024 is because every enterprise is trying to figure out how best to leverage its proprietary data for use in LLMs, and Unstructured is helping make that happen." Advertisement Larsen Jensen, founder and general partner of Harpoon Ventures. Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures Startup: Vannevar Labs Relationship: No financial interest What it does: The startup develops AI-powered tools that analyze battlefield data. Why it's on the list: " In 2024, Vannevar continues to innovate with AI-driven, defense-industry-focused software suites, expanding its deployment across military bases and focusing on team growth to support advanced AI-driven products for battlefield intelligence and operational security, aiming to enhance real-time decision-making and counter-threat capabilities to bolster national security," Jensen said. Advertisement Homebrew founding partner Satya Patel Homebrew Startup: Windborne Systems Relationship: No financial interest. Total funding: $24.87 million, according to PitchBook. What it does: Windborne Systems is building a AI-powered weather forecasting program that accounts for climate change. Why it's on the list: Founded by a team of Stanford graduates, Windborne recently raised $15 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures. "I think Windborne is exciting because it is tackling a massive problem in a manner which could be incredibly cost-effective and scalable," Patel said. "There are massive uses for more accurate weather data, across agriculture, transportation, insurance, defense and almost every other industry." Advertisement