85 of the most promising startups of 2024, according to top VCs

Startup: Abridge

Recommended by: Marisa Bass, Primary Venture Partners; Shravan Narayen, IVP

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.

Startup: Airbuds

Recommended by: Alexia Bonatsos, Dream Machine

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: Not disclosed

What it does: Airbuds allows you to ambiently share music with friends.

Why it's on the list: "Gen Z especially finds identity in fandoms," said Bonatsos. "Airbuds has built the beginnings of an interest-based social graph, and it's just getting started with music."

Startup: Air Space Intelligence

Recommended by: Renata Quintini, Renegade Partners

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $222.28 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: AI-powered operating system for aerospace and defense

Why it's on the list: "Their platform helps the world's most complex air operations make better, faster, and more data driven decisions," Quintini said. "ASI had already established itself as the market leader with domestic airlines, working with several major US carriers in mission-critical capacities." The startup has also made progress this year toward "larger scale deployments with the DoD," Quintini said, opening up a US-based engineering hub and hiring talent for this endeavor, she added.

Startup: AliveCor

Recommended by: Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures

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.

Startup: Anrok

Recommended by: Amit Kumar, Accel

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $51.9 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Anrok automates sales tax compliance for SaaS companies. It helps companies track where they have sales tax exposure and collect the right amounts from end customers during checkout. Anrok also helps companies file returns easily.

Why it's on the list: "Anrak is following the classic API playbook; abstracting away a surprisingly complex yet necessary piece of infrastructure into its own layer," said Kumar. They're "making it about as developer and user-friendly as possible."

Startup: Avian Labs

Recommended by: Seth Rosenberg, Greylock

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Unknown

What it does: Global venmo using stablecoins.

Why it's on the list: "It's an amazing real-world use case for crypto and a clean product," Rosenberg said.

Startup: BeatBread

Recommended by: Dan Kimerling, Deciens

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $134 million, according to the company

What it does: BeatBread allows independent artists to receive advances on their music income from streaming and airplay and shop funding offers from investors, distributors, and indie labels.

Why it's on the list: BeatBread has provided over 1,000 advances to artists and indie labels over the past four years. It's now deepening its partner network with deals to provide small labels with more ways to fund artists and give artists more control over publishing.

Kimerling said it's an "exhilarating period for the company," which uses machine learning to analyze and predict revenue potential for music rather than "subjective artistic evaluations."

"This also puts the control back in artists' hands," he said, "as it unbundles capital from services and enables artists to pick who they want to work with for all aspects of their business."

Startup: Braintrust

Recommended by: Shravan Narayen, IVP

Relationship: No financial interest

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 Narayan.

Startup: Browserbase

Recommended by: Vivek Ramaswami, Madrona, and Astasia Myers, Felicis

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $6 million, according to Pitchbook.

What it does: Browserbase is a platform for running headless browsers at scale.

Why it's on the list:

"Everyone is talking about AI Agents, but in order for agents to actually be able to browse the web like a human, better infrastructure is required," said Ramawami. "Browserbase is helping to build that infrastructure, revolutionizing a small, some might even say boring, technology with potentially massive implications. The reason it is special in 2024 is because they are laying the groundwork for AI Agents to proliferate."

Startup: Cake AI

Recommended by: Tobias Citron, Primary

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: Undisclosed

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.

Startup: Castelion

Recommended by: Jackson Moses, Silent Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $14.14 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: Castelion designs, tests, and manufactures next-generation military systems quickly and at scale with the idea that these arsenals will deter future conflicts. The startup is first focusing on developing long-range strike hypersonic weapons, which can travel at least five times the speed of sound and evade traditional defense systems.

Why it's on the list: The defense tech startup was founded in 2022 and has quickly gained steam in developing a hypersonic weapon. In March, Castelion had a successful test launch of a prototype of its hypersonic test platform."Castelion's founding team has gone from concept to real world testing of advanced hardware in a matter of month," Moses said. "Unlike legacy contractors that spend years and $billions on R&D, Castelion is building much needed hypersonic missiles in weeks to fill the glaring gap in America's arsenal (and at a fraction of the cost)."

Startup: Certiverse

Recommended by: Samara Hernandez, Chingona Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $8 million, according to Pitchbook.

What it does: Helps companies launch certification exams faster.

Why it's on the list: "They are in an outdated industry that not many want to touch, and the founder has incredible expertise," said Hernandez. "They are super under the radar but have been growing exponentially."

Startup: Charlie Health

Recommended by: Alex Morgan, Khosla Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Not disclosed

What it does: Charlie Health provides intensive outpatient mental health services to teens and young adults online.

Why it's on the list: Charlie Health is tackling the US's worsening youth mental health crisis at a time when adolescent mental health specialists are few and far between, Morgan noted.

He pointed to Charlie Health's partnership with health system Houston-based Memorial Hermann, announced earlier this year — the nonprofit Mental Health America ranked Texas last in the nation in 2023 for access to mental health services. Charlie Health has also notched deals with other startups like Talkiatry and Mantra Health.

Startup: Clay

Recommended by: Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures

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."

Startup: Cranium

Recommended by: Kyle York, York IE

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: Kratom 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.

Startup: CloudZero

Recommended by: Lily Lyman, Underscore VC

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $56 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: Engineering teams rely on CloudZero's cloud-cost management dashboard to see what they're spending, who is driving spending, and how to optimize it.

Why it's on the list: Every software company faces pressure to bring cloud spending in line amid a pullback in funding. That's where CloudZero comes in. Lyman, an investor, says the company has consistently grown and beat targets over the past eight quarters.

"With the increased pressure on budgets and the rising costs of integrating AI into enterprise software products, Cloudzero is the only company that can help engineering teams and finance teams manage cloud spend in real time," said Lyman. "They have an exceptional team, great investor group … and extremely good culture and very strong employee NPS."

Startup: Coast

Recommended by: Amit Kumar, Accel

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $123 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: Coast is a card payments platform for fuel and fleet expenses. The company's expense management software enables fleet operators to gain visibility into spend as well as reduce fraud and abuse.

Why it's on the list: The Coast team has built a flexible and reliable fleet card that has already won over thousands of customers, said Kumar. "It helps businesses by providing greater ease, visibility, and control through a platform where they can manage their entire fleet at a glance."

Startup: Connect the Dots

Recommended by: Scott Beechuk, Norwest Venture Partners

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.

Startup: Continua AI

Recommended by: S. Somasegar, Madrona

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.

Startup: Cove

Recommended by: Meera Clark, Redpoint Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $18.4 million, per Pitchbook

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.

Startup: Datology

Recommended by: Astasia Myers, Felicis and Jon Chu, Khosla Ventures

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.

Startup: Datavolo

Recommended by: Dave Zilberman, Northwest Venture Partners

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."

Startup: Decagon

Recommended by: Corinne Riley, Greylock

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.

Startup: Diagrid

Recommended by: Dave Zilberman, Northwest Venture Partners

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $24 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Diagrid helps developers be more productive by providing tools and APIs for building cloud-native applications.

Why it's on the list: Before they founded Diagrid, Mark Fussell and Yaron Schneider were at Microsoft and created Dapr, an open-source project for developers to build microservices on top of Kubernetes. Their new company aims to eliminate the hassle of managing Dapr in production.

"With 5 million Kubernetes developers in the world, Diagrid (combined with Dapr) enables millions more to harness the potential of distributed systems and build on Kubernetes," said Zilberman, whose firm led a $20 million round in 2022. "They've made huge strides over the last two years to democratize software development and support its thriving developer community."

Startup: Distributional

Recommended by: Scott Beechuk, Norwest Venture Partners

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $11 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Distributional is a testing and evaluation platform for enterprise AI. The company strives to make AI safe and reliable by automating AI testing.

Why it's on the list: "The Continuous Integration pipeline for software is not designed for modern AI code development," said Beechuk. "Distributional is building a developer-focused system to automate the testing of AI code to help developers stay within guardrails that are important to their business."

Startup: Enveda Biosciences

Recommended by: Ben Hemani, Bison Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $230 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Enveda is leveraging AI to discover and develop new drugs from plants.

Why it's on the list: In June, Enveda grew its war chest with another $55 million in funding from new investors, including Microsoft. It plans to use the funds to invest further in research and development and to advance several drug candidates to clinical trials later this year.

"The company is led by a visionary founder, Dr. Viswa Colluru, who brings rare experience in building a true AI-enabled biotech platform from his time at Recursion," Hemani said.

Startup: Ezra

Recommended by: Sara Deshpande, Maven Ventures

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.

Startup: Factored Quality

Recommended by: Zach Fredericks, Primary

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $7.7 million, according to Pitchbook.

What it does: Factored Quality is a quality control and assurance management tool that brings all quality and compliance operations together in a single platform

Why it's on the list: Factored Quality, which counts Brooklinen and the The Honest Company as clients, has raised over $7 million in funding from Y Combinator, Vinyl Capital and others.

"They use a tech-enabled services business that most companies need to build a unique and valuable database of vendor quality around the world," said Fredericks.

Startup: Farcaster

Recommended by: AJ Solimine, Script Capital

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $180 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Farcaster is a decentralized social networking protocol and powers the social network Warpcast. Warpcast users can create profiles and engage with the community, and developers can build new apps on top of the Farcaster protocol.

Why it's on the list:

Founded by two former Coinbase employees, Farcaster just raised $150 million in new funding led by Paradigm.

"As our personal data becomes the new monetizable oil of the internet, it's imperative that everyone take control of their data," said Solimine. "The current systems for storing and sharing data grant almost unlimited power to a concentrated few companies and people." Farcaster aims to help developers create "a plethora of application experiences that can flourish outside the control of the Facebook, Google, and Apple oligopoly."

Startup: Felix Pago

Recommended by: Gabby Cazeau, Harlem Capital

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $23.9 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Felix Pago uses blockchain technology to facilitate cross-border payments.

Why it's on the list:

Felix Pago recently raised $15.5 million in Series A funding.

"They focus on facilitating Remittances from workers in the U.S. to their families and friends in Latin America," Cazeau said. "Remittances are a huge business and traditional providers take large fees that cut into how much money people can send to each other. Felix is built on the blockchain and uses stablecoins which allows them to save on FX fees and which they can pass to users"

Startup: Finally

Recommended by: Marcos Fernandez, Fiat Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $108.2 million, per Pitchbook.

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."

Startup: Fintary

Recommended by: Henri Pierre-Jacques, Harlem Capital

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $2 million, according to Crunchbase.

What it does: Revenue and payout platform for the insurance industry.

Why it's on the list: Powered by AI, the startup's platform aims to streamline finance operations in insurance businesses. "They have grown 10x+ since our investment last fall and their customers love them," Pierre-Jacques said. "The quick ramp has been one of the fastest we've seen for a pre-seed company."

Startup: Firestorm

Recommended by: Jackson Moses, Silent Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $17.14 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Firestorm is part of San Diego's booming defense tech ecosystem, building modular, 3D-printed drones that can operate autonomously and perform predetermined missions on the battlefield. Through its novel edge-manufacturing platform, xCell, the startup allows those deployed in combat zones to order, build, and quickly receive these aircraft on demand.

Why it's on the list: Launched in 2022, Firestorm has been building steady funding momentum among investors, riding a current wave of defense tech enthusiasm as the startup raises its Series A round. "Firestorm has demonstrated an uncanny ability to move fast across product development and DoD contracting," said Moses. "The founding team routinely surpasses its deliverables and correctly strategizes around future DoD requirements, creating new enablement standards in the process."

Startup: Flex

Recommended by: Eric Bahn, Hustle Fund

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $128.98 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Flex is an end-to-end financial platform targeting small businesses and mid-market companies. The Flex Credit Card offers 0% interest for 60 days to customers, and Flex integrates banking, payments, and expense management software to automate customers' backoffice operations.

Why it's on the list: "Flex elegantly unifies banking, payments, and expense management for businesses," said Bahn. "It is one of the financial institutions that have been aggressively expanding their lending operations, with simple Net-60 credit products for its clients."

Startup: Gamma

Recommended by: AJ Solimine, Script Capital

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:

Gamma recently raised a $12 million round led by Accel.

"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."

Startup: Gecko Robotics

Recommended by: Chris Morales, Point 72 Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $222.28 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Builds robots that inspect critical infrastructure.

Why it's on the list: The startup's products include wall-climbing robots that use high-definition visual cameras and other sensors along with AI to determine the state of infrastructure like power plants and oil and gas facilities. Morales said Gecko Robotics is also working with the Navy to determine the structural integrity of its ships.

Startup: Glean

Recommended by: Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $356 million, according to PitchBook

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.

Startup: Greenlite

Recommended by: Seth Rosenberg, Greylock

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $4.8 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Automates compliance for enterprise fintechs and banks using AI.

Why it's on the list: "Greenlite has seen exceptional customer demands with enterprise banks and fintechs, and has proven one of the few enterprise-grade applications for generative AI — automating tedious compliance workflows like alert handling, periodic reviews and document processing, improving efficiency and reducing human error," Rosenberg said.

Startup: GreenPlaces

Recommended by: Meera Clark, Redpoint Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $17.98 million, per Pitchbook

What it does: GreenPlaces helps small businesses be more sustainable.

Why it's on the list:

Last year, Greenplaces raised $13 million Series A funding, from Redpoint Ventures, Felicis, Tishman Speyer Ventures, and Bull City Venture Partners

"While software in this space has traditionally focused on the largest businesses in the world, GreenPlaces is purpose-built for the broad base of companies (think those with 100–10,000 employees) who comprise the majority of global emissions but today lack sufficient resources to dedicate towards sustainability," Clark said.

Startup: Grow Therapy

Recommended by: Chris Farmer, SignalFire

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $178 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Grow Therapy helps therapists start and run their own practices, and provides virtual and in-person mental healthcare to patients.

Why it's on the list: "Grow handles the busy work like credentialing, billing, scheduling, note-taking, and follow-ups so therapists can focus on their patients and control their own schedule instead of being overworked and underpaid at someone else's practice," Farmer said.

"It gets therapists' work covered by insurance, democratizing access to patients who can't pay out of pocket. And Grow helps therapists expand their business by listing them on every marketplace including their own that uses AI to match them with patients, reducing burnout for therapists by letting them concentrate on care for conditions they truly understand."

Startup: Haize Labs

Recommended by: Tobias Citron, Primary

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Undisclosed.

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.

Startup: Helaina

Recommended by: Marisa Bass, Primary Venture Partners

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $38 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Helaina is a food science startup developing bioactive proteins to meet the nutritional needs of both children and adults and improve overall health.

Why it's on the list: This year, Helaina launched its flagship product, a protein found in breast milk that aims to improve immune function, gut health, and iron utilization.

Helaina is "on the precipice of breakout potential," Bass said, adding that the startup is currently negotiating nearly $200 million of commercial contracts with adult nutrition and infant formula manufacturers.

Startup: Helion

Recommended by: Chris Farmer, SignalFire

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $608 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Helion is developing nuclear fusion technology to produce low-cost, clean energy using fuel derived from water.

Why it's on the list: "Through newly pioneered fusion energy breakthroughs in plasma physics that have yet to be scaled up and brought to market, Helion could generate virtually limitless, carbon-free energy," Farmer said.

Big Tech is buying into Helion's vision already — Microsoft signed a deal last year to buy energy from Helion's first fusion power plant beginning in 2028. The Sam Altman-backed startup is also reportedly in talks with OpenAI to power the AI giant's data centers, Farmer noted.

Startup: Hello Heart

Recommended by: Sara Deshpande, Maven Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $138 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Hello Heart's app, paired with a connected blood pressure monitor, helps patients manage their cardiovascular health at home.

Why it's on the list: Hello Heart "was a very early pioneer in AI-driven health insights since inception; this year, they've continued to strengthen their leadership team while growing impressively across all business metrics and helping improve the health of their customers," Deshpande said.

The startup now boasts more than 100 customers, from employers and health plans to governments and labor unions, Deshpande said. She pointed to a May study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association that found usage of Hello Heart program helped patients reduce their blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight.

Startup: HeyGen

Recommended by: Alex Kayyal, Lightspeed

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $65.6 million, according to Pitchbook.

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."

Startup: Intramotev

Recommended by: Brian Hollins, Collide Capital

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $12.74 million, per PitchBook.

What it does: Intramotev is developing autonomous, electric cargo trains.

Why it's on the list:

Earlier this year, Intramotev debuted the first battery-electric self-propelled railcar.

"They're going to change the entire industry in the next decade, and and are about four years in and finally starting to see real traction," Hollins said. "I think they could be a generational company that no one cares about today, but will tomorrow!"

Startup: Intenseye

Recommended by: Alex Kayyal, Lightspeed

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."

Startup: InWorld AI

Recommended by: Moritz Baier-Lentz, Lightspeed

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $120 million, according to PitchBook

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."

Startup: Jaan Health

Recommended by: Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $12 million

What it does: Jaan Health offers text-based care coordination for patients with chronic conditions and their providers.

Why it's on the list: Jaan Health's software, called Phamily, helps reduce the labor and cost burdens associated with chronic condition management, Yin said.

"There's a lot of talk about AI, but Jaan Health is a poster child for how AI can help people. To date, they've automated millions of messages to patients, reducing work for providers to increase care at lower time and monetary cost," she said.

Startup: Jellyfish

Recommended by: Lily Lyman, Underscore VC

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $117 million, according to the company.

What it does: Jellyfish is an engineering leader's copilot, giving them visibility into what their teams are working on and how they operate. The goal is to equip engineering leaders with data and insights to ensure the software that gets built aligns with the business's priorities.

Why it's on the list: Jellyfish brings together repeat founders from Endeca, a Boston company that sold to Oracle for $1 billion in 2011, around a product likened to Salesforce for engineering.

The Boston-based Lyman says chief executive Andrew Lau "is defining a new category of engineering management." She added that Jellyfish has attracted tier-one investors like Accel and is "one of the hottest startups in the growth stage coming out of Boston."

Startup: K2 Space

Recommended by: Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $65.93 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Building "mega class" satellites.

Why it's on the list: Founded by brothers Neel and Karan Kunjur, K2 Space is building what it calls mega-class satellite buses—the physical structure of a spacecraft that provides power, movement, and other functions. K2's satellite is bigger yet cheaper to build and sized to fit bigger rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9 and other heavy and super-heavy rockets yet to come to market, such as SpaceX's Starship.

Earlier this year, K2 raised $50 million in new funding and expects to launch its first satellite on a demonstration mission later this year, CNBC reported.

"The company is building the world's largest satellites for a future when SpaceX's Starship removes mass constraints," Asparouhov said. "The future of GEO satellites will be the K2 form factor by the end of the decade, and these capabilities are a national security priority."

Startup: Langchain

Recommended by: Navin Chaddha, Mayfield, and Dave Munichiello, GV

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $35 million, according to PitchBook.

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.

Startup: LeadSales

Recommended by: Henri Pierre-Jacques, Harlem Capital

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $4.1 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: CRM tool for WhatsApp

Why it's on the list: Users of LeadSales can filter all of their inbound Whatsapp inquiries from customers and potential customers into neatly organized columns. The Mexican startup is positioning itself as the mobile commerce market in Latin America takes off.

"The business has grown significantly since we passed on the investment and retention of customers has expanded showing a stickier product," Pierre-Jacques said. " It is clear they are solving an underserved market for SMBs on WhatsApp."

Startup: Loft Labs

Recommended by: Jon Chu, Khosla Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $28.7 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Loft Labs maintains an OSS project called vCluster, which virtualizes kubernetes clusters, which allows for more efficient clusters that are faster, simpler, and cheaper to manage.

Why it's on the list: The startup recently raised $24 million in new funding led by Khosla Ventures.

"Loft figured out the next level of virtualization and the promise is already so compelling that vCluster has been pulled into Fortune 500 companies," said Chu.

Startup: Lyric

Recommended by: Zach Fredericks, Primary

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $9.4 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Decision intelligence software that helps supply chain organizations build custom AI applications.

Why it's on the list: "I believe that all critical supply chain decisions will be made with best in class data science and AI going forward, but in order to do so, companies will need the tools to make that easy," said Fredericks. "Lyric levels the playing field by making it faster, cheaper and easier than ever to make AI applications work for supply chain."

Startup: Modal

Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock

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.

Startup: Modular

Recommended by: Dave Munichiello, GV

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $130 million, according to PitchBook.

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.

Startup: Mutiny

Recommended by: Aileen Lee, Cowboy Ventures

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."

Startup: Nominal

Recommended by: Renata Quintini, Renegade Partners

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $27.5 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Develops software for defense tech hardware like drones and satellites.

Why it's on the list: Led by former submarine officer Cameron McCord who served in the US Navy, the startup in April came out of stealth with a $27 million funding round. McCord also worked at Anduril and was most recently an investor at Lux Capital. Nominal's software helps engineers manage the complex workflows of testing and developing hardware system in the aerospace, defense and industrial spaces, Quintini said.

Startup: Norm AI

Recommended by: Aydin Senkut, Felicis

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."

Startup: Nox

Recommended by: Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Undisclosed

What it does: a personalized AI assistant.

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 TK. "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.

Startup: Nucleus

Recommended by: Delian Asparouhov, Founders Fund

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $17.5 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: Developing a whole genome sequencing test to assess a person's risk of certain diseases

Why it's on the list: With investors like Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six and Founders Fund, the startup raised initial funding to create an all-in-one DNA test harnessing whole genome sequencing. Nucleus promises a detailed analysis of one's DNA, combined with their health traits, to determine their risk of certain diseases. The cost of sequencing a whole genome has decreased exponentially, but consumer genetic insights have stagnated, says Asparouhov.

"Leveraging this precipitous decrease in cost, as well as new disease risk and trait models, Nucleus is reimagining how people engage with their DNA and health," he said. "Having secured key collaborations with leading healthcare companies, Nucleus launched the first clinical-grade whole genome sequencing test this year and has already attracted a strong early user base."

Startup: Overland AI

Recommended by: Chris Morales, Point 72 Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $20.1 million, according to PitchBook.

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.

Startup: Protect AI

Recommended by: Ed Sim, Boldstart Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $48.5 million, according to Pitchbook

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."

Startup: Restate

Recommended by: Jordan Segall, Redpoint Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $7 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Restate ensures that distributed applications are reliable and can handle a variety of failure scenarios. The company has "workflows as code" for a range of use cases, such as serverless task queues and event processing, workflows, service orchestration, and microservice architectures.

Why it's on the list: "When you have a distributed application full of hundreds of different services and functions speaking with one another via asynchronous workflows, a lot can go wrong," said Segall. "Restate makes it easy to build resilient distributed applications via its unique durable execution architecture." The company was founded by three of the original creators of Apache Flink, an open-source stream-processing product.

Startup: Retro

Recommended by: Alexia Bonatsos, Dream Machine

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $9 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: a photo journaling and sharing app for close friends.

Why it's on the list: Founded by two former Instagram employees, Retro has raised seed funding from Thrive Capital, Dylan Field, Scribble Ventures, and Box Group.

"Retro is a well-crafted consumer social app, and is focused on friends, while the big platforms pivot to entertainment," said Bonatsos.

Startup: Sakana AI

Recommended by: Lan Xuezhao, Basis Set Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $155 million, per 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.

Startup: Sema4.ai

Recommended by: Navin Chaddha, Mayfield

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $54 million, according to PitchBook

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.

Startup: Seven AI

Recommended by: Jason Risch, Greylock

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.

Startup: Shack15

Recommended by: Eric Bahn, Hustle Fund

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Undisclosed

What it does: Shack15 is a social club in San Francisco popular among tech workers, founders, and VCs. Shack15 has a coworking space and hosts a range of events including fireside chats and conferences. The community also has an angel fund that invests in AI and deep tech startups, according to the company's website.

Why it's on the list: "Over the past several years, Shack15 has quietly emerged as one of the most important social centers of Silicon Valley. It's now the home to countless venture capitalists, founders (especially AI), and builders of all kinds," said Bahn. "Shack15 will no doubt spawn many future unicorns, all while encouraging its calm, kind vibes among its membership."

Startup: Slang.ai

Recommended by: Brian Hollins, Collide Capital and Satya Patel, Homebrew

Relationship: Investors

Total funding: $20.57 million, per PitchBook.

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."

Startup: SmarterDx

Recommended by: Ann Miura-Ko, Floodgate

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."

Startup: Solugen

Recommended by: Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $640.45 million, according to PitchBook

What it does: The startup uses biotechnology to make chemicals in an environmentally friendly way.

Why it's on the list: The Houston-based startup launched in 2016 and has developed a manufacturing platform dubbed Bioforge. That platform uses bioengineered enzymes and metal catalysts to convert sugars into chemicals typically made from fossil fuels like petroleum and natural gas.

Earlier this year, Solugen broke ground on a new biomanufacturing facility in Marshall, Minnesota, adding to the two sites it already has in Texas. "This development is a massive boost to Solugen's potential to drive a shift toward more environmentally sustainable chemical manufacturing, aiming to fulfill the growing demand for greener products," Jensen said.

Startup: Sunfish

Recommended by: Marcos Fernandez, Fiat Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $4 million, per PitchBook.

What it does: Sunfish provides financial resources for people seeking to become parents through IVF as well as single parenthood.

Why it's on the list:

"The U.S. market for fertility clinic services was estimated at $7.9 billion in 2022 and is forecasted to reach $16.8 billion by the end of 2028," Fernandez said.

"By providing modern fintech solutions, not only does Sunfish provide access to fertility treatments that would otherwise be unavailable, but the company is also developing unique datasets and paving the way for more financial tools to be developed using machine learning and AI."

Startup: Superwhisper

Recommended by: Elizabeth Yin, Hustle Fund

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: Not disclosed

What it does: Superwhisper's app uses AI to convert speech into text.

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.

Startup: Theorycraft Games

Recommended by: Moritz Baier-Lentz, Lightspeed

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $87 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Gaming studio.

Why it's on the list: Founded by former employees at Riot Games, Bungie, Blizzard Entertainment, and Valve, india game studio Theorycraft Games just released a new flagship game, called Supervive.

"They have an extraordinary founding team of veterans from Riot Games, Bungie, Blizzard Entertainment, and Valve," according to Baier-Lentz, and are "building a League of Legends / Riot Games killer."

Startup: TrashLab

Recommended by: Gabby Cazeau, Harlem Capital

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $4 million, per PitchBook.

What it does: TrashLab provides management software for waste haulers.

Why it's on the list: "Trashlab automates daily workflows for trucks & dumpsters and handles all the billing," Cazeau said. "TrashLab is truly the first of its kind in the waste industry. It's an industry that hasn't seen much software or innovation, yet it's incredibly important and critical to our infrastructure."

Startup: Typeface AI

Recommended by: S. Somasegar, Madrona

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."

Startup: Unstructured

Recommended by: Vivek Ramaswami, Madrona

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."

Startup: Valur

Recommended by: Dan Kimerling, Deciens

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $5 million, according to the company.

What it does: Valur offers software for tax and estate planning to help founders, employees, and investors reduce the taxes on their income.

Why it's on the list: Valur's superpower is digitizing and automating the creation of trusts for a low flat fee and a fraction of a percent of assets under management. In doing so, it's broadening access to strategies typically reserved for the ultrawealthy to reduce people's tax liabilities.

Kimerling says startups like Valur are "reshaping the landscape of wealth management."

"By using technology to simplify elite solutions, the company aims to make efficient tax planning affordable for all — not just the top 0.01%," Kimerling said.

Startup: Vannevar Labs

Recommended by: Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $91.1 million, according to PitchBook.

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.

Startup: WarpStream

Recommended by: Jerry Chen, Greylock

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: $20 million, according to the company

What it does: WarpStream is building a cloud-native data streaming service based on the Apache Kafka protocol, helping developers to lower costs and increase reliability.

Why it's on the list: Backed by Greylock, Amplify Partners, and software visionaries such as Ben Sigelman and Spencer Kimball, WarmStreap has a fresh $20 million in funds to hire more engineers, rev up its go-to-market strategy and research and develop new product lines.

"The team is poised to disrupt Confluent and the entire Kafka ecosystem by providing a lower-cost, easier-to-use streaming data platform that will increase the accessibility of data to all developers," said Chen, who led Greylock's investment. "2024 has been great so far as the company launched its bring your own cloud product and has been closing its first customers."

Startup: Windborne Systems

Recommended by: Satya Patel, Homebrew

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."

Startup: Zafran

Recommended by: Jason Risch, Greylock

Relationship: No financial interest

Total funding: $30 million, according to PitchBook.

What it does: Vulnerability risk and mitigation platform.

Why it's on the list: Zafran cofounder Sanez Yashar served for about 15 years in the IDF Intelligence Corps before leading cyber threat research and analysis groups at FireEye - Mandiant (which was acquired by Google). Fellow founders Ben Seri and Snir Havdala also served in the IDF. Earlier this year, Zafran raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital and Cyberstarts.

"Vulnerability prioritization and risk is valuable in and of itself, given the sheer volume of vulnerabilities," said Risch. "However, Zafran goes beyond prioritization by developing an understanding of an enterprise's environment and cyber toolset."

One of the biggest challenges for CISOs is mobilizing engineering resources outside their domain to prioritize fixing vulnerabilities. Zafran enables CISOs to instead utilize the tools under their control to reduce their risk profile," he said.

Startup: Zyphra

Recommended by: Ben Hemani, Bison Ventures

Relationship: Investor

Total funding: Undisclosed

What it does: Zyphra is working toward a future of personalized artificial intelligence by building smaller, more efficient models for simple use cases.

Why it's on the list: The startup made waves this past spring by releasing Zamba, an SSM-hybrid foundation model that Zyphra says can run locally on almost any device. The team, which includes former employees of Google DeepMind, StabilityAI, Neuralink, and Nvidia, is now developing a multimodal edge intelligence platform and an on-device personal AI.

"Every major AI company is focused on using off-the-shelf technology to create bigger and bigger models with little regard for cost and energy usage," said Hemani, whose firm Bison Ventures participated in Zyphra's seed round of funding. "Zyphra has been able to demonstrate that you can have a model as powerful as GPT-4o literally in the palm of your hand."