Pipeline
Founded by Sudarshan Sridharan, bootstrapped founded around 2023 with its AI-driven automated sales and outreach platform. Sridharan has been publicly building Pipeline. A serial entrepreneur based in SF with a history of scaling companies and experience in VC and angel investing. Previously founded and led Fion Technologies, an AI-based wildfire prediction platform. His background combines technology development with . Pipeline's funding details not publicly disclosed. Growing in presence and gaining attention in the investor and business community.
Caesar
Caesar is building a deep research engine positioned as “using AI to answer humanity’s most challenging questions.” The company surfaced in late 2024 and is headquartered in Europe. Public claims highlight strong performance on the Humanity’s Last Exam (HLE) benchmark, though these remain debated by the community. Founder Marco (Mark) McKenzie brings a career spanning blockchain startups (Megapont, Spark) and data/AI leadership (Vizibl, Arcarta). His trajectory combines fintech, Web3, and enterprise SaaS, underscoring Caesar’s hybrid of AI research and crypto-native distribution.
Ardent AI
Ardent AI develops an AI-powered platform for data engineering, enabling AI agents to autonomously perform tasks like building pipelines, transforming data, and resolving errors directly on a company's data infrastructure. Founded in 2024 and New York HQ. Founder Vikram Chennai brings experience in machine learning and data engineering from Cornell University and previous startups, having co-founded ReVision and worked within the startup ecosystem, including a role as scout for investor Crane Venture Partners. He leads Ardent AI in its mission to build the first AI Data Engineer. Secured funding, including a pre-seed round, to further its mission of automating and accelerating data engineering workflows.
Trepa
Building a precision prediction platform, rewarding users for the accuracy of their forecasts on real-world numbers rather than simple binary outcomes. Operating on Solana devnet, it allows users to predict metrics like inflation, yields, and gas fees by staking on their forecasts. Founded in 2024, Trepa was a winner at the Colosseum Breakout Hackathon and secured a $420k pre-seed funding round, with participation of Balaji Srinivasan et al. Founders CEO Yukshibgu, CTO Leon Meka, and @cmger. Team won the Grand Prize at a Solana hackathon for implementing a Node Consensus Network for secure voting.
Generative Inc.
Generative Inc. is a bootstrapped company founded in 2025, based in the US, with the stated mission to “build agentic systems that change the way people work.” Its site is intentionally minimal, but signals a focus on agentic AI platforms reshaping workflows. Alton Wells, active on GitHub and X under his own name, is visibly building the product. He brings prior growth and marketing operations leadership from Sigma Computing, adding GTM strength alongside technical execution. Investors and funding details have not been disclosed, but the company is beginning to surface with growing investor attention.
Generative, Inc.
Transluce
An independent research lab working toward responsible development and deployment in the public interest. Founders Sarah Schwettmann (research scientist at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT PhD); and Jacob Steinhardt (assistant professor in statistics at the UC Berkeley, ex-OpenAI and Open Philanthropy). In March 2025 launched Docent, a tool for analyzing AI agent behaviors, and September 2025 automated "jailbreaking" techniques and pathological behaviors in frontier language models.
detections.ai
A community-centric platform for detection engineering: it lets teams generate and translate detections (e.g., SPL ↔ KQL ↔ Sigma) and share rules across tools. A community effort linked to System Two Security, a detection-engineering startup led by CEO Robert Fly (ex-Elevate Security; former Salesforce/Microsoft security leader) and CTO Prasanth Ganesan (ex-Symantec). System Two announced $7M led by Costanoa Ventures in Dec-2024.
Sorce
Sorce calls itself “Tinder for jobs”: upload a resume, swipe right on roles, and an AI agent navigates to the employer’s website to apply on your behalf. 1.6M jobs indexed and 7.5m+ swipes (as of Mar 2025). X account noted milestones like 5M+ swipes and Android traction. Founders David Alade — Co-founder, Software engineer (e.g., Bibite, an app for restaurants built at Northeastern), software roles incl. Network Science Institute, SWE internship at JPMorgan Chase; Oluwapelumi Dada — Co-founder (aka “Vibe Coder”), Product/ops background with internships at Tesla (TPM) and Dell Technologies; and Daniel Ajayi — Co-founder, MIT alumni with prior internships include Citadel Securities and NVIDIA.
Smithery
Smithery is building an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server marketplace and gateway—“tool calls are the new clicks”—so agents can discover and use thousands of server-side capabilities (search, data, automations) from a single platform. Founded by Henry Mao (Founder/CEO) — previously co-founded Jenni.ai (AI copilot for researchers) and Anirudh Kamath (Co-founder) — previously Tech Lead on Stagehand at Browserbase, the widely used AI browser-automation framework (open-source; >10k stars; millions of downloads), and maintains repos around Stagehand and MCP servers. Recent third-party features (e.g., ngrok’s profile of Smithery/henry) and community coverage echo the agent-first vision and highlight Smithery as part of the SPC ecosystem.
Playbit
Playbit is a local-first operating system & development environment for “software creatives,” with early-access docs and open roles describing a WebGPU/WASM-powered, collaborative, workspace-centric OS. Based in SF Bay Area. Founded by Rasmus Andersson (creator of the Inter typeface; early design/engineering at Spotify, Facebook, Dropbox, Figma) — widely discussed in interviews and talks while presenting Playbit. Backed by Cursor Capital and Designer Fund.
Plato
San Francisco-based AI building AI teammates for B2B sales teams. Its AI software integrates with existing tools like Gmail and HubSpot to revive stalled deals and automate tasks. Founders Jungkeun Hong, an ex-McKinsey consultant and UC Berkeley graduate, co-founded Plato after gaining insights into the pressures of startup life compared to his intense corporate experience. Justin Min Gi Cho, also a UC Berkeley alumnus, served as Chief of Staff to the CFO for the Associated Students of the University of California and held several leadership roles in the Association of Korean Artists at Berkeley before co-founding Plato.
Co
Co bills itself as an “AI-native Slack” for multiplayer AI—organising work into spaces, channels, and conversations, and letting teams use multiple top models in one place (Gemini, etc.). Founded in 2023. Bootstrapped, collaborative generative AI platform targeting teams. The founder, Mohammad, previously worked at Google and the World Bank. Shares work publicly via mohamm.ad/work. On X @mohammadonx, he actively signals his work on Co AI and his multi-background experience, giving early social proof of the product and his trajectory.
Delve
Delve builds AI agents for compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS, etc.). Founders: Karun Kaushik (CEO) and Selin Kocalar (COO)—both studied AI at MIT; Kocalar has 8 research papers and led an ISS experiment, while Kaushik helped scale an AI COVID diagnostic internationally. In Jul 2025, Delve announced a $32M Series A at a $300M valuation led by Insight Partners.
Anton OsikaCEO, Lovable
Chakra Labs
Chakra is building the first verifiable data warehouse, re-architected for AI-native workloads and structured data monetization. Founded in 2024 and HQ in New York, the company launched its public preview in Jan 2025 and continues to share technical updates via @chakra_ai. Founders Alexander Fung (ex-Snap, Palantir, TipLink) and Nirmal Krishnan (ex-Artemis, Holocene Advisors, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs) bring deep backgrounds in infrastructure engineering and capital markets data systems, positioning Chakra at the convergence of next-gen data infra and enterprise adoption.
MK1
MK1.ai is an AI company that develops tools and technology to help other businesses build, deploy, and manage AI-driven applications and agents. Founders Paul Merolla (Neuralink Co-founder,17 years in neuroscience & ML, 30+ patents, UPenn PhD); Thong Wei Koh (Neuralink Team lead, MD at UBS, Oxford DPhil). HQ in Menlo Park backed by investors like Ascent Equity Partners, Interface Capital, Interface Fund, Rsquared, and Susa Ventures. Founded in 2022.
Nozomio
A product lab building “engineers for the AI era,” starting with Nia, a context layer that performs agentic research and indexes external code/docs via MCP / API. Founder Arlan Rakhmetzhanov has publicly shared a move to the Bay Area to build the company and product. Funding: reports indicate an $850k pre-seed led by LocalGlobe / Phoenix Court Group with other angels; the YC/No Label/Andrena. Total Funding: $1.34m.
Arlan Rakhmetzhanov
Second
Second calls itself “the app that builds itself”—a hyper-personalized app that dynamically morphs around a user’s work and life. Founded in 2025 and headquartered in SF, it remains bootstrapped, with no disclosed investors or fundraising to date. Founder Omer Vexler brings a strong technical pedigree from Unit 8200, through roles at Noogata, Matrix, and early product startups like Fijoya and HelloYou, making him a seasoned founder at the intersection of AI, DevOps, and consumer productivity.
Wonder
Bootstrapped, SF–based AI-native design platform launched in 2025, centered on an infinite canvas that “understands your components and patterns” and helps teams generate beautiful designs in one click. Has shared hiring calls for Founding Designer roles and surfaced in Show HN discussions and on X, @aibek_design (co-founder). Yegemberdin brings prior startup experience across Superflex (frontend automation), Sprout HR, and Amici, alongside product management at fintech Savi. His track record shows both technical design–dev bridges and scaling consumer apps, which aligns with Wonder’s positioning at the intersection of AI and collaborative design tools.
Gizmo
Gizmo is an iOS app by Atma Sciences Inc. that lets anyone create and share interactive, touch-driven “Gizmos” from simple prompts; HQ in New York City. Founded by Daniel Amitay — CTO, Long-time iOS builder (SleepBot co-founder; ex-Airbnb, ex-Snap, personal site five-million-plus downloads, notable open-source repos like iHasApp); Josh Siegel — CEO, Product leader (ex-Snap, ex-Looker); Rudd Fawcett — Co-founder, Design engineer (previously Snap); Brandon Francis — Co-founder, Staff software engineer background at Snap. Official @MakeGizmos posts provide product demos and updates.
FurtherAI
FurtherAI builds AI assistants for commercial insurance, automating submission intake, policy comparisons, and underwriting audits. On Apr 2, 2025, the company announced $5M led by Nexus Venture Partners, with YC, Pioneer AI Fund, South Park Commons, ConvergeVC, BrokerTech Ventures, Yenom Capital and Xceedance participating. Founders: Aman Gour (CEO)—ex-Microsoft, co-founded TurboHire; Sashank Gondala (CTO)—ex-Apple language-modeling scientist.
Syncere AI
Toronto-based robotics startup designing domestic robots to “serve quietly,” blending into home life without dominating attention — intended to feel like they’ve “always belonged” while complementing existing spaces.
Founded 2024 by University of Toronto alumni; Angus Fung, PhD (Robotics Ph.D) with Eric Xie (Engineering Science, BC Chess Champion, VEX Robotics Worlds Competitor, MLH SWE Fellow), Eric Mak (Mechanical Engineering at University of Waterloo), and Nathaniel Eichhorn (Robotics development). Early-stage hardware + software robotics company. A design philosophy prioritizing unobtrusive, ambient service — robots that operate quietly in the background, enhancing rather than disrupting the home environment. No funding announced yet.
Opennote
“The AI tutor that lives in your notes,” founded 2025 and based in San Francisco. Founders: Abhigyan (Abhi) Arya, Rishi Srihari, Vedant Vyas. Funding: $850k USD (closed April 2025) led by Afore Capital with Sancus Ventures, Script Capital, Untitled Ventures and angels. Opennote is in YC S25 (with standard $125k + $375k). They offer a freemium SaaS — Free, $15/mo Explorer, $25/mo Scholar; the USP is “Feynman,” proactive feedback embedded directly in your notes, plus visual learning/collaboration.
Opennote Team
ROSTRA
A strategic communications firm built around founder-led, direct communication. Founders Lulu Cheng Meservey (Founder/CEO; ex-Activision Blizzard EVP, Corporate Affairs & CCO; formerly VP Comms at Substack) and Gaby Goldberg (Partner). Reported helping launch Cognition’s “Devin”. Meservey profiled for her “direct” comms stance and public-facing work steered Activision’s comms during the Microsoft acquisition; previously led comms at Substack and co-founded TrailRunner International. Backed by Goldberg - investor/writer who ended up joining ROSTRA in 2024.
Hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is building an open-access AI cloud (decentralized GPU marketplace + serverless inference). On Dec 10, 2024, the company announced a $12M Series A led by Variant and Polychain, noting $20M total raised to date. Founded by Dr. Jasper (Yue) Zhang (CEO) — Math PhD (UC Berkeley) — and Dr. Yuchen Jin (CTO) — PhD CS, previously led Relax in Apache TVM.
