Perceptron AI
Perceptron AI is pioneering the development of foundation models for the physical world, bridging the gap between digital AI and real-world applications. Founded in 2024 by Armen Aghajanyan and Akshat Shrivastava, both accomplished AI researchers, Perceptron has secured significant early-stage funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, S32, and Foundation Capital. The company's innovative approach treats video, audio, text, and structured data streams with equal importance, maintaining consistent real-time performance across diverse hardware configurations.
Melty
Melty’s AI code editor, launched in 2024 by Charlie Holtz (ex-Replicate) and Jackson de Campos (Netflix ML), integrates terminal/GitHub context to streamline production-ready coding. Holtz’s quantitative finance background at Point72 and Brown University neuroscience training shaped Melty’s real-time collaboration features. The $500K September 2024 funding accelerated their open-source tools for “10x engineers,” reducing manual debugging by 40%.
Bytespace.ai
Bytespace’s no-code AI employees automate cross-website tasks without APIs, founded in 2024 by Kar Dhillon (ex-Certa VP) and André Nuyens (Penn Bioengineering). Bootstrapped with a “virtual office” interface, they prioritize solopreneurs in e-commerce. Dhillon’s fiber infrastructure ventures and Nuyens’ neural network research inform their focus on replacing manual workflows.
Scrapybara
Scrapybara’s API-controlled virtual desktops for AI agents were co-founded in 2024 by Nalin Semwal (MultiOn AI researcher) and Justin Sun (UPenn M&T). Their Y Combinator-backed platform simplifies agent-environment interactions, securing $500K in December 2024. Semwal’s work on LLM agents at Georgia Tech and Sun’s product development at Contrary underpin Scrapybara’s neural search engine for sales automation.
ell
ell is revolutionizing prompt engineering with its lightweight, function-based approach to language model programming. Founded in 2024 by William Guss, a former research scientist at OpenAI, ell has quickly gained traction in the AI development community. While funding details are not publicly disclosed, the project has garnered significant attention on GitHub and in developer circles. Guss's background includes years of experience building and using language models at OpenAI, bringing valuable expertise to ell's design. The library treats prompts as programs rather than simple strings, enabling developers to create discrete subroutines called Language Model Programs (LMPs). This innovative approach allows for cleaner interfaces and more efficient prompt optimization.
William Guss
Santosh Sharan
Santosh Sharan is currently building a stealth AI startup focused on reinventing buyer-led go-to-market strategies through advanced data intelligence systems. Drawing from 25+ years of scaling B2B data platforms, Sharan previously served as COO of Retention.com (2022-2025) and President/COO of Apollo.io (2020-2022), where he helped grow revenue from $8M to $100M ARR. His operational expertise was honed at ZoomInfo (2012-2017), where as VP of Product, Growth & Strategy he laid groundwork for its $27B IPO. Sharan's technical foundation includes founding Keisense (acquired by Nuance/Microsoft in 2010) and engineering roles at Transform Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson). His new venture reportedly combines AI agent infrastructure with proprietary intent data signals, developed alongside Clearbit co-founder Amit Vasudev.
Santosh Sharan
Superwhisper
Superwhisper is revolutionizing voice-to-text technology with its AI-powered platform for macOS and iOS. Founded in 2023 by Neil Chudleigh, a serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in software development, Superwhisper has quickly gained traction among professionals and creatives. The company's recent expansion to iOS in April 2024 marks a significant milestone in its growth trajectory. Chudleigh's background as co-founder of PartnerStack, which he led for nearly 10 years through Y Combinator, brings valuable experience in building scalable software solutions. Superwhisper's innovative approach to offline-first, AI-powered transcription addresses critical needs for privacy and efficiency across various industries.
Unblocked
Unblocked is revolutionizing software development with AI-powered context-aware assistance. Founded in 2022 by Dennis Pilarinos, a seasoned entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in developer tools, Unblocked has quickly gained traction among top tech companies. While specific funding details are undisclosed, the company's rapid growth and high-profile client base suggest substantial backing. Pilarinos' background includes founding Buddybuild (acquired by Apple in 2018) and leadership roles at Apple, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft, bringing valuable industry expertise to Unblocked.
Beats AI
Beats Foundation is revolutionizing AI-driven media creation through its open-source multimodal framework and Hyperliquid-integrated platform. Founded in 2024 by an anonymous collective operating under the pseudonym @0xbeatsai, the project enables users to generate AI music tracks, deploy autonomous agents, and participate in decentralized creative ecosystems. The platform’s $BEATS token, native to Hyperliquid, facilitates governance and rewards for its 3,800+ community members. The New York-based team recently integrated AI-generated tracks from artists like @sershokunin and @catbalio onto Spotify, expanding distribution for AI musicians.
Flocurve
Flocurve is revolutionizing startup growth by automating lead generation and churn reduction through AI-driven workflows. Founded in 2024 by Linus Ekenstam (AI evangelist) and ex-Klarna growth marketers, this bootstrapped San Francisco company targets post-seed startups ready to scale. Ekenstam’s decade of growth-hacking experience across European unicorns informs Flocurve’s “opinionated” approach—eliminating chaotic dashboards in favor of autonomous systems that convert signups and retain customers.
Interaction
Interaction is revolutionizing team collaboration through AI-powered workflow augmentation, founded in 2023 by Felix M. Schlegel and Marvin von Hagen. The duo, who met at a middle school hackathon, bring a unique blend of academic rigor and engineering prowess from institutions including MIT, Stanford, and Cambridge. Bootstrapped and currently in stealth mode, Interaction builds on the founders’ prior success with TUM Boring, where they led 65 students to construct a 22-ton tunnel boring machine, securing $1M in sponsorships and winning SpaceX’s 2021 Not-a-Boring Competition. Schlegel (Stanford CS) and von Hagen (MIT Technology Policy) further honed their technical expertise through internships at Apple and Tesla, while bootstrapping AI automation projects to six-figure revenues. Their platform, developed in California, aims to bridge productivity gaps in technical teams by integrating neural interfaces with existing toolsets, leveraging lessons from scaling complex hardware systems and enterprise software environments.
Jazz
Jazz is revolutionizing local-first application development through its open-source framework that eliminates backend complexity. Founded in 2021 by Anselm Eickhoff, a software engineer and advocate for decentralized systems, Jazz provides tools to build real-time collaborative apps using client-side code. Eickhoff, who previously architected distributed systems at Stripe and Microsoft, created Jazz to address the "mess of moving parts" developers face when managing shared state across devices.
Retool
Retool revolutionized low-code internal tool development under CEO David Hsu, who founded the company in 2017 after leaving Oxford. With $190M raised, including a $45M round in 2022, Retool empowers enterprises like Mercedes-Benz to build custom apps 10x faster. Hsu’s pivot from a failed crypto startup (Cashew) to addressing developer inefficiencies led to Retool’s $3.2B valuation. The platform now serves 50,000+ developers, emphasizing reusable components over boilerplate code.
Firecrawl
Firecrawl, co-founded in 2024 by Eric Ciarla (Mendable.ai exit), Nicolas Silberstein Camara, and Caleb Peffer, offers unified web crawling infrastructure for AI pipelines. Their $500K January 2024 raise funds tools that convert pages into clean markdown, used by 15,000+ developers. Ciarla’s prior data science roles at Ford and Fracta informed Firecrawl’s focus on structured data extraction.
Firecrawl
Nebesta
Nebesta is reinventing customer service operations through AI-driven workflow automation and strategic process redesign. Founded in 2025 by Nicholas Cohen (ex-CEO of Ankorstore, scaled to $2B valuation) and Ivan Litovsky (former Criteo AI lead), Nebesta has attracted undisclosed funding from top-tier investors to bridge AI capabilities with enterprise-grade operational frameworks. Cohen’s experience building Ankorstore’s 250-person product team and Litovsky’s background in deploying AI models for 1B+ users position Nebesta as a full-stack partner, not just a software vendor.
Cosmin Nicolaescu
Cosmin Nicolaescu is currently leading Accrual, a stealth-mode venture applying AI to modernize professional services through strategic acquisitions and technological transformation. With over two decades of experience spanning cloud infrastructure, payments, and fintech leadership, Nicolaescu brings deep technical expertise from pivotal roles at Microsoft (Azure/Office 365 architect), Stripe (core financial infrastructure builder), and Brex (CTO who scaled engineering from 40 to 1,000+ employees). Though details about Accrual remain limited, General Catalyst has invested $16M in the venture to acquire and automate accounting firms using LLMs.
Suno
Suno, co-founded in 2022 by Michael Shulman (ex-Kensho), Georg Kucsko, Martin Camacho, and Keenan Freyberg, democratizes music creation via AI. Their $125M May 2024 funding round expanded tools for generating lyrics and melodies through natural language prompts. Despite lawsuits from major labels over copyrighted training data, Suno’s v4 model enables 4-minute songs and remastering, attracting 10M+ users. Shulman controversially stated most people “don’t enjoy making music,” framing Suno as lowering creative barriers.
Jacob Sansbury
Jacob Sansbury is currently developing an undisclosed AI venture in stealth mode, building on his extensive experience in financial technology and software engineering. The 24-year-old founder previously demonstrated his technical prowess as the youngest software engineer hired by Bridgewater Associates at age 18, where he gained foundational insights into systematic investing strategies. Sansbury's career breakthrough came with Pluto Capital - an AI-powered investment platform he founded that was acquired by Robinhood Markets in July 2024 for an undisclosed sum.
Jacob Sansbury
OpenVision Engineering
OpenVision Engineering is redefining personal AI assistants through privacy-focused hardware-software integration. Founded in 2024 by Akshayhttps://in.linkedin.com/in/akshaynarisetti Narisetti, a Georgia Tech graduate and former Y Combinator engineer, the bootstrapped startup has rapidly gained traction with its debut product Pocket—an AI voice recorder priced at $49. The device sold out two initial batches at $79, demonstrating strong market demand. Narisetti, known for his viral 2025 Google Dino Game hack that automated obstacle detection using microcontroller programming, rejected multiple Google job offers to prioritize OpenVision. His background includes developing robotics systems and contributing to AI projects at BharatX and Questbook, shaping Pocket’s focus on simplicity and utility.
Residua AI
Residua AI is pioneering cognitive augmentation tools that transform fragmented digital data into structured knowledge networks. Founded in 2024 by Carmen Gutierrez (Stanford CS PhD, ex-Meta NLP researcher) and Jon Morales (Figma’s first design hire), the New York-based startup has raised $1.7M in seed funding to date, including a $1.67M round in March 2024. Gutierrez’s expertise in neural language models and Morales’ award-winning interface design inform Residua’s unique approach to AI-human collaboration. Their flagship product helps users organize personal data streams—emails, notes, and multimedia—into actionable insights through adaptive visualization tools. The team of machine learning researchers and UX specialists focuses on reducing cognitive overload, aiming to empower individuals and enterprises to "think the unthinkable" by surfacing hidden patterns in chaotic information environments.
dawn
Dawn is revolutionizing AI product analytics by transforming unstructured user inputs and model outputs into actionable insights. Founded in 2023 by Zubin Singh Koticha (ex-CEO of Opyn), Alexis Gauba (co-founder of she256), and Ben Hylak (ex-Apple/SpaceX engineer), Dawn empowers companies to decode complex AI interactions through its specialized analytics platform. Backed by Y Combinator (Winter 2024) and praised by customers like Clay and Quizard, Dawn simplifies tracking user behavior in AI products with just three lines of code.
Adam AI
Adam CAD is revolutionizing mechanical design with AI-powered parametric modeling, enabling engineers to generate production-ready 3D models through natural language prompts. Founded in 2024 by Zach Dive (ex-Adept AI researcher), Aaron Li (ex-BMW/NIO automotive designer), and Avi Peltz (BioGlyph co-founder), the San Francisco-based startup has raised $500,000 in early-stage funding. Their recent public beta launch this month February highlights rapid adoption among hardware teams streamlining prototyping workflows. Early users report reducing iteration cycles from days to hours, particularly in robotics and consumer hardware sectors. Adam’s Y Combinator-backed team focuses on bridging the gap between conceptual design and manufacturing-ready outputs, with plans to integrate real-time collaboration tools for distributed engineering teams.
Agency AI
Agency AI is transforming AI agent development through reliable scaling solutions, founded in 2023 by the team behind AgentOps (Adam Silverman and Shawn Qiu). With $2.6M raised in August 2024, including backing from General Catalyst and Y Combinator alumni, the San Francisco-based company addresses industry-wide reliability gaps in autonomous AI systems. The team’s prior experience building AgentOps—the leading observability platform used by 400+ production AI agents—informs their enterprise-grade tools for agent lifecycle management.
Cognition
Cognition AI is developing autonomous AI software engineers through its flagship product Devin, founded in 2023 by Scott Wu (ex-CTO of LunchClub), Walden Yan, and Steven Hao. The team—which holds 10 International Olympiad in Informatics gold medals—recently secured $185M in April 2024, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, valuing the company at $2B. Based in San Francisco, Cognition’s agents automate coding, debugging, and deployment tasks, positioning it as a leader in AI-driven software development. Wu’s viral 2010 Mathcounts performance highlighted his problem-solving prowess, which now informs Devin’s algorithmic rigor.
