Madrona, Basis Set Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Renegade Partners
- We asked top venture capitalists to name the most promising AI startups so far in 2024.
- VCs named portfolio companies as well as startups that they have no financial ties to.
- AI startups are building across sectors like fintech, health, and logistics.
Primary; IVP
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.
Renegade Partners
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.
Khosla Ventures
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.
Felicis; Madrona
Startup: Braintrust
Recommended by: Shravan Narayen, IVP; Corinne Riley, Greylock
Relationships: No financial interest; investor
Total funding: $8.3 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Braintrust is the infrastructure stack for enterprise AI products. The company helps enterprise customers through the AI development process, supporting with evaluations, logging, data management, and prompting. Braintrust also provides customers with access to top AI models via an API.
Why it’s on the list: Braintrust is “critical infrastructure for leading technology companies like Zapier, Coda, Airtable, and Instacart” and “boosts AI accuracy by over 30%,” said Narayen.
“The founder and CEO Ankur Goyal is a second-time founder who sold his last company to Figma, where he then led AI,” said Riley. “The speed at which he and the team have shipped products and the mindshare they have developed amongst leading builders in the AI community is truly unique.”
Primary
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.
Cowboy Ventures
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.”
York IE
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: Cranium was developed within KPMG’s startup studio and was eventually spun out. Last year, the company raised $25 million from Telstra Ventures with participation from KPMG.
“They are on an incredible journey emerging from stealth in 2023 and spinning out of KPMG and securing $25M in Series A in October,” York said.
Norwest Venture Partners
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.
Madrona Venture Group
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.
Redpoint Ventures
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.
Felicis; Khosla Ventures
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.
Northwest Venture Partners
Startup: Datavolo
Recommended by: Dave Zilberman, Norwest 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.”
Greylock
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.
Norwest Venture Partners
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.”
Bison Ventures
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.
Maven Ventures
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.
Fiat Ventures
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.”
122 West Ventures
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.”
Boldstart Ventures
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.
Greylock
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.
Primary
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.
Lightspeed Venture Partners
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.”
Lightspeed Venture Partners
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.”
Lightspeed Venture Partners
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.”
Mayfield; GV
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.
Primary
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.”
Greylock
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.
GV
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.
Cowboy Ventures
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.”
Felicis
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.”
Floodgate
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 Miura-Ko. “We are at an interesting inflection point at the intersection of data and AI especially with our own personal data. Molly, [Nox’s founder] has captured the ability to seamlessly understand the consumer with all of the necessary context to fulfill daily tasks.
Point 72 Ventures
Startup: Overland AI
Recommended by: Chris Morales, Point72 Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $10.1 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.
Boldstart Ventures
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.”
Basis Set Ventures
Startup: Sakana AI
Recommended by: Lan Xuezhao, Basis Set Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $155 million, according to PitchBook
What it does: Sakana is an AI research lab building a foundation model based on nature-inspired intelligence.
Why it’s on the list:
Founded by two former Google AI researchers, Sakana was recently rumored to be valued at $1 billion in a new funding round.
“This is one of the strongest research teams out there building for the next-gen, nature-inspired AI in Asia,” Xuezhao said.
Navin Chaddha
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.
cybersecurity threats
Greylock
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.
Collide Capital; Homebrew
Startup: Slang.ai
Recommended by: Brian Hollins, Collide Capital and Satya Patel, Homebrew
Relationship: Investors
Total funding: $20.57 million, according to 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.”
Courtesy
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.”
Hustle Fund
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.
Madrona Venture Group
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.”
Madrona
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.”
Larsen Jensen, Harpoon Ventures
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.
Homebrew
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.”
Bison Ventures
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.”
