TL;DR
Accelerators open for apps: equity-free corporate pilots, deep AI tech support, and solid seed cohorts in SV/Seattle
Rolling equity-free grants for underrepresented founders, women, Black-owned businesses, and established small shops
Fresh pre-seed/seed cash hitting AI app builders, agent tools, workplace agents, and agent-cloud infra
Big Series A+ rounds in AI market intel, health payments, finance automation, social apps, and stratospheric sensing
Active VCs writing checks now — $250K–$3M early-stage up to $10M–$100M growth deals
Follow our Socials 📲
@capnewsletter on X
@The Capital Newsletter on LinkedIn
AI-native CRM
“When I first opened Attio, I instantly got the feeling this was the next generation of CRM.”
— Margaret Shen, Head of GTM at Modal
Attio is the AI-native CRM for modern teams. With automatic enrichment, call intelligence, AI agents, flexible workflows and more, Attio works for any business and only takes minutes to set up.
Join industry leaders like Granola, Taskrabbit, Flatfile and more.
Accelerators + Grants
🚀 Accelerators
Up to $150K for 6% equity, 4-month intensive program in Silicon Valley, growth-focused curriculum, mentorship, and global Demo Day; accepting applications for Batch 37.
No equity taken, 3-month batch programs with direct corporate partnerships & pilots (e.g., Google, PayPal), expert mentorship across 50+ verticals; rolling applications year-round.
Up to $600K+ on SAFE terms, 6-month technical deep-dive with world-class AI research mentorship, AWS credits, Seattle-based/hybrid; rolling applications for AI-first startups.
💰 Grants
Monthly $500 equity-free micro-grant for U.S. small business owners (underrepresented entrepreneurs encouraged); includes mentorship and community access; simple rolling applications with monthly awards – all applicants get free resources.
Quarterly $2,500 equity-free grant for U.S.-based small businesses (at least 2 years old, $50K+ revenue, 1-2 employees); covers essential expenses like rent or marketing; rolling applications reviewed quarterly – simple process focused on business needs.
$500-$2,000 equity-free grants for Black-owned U.S. small businesses (20 or fewer employees, under $1M revenue, brick-and-mortar); funds for various purposes; rolling applications – recipients join Wish Local app for additional exposure.
Monthly $1,000 equity-free micro-grant for women entrepreneurs in the U.S. with a clear business vision; supports ambitious ideas and growth; simple rolling applications with two recipients selected each month – focus on empowering women-led ventures.
Roladex Venture Studios
Roladex provides hands-on support with fundraising, product development, and marketing—plus the team, network, and resources to launch and scale your business👇
PreSeed + Seed
Notable companies that recently raised:
1️⃣ Empromptu — raised $2M (Pre-Seed)
Description: “Build AI apps from an idea” platform for enterprises—aims to turn AI experiments into production software with built-in evaluation, governance, and control.
Investors: Precursor Ventures (lead), Zeal Capital, Alumni Ventures, FoundersEdge, South Loop
2️⃣ Alpic — raised $6M (Pre-Seed)
Description: MCP-native cloud platform for deploying, managing, and monitoring MCP servers so companies can safely expose products/services to AI agents; launched a public beta.
Investors: Partech (lead), K5 Global, Irregular Expression, Yellow, Drysdale, Kima Ventures, Galion.exe + angels (incl. founders from Mistral, Datadog, Dataiku)
3️⃣ Mastra — raised $13M (Seed)
Description: TypeScript agent framework (tools, memory, evals, tracing) designed to help teams ship agents into production; positioned as a developer-first “agent framework + platform.”
Investors: Y Combinator, Gradient Ventures, SVAngel, Runa Capital, Pioneer Fund, Liquid2, basecase capital, Orange Collective, Palm Drive + many notable angels/founders (incl. Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, Amjad Masad, Balaji Srinivasan, etc.)
4️⃣ Onyx — raised $10M (Seed)
Description: Open-source workplace “deep research” agent that indexes company knowledge across many tools (Drive/Slack/GitHub/Salesforce, etc.) and answers questions with stronger context and privacy controls.
Investors: Khosla Ventures (co-lead), First Round Capital (co-lead), Y Combinator + angels including Gokul Rajaram, Arash Ferdosi, Amit Agarwal, Kulveer Taggar
💸 Active Investors & New Funds
1️⃣ Precursor Ventures — San Francisco, CA ✨
$250K–$2M initial checks; leading pre-seed investor focused on diverse, high-potential founders across consumer, enterprise, fintech, and healthcare; highly active with consistent deployments; closed Fund V at $66M in 2025 for continued early-stage investments.
2️⃣ Lightspeed Venture Partners — Menlo Park, CA
$1M–$20M+ checks across early-stage; multi-stage firm with strong focus on AI, enterprise software, fintech, and consumer; one of the most active deployers globally; closed $9B across six new funds in late 2025, the largest raise of the year.
3️⃣ Afore Capital — San Francisco, CA
$500K–$2M pre-seed checks; "no investment too early" thesis backing technical founders in infrastructure, AI, and tools; quantitative approach with operator support; closed $185M Fund IV in early 2025 for pre-seed focus.
4️⃣ Liquid 2 Ventures — San Francisco, CA
$500K–$3M seed checks; backed by Joe Montana, invests in B2B SaaS, defense tech, consumer, and fintech; broad sector approach with high activity; recently closed $100M new fund in 2025 for continued early-stage deals.
Series A+
Notable companies that recently raised:
1️⃣ DataLane — raised $22.5M (Series A)
Description: AI-driven platform creating an identity graph for local businesses, transforming unstructured data into actionable market intelligence for sales teams targeting offline economies.
Investors: Amplify Partners (Lead), 20VC, Basis Set Ventures, Mischief, and others
2️⃣ Truemed — raised $34M (Series A)
Description: Payment platform enabling health and wellness companies to accept HSA/FSA funds, making preventive care and healthy products more accessible and affordable.
Investors: a16z (Lead)
3️⃣ Sequence — raised $20M (Series A)
Description: AI-powered finance operations platform automating order-to-cash workflows, with generative agents for revenue recognition, billing, and GTM support.
Investors: 645 Ventures (Lead), Andreessen Horowitz, Firstminute Capital, Passion Capital, Dig Ventures, Vor Capital
4️⃣ 222 — raised $10.1M (Series A)
Description: Social discovery platform connecting users for real-life experiences, events, and activities through personalized recommendations and community building.
Investors: Upfront Ventures (Lead), 1517 Fund, Alumni Ventures, BBQ Capital, Genius Ventures
5️⃣ Urban Sky — raised $30M (Series B)
Description: Aerospace startup developing stratospheric balloon platforms for high-resolution remote sensing, weather data, and defense applications with low-cost, reusable systems.
Investors: Altos Ventures (Lead), New Legacy Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Catapult Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, New Stack Ventures, TenOneTen, DA Ventures, Union Labs VC, Techstars
💸 Active Investors & New Funds
1️⃣ General Catalyst — Boston, MA
$10M–$100M checks; multi-stage firm leading Series A/B in healthcare, fintech, AI, and enterprise software; highly active with strong deployments and portfolio support in 2025, backing resilient founders scaling disruptive companies across US markets.
2️⃣ Bessemer Venture Partners — New York, NY
$10M–$50M checks; Series A/B specialist in cloud/SaaS, cybersecurity, healthcare, and consumer tech; consistently active investor with deep operational expertise and a track record of category leaders, deploying aggressively into high-growth US startups in 2025/2026.
3️⃣ New Enterprise Associates — Chevy Chase, MD (global offices)
$10M–$100M+ checks; broad multi-stage focus on tech, healthcare, and biopharma Series A/B; one of the largest and most active firms with massive AUM, leading deals in overlooked and emerging sectors for ambitious US scaling.
4️⃣ Khosla Ventures — Menlo Park, CA
$10M–$50M checks; Series A/B leader in AI, cleantech, healthcare, and sustainability; prolific early-growth investor with high activity in 2025, backing bold technical founders building transformative technologies nationwide.
Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! Our goal is to continue providing founders with the insights and resources they need to succeed in today’s startup ecosystem. We hope you enjoy and catch us on the next one 😄
- Michael Marra, Founder & CEO of Entre
P.S. Upgrade to PRO to get access our investor database and gain access to $100k+ in discounts on software and services, and more!
P.S.S If you’d like to partner on one of our upcoming newsletters or events, you can sign up to work with us here.