Every so often at Crunchbase News, we take it upon ourselves to review every sizable seed round of the past few months, seeing what trends arise.
This time around, given the excitement around artificial intelligence, we honed in exclusively on AI-focused startups. The goal was to pick out a few themes that appear to be resonating.
Turns out, the hard part was narrowing it down. Investors poured over $9 billion into global AI-focused seed rounds over the past six months, per Crunchbase data. Areas they favored include cybersecurity, multimedia AI, robotics and desk work automation.
Below, we look at these seed hotspots in greater detail.
No. 1: Cybersecurity
The intersection of AI and cybersecurity has two main areas of interest. One is tools that use AI to do established security tasks more efficiently and effectively. The other is applications aimed at security issues that AI itself itself brings to the fore, such as tracking and verifying autonomous agents.
Put together, it adds up to a well-funded sector for seed, with more than $400 million invested at this stage in the past six months. Using Crunchbase data, we put together a sample list of eight AI and security-focused startups that raised some of the more significant recent seed rounds.
Silicon Valley-based Armadin Security, a stealth startup, picked up one of the bigger rounds for tools using AI to automate security testing and identify vulnerabilities that hackers could use AI to exploit. Another standout was identity management startup Opti.
No. 2: Robotics and drones
Robotics features frequently in our roundups of seed trends, and this time is no exception.
Per Crunchbase data, investors poured more than $850 million into seed rounds for AI-enabled robotics and drone startups over the past six months. It’s a geographically diversified lineup, with many of the largest rounds going to China-based startups.
To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to put together a list of seven recently funded companies from multiple countries.
Per Crunchbase data, the largest recent seed funding recipient is Mochi Intelligence, a Chinese company developing a universal humanoid robot that can do household work. Another high-profile round went to Mind Robotics, a spin-out of EV maker Rivian that is focused on AI-powered industrial robots.
No. 3: Multimedia and content creation tools for AI
Seed-stage startups are also innovating around how to better incorporate more language and multimedia features in AI offerings, including audio, translation and video.
To demonstrate, we used Crunchbase data to assemble a list of six companies in these areas that raised sizable seed financings in the past few months.
The biggest round on our list went to Paris-based Gradium, which picked up $70 million in initial funding in December to scale audio language AI models designed to deliver voice with ultra-low latency. Others are moving quickly up the funding ladder.
San Francisco-based Runware, developer of an API for image, video and audio generation, raised a $13 million seed round in September and a $50 million Series A in December.
No. 4: Automating niche desk work
The notion that AI tools can perform a lot of tedious screen-facing work is now fully embedded in the public consciousness. In addition, many earlier pioneers in bringing these tools to market are already well-established unicorns, including AI legal tech company Harvey and clinical note-taking platform Abridge.
But it’s not game over for newly launched startups that want to play in this space. Of late, we’re seeing seed funding to various ventures around this theme, with a particular focus on upstarts taking on niches within the vast realm of traditional deskwork. This includes areas like claims processing, procurement, healthcare call centers and building plan review.
To illustrate, we aggregated a sample of 10 companies that raised seed investment in the past six months with $10 million or more in total funding.
ClaimSorted, a New York-based insurtech startup that uses AI to do what its name suggests, is the most heavily funded on our list, securing a $13.3 million seed round in October. Another big round that month was a $10 million seed financing for Spacial, an AI-enabled structural engineering startup that reviews building plans to enable faster permitting.
Big picture: More things we don’t pay attention to get automated
One of the intriguing things about this particular AI seed-funding data dive is that it didn’t provide many startups that triggered an immediate “I want that” reaction. For the most part, it wasn’t a highly consumer-facing sample set. To the extent upstarts are disrupting established spaces, it was in areas the average person doesn’t think about much, like healthcare recordkeeping or next-gen security. So efficiency gains will likely be more apparent for enterprises than end users.
There are some exceptions, of course, like household robots. But these aren’t innovations likely to make it into our shopping carts anytime soon.
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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