Recently funded startups, hand-picked every weekday
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Aug 31
$10M Pre-Seed · diffraqtion.com
Diffraqtion — Quantum cameras for space imaging and national security
Diffraqtion is a Massachusetts-based startup focused on developing quantum cameras for space applications. The company combines quantum imaging technology with artificial intelligence to detect distant objects and provide high-resolution imaging at lower costs. Their innovative platforms aim to reduce image processing times while offering analytics and insights rapidly. Diffraqtion is working towards building a constellation of satellites to enhance their imaging capabilities for national security and earth observation services.
Artificial intelligenceGround State VenturesAdinMilemark•CapitalAether VCTek Ventures · +6 · +9
$40M · reframe.systems
Reframe Systems — Robotic microfactories that build single-family homes
Reframe Systems is a Boston-based startup that uses physical AI to automate the homebuilding process. Its scalable microfactories enable the construction of resilient homes more quickly and affordably. The company leverages proprietary software and advanced robotics to reduce time and costs while addressing the skilled labor shortage. Reframe's AI-driven microfactories can manufacture five single-family homes per week.
ManufacturingSoftwareArtificial intelligenceLaci Impact FundUp PartnersThin Line Capital · +6 · +9
$6M Seed · bluevoice.io
Blue Voice — AI legal and procedural guidance for police officers
Blue Voice is a Boston-based startup that has developed an AI platform designed to provide police officers in the United States with operational legal and procedural guidance. Founded by former law enforcement officials and experts, the company aims to streamline access to critical legal information for law enforcement. The platform is utilized daily by officers across 225 county law enforcement agencies in 25 states. It helps officers make informed decisions quickly, enhancing their operational effectiveness.
SoftwareArtificial intelligenceLegalLas Olas VCSignal Fire$1M+ · +2 · +5
Aug 30
YC F26 · nodus-compute.ai
Nodus — Execution layer for AI workloads
Intelligent execution layer for AI workloads
Artificial intelligenceInfrastructureB2BYC · +1
YC F26 · subvocal.company
The Subvocal Company — Lets you talk to your computer without speaking aloud
Talk to your computer without talking
Hard techConsumerYC
Aug 27
$22M Series B · levanta.io
Levanta — Affiliate marketing that pairs Amazon sellers with creators
Levanta is a leading affiliate marketing platform designed to help Amazon sellers unlock growth through creator-driven commerce. By connecting sellers with a network of vetted creators, Levanta enables performance-based partnerships that drive revenue, increase customer acquisition, and build brand loyalty. Launched in 2023, Levanta has quickly become a go-to platform for sellers seeking to capitalize on the growing power of creators and influencers in digital commerce. Levanta's co-founders previously founded and sold Grovia Partners, a leading affiliate marketing technology-enabled services company, to Acceleration Partners in 2022.
InternetVolition Capital$10M+
$240M Series B · regentcraft.com
REGENT — Electric seagliders for travel between coastal cities
REGENT’s seagliders will revolutionize regional transportation. Our mission is to drastically reduce the cost and headache of moving people and goods between coastal cities. Our vehicle, called a seaglider, is an all-electric, wing-in-ground-effect craft that operates within a wingspan of the water's surface and couples the speed of an airplane with the operating cost of a boat. Built to the same safety standards of all modern aircraft and watercraft, our vehicle will service routes up to 180 miles with existing battery technology and routes up to 500 miles with next-gen batteries, all via existing dock infrastructure. Our team of MIT-trained, ex-Boeing engineers are leveraging maritime vehicle development pathways to bring our zero-emission, high-speed seagliders to market within five years.
MobileConsumer goodsTransportationErebor BankGiant Step CapitalJapan Airlines · +8 · +11
$75M · cyclicmaterials.earth
Cyclic Materials — Recycling that yields a local supply of critical metals
Cyclic Materials helps businesses recycle, provides the market with a secure and local supply of critical metals, and does so in an ethical, economic, and sustainable way.
$50M+
$250M Series B · instinct.co
Instinct — AI assistant you text and call to organize your life
Instinct is an AI assistant built to organize your life: users connect their apps and devices and talk to it by text message and phone call. Founded by Noah Shinn and operated by Spear Street Technology, it went viral while still in private beta — and drew scrutiny over the breadth of app permissions it asks for. The $250M round, led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, values the company at $2.5B and takes total funding to $350M.
BiotechnologyHealthcareBenchmarkIndex Ventures$100M+ · +2
Aug 26
YC F26 · talos-us.com
Talos — Predictive maintenance for power infrastructure
Talos builds predictive maintenance for power infrastructure. It continuously monitors critical power equipment, detects meaningful changes in behaviour, and tells teams where to look before a failure becomes an outage. Founded in 2026 by Kevin Hwang, Amitav Kohli and Himani Musku, the Baltimore-based company is in Y Combinator's Fall 2026 batch.
Deep learningIoTEnergyYCIndustrials · +2
$10M Seed · very.org
VeryAI — Palm-scan identity verification on standard smartphones
VeryAI is a Proof of Reality platform providing biometric-based identity verification. Founded by experts in biometrics, crypto, and AI, the company focuses on securely verifying user identity on standard smartphones without storing sensitive images. Its primary product utilizes a hardware-free palm scan verification process. VeryAI aims to distinguish human identities from AI-generated content and deepfakes.
Artificial intelligenceMachine learningBiometricsAnagramBerggruen InstitutePolychain Capital · +1 · +4
$35M Series A · voya.energy
Voya Energy — Aluminum fuel that makes electricity without combustion
Voya Energy is focused on innovative energy solutions, unveiling a proprietary aluminum-based metal fuel system paired with an electrochemical generator. This technology aims to produce electricity without combustion or air emissions, advancing sustainable energy methods. The company is committed to commercial deployment of its groundbreaking systems.
ManufacturingEnergyRenewable energySeven StarsOvermatchFounders Fund · +5 · +8
$20M Series A · sifly.co
SiFly Aviation — Long-endurance drones for public safety and inspection
SiFly delivers helicopter-like performance at drone economics through long-endurance autonomous aerial systems. Its cloud-connected, U.S.-made platforms enable persistent coverage for public safety, critical infrastructure inspection, and enterprise operations. The company focuses on providing greater endurance to improve operating performance and economics across various industries. SiFly is positioned to redefine drone usage in mission-critical applications.
Information technologySoftwareAlumni VenturesBbk CapitalQuditShield Capital · +1 · +4
$43M Series A · deepcogito.com
Deep Cogito — AI models that improve by refining their own reasoning
Deep Cogito is a San Francisco AI research company building general superintelligence. Its research centres on advanced reasoning and iterative self-improvement — models that get better by refining their own reasoning — rather than on scale alone. The $43M Series A backs its post-training engine for frontier intelligence.
SoftwareArtificial intelligenceSaaSZscalerSouth Park CommonsAtreides Management · +6 · +9
$20M · corvus-robotics.com
Corvus Robotics — Autonomous drones that track inventory inside warehouses
Corvus Robotics builds physical AI agents for large scale supply chain environments, enabling companies to understand and coordinate inventory operations in real time. Built in America, Corvus deploys infrastructure free autonomous drones that operate continuously inside active warehouses and manufacturing facilities at scale. Its spatial AI agents learn from real world deployments to improve models of space, inventory and supply chains. Through a Robots as a Service model, Corvus creates a data flywheel where deployments compound customer value and system intelligence over time, solving the hardest problems in physical AI including autonomy, reliability and real world deployment at national scale while supporting a more efficient and responsive physical economy.
OtherTransportationLogisticsCibus CapitalF7 VenturesSpero Ventures · +3 · +6
$115M · iconbuild.com
ICON — 3D-printing robots that build homes
ICON is a construction technology company developing robotic and AI systems to lower the cost and increase the speed and quality of construction to tackle the global housing crisis and prepare to build on other worlds. As a pioneer of large-scale 3D printing, ICON continually sets new standards for delivering resilient, dignified housing and recently unveiled a radical new robotic printer that enables multi-story construction, a new low-carbon building material, a digital catalog for residential architecture, and an AI architect for home design and construction. Using proprietary 3D printing robotics, software and advanced materials, ICON is shifting the paradigm of homebuilding on Earth and beyond.
Information technology$100M+
Aug 25
$12.5M Seed · terrablaster.com
TerraBlaster — Laser soil sensors that map nutrients as tractors drive
TerraBlaster builds laser-based soil sensors that read nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and pH in real time as a tractor or ATV drives the field, at resolutions down to 0.15 acres. Using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, it feeds nutrient maps straight into the variable-rate fertiliser workflows growers already run. The California company was founded by Jorge Heraud, former John Deere executive and Blue River Technology co-founder, and plans commercial launch in spring 2027.
ManufacturingFarmingHort Innovation Venture FundGrain InnovatePlug And PlaySunna · +8 · +11
$200M Series D · gatik.ai
Gatik — Driverless trucks for short-haul B2B deliveries
Gatik, the leader in autonomous middle mile logistics, delivers goods safely and efficiently using its fleet of light and medium duty trucks. The company focuses on short-haul, B2B logistics for Fortune 500 customers including Kroger, Walmart, Loblaw, Tyson Foods, and Pitney Bowes, and in 2021 became the first company worldwide to operate fully driverless commercial deliveries on the middle mile.
TransportationIntact Private CapitalArk InvestMillennium ManagementKoch Disruptive TechnologiesQatar Investment Authority · +1 · +4
Aug 24
$37M Series A · airbound.com
Airbound — Autonomous cargo drones for places roads serve badly
Airbound builds autonomous, zero-infrastructure delivery aircraft — engineered, manufactured, and flown in India. Its TRT blended-wing-body tailsitter takes off vertically without a runway and flies cargo to places roads serve badly, with an ultra-lightweight airframe that weighs less than the payload it carries. The Bengaluru company has logged over 13,000 autonomous flights, moves diagnostic samples for hospital networks today, and is targeting per-delivery costs low enough to compete with trucking. The Series A funds a three-city drone delivery network in Andhra Pradesh and a larger next-generation craft.
TransportationLogisticsManufacturingGreenoaksDoorDash LabsLachy Groom · +4 · +7
$18.3M · mantelcapture.com
Mantel — Molten-salt carbon capture for boilers, kilns and furnaces
Mantel is developing the first molten-salt based carbon capture technology. Our molten borates are designed to operate at the high temperatures found inside boilers, kilns, and furnaces – enabling highly efficient carbon capture that has not been possible until now. Carbon capture can be applied across industry to reduce emissions - and even achieve net-negative emissions. By solving for efficiency Mantel can reduce energy losses by more than 60% and cut costs in half, unlocking carbon capture’s role in reaching global net zero.
Manufacturing$10M+
$6M Pre-Seed · lightlinks.co
Light Links — Infrared wireless links for industrial and defense networks
Light Links is an optical wireless communication company that has developed Wi-OW™, a technology that replaces traditional radio communication with invisible infrared light. Their solutions aim to enhance mission-critical networks in sectors such as industrial automation and defense. The company is focused on scaling production and expanding deployments. Light Links is backed by notable investors in the dual-use and defense-tech sectors.
HardwareSatellite communicationWirelessCrosscourtManaOutput Capital · +3 · +6
Aug 23
YC S26 · ethos-space.com
Ethos Space Resources — Makes solar-grade silicon from lunar regolith
Ethos Space Resources makes solar-grade silicon on the Moon. Demand for AI compute is compounding toward a terawatt a year of new capacity, and once data centres head to orbit it is rocket capacity, not the grid, that caps the buildout — so terawatt-scale AI in space has to be built from mass already outside Earth's gravity well. Ethos melts, electrolyses and purifies lunar regolith in hard vacuum, a single process that yields construction materials, rocket propellant and solar-grade silicon, tested in the company's own lunar environment chamber. The work starts with mining and construction for the first heavy landings: landing pads, propellant for the trip home, and silicon that turns sunlight into more capacity. Founded in 2022 by Ross Centers (Planetary Sunshade Institute) and Brogan BamBrogan (former principal propulsion engineer at SpaceX, co-founder of Hyperloop One), Ethos is based in Los Angeles and is part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch.
Hard techExascale computing3d-printingYCEnergyAerospace · +1 · +4
Aug 22
YC S26 · spectreintelligence.ai
Spectre Intelligence — Trading firm that trains AI traders instead of hiring humans
Spectre Intelligence is a multi-strategy trading firm that trains AI traders instead of hiring human ones. An independent research and trading company built around reasoning under uncertainty, it currently trades in the semiconductor and biotechnology sectors. Founded by Michelle Li (CEO) and Joshua Zyzak, the firm is based in San Francisco and is part of Y Combinator's Summer 2026 batch.
BiotechnologyInvestingTradingYCSemiconductorsFintech · +3
Aug 21
$9M Seed · idler.ai
idler — Evaluation suites and RL environments for AI labs
idler is a frontier data research lab and artificial intelligence evaluation platform based in San Francisco, CA. The company develops a comprehensive evaluation and benchmarking platform that builds advanced evaluation suites, programmatic datasets, and interactive reinforcement learning environments utilized by global AI labs. It focuses on specialized software engineering, cybersecurity, recursive self-improvement, and enterprise safety testing beds.
SoftwareArtificial intelligenceCybersecuritySmaiyl MakyshovNur BazylbekovFeross Aboukhadijeh · +9 · +12
