frontrun

startup discovery platform. ai-native deal flow, from discovery to outreach.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

https://t.co/EBjqkW4JGe

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@jqdsouza @Aries @kleinerperkins @EkaRobotics @a16z @FPrimeCapital 🫡

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

A week of raises. @frontrunvc flagged 12 startups before they were announced. 👇

Average lead time: 100 days.

1. @Aries - 196 days ago. $7M seed led by Thomas Peterffy & @kleinerperkins
2. @EkaRobotics - 184 days ago. $150M Series A co-led by @a16z and @fprimecapital
3. @qualitateio - 184 days ago. $25M Series A led by @insightpartners
4. @getcontextdev - 144 days ago. $9M led by @generalcatalyst
5. @asymptotelabs - 106 days ago. $5.5M seed led by @TowerVentures
6. @coherenceneuro - 99 days ago. $45M led by @foundersfund and the OpenAI Startup Fund
7. @rosiematch - 77 days ago. $7M seed co-led by @blingcapital and Reach Capital
8. @pennant_ai - 59 days ago. $5M seed led by Urban Innovation Fund
9. @optivolt - 52 days ago. $32M Series A led by VXI Capital
10. @trustedrouter - 39 days ago. $6M seed led by @Sierra_Ventures
11. @babahq - 31 days ago. $40M Series A led by @FirstMarkCap
12. @tolanworld - 23 days ago. $30M Series A led by @khoslaventures

Great week to follow from the front. 🫡

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@boardyai @ycombinator @VerdunAI @EpsilabRL @joannewang_ @OlsenMatthew99 @PFengjiao @vanders3nn yes indeed

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

startups in @ycombinator's newest batch with under 20 followers on X:

1/ @VerdunAI: the world's most advanced security monitoring service.

2/ @epsilabrl: long-horizon rl environments for real-world agents.
> built by @joannewang_, @OlsenMatthew99, @PFengjiao and @vanders3nn.

3/ @confettibuild: build hardware with a single prompt. > built by @lucasyuan007.

4/ @armorer_labs: continuous security verification for ai agents in regulated industries.
> built by @begimher and @cristian_le0.

5/ @SPMOffroad: electric offroad vehicles.
> built by @jp1994194.

flagged on @frontrunvc's accelerator discovery lane. 🟧

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

people who left @OpenAI, @spacexai, @stripe and @Tesla to build something new in stealth on X:

1/ @hyhieu226: ex-openai and xai technical staff, google brain researcher, imo silver medalist.

2/ @rochi5ha: 5 years engineering at rippling, then stripe.

3/ @bradbartelt: openai grove incubation, first employee at a16z-backed meridian.

4/ @nickperkins94: tesla battery engineer, then 7 years at form energy.

5/ @vivianphung: ex-instagram feed engineer, founded snowball tools, ceo of dora.

flagged on @frontrunvc stealth discovery lane. 🥷

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

people who left @OpenAI, @spacexai, @stripe and @Tesla to build something new in stealth on X:

1/ @hyhieu226: ex-openai and xai technical staff, google brain researcher, imo silver medalist.

2/ @rochi5ha: 5 years engineering at rippling, then stripe.

3/ @bradbartelt: openai grove incubation, first employee at a16z-backed meridian.

4/ @nickperkins94: tesla battery engineer, then 7 years at form energy.

5/ @vivianphung: ex-instagram feed engineer, founded snowball tools, ceo of dora.

flagged on @frontrunvc stealth discovery lane. 🥷

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

if ur investing lmk below

ill hook u up

[Boardy @boardyai]

if ur raising lmk below

ill hook u up

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

a startup in sf is turning mercury into real gold.

@frontrunvc flagged @MarathonFusion 50 days ago at 1k followers. 🫡

[Marathon Fusion @MarathonFusion]

Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.

Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.

Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @Aries on April 9th.

195 days later: $7M seed led by Thomas Peterffy & @kleinerperkins 🫡

[Aries @Aries]

WE JUST RAISED MONEY

Announcing our $7m Seed Round led by Thomas Peterffy with participation from @kleinerperkins, @collision, John Paulson, 638 of our users, and a few amazing others.

Aries is building the stock trading platform of the future

We just launched Aries Infinite your own infinite trading canvas, built widget by widget or by asking AI

Open an account today at https://t.co/fD6BMlCIQr to experience premium market access and get one free share of stock worth up to $500!

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@KyzenTheEditor @jongall45 @cabralorenzo 👀

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

the number ai labs use to check if a model changed after fine-tuning barely works.

meet @ArcanumLabs_: they train models that beat frontier models on your agent's use case, faster and cheaper. you own the weights.

@frontrunvc flagged the team in august and the company X account this morning. 🫡

→ @danielrupawalla
→ @theoc____
→ @samir_walji
→ @MikeRCrystal

[JG @jongall45]

some new ui on @frontrunvc.

pick a startup, see exactly who in your network is following it. one click to dm the founder.

thanks to @cabralorenzo and bencho for the network graph component 🔥

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@boardyai @jongall45 @cabralorenzo 🫡

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

https://t.co/XAr0jEK0Q9

[Nicky @nicholastorabi]

I’ve spoken to many $1B+ revenue data companies in the past weeks, and these are some thoughts on where this is all headed and various types of players that will emerge:

1) The facilitators. Think companies that offer data anonymisation technology, ‘stock x for data’ to build a universal quality standard for data evaluation so labs don’t need to waste time with low quality data and deals can happen quicker, escrow tech for buyers and sellers to put cash and data into and then exchange in order to not get scammed, banks for financing data vendors, etc. I actually think this is quite overlooked and there’s a lot really cool stuff that will emerge.

2) The crypto-style data broker. One man operation. Operating out of a tax heaven. Great 6 month opportunity to make cash. Not all to fulfilling, but demand is there. My two cents on this if you’re considering this: act as an ‘advisor’ to the sellers. Build relationships. Almost like an investment banker on the sell-side. Build a website that depicts trust and advisory, not large scale marketplace that doesn’t care.

3) Large market-place websites. I think there will be a couple that do very well and will make a small % margin on a large volume of deals. This is less of a venture capital play and will likely flourish better if you bootstrap, seen as you don’t need outside capital. Classic problem of getting this off the ground is the chicken and egg problem to get enough sellers and buyers in the first place. Here I would optimise for going viral on social media to achieve that first unlock.

4) Couple deeply routed players for each type of data that completely verticalises (own deep supply roots; maybe even buy companies) and be in constant communication with the buyers (labs, enterprises) to understand their needs. Here you go the next step and don’t just sell the data raw, but utilise reinforcement learning to increase margin by 10-100x. For this you need some good technical talent and capital to get it off the ground, but comes with the opportunity to build something long-lasting.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

the ai data gold rush is real. we found the next one at 1 follower, before its first post.

@thegeneraldata: self-improving environments for industrial engineering. teaching ai how industry works from real operational data.

founder: @nicholastorabi co-founded qorelo and raised a $3.7m seed at 19. ex-antler, ex-deutsche bank.

sep 14: account created
sep 14: linkedin flips to "founder at stealth ai startup", flagged
sep 27: @nicholastorabi flagged at 22 followers
oct 14: @thegeneraldata flagged at 1 follower
oct 21: still under the radar 🫡

[Deedy @deedydas]

I’ve had 3 diff people tell me they are 100% sure this “fastest to $1B annualized revenue” is 3 diff companies.

Very likely more than 1 data co has recently hit that mark, many of which are on Pavlov’s List.

Many more will get there in the next 6mos.

Total data spend is >$15B.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@EseTeLopez @qualitateio @insightpartners we are not building for airdrop farmers.
feel free to unfollow. 🫡

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @qualitateio on April 22nd.

181 days later: $25M led by @insightpartners. 🫡

[Sagar Kadakia @S_Kadakia]

We just raised $25M from Insight Partners to replace Gartner, McKinsey, and GLG.

RIP the Quadrant, the 80-page consulting deck, and the $2000 expert network call.

Our revenue run-rate is up 10x+ this year.

100+ investment firms and enterprises use Qualitate to inform decisions with firsthand evidence.

Here's how:

https://t.co/0KKmWR07Ik

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

https://t.co/EBjqkW4JGe

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @EkaRobotics on April 22nd.

181 days later: $150M Series A co-led by @a16z and @fprimecapital. 🫡

[Pulkit Agrawal @pulkitology]

@EkaRobotics has raised a $150M Series A.

Generality v/s Performance is the fundamental tension at the frontier of robotics. Generality without performance is just a prototype. Performance without generality is just a single-purpose tool.

Customers shouldn’t have to choose. Eka breaks the tradeoff. Powered by our Vision-Force-Action (VFA) model, we deliver the performance and versatility customers need to put robots to work every day.

Eka is built on three convictions:
⚡️Force is the language of manipulation.
🚀 Reinforcement learning is how dexterous manipulation scales.
🎂 System 1—fast, reliable physical execution—is the bottleneck to solve.

With this funding, we will scale our model and accelerate customer deployments.

Grateful to be building alongside a dream team and investors who share our ambition.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @asymptotelabs on July 8th.

104 days later: $5.5M seed led by @TowerVentures, with @LyticalVentures, @1984Ventures and @spc. 🫡

[Justin D'Souza @jqdsouza]

We’re betting our $5.5M seed round that the next leap in AI coding won’t come from OpenAI or Anthropic.

It’ll come from a new feedback loop that learns from you.

Introducing Beacon: open-source, self-improving memory for coding agents.

Your sessions capture how you debug and solve problems. Today, that context gets lost and you have to re-explain things every time you switch tools.

Beacon continuously distills your sessions into reusable skills across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and 20+ harnesses, so your next agent can learn from the last.

Beacon is free and OSS 🌟 https://t.co/Q6gvnXXT5f

Why should the frontier labs be the only ones winning with your sessions?

You already did the work. Now let your coding agents learn from you.

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

@ilaamathur @via_ai_ @jeffawilke @ShrayAlag early 👀

congrats on the launch @ilaamathur 🫡

https://t.co/GOqVu2wdxi

[frontrun @frontrunvc]

EARLY 🌱: 5 startups under 30 followers, across AI and Robotics.👇

1. @supernerves - 4 followers - (AI): a research lab for machine taste, studying how humans see, judge and create.
→ founder: @PossiblyTejas

2. @via_ai_ - 7 followers - (AI): routes enterprise llm queries between open-source and frontier models to cut costs.
→ founders: @ilaamathur, @ShrayAlag.

3. @afterthoughtai - 8 followers - (AI): venture-backed lab doing foundational ai research.
→ founder: @CollinMickels.

4. @hyperictech - 17 followers - (Robotics): building drone autonomy.
→ founder: @ayushrgarg.

5. @abstractatomic - 28 followers - (AI): evolving atoms at the speed of bits.
→ founder: @lindahongcheng.