If anything, Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI defined 2024. it’s a transformative force reshaping industries and redefining innovation in real time. In fact, when it comes to AI-fueled innovation, virtually no industry has been left untouched. Recent advancements in generative AI, natural language processing, and machine learning have unlocked unprecedented opportunities, sparking a wave of creativity and entrepreneurship across the globe.
At the heart of this technological revolution are the startups and ‘small tech’ entrepreneurs that are enabling businesses to innovate faster by leveraging cutting-edge technologies to solve complex problems, streamline operations, and enhance user experiences. These agile innovators not only capitalize on the latest trends but also help define the trajectory of AI’s evolution, creating a dynamic feedback loop between groundbreaking research and practical application.
McKinsey projects that by 2030, AI could contribute an additional $13T – $22T in economic value through enhanced productivity and revenue opportunities, representing a significant boost compared to today’s global GDP. Despite this growth, the impact on overall employment levels is expected to be limited. Similarly, PwC forecasts that AI’s widespread adoption and rapid integration could drive a transformative $15.7 trillion increase in global economic activity by 2030, underscoring its potential to fuel unprecedented growth.
With that as a backdrop, we will be exploring some of the most notable early-stage (seed – Series B) AI startups, highlighting how they’re pushing the boundaries of possibility and influencing the broader tech landscape as we turn the calendar into 2025. From healthcare to finance and beyond, these companies exemplify the potential of AI to transform our world.
Actively, AI was founded by a handful of Stanford AI researchers and is based in New York. It’s an AI-powered pipeline generation tool specifically designed for growth and enterprise companies. It helps outbound teams prioritize, personalize, and expand their sales pipelines by streamlining the process of identifying and engaging high-potential leads. Actively, AI has raised $5M in funding to date, with its most recent Seed round closing on January 1, last year. The company has attracted a handful of investors, including Lachy Groom and Conversion Capital.
AgentAI, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, is focused on helping healthcare providers and medical billing companies leverage AI to drive significant improvements in efficiency and cost savings through workflow automation. The company aims to shape a future where healthcare is more efficient, accessible, and affordable for everyone. AgentAI has raised $5.9M in funding to date, with its most recent Seed round closing on July 2024. The company is currently backed by two investors, including Slow Ventures and Oceans.
Basis recently closed its $34M Series B round to fuel AI-powered accounting automation. Basis’ AI agents perform various workflows such as entering transactions and double-checking data accuracy and integrate with popular ledger systems like Intuit’s QuickBooks and Xero. Notable investors include Khosla Ventures, NFDG, the AI-focused fund run by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and former Apple executive Daniel Gross, OpenAI board members Larry Summers and Adam D’Angelo, and Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean.
Bluebirds, based in San Francisco, California, helps GTM teams automate outbound efforts using intent signals and AI agents. By leveraging trusted data sources, Bluebirds enables teams to create custom intent signals in just three minutes, saving reps up to 2 hours a day on list building and prospect research. The platform continuously scans the market and delivers ready-to-prospect leads directly to your CRM. Bluebirds has raised $5.5M in funding to date, with its most recent Seed round closing in October of 2023. The company has attracted six investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners and 1984 Ventures.
Braintrust Data, based in San Francisco, California, offers an AI stack designed to help you build LLM and AI apps better. The platform streamlines the evaluation process by enabling easy scoring, logging, and visualization of outputs. Users can investigate failures, monitor performance trends, and address key questions such as identifying regressions or assessing new models. Braintrust Data also features a “Prompt Playground” where users can compare multiple prompts, benchmarks, and input/output pairs across runs, facilitating both quick experimentation and dataset evaluations. The company has raised $41.1M in funding to date, with its most recent Series A round closing in October 2024. Braintrust Data has attracted 11 investors, including Databricks Ventures and Arthur Mensch.
Encord, based in San Francisco, provides a unified data development platform designed for vision and multimodal AI teams. As the leading platform in this space, Encord builds tools and infrastructure that help clients accelerate the deployment of their models into production. Its offerings include a data-centric model testing and evaluation framework, human-centric workflow and annotation tools for labeling and RLHF, and software for data curation and management. Encord has raised $50M in funding to date, with its most recent Series B round closing in August 2024. The company has attracted 10 investors, including Y Combinator and Next47.
Hume AI, founded in 2021 and based in New York, provides an AI toolkit designed to measure, understand, and improve the impact of technology on human emotion. Through its science-backed API, Hume AI enables the measurement of human expressive behavior in images, videos, audio, and text, allowing developers to build applications that better predict user intents, preferences, experiences, and outcomes. The company has raised over $67.M in funding to date, with its most recent Series B round closing in March 2024. Hume AI has attracted 11 investors, including Comcast Ventures and Nat Friedman.
Inventive, founded in 2022 and based in San Francisco, California, is an AI agent platform that develops tools to help companies build more innovative products. Its mission is to accelerate the world’s transition to smarter products by embedding a conversational AI copilot that enhances customer experience, aids in data analysis to solve problems, and drives better actions. Inventive has raised $6.5M in funding to date, with its most recent Seed round closing June 2024. The company has attracted four investors, including Tokyo Black and Wing Venture Capital.
Materia, which was recently acquired by Thomson Reuters, New York-based Materia, is transforming public accounting by automating tedious tasks, allowing firms to focus on higher-value activities and improve overall efficiency. As the first comprehensive generative AI platform for public accounting firms, Materia helps organizations enhance productivity, improve quality, and boost staff performance at all levels. The company has raised $6.3M in funding to date, with its most recent Series A round closing June, 2024. Materia has managed to attract five investors, including Haystack and Pathlight Ventures.
Sahara AI, based in Los Angeles, California, is a decentralized AI network that enables the secure and seamless deployment of autonomous AI on a high-performance, privacy-first network. Its collaboration platform empowers individuals and businesses to deploy personalized, autonomous AI while offering a permissionless and privacy-centric network that facilitates cross-agent communication, knowledge transfer, and capitalization between users. Sahara AI has raised $43M in funding so far, attracting upwards of 25+ investors, including Laksh Vaaman Sehgal and Elvis Zhang.
