Who funded the startups on our directory in 2026

We track eighteen AI startups on the startups page. Eleven of them closed a round in 2026, one was acquired, and six have not raised since 2025. Below is what each one does and where its money came from, as of October 12, 2026.

A note on sourcing: every figure links to the announcement or press report it came from. "Reportedly" marks numbers that rest on a single outlet or on reports of talks, not on a company announcement.

The 2026 rounds, largest first

Company	What it does	Round	Amount	Valuation	Lead investors	Date
Sierra	AI customer-service agents	Unnamed	$950M	over $15B	Tiger Global, GV	May 4
Harvey	AI for legal teams	Unnamed	$550M	$15.5B	Diffusion, Lightspeed	Sep 9
ElevenLabs	AI voice and audio	Series D	$500M	$11B	Sequoia	Feb 4
Suno	Songs from text prompts	Series D	over $400M	$5.4B	Bond	Jun 3
Lovable	Apps from prompts	Series C	$400M	$13.3B	Menlo, Scaleup Europe Fund	Aug 12
Replit	Build and deploy apps with AI	Unnamed	$400M	$9B	not named	Mar 11
Runway	AI video and world models	Series E	$315M	$5.3B	General Atlantic	Feb 10
Exa	Web search API for AI agents	Series C	$250M	$2.2B	a16z	May 20
Granola	AI meeting notes	Series C	$125M	$1.5B	Index Ventures	Mar 25
Braintrust	Evals and observability for AI apps	Series B	$80M	$800M	ICONIQ	Feb 17
Firecrawl	Web scraping API for AI agents	Series B	$75M	undisclosed	Smash Capital	Sep 22

Together that is about $4B across eleven rounds, and five of them were priced at $9B or more.

App builders

Lovable builds working web apps from a chat prompt. It raised a $400M Series C at $13.3B in August, co-led by Menlo Ventures and the Scaleup Europe Fund, eight months after a $330M Series B at $6.6B. That is a doubled valuation in under a year. The company told TechCrunch it reached $500M in annualized revenue in June.

Replit turns natural language into deployed apps. It raised $400M at $9B in March, from investors including Georgian, G Squared, Coatue, a16z and QIA. It reported more than 50M users and says it is on track for $1B in run-rate revenue by the end of the year (a target, not a reported number).

Bolt (StackBlitz) has not announced a round since its Series B in January 2025, led by Emergence and GV at a reported $700M valuation. Forbes puts its total funding at about $105M.

Search and data for agents

Exa sells a web search engine built for AI agents. Its $250M Series C in May, led by a16z, valued it at $2.2B, about three times the $700M of its Series B eight months earlier. It says more than 5,000 companies use it.

Firecrawl turns websites into clean data for agents. It raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital on September 22, with Altos, Nexus and Y Combinator joining.

Tavily, a search and extraction API for agents, took a different path. After a $25M Series A in 2025, it agreed in February to be acquired by Nebius, reportedly for $275M.

Perplexity, the AI answer engine, has no confirmed 2026 round. Nvidia was reportedly in talks in August to invest at more than $30B, up from $20B in September 2025. Its annualized revenue reportedly passed $750M in August.

Agent infrastructure

Braintrust runs evals and observability for AI products. It raised an $80M Series B at $800M in February, led by ICONIQ, with customers including Notion, Replit and Cloudflare.

Three infrastructure companies on our list have not raised in 2026:

• Browserbase, cloud browsers for agents: a $40M Series B at $300M in June 2025, led by Notable Capital.
• E2B, sandboxes where agents run code: a $21M Series A in July 2025, led by Insight Partners.
• Mem0, a memory layer for agents: $24M across seed and Series A in October 2025, led by Basis Set and Kindred.

Media

ElevenLabs makes speech, dubbing, music and voice agents. Its $500M Series D at $11B, led by Sequoia in February, brought its total to $781M. It reported more than $330M in ARR at the end of 2025.

Suno generates songs from text. It raised more than $400M at $5.4B in June, led by Bond, just six months after a $250M Series C at $2.45B. That more than doubled its valuation while it was still fighting copyright suits.

Runway builds AI video and what it calls world models. It raised a $315M Series E at $5.3B in February, led by General Atlantic, with Nvidia, Adobe Ventures and AMD Ventures participating.

Productivity

Granola started as an AI meeting notetaker and is moving into team software. It raised a $125M Series C at $1.5B in March, led by Index Ventures.

Gamma generates presentations and websites. It has not raised since its $68M Series B at $2.1B in November 2025, and it says it is profitable at $100M ARR.

Vertical AI

Harvey sells AI to law firms and in-house legal teams. It raised $550M at $15.5B in September, co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed. That was its second round of the year, after a reported $200M at $11B in March. LawSites estimates its total funding at more than $1.5B.

Sierra builds customer-service agents for large companies. Its $950M round in May, led by Tiger Global and GV, was the largest on our list and valued it at more than $15B (reportedly $15.8B). It says it passed $150M ARR within eight quarters.

What stands out

• The money follows revenue. The biggest rounds went to companies that publish revenue figures: Lovable ($500M run rate), ElevenLabs ($330M+ ARR), Harvey (reportedly $400M+ ARR) and Sierra ($150M+ ARR).
• Valuations are doubling within a year. Lovable went from $6.6B to $13.3B in eight months, Suno from $2.45B to $5.4B in six, and Exa from $700M to $2.2B in eight.
• Agent infrastructure is splitting. Search for agents is drawing large rounds (Exa) or getting acquired (Tavily), while browsers, sandboxes and memory have not raised since 2025.