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QOSMIC is a Bengaluru spacetech startup building laser communication hardware that helps satellites send much more data back to Earth than older radio-frequency links can handle. The $3.3 million seed round, led by Accel and Prosus, gives the QOSMIC laser communication team fresh capital to turn prototypes into operational optical ground stations and satellite terminals for global customers. Satellites keep collecting bigger and richer datasets, but downlink infrastructure still chokes on the handoff. Founded in 2025 by Shreyaans Jain, Rohit Ramakrishnan, and Aloke Kumar, QOSMIC is betting that laser links become a core layer of space infrastructure rather than a niche add-on.

What is QOSMIC and how does its laser communication hardware work?

QOSMIC is building both sides of the optical link. On the ground, it offers ARGUS, an optical ground station that receives laser transmissions from satellites in LEO, MEO, and GEO. In orbit, it’s building ZAPHOD, a compact optical terminal that can sit on CubeSats and small satellites for satellite-to-ground and inter-satellite communication. That end-to-end setup matters because customers don’t just need a terminal or a telescope in isolation. They need a working path from spacecraft to usable data on Earth.

The hardware details are unusually specific for such a young company. ARGUS is designed around a proprietary aperture system with atmospheric turbulence compensation and sub-arcsecond beam tracking. High-speed demodulation is part of the package. QOSMIC lists a 1550 nm C-band optical link, a 1 to 100 Gbps data-rate range, support for standards such as CCSDS 142.0-B, ESTOL v2.2, and SDA 4.0, and a deployment timeline of under 6 months. That’s not casual slideware. It’s the kind of spec sheet buyers and partners actually look for.

ZAPHOD is the smaller but strategically important piece. The terminal is built for CubeSat-to-SmallSat missions, targets 1 to 10 Gbps links, and is listed at under 3 kg for LEO missions. QOSMIC is co-developing the terminal with TakeMe2Space for constellation deployment, which gives the product a real mission path instead of leaving it stuck in endless lab validation.

And the bigger idea isn’t just hardware. QOSMIC plans to run 50+ optical ground stations as one coordinated network. It will use weather-adaptive scheduling and automated handoffs. Predictive maintenance and centralized network operations are part of the plan. Before that, a satellite operator often has to live with scarce RF bandwidth, clunky booking, and a lot of wasted data. After that, the pitch is closer to a programmable downlink layer.

Who founded QOSMIC and why does the QOSMIC funding round matter?

QOSMIC’s founding story

QOSMIC was founded in 2025 in Bengaluru by Shreyaans Jain, Rohit Ramakrishnan, and Aloke Kumar. The company came out of a research-heavy environment tied to IISc and ARTPARK, and it was later selected for the inaugural Atoms X cohort from Accel and Prosus. QOSMIC doesn’t look like a startup that stumbled into “space” after building generic enterprise software first. It looks like a deliberate deeptech build from day 1.

Why this team fits the problem

Shreyaans Jain, QOSMIC’s CEO, studied Quantum Information Systems at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a minor in ECE and a specialization in technology commercialisation. Rohit Ramakrishnan, the CTO, brings the harder technical edge: he was a C.V. Raman Postdoctoral Fellow at IISc, holds a PhD from IISc’s Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, worked on the world’s first quantum satellite program at the National University of Singapore, and also spent time at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He’s also a co-author of The Quantum Internet, which tells you this team has spent years thinking about photonics, quantum communication, and real transmission systems — not just startup narratives. QOSMIC itself lists Aloke Kumar as cofounder and faculty advisor.

Early signals, round details, and the competition

The company is still early, but there are solid signs of execution. QOSMIC has already tested its optical communications system over a 10-km ground link, validating high-speed transfer plus pointing, acquisition, and tracking outside the lab. It is now preparing for in-orbit tests and first commercial deployments. The TakeMe2Space partnership is the clearest near-term proof point. QOSMIC is handling the optical terminal, while TakeMe2Space is responsible for the gimbal systems, bus interconnects, and attitude determination and control stack. The first jointly developed terminal is expected to launch in Q2 2027 into the MOI constellation.

The startup also remains tiny. Its public profile lists a team size of 2–10 people, which is both impressive and a reminder of the execution risk here. Hardware startups don’t get much margin for error, especially when they also need testing, manufacturing, systems integration, and orbital qualification.

On financing, QOSMIC has raised $3.3 million, or about ₹31 crore, in seed funding from Accel and Prosus, with South Park Commons, ARTPARK, and angel investor Manish Jain joining the round. The company will use the money to deploy operational optical ground stations and satellite communication terminals. It also plans to expand integration and testing capacity, scale manufacturing, and hire across optical, mechanical, and electronics roles.

Competition is real, and it’s not lightweight. Global optical satcom already has terminal-focused players such as Mynaric, TESAT, and Skyloom, while ground-segment specialists like OGS Technologies and Azora are working the infrastructure side. QOSMIC’s edge is that it’s trying to own both layers — terminal and ground station — while building from India with a compact team and a sharper cost structure than many western peers. That’s a harder strategy.

Why does the QOSMIC funding round matter?

This round matters because it pushes QOSMIC out of the “interesting prototype” zone and into the much tougher phase where customers expect operational hardware. Deploying real ground stations is expensive. Building space-ready terminals is worse. Once a startup says it will manufacture and integrate critical hardware itself, the bar rises fast. That’s exactly where this money is going.

For customers, the significance is practical. A satellite operator doesn’t just want a promising photonics startup; it wants a vendor that can test, build, integrate, support, and eventually operate infrastructure at mission pace. QOSMIC’s decision to spend part of the round on testing and manufacturing shows the founders understand that. Nobody gets repeat business in satellite communications by shipping science projects.

The investor signal is pretty clear. Accel and Prosus didn’t just back a generic spacetech pitch; they had already pulled QOSMIC into Atoms X, their science-led cohort for harder technical bets. Jain put the ambition plainly: “We believe optical communications will become as fundamental to space infrastructure as fibre optics became to the internet. This funding enables us to accelerate that transition and build the connectivity layer that the next generation of space applications will rely on.” The line is ambitious, sure.

How big is the market behind QOSMIC funding?

The market backdrop is getting harder to ignore. Novaspace now forecasts cumulative global revenues of $12.9 billionfor space-based laser communication terminals through 2035, with more than 118,000 terminals in orbit by then. On the ground side, optical ground segment assets are projected to grow at a 31.3% CAGR and pass 830 units by 2035. That’s the kind of curve that makes even very early infrastructure bets look rational.

India’s own space opportunity is also widening, though the forecasts vary depending on who’s doing the math. Bullish industry estimates put the country’s commercial space market above $77 billion by 2030, while IN-SPACe’s strategic roadmap targets roughly $44 billion by 2033 from a base of around $8 billion today. Either way, the direction is the same: more satellites, more private-sector work, and more pressure on data transport infrastructure.

That’s why the timing works. Earth observation payloads are getting richer. On-orbit compute is getting real. Security-sensitive missions want narrower, harder-to-intercept links. And LEO constellations need faster ways to move data between space and ground without drowning in RF bottlenecks. Optical communications don’t solve everything — weather still matters a lot — but the demand pull is now obvious.

Can QOSMIC laser communication turn India into a lasercom supplier?

Maybe. But it won’t happen because the funding headline looks good.

QOSMIC laser communication is still an early bet with very hard milestones ahead: in-orbit validation, customer delivery, terminal reliability, and the first Q2 2027 mission under the TakeMe2Space partnership. If the startup clears those, it won’t just be another seed-funded spacetech company from Bengaluru. It could become one of the few Indian startups selling a serious piece of the global orbital data stack.

Read how Ikin Global raised $2M in a Pre-Series A2 round led by Unicorn India Ventures, Callapina Capital, and AWE Funds to expand its IoT smart lock platform into the US and other global markets.

FAQ

• What is QOSMIC’s latest funding round? QOSMIC has raised a $3.3 million seed round, or about ₹31 crore, led by Accel and Prosus. South Park Commons, ARTPARK, and angel investor Manish Jain also joined, and the cash is earmarked for operational ground stations, satellite terminals, manufacturing, testing, and hiring.
• How does QOSMIC’s product actually work? QOSMIC builds an optical ground station called ARGUS and a satellite terminal called ZAPHOD. The idea is to create a full laser link from spacecraft to Earth. ARGUS handles reception on the ground. ZAPHOD serves as the spaceborne terminal for downlinks and inter-satellite links.
• Who are the founders of QOSMIC? QOSMIC was founded in 2025 by Shreyaans Jain, Rohit Ramakrishnan, and Aloke Kumar. Jain brings quantum systems and commercialization exposure from UIUC, while Ramakrishnan brings a much deeper optical and quantum communications research background through IISc, NUS, and earlier defense-linked academic work.
• Is QOSMIC in the satellite communications market or the spacetech market? It’s in both, but more precisely it sits inside optical satellite communications infrastructure. That puts it in a niche focused on laser terminals, optical ground stations, and inter-satellite links — a category Novaspace expects to generate $12.9 billion in cumulative terminal revenues by 2035.

Ikin Global builds connected smart locks and digital seals for trucks, containers, and warehouses. The IoT smart lock startup has raised $2 Mn, or about ₹18.9 Cr, in a Pre-Series A2 round led by Unicorn India Ventures, Callapina Capital, and AWE Funds. The pitch is simple: cargo operators still lose money to theft, unauthorized access, and weak proof of custody long after GPS tracking became normal. Founded in 2012 by Nibu Alias, Ikin Global is using the new capital for international growth, faster product development, bigger manufacturing capacity, and stronger day-to-day operations.

What does Ikin Global actually sell?

Ikin Global sells a hardware-plus-software security stack for moving cargo. Its lineup includes a 4G GPS Truck Lock, a reusable Smart Bolt Seal, and a Smart Shutter Lock. All three tie into a centralized control center and mobile app where operators can grant access, revoke it, and review a full event log. That’s more useful than a basic padlock because the lock becomes part of the fleet workflow instead of sitting outside it.

Here’s what that looks like for a customer. The devices arrive pre-configured and SIM-activated. The fleet panel and admin app are provisioned in parallel, and the hardware is installed on trucks, containers, or shutters. Managers can then define who gets access, set route boundaries where relevant, and monitor every opening or tamper event from a dashboard instead of waiting for a driver call hours later.

The feature set is pretty specific. Ikin’s Intelligent Logistics Vehicle Security System, or ILVSS, is built around real-time tamper alerts, geofencing, remote access controls, and audit trails. The GPS truck lock adds 4G connectivity and live location tracking. The Smart Bolt Seal focuses on mobile app unlock, open-close logs, up to 12 months of battery life, and 2,000+ reuse cycles. GPS and geofencing are available on the truck lock, while the bolt seal and shutter lock focus more on tamper alerts and digital records.

That changes the customer experience in a practical way. Before, a logistics operator might use plastic seals, paper handovers, and a separate tracking tool. After deployment, the same operator gets one system that shows location, access history, user identity, and exceptions in near real time. It doesn’t eliminate theft risk. But it does make silent tampering harder to hide.

Who founded Ikin Global?

From SectorQube to cargo security

Ikin Global was founded in 2012 by Nibu Alias and is based in Kochi, Kerala. The broader operating company behind it, SectorQube Technolabs, has a multi-founder bench that includes Ani Abraham Joy, Biniyas Valiyaveettil, Arjun Sarath, Midhun Skaria, and Sabarish Prakash. Their current roles are unusually operational for a young hardware company. Alias serves as CEO, Joy as COO, Skaria leads hardware, Prakash leads software, and Sarath runs customer success.

That team didn’t begin with logistics locks. Earlier in SectorQube’s life, the founders were building IoT consumer hardware, including MAID, a smart oven that could pull recipes over Wi‑Fi and support touch, gesture, and voice controls. The team started working together in college and formally built out SectorQube around 2011. That matters because it shows they weren’t parachuting into hardware after years in pure software. They’d already dealt with the ugly parts of physical product building—device design, firmware, manufacturing, and getting connected products into real hands.

Why the founders look like credible builders

Alias brings both technical and operating experience. He previously served as CTO at SectorQube before becoming co-founder and CEO, studied engineering at Toc H Institute of Science and Technology, and later completed an MBA at the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode. That mix doesn’t guarantee execution. But for a company selling enterprise IoT hardware into logistics, a founder who understands both product and B2B operations is more credible than someone selling a PowerPoint.

The rest of the bench matters too. Hardware startups usually break because one side outruns the other—great engineering with weak field rollout, or strong sales with fragile devices. Ikin’s structure looks more balanced. Hardware, software, operations, and customer success all show up as founder-level responsibilities. That fits the kind of business this is: not just selling locks, but deploying them into fleets that can’t afford downtime.

Traction, fundraising, and where Ikin sits against rivals

Ikin is already live in market, not a lab project. The company grew deployments from 2,500 trucks to 10,000 trucks in the last year and crossed 5 Mn successful lock-unlock cycles. Its customer base includes Amazon, Swiggy, Flipkart, Zepto, and Blue Dart. A broader client list includes Licious, Sequel Logistics, Nesto, Syngenta, and Shadowfax. The business serves B2B customers only, and its LinkedIn profile lists a team size of 51-200 employees.

The new round brings in $2 Mn in Pre-Series A2 funding from Unicorn India Ventures, Callapina Capital, and AWE Funds. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the company plans to expand across the US, Europe, and West Asia. It also plans to secure market-specific certifications, launch edge-computing-enabled smart locks, and push deeper into oil and gas, cold chain logistics, defence cargo, mining, railway freight, and cash management. It has already run trials with customers in the US, the UAE, and the UK. Still, trials aren’t revenue, and international industrial sales cycles can drag.

On competition, Ikin isn’t alone. In India, providers such as eLockGPS, Pictor Telematics, Proxgy’s Lockator, and Klik e-Seal pitch GPS-enabled locks or container security systems with live tracking, tamper alerts, and remote unlocking. The old alternative is even more common: plain padlocks, plastic seals, and standalone GPS trackers that tell you where a vehicle is but not who opened it or when. Ikin’s bet is that customers want one integrated system across trucks, containers, and facilities, plus reusable hardware and a centralized dashboard instead of fragmented tools.

Why does Ikin Global funding matter?

This round matters because it’s aimed at scale problems, not survival. Manufacturing expansion suggests Ikin is trying to shorten deployment cycles and support bigger enterprise rollouts. Product development money should also help it move beyond cargo locks into sector-specific security workflows, especially in regulated industries where access logs and tamper evidence are worth real money.

The launch of iBS Pro and the Smart GPS Truck Lock, or iTSS, points in the same direction. iBS Pro gives Ikin a reusable smart bolt seal for cargo containers, while iTSS adds an AI-powered lock with intrusion detection. That’s not just a catalog expansion. It shows the company wants to own more of the security stack for moving goods, from standard truck fleets to higher-risk categories where compliance, route discipline, and incident traceability matter more.

Investors are backing proof, not theory. A jump to 10,000 deployed trucks and 5 Mn successful access cycles is the kind of operational evidence enterprise hardware investors care about. Still, this isn’t easy money. Global expansion in industrial hardware usually gets hung up on certifications, channel partners, and after-sales support.

How big is the market for supply chain IoT security?

The supply chain IoT market is expected to reach $40.33 Bn by 2033, up from $12.6 Bn in 2024, with the market forecast pointing to $14.34 Bn in 2025. That’s the demand backdrop for companies like Ikin: more connected assets, more software around physical movement, and more enterprise budgets flowing into tracking, monitoring, and operational control.

Security is a big reason that spending is happening. The 2025 TT Club and BSI cargo theft report found that trucks accounted for 70% of global cargo theft incidents, and insider involvement showed up in 22% of cases, with concentrations in India, China, Brazil, the US, and Indonesia. The same report flagged an increase in pharmaceutical theft in India. Put bluntly, cargo crime is getting smarter, and simple physical seals don’t create the kind of evidence trail insurers, operators, or compliance teams now want.

Can this IoT smart lock startup win abroad?

Ikin Global looks more serious than a lot of hardware startups because it already has product in the field, blue-chip customers, and a team that’s been building connected devices for years. The harder part starts now. If the company can convert overseas trials into contracts, win the certifications it needs, and prove that its smart lock platform works outside India’s logistics context, this IoT smart lock startup could become a credible export story from Kerala. Paid adoption in the US, Europe, and West Asia is the next thing to watch.

Read how Hang Ten Systems raised a $32M seed led by Mayfield to reinvent enterprise software delivery with AI-native development, agentic code generation, and reusable engineering workflows.

FAQ

• What funding did Ikin Global raise in 2026? Ikin Global raised $2 Mn in a Pre-Series A2 round announced on June 24, 2026. Unicorn India Ventures, Callapina Capital, and AWE Funds led the round, and the company is using the money for international expansion, product work, manufacturing scale-up, and stronger operations.
• How does Ikin Global’s smart lock system work? It works by combining connected locking hardware with a central dashboard and mobile app. Fleet teams can install GPS truck locks, reusable smart bolt seals, or shutter locks. They can then manage access permissions, monitor tamper alerts, review audit trails, and in some cases track location and geofencing events through one control layer.
• Who is Nibu Alias and what is his background? Nibu Alias is Ikin Global’s founder and CEO, based in Kochi, and he previously served as CTO at SectorQube before moving into the chief executive role. He studied engineering at Toc H Institute of Science and Technology and completed an MBA at IIM Kozhikode, and he was part of the earlier connected-hardware effort behind the MAID smart oven.
• Is Ikin Global a logistics startup or an IoT company? It’s both, really, but the cleaner label is a B2B supply chain IoT company. Ikin builds enterprise hardware and software for cargo security, fleet security, and access control across trucks, containers, warehouses, and industrial facilities, which puts it inside the wider supply chain IoT market projected to reach $40.33 Bn by 2033.

Hang Ten Systems is an enterprise AI services startup that helps big companies build, change, and run software with AI. It has raised a $32 million seed round led by Mayfield, with Aramco Ventures and angel investors also participating, as it goes after a stubborn problem: enterprise AI projects still get bogged down when old software, custom integrations, and endless maintenance work pile up. Founded in 2026 by former Infosys CEO and SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka, the Palo Alto company will use the money to hire and expand its work with global enterprises.

What is Hang Ten Systems and how does it work?

Hang Ten Systems is trying to replace a lot of classic IT services work with an AI-native delivery model. Instead of treating enterprise software projects as big, one-off customization jobs, it pitches a continuous model where software is built, modified, and operated with AI-driven development and automation. That includes business systems work and operational software. It also covers AI deployment inside enterprise workflows.

The guts of the product are pretty specific. Hang Ten uses agentic code generation and reusable skills libraries. It pairs those with domain expertise to speed up software development, customization, integration, and maintenance. It has also described its model as being backed by an expert bench of forward deployed engineers, with specialized capabilities in enterprise transformation, finance, HR, and new product development.

In practice, that means the customer experience is supposed to look less like a slow handoff to a massive systems integrator and more like an embedded engineering team working with AI accelerants. Hang Ten’s engineers sit close to the customer problem and reuse skills from past projects. AI handles more of the repetitive build-and-change cycle. That’s the pitch.

And that’s where the company gets interesting. A lot of enterprise AI vendors sell copilots, dashboards, or model access. Hang Ten is selling delivery itself — the messy work of actually getting software and operations changed inside big companies. That’s a harder sell. Budgets there are much larger.

Who founded Hang Ten Systems and what’s the backstory?

A 2026 launch with familiar lieutenants

Hang Ten launched in June 2026 with Sikka as founder and CEO. Early leadership around him includes longtime collaborators from earlier chapters of his career: co-founders Navin Budhiraja as CTO and Sanjay Rajagopalan as chief design officer, along with Tao Liu as senior vice president of forward deployed engineering. That lineup matters because this isn’t a solo-founder experiment. It looks more like a seasoned enterprise team reassembled for a new delivery model.

Why Vishal Sikka fits this market

Sikka’s fit for this market is obvious. He ran Infosys from 2014 to 2017, after spending years at SAP and eventually leading all products and technology there from 2010 to 2014. His formal background is just as technical: a B.Sc. in computer science from Syracuse University and doctoral studies in artificial intelligence at Stanford.

That mix matters. He’s seen enterprise software from the product side at SAP and from the services side at Infosys. Hang Ten is built at that intersection — where enterprise software meets AI-enabled delivery.

From SAP and Infosys to Vianai

After stepping down from Infosys, Sikka founded Vianai Systems in 2019, another Palo Alto AI company aimed at enterprise decision-making and analytics. He stayed as founder and CEO there until April 2026. He also sits on BMW Group’s supervisory board and has served on GSK’s board since 2022, which gives him unusually strong boardroom access for a startup that needs Fortune 500 trust early.

That helps explain why investors moved fast here. Hang Ten isn’t asking customers to trust a first-time founder with a slick demo. It’s asking them to trust someone who has spent decades inside the kind of enterprise software stack he now wants to rebuild.

Early traction, board muscle, and the round

The company is already live with enterprise work. Sikka has said Hang Ten is working with Fresenius and Siemens entities, including Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, on AI-native project delivery. Jerry Yang, the Yahoo co-founder, has joined the board, which adds even more weight when the company starts pitching large global accounts.

On the financing side, Hang Ten closed a $32 million seed round led by Mayfield, with Aramco Ventures and angel investors joining in. The capital is earmarked for expanding the team and scaling customer engagements globally. For a seed round, that’s a big number. It suggests investors think this category won’t be won by tiny prototype teams. It’ll be won by whoever can mix talent and delivery process with reusable IP fast enough.

How Hang Ten Systems stacks up against incumbents

This market is already crowded, just not with many startups that look exactly like Hang Ten. The most obvious competitors are incumbent AI and generative AI service firms such as Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, Deloitte, IBM Consulting, and TCS, which Everest Group placed in the leadership tier of its 2025 AI and generative AI services assessment. Infosys, Globant, Wipro, Tech Mahindra, and others sit close behind.

So where does Hang Ten try to stand apart? On speed. On compounding delivery leverage. And on being AI-native from day 1 rather than retrofitting AI into a giant headcount-heavy services model. The old alternative is familiar: long enterprise software projects, lots of manual customization, and expensive maintenance wrapped around off-the-shelf systems. Hang Ten is betting enterprises will pay for a model that keeps changing software continuously instead of rebuilding it in giant waves every few years. That’s ambitious. It also goes straight at the profit engine of traditional IT services.

Why Hang Ten Systems’ $32M seed matters

The size of this round tells you something right away. Hang Ten isn’t being financed like a lightweight SaaS tool that can coast on self-serve adoption. Its model depends on senior engineering talent and customer-facing delivery teams. It also depends on internal assets that get reused from project to project. A $32 million seed gives it room to hire across engineering, delivery, sales, and leadership before the usual startup clock gets too loud.

It also sharpens the investor thesis. Mayfield isn’t just backing AI in the abstract. It’s backing Sikka’s view that a lot of enterprise software work can be restructured around agentic development, reusable skills, and deep domain know-how. If that works, Hang Ten could capture budgets that used to belong to outsourcers, systems integrators, and large consulting firms.

There’s a customer signal here too. Early work with Fresenius and Siemens Gamesa means Hang Ten didn’t start with toy use cases. It started where enterprise buying is slow, technical, and risk-sensitive. If those projects expand, that’ll be a much stronger proof point than a dozen flashy pilot announcements.

What market is Hang Ten Systems entering?

The macro numbers are huge, even if the real opportunity will depend on execution more than hype. Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending will reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, up 47% year over year, with AI services alone rising to about $585.5 billion. Gartner also says 2026 is the inflection year when enterprise spending starts to move beyond tactical experiments, even though many CIOs still struggle to prove business value.

A narrower market view tells a similar story. Grand View Research estimates the global enterprise generative AI market was about $2.94 billion in 2024 and could reach roughly $19.81 billion by 2030, a 38.4% compound annual growth rate, with services projected as the fastest-growing component. North America accounted for 41% of revenue in 2024. Hang Ten is launching right when enterprises are shifting from “show me a demo” to “show me production value.”

Should enterprises bet on Hang Ten Systems?

Hang Ten Systems has the rare thing that most enterprise AI startups don’t: a founder who understands both the software product world and the global IT services machine he’s trying to outmaneuver. That doesn’t guarantee anything. Big incumbents already have distribution, client relationships, and giant delivery benches.

But the company’s core bet is smart. If AI really can make enterprise software work faster, cheaper, and more continuous, the biggest winners may not be the model providers. They may be the firms that rewire delivery economics around those models. For Hang Ten Systems, the next thing to watch is simple: whether early flagship projects turn into a repeatable services engine rather than a handful of founder-led wins.

Read how Bodycraft raised ₹120 crore led by Singularity AMC to expand its hybrid beauty and clinical aesthetics platform across India with new centers, AI-led diagnostics, and advanced medical equipment.

FAQ

• What funding did Hang Ten Systems raise?
  Hang Ten Systems raised a $32 million seed round in June 2026. Mayfield led the financing, and Aramco Ventures joined alongside angel investors, giving the startup unusually deep capital for a company that has only just launched.
• How does Hang Ten Systems work for enterprise customers?
  It works as an AI-native enterprise delivery partner rather than a simple software tool. The company combines agentic code generation and reusable skills libraries with forward deployed engineering to help customers build, modify, and operate software across functions like finance, HR, enterprise transformation, and new product development.
• Who is Vishal Sikka and why is he relevant here?
  Sikka is the former CEO and managing director of Infosys and a former SAP executive board member who ran products and technology there. He later founded Vianai in 2019, studied computer science at Syracuse, did doctoral work in AI at Stanford, and still holds board roles at BMW Group and GSK — so he brings both technical depth and enterprise credibility.
• What market category is Hang Ten Systems in?
  Hang Ten sits in enterprise AI services, with a strong overlap into AI-native software delivery and application transformation. Its real competition isn’t consumer AI apps; it’s the much larger field of consulting, systems integration, and IT services firms that are now trying to operationalize generative AI for big-company software projects.

Bodycraft is an Indian beauty and wellness chain that combines salons, clinics, and medical aesthetic services under one brand. Singularity AMC has led a ₹120 crore round, giving the company fresh capital after a long gap between major raises. The problem it’s trying to solve is basic but real: most customers still bounce between neighborhood salons, dermatologists, and slimming centers that don’t talk to each other. Founded in 1997 by Manjul Gupta and now run by CEO Sahil Gupta, with Dr. Mikki Singh leading clinical aesthetics, Bodycraft wants to turn that fragmented spend into a single, organized experience.

What is Bodycraft and how does it work?

Bodycraft is India’s first hybrid clinic-salon, and that’s the easiest way to understand the business. A customer can walk in for a haircut or color session, but the same brand also sells dermatologist-led treatments like laser hair reduction and injectables. It also offers skin rejuvenation, hair restoration, body contouring, and wellness services. That blend matters because it shifts Bodycraft out of the old “salon chain” bucket and closer to a recurring personal-care platform.

The workflow is more clinical than a normal beauty chain. For many treatments, the experience starts with a consultation. Then a doctor or trained specialist maps the concern, explains prep and aftercare, and puts the customer into a package or session plan. Bodycraft’s clinic menu now stretches across laser hair reduction and Hydra Medi Facial. It also includes fillers, microneedling, PRP and GFC hair treatments, IV wellness drips, and non-surgical fat reduction options like CoolSculpting and Onda Coolwaves.

Mostly hassle. Instead of figuring out whether to visit a salon, a skin clinic, or a separate weight-management setup, customers can keep those spends inside one system. The company is also talking openly about AI-led efficiencies and has already begun introducing AI-led diagnostics in newer centers. It’s trying to standardize decision-making and customer follow-up as it scales.

There’s also a clear premium play here. This isn’t a mass-market grooming chain built around quick services and discounting. It sells trust and repeat visits. It also sells higher-value procedures — the kind that need trained dermatology talent, devices, tighter protocols, and a brand customers are willing to revisit for months, not just weekends.

Who founded Bodycraft and how did it grow?

The founding story

Manjul Gupta started Bodycraft in 1997 after building skincare expertise in the early 1990s and working with clients in army circles while moving across cities with her family. Bengaluru became the base, and the business began small — first from an apartment setup, then as a formal salon. A few years later, Manjul Gupta and her husband, Dr. Sushil Gupta, pushed the model beyond grooming and into a hybrid format that put salon services and clinic-grade care under one roof.

India’s beauty market has always had demand, but organized chains that could credibly sell both indulgence and medical precision were rare. Bodycraft’s early bet was that customers didn’t want to manage separate relationships for hair, skin, aesthetics, and wellness if one trusted brand could do the lot.

Why this team fits the category

Sahil Gupta didn’t come up through salon operations from day one. He trained as a civil engineer, studied further at IIT Kharagpur, worked as a consultant at Ernst & Young, and later joined the family business. That’s useful here. Bodycraft isn’t just a beauty brand anymore — it’s a multi-city services business that needs process control and rollout discipline. It also needs staffing systems and unit economics that work across owned and franchise locations.

Dr. Mikki Singh brings the medical layer that a lot of lifestyle chains can’t fake. She leads Bodycraft’s aesthetics and dermatology arm, and Sahil Gupta has publicly credited her with building the clinic vertical’s clinical rigor and patient-first approach. In a category where consumer trust can collapse fast, that matters a lot more than fancy interiors.

What Bodycraft has built

The company has had time to mature. This isn’t a 3-year-old startup chasing vanity growth. Bodycraft has been around since 1997, and by June 2026 it operated 67 outlets — 33 clinics and 34 salons — across more than 10 cities, using a mix of COCO and FOFO models. It now plans to add 30 more locations, which tells you management thinks the playbook is ready for a wider rollout.

There are a few execution signals here too. The broader Bodycraft group has expanded into education through Bodycraft Academy, and Swati Gupta has led training initiatives tied to international hair education. That won’t make headlines, but in a service business, training is infrastructure.

The deal and the competition

This round is Bodycraft’s first major fundraising event in nearly 9 years. Back in 2017, it raised ₹18 crore at a pre-money valuation of ₹55 crore. The new ₹120 crore infusion, led by Mumbai-based Singularity AMC, will go into expansion and clinical equipment. It will also fund technology, management and operations, AI-led efficiencies, and customer experience upgrades.

Competition is real, and it’s not just one type of rival. Kaya is the big organized dermatology benchmark, with 94 clinics across 27 Indian cities and a much deeper pure-play skin and hair footprint. Oliva is another direct clinical aesthetics competitor, with 34 clinics in 9 cities. Then there’s VLCC, which plays a broader beauty and wellness game with stronger legacy associations in slimming and wellness. Bodycraft’s difference is that it isn’t trying to be only a skin chain or only a salon network. It’s betting that the hybrid format lifts wallet share and retention.

The incumbent alternative still looks messy. A lot of Indian consumers either visit independent dermatologists for procedures and neighborhood salons for upkeep, or they choose large chains that are strong in one service line but not the full stack. Investors backing Bodycraft are saying the integrated format can win if execution stays tight. It’s a demanding thesis. Service quality slips fast when clinic networks expand too aggressively.

Why does the Bodycraft funding round matter?

After such a long gap between major raises, this capital looks less like routine balance-sheet support and more like an inflection point. Bodycraft has already proved that customers will buy a hybrid beauty-and-clinical experience. What it hasn’t fully proved yet is whether that model can scale nationally without losing trust, consistency, or margins.

The use of funds gives the game away. When a company wants to spend on clinical equipment, management systems, and AI-led efficiencies, it’s telling you the next phase is operational, not just promotional. New centers are expensive. Medical aesthetics is even more expensive. So the round matters because it funds the hard stuff — devices, process, hiring, standardization — not just store openings.

For customers, the upside is obvious if Bodycraft gets this right: more cities and better access to device-led treatments. It could also mean more predictable service quality. For Singularity AMC, the bet is on organized premium consumption with healthcare-like trust layered on top. That’s smarter than it sounds, because people may postpone a luxury haircut, but they’re often far stickier once they enter recurring skin, hair, or aesthetic treatment plans.

How big is India’s clinical aesthetics market?

Bodycraft says India’s clinical aesthetics market could grow from about $2 billion in 2024 to more than $7 billion by 2033. Even if you haircut that optimism a bit, it’s still a big enough number to explain why investors are willing to back organized operators with medical credibility and multi-city ambition.

The trend lines underneath that forecast are clear. Kaya’s FY25 annual report, citing analyst work and expert interviews, pegs FY25-FY29 CAGR at 13.1% for skin treatments, 14.4% for body treatments, and 12.3% for hair treatments in India’s aesthetic services market. That’s not meme-stock growth. It’s steady, category-level expansion across the exact buckets Bodycraft sells into.

Consumer behavior is changing in a way that favors chains over independents. Buyers are more willing to pay for laser, injectables, body contouring, and dermatologist-led maintenance than they were a decade ago. They also want brand safety. In medical aesthetics, “premium” isn’t just about price — it’s about whether a customer trusts the person holding the laser.

Is Bodycraft funding enough for a national push?

It’s enough to matter. Not enough to guarantee anything.

Bodycraft has something most venture-backed consumer brands don’t: age, brand memory, and a service model that already exists beyond a slide deck. That makes the ₹120 crore raise more interesting than the number alone suggests.

Read how Square Yards raised ₹900 crore ($95M) in a debt-and-equity round led by EAAA Alternatives to strengthen its integrated proptech platform ahead of a planned IPO and a potential $1.6B valuation in its next fundraising.

Bodycraft funding FAQ

• What happened in the Bodycraft funding round? Bodycraft raised ₹120 crore, or about $12.6 million, in a round led by Singularity AMC in June 2026. It was the company’s first major fundraise in nearly 9 years, which makes it a reset rather than a small follow-on cheque.
• How does Bodycraft actually work as a business? Bodycraft runs a hybrid model that mixes salons with dermatologist-led clinics and medical aesthetic services. That means the same brand can sell routine beauty services and laser hair reduction. It also offers anti-ageing procedures, hair restoration, body contouring, and wellness treatments instead of operating as just a salon chain.
• Who founded Bodycraft and who runs it today? Manjul Gupta founded Bodycraft in 1997 after building a career in skincare and beauty services. CEO Sahil Gupta now leads the company operationally. He previously worked at Ernst & Young, while Dr. Mikki Singh oversees the clinical aesthetics side of the business.
• Is Bodycraft a salon brand or a clinical aesthetics company? It’s both, and that’s the whole point of the model. Bodycraft sits at the intersection of organized beauty retail and wellness services. It also sits in India’s clinical aesthetics market, which is why it competes differently from pure salon chains and pure dermatology clinic networks like Kaya or Oliva.

Square Yards is a proptech platform that combines property discovery with mortgages, interiors, rentals, and after-sale management.

The latest Square Yards funding round brings in ₹900 crore, or about $95 million, in a mix of debt and equity led by EAAA Alternatives with Muzinich & Co also participating. Buying a home in India is still a fragmented mess of brokers, loan paperwork, legal checks, and post-possession work. That’s the gap Square Yards has spent years trying to stitch together under one roof. Founded in 2014 by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori, the company is now past the $1 billion mark and pushing toward a public listing.

It’s a big jump from the company’s November 28, 2025 round, when it raised $35 million at a $900 million pre-money valuation. Square Yards also wants to raise another $50 million to $60 million over the next quarter, with market chatter pointing to a possible $1.6 billion valuation for that next raise.

What is Square Yards and how does it work?

At a practical level, Square Yards runs an end-to-end property transaction stack. A buyer can start with need discovery, move into curated shortlisting, book site visits, compare pricing and ROI, close the booking, and line up a home loan through Urban Money. Legal help on documentation comes next. Then buyers can plug into interiors or rental management after possession. That’s a lot closer to a managed transaction service than a plain listings portal.

The tech layer is more serious than the usual “search by BHK and budget” pitch. Its Data Intelligence engine pulls from millions of government sub-registrar records to show price history and comparable sales. It also surfaces demand heatmaps and price-versus-size analytics. PropVR adds immersive 3D walkthroughs and virtual site visits over video. An AI-based e-Valuation tool estimates market value, rental yield, and circle-rate benchmarks.

Then there’s the rest of the stack. Urban Money handles loan matching and mortgage advisory. Interior Company takes care of design and execution. Azuro runs tenant discovery and rent collection. It also handles maintenance and compliance for landlords. So the customer experience doesn’t end at “lead generated” — which, frankly, is where a lot of property sites stop.

That full-journey setup also strips out a ton of manual work. Instead of a buyer separately chasing brokers, loan agents, lawyers, interior vendors, and rental managers, Square Yards tries to keep the handoffs inside one operating system. The product design is much broader than classifieds.

Who founded Square Yards and how did it grow?

The founding story

Square Yards was started in 2014 by husband-wife duo Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori. The company’s origin story wasn’t the usual “founders spotted a tiny workflow problem” version. Tanuj has said the founding team came from corporate jobs, had meaningful personal exposure to real estate as an asset class, and wanted to build something larger in a sector with obvious inefficiencies and a wide trust gap.

Why the founders had market fit

Tanuj brought finance muscle into a business that sits right at the intersection of property and capital. Before Square Yards, he spent more than 8 years in global capital markets roles at Standard Chartered Bank, Lehman Brothers, and Nomura across Asia Pacific and the US, and he studied at the Indian Institutes of Management. That matters because a real estate platform with mortgages, data products, and IPO ambitions needs more than consumer-internet instincts.

Kanika Gupta Shori brought a different kind of fit. She studied economics at Delhi University and is a graduate of the Wharton School, and Square Yards credits her with helping scale operations across 10 countries and 40 cities. Her background spans asset management, entrepreneurship, and business strategy. It lines up neatly with the messy execution burden of building a cross-border real estate operation.

Traction before the new round

By FY26, Square Yards had stopped looking like an early-stage story and started looking like a scaled operating business. Revenue rose 48% year over year to ₹2,086 crore from ₹1,410 crore in FY25, while EBITDA jumped about 3.7x to ₹176 crore. The company also disclosed 2,73,643 customers acquired in FY26, ₹13,236 crore of houses transacted during the year, and ₹87,831 crore of loans disbursed through Urban Money.

How the round was put together

The fresh capital raise totals ₹900 crore, roughly $95 million, and combines debt with equity. EAAA Alternatives led the round. Muzinich & Co participated. Orion Capital Partners acted as lead arranger for the transaction. Square Yards will use the money to expand in its current markets — India, the UAE, Australia, and Canada — while strengthening its technology infrastructure as it gets ready for an IPO.

This came just months after the November 2025 pre-IPO round led by Smile Gate, which brought in $35 million at a $900 million valuation. Earlier reporting had pegged the IPO at about ₹2,000 crore, split roughly between a fresh issue and an offer for sale, with the founders still expected to hold more than 50% after listing. Including the new infusion, Square Yards has raised $208.8 million to date from investors including Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd., Reliance Group Holdings, ADM Capital, and Smilegate VC.

The latest round also pushed the company into the unicorn club at a valuation above $1 billion, making it the 131st Indian startup to get there. It was also the second startup to enter the unicorn club that month, after Sarvam raised $234 million in a $300 million Series B at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation.

How does Square Yards compare with MagicBricks, 99acres, and Housing.com?

This is where the company’s pitch gets sharper. MagicBricks is still huge — more than 12 million monthly visits and over 8 lakh active listings. It also offers a broad set of tools around search, locality data, alerts, calculators, and project reports. Housing.com also looks more like a scaled digital property platform, with buying, renting, virtual viewing, home loans, post-transaction support, and operations across 28 Indian cities.

Square Yards is competing with those players, plus 99acres, but it doesn’t frame the job as media, traffic, or listings alone. Its differentiator is the tighter operating stack: advisory-led transactions and in-house financing rails. It also includes post-possession interiors and rental management. The legacy alternatives are still offline brokers, developer sales desks, and disconnected service vendors. Investors are betting that a more integrated model can capture more revenue from every home transaction — not just the first click.

Why does the Square Yards funding round matter?

This round matters because it changes the conversation from “promising proptech startup” to “pre-IPO, profitable operator.” Plenty of real estate internet businesses can generate traffic. Far fewer can show revenue above ₹2,000 crore, improving margins, and cross-sell economics across mortgages, interiors, and rentals at the same time.

It also gives Square Yards more room to harden the parts of the business that aren’t flashy but matter a lot — balance sheet strength and technology systems. Expansion execution matters too. So does the discipline public-market investors will look for. EAAA Alternatives’ thesis was basically that this is a profitable market leader in a fragmented category with operating leverage still kicking in. That’s not a casual bet.

For customers, the upside is simpler: a company with more capital can invest in better transaction support and more market coverage. Tighter product integration is part of that. For Square Yards, the real prize is credibility. Unicorn status is nice for headlines. IPO readiness is what actually resets valuation expectations.

How big is the Indian proptech market?

India’s proptech market reached $1.31 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to $3.82 billion by 2034, which implies a 12.26% CAGR. Residential use cases account for 58.4% of the market, and cloud deployment already makes up 64.3%. Digital real estate in India isn’t niche anymore. It’s becoming normal infrastructure.

The timing makes sense. The same market study ties growth to rising smartphone penetration and Smart Cities investments. It also points to AI-led property platforms and digital transaction tools. India’s real estate sector is a $300 billion-plus base that’s still mid-transition, not fully digitized. That’s why platforms are moving beyond listings into valuation, financing, compliance, and ownership services — exactly the direction Square Yards has been pushing.

What happens next after Square Yards funding?

The next milestone isn’t another press release. It’s execution.

Square Yards now has to prove that its integrated model can stay profitable while expanding across India and overseas markets. It also has to show that the extra capital deepens its tech moat instead of just funding growth for growth’s sake. If the follow-on raise lands near the rumored $1.6 billion mark and the IPO plan holds, Square Yards funding will look less like a one-off unicorn pop and more like the last private step before the public markets start judging the company for real.

Read how Mitigata raised a $15M Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners to build an AI-powered cyber resilience platform that combines cybersecurity, compliance, insurance, and incident response into a single operating layer for enterprises.

FAQ

• What happened in the latest Square Yards funding round?
  Square Yards raised ₹900 crore, or about $95 million, in a mix of debt and equity and crossed the $1 billion valuation mark. EAAA Alternatives led the round, Muzinich & Co joined in, and the company is also targeting another $50 million to $60 million over the next quarter as it moves closer to an IPO.
• How does Square Yards actually work for a homebuyer?
  It works like a managed property transaction platform rather than a simple listings site. A customer can move from discovery and shortlisting to site visits, loan support, legal coordination, interiors, and even rental management. Tools like Data Intelligence, PropVR, and e-Valuation sit underneath that journey.
• Who founded Square Yards?
  Square Yards was founded in 2014 by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori. Tanuj came from global capital markets roles at Standard Chartered, Lehman Brothers, and Nomura, while Kanika brought experience across asset management, entrepreneurship, and strategy, backed by Delhi University and Wharton credentials.
• Is Square Yards a proptech company or a real estate marketplace?
  It’s both, but the more accurate label is integrated proptech. Square Yards still operates a real estate marketplace, yet its business now stretches into mortgages through Urban Money and interiors through Interior Company. It also includes rental management through Azuro, along with AI- and VR-led transaction tools that go beyond basic property search.

Mitigata is a Bengaluru-based company that combines cyber insurance, managed security, compliance work, and AI-led monitoring in one platform. The Mitigata cybersecurity startup has now raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Nexus Venture Partners, Titan Capital, and WEH Ventures also participating. A lot of companies still buy security tools, compliance support, and cyber insurance from separate vendors, then get stuck in the gaps when something goes wrong. Founded in 2023 by Mohit Anand, Sarthak Dubey, Mayank Morya, and Akshit Kaushik, the company wants to build India’s largest sovereign, indigenous AI security infrastructure.

What does the Mitigata cybersecurity startup actually do?

Mitigata isn’t selling one narrow cyber tool. It runs a full-stack cyber resilience platform where a company can assess risk, buy or renew cyber insurance, connect to a 24×7 managed SOC, and track compliance work for frameworks including DPDP 2023, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and SEBI CSCRF through one console. The pitch is simple: one team owns security posture and compliance proof. It also handles insurance placement and incident response instead of pushing customers across 3 or 4 vendors.

The workflow is more specific than the source article suggested. A customer starts with a cyber risk assessment, then gets scenario-based loss estimates and compliance exposure mapping. It also gets board-ready reporting that translates technical weakness into financial risk. Mitigata maps security controls directly to underwriting requirements. That matters for buyers trying to get coverage without endless back-and-forth with brokers and carriers.

There’s also a product layer called Gordon AI. That stack includes attack-surface monitoring and dark-web monitoring. It also covers threat intelligence, third-party risk, cyber risk quantification, AI SOC, phishing simulation, workforce risk management, and governance-risk-compliance tooling. On the security side, the menu stretches from EDR/XDR and SIEM to vCISO, DFIR, AI red teaming, prompt security, and managed SOC monitoring.

The before-versus-after story is clear. Before Mitigata, a customer might use one broker for insurance, one MSSP for monitoring, and one audit consultant for compliance, then scramble again during a breach. After Mitigata, the same operating layer can activate a “Cyber Force” pod within 60 minutes, pull legal, forensics, insurer, and internal teams onto one bridge, and use a shared evidence repository so one audit can speed up the next one.

Who founded Mitigata and what traction has it built?

Company founding story

The founders didn’t begin with a generic AI pitch. Mitigata’s origin story is that the team noticed Indian businesses were getting hit by cyberattacks, failing compliance audits, and then struggling with denied insurance claims, often all at once. The company started as a cyber insurance broker because that was the most obvious pain point, then expanded after the team concluded insurance alone treated the symptom, not the underlying security and compliance mess.

The core team includes Mohit Anand as cofounder and CEO, Sarthak Dubey as cofounder and COO, Mayank Morya as cofounder and CTO, and Akshit Kaushik as cofounder and CBO. That operating split fits what Mitigata is trying to do, because this isn’t just software and it isn’t just broking either. It’s a stitched-together model across underwriting, cybersecurity operations, product, and enterprise sales.

Why this team fits the problem

Anand graduated from IIT (BHU), Varanasi, while Dubey studied at Manipal Institute of Technology. Later reporting ties the broader founding bench to prior work at Meesho, Delhivery, Lenskart, Khosla Labs/Trustt-Novopay, and CGI. That mix spans ecommerce, logistics, fintech, and enterprise systems. It’s useful when the product has to speak to CISOs, finance teams, and insurers at the same time.

That cross-functional background matters more here than a pure security pedigree would. Mitigata is trying to turn cybersecurity into a measurable risk management function built around “insure, detect, defend and recover.” The team has to understand software delivery, underwriting logic, operational response, and enterprise buying behavior together.

Traction and fundraising

The early numbers are hard to ignore. Mitigata supports more than 800 organisations across BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, technology, retail, and ecommerce. The company has also triaged more than 1 million security incidents in the last few months and is growing at more than 12x year on year. Its site adds some extra texture: 25+ industries served, 18+ insurance partners, 500+ OEM partnerships, and 25+ compliance frameworks supported.

This Series B comes after earlier financing rounds that helped the company get to this point. Mitigata raised $5.9 million in August 2025 in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners with Titan Capital and WEH Ventures joining in, and Forbes had previously noted a $1 million raise backed by investors including Titan Capital, WEH Ventures, and PointOne Capital. The new $15 million round is led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Nexus, Titan, and WEH. The company will use the fresh money for AI and R&D. It also plans to invest in product, engineering, customer success, and international expansion.

How Mitigata compares with rivals

Mitigata doesn’t fit neatly into one competitor bucket, and that’s partly the point. Safe Security is best known for cyber risk quantification in financial terms. Sequretek leans into AI-driven SecOps and SOC-style coverage, while CloudSEK is more closely associated with threat intelligence and external risk monitoring. Mitigata overlaps with each of those categories a bit, but it’s trying to add insurance placement and claims coordination to the stack.

The more common incumbents are even less integrated: a traditional broker sells the policy, an MSSP monitors networks, and an audit consultant handles framework checklists. Mitigata’s clearest differentiator is that the same platform ties live posture data to underwriting and breach response. That means the risk score is supposed to affect alerts, premium pricing, compliance readiness, and recovery speed.

Why does this Mitigata funding round matter?

Plenty of cyber startups raise money to add another detection layer. That’s not what’s happening here.

Mitigata is trying to build an operating system for cyber resilience — one that talks to the board, the security team, the compliance team, and the insurer in the same language. If it works, customers get a cleaner buying motion and faster response path. If it doesn’t, the company risks becoming a labor-heavy services shop wrapped in AI branding.

Mohit Anand framed the ambition in unusually broad terms: “Cybersecurity is entering an AI-first era, and resilience will become one of the defining capabilities of the modern enterprise. As AI becomes increasingly embedded into economies and critical infrastructure, security stops being just an IT problem. It becomes a question of trust, continuity and, increasingly, national security.

We believe India has a unique opportunity to build world-class cyber resilience infrastructure from India, for the world. This funding allows us to accelerate that vision.”

Bessemer’s read is just as revealing. Partner Pankaj Mitra said the founders have built “a timely AI-native resilience platform” that helps enterprises assess risk, procure cyber insurance, deploy tools, and manage security outcomes. That’s not an investor describing a point solution. It’s an investor backing integration.

How big is India’s cyber resilience market?

The macro tailwind is real. One estimate puts India’s cyber security services market at $2.54 billion in 2024 and projects it will reach $5.87 billion by 2030, a 15.8% CAGR. Another pegs the broader Indian cybersecurity market at $8.8 billion in 2025 and $18.5 billion by 2030, roughly 16% annual growth.

Why now? Regulation and threat volume are both pushing spend upward. India’s cyber market is being driven by DPDP Act enforcement and tighter reporting and compliance burdens. It’s also being pushed by a shift toward managed services as companies admit they can’t hire or coordinate every capability in-house. The same research notes around 370 million malware attacks in India during 2024 and says managed services are among the fastest-growing parts of the market.

That’s the kind of environment where a bundled resilience model can get traction. Not because CISOs suddenly want fewer tools for philosophical reasons. Because enterprises are tired of fragmented accountability.

The bottom line on the Mitigata cybersecurity startup

Mitigata still has a lot to prove, especially outside India and especially if it wants to scale software margins on top of a service-heavy base.

But the thesis is sharper than most startup funding stories. If the Mitigata cybersecurity startup can keep security operations and compliance evidence inside one repeatable product workflow, while also tying in insurance economics, it could end up owning a much larger slice of enterprise cyber budgets than a normal MSSP or insurtech broker ever would. The next thing to watch is whether its AI layer becomes a real moat — or just a glossy wrapper around operational grunt work.

Read how Halo raised a $7M seed round led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six to bring its HaloBraid device to salons, helping stylists cut braiding time, reduce strain, and serve more clients without replacing the human touch behind the craft.

FAQ

• What funding did Mitigata raise in its latest round?
  Mitigata raised $15 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Titan Capital, and WEH Ventures also joined. The company plans to use the capital for hiring across AI, R&D, product, engineering, and customer success, while pushing into international markets.
• How does Mitigata’s platform work for a customer?
  It works as a single cyber resilience layer rather than a standalone tool. A customer can assess cyber risk and map security controls to underwriting needs. They can also manage compliance workflows, plug into a managed SOC, and coordinate breach response and claims from one console. That’s a much broader workflow than what a standard broker or single security vendor usually offers.
• Who founded Mitigata?
  Mitigata was founded in 2023 by Mohit Anand, Sarthak Dubey, Mayank Morya, and Akshit Kaushik. Anand serves as CEO, Dubey as COO, Morya as CTO, and Kaushik as CBO, giving the company a mix of technical, operational, product, and go-to-market leadership from day one.
• Is Mitigata a cybersecurity startup or an insurtech company?
  It’s basically both, but “cyber resilience platform” is the more accurate label. Mitigata sits at the intersection of cybersecurity services, compliance software, and cyber insurance, which is why it looks different from pure-play SOC vendors, risk scoring platforms, or insurance brokers.

Halo, the Cambridge startup behind the HaloBraid braiding device, has raised a $7 million seed round led by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six to bring its first salon tool to market later in 2026. That matters because braiding still eats up huge blocks of time in salons, with appointments that can run from 6 hours to 12. Founder Yinka Ogunbiyi started the company in 2023 with David Afolabi after trying to braid her own hair during the pandemic in a London apartment and realizing the job was repetitive enough to engineer around, though not simple enough to fake. AlleyCorp and Bling Capital also joined the round.

What is HaloBraid’s braiding device and how does it work?

The HaloBraid braiding device is a salon-focused braid assistant, not a robot meant to replace the stylist. The braider starts each braid by hand, sets the look and pattern, then hands off the repetitive finishing work to HaloBraid, which is designed to complete the rest quickly while matching the stylist’s style. The tool works for box braids and knotless braids. Halo markets it as gentle enough to avoid pulling and tangling.

That distinction matters. Halo isn’t trying to automate the creative part of braiding, the section where tension, parting, feed, and pattern control really live. It’s targeting the manual stretch that comes after the braid has been started, which is why Ogunbiyi has framed the product less like a replacement worker and more like power steering for a stylist’s hands. Harvard profiled the company and wrote that the system uses machine learning to help deliver a professional-level result.

The customer pitch is pretty blunt. Halo’s site shows a before-and-after salon timeline where a box-braid appointment that might otherwise run until 3 PM can wrap by noon instead. The company also promises more consistency across braids and less strain on hands and wrists. It also promises more capacity for stylists who currently lose entire workdays to one client. Practical wins.

Halo still hasn’t shown much publicly. Patents are pending, and Ogunbiyi has been careful not to spell out the full mechanism. Even so, the pieces already on the record are enough to understand the workflow: start by hand, pass the braid to the device, finish faster, keep the human in control.

Who founded Halo and built the HaloBraid braiding device?

The founding story

Halo came out of a lived problem, which sounds cliché until you hear the detail that matters: Ogunbiyi tried doing her own braids during COVID and said it “took me 4 days.” That pushed her to treat braiding like an engineering problem rather than just a salon ritual. By 2023, Halo Braid had already surfaced at Harvard’s startup competitions, and Harvard later identified Ogunbiyi and Afolabi as the founding pair behind the company.

Why Yinka Ogunbiyi fits this problem

Ogunbiyi isn’t coming at this as a tourist founder. Halo’s materials describe her as a biomechanical engineer, and she holds a BSc, MS, and MBA from Harvard. That mix explains a lot. She’s close enough to the customer problem to understand why braiding can’t be clumsily automated, but technical enough to keep iterating through a hardware build that most founders would probably abandon after prototype 12.

Her earlier startup track record

Before Halo, Ogunbiyi co-founded Desora, a smart cooking hardware company. In Halo’s funding announcement, she’s credited with co-inventing 6 patented smart cooking devices there, and earlier reporting on Desora described her as the startup’s co-founder and CTO. Hair tech and cooking tech aren’t the same business. But she’s already done the ugly part of hardware: prototypes, productization, and getting advanced consumer devices into the world.

Early traction and execution signals

Halo is still pre-launch, but it’s not a deck-only company. The team is about 15 people, the first device is slated to launch later in 2026, and the company has been developing with stylists from the start. By May 2025, Harvard reported 450 prototype iterations; Halo’s site now says the number has crossed 600. Ogunbiyi has also said her research found 8 billion hours are spent braiding hair every year, and in a survey of 2,000 people, 95% said they’d braid more often if the process took less time.

Investors and startup judges were paying attention early too. In February 2024, Ogunbiyi told Poets&Quants that Halo Braid was closing a pre-seed round of more than $1 million and had won $170,000 in non-dilutive funding from competitions and grants. In May 2025, the company won Harvard’s President’s Innovation Challenge grand prize, which came with another $75,000.

The $7M seed round

The new round is a seed financing led by Seven Seven Six, Alexis Ohanian’s venture firm, with AlleyCorp and Bling Capital also participating. Halo will use the money for product development and manufacturing. It’ll also go toward salon partnerships.

Competition and positioning

The direct field is still thin. The clearest named rival is Braidiant, another company building automated tools for textured hair and taking early-access reservations. But Halo’s positioning is narrower and sharper: it’s starting with professional stylists, not a generic consumer gadget, and it keeps the braider in control of the braid’s beginning rather than pretending a machine can own the full service from scratch. The real incumbent is still manual braiding by hand. Slow, skilled, physically demanding.

Why does Halo’s $7M seed round matter?

For Halo, this round is less about vanity and more about crossing the hardware gap. Building a decent demo is one thing. Manufacturing salon-grade equipment that can work on real heads and real schedules is something else entirely. Real customer expectations too.

Ohanian’s interest also isn’t abstract. He told TechCrunch he has “studied exactly how long these braiding sessions take,” partly because Serena Williams is his wife and their daughters wear braided styles too. He added that by hour 9, “everyone’s ready to call it a night.” That family connection doesn’t replace diligence. But it does explain why he sees a textured-hair tool as a serious consumer and professional category instead of a niche curiosity.

The roadmap matters just as much as the round. Ogunbiyi has said HaloBraid is only the first product, and the team is already thinking about other devices, including one that can take braids down faster. If Halo can ship the first tool and prove stylists trust it, the company doesn’t have to stop at braiding. It can start building a hardware stack for textured haircare.

How big is the textured hair and salon market?

The business case here is bigger than one device. Lincoln International puts the global textured hair care market at $16 billion, and textured hair care accounts for 35% of the North American hair care market. It also cites Mintel figures showing the multicultural hair care segment was about $3 billion in 2023 and could top $4.5 billion by 2032. This isn’t a tiny corner of beauty. It’s a large category that still doesn’t get much purpose-built hardware.

Salon spending adds another layer. In Halo’s funding release, Ohanian called salon services a $270 billion industry, while Lincoln noted “textured hair” search volume grew 20% in 2024. Put that together and you get the timing. Consumers are spending, search interest is climbing, and beauty companies have spent years over-indexing on products while leaving tools for textured hair oddly underbuilt.

Will HaloBraid actually ship a breakout beauty hardware product?

Halo’s bet is simple: the artistry of braiding should stay human, but the repetitive labor doesn’t have to. That’s a much more believable thesis than the usual “replace the professional with a robot” story.

Now comes the part that matters. If Halo can get the HaloBraid braiding device onto salon floors later in 2026 and make stylists love it, this round will look smart. If not, it’ll be another reminder that beauty hardware is brutal, even when the problem is obvious.

Read how Fika Jobs raised a $4M pre-seed round to reinvent hiring with AI-led video interviews, helping employers discover candidates through searchable profiles instead of relying on resumes and traditional screening processes.

FAQ

• What funding did Halo raise for HaloBraid? Halo raised a $7 million seed round announced on June 23, 2026. Seven Seven Six led the deal, and AlleyCorp plus Bling Capital also invested, with the money earmarked for manufacturing, product development, and salon partnerships.
• How does the HaloBraid braiding device work? It works as a braid assistant for professionals, not a full replacement for the stylist. The braider starts the braid by hand, then the device handles the repetitive finishing portion while aiming to preserve the stylist’s pattern and reduce pulling, tangling, and hand strain.
• Who founded HaloBraid? Halo was founded by Yinka Ogunbiyi and David Afolabi, with the startup emerging in 2023 through Harvard’s entrepreneurial circuit. Ogunbiyi brings a rare mix of customer intimacy and hardware experience: she’s a Harvard-trained engineer and MBA who previously co-founded Desora and helped invent 6 patented smart cooking devices.
• What market is HaloBraid going after? Halo sits at the intersection of salon services, textured haircare, and beauty hardware. That’s attractive because textured haircare already represents 35% of the North American hair care market, while multicultural hair care was a roughly $3 billion category in 2023 and is projected to surpass $4.5 billion by 2032.

Fika Jobs is a Stockholm startup that runs AI-led video interviews and turns them into searchable candidate profiles for employers. The company has raised a $4 million pre-seed round as it tries to fix a hiring process that still burns tons of time on resumes, cover letters, and screening steps that often tell you very little about the actual person. Founded in 2025 by brothers Jakob Dubois and Alexander Dubois, Fika Jobs is pitching a different starting point: talk first, paperwork second.

The timing makes sense. Hiring teams are drowning in applications, and candidates are increasingly dealing with AI filters before a human ever sees them. Fika’s bet is that the next hiring platform won’t just parse CVs faster. It’ll capture communication, judgment, and motivation in a format recruiters can scan quickly. That’s a sharp thesis. It also comes with real risk, especially when video makes bias easier, not harder.

What is Fika Jobs and how does it work?

Fika Jobs starts with a candidate linking a LinkedIn profile, after which the platform generates a personalized AI interview and records a roughly 10-minute to 20-minute video session. The interview agent in the funding announcement is powered by Google Gemini. The broader product materials describe a system that turns those conversations into structured insights, summaries, role recommendations, relevance scores, and ranked matches.

What happens next is the part Fika cares about most. The platform slices interview responses into short clips and builds a live profile. It keeps that profile available for future openings instead of forcing the candidate to restart from zero every time a new role appears. Employers can post jobs or browse a pre-interviewed talent pool, while Fika’s matching layer recommends who fits what. That’s less like a classic applicant tracking system. More like a two-sided marketplace wrapped around AI interviews.

The hidden work is pretty technical. Fika’s hiring material points to retrieval and ranking systems, embeddings, vector databases, speech tooling, evaluation frameworks, and AI agents that can help source candidates. They also evaluate roles and run parts of the recruiting workflow. Its listed stack includes Node.js, TypeScript, Python, AWS, Next.js, Deepgram, ElevenLabs, LiveKit, and multiple model providers. So even if the front-end feels simple, the product is clearly being built as an AI-native hiring engine rather than a lightweight video layer on top of a jobs board.

There’s also a business-model twist. The service is free for job seekers, while employers pay only when they hire. That gives Fika a reason to obsess over match quality, not just activity on the platform.

Who founded Fika Jobs and what’s the backstory?

The founding story

Jakob Dubois is CEO. Alexander Dubois is CTO. They’re brothers, and the idea came out of a problem they ran into while building an earlier startup called Gaff, a social app focused on daily conversations with friends. While hiring there, they nearly passed on a candidate whose resume looked ordinary, then changed their minds after speaking with him. As Jakob put it, “within minutes, his grit, drive, and ambition became obvious. Exactly the kind of person we wanted to hire.”

That’s the entire Fika thesis in one moment.

The founders decided that some of the traits employers actually care about — energy, communication, ambition, judgment — are weakly represented on paper. So they built a product that flips the order. Let people talk first. Let employers watch later.

Founder market fit and track record

The Dubois brothers aren’t longtime HR software operators, and that cuts both ways. On the one hand, they don’t come from the old recruiting playbook. On the other, they’re repeat builders who found the pain firsthand while recruiting for Gaff. Jakob’s public profile ties him to Babson College and Hult International Business School, which fits the venture-backed, business-builder mold more than the traditional recruiter path. Alexander has taken the technical lead as CTO and has been front and center in Fika’s product and hiring push.

Early traction, launch timing, and funding

Fika Jobs is still early. The company is opening candidate early access in the week of June 23, 2026, with a broader public launch planned for fall 2026. It will focus on Sweden first, then expand internationally. The team is small today, but the founders expect it to reach around 10 employees by the end of 2026.

There are already some early signals. More than 100 companies are on the waitlist, and more than 50 have tested the platform, including Plenty Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity, and Rebtel. That’s not mass scale. But for a pre-launch marketplace product, it’s enough to show live demand on the employer side.

Luminar Ventures led the new $4 million pre-seed round, with participation from Alliance VC and King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi. Fika says the capital will go into product development and team growth. It’ll also help prepare for a wider rollout later in 2026.

How Fika Jobs compares with Alex, Maki, and Mercor

This is where the company gets more interesting.

Alex, Maki, and Mercor all use AI in hiring, but they mostly attack the employer workflow. Alex automates phone screens and video interviews for companies and raised a $17 million Series A in September 2025 after a $3 million seed. Maki sells conversational AI agents into talent acquisition teams and closed a $28.6 million Series A in January 2025 after reporting more than 300% growth in 2024. Mercor raised $100 million at a $2 billion valuation in February 2025 and became one of the most visible names in AI-led recruiting.

Fika Jobs is taking a more candidate-centric route. Instead of helping employers process inbound applicants faster, it wants candidates to keep an always-on video profile that employers can discover over time. Pricing is part of the pitch too. Employers pay nothing upfront, and Fika takes 10% of first-year salary on a successful hire, below the 20% to 30% fee range common with recruiters and headhunters.

But the company’s biggest difference is also its biggest vulnerability. Video can surface charisma early. It can also surface race, age, gender presentation, disability cues, and accent before qualifications are weighed. That’s not a side issue. It’s the core tension in the product. Fika may make hiring feel more human, but it also strips away some of the anonymity that blind screening was designed to protect.

Why does Fika Jobs’ $4M round matter?

This round matters because Fika isn’t just polishing a UI. It’s trying to build trust in a new hiring format.

To work, the company needs three things at once. It needs enough candidates willing to talk to an AI first and enough employers willing to browse video profiles instead of piles of resumes. It also needs matching systems that actually get better as more interviews flow through the platform. That’s hard. The pre-seed gives Fika time to tighten that loop before it pushes into a broader launch.

The investor list matters too. Luminar Ventures and Alliance VC have both backed Nordic software startups before, and the presence of Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi gives Fika founder-brand support that should help with recruiting, intros, and early credibility in Sweden’s startup market. For a marketplace-style hiring product, trust compounds slowly. Names like that speed up the first few steps.

How big is the hiring software market for Fika Jobs?

The broad AI-in-HR market was estimated at $3.25 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $15.24 billion by 2030, a 24.7% compound annual growth rate. That tells you this isn’t a niche software category anymore. Employers are already spending real money on AI for screening, matching, assessment, and workforce planning.

Fika sits even closer to video interviewing, and that segment is growing too. The video interviewing platform market was valued at $2.76 billion in 2025 and is expected to rise to $6.29 billion by 2031. Large enterprises still dominate spending, but smaller companies are projected to grow faster. That matters because startups and mid-size firms are often more willing to try a new hiring workflow than a giant corporate HR department is.

There’s another trend underneath all this. LinkedIn’s labor data showed AI engineering hiring grew more than 25% year over year in 2025, and McKinsey has argued that the labor market will put higher value on both digital and social-emotional skills. That combination is basically Fika’s whole pitch. Companies want technical ability, but they also want to see how someone thinks and communicates before they commit to a hire.

Should you bet on Fika Jobs yet?

Fika Jobs has a sharp idea, strong early backers, and a product that feels more distinct than a lot of AI recruiting startups do. It’s not just another automation layer for HR teams. It’s trying to change the unit of hiring from the resume to the interview.

Still, the company has to prove that video-first hiring can scale without amplifying bias or turning into a charisma contest. By fall 2026, the thing to watch won’t be the demo. It’ll be whether employers keep coming back after the novelty wears off.

Read how Menlo Ventures raised $3B in its largest-ever fundraise, leveraging its early Anthropic bet and AI-focused investment strategy to back the next generation of startups building on frontier AI models.

FAQ

• What funding did Fika Jobs raise? Fika Jobs raised a $4 million pre-seed round announced on June 23, 2026. Luminar Ventures led the round, with Alliance VC and King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi also participating.
• How does Fika Jobs work for candidates and employers? Candidates connect a LinkedIn profile, complete an AI-led video interview, and get a reusable profile built from clips, summaries, and matching signals. Employers can browse that pre-interviewed pool or post roles. Then they can use the platform’s recommendation system instead of starting from a cold resume stack each time.
• Who founded Fika Jobs? Fika Jobs was founded in 2025 by brothers Jakob Dubois and Alexander Dubois, who serve as CEO and CTO. They came up with the idea after a hiring experience at their previous startup, Gaff, showed them how much a resume can miss.
• Is Fika Jobs a recruiting marketplace or HR software? It’s really a hybrid, but it leans more like a recruiting marketplace than a pure HR tool. The platform is free for job seekers, free upfront for employers, and makes money by taking 10% of a successful hire’s first-year salary — a model closer to recruiting than subscription software.

Menlo Ventures is a Silicon Valley venture firm that backs startups from early stage through growth and has become one of the more aggressive AI investors in the market. Its latest Menlo Ventures fundraise — $3 billion announced on Tuesday — is the biggest in the firm’s 50-year history. That matters because venture firms right now need more than capital to win. They need privileged access to the handful of AI companies shaping the stack. Menlo’s edge is Anthropic, founded in 2021 by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, and that relationship now looks less like a smart bet and more like the engine behind an entire franchise.

Menlo’s stake in Anthropic is now worth about $14 billion, according to Bloomberg. The story behind that number is very venture-capital-core: a giant conviction bet, messy fundraising mechanics, and a payoff big enough to rewrite how limited partners think about the firm.

What is the Menlo Ventures fundraise and how does it work?

The cleanest way to understand this Menlo Ventures fundraise is to look at the machine behind it. Menlo doesn’t just write venture checks. It has built an AI investing model that combines traditional funds and one-off SPVs for oversized deals. It also runs a joint startup program with Anthropic called the Anthology Fund. That setup lets Menlo back foundation-model companies directly. It also puts the firm upstream from the next wave of startups building on those models.

Anthology is the most concrete piece of that strategy. Menlo and Anthropic launched it in 2024 as a $100 million fund aimed at seed through expansion-stage AI startups, with checks starting at $100,000. The program focuses on AI infrastructure and novel vertical applications. It also targets consumer AI. It’s designed to give founders more than money — access to Menlo partners, Anthropic’s technical orbit, and credits to use Claude.

That matters because startups building on frontier models don’t just need a lead investor. They need tooling and compute strategy. They also need model relationships and fast feedback on what’s actually working. Anthology turns Menlo’s capital into something closer to an operating layer for early AI companies. It’s part fund and part distribution channel. It also signals to founders that Menlo can help them get close to one of the leading model labs.

Anthropic’s own product momentum helps explain why that’s attractive. Claude Code, for example, is built to work at the project level rather than just autocomplete lines. It can read a full codebase and plan changes across files. It can run tests and iterate when something breaks. It also asks for approval before it edits files or runs commands. For a startup building developer tools or AI workflow software, that kind of platform access can shape an entire product roadmap.

How did Menlo Ventures build its Anthropic edge?

The founding story

Menlo has been around since 1976, so this wasn’t some overnight reinvention. But its current identity has shifted hard toward AI. The firm was already in Anthropic’s orbit early, investing in the company’s Series C before Anthropic even had a product in market.

Anthropic itself was created by former OpenAI researchers and executives, with Dario Amodei as CEO and Daniela Amodei as president. The company’s pitch has always been pretty direct: build frontier AI systems that are reliable, interpretable, and steerable. That safety-and-research framing made it stand out early, even before Claude became a mainstream brand.

Why Anthropic became the defining bet

By 2024, Menlo wasn’t backing a science project. Anthropic had already landed a $4 billion deal from Amazon and had become one of the hottest names in AI. Venture firms wanted in. Menlo moved first in a way that looked reckless at the time and obvious in hindsight.

The firm preemptively led Anthropic’s Series D in 2024 with a $750 million commitment. That round valued Anthropic at $18.4 billion — roughly 4 times the previous mark. Menlo partners have described the decision as a white-knuckle moment, and that sounds right. Few firms in that post-VC-winter stretch were ready to swing that size.

The 2024 deal structure

This is the part that separated Menlo from a normal lead investor. About $500 million of the Anthropic bet came together through an SPV, pulling in outside capital for a single deal. Menlo then added about $250 million from its own fund plus money from Menlo insiders, bringing the full commitment to $750 million.

Back then, that structure looked unusual. In 2026, it looks early. AI SPVs are now everywhere, and Anthropic has gotten so much unofficial secondary-market attention that the company warned last month that unauthorized SPVs and stock-sale offers tied to its shares were “scams.” Menlo’s vehicle wasn’t that. It was an authorized, high-conviction route into a private company that many investors wanted but couldn’t reach.

Traction, follow-ons, and early signals

The payoff has been huge on paper. Menlo’s Anthropic stake is now worth about $14 billion. It also didn’t stop at Series D. Menlo followed into Anthropic’s Series E and Series F. That tells you the firm wasn’t treating the earlier investment as a one-off trade.

Anthology became the downstream expression of that same conviction. The fund started at $100 million in 2024, but capital deployed to date is now closer to $250 million. It has backed more than 60 startups and has already produced exits, including Graphite’s acquisition by Cursor and Astrix Security’s acquisition by Cisco. Those aren’t massive liquidity events on their own. But they’re the kind of early marks that help a thematic fund look real instead of aspirational.

Menlo’s broader AI roster now includes names like OpenRouter, Higgsfield, Legora, Lovable, and OpenEvidence. That matters less as bragging rights than as evidence that Menlo has turned Anthropic access into sourcing leverage.

Competition and market positioning

Menlo isn’t the only firm chasing AI. Every major venture shop wants exposure to the model layer and the application layer above it. Some rivals compete with giant balance sheets. Others compete with brand, founder networks, or faster seed processes.

What Menlo has that many don’t is a structured relationship with a leading model lab. OpenAI has its own startup initiatives, and plenty of investors can promise introductions, but Menlo’s positioning is tighter: direct equity upside in Anthropic and an authorized history of large special vehicles. It also has a joint program that can get startups both capital and Claude access.

Legacy alternatives still exist, of course. Founders can raise from generalist seed funds. Growth investors can chase secondaries. Opportunists can also float unofficial SPVs around hot names. Menlo’s pitch is that founders and LPs don’t need the gray market when they can work with a firm already sitting close to the cap table.

Why does the Menlo Ventures fundraise matter?

First, it gives Menlo more room to keep playing both ends of the AI cycle. It can back big model companies when the rounds get huge. It can also fund startups building on top of them before those categories get crowded.

Second, it changes the LP conversation. Venture firms love to talk about access, but access sounds abstract until a single position grows large enough to underpin a $3 billion raise. Menlo now has a proof point that’s hard to ignore. The Anthropic bet wasn’t just on-trend. It created markups big enough to define the firm’s next chapter.

For founders, this round says Menlo can keep showing up. Not just with seed checks. With follow-on capacity. With SPV muscle. With a path from first meeting to late-stage support if a company starts to break out.

There’s a catch, though. Paper value isn’t realized value. Menlo still has to turn ownership into eventual distributions. That’s the less glamorous part of this story. It’s the part LPs will care about most once the AI cycle cools down.

How big is the AI market Menlo is chasing?

The backdrop is enormous. Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending will hit $2.59 trillion in 2026, up 47% year over year. Inside that, AI models are expected to grow from about $15.5 billion in 2025 to $32.6 billion in 2026, while AI infrastructure rises to roughly $1.43 trillion. That tells you where the money is going. Not just flashy apps, but the full stack underneath them.

The timing also lines up with how enterprises are buying. Gartner says 2026 is the inflection year when companies move from tactical AI experiments toward broader deployment, especially through embedded models and agent-style workflows. Anthology’s focus areas — infrastructure, vertical software, consumer AI — map neatly onto that shift.

There’s still plenty of froth here. Some AI startups will raise too much. Some will confuse API wrappers with defensible businesses. Some of these SPV-heavy capital stacks will look silly later. But the structural trend is real: model companies are becoming platforms, and venture firms with direct ties to those platforms can source deals earlier than firms relying on cold inbound.

What to watch after the Menlo Ventures fundraise

The Menlo Ventures fundraise is really a referendum on one idea: a single winning position in frontier AI can reset an entire venture firm.

That’s exciting. It’s also narrow. If Anthropic keeps compounding, Menlo looks prescient. If exit timelines stretch or the model market gets compressed, the story gets more complicated fast. The next thing to watch isn’t whether Menlo can raise money again. It’s whether it can turn the Anthropic halo into durable, repeatable returns across the next generation of AI companies.

Read how Seedcamp raised a $320M Fund VII to double down on backing Europe’s earliest-stage startups, while launching a new $100M Select vehicle to keep investing in breakout portfolio companies as they scale globally, with a growing focus on helping founders expand into the US market.

FAQ

• What did Menlo Ventures raise in its latest fundraise?
  Menlo Ventures raised $3 billion in funds, announced on Tuesday, marking the largest raise in the firm’s 50-year history. The new capital comes after a period when its AI portfolio — especially Anthropic — became the firm’s defining asset.
• How does the Anthology Fund work for AI startups?
  Anthology is a joint Menlo Ventures and Anthropic fund launched in 2024 to back AI startups from seed through expansion. It starts with checks from $100,000 and pairs capital with practical support, including access to Anthropic’s tools, leaders, and Claude credits.
• Who are the founders behind Anthropic, and why do they matter here?
  Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, both former OpenAI leaders. Dario leads as CEO and Daniela serves as president, and their credibility in frontier AI research helped make Anthropic one of the most sought-after companies in the sector.
• Is Menlo Ventures really an AI investor now or still a generalist VC firm?
  It’s still a multi-stage venture firm, but AI has clearly become central to its identity. The firm’s Anthropic exposure and its use of SPVs for large AI rounds point in the same direction. So does the expansion of Anthology into a much more active startup program.

Seedcamp is a London-born venture firm that backs European startups at the earliest stage and helps them scale into global companies. On June 22, 2026, it said Seedcamp Fund VII had raised $320 million, its biggest pool of capital yet, as it pushes harder into the US market. The bet is simple: European founders often need American customers, investors, and hiring networks much earlier than they used to. Seedcamp was co-founded in 2007, and co-founder and managing partner Reshma Sohoni is still making the case that the firm’s real job is to connect founders to the right commercial nodes fast.

What is Seedcamp Fund VII and what will it invest in?

This isn’t just a bigger fund. It’s a more split strategy.

Seedcamp has carved the $320 million into 2 buckets. The main vehicle, Seedcamp VII, gets $220 million for early-stage investing. Another $100 million sits in a new follow-on vehicle called Select. It’s for growth-stage bets on companies that keep compounding after the first check.

That matters because plenty of seed firms talk about backing founders from day one, then get diluted out of the story once Series B money arrives. Seedcamp is trying to fix that with structure, not slogans. The early fund is set to write roughly $1 million first checks into about 100 to 120 startups. Select will invest about $3 million to $5 million at Series B and later.

Fund VII is also a sharp step up in size. Seedcamp’s previous fund, Fund VI, closed at $180 million in 2023. This new raise nearly doubles that figure. It says a lot about how limited partners see the firm’s hit rate after early bets on companies like Revolut, Wise, UiPath, Pleo, Synthesia, Hopin, and Fluidstack.

How does Seedcamp Fund VII work for founders?

At the founder level, Seedcamp still sells the same basic promise: be the first believer, then stay useful.

Founders can approach it as early as idea stage, pre-product, or pre-revenue, and even after launch if the company is still in its earliest commercial phase. Its process starts with an initial call. It can move to a second conversation or lightweight diligence over email or WhatsApp, then land in a 45-minute partner pitch if there’s a fit. Seedcamp tries to run that whole process within 2 weeks.

After investment, the support looks more like an operating network than a classic hands-off cap table entry. Seedcamp usually takes a board observer role instead of insisting on board seats. It plugs founders into design partners and customers. It also offers hiring help, investor introductions, founder dinners, and M&A connections across what it calls Seedcamp Nation. Its US team is there for a specific reason: to help European startups build customer pipelines, talent relationships, and financing access in New York and San Francisco earlier than before.

That’s the practical side of the new Select fund too. It gives Seedcamp a cleaner way to keep backing breakout companies as they move past seed and into the rounds where US relationships often stop being nice-to-have and start becoming necessary.

Who built Seedcamp and why does it have an edge?

The founding story

Seedcamp has spent 18 years focused on Europe, and that long runway is part of the pitch. The firm was created in 2007 by Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni, at a time when Europe’s startup stack was thinner, less connected, and a lot more fragmented than it is now. Sohoni still frames the work in direct terms: “We need to plug founders to nodes that are connective.”

Why Reshma Sohoni fits this market

Sohoni’s background helps explain Seedcamp’s style. She has described her career as sitting at the intersection of business and technology, with experience spanning M&A banking, Vodafone, and then Seedcamp. Earlier Seedcamp coverage also described her as having worked at 3i and SoftBank Capital before helping launch the firm.

That mix matters. Seedcamp has never behaved like a narrow operator-led seed fund, and it has never been just a spreadsheet investor either. It’s always tried to be a connector firm. One that can talk product, hiring, fundraising, and cross-border expansion without pretending those are separate problems.

The execution record

The track record is real. Seedcamp now has more than 550 portfolio companies, 12 unicorns, and $1 billion in assets under management. The headline names aren’t random either. Wise, Revolut, UiPath, Pleo, Synthesia, Hopin, and Fluidstack are exactly the kind of companies every European early-stage firm wants in its historical deck.

That history also explains why 80 founders from Seedcamp’s own portfolio joined Fund VII as angel investors alongside institutional LPs. British Business Bank, HarbourVest, Schroders, and Sofina are also in the fund. It’s internal recycling of credibility.

The new fund and how Seedcamp is positioning it

Seedcamp already has offices in New York City and Miami, and now it wants a larger stateside team. The immediate goal is to connect its European portfolio more directly to US customers and investors, especially as San Francisco and Silicon Valley have regained some of their pull as capital and talent magnets.

Its sector stance is broad but not unlimited. Sohoni says Seedcamp will stay sector-agnostic and keep writing early checks into companies that are still pre-traction. But it will continue to avoid capital-intensive businesses such as mobility and marketplaces. Her explanation is blunt: funding working capital on day one isn’t a great model, and Seedcamp sees itself as a commercial-driven investor.

That gives the firm a clear position in the market. It competes with other European first-check investors, angel-heavy syndicates, and multi-stage funds that have moved earlier. But Seedcamp’s angle is sharper than “we invest in Europe.” It wants to be useful before product-market fit, keep backing winners later, and now do more of that through a US bridge instead of from London alone.

Why does Seedcamp Fund VII matter now?

Because this raise changes more than the number on the press release.

First, it lets Seedcamp keep ownership and influence deeper into a company’s life. A lot of firms are good at sourcing the first round and then watching later-stage funds take the real economics. Select is a direct attempt to stop that.

Second, the US expansion is a signal about where Seedcamp thinks value creation happens next. Not where companies are founded. Where they sell, hire, and raise. That’s a meaningful distinction. Europe keeps producing ambitious startups, but the firms that help them cross the Atlantic without losing momentum have a better shot at staying relevant.

Third, the fund says something about conviction. Seedcamp isn’t changing its basic thesis. It still wants startups that are pre-product, pre-revenue, or pre-traction. In a market where many investors have drifted toward safer, later deals, sticking with the earliest stage is either disciplined or stubborn. Maybe both.

What market trends are shaping Seedcamp Fund VII?

Europe’s venture market in 2025 gave Seedcamp a decent macro backdrop for this move. Dealroom’s Q1 2025 data showed early-stage European VC staying relatively stable, while breakout-stage capital at Series B and C started to return after a weaker period. That lines up neatly with Seedcamp’s split-fund design: keep feeding the seed pipeline, but reserve real firepower for later rounds.

Cross-border money is another part of the story. European startups were getting more than 40% of their funding from overseas investors, and London alone pulled in $3.2 billion in Q1 2025 — ahead of other major hubs like Paris and Berlin. If capital is already international by default, a European firm with a bigger US footprint isn’t expanding for vanity. It’s following the deal flow and the customer base.

There’s also a category shift happening under the surface. Dealroom found that European AI startups raised $3.4 billion in Q1 2025, up 55% year on year, and accounted for 25% of all European VC in the quarter. Seedcamp invests across sectors, not just AI, but this matters anyway. Founders in fast-moving categories need customer access and compute partnerships. They also need later-stage capital and hiring density quickly. That pushes firms like Seedcamp to think less like local seed funds and more like transatlantic platforms.

Seedcamp Fund VII, then, isn’t only about having more money. It’s about keeping pace with a European startup market that still starts locally but scales globally much faster than it did in 2007.

Read how Groq raised $650M to expand its AI inference cloud platform, betting that fast, low-latency model serving and developer-friendly infrastructure can help it compete in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market despite Nvidia licensing its core technology and hiring away key executives.

FAQ

• What is Seedcamp Fund VII? Seedcamp Fund VII is Seedcamp’s new $320 million fund platform announced on June 22, 2026. It includes a $220 million early-stage fund for first checks and a $100 million Select vehicle for later follow-on investing into breakout companies.
• How does Seedcamp work for founders? Seedcamp works as an early backer for startups from idea stage through early revenue, then supports them with hiring, customer introductions, fundraising help, and US expansion access. Its investment process can move from first call to partner pitch in about 2 weeks.
• Who founded Seedcamp? Seedcamp was founded in 2007 by Saul Klein and Reshma Sohoni. Sohoni remains the public face of the firm as co-founder and managing partner, and her background spans finance, telecom, and venture investing.
• Is Seedcamp Fund VII a venture capital fund or an accelerator? It’s a venture capital fund first, even if it still carries some accelerator DNA in how hands-on it is with founders. The firm writes equity checks and follows on through later rounds. It now has a dedicated growth vehicle through Select rather than stopping at seed.