🚀 Humans& just raised a $480M seed round at a $4.5B valuation, AI video startup Higgsfield hit unicorn status, and Runpod bootstrapped its way to $120M ARR. Meanwhile, the race for on-device AI inference is heating up as companies look to cut cloud costs.
Mega funding rounds and AI breakaways
Humans&, a 'human-centric' AI startup founded by Anthropic, xAI, Google alums, raised $480M seed round
Humans&, a startup with a philosophy that AI should empower people rather than replace them, has raised $480 million in seed funding at a $4.48 billion valuation, reports The New York Times. Investors in the round include chipmaker Nvidia, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and VC firms SV Angel, GV, and Laurene Powell Jobs' firm Emerson Collective.
What this signals: Pedigree and timing matter more than traction in AI funding. A three-month-old company with top-tier founders can command a multi-billion valuation before building anything. This creates pressure on established AI labs to retain talent.
Kirill Lazarev, CEO and Founder at Lazarev.agency: "Humans&'s $480M seed shows investors are betting on founder credentials over product. But 'human-centric AI' needs exceptional UX to deliver on that promise. The challenge is designing AI tools that genuinely augment human capability rather than creating dependency."
Unconventional AI lands monster $475M seed round at $4.5B valuation
Unconventional AI got $475 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz on December 8. The round valued the one-year-old startup, which is rethinking the foundation of computers in the age of AI, at nearly $4.5 billion.
Why this matters: Investors believe current computer architecture isn't optimized for AI workloads. Rethinking computing from the ground up could unlock massive performance gains and efficiency improvements.
4 more US AI startups that raised $100M+
- Mythic (Austin, TX): $125M led by DCVC for power-efficient AI compute. Investors include SoftBank, NEA, and Linse Capital.
- Chai Discovery: $130M Series B at $1.2B valuation for AI models in biotech and drug discovery. Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst co-led.
- Fal: $140M Series D led by Sequoia at $4.5B+ valuation for generative media platform.
- 7AI (Boston): $130M Series A led by Index Ventures for cybersecurity AI agents.
Indian vibe-coding startup Emergent triples valuation to $300M with $70M fundraise
In a sign of the demand, or hype, for AI startups, Emergent is building an AI "vibe-coding" platform that raised $70 million less than four months after it raised a $23 million Series A.
The Series B round was jointly led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 and Khosla Ventures, and values the startup at $300 million post-money, sources with knowledge of the deal told TechCrunch. The startup was previously valued at $100 million post-money.
Oleksandr Koshytskyi, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency: "Vibe-coding platforms need to balance magic and control. Developers want AI to generate code fast, but they also need to understand and modify what's generated.”
Optimist raises $12M for AI data center cooling solutions
Cooling solutions startup Optimist raised $12 million in seed funding led by Accel and Arkam Ventures. The newly-raised capital will be used to scale manufacturing, research and development, and go-to-market operations.
Optimist was founded in 2024 by Ashish Goel, ex-CEO and Co-founder of Urban Ladder, and Pranav Chopra. The company is developing cooling systems for India's extreme heat and energy-constrained market.
Why this matters: AI data centers generate massive heat. India's climate and energy constraints make traditional cooling expensive. Purpose-built cooling solutions for hot climates and AI infrastructure could be a massive market.
The AI infrastructure shake-up
Quadric rides the shift from cloud AI to on-device inference and it's paying off
Quadric posted $15 million to $20 million in licensing revenue in 2025, up from around $4 million in 2024, CEO Veerbhan Kheterpal told TechCrunch. The company is targeting up to $35 million this year as it builds a royalty-driven on-device AI business. That growth has boosted the company to a post-money valuation of between $270 million and $300 million, up from around $100 million in its 2022 Series B.
Quadric announced a $30 million Series C round led by ACCELERATE Fund, managed by BEENEXT Capital Management, bringing its total funding to $72 million.
Kirill Lazarev, CEO and Founder at Lazarev.agency: "On-device AI is where cost meets privacy. For fintech apps running fraud detection or personalized recommendations, processing data locally instead of sending it to cloud servers improves both speed and security."
AI cloud startup Runpod hits $120M in ARR and it started with a Reddit post
Runpod, an AI app hosting platform that launched four years ago, has hit a $120 million annual revenue run rate, founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh tell TechCrunch.
Their startup journey includes bootstrapping their way to over $24 million in revenue; landing a $20 million seed round after VC Radhika Malik, a partner at Dell Technologies Capital, saw some Reddit posts; and gaining key angel investor Julien Chaumond (Hugging Face co-founder) because he was using the product and reached out over support chat.
Generative AI at an entirely new level
AI video startup Higgsfield, founded by ex-Snap exec, lands $1.3B valuation
Through an extension to its previous $50 million Series A round that closed in September, AI video generation startup Higgsfield has sold another $80 million worth of stock, bringing its total Series A to $130 million. The company says it has now hit a $1.3 billion valuation.
Higgsfield offers a tool that allows consumers, creators, and social media teams to create and edit AI-generated videos. The company was founded by Alex Mashrabov, former head of Generative AI at Snap, who landed at the company after it bought his previous startup, AI Factory, in 2020 for $166 million.
Danylo Dubrovsky, Senior UX/UI designer at Lazarev.agency: "AI video tools succeed when creation feels playful. Higgsfield needs editing interfaces where creators can iterate fast: adjusting style, pacing, and details without starting from scratch each time."
Enterprise AI and vertical solutions
PraxisPro raises $6M seed from AlleyCorp to coach medical sales reps
PraxisPro is a standalone platform that can also be integrated into enterprise software. It develops small language models trained on life science data to help companies navigate the nuances and context needed to interact with healthcare providers. PraxisPro has created an AI agent that helps commercial sales teams practice their communication skills before engaging with customers.
Oleksandr Koshytskyi, Lead Designer at Lazarev.agency: "AI sales coaching tools need to feel supportive. Sales reps will only use practice tools if feedback helps them improve without making them feel inadequate. The interface should celebrate progress and show concrete improvement over time."
Antidote secures $5M seed for AI-powered legal billing compliance
Antidote has secured $5 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding to $7 million. The round was led by Lakestar, with participation from Concept Ventures, The LegalTech Fund, and industry angel investors.
The opportunity: Legal billing compliance is manual, error-prone, and costly. Law firms lose revenue to billing errors and compliance issues. Automating this with AI saves time and captures more billable revenue.
Retail and commerce tech
Retail startup Another raises $2.5M seed to help sell excess inventory
Corina Marshall spent 11 years working in retail digital marketing and realized the industry was behind the times. Specifically, the technology that helped retail brands sell unsold or excess products (off-channel inventory) wasn't as sophisticated as it could have been. Brands sell their excess inventory at discount retailers like Nordstrom Rack, but often lose money because managing unsold inventory is difficult.
Another connects to a business's existing software systems to better centralize an organization's data and workflows. This way, teams across the company can access data from the same place, making decision-making more effective. The company announced a $2.5 million seed round led by Anthemis FIL and Westbound.
What this solves: Excess inventory destroys margins. Real-time data on product value and optimal selling timing means brands can move products faster to the right channels. Better inventory management means less waste and better profitability.
Danylo Dubrovsky, Senior UX/UI designer at Lazarev.agency: "Inventory management platforms need dashboards that show actionable insights. Buyers need to see which products to move now, where to send them, and expected margins all at a glance without digging through reports."
What's coming next week
More mega-rounds for AI startups with pedigreed founders, continued shift from cloud to on-device AI as infrastructure costs mount, and probably another unicorn video or coding AI tool.
We'll keep tracking where AI meets real-world business models and we can help you build the next newsworthy project with:
🔥 Stay sharp. Stay with Lazarev.agency, your AI design agency for startups.
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