Garden Research: Weekly Recap #16
Down week in the US Seed ecosystem. Let's take a look.
Hey Everyone,
Happy Thursday. For those who are new here, every week I deliver a recap of the activity in the US seed ecosystem, a full list of every completed round, and a deep dive into a company I find interesting. If you’re interested in following along, click below.
Last week, 38 companies raised Seed capital in the U.S. 🌱
Quick Stats 📈
Total Funding: $142.5M
Highest Round: $21.5M
Lowest Round: $350k
Average Round: $4.1M
Top Raisers 💰
Karman+: Karman+ is developing technology to survey, prospect, and mine near-Earth asteroids for resources and sustainable energy. The company aims to provide abundant, sustainable energy and resources both in space and for Earth by extracting materials from asteroids. Their approach uses autonomous spacecraft and "COTS+" (Commercial Off-The-Shelf Plus) technology to reduce mission costs from the traditional $1 billion to under $10 million, with plans to launch their first test mission "High Frontier" in 2027. Raised $21.5M in a round led by Hummingbird Ventures.
Yutori: Yutori is an AI assistant startup founded by former Meta executives that recently raised $15 million to develop personal AI assistants capable of performing autonomous tasks beyond conversation. Their technology uses an "agent-first" approach to ensure accuracy and reliability across the web, focusing on building AI assistants that can automate digital tasks without constant human oversight. The founding team brings expertise from Meta's multimodal AI research and embodied AI teams, with experience on projects like Llama 3, Make-A-Scene, and AR glasses integration. Raised $15M in a round led by Radical Ventures.
SYLKE: SYLKE is a medical technology company innovating wound closure with a unique all-in-one approach to wound closure and healing. Their technology provides comprehensive solutions for wound care, backed by a team with extensive experience in the medical device industry. The company combines advanced medical research with practical applications to improve patient outcomes in wound treatment and healing processes. Raised $10.3M in a round led by Mayo Clinic Ventures.
Pro Padel League: The Pro Padel League (PPL) is North America's first professional padel league, created to provide a national stage for the rapidly growing racquet sport. The league features teams consisting of two male and two female players competing in tournaments that follow international scoring formats, with regular season events and playoffs culminating in the PPL Cup. Their mission is to generate nationwide awareness for padel, which currently has over 25 million players worldwide and is projected to reach 8 million players in the U.S. by 2030. Raised $10M in a round led by Left Lane Capital.
Charm Security: Charm Security is an AI-powered customer security platform that protects against scams, social engineering, and human-centric fraud using a combination of AI tools and psychological insights. Their technology operates at the human layer, analyzing vulnerability patterns and intervening at critical moments before scams occur with real-time countermeasures that can disrupt manipulation attempts as they unfold. The platform tackles AI-generated deception across multiple channels including digital, mobile, and in-person interactions, providing protection for various industries including financial institutions, retailers, and telecommunications companies. Raised $8M in a round led by Team8.
My Favorites 🕺
Marit Health - Raised $3.2M in a round led by Define Ventures.
Marit Health has developed a free, community-powered platform providing anonymous yet verified salary transparency for physicians and advanced practice providers. By collecting comprehensive compensation data including workload details, schedule information, and benefits, Marit empowers clinicians with information previously controlled exclusively by employers and expensive subscription services. In an industry facing critical workforce shortages and high burnout rates, Marit aims to level the playing field in compensation negotiations, ultimately strengthening the healthcare system through a more supported clinical workforce.
iSono Health - Raised $3M in a round led by Gershon Capital
iSono Health has developed ATUSA, the world's first FDA-cleared wearable and automated 3D breast ultrasound system that revolutionizes breast cancer screening through its combination of automated ultrasound technology and artificial intelligence to improve accuracy, access, and adoption of breast imaging. The ATUSA system captures complete breast scans in just two minutes without requiring a trained ultrasound operator, making high-quality breast imaging accessible at point-of-care settings like physicians' offices and women's health clinics. By addressing limitations of traditional mammography (especially for dense breast tissue) and integrating advanced machine learning for abnormality detection, iSono Health is transforming breast cancer screening to enable earlier detection and improve outcomes for the 1.7 million women diagnosed with breast cancer annually worldwide.
Sound Credit - Raised $2.1M from undisclosed investors
Sound Credit has developed an innovative platform that addresses the $1.4 billion annual problem of unpaid royalties in the music industry by streamlining the collection and distribution of music credits and attribution data through their comprehensive workflow solution. Their technology includes cross-platform applications for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android that enable musicians, producers, engineers, and other contributors to easily document, store, and share credit information using the industry-standard DDEX RIN format. The platform revolutionizes music file sharing by combining secure audio file collaboration, high-resolution audio transfers, and comprehensive metadata in a single solution that ensures credits and royalty information travel with the music files throughout the industry supply chain, ultimately fostering a more transparent, ethical, and sustainable ecosystem for all music professionals.
Podonos - Raised KRW 1B ($690k) in a round led by KAIST Venture Investment Holdings
Podonos is a specialized AI evaluation platform that helps companies assess the effectiveness and performance of speech and audio AI models through managed evaluation services delivering results within 12 hours from global evaluators. Their technology automates the complex process of setting up multi-language evaluations, prescreening evaluators, and analyzing results according to industry standards like NMOS, QMOS, and ITU-T P.808 across 8 languages and 13 locales. By providing comprehensive performance analysis and comparison metrics, Podonos enables AI companies to accelerate product development, reduce costs, and save valuable engineering time that would otherwise be spent on cumbersome evaluation processes.
You can find the full list of startups that raised seed capital last week linked here
Seeya next week!