💼 50 Best VC Firms for Startups

🚀 14 Must-Follow YouTube Channels for Startup Founders

Praveen Panjiar

— 6 min read
💼 50 Best VC Firms for Startups

In This Edition:

  • 💼 50 Best VC Firms for Startups
  • 🚀 14 Must-Follow YouTube Channels for Founders
  • 🔥 55 U.S. AI Startups Raised $100M
  • 💸 Funding Snapshot — Where Capital Is Flowing
  • 🧠 Paul Graham’s ‘Small, Intense Fire’
  • 🤖 Anthropic Introduces Sonnet 4.6 Model

💸 Funding Snapshot — Where Capital Is Flowing

Investors continue doubling down on AI, infrastructure, and vertical software, with several major rounds signaling strong momentum across the ecosystem.

🧠 Braintrust raised $80M Series B led by Iconiq, with Andreessen Horowitz, basecase, and Greylock backing the growing need for AI model monitoring and evaluation.

🚗 Kavak secured $300M co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and WCM Investment Management, with Foxhaven participating, reinforcing confidence in large digital marketplaces.

⚖️ Legora is reportedly in talks to raise $400M at a $5B+ valuation with Accel potentially involved, highlighting strong demand for AI in legal workflows.

🔌 Mesh Optical raised $50M led by Thrive Capital with Also Capital and Banner VC, reflecting continued investment in AI infrastructure hardware.

🤖 Moonshot, maker of the Kimi chatbot, is targeting a $10B valuation after recently raising $500M, underscoring the rapid rise of AI platforms.

☁️ Render raised $100M at a $1.5B valuation backed by 01A, Addition, Bessemer, General Catalyst, and Georgian Partners to scale cloud infrastructure.

🔄 Temporal secured $300M led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Lightspeed, Sapphire Ventures, and Sequoia Capital participating, signaling growing demand for workflow orchestration in AI systems.

📊 Trend to watch: Smart money is concentrating on AI infrastructure, vertical AI applications, and developer platforms.

👉 Curious who’s leading the biggest bets right now? Click below to explore deeper investor signals, valuation moves, and funding context. 👇

List of investors

🚀55 U.S. AI Startups Raised $100M

55 U.S.-based AI companies that closed funding rounds of $100M or more in 2025, proving investor appetite for AI is still extremely strong—especially across AI infrastructure, coding agents, healthcare AI, and enterprise platforms.

📌 Biggest Funding Highlights (with complete details)

✅ OpenAI

  • $40B funding round (Mar 31, 2025)
  • Valuation: ~$300B
  • Led by: SoftBank
  • Also participated: Thrive Capital, Microsoft, Coatue
  • Founders: Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, John Schulman

✅ Anthropic (multiple mega-rounds in 2025)

✅ Anysphere (Cursor) (raised twice in 2025)

✅ Reflection AI (raised twice in 2025)

✅ Cerebras Systems

✅ Thinking Machines Lab

🔥 AI is consolidating into a few “winning lanes”

Most of the $100M+ capital went into:

  • AI infrastructure & compute (Cerebras, Groq, Lambda, Fireworks AI, Baseten)
  • Vibe-coding + AI dev tools (Cursor/Anysphere, Cognition/Devin)
  • Healthcare AI agents & copilots (Abridge, Hippocratic AI, Ambience Healthcare)
  • Enterprise AI workflows & search (Glean, Uniphore)

Bottom line: 2025 wasn’t just about “AI hype”—it was about serious money chasing scalable AI distribution. And early 2026 signals suggest the momentum may continue.

Looking for early believers to back your startup?👇

Find Angel Investors

🚀 14 Must-Follow YouTube Channels for Startup Founders

YouTube is the most underrated free university for founders.

These 14 channels cover everything from:
• Validating startup ideas
• Raising capital
• Product-market fit
• Growth & monetization
• AI and modern startup execution

The insights from these channels helped us validate our idea, gain early traction, and raise a $2.8M pre-seed round at Rork.

A few highlights you shouldn’t miss 👇

🎯 a16z – Tech trends, AI, and startup strategy
🎯 Y Combinator – Raw advice from billion-dollar founders
🎯 Greg Isenberg – Internet businesses & community-led growth
🎯 Lenny’s Podcast – Tactical product & growth playbooks
🎯 Lex Fridman Podcast – Deep conversations on AI, startups & first principles

…and 9 more channels every early-stage founder should follow.

📌 If you’re building a startup in 2026, this list can save you years of trial and error.

Read the full blog here 👇

🚀 Explore All 14 Channels

✨ ICYMI

Founders were scrambling for these drops—each one unlocked deal flow, investor access, or tactical fundraising shortcuts. If you missed them the first time, this is your chance to catch up before everyone else does.

Don’t wait. These are the kind of links founders bookmark—and competitors quietly use.

🔥 The Most Clicked Founder Resources

📚 The Ultimate Fundraising Resource Stack
A vault of tools most founders don’t know exists.

🔑 The Most Overlooked Key to Fundraising Success
YC founders swear by this — yet most ignore it.

🔥 Paul Graham’s ‘Small, Intense Fire’
The mindset shift that separates funded from forgotten.

🧠 What Sam Altman Wants Every Founder to Know
The blunt guidance founders rarely hear early enough.

📊 Venture Math Demystified
Why VCs say no — even when your pitch feels strong.

🚀 The Pre-Seed Playbook Every Founder Needs
A practical guide to nailing your first raise.

💡Fundraising Mistakes From a $13M Raise 
Avoid the painful errors most founders repeat.

Don’t just save these—use them. The founders who act fastest raise fastest. Want these in a searchable Notion library?

💼 50 Best VC Firms for Startups — Find the Right Backers

Raising capital isn’t just about funding — it’s about finding partners who can help you navigate growth, open doors, and challenge your thinking.

From early-stage specialists like Boost VC, Pear VC, Hustle Fund, and Precursor Ventures to global platforms like Plug and Play Tech Center, Panache Ventures, and Forum Ventures, today’s VC landscape offers founders more pathways than ever to secure the right support.

We’ve curated a comprehensive list of top VC firms across sectors like SaaS, fintech, deep tech, and frontier innovation — helping you discover investors aligned with your stage and vision.

💡 The right investor doesn’t just fund your startup — they help shape its future.

👉 Explore the full list to discover potential partners for your next round.

Explore the Full VC List

🔥WEB PICKS

🍎 Apple Reportedly Working on a Trio of AI Wearables

Apple is said to be exploring multiple AI-powered wearable devices as it looks to expand its footprint beyond the iPhone and Vision Pro. The report highlights Apple’s growing focus on ambient computing and personalized AI experiences delivered through hardware. If successful, these devices could reshape how users interact with AI throughout their day. 👉 Read more

🤖 Anthropic Introduces Sonnet 4.6 Model

Anthropic has rolled out Sonnet 4.6, the latest update in its Claude model lineup, aiming to improve performance, reliability, and real-world usability. The release underscores the rapid pace of model iteration as AI labs compete on capability and efficiency. It’s another signal that enterprise-ready AI is evolving quickly. 👉 Explore the full article

☁️ Mistral AI Acquires Koyeb to Boost Cloud Strategy

Mistral AI has made its first acquisition by buying cloud platform Koyeb, signaling a deeper push into infrastructure and deployment capabilities. The move shows how AI companies are increasingly building vertically integrated stacks to control performance and distribution. It’s a strategic step toward competing with larger AI ecosystem players. 👉 Learn more

🛰️ Former SpaceX Engineers Raise $50M for Data Center Connectivity

A team of SpaceX veterans has secured $50 million to build advanced connectivity solutions for data centers. The funding highlights growing demand for faster, more efficient infrastructure to support AI workloads and massive data flows. As compute needs surge, networking innovation is becoming a critical battleground. 👉 Read the story

🧠 Running AI Models Is Becoming a Memory Challenge

As AI models grow more powerful, memory constraints are emerging as a major bottleneck for performance and cost. The article explores how developers and infrastructure providers are rethinking architectures to manage increasingly complex workloads. It’s a deep dive into one of the most important technical challenges shaping the future of AI. 👉 Dive deeper

🇪🇺 European Parliament Blocks AI Apps Over Security Concerns

Lawmakers in the European Parliament have reportedly restricted AI tools on official devices due to potential security and data risks. The move reflects rising regulatory caution as governments weigh productivity benefits against privacy and security threats. It’s a reminder that policy will play a major role in AI adoption. 👉 Find out more

📝 WordPress.com Launches Built-In AI Assistant

WordPress.com has introduced a new AI assistant that can edit content, adjust styles, generate images, and help streamline publishing workflows. The feature aims to make content creation more accessible while boosting productivity for creators and teams. It’s another sign that AI is becoming native to everyday software tools. 👉 Explore the update

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