AI Funding News: Week Ending 05.16

This week? Infra is hot. Agents are multiplying. And startups are raising across...

Author

Feed The AI Team
May 16, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

In partnership with

How 15 Small Brands Achieved Remarkable Marketing Results

Stop believing you need a big budget to make an impact. Our latest collection highlights 15 small brands that transformed limited resources into significant market disruption through innovative thinking.

  • Case studies revealing ingenious approaches to common marketing challenges

  • Practical tactics that delivered 900%+ ROI with minimal investment

  • Strategic frameworks for amplifying your brand without amplifying your budget

These actionable insights can be implemented immediately, regardless of your team or budget size. See how small brands are making big waves in today's market.

Welcome to Feed The AI,

Your weekly download of what just happened in AI funding, M&A, and market signals.

This week? Infra is hot. Agents are multiplying. And startups are raising across biotech, security, ops, and embedded AI.

🔥 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week

» Funding Roundup

  • TensorWave raised $100M (Series A) to build AMD-powered AI infrastructure.

  • Toloko raised $72M to Expand Its human-AI data Platform, backed by Bezos Expeditions

  • Akido raised $60M (Series B) to bring AI into care delivery.

  • PhaseV raised $50M (Series A) for AI/ML-driven clinical trial development.

  • Granola raised $43M (Series B) to power an AI notepad for typed + transcribed notes.

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences

AI for Defense Transformation

AI for Defense Transformation is the leading US conference for military, government, VC, and industry decision makers implementing AI technology.

Upper Bound AI

This event offers real-world insights through panels, interactive workshops, and dynamic presentations.

📡  Signals – What This Week Tells Us

  • AI in Biotech Keeps Climbing: With rounds for PhaseV, Pluto Bio, Somite AI, Fieldstone Bio, and Intrepid Labs, AI-powered drug discovery and bioinformatics continue to draw capital.

  • Agentic Everything: From Adopt AI and Forethought to StackAI and Persona AI, funding for agent-driven platforms is heating up. As complexity rises, orchestration and coordination become investable categories.

  • Specialized Applications > General Platforms: Many of this week’s raises are verticalized plays: legal ops (Plexus), hospitality (Hostie), real estate (Algoma), logistics (Axe), and food robotics (Posha).

🦄 Startups to Watch

  • Adopt AI raised $6M to bring agentic AI into enterprise ops.

  • Fieldstone Bio raised $5M to scale AI-powered biosensors for environmental detection.

  • Pluto Bio raised $3.6M for AI-first computational biology.

  • Egune AI raised $3.5M out of Mongolia to develop foundation models.

  • Kovr.ai raised $3.6M to automate AI-era cyber compliance.

  • Algoma raised $2.3M for an AI-native real estate dev platform.

  • ThriveAI raised $1.2M to build an AI-powered junior product manager.

🤖 Beyond The Feed

We break down why optimizing the experience of your AI agents will be just as crucial as optimizing UX.

Did you know? There’s a Lean AI Leaderboard. Tracking lean AI native companies and how close they are to a “1-person” billion-dollar startup.

Till next week,

Feed The AI