AI Funding News: Week Ending 10.03

Two $300M headliners (Vercel, Periodic Labs) set the pace; ERP and infra intelligence heat up

Feed The AI Team
October 03, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Welcome to Feed The AI

Welcome to Q4. New quarter, new money. Investors didn’t tiptoe, they sprinted. We’ve got two $300M rounds topping the sheet, a $90M AI-native ERP raise, and a tidy batch of M&A to kick off the final stretch of 2025.

Lets dive in:

🔥 Biggest AI Funding Rounds This Week:

Vercel – $300M (Series F) – San Francisco, CA
AI cloud + v0 agent platform for building/shipping AI apps; round values Vercel at $9.3B.

Periodic Labs – $300M (Seed) – San Francisco, CA
“AI scientist” + autonomous labs: robots run physical experiments to discover new materials (e.g., superconductors).

DualEntry – $90M (Series A) – New York, NY
AI-native ERP with 24-hour “NextDay Migration” off legacy stacks; targets mid-market firms.

Phaidra – $50M+ (Series B) – Seattle, WA
AI agents to operate energy-efficient “AI factories”/data-center and industrial systems.

MAI – $25M (Seed) – San Francisco, CA
Autonomous performance-marketing agents; manages ad spend and optimization for brands.

Paid – $21M (Seed) – London, UK
Infra rails for the AI-agent economy (payments/monetization layer for agents).

🗓️ Upcoming Conferences:

Oracle AI World – October 13–16, 2025 | Las Vegas, NV | More Info
AI Security Summit – October 22-23,2025 | More Info
Nvidia GTC 2025 – October 27–29, 2025 | Washington, D.C. | More Info

For a full list of upcoming conferences check out our full list here!

🦄 Startups to Watch:

OpenSolar -$20M (Equity) - solar OS with new AI features.
Alex - $17M (Seed/early A) - AI recruiter & interview automation.
Cyvl.ai - $14M (Series A) - AI infrastructure intelligence for cities.
Gelt - $13M (Series A) - AI-native tax firm.
Gain - $12M (Seed) - “AI employees” for procurement.
InOrbit.AI - $10M (Series A) - robot orchestration platform.
Composite - $5.6M (Seed) - cross-browser automation agents.
Prosper AI - $5M (Seed) - healthcare voice AI.
Flai - $4.5M (Seed) - AI phone assistant for car dealerships.
SolidCore.ai - $4M (Seed) - AI risk identification/governance.

📡 Signals – What This Week Tells Us:

Infra is STILL king: We’ve written this a few times, but it cant be ignored. Late-stage capital (Vercel) and mega-seed (Periodic) show investors backing both the application and the lab bench.
AI-first rewrites are go: A $90M A into ERP (DualEntry) says the market’s ready to replatform core systems, not just bolt on copilots.
Robotics platform layer is forming: InOrbit’s A and EVS’s roll-ups point to orchestration + hardware ecosystems consolidating.

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions:

Waystar → Iodine Software (AI for hospital RCM) - Closed Oct 1 — value ~$1.25B.
Perplexity AI → Visual Electric (gen-AI image/video) - Ann. Oct 2 — terms undisclosed; team to join new Agent Experiences group.
Uber → Segments.ai (robotics/AV data labeling) - Reported Oct 2–3 — terms undisclosed.
Vectra AI → Netography (cloud-native network observability) - Ann. Oct 2 — terms undisclosed.
EVS → Telemetrics & XD Motion (broadcast camera robotics) - Closed Oct 1 / confirmed Oct 2–3 — small disclosed amounts previously; forms new “T-Motion” division.

Beyond The Feed:

People Can't Distinguish AI Voice Clones From Actual Humans Anymore

Researchers created extremely realistic voice clones with just four minutes of recordings.

Meme of the Week:

📬 Enjoyed the intel?

See you next Friday.

Until then: ship fast, raise smart, stay curious.

Feed The AI