Seven Rice University students have founded Haast Autonomous, a startup developing a drone-based system for transporting critical medical supplies. They secured $1.85 million in pre-seed funding to create a faster, safer alternative to ground couriers and traditional air transport, with pilot trials planned for early 2027.
Critical Energy, a startup focused on modular turbines for geothermal power plants, has raised $19 million in seed funding. The company aims to address a shortage of compatible turbines and plans to build its first 2.5 MW project by 2027, potentially outpacing nuclear energy deployments.
AI compliance service ZeroDrift has raised $10 million in seed funding to address governance challenges in AI systems. The company's technology flags and replaces non-compliant messages generated by AI, aiming for lower latency and higher reliability than traditional LLMs.
Maka Kids, a startup focused on children's well-being, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding for its streaming app. Unlike traditional platforms, it avoids algorithms and auto-play, prioritizing healthy development for ages zero to six.
Kin Health has raised $9 million in seed funding to develop an AI notetaker for patients, aiming to transcribe doctor visits, parse medical advice, and surface next steps. The app, built by physicians and entrepreneurs, plans to offer a free service monetized through referrals, while addressing privacy concerns and AI accuracy challenges in healthcare.
Atech, a Danish hardware startup, secures $800,000 in pre-seed funding from investors including Lovable, a16z Scout Fund, Sequoia Scout Fund, and Nordic Makers, to develop 'vibe coding' for democratized hardware prototyping.
Ineffable Intelligence has emerged from stealth with a $5.1 billion valuation.
NeoCognition, a new AI startup developing self-learning agents, has raised $40 million in seed funding. Founded by Ohio State professor Yu Su, the company aims to solve AI reliability issues—current agents only complete tasks correctly about 50% of the time. The funding was co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with participation from Vista Equity Partners and angels including Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica.
