MENLO TIMES

Cortea, building AI audit agents for professional audit firms, led by Valentin Neumann and Philipp Hövelmann, has raised €12 million in seed funding led by Dawn Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and angel investors including Larry Bradley, former Global Head of Audit at KPMG. Building Trust in AI-Powered Audits. This milestone reflects more than a funding achievement; it highlights a broader transformation underway across the audit profession.

Sakana AI, building frontier AI in Japan, led by David Ha, Llion Jones, and Ren Ito, has introduced Sakana Marlin, its first commercial product, an autonomous research assistant for business, built on long-horizon reasoning technology. Give it a research topic, and Marlin works autonomously for up to roughly eight hours, crafting a detailed strategy report up to a hundred pages long, along with executive summary slides. Automating Strategic Research. Sakana Marlin is designed

Waniwani, the leading revenue and compliance infrastructure for the agentic distribution of financial services, led by Maxime Antoine, Robin Diligent, Raphaël Vullierme, and Luiza Gusmao, has raised $8 million in seed funding led by Seedcamp, with participation from Redstone, Plug & Play, Zone II Ventures, OPRTRs Club, and Kima Ventures alongside a group of prominent angel investors. Waniwani has already become the infrastructure of choice for global financial institutions na

Capsa AI, building the AI intelligence layer private capital has been waiting for, led by Danyal Özdüzenciler and Callum Downie, has announced its $18M Series A, co-led by TX Ventures and Pivot Investment Partners, with participation from Bek Ventures and continued support from Outward VC, Antler, and Cornerstone VC, alongside angel investors, including Paul Forster, co-founder of Indeed. Building Institutional Intelligence For Private Capital. Capsa was founded to solve a

Cyera, the AI security platform, led by Yotam Segev, Tamar Bar-Ilan, Yonatan Itai, and the team, has announced its Series G: $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Cyberstarts and Temasek, in addition to all existing investors, including Accel, AT&T Ventures, Blackstone, Coatue, Spark Capital, among others. Building The Trust Layer For AI. Cyera was founded to help enterprises understand what sensitive data they hav

TensorWave, the cloud built for the next wave of AI, led by Darrick Horton, Piotr Tomasik, Jeff Tatarchuk, and the team, has raised $350 million in Series B funding, co-led by Magnetar and AMD Ventures, with continued participation from Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners, and Western Frontier. Expanding AMD-Powered AI Infrastructure. The new funding will help TensorWave expand its global AI compute footprint, including deployment of next-generation AMD Instinct™ MI355X

Sandstone, in-house counsel legal AI software, led by Nick Fleisher, Jarryd Strydom, Liam Germain, and Jessica Nguyen, has announced $30 million in Series A financing, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors. The Missing Layer In Legal AI. AI can now automate legal tasks like drafting, review, and research. But the knowledge that makes those tasks accurate- precedents, policies, workflows, and institutional know-how- often remains scatte