Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, predicted that this year could be the year when the first “agents” (a set of synthetic intelligence teams that can perform responsibilities on their own) “will be incorporated into the workforce. “It’s to new technologies before they become ubiquitous that they’re swooning over the promises of those virtual workers.
The rise of agents provides fertile ground for a select startup organization to identify itself as a pioneer of this change. With that in mind, Business Insider reviewed press releases, news articles, and insights from the PitchBook for startups exploring agent application across industries, then filtered through corporations that raised more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024. The result is a list of 21 startups that look poised to scale this year thanks to the new funding.
“If 2024 is the year of LLMs, we think 2025 will be the year of agent AI,” said Praveen Akkiraju, managing director at Insight Partners, whose agent works include Writer, Jasper, and Torq.
The last wave of artificial intelligence brought copilots, a type of virtual assistant designed to work side-by-side with a user. Some write code, some recap meetings or emails, and some transcribe notes on a physician’s behalf. Copilots require some human hand-holding but significantly amplify productivity and efficiency.
Since that breakthrough, a new generation of virtual assistants has emerged. Agents describe an artificial intelligence that can complete tasks without much human supervision. They don’t just assist — they take charge. Agents can break down complex tasks into smaller sub-tasks, make decisions, execute plans, and adjust their approach based on outcomes.
Here’s a simple way to think about the difference: a copilot can assist with crafting a tailored vacation itinerary, while an agent can go further by booking the flights, reserving the hotel, and organizing activities — all without a user needing to intervene at each step.
With Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI’s significant investments in agentic models and the subsequent investor hysteria around this technology, it’s clear that agents are the flavor of the season. PitchBook data shows startups exploring the application of agents have raised $8.2 billion in 2024.
Jill Chase, wife of CapitalG, an Alphabet expansion fund, said the software infrastructure that helps keep agents running “will be primed for explosive expansion. ” Aaron Jacobson, one of NEA’s spouses and one of early investors in Databricks, said corporations will deploy agents widely to “have genuine business impact. ” Seema Amble, wife of Andreessen Horowitz, warned that agents will replace the way professionals use software.
“In the short term, human staff will be the affected reviewers,” said Amble, an investor in enterprise software. “In the future, as it builds over time, I expect that many data-derived movements will become entirely a set of narrowly defined task-oriented agents. “
Here’s a list of agentic startups that have raised rounds of more than $25 million and less than $75 million in 2024, ranked from the least to most money raised.
What it is: Maven AGI reinvents business visitors by leveraging agents.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $28 million
Notable deal: Maven AGI was quietly filed in May with a $28 million Series A investment led by M13.
What it is: Wordware, a Polish-British startup, is building a software platform that can expand and deploy agents that use plain English instead of code.
Founded: 2021
Total Funding: $30 million
Notable deal: At $30 million, Wordware’s November fundraising is one of the largest fundraising rounds in Y Combinator’s history, the startup said. Spark Capital led the investment round, with participation from YC and venture capital firm Felicis.
What it is: Decagon develops agents that act as visitor representatives for business visitors.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $100 million
Notable deal: Decagon emerged from stealth in June and announced both its $30 million Series A and $5 million seed rounds. The startup’s investors include Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Elad Gil.
What it is: Resolve AI creates a production engineering agent that fixes bugs and production issues, freeing up human engineers’ time to create new features.
Founded: 2024
Total funding: $35 million
Notable deal: Greylock led Resolve AI’s $35 million seed round in November. Unusual Ventures also participated in the round alongside the angel investors Fei-Fei Li, known as the “godmother of AI, and Jeff Dean, Google DeepMind’s chief scientist. Executives from OpenAI, GitHub, AWS, and Notion also participated in the round.
What it is: Norm Ai corporate compliance officers to convert public law regulations into corporate policies into running computer code.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $38 million
Notable Deal: Norm Ai raised a $27 million Series A investment led through Coatue in June, following an earlier $11 million investment in the year.
What it is: Founded by two cybersecurity veterans, 7AI is building a “swarm” of agents that monitor threats and companies against cyberattacks.
Founded: 2024
Total funding: $36 million
Notable deal: 7AI launched from stealth in June with a $36 million seed funding round led by Greylock. CRV and Spark Capital also participated in the round.
What it is: Developers like Airtable, Instacart, and Stripe use Braintrust to build, monitor, and troubleshoot their AI applications.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $45 million
Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led a $36 million Series A funding round for Braintrust in August.
What it is: Lawrence, Lawhive’s AI-powered paralegal, automates the regime’s legal tasks, from consumer onboarding and compliance checks to document drafting.
Founded: 2019
Total funding: $52 million
Notable deal: Lawhive closed two rounds of funding just eight months apart, with a $10 million seed round in April and a $40 million Series A round in December.
What it is: Formerly known as CodiumAI, Qodo implements agents in the coding procedure with responsibilities such as creating, testing, reviewing, and documenting.
Founded: 2022
Total financing: $50 million
Notable deal: Qodo raised a $40 million Series A funding round in September led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg. Firestreak Ventures, ICON Continuity Fund, TLV Partners, and Vine Ventures also participated in the round.
What it is: Rox serves sales groups by tracking visitor activity, identifying hazards and opportunities, and recommending action plans to human employees.
Founded: 2024
Total financing: $50 million
Notable deal: Rox finished their seed and Series A rounds quietly. The deals, totaling $50 million from investors GV, Sequoia and General Catalyst, were announced in November.
What it is: Decart builds commercial and customer products on top of most of its own infrastructure, designed to reduce some of the costs of building AI models.
Founded: 2023
Total Funding: $53 million
Notable deal: Decart quietly exited in October with $21 million in seed investment from Sequoia Capital and Zeev Ventures and raised another $32 million in a Series A led by Benchmark in December.
What it is: Founded through former Stripe CTO David Singleton, /dev/agents develops a cloud-based operating formula for agents that works on any device.
Founded: 2024
Total Funding: $56 million
Notable deal: The company emerged from stealth with $56 million in seed financing from Index Ventures, CapitalG, and Sarah Guo’s fund, Conviction Capital, in November of 2024. The round also included names like OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Android founder Andy Rubin.
What it is: HeyGen, a generative AI video creator for businesses, has introduced agents as virtual avatars capable of offering tours to visitors 24 hours a day.
Founded: 2020
Total funding: $60 million
Notable deal: Benchmark led HeyGen’s $60 million Series A in June. Other investors in the round included Thrive Capital, Bond Capital, Conviction, Dylan Field, Elad Gil, Aviv Nevo, Neil Mehta, and SV Angel.
What it is: 11x creates AI-powered sales reps to manage the workflows of classic sales teams.
Founded: 2022
Total funding: $76 million
Notable deal: Andreessen Horowitz led an 11x $50 million Series B investment in November, just two months after the startup raised $24 million in a Series A led through Benchmark.
What it is: Astrix Security creates a security platform for a visiting company’s agents against cyber attacks.
Founded: 2021
Total Funding: $85 million
Notable deal: Astrix closed a $45 million Series B round in December, led by Menlo Ventures. Workday Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, and F2 Venture Capital also participated.
What it is: Robin, a fast-growing legal tech startup, gives lawyers a co-pilot to draft and review contracts.
Founded: 2019
Total financing: $60 million
Notable deal: The Singapore investment company Temasek led Robin’s $26 million Series B funding round in January 2024, and the VC firms QuantumLight, Plural, and AFG Partners also participated in the round. The startup raised additional funding at the end of 2024.
What it is: Ema is building agents called “personas” that complete complex business tasks for their human employee counterparts.
Founded: 2023
Total funding: $61 million
Notable deal: Ema increased its Series A investment to $50 million in July and counts its investors include Accel, Section 32, Prosus Ventures, Sozo Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Wipro Ventures, SCB 10X, Colle Capital and Frontier VenturesArray.
What it is: You. com’s multi-agent formula allows employees to search, create content, and create traditional agents on the best workforce. AI for virtually any task.
Founded: 2020
Total funding: $99 million
Notable deal: Georgian led a $50 million Series B investment for You. com in September.
What it is: Anypshere, the startup behind the AI-powered code editor Cursor allows developers to turn terse directives into working code.
Founded: 2022
Total financing: $171 million
Notable deal: Anysphere raised back-to-back rounds of funding just four months apart, with a $60 million Series A round in August and a $100 million Series B round in December. The latest round crowned Anysphere a unicorn, with a valuation of $2.6 billion.
What it is: Torq’s multi-agent formula allows security professionals to create and deploy workflows, triage alerts, and respond to security events.
Founded: 2020
Total Funding: $192 million
Notable deal: Torq closed two separate investments in the last 12 months, adding a $42 million Series B and a $70 million Series C led through Evolution Equity Partners.
What it is: Legion, a monitoring platform used by corporations like Barry’s and Five Below, has developed agents to wait for calls from visitors at all locations, create and analyze schedules and timesheets, and decrease human bias.
Founded: 2016
Total Funding: $195 million
Notable deal: Legion landed $50 million in a growth round in May, led by Riverwood Capital. In December, it raised another $50 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank, bringing its total funding to $195 million.
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