Morning VC Brief丨2025.02.27

Morning VC Brief is an expert daily curation of tech and venture news. Feel free to forward; the sign-up is here

01. Venture News

1/ Usage-based Billing Startup Metronome raises $50M Series C

Metronome is a provider of usage-based billing for software companies. Metronome 8x’d dollars billed YoY and now power billing for 150M+ end users, processing billions in usage-based revenue. This round was led by NEA with participation from a16z, General Catalyst, Workday Ventures, and more. Link

2/ AI Recruiting Startup Mercor raises $100M Series B at $2B

Mercor uses AI to streamline hiring. Its platform automates resume screening and candidate matching, and offers AI-powered interviews and payroll management. This round was led by Felicis with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, and more. Link

3/ Salad Chain Just Salad raises $200M Venture Round at $1B

Just Salad is a fast-casual restaurant chain that focuses on healthy, plant-centric meals, and sustainability. This round was backed by Wellington Management, D1 Capital Partners and more. Link

4/ Enterprise CFO Agent Auditoria AI raises $38M Series B

Auditoria AI strengthened its position as the premier provider of agentic AI solutions for corporate finance, automating accounting tasks proactively and autonomously with triple-digit growth in 2024. This round was led by Innovius Capital with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, Sentinel Global, and more. Link

5/ Sales Engagement Platform Regie AI raises $30M Series B

Regie AI is an AI-native sales engagement platform that unifies human sellers and AI agents in a single workflow. This round was led by Scale Venture Partners and Foundation Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures, StepStone Group and more. Link

6/ AI Warehouse Robotics Nomagic raises $44M Series B

Nomagic is a leading provider of AI powered robotics for warehouses and the fulfillment sector. With demand growing from existing and new customers in sectors such as fashion, general merchandise, pharmaceuticals and groceries, Nomagic expects to multiply the number of sites with over 10 robots, across industries. This round was led by EBRD with participation from Khosla Ventures, Almaz Capital and more. Link

7/ Blockchain-Powered Gift Cards Raise raises $63M Series B

Raise offers activation and real-time redemption capabilities across a network of over one million stores, websites, and applications. This round was led by Haun Ventures with participation from Amber Group, Anagram, Borderless Capital and more. Link

8/ OS for Petcare Provider Goose raises $13.4M Seed

Goose is a technology company dedicated to transforming the pet services industry through real-time e-commerce and scalable operations. Founders Drew Brinkoetter and Chris Tilson have a combined 31 years in the pet services industry, with each having operated successful pet services businesses across the U.S. This round was backed by B Capital, First Round Capital and more. Link

9/ AI Patent Intelligence Solution Palytics raises $14M Series A

Palytics has developed an AI-enabled patent analytics platform to help corporations, IP professionals and law firms streamline their patent workflows, from discovery, analytics, comparison, and prosecution to litigation. This round was led by Next47 with participation from Gradient Ventures, 8VC, Alumni Ventures, and more. Link

10/ Enterprise AI Risk Management & Performance Platform CTGT raises $7M Seed

CTGT is approaching AI model training and deployment in new ways that require a fraction of the energy and compute. Instead of scaling by brute force, CTGT broke down how deep learning systems actually learn and developed a way to achieve the same (or better) insights up to 500x faster. This round was led by Gradient with participation from General Catalyst, Y Combinator, Liquid 2, and more. Link