Morning VC Brief丨2025.03.26

Week13 Highlights丨The Bot Company, Campus, Arcade, Lumber, Browser Use, Pluralis Research, Nace AI, Spangle AI

Author

eric gu
March 26, 2025

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

TL;DR

01. Venture News

1/ Embodied AI Startup The Bot Company raised $150M Venture Round

  • Product: Founded by ex-Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, focuses on developing household chore robots

  • Highlight:

    • Founded by Vogt (Cruise co-founder), Paril Jain (ex-Tesla AI lead), and Luke Holoubek (ex-Cruise engineer)

  • Investor: Greenoaks (Lead)

  • Source

2/ Next-gen College Campus raised $46M Series B

  • Product: A live online two-year college offering career-focused programs in business and AI, designed for Gen Z seeking affordable, accelerated education

  • Highlight:

    • Doubles graduation rates compared to traditional two-year colleges

    • Zero-debt model prioritizes workforce readiness

  • Investor: General Catalyst (Lead), Founders Fund, Sam Altman, 8VC

  • Source

3/ AI Design Platform Arcade raised $25M Series A

  • Product: Generative AI marketplace for designing jewelry and home goods (starting with rugs)

  • Highlight:

    • Integrates Midjourney/Stable Diffusion for customizable rug designs (prices from $400)

    • New commission program (5% per sale) and entrepreneur initiatives for creators

  • Investor: Laura Chau (Lead)

  • Source

4/ AI Construction Workforce Management Platform Lumber raised $15.5M Series A

  • Product: End-to-end construction workforce management platform offering HR, scheduling, payroll, and compliance tools tailored for the construction industry

  • Highlight:

    • Free AI audit tool for compliance scanning, integration with 20+ applications, and specialized solutions for complex labor regulations

  • Investor: Foundation Capital (Lead), 8VC, Sure Ventures, FirsthandVC

  • Source

5/ Web Agent Startup Browser Use(YC W25) raised $17M Seed

  • Product: Browser Use develops infrastructure enabling AI agents to interact with websites via structured text instead of vision-based methods

  • Highlight:

    • 50K GitHub stars and 15K+ active developers

    • Use cases include data extraction, QA testing, and CRM automation

  • Investor: Felicis (Lead), A Capital, Nexus Ventures, Paul Graham, Y Combinator

  • Source

6/ Protocol Learning Platform Pluralis Research raised $7.5M Seed

  • Product: Protocol Learning enables collaborative AI model training by pooling decentralized computational resources, preventing centralized control while ensuring economic sustainability

  • Highlight:

    • Solves the open research problem of low-bandwidth model-parallel training

  • Investor: Union Square Ventures (Lead), CoinFund (Lead)

  • Source

7/ Precision-driven Enterprise Model Startup Nace AI raised $5M Seed

  • Product: MetaModel 1 generates task-specific small language models for enterprise needs, enhancing precision, compliance, and hardware efficiency

  • Highlight:

    • Outperforms GPT-4o and DeepSeek-V3 in accuracy (0.8709 vs. 0.7758) despite being 25x smaller.

    • Modular design enables seamless integration into audit, healthcare, and supply chain workflows

  • Investor: General Catalyst (Lead)

  • Source

8/ AI Shopping Experience Startup Spangle AI raised $6M Seed

  • Product: AI-powered self-optimizing shopping platform using proprietary ProductGPT to analyze real-time consumer behavior and product interactions

  • Highlight:

    • Achieved 51% conversion lift, 46% engagement increase, and 2x ROAS improvement in A/B tests

  • Investor:Madrona Ventures(Lead),Streamlined Ventures(Lead)

  • Source