Morning VC Brief丨2025.04.01

Week14 Highlights丨Temporal, Isomorphic Labs, Retym, Playback, Sohar Health, Sourcetable, Taxo, Kay

Author

eric gu
April 01, 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/ Microservices Orchestration Platform Temporal raised $146M Series C at $1.72B

  • Product: Provides a scalable backend for AI-native systems with open-source flexibility and cloud reliability

  • Highlight:

    • 183K+ weekly active open-source developers, 7M+ deployed clusters (600% growth in 18 months)

    • Temporal Cloud serves 2,500+ global customers with 4.4x revenue growth

  • Investor: Tiger Global(Lead), Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Amplify Partners

  • Source

2/ AI Drug Discovery Platform Isomorphic Labs raised $600M

  • Product: Alphabet-backed AI drug discovery platform (spun out of DeepMind) using AlphaFold technology to predict protein structures

  • Highlight:

    • Landed partnerships worth up to $3B with Eli Lilly and Novartis

    • Core team won 2024 Nobel Prize for AlphaFold breakthroughs

  • Investor: Thrive Capital(Lead), GV

  • Source

3/ Semiconductor Startup Retym raised $75M Series D

  • Product: Programmable coherent DSP solutions enabling faster data transmission within AI data centers

  • Highlight:

    • Technology foundational for AI-driven network bandwidth scaling

  • Investor: Spark Capital(Lead), Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield Partners

  • Source

4/ Sports-Focused Livestreaming Platform Playback raised $22M Series A

  • Product: "Twitch for sports" platform enabling creators to livestream games and interact with fans

  • Highlight:

    • Partnerships with MLB.tv and NBA League Pass for live game streaming

    • Attracts NBA stars like Kevin Garnett as creators

  • Investor: Seven Seven Six(Lead), Khosla Ventures

  • Source

5/ AI Eligibility Determination And VoB Startup Sohar Health raised $3.8M Seed

  • Product: AI-powered real-time eligibility determination and benefits verification platform to streamline healthcare administrative workflows

  • Highlight:

    • Median 6-second response time for eligibility checks, with 90% processed within 30 seconds

    • 96% accuracy in benefits data, reducing claim denials

  • Investor: Kindred Capital(Lead), Y Combinator, Rebel Fund

  • Source

6/ AI Spreadsheet Startup Sourcetable raised $4.3M Seed

  • Product: Launched "Autopilot Mode," the world's first AI-powered spreadsheet that automates tasks like data cleaning, cross-tab VLOOKUPS, and pivot creation through voice commands

  • Highlight:

    • Integrates commercial/open-source models with data privacy safeguards

  • Investor: Bee Partners(Lead), Julien Chaumond (Co-founder / CTO, HuggingFace), Preston-Werner Ventures (Github Co-founder)

  • Source

7/ AI Healthcare Admin Solution Taxo raised $5M Seed

  • Product: Automating healthcare administrative tasks (prior authorizations, billing, patient intake) with a "reasoning engine" that explains decisions transparently

  • Highlight:

    • 98% prior authorization approval rate (vs. industry 80%)

    • hit $1M ARR within 6 months of launch

  • Investor: General Catalyst(Lead), Y Combinator, Character Capital

  • Source

8/ Insurance Workflow Automation Startup Kay raised $3M Seed

  • Product: AI co-worker that understands processes, interacts with systems, and adapts to preferences, automating high-volume tasks like policy submissions and renewals for brokers

  • Highlight:

    • Eliminates hours of daily manual work at 1/4th the labor cost

    • Achieved 100% accuracy with early adopters like Johnson Insurance

  • Investor: Wing VC(Lead), South Park Commons

  • Source