Morning VC Brief丨2025.05.23

Week21 Highlights丨LM Arena, David AI, Siro, Zoca, Slash, Greenlite, Legora

Author

eric gu
May 23, 2025

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

Table of Contents

01. Venture News

1/ AI Benchmarking Platform LM Arena raised $100M Seed Round

  • Product: Crowdsourced AI model evaluation platform partnering with major labs like OpenAI and Google to test flagship models

  • Investor: a16z(Lead), Lightspeed, Felicis, Kleiner Perkins

  • Source

2/ Audio AI Data Infrastructure David AI raised $25M Series A

  • Product: Provides high-quality audio datasets for voice production systems and AI research, focusing on real-world AI applications like robots and wearables

  • Highlight: Partnered with top AI labs and "Mag 7" companies, achieved eight-figure annual revenue

  • Investor: Alt Capital (Lead), Amplify Partners (Lead), First Round Capital

  • Source

3/ AI Sales Enablement Platform Siro raised $50M Series B

  • Product: Mobile app that captures in-person customer conversations and transforms them into structured insights, helping sales teams improve performance

  • Highlight: 36% higher close rates; 10x faster coaching cycles; 30% reduction in sales rep turnover

  • Investor: SignalFire (Lead)

  • Source

4/ Local Business Growth Platform Zoca raised $7M Seed

  • Product: An autonomous AI system that forces growth for local beauty/wellness businesses by handling marketing, search optimization, and customer conversion automatically

  • Highlight: Generated 120K+ appointments and $10M+ revenue for clients

  • Investor: Accel (Lead), Elevation Capital, GTMfund

  • Source

5/ Neobank Platform Slash raised $41M Series B

  • Product: Pivoted from sneaker reseller banking to verticalized neo-banking for performance marketing, crypto, and HVAC sectors

  • Highlight: Processes $300M monthly transactions post-pivot; survived 80% revenue drop after Yeezy market collapse

  • Investor: Goodwater Capital(Lead), NEA

  • Source

6/ Financial Compliance Agent Greenlite raised $15M Series A

  • Product: AI-driven compliance automation solutions for financial institutions, streamlining AML, KYC, and sanctions review processes

  • Highlight: Trusted by OCC/SEC-regulated banks and Fortune 500 clients (e.g., Ramp, Mercury)

  • Investor: Greylock (Lead), Thomson Reuters, Y Combinator

  • Source

  • Product: Collaborative AI platform empowering lawyers to review documents, conduct research, draft efficiently, and collaborate in complex workflows

  • Highlight: Serves 250+ law firms and legal teams across 20 markets, including top-tier clients like Cleary Gottlieb and Bird & Bird

  • Investor: ICONIQ(Lead), General Catalyst(Lead)

  • Source