Morning VC Brief丨2025.07.18

Week29 Highlights丨Thinking Machines Lab, Lovable, OpenEvidence, Bedrock, Firestorm Labs, Unify, ParadeDB, Vultron, GeologicAI

Author

eric gu
July 18, 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 startup Thinking Machines Lab raised $2B Series A at $12B

  • Product: Frontier AI systems with significant open source offering, focused on helping researchers and startups build custom AI models

  • Highlight: Founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, attracted top AI talent including John Schulman, Barret Zoph, and Luke Metz from OpenAI

  • Investor: Andreessen Horowitz (Lead), Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, Jane Street

  • Source

2/ Vibe coding platform Lovable raised $200M Series A at $1.8B

  • Product: AI-powered platform that helps users create websites and apps using natural language, enabling non-technical users to build prototypes and production-grade applications

  • Highlight: 2.3M+ active users, 180K+ paying subscribers, $75M annual recurring revenue in 7 months, 10M+ projects created, 45-person team serving enterprise customers including Klarna and Hubspot

  • Investor: Accel (Lead), 20VC, byFounders, Creandum, Hummingbird

  • Source

3/ Medical AI platform OpenEvidence raised $210M Series B at $3.5B

  • Product: Clinical decision support platform and medical search engine for healthcare professionals to access and apply medical knowledge

  • Highlight: Most widely used medical search among U.S. clinicians, serving 40% of U.S. physicians across 10,000+ hospitals, 65,000+ new verified clinician registrations monthly, over 100M Americans treated by doctors using the platform

  • Investor: Google Ventures & Kleiner Perkins (Co-lead), Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Conviction, Thrive

  • Source

4/ Construction robotics startup Bedrock Robotics raised $80M Series A

  • Product: Self-driving retrofit kits for construction and worksite vehicles, upgrading existing fleets with sensors, compute, and intelligence for autonomous operations

  • Highlight: Founded by ex-Waymo and Segment veterans, testing across Arkansas, Arizona, Texas, and California with major construction companies including Sundt Construction and Zachry Construction Corporation

  • Investor: Eclipse, 8VC

  • Source

5/ Defense tech company Firestorm Labs raised $47M Series A

  • Product: Expeditionary manufacturing platform xCell for 3D printing modular drones and mission-critical components at point-of-need, producing complete Tempest UAS on-site

  • Highlight: Multiple U.S. Department of Defense contracts secured, xCell factory-in-a-box enables rapid field production of unmanned systems, field-proven solution for contested environments

  • Investor: New Enterprise Associates (Lead), Lockheed Martin Ventures, Decisive Point

  • Source

6/ Sales automation platform Unify raised $40M Series B

  • Product: AI-powered sales platform that unifies prospecting, personalization, and engagement in one system, featuring AI agents and automated workflows for growth teams

  • Highlight: 8x revenue growth in the last year, trusted by fast-growing companies like Cursor, Perplexity, Flock Safety, Airwallex, team of 50 from notable companies like Airbnb, Waymo, Scale AI

  • Investor: Battery Ventures (Lead), OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive, Emergence

  • Source

7/ Database startup ParadeDB raised $12M Series A

  • Product: Modern Elastic search alternative built on Postgres, providing full-text search and analytics capabilities with zero ETL requirement

  • Highlight: 7K+ GitHub stars, 100K+ installs, serving Fortune 500 customers like Alibaba Cloud and fast-growing startups like Bilt Rewards, Modern Treasury, UnifyGTM

  • Investor: Craft Ventures (Lead), Y Combinator

  • Source

8/ Federal contracting platform Vultron raised $22M Series A

  • Product: Agentic Operating System designed for federal growth, enabling contractors to develop proposals, increase pipeline coverage, and streamline federal procurement processes

  • Highlight: Customers reduce proposal timelines from weeks to days, triple pipeline coverage, Fortune 500 enterprise saves 20+ hours per user weekly

  • Investor: Greycroft (Lead), Craft Ventures, Long Journey, South Park Commons

  • Source

9/ Mining AI company GeologicAI raised $44M Series B

  • Product: AI-driven platform for critical mineral discovery and development, combining cutting-edge sensors, advanced AI, and geoscience expertise to scan drill cores onsite and analyze data in real-time

  • Highlight: Backed by the world's largest mining companies BHP and Rio Tinto as both investors and customers, expanding to five continents, accelerating discovery and development of critical minerals like lithium, copper, and rare earth elements

  • Investor: Blue Earth Capital (Lead), BHP, Rio Tinto, Breakthrough Energy Ventures

  • Source