Morning VC Brief丨2025.08.01

Week31 Highlights丨Ambience, Quince, Julius, Courtyard, Hypernatural, Radical AI, Olto, Observe

Author

eric gu
August 01, 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/ Healthcare Documentation Platform Ambience raised $243M Series C

  • Product: Leading ambient AI platform for documentation, coding, and clinical documentation integrity (CDI) that integrates directly into EHR systems across ambulatory clinics, emergency departments, and inpatient hospitals

  • Highlight: Supports 100+ medical subspecialties, achieved 97.7 customer satisfaction score in KLAS evaluations, first ambient solution with CFO-approved ROI validation

  • Investor: Oak HC/FT (Lead), a16z(Lead), OpenAI Startup Fund, Kleiner Perkins

  • Source

2/ Affordable Luxury E-commerce Platform Quince raised $200M at $4.5B

  • Product: Direct-to-consumer online retailer offering affordable luxury items including clothing, luggage, furniture and home goods, shipping directly from factories with sustainable model

  • Highlight: viral popularity on Instagram/TikTok among Gen Z and millennials, sells $50 cashmere sweaters vs competitors' higher prices

  • Investor: Iconiq Capital (Lead)

  • Source

3/ AI Data Analysis Platform Julius raised $10M Series A

  • Product: Personal AI data analyst that generates analysis and visualizations from plain English questions, eliminating the need for technical skills

  • Highlight: 2 million users created 10+ million visualizations, writes 4 million lines of code daily, adopted by Fortune 500 companies

  • Investor: Bessemer Venture Partners, 8VC, AI Grant, Y Combinator

  • Source

4/ Digital Collectibles Platform Courtyard.io raised $30M Series A

  • Product: Digital collectibles platform that merges physical items with digital convenience, offering zero-fee marketplace, pack-ripping experiences, and secure vaulting services for cards, coins and other collectibles with authentication and instant liquidity

  • Highlight: Explosive growth from $50K monthly GMV in January 2024 to $50M monthly GMV currently, Digital Packs model with instant buyback offers and zero seller fees driving rapid adoption, integrates with PSA, CGC, eBay, and Fanatics

  • Investor: Forerunner Ventures(Lead), NEA, Y Combinator

  • Source

5/ AI Video Creation Platform Hypernatural raised $9.2M Series A

  • Product: AI-powered video creation platform that enables users to create full-length videos with custom characters, animations, and captions in under 30 seconds

  • Highlight: 1M+ users creating millions of videos, average minute-long video generates in 30 seconds, $12/month subscription vs competitors charging $3.75 per 5-second clip

  • Investor: AIX Ventures (Lead), Underscore VC

  • Source

6/ Materials Discovery Platform Radical AI raised $55M Seed

  • Product: Scientific intelligence platform that autonomously discovers, creates, and manufactures next-generation materials through integrated system combining digital blueprints, physical creation, and real-world performance testing with self-driving lab capabilities

  • Highlight: First truly integrated materials R&D system removing human-driven research fragmentation, operates in parallel across millions of sources simultaneously

  • Investor: RTX Ventures (Lead), NVentures, Infinite Capital

  • Source

7/ Demo Personalization Platform Olto raised $5.1M Seed

  • Product: AI demo engineer that creates personalized B2B software demos in real-time by overlaying prospect-specific data onto live product interfaces, featuring entity resolution engine and contextual intelligence layer for instant demo customization

  • Highlight: Founded by former Amazon engineers who built Prime Video X-Ray feature, addresses problem where sales teams spend 40% of time on demo prep

  • Investor: Nexus Venture Partners (Lead)

  • Source

8/ Software Observability Platform Observe Raised $156M Series C

  • Product: Observability platform that helps companies monitor software status and spot disruptions, incorporating AI agents for faster issue detection and fixing

  • Highlight: Revenue nearly tripled in 2024, 93% gross customer retention, serves large enterprises including CapitalOne, Paramount, and Dialpad

  • Investor: Sutter Hill Ventures(Lead), Madrona Ventures, Alumni Ventures

  • Source