Morning VC Brief丨2025.08.12

Week33 Highlights丨Decart, Vulcan, Novig, Perle, Translucent, Lava, Datumo

Author

eric gu
August 12, 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/ Real-time Creative AI Platform Decart raised $100M Series B

  • Product: Interactive AI experiences platform featuring "Mirage" world transformation model for real-time video/content transformation

  • Highlight: Raised $153M in 11 months but spent less than $10M; focuses on creativity/entertainment sector as AI transforms other internet categories

  • Investor: Sequoia Capital (Lead), Benchmark, Zeev Ventures

  • Source

2/ Rare Earth Magnet Manufacturer Vulcan Elements raised $65M Series A

  • Product: High-performance rare earth magnets for defense and commercial applications (drones, semiconductors, robotics, automotive)

  • Highlight: Already producing magnets in North Carolina facility; supplies all U.S. military branches; aims to scale to hundreds of metric tonnes annually, breaking China's 90%+ market dominance

  • Investor: Altimeter Capital(Lead), One Investment Management

  • Source

3/ Sports Prediction Market Platform Novig raised $18M Series A

  • Product: Peer-to-peer sports prediction marketplace where users trade with each other instead of against the house

  • Highlight: 100x increase in monthly trading volume since September launch; surpassed $2B annualized volume; 90% of trades are peer-to-peer

  • Investor: Forerunner(Lead), Y Combinator, NFX

  • Source

4/ AI Data Training Platform Perle raised $9M Seed

  • Product: Web3-powered AI training data platform combining human expertise with adaptive workflows for data collection, annotation, and model evaluation

  • Highlight: Founded by AI veterans from Scale AI, Meta, MIT, Berkeley; human-in-the-loop annotation outperformed Amazon Rekognition by 70%+

  • Investor: Framework Ventures(Lead)

  • Source

5/ Healthcare AI Financial Platform Translucent raised $7M Seed

  • Product: AI-powered financial analyst platform designed exclusively for healthcare operators, providing real-time financial performance insights and automated reporting

  • Highlight: Deployed by healthcare organizations managing over $5B in combined revenue since 2024 launch; addresses $2.5 trillion healthcare provider market

  • Investor: NEA (Lead), FPV Ventures

  • Source

6/ AI Agent Payment Platform Lava raised $5.8M Seed

  • Product: Digital wallet platform enabling seamless payments for AI agents across multiple merchants and services with unified usage credits

  • Highlight: targets "agent-native economy" with pay-as-you-go model across foundational AI models like GPT and Claude

  • Investor: Lerer Hippeau(Lead), Harlem Capital, Streamlined Ventures

  • Source

7/ AI Model Evaluation Platform Datumo raised $15.5M Venture Round

  • Product: Full-stack AI evaluation platform providing testing, monitoring, and improvement tools for LLM models, including no-code evaluation tool "Datumo Eval"

  • Highlight: 300+ clients including Samsung, LG, Hyundai, SK Telecom; $6M revenue in 2024; evolved from data labeling to AI evaluation

  • Investor: Salesforce Ventures(Lead)

  • Source