Morning VC Brief丨2026.03.10

Week11 Highlights丨Science, Profound, Lio, Encord, Guild AI, Basis, Harper, Rowspace

Author

eric gu
March 10, 2026

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/ BCI Retinal Implant Company Science raises $230M Series C

  • Product: PRIMA — a brain-computer interface (BCI) retinal implant that restores form vision to patients blinded by late-stage macular degeneration, functioning as artificial photoreceptors in the retina

  • Highlight: 80% of trial patients showed meaningful visual acuity improvement in a 38-patient study; CE mark application submitted in EU, FDA approval application filed in the U.S.

  • Investors: Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator, IQT, Quiet Capital

  • Source

2/ GEO Marketing Platform Profound raises $96M Series C at $1B

  • Product: AI-era marketing platform that tracks brand mentions, sentiment, and performance across all major Answer Engines (AEO), now with built-in AI Agents for end-to-end orchestration and automation — from insight to execution in one system

  • Highlight: Customers include Target, Walmart, Figma, MongoDB, Charlotte Tilbury, and US Bank

  • Investor: Lightspeed Venture Partners (Lead), Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins

  • Source

3/ Agentic AI Procurement Platform Lio raises $30M Series A

  • Product: The world's first multi-agent AI system for enterprise procurement — autonomous agents that triage requests, analyze quotes, negotiate with suppliers, onboard vendors, and execute purchases end-to-end across ERPs, contracts, and the open web

  • Highlight: Seven-figure contracts with Fortune 100 clients; strategic partnership with AWS for direct deployment

  • Investor: Oak HC/FT (Lead), Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, Salesforce Ventures

  • Source

4/ AI Data Infrastructure Platform Encord raises $60M Series C

  • Product: A universal AI data layer for physical AI — covering data curation, management, annotation, and model alignment across multimodal data (video, image, LiDAR, audio, etc.) to help AI companies move from prototype to production

  • Highlights: Platform data storage grew from 1PB to 5PB+ in 12 months; revenue from physical AI customers grew 10x YoY

  • Investor: Wellington Management (Lead), Y Combinator, CRV, N47

  • Source

5/ AI Agent Control Plane Guild.ai raises $30M Series A

  • Product: A neutral, multi-model control plane for deploying and scaling AI agents in production — supporting Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and open-source models, with governance, auditability, and cost visibility built in

  • Highlight: Enables centralized identity management, least-privilege access, immutable audit logging, and an Agent Hub

  • Investor: GV(Lead), Khosla Ventures, NFX, Acrew Capital

  • Source

6/ AI Accounting Agent Platform Basis raises $100M Series B at $1.15B

  • Product: AI agent platform purpose-built for accounting — enabling accountants to complete partnership tax workbooks end-to-end, create complex journal entries, debug reconciliations, and prepare technical accounting memos autonomously

  • Highlight: Agents capable of completing full partnership tax workflows end-to-end; deployed by real accountants for real daily work across enterprises

  • Investor: Accel (Lead), GV (Google Ventures)

  • Source

7/ AI-powered Commercial Insurance Brokerage Harper raises $47M Seed + Series A

  • Product: AI-native commercial insurance brokerage that helps complex businesses — manufacturers, healthcare providers, fleets, restaurants — get coverage in 24–48 hours instead of weeks

  • Highlight: Served 5,000+ businesses in just 13 months; works with 165+ underwriters; proprietary AI handles judgment-heavy underwriting tasks end-to-end

  • Investor: Emergence Capital (Lead), Y Combinator, Peak XV, Antler, 10X Founders

  • Source

8/ AI-powered Financial Intelligence Platform Rowspace raises $50M Series A

  • Product: A specialized AI platform that maps, structures, and scales institutional knowledge — memos, models, trade data, and more — to help financial firms make faster, sharper investment decisions

  • Highlight: Deployed inside clients' own environments with full data sovereignty; use cases span real-time portfolio covenant monitoring, 50-year PE deal history synthesis, and cross-fund company tracking

  • Investor: Sequoia Capital, Emergence Capital, Stripe, Conviction

  • Source