Morning VC Brief丨2026.04.17

Week16 Highlights丨Factory, Resolve ai, Loop, Applied Compute, Expo, Gizmo, HockeyStack, Auctor

Author

eric gu
April 17, 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/ Autonomous Software Engineering Platform Factory.ai raises $150M Series C

  • Product: An agent-native development platform powered by "Droids" — autonomous AI systems that handle full-spectrum software engineering tasks across any model, interface, and development stage

  • Highlight: Used by hundreds of thousands of developers daily at enterprises including Nvidia, Adobe, EY, Palo Alto Networks, and Adyen

  • Investors: Khosla Ventures(Lead), Sequoia Capital, Blackstone, Insight Partners

  • Source

2/ AI-Powered Production Engineering Platform Resolve AI raises $40M Series A

  • Product: An autonomous AI production engineer that investigates incidents, identifies root causes, and takes action across code, infrastructure, and telemetry — keeping enterprise software running reliably at scale.

  • Highlight: Announced the launch of Resolve AI Labs, a dedicated research division led by Dhruv Mahajan, formerly of Meta Superintelligence Labs

  • Investor: DST Global and Salesforce Ventures(Lead)

  • Source

3/ AI Platform for Logistics & Supply Chain Loop raises $95M Series C

  • Product: A full-stack, verticalized AI platform that transforms fragmented logistics and supply chain data into actionable intelligence — covering freight audit, real-time visibility, carrier payments, and cost management, powered by its proprietary DUX model family

  • Highlight: Serves leading enterprise brands including Outset Medical, Clemens Food Group, Olipop, Kendra Scott, and Dot Foods

  • Investor: Valor Equity Partners and the Valor Atreides AI Fund(Lead)

  • Source

4/ Enterprise-Specific AI Agent Platform Applied Compute raises $80M at $1.3B

  • Product: "Specific Intelligence" platform that trains proprietary AI agents on each enterprise's own workflows, data, and performance criteria — deploying them within the company's secure environment and enabling continuous self-improvement through real-world feedback loops.

  • Highlights: Serves F500 enterprises; differentiates from general-purpose frontier models by building context-rich, company-owned agents that grow sharper with every decision

  • Investors: Kleiner Perkins (Lead), Elad Gil, Lux, Greenoaks, Neo

  • Source

5/ React Native App Development Platform Expo raises $45M Series B

  • Product: A developer infrastructure platform for building cross-platform mobile and web apps with React Native, now expanding into AI-powered development via Expo Agent

  • Highlights: 40K+ GitHub stars; platform is widely adopted across enterprise, startup, and solo developer segments, with notable customers including the MTA

  • Investors: Georgian (Lead)

  • Source

6/ AI-Powered Gamified Learning Platform Gizmo raises $22M Series A

  • Product: AI learning app that transforms students' notes into interactive, gamified study materials — featuring leaderboards, streaks, daily lives, and friend challenges to sustain engagement among teenagers and young adults across 120+ countries.

  • Highlights: 13M+ users across 120+ countries since 2021 launch — up from just 300K in 2023

  • Investors: Shine Capital(Lead), Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV, and NFX

  • Source

7/ Enterprise Revenue Agent Platform HockeyStack raises $50M

  • Product: An event-based GTM data platform that launches "Revenue Agents" — autonomous AI agents powered by "Blueprints," a proprietary ML model that reverse-engineers each company's winning sales patterns to drive prospecting, deal-closing, and account expansion 24/7.

  • Highlights: Scaled to 300+ enterprise customers in under two years, including Microsoft, New Relic, and Harvey

  • Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator, and Uncorrelated Ventures

  • Source

8/ AI-Native Enterprise Implementation Platform Auctor raises $20M Series A

  • Product: The first AI-native system of action for software implementation teams — unifying discovery, scoping, solutioning, and delivery into a single traceable platform that auto-generates execution-ready artifacts

  • Highlights: Customers report up to 80% efficiency gains in discovery and design phases, compressing weeks of work into hours

  • Investors: Sequoia Capital(Lead), Y Combinator, M12 (Microsoft's Venture Fund), Workday Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, OneStream, Tercera, and Dig Ventures

  • Source