Antler Is Everywhere...

TARS raised $455M Pre-A

Hey,

47 early-stage AI startups raised $664.4M in Seed and Pre-Seed funding this week across 19 countries.

April 12-18: Top Line Numbers

47 early stage AI deals | $664.4M raised | 19 countries | Median: $2.8M

The split: 26 Seed and 21 Pre-Seed/Pre-A early-stage AI deals.

Biggest round: TARS ($455M Pre-A in Manufacturing & Industrials). Total funding up over 100% week-over-week but just because of this mega round).

Where the money went: Developer Tools & AI Infrastructure led with 14 deals (30% of deal flow). Enterprise Software and Manufacturing & Industrials followed at 19% and 15%. New York City led with 7 deals, London followed with 6. The top 5 cities held 90% of the funding dollars.

The Signal

Three early-stage AI trends stand out this week:

1/ Funding Surged 119% Week-over-Week: Strip TARS’s round and the remaining 46 deals still totaled $209.4M. That’s $4.6M average per deal across the rest of the field. Developer Tools & AI Infrastructure pulled in $78.2M of ex-biggest funding. Investor appetite is heating up.

2/ Antler Is Everywhere: Antler participated in 4 deals this week. Covering GovTech & Defense, FinTech, Developer Tools & AI Infrastructure. Including Ralio (€2.1M), OrtCloud ($1.7M), and SolvaPay (€2.4M).

3/ Deal Flow Concentrates in Developer Tools & AI Infrastructure: Three verticals captured two-thirds of this week’s deals. Within Developer Tools & AI Infrastructure: 10 Seed, 4 Pre-Seed. Led by Eigen ($15M), ActionAI ($10M).

Breakout Early-Stage AI Startups

1/ Pillar raised $20M Seed in New York. Helps companies in sectors such as metals, food, and aviation manage their exposure to price fluctuations in commodities, foreign exchange, and freight. Andreessen Horowitz led, with Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures, and Dara Khosrowshahi participating.

2/ OpenGradient raised $9.5M Seed in New York. They run AI models on a decentralized network of GPU and secure-enclave nodes, attaching cryptographic proofs to every inference. The pitch is a compute layer where anyone can audit what the model actually did. Andreessen Horowitz led.

3/ Orbital raised $1M Seed in Los Angeles. Is developing satellite-based AI data centers to address the increasing energy and cooling demands of terrestrial data centers. Andreessen Horowitz led.

4/ Helical raised $10M Seed in London. Most drug discovery still moves at the pace of wet lab experiments. They’ve built a ‘Virtual Lab’ that turns biological foundation models into reproducible in-silico workflows, letting scientists test hypotheses computationally. redalpine led.

5/ Capsule Security raised $7M Seed in Tel Aviv. Provides a runtime security layer specifically built for enterprise AI agents. Lama Partners and Forgepoint Capital International led.

6/ Round Treasury raised $6M Seed in London. Unifies liquidity, payments, foreign exchange, and reconciliation into a single intelligent system. Alstin Capital led, with Backed VC, Love Ventures, and others participating.

7/ Stendr raised $5.4M Pre-Seed in Oslo. Is building a vertically integrated technology stack that combines hardware and software with artificial intelligence at its core to enhance autonomy, resilience, and situational awareness. Rainfall, ACME, and Skyfall led.

8/ Flare raised €3.6M Pre-Seed in Copenhagen. Its platform combines transparent, structured systems with collective intelligence to evaluate claims and surface what is actually supported. 20VC led, with ByFounders and 20Growth participating.

9/ Deteqt raised A$5M Seed in Sydney. This allows for the creation of compact, low-power, and cost-effective sensors that can operate at room temperature, removing the need for bulky cryogenic cooling. Main Sequence led, with ATP Fund, BOKA Capital, and others participating.

10/ Otel AI raised €2.8M Seed in Dublin. Provides an AI co-worker platform for hotel General Managers that connects with a hotel’s existing systems, such as property management (PMS), revenue management, payroll, and food and beverage. Playfair led, with Nebular, Baseline, and others participating.

11/ Replenit raised $2.5M Pre-Seed in Warsaw. Provides an AI decision engine that enables retailers to make real-time, individualized decisions across the customer journey. Movens Capital and Vastpoint led.

12/ Outcraft AI raised €2M Pre-Seed in Vilnius. Integrates with existing CRM and commerce systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Shopify to provide continuous and context-aware interactions without requiring human intervention for each step. Practica Capital led, with Lost Astronaut participating.

Which of the above startups seems the most promising? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks,

Chintan