Tip-offs
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Jan 16, 2026
Each week, we surface high-potential startups & promising founders.
This week's highlights →
🧑💼 Hiring Frenzy
Startups seeing a surge in job openings.
Augmentus | 300% growth in 3 months
No-code adaptive automation platform that simplifies complex robot programming through auto-generated toolpaths and 3D reconstruction. Raised a Venture round in Oct 2025 from Applied Ventures.
Singapore
Promoboxx | 100% growth in 3 months
AI-driven retail marketing platform connecting brands with retailers to distribute and activate brand-approved marketing content. Raised an $8M Series A in Sep 2016 from Ascent Venture Partners and Grotech Ventures.
Boston, US
Ad Hoc Labs | 100% growth in 3 months
Privacy-focused communications company behind Burner, offering disposable phone numbers for secure digital interactions. Raised a $2M Seed in Oct 2013 from Founder Collective and Venrock.
Los Angeles, US
Shayp | 100% growth in 3 months
Water efficiency platform using non-invasive sensors and AI analytics to detect leaks in real time. Raised a $2M Seed in Dec 2020 from Apic Investments.
Brussels, Belgium
Faro Health | 100% growth in 3 months
AI-powered platform streamlining clinical trial design to accelerate drug development. Raised a $20M Series A in Feb 2023 from General Catalyst.
La Jolla, US
💰 FinTech Fever
Fintech and crypto startups surging in web traffic.
River | 2915x growth in 3 months
DeFi platform building a chain-agnostic stablecoin system for trading, staking, minting, and cross-ecosystem value flow. Raised a $2M Seed in May 2024 from RockTree Capital and CMS Holdings.
Paysquad | 245x growth in 3 months
Fintech platform enabling users to split payments for group purchases and shared gifts directly at checkout. Raised a Pre-Seed round in Nov 2023.
Invercargill, New Zealand
Pact Swap | 108x growth in 3 months
Cross-chain decentralized exchange enabling efficient, trustless swaps across multiple blockchains. Raised a $5M Seed in May 2025 from DNA Fund.
San Francisco, US
SpiceNet | 67x growth in 3 months
DeFi brokerage layer providing unified access to top DeFi venues across networks. Raised a $3.5M Seed in Dec 2024 from Magnus Capital and Hack VC.
Hyderabad, India
Tria | 42x growth in 3 months
Crypto-enabled neobank offering gasless, cross-chain settlement through its proprietary BestPath infrastructure. Raised a $12M Pre-Seed in Oct 2025.
New York, US
🧠 DeepMind DNA
Ex-Google DeepMind PhDs building AI startups.
Yao Zhao
Yale PhD (Engineering & Applied Science). Peking University alum.
Ex-Google DeepMind & Google Brain (Staff Engineer), Microsoft AI & Research. Now co-founder of Twenty Labs, building AI-native products, including Compound, the AI analyst for finance.
San Francisco, US
Yuan Cao
Johns Hopkins PhD (Electrical & Computer Engineering). 1x Exit.
Founded KITT.AI (acquired by Baidu). Ex-Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google Brain (Staff Manager). Now co-founder & CEO of stealth AI startup.
Mountain View, US
Pedro Alejandro Ortega
Cambridge PhD (Learning in Autonomous Agents). Universidad de Chile alum. Ex-DeepMind Research Scientist & Safety Analysis Lead (5+ years). Now founder of Daios AI, building decentralized AI infra for Web 4.0.
London, UK
Mahesh Sathiamoorthy
USC PhD (Computer & Wireless Networking). IIT Kharagpur alum.
Created open-thoughts.ai and OpenThinker2-32B, cited by Nvidia and Microsoft. Ex-Google DeepMind Staff Engineer (LLMs & recommender models), Google Brain (TPUs & neural recommenders). Now co-founder & CEO of Bespoke Labs, building RL environments & agents.
Mountain View, US
Pete Florence
MIT PhD (EECS). Cambridge MPhil, Princeton alum.
Ex-Google DeepMind Staff Research Scientist (robotics & multimodal AI). Built LLMs for robotic manipulation, 3D learning, and policy learning. Now co-founder & CEO of Generalist, building general-purpose robots.
San Francisco, US
