tl;dr: frontrun flagged Antioch on april 17 2026 at 124 followers, 144 days before the company announced a $32M series A led by Greylock, with A*, Category Ventures, BoxGroup and Icehouse Ventures. founders Harry Mellsop, Michael Calvey, Colton Swingle and Collin Schlager. frontrun flagged Tazapay 212 days before Circle announced its acquisition of the cross-border payments platform. frontrun flagged Poseidon Aerospace on april 25 2026, 136 days before the company announced a $60M series A led by TQ Ventures at a $350M valuation, with JAWS, Hanwha, G Squared, Starship Ventures, Drover Ventures and Draper. frontrun flagged herdr on may 27 2026, 104 days before the company announced a $6M seed led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Y Combinator, e2vc and angels Tobi Lütke, Dane Knecht and Görkem Yurtseven. founder Can Celik.
Antioch Robotics: $32M series A, flagged 144 days early
@frontrunvc · Sep 8, 2026
FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @antiochrobotics on April 17th, and was #1 on our "12 robotics companies under 1,000 followers" list on June 11th.
144 days later: $32M Series A led by @GreylockVC, with @A_StarVC, @Category_VC, @BoxGroup and @IcehouseVenture.
@frontrunvc · Jun 11, 2026
12 robotics companies you've never heard of under 1,000 followers.
1. Antioch (@antiochrobotics) - 486 followers
frontrun flagged Antioch on april 17 2026, at 124 followers. on june 11 it was #1 on our list of 12 robotics companies under 1,000 followers, at 486 followers. on september 8 2026, 144 days after the flag, Antioch announced a $32M series A led by Greylock, with A*, Category Ventures, BoxGroup, Icehouse Ventures and angels. by then 17 tracked accounts were following it.
Antioch builds cloud simulation for physical AI. teams onboard a robot, build high fidelity scenes and test autonomy in hours instead of weeks in the field. TechCrunch called it "the Cursor for physical AI." customers include Amazon Ring, NVIDIA Robotics and Nebius. the series A follows an $8.5M seed at a $60M valuation from A* and Category Ventures in april 2026, with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar as an angel.
the founders are Harry Mellsop, CEO (@HarryMellsop, ex Tesla Autopilot), Michael Calvey (@michaeljcalvey), Colton Swingle (@colton_swingle, ex Google DeepMind) and Collin Schlager (@CollinSchlager, ex Meta Reality Labs). they are in the follow up post on X.
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Tazapay: acquired by Circle, flagged 212 days early
@frontrunvc · Sep 8, 2026
ACQUIRED 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @tazapay on February 8th.
212 days later: acquired by @circle
frontrun flagged Tazapay on february 8 2026, at around 800 followers. on september 8 2026, 212 days later, Circle announced it is acquiring Tazapay. no terms were disclosed. 4 tracked accounts followed Tazapay before the news.
Tazapay is cross border payments infrastructure: collect, hold and pay out across 100+ markets, with $25B in annualized volume and about 60% of it already moving in stablecoins. that is why Circle wanted it.
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Poseidon Aerospace: $60M series A, flagged 136 days early
@frontrunvc · Sep 8, 2026
FUNDRAISE 💰: @frontrunvc flagged @poseidonaero on April 25th.
136 days later: $60M Series A led by @TQVentures.
Autonomous cargo planes, designed and built from the ground up. 🫡
frontrun flagged Poseidon Aerospace on april 25 2026. on september 8 2026, 136 days later, the company announced a $60M series A led by TQ Ventures, with JAWS, Hanwha, G Squared, Starship Ventures, Drover Ventures and Draper, at a $350M valuation per the company's announcement video. 8 tracked accounts were following it at announcement.
Poseidon Aerospace builds autonomous cargo aircraft from the ground up: the Egret, an unmanned fixed wing, and the Heron, an unmanned seaplane. the goal is lowering cost per flight ton mile so goods move faster and cheaper, anywhere they are needed. the round lands ahead of the company's first pilotless test flight and ten months after its $11M raise in november 2025. founder and CEO: David Zagaynov (@DavidZagaynov).
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herdr: $6M seed, flagged 104 days early
frontrun flagged herdr on may 27 2026. on september 8 2026, 104 days later, herdr announced a $6M seed led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with Y Combinator and e2vc, and angels Tobi Lütke (CEO, Shopify), Dane Knecht (CTO, Cloudflare) and Görkem Yurtseven (co-founder, fal). 20 tracked accounts were following it at announcement, and Bessemer's own X account followed herdr on september 1, seven days before it led the round.
herdr (@herdrdev) is the runtime your coding agents live on: an open, terminal native runtime for AI agents, written in Rust, built by Y Combinator founder Can Celik. the seed goes to hiring people who live in terminals. source: herdr raised a $6M seed.
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see the list before the round
these already happened. the useful list is the one where the round or the launch has not happened yet.
frontrun watches the follow graphs of 2,000+ tracked venture investors on X and flags the companies they converge on, with a date, the morning it happens.
read next: the fundraise receipt ledger · startups flagged before they raised
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companies and founders surfaced on frontrun. curated, every week.
