tl;dr: Preview has raised $12M to date, led by Sequoia. Alloy Robotics raised an $8M seed at an $80M valuation, led by Square Peg. both announced august 12 2026. frontrun flagged them on february 19 and february 13, which is 174 days and 180 days of lead.
who backed Preview's $12M?
Preview is the professional platform where AI video production runs. the pitch is that AI video is now part of how real productions actually get made, and what professional work requires has not changed: scripts, shot lists, versions, reviews, deliveries, and a clear record of all of it.
the $12M raised to date was led by Sequoia, with participation from The General Partnership and Farooq Butt. Sonya Huang and James Fly led for Sequoia.
founder and CEO: stefo, who previously built Veed from $0 to $40M ARR.
Preview has raised $12M in funding to date, led by @sequoia with participation from @thegp and @farooqib.
— stefo (@fejes713) August 12, 2026
AI video is now part of how real productions get made. What professional work requires hasn't changed: scripts, shot lists, versions, reviews, deliveries, and a clear record
who led Alloy Robotics' $8M seed?
Alloy Robotics raised $8M at an $80M valuation, led by Square Peg, with angels from Tesla, Waymo, Anthropic and OpenAI.
Alloy gives robotics teams and AI agents a shared memory over the data their machines produce. the company says it has processed data from more than 10,000 robotic runs across almost 1,000 robots, spanning agriculture, maritime, drones, defence, humanoid, medical and logistics. it reads the robot as a complete system across hardware, firmware and software, then puts answers into the tools engineers already use.
founder: Joe Harris.
We just raised $8M at a $80M valuation, to build agents for analysing robotics data.
— Joe Harris (@_joe_harris_) August 12, 2026
The round was led by @SquarePegCap, with angels from @Tesla, @Waymo, @AnthropicAI, @OpenAI and more.
Alloy gives robotics teams and AI agents a shared memory over the data their machines produce.
how early did frontrun flag them?
Preview: flagged february 19 2026, announced august 12 2026. 174 days.
Alloy: flagged february 13 2026, announced august 12 2026. 180 days.
Alloy is the cleaner of the two receipts. 8 tracked accounts are on the company today, and every single one of them arrived before the announcement, at a rate of roughly one a month from february straight through july. there was no announcement-day rush on Alloy, because everyone watching had already been watching for months.
Preview ran the other way around. 3 tracked accounts were on it before the news, and 11 more landed the day the round broke. that is the ordinary shape of a raise: a thin, early, quiet signal, then a crowd. the thin part is the part you can act on, and on Preview it was sitting there for 174 days.
both raises clear our receipt ledger's 7-day minimum lead by a wide margin, so they join the permanent record with their flag dates and a source link.
neither company has 1,000 followers
here is the part worth sitting with. as of today, Preview has 993 followers on X and Alloy has 963.
a company can raise $12M from Sequoia, or $8M at an $80M valuation with angels from Tesla, Waymo, Anthropic and OpenAI, while its X account is smaller than a mid-sized group chat. follower count is not a proxy for whether a company is real, and treating it as one is exactly how these companies stay invisible until the round is a headline.
what moved first on both of these was the follow graph. in february, months before either announcement, accounts we track started arriving. that is the signal, and it is public the whole time. you just have to be watching the right accounts.
see the list before the round
Preview and Alloy already raised. the useful list is the one where the round 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: River Markets and Attestable, flagged 119 and 130 days early · startups flagged before they raised · the fundraise receipt ledger
open source deal flow
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