Weekly Rundown - October 23: 12 rounds flagged before they were announced, 5 founders in stealth, 5 early startups

everything frontrun flagged this week, oct 16 to oct 23, in one place.

Early Startups (5)

companies flagged while still small, before most people have heard of them.

• SuperNerves @supernerves (4 followers), AI: a research lab for machine taste, studying how humans see, judge and create. (website)
• Via @via_ai_ (7 followers), AI: routes enterprise llm queries between open-source and frontier models to cut costs. (website)
• After Thought @afterthoughtai (8 followers), AI: venture-backed lab doing foundational ai research. (website)
• Hyperic @hyperictech (17 followers), Robotics: building drone autonomy.
• Abstract Atomic @abstractatomic (28 followers), AI: evolving atoms at the speed of bits. (website)

Founders In Stealth (5)

people flagged before their company has a name.

• Hieu Pham @hyhieu226: ex-openai and xai technical staff, google brain researcher, imo silver medalist. (linkedin)
• Rochisha @rochi5ha: 5 years engineering at rippling, then stripe. (linkedin)
• Brad Bartelt @bradbartelt: openai grove incubation, first employee at a16z-backed meridian. (linkedin · website)
• A$AP perk ♻️ @nickperkins94: tesla battery engineer, then 7 years at form energy. (linkedin)
• viv @vivianphung: ex-instagram feed engineer, founded snowball tools, ceo of dora. (linkedin)

New Accelerator Startups (9)

companies that joined a program this week. the ones marked "not listed yet" are not in the program's public directory yet.

• Verdun (F26) @verdunai, YC Fall 2026: the world's most advanced security monitoring service. (website)
• Epsilab @epsilabrl, YC Fall 2026: long-horizon rl environments for real-world agents. (website)
• Confetti @confettibuild, YC Fall 2026, not listed yet: build hardware with a single prompt. (website)
• Armorer Labs @armorer_labs, YC Fall 2026: continuous security verification for ai agents in regulated industries. (website)
• Super Powers Mobility @spmoffroad, YC Fall 2026: electric offroad vehicles. (website)
• Shepherd Robotics @shepherd_si, YC Fall 2026, not listed yet: Robots for skilled physical work in data centers and advanced manufacturing. Engineers direct. Robots execute.. (website)
• Tesser @tesser_sh, YC Winter 2027, not listed yet: The modern development runtime (website)
• Godpack @godpack, YC Winter 2027, not listed yet: 100% fair packs for collectors. Instant withdrawals, buyback offers, and shipping. (website)
• Veeza AI @veezaai, YC Fall 2026: AI tourist visa agent for people with weak passports. (website)

Fundraise Receipts (12)

average lead time: 98 days.

• Aries (@Aries) raised $7M seed, led by Thomas Peterffy and Kleiner Perkins. frontrun flagged it on April 9, 195 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Eka Robotics, Inc. (@EkaRobotics) raised $150M Series A, led by Andreessen Horowitz and F-Prime Capital. frontrun flagged it on April 22, 181 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Qualitate (@qualitateio) raised $25M, led by Insight Partners. frontrun flagged it on April 22, 181 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Context.dev (@getcontextdev) raised $9M, led by General Catalyst. frontrun flagged it on June 1, 140 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Asymptote Labs (@asymptotelabs) raised $5.5M seed, led by Tower Research Ventures. frontrun flagged it on July 8, 104 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Coherence Neuro (@coherenceneuro) raised $45M, led by Founders Fund and The OpenAI Startup Fund. frontrun flagged it 99 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Rosie (@rosiematch) raised $7M seed, led by Bling Capital and Reach Capital. frontrun flagged it 77 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Pennant (@pennant_ai) raised $5M seed, led by Urban Innovation Fund. frontrun flagged it 59 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Optivolt (@optivolt) raised $32M Series A, led by VXI Capital. frontrun flagged it 52 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• TrustedRouter (@trustedrouter) raised $6M seed, led by SIERRA Ventures. frontrun flagged it 39 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Baba (@babahq) raised $40M Series A, led by FirstMark. frontrun flagged it 31 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)
• Tolan (@tolanworld) raised $30M Series A, led by Khosla Ventures. frontrun flagged it 23 days before the announcement. announcement · our post (website)

the full ledger: frontrun.vc/fundraises

This Week's Article

Every AI Lab Needs Data. These 10 Startups Sell It.

the bottleneck for ai labs isn't only compute anymore. it's data. not scraped text. environments, expert work and real company records that models have never seen. anthropic discussed spending over

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