Recently Funded US Startups (2026) — Verified Founder Contacts

The United States remains the largest venture capital market by a wide margin, but the distribution of that capital is shifting. San Francisco still dominates — roughly 40% of all US venture funding flows through the Bay Area — but New York has solidified its position as the second city for startups, particularly in fintech, media, and enterprise SaaS. What is newer is the emergence of secondary hubs with genuine density: Austin for defence and energy tech, Boston for biotech and deep tech, and Los Angeles for consumer and creator economy. In the JustRaised database, US-based startups account for approximately 65% of all entries, with the average round size 30% higher than non-US peers.

San Francisco and the Bay Area: Still the centre of gravity. Companies like Conductor ($22M Series A, coding agents), Treeline ($25M Series A, IT security), Latent Health ($80M Series A, clinical AI), Noon ($44M Seed, design tools), and Sycamore ($65M Seed, enterprise AI) all raised in Q1 2026. The Bay Area skews heavily toward AI, developer tools, and infrastructure. New York: The enterprise and fintech capital. Spade ($40M Series B, AI for finance), Edra ($30M Series A, business automation), Normal ($50M Series B, AI for silicon), Posh ($37M Series B, social networking), and Conduit Health ($17M Series A, medical supplies) all raised recently. New York founders tend to build for regulated industries. Greater Los Angeles and Southern California: Valar Atomics ($450M Venture, nuclear energy) in El Segundo and Shepherd ($42M Series B, insurance) in San Francisco represent the region's strength in hard tech and insurtech. Boston and the Northeast: Cloaked ($375M Series B, identity protection) in Lowell represents the region's focus on privacy and security. Other notable cities: Redmond has Starcloud ($170M Series A, space data centres), Anchorage has Applied Atomics ($8.3M Seed, nuclear power), and Birmingham has Linq ($20M Series A, messaging).

1. Valar Atomics ($450M, Venture) — The new atomic age. Isaiah Taylor, El Segundo. Nuclear energy is back and this is one of the largest rounds in the space. 2. Cloaked ($375M, Series B) — Fighting surveillance, spam, and identity theft. Arjun Bhatnagar, Lowell MA. Backed by General Catalyst. 3. Eridu AI ($200M, Series A) — Networking for AI workloads. Drew Perkins, Los Gatos. Infrastructure plays at this scale need massive vendor ecosystems. 4. Axiom Math ($200M, Series A) — The starting point for reasoning AI. Carina Hong, Stanford. Backed by Menlo Ventures. 5. Starcloud ($170M, Series A) — Data centres in space. Philip Johnston, Redmond. Backed by Benchmark. 6. Latent Health ($80M, Series A) — Clinical AI for medication access. Sriram Somasundaram, San Francisco. 7. Gimlet Labs ($80M, Series A) — Next-gen computing. Omid Azizi, Stanford. 8. Sycamore ($65M, Seed) — Enterprise agent operating system. Sri Viswanath, Palo Alto. Backed by Lightspeed. 9. Normal ($50M, Series B) — AI for silicon crises. Faris Sbahi, New York. 10. Gumloop ($50M, Series B) — AI agents built by your team. Max Brodeur-Urbas, San Francisco.

Three factors make US startups the best cold outreach targets for agencies and SaaS vendors. First, US companies spend more on SaaS and services per employee than any other market — the average US startup with 20 employees has 40+ active software subscriptions. Second, the decision-making culture is faster. US founders, particularly on the coasts, are accustomed to evaluating and signing vendor contracts within days, not months. Third, the funding amounts are larger. A $30M Series A in the US translates to roughly $6–9M in tooling and vendor spend over 18 months. The same stage in Europe might yield $2–4M. For outreach professionals, this means higher contract values and faster close rates.