Unsurprisingly, it is about AI. More specifically, Crunchbase data shows a continued boom this year in seed-stage funding to startups working on autonomous AI agents, assistants and companions, with a particular focus on enterprise customers. While the SaaS boom that began in the mid-2000s was all about giving enterprises 'power tools' to enhance productivity, Rohan said this next phase is about applications that can actually do jobs themselves. And among startups, progress toward this goal is moving fast. Certainly that's what the funding data indicates, particularly at seed stage. Per Crunchbase data, investors have poured around $700 million so far this year into seed rounds for artificial intelligence companies with descriptions tied to autonomous agents. 1 The biggest seed-stage funding recipient hailed from the life science space: Lila Sciences, a startup that uses AI software to run experiments in automated labs. The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company publicly launched in...
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