This Week’s Top Talent Pools

Standard Bots, an NYC-based AI-native industrial robotics company building six-axis robotic arms that learn through demonstration, raised $200M Series C at a $1B valuation. General Catalyst and RoboStrategy co-led. Customers include Amazon, Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the US Army.

  1. Irving Fain in NYC (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: CEO & Founder @ Bowery Farming ($647M+ raised from GV, GGV, Temasek, Fidelity; SB Founder's previous co-founder)

    2. Other Experience: CEO & Co-Founder @ CrowdTwist (acq by Oracle), Brown BA English

    3. Description: Left Bowery Farming 11/24

  2. Allan (Amnon) Fisch in Toronto (Stealth)

    1. Role: President & Co-Founder @ LeapPay (acq by Funding Circle; SB Founder's previous co-founder)

    2. Other Experience: Co-CEO & Founder @ Moonshot Brands (YC W21), CEO & Co-Founder @ Mavencare ($7M from DN Capital, FJ Labs; acq by Bayada Health), CEO & Co-Founder @ Homesav (acq by Rebellion Media), Wharton MBA, Cardozo JD

    3. Description: Stealth since 4/25

  3. Dan Grover in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 1st Product FTE & Head of Product @ Standard Bots (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: PM @ Meta, PM @ WeChat, Northeastern CS

    3. Description: Left Standard Bots 4/26

    4. Contact: Site

  4. Ben Biran in NYC (Co-Founder @ ACRONYM)

    1. Role: Director of Engineering @ Standard Bots (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Director of AI Engineering @ Zapier, Harvard BA

    3. Description: "Building a shared context layer for revenue and product teams"

    4. Contact: [email protected]

Mistral AI, a French AI lab building open-source and commercial large language models, is in early talks to raise around €3B at a €20B valuation, per Bloomberg. Founded by ex-DeepMind and Meta researchers. Previous rounds totaled ~$1.1B from a16z, Lightspeed, General Catalyst, Salesforce, and others.

  1. Wendy Shang in NYC (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Research Scientist @ Mistral AI (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: MTS @ Character.AI, Research Engineer @ DeepMind, Vision SWE @ Meta, PhD @ University of Amsterdam

    3. Description: Left Mistral AI on 4/25 with no updates

  2. Leocadia Barcena in Madrid (Stealth)

    1. Role: Engineering @ Mistral AI (2.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: AI Engineer @ Google DeepMind, Principal Engineer @ Sana, Engineering Manager @ Klarna

    3. Description: Stealth since 5/25

  3. Adrien Reynaud in Paris (Stealth)

    1. Role: Mistral Compute @ Mistral AI (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Sr Director Energy @ Crusoe, Investment Director @ Antin Infrastructure Partners, Officer @ Marine Nationale, HEC Paris + Sciences Po

    3. Description: Stealth since 4/26

Poetic (formerly Forge), building software that learns like AI but runs like code, raised $50M Series A at a $500M valuation. Kleiner Perkins led, with Founders Fund, First Harmonic, and OpenAI also participating.

  1. Jason Wu in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Founding Engineer @ Poetic (1.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Head of Engineering @ Mine/Fizz, Sr SWE @ Snackpass, Yale BS CS

    3. Description: Left Poetic 5/26

  2. Shreshth Rajan in NYC (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 1st FTE & Founding Engineer @ Poetic (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Engineer @ Pillar ($23M from a16z, Neo), Harvard BA Math + Philosophy

    3. Description: Left Pillar 2025

    4. Contact: [email protected], Site

Orbital, a space infrastructure company building AI data centers in Low Earth Orbit, raised $5M pre-seed. a16z speedrun led, with Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, Feld Ventures, and others participating. Founded by Euwyn Poon, previously co-founder of Spin (acq by Ford for $100M).

  1. Derrick Ko in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: CEO & Co-Founder @ Spin (acq by Ford for $100M, $8M raised; Orbital Founder's previous co-founder)

    2. Other Experience: CEO & Co-Founder @ Matchday ($21M from Greylock, Courtside, HackVC, Messi's Play Time), PM Growth @ Lyft, Founding Engineer @ Kicksend (YC S11, acq by Lyft), Co-Founder @ Yum.sg, Purdue BS CE

    3. Description: “Making games with AI agents”

    4. Contact: [email protected], Twitter, Site

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