Today’s Top Talent Pools

Simile, the Palo Alto AI simulation startup founded by Stanford's Joon Sung Park, raised a $200M Series B at a $2B valuation led by Greenoaks, joined by Definition and insiders Index Ventures, Hanabi, Bain Capital Ventures, A*, Factory, and CVS Health Ventures. Its first hire and its fifth member of technical staff both departed before the round was announced.

  1. Carolyn Zou in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 1st Hire & Product / Research @ Simile (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Stanford PhD CS, Northwestern BA Communication Studies

    3. Description: Left Simile on 3/26 with no updates

  2. Akaash Kolluri in Houston (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: 5th Member of Technical Staff @ Simile (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Research Assistant & MS @ Stanford University Department of CS, Research Assistant @ Stanford GSB

    3. Description: Left Simile on 6/26 with no updates

    4. Contact: Site, Twitter

Gravis Robotics, a Swiss developer of construction robots, raised $200M in Series A from SoftBank. Axios

  1. Burak Çizmeci in Zurich (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Co-Founder @ Gravis Robotics (4 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Postdoctoral Researcher @ ETH Zurich

    3. Description: Left Gravis on 6/26

Higgsfield, an SF-based AI video generation startup, raised $400M at a $5.4B post-money valuation. DST Global led, joined by Tribe Capital, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Intel Capital, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, NTT Docomo Ventures and insiders Accel, Menlo Ventures, AI Capital Partners, GFT Ventures, Capra Ventures, BAM Corner Point, and BroadLight Capital. Axios Pro

  1. Azat Khairov in London (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Founding Research Engineer @ Higgsfield AI

    2. Other Experience: Research Engineer @ ElevenLabs, Sr SWE @ PwC

    3. Description: Left ElevenLabs on 11/25

  2. Rakhim Baimurzin in Kazakhstan (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Machine Learning Engineer @ Higgsfield AI

    2. Other Experience: IMO medalist + ICPC semifinalist

    3. Description: Left Higgsfield on 2/26

SkyPilot, the Berkeley-based AI compute orchestration platform, raised a $20M seed on 7/22 led by Lux Capital, joined by Coatue, Amplify Partners, Foundation Capital, Race Capital, The House Fund, and angels including Ali Ghodsi, Jeff Dean, and Guillermo Rauch.

  1. Kevin Wang in SF (Founder @ Tokenless)

    1. Role: MTS @ SkyPilot (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: 4th FTE & Founding Engineer @ Eventual ($30M Series A), Quant @ Arrowstreet Capital, SWE @ Cloudflare, SWE @ Docker, UC Berkeley BS EECS

    3. Description: "Bridging the gap between open weight and frontier intelligence"

    4. Contact: Site

    5. Funding: Backed by Y Combinator (S26).

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