This Week’s Top Talent Pools

ElevenLabs, an AI audio startup, is raising more than $500M in Series E funding with backers to include Scaleup Europe Fund, per Bloomberg.

  1. Anurag Beniwal in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: MTS & Engineering Lead, Voice Agents @ ElevenLabs (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Head of AI, Worldwide Customer Service @ Amazon, Senior Manager, Conversational AI @ Amazon, Applied Scientist @ AWS SageMaker

    3. Description: Tinkering @ South Park Commons since 6/26

    4. Contact: Site, [email protected]

  2. Edward Erelt in SF (CEO @ ApexMake)

    1. Role: Early Team & MTS @ ElevenLabs (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: MTS @ Veeve, Senior ML Engineer @ OCCO, ML Engineer @ DriveX, Cambridge MS CS + BA Engineering

    3. Description: "The fastest, most detailed investment market research & due diligence. Built on the largest pool of vetted operators in AI infrastructure, inference, and training.”

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  3. Daniel Edrisian in SF (Founder @ Blackstar) - Venture Lead

    1. Role: SWE @ ElevenLabs (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: MTS @ OpenAI (Codex), Founder @ Alex (YC F24, Khosla Ventures), 1st Hire & Founding Engineer @ FlutterFlow, UC Berkeley BS EECS

    3. Description: "Building the future of human-computer interaction"; new hardware device and OS

    4. Funding: $12M Seed led by Abstract, with SV Angel, Naval Ravikant, Chapter One, Timeless

  4. Azat Khairov in London (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Research Engineer @ ElevenLabs (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Research Engineer @ Higgsfield AI ($138M at $1.3B from Accel, Menlo, GFT), Senior SWE @ PwC, ML Lead @ Sergek, Purdue BS CS

    3. Description: Left ElevenLabs 11/25

Antioch raised a $32M Series A led by Greylock, with BoxGroup and Icehouse, for simulation in physical AI per Axios Pro Rata.

  1. Colton Swingle in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: Co-Founder @ Antioch (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Software Engineer @ Google DeepMind, Graduate Research Assistant @ Stanford

    3. Description: Stealth since 7/26 “Building Physical Autonomy”

Factory, an SF-based AI coding startup, raised $200m at a $5b valuation from Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Evantic Capital, Sound Ventures, NEA, Mantis VC, and Clearlake per Axios Pro Rata.

  1. Justin Tang in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Member of Technical Staff @ Factory (1.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Senior Software Engineer @ Databricks, Software Engineer @ Google, Software Engineer @ Oracle

    3. Description: Stealth since 3/26

  2. Ben Tossell in Ampthill (Founder @ Ben's Bites)

    1. Role: Head of Developer Relations @ Factory (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founder & CEO @ Makerpad (acquired by Zapier), General Partner @ Ben Tossell's Rolling Fund

    3. Description: Left Factory 3/26, runs Ben's Bites

    4. Contact: [email protected]

Arcee AI, the US company building open-weight foundation models, closed a Series B led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital and Emergence Capital, valuing it at more than $1B. AI10 Ventures, Hitachi, IAG, M12, P7 and Wipro also participated.

  1. Jacob Solawetz in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Co-Founder & CTO @ Arcee AI (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Engineer @ Roboflow ($62M from Craft, GV, Y Combinator)

    3. Description: Stepped out of the CTO role 8/25

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  2. Bin Zhou in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Head of AI Engineering @ Arcee AI (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Engineer, Head of Infrastructure @ Spindl (acquired by Coinbase), Engineering Leader @ Circle, Venture Fellow @ Scale Asia Ventures

    3. Description: Stealth since 2026

Rainmaker, the El Segundo cloud seeding company, raised a $100M Series B, announced 21 September, with investments from NOA VC, Upfront Ventures, DCVC, Lowercarbon Capital and Dream Ventures. It had raised $50.3M before this round, including a $25M Series A led by Lowercarbon.

  1. Harry Thomas in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Chief of Staff, First employee @ Rainmaker (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Business Development Manager @ Hydrosat, Business Development Analyst @ Hydrosat, Georgetown University

    3. Description: Left 7/26

  2. Kaitlyn Suski in Los Angeles (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Chief Science Officer, Head of Research @ Rainmaker (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Principal Scientist, Aerosol Science @ Juul Labs, Senior Scientist @ Juul Labs, Postdoctoral Researcher @ Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

    3. Description: Left 7/26

Thatch, an SF-based health benefits company, raised $108m in Series C funding at a $1b valuation from The General Partnership, Index Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and a16z per Axios Pro Rata.

  1. Dheera Vuppala in NYC (Stealth)

    1. Role: FTE #15 & Software Engineer @ Thatch (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Product Engineer @ Ascend

    3. Description: Stealth since 7/25

    4. Contact: [email protected]

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