This Week’s Top Talent Pools

Baseten, an SF-based AI inference startup, is in talks to raise Series G funding at a $26B valuation, per Axios Pro. axios.link/4yYxR0h

  1. Phillippe Siclait in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE @ Baseten (1.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-founder & CEO @ Clay3D ($4M from Thrive Capital, Y Combinator), Founder & ML Engineer @ Convexity AI, SWE @ Airbnb, Associate @ The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    3. Description: Left 9/26

Ema, the agentic AI employee platform, raised a $77M Series B led by Creaegis, with Accel, Section 32 and Prosus all increasing their stakes. Total funding is now $140M and the valuation more than quadrupled from its 2024 round, which the company declined to disclose.

  1. Souvik Sen in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Co-Founder and CTO @ Ema (3.5 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Vice President, Engineering @ Okta, Senior Staff SWE @ Google, Principal Research Scientist @ Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

    3. Description: Left Ema 7/26

Snorkel AI, a provider of AI training data, raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation, co-led by Insight Partners and S32, with Greylock, GV and Wells Fargo participating.

  1. Charles Srisuwananukorn in SF (Co-Founder @ Jaccard AI)

    1. Role: Head of Applied ML, Head of ML Lifecycle @ Snorkel AI (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Founding VP of Engineering @ Together AI ($305M Series B), Sr. SWE Manager, Siri Knowledge @ Apple,

    3. Description: Founded Jaccard AI 2/26

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  2. Will Hang in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: SWE @ Snorkel AI (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CTO @ include.ai (backed by Sequoia, Gradient, Pear VC —> cquired by Retool), Research Engineer, Google Brain @ Google, Research Engineer @ DeepMind

    3. Description: Left Snorkel AI 2/24

  3. John Allard in SF (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: Staff SWE, Senior SWE @ Snorkel AI (3 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Member of Technical Staff @ OpenAI, Senior SWE @ Camio, University of California, Santa Cruz

    3. Description: "2026 sabbatical"

  4. Manan Shah in SF (Founder/CEO @ Backbone)

    1. Role: ML Engineer @ Snorkel AI (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Founding Member @ Kumo.AI ($37M from Sequoia, ICONIQ)

    3. Description: “The clinical intelligence behind healthcare payments.”

    4. Contact: [email protected]

Ando came out of stealth on 24 September with $20M in pre-seed and seed funding from Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence. Founded by Sara Du, it is a team messaging platform built for humans and AI agents together, a direct challenge to Slack and Teams, giving agents their own identities and inboxes so they can join conversations rather than be installed as apps.

  1. Peter Choi in SF (Founder @ Parable)

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

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder @ Gaptool, SWE @ OneShop

    3. Description: "Coding agents that verify their own work.”

    4. Contact: [email protected]

  2. Ryan Haraki in SF (Stealth)

    1. Role: Founding Engineer @ Ando (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder & CEO @ Collective (Acq. 2023)

    3. Description: "exploring | prev @ ando, vercel, google"

  3. Jordan Ramos in United States (Stealth)

    1. Role: Founding Engineer @ Ando (<1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: Engineer @ Stealth, SWE @ LinkedIn, Software QA @ GroupM, SWE @ Northrop Grumman, Columbia University

    3. Description: Stealth since 8/26

Modal is in talks to raise at a roughly $15B valuation, per Bloomberg on 23 September, roughly triple the $4.65B it was worth four months ago. That May round was a $355M Series C led by General Catalyst and Redpoint, with Bain Capital Ventures, Menlo and Accel, taking total funding to $466M.

  1. Advay Pal in United States (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: FTE #19 & Forward Deployed Engineer @ Modal (1 yr)

    2. Other Experience: SWE @ Applied Intuition, Adjunct Lecturer @ Stanford University

    3. Description: Left Modal 2025

  2. Emily Han in Stanford (Potential Founder)

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

    2. Other Experience: Co-Director @ TreeHacks, Stanford University

    3. Description: Left Modal 9/26

Quartermaster, the Arlington, Virginia maritime intelligence startup, closed a $140M Series B on 28 September, four months after a $43M Series A in May. About $100M came from Insight Partners, which preempted the round, alongside new defence-focused investor Overmatch Ventures and existing backer First Round Capital, with the remaining $40M as a debt facility from Stifel.

  1. Benjamin Woryk in Great Falls (Potential Founder)

    1. Role: VP of New Product @ Quartermaster (2 yrs)

    2. Other Experience: Co-Founder and CEO @ Ocean Observations Group (acquired by Quartermaster), Marine Raider @ U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), Stanford University

    3. Description: "Maritime Tech”

Keep Reading

View more
caret-right
© 2026 Stealth Founders.
beehiivPowered by beehiiv