Today's pick
Serval
An AI-native enterprise automation platform where non-engineers build and ship workflows with an agent called Catalyst, positioning itself as a direct challenger to ServiceNow.
- Problem
- 7
- Traction
- 8
- Founders
- 6
- Market
- 9
- Novelty
- 6
Why today
Today's pick is Serval, the San Francisco startup that announced a 150 million dollar Series C on October 29, 2026, led by Sequoia Capital, which also led its 75 million dollar Series B in December. The round values Serval at 3 billion dollars, triple the 1 billion dollar valuation it carried five months earlier, and brings total funding since launch to 277 million dollars. Co-founders Jake Stauch and Alex McLeod, who met at security camera company Verkada, built Serval as an AI-native challenger to ServiceNow, letting non-engineers automate cross-department workflows through an agent called Catalyst. The company says its annual recurring revenue has doubled every quarter since the Series B, two Fortune 20 companies converted off incumbent systems in the past six months, and headcount has grown roughly tenfold since January toward a target of 700 employees by the end of next year. The same stretch produced a run of other notable rounds: Kalshi, the regulated prediction market exchange, raised a 1 billion dollar Series G at a 40 billion dollar valuation; Mintive, an AI agent identity and access startup backed by angels Jeff Dean and Andrej Karpathy, raised a 7 million dollar seed; Sydney's MP Space raised a 23 million Australian dollar seed to scale satellite battery manufacturing; and Sebastian Thrun's stealth startup Dulo reportedly raised a 130 million dollar seed to build AI models for hardware design. Serval stands out because a company barely a year into fundraising just tripled its valuation in five months, is converting Fortune 20 accounts away from a dominant incumbent, and is scaling headcount tenfold to back up the bet that AI agents, not more enterprise software seats, are what finally displace ServiceNow.
Problem
Enterprise service management software like ServiceNow has grown into sprawling systems that only trained administrators and consultants can configure, forcing IT, HR, finance and legal teams to file tickets and wait weeks for engineers to build or change a single workflow. Every new automation requires specialized knowledge of the underlying platform, and large organizations end up paying for both the software license and an army of consultants just to keep basic processes running. Serval argues that as AI agents become capable enough to understand business processes directly, that entire layer of configuration overhead, and the headcount built around it, no longer needs to exist.
Product
Serval's platform centers on an agent called Catalyst, which lets non-engineers describe a workflow in plain language and have the agent build the automation, test it in a separate environment, and then publish it to a second agent that employees interact with directly. The company is also launching ProServal, a professional services arm that will place more than 100 in-house Automation Engineers inside large customers to build and maintain automations alongside Catalyst. Together the two products let Serval sell both software and the implementation labor that ServiceNow deployments usually require from third-party consultancies, folding a traditionally separate services market into its own subscription.
Traction
Serval says its annual recurring revenue has doubled every quarter since its Series B in December, and that two Fortune 20 companies converted away from incumbent systems onto its platform in the past six months, though neither has been named publicly. Named customer WPP already runs workflows on the platform. Headcount grew from about 20 employees in January to roughly 200 by this round, and the company is targeting at least 700 by the end of next year, including more than 100 new Automation Engineer hires, a scaling pace investors are betting will keep up with the Fortune 20 conversions already underway.
Team
Serval was founded by chief executive Jake Stauch and chief technology officer Alex McLeod, who met while working at Verkada, the security camera and physical access control company that itself scaled from startup to a multibillion dollar valuation. That shared background building enterprise hardware and software at a fast-growing company appears to have shaped Serval's approach of pairing AI automation with hands-on implementation services rather than selling software alone. The founders have taken the company from roughly 20 employees in January to about 200 today, a growth rate that mirrors the sales traction they are reporting, though detailed public biographies for either founder remain limited.
Funding
Serval raised 150 million dollars in a Series C led by Sequoia Capital, which also led its 75 million dollar Series B in December, with existing investors Elad Gil, Evantic, First Round, General Catalyst and Redpoint returning and Conviction and Headline joining as new backers. The round, announced October 29, 2026, values Serval at 3 billion dollars, triple the 1 billion dollar valuation it held five months earlier, and brings total funding since launch to 277 million dollars. It is Serval's third disclosed round within roughly a year, a pace of fundraising that reflects how quickly investors are repricing AI-native challengers to legacy enterprise software.
Competitors
Serval's most direct target is ServiceNow, the dominant enterprise service management platform, including its own AI push through Flow by ServiceNow, an AI-driven service desk product aimed at the same automation use cases. ServiceNow's scale, existing enterprise contracts and head start in AI agent tooling give it enormous defensive advantages, and it has moved quickly to fold agentic features into its core product rather than ceding the category. Serval's bet is that an AI-native architecture built from scratch can out-automate a two-decade-old platform carrying significant technical debt, but it will need to keep converting large accounts faster than ServiceNow can copy its playbook.
VC lens
Would YC fund it? Yes: a founding team that has already tripled its valuation in five months, converted two Fortune 20 accounts off a dominant incumbent, and grown headcount tenfold to back it up is exactly the kind of inflection YC looks for, even if the long-term defensibility against ServiceNow's own AI push remains unproven.
Biggest risk: Serval is still a small company by disclosed revenue relative to its 3 billion dollar valuation, and ServiceNow and other incumbents have the capital, existing contracts and distribution to copy Catalyst's automation approach once it proves out, leaving Serval's edge dependent on out-executing much larger rivals before they close the gap.
Runners-up
Kalshi
A federally regulated U.S. prediction market exchange co-founded by MIT classmates Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara, which raised a 1 billion dollar Series G co-led by Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management at a 40 billion dollar valuation, nearly double its 22 billion dollar valuation from May. (Oct 30)
Mintive
A San Francisco startup that gives every AI agent its own scoped identity and access permissions through an MCP gateway and LLM gateway, founded by ex-Google Brain researchers Jiquan Ngiam and Vijay Vasudevan, which raised a 7 million dollar seed led by Cowboy Ventures with angel backing from Jeff Dean and Andrej Karpathy. (Oct 29)
MP Space
A Sydney startup founded by former Tesla engineers Jay Manley and Sam Paterson that builds low-cost power systems and batteries for satellites, which raised a 23 million Australian dollar seed led by Blackbird VC with Seraphim Space, Systemiq Capital, Speedinvest and MFV Partners participating. (Oct 26)
Dulo
A stealth AI startup co-founded by Waymo pioneer Sebastian Thrun to build foundation models that automate engineering and hardware design, which reportedly raised a 130 million dollar seed backed by Eric Schmidt, John Doerr and Kleiner Perkins, according to The Information. (Oct 29)
Archive
52 reports · click a row to open it| Date | Winner | One-liner | Runners-up | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-02 | Serval | 150 million dollar Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a 3 billion dollar valuation, triple its level five months ago, as the AI-native challenger to ServiceNow converted two Fortune 20 companies and doubled revenue every quarter since its Series B | Kalshi, Mintive, MP Space, Dulo | |
| 2026-11-01 | Upwind | 400 million dollar Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a 3.8 billion dollar valuation, as the cloud and AI security startup quadrupled revenue and turned down a near 4 billion dollar acquisition offer from Datadog | Circuit Mind, Plato, Easol, Re:Build Manufacturing | |
| 2026-10-31 | Hyperbolic | 30 million dollar Series A-1 led by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan's Walden Catalyst, as the AI compute marketplace aggregating 30 cloud providers into one dashboard pushes toward letting idle GPU capacity trade like electricity | Braid, Bites, Midstream Health, Crux Labs | |
| 2026-10-30 | Dream | 17 million dollar seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, as the ex-Palantir founders' AI world models took on architect-of-record liability for commercial buildings already under construction in Texas and California | Ravical, VUSE XR, KineDB, Ace Blend | |
| 2026-10-29 | Numeracle | 28 million dollar growth investment from Edison Partners, as the profitable McLean, Virginia company's business identity verification tools kept legitimate calls from 4,000 customers from being wrongly flagged as spam | Machenta, Vera Health, Autofixer, Zorit | |
| 2026-10-28 | Simplismart | 14 million dollar Series B led by Dallas Venture Capital with Nvidia participating, as the Bengaluru AI inference startup's annualised revenue run rate grew 14x in six months on the back of US customers like HeyGen and Shiprocket | Nova Spectral AI, Live2.ai, Mochatrade, Troovy | |
| 2026-10-27 | Bedrock Robotics | 600 million dollar Series C co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital at a 4.1 billion dollar valuation, as the Waymo-founded startup's retrofit kit for autonomous excavators moved from pilots to paid commercial work on job sites in Nevada, Texas and Arizona | Matiks, Nous, adsilico, Volare | |
| 2026-10-26 | Blacksmith | 66 million dollar Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a 1 billion dollar valuation, as the YC-backed CI platform's weekly jobs run grew from 5 million to over 90 million amid a flood of AI-written code | Enact Intelligence, QuantrolOx, Beyond Vision, Maxinsights | |
| 2026-10-25 | Flapping Airplanes | 1 billion dollar Series A at a 6 billion dollar valuation co-led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital, as the year-old AI efficiency lab's valuation quadrupled nine months after its seed with still no shipped product | Air Space Intelligence, Whop, Arda Industries, AuxoAI | |
| 2026-10-24 | CureBay | 100 crore rupee Pre-Series C led by IvyCap Ventures, as the rural healthcare startup's network of technology enabled clinics and community health workers across seven Indian states passes 1.7 million patients served | Slingshot Insurance, Firstwork, Karta AI, Chapter Home | |
| 2026-10-23 | Warhound | 200 million dollar round at a 1.2 billion dollar valuation from In-Q-Tel, Sequoia and 8VC, as Colossal Biosciences founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey launch a company that genetically engineers and clones working dogs for the military and arms them with Anduril sensor gear | Enact, Beyond Vision, QuantrolOx, Indurex | |
| 2026-10-22 | Legora | 550 million dollar Series E at an 8.8 billion dollar valuation led by Atreides Management, as the legal AI company's annual recurring revenue doubled past 200 million dollars in six months while US in-house legal teams became its fastest-growing customer base | Pigment, Opply, Photon Bridge, Blacksmith | |
| 2026-10-21 | Daytona | 60 million dollar Series B at a 1 billion dollar valuation led by FirstMark, as the AI agent sandbox company's revenue run rate rose twenty-five fold in nine months on a customer list including Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Cursor, Cognition and Meta | Blackwall, Vessla, Linkener, Coherence Quantum | |
| 2026-10-20 | Tenstorrent | 1.5 billion dollar round at a 6.2 billion dollar valuation, more than doubling its 2024 mark, as chip architect Jim Keller's inference-chip startup turns down Intel and Qualcomm buyout interest to keep challenging Nvidia independently | Town, Hunar.AI, Rabot Energy, Otter Health | |
| 2026-10-19 | Modal Labs | 750 million dollar Series D led by Accel at a 15.75 billion dollar valuation, as the AI infrastructure startup says its annualized run rate crossed 1 billion dollars with usage tripling in five months, built on serverless GPU access for inference, training and agent sandboxes | OMass Therapeutics, Scanntech, North.cloud, Fortem Technologies | |
| 2026-10-18 | Mueon | 65 million dollar Series A led by Maverick Silicon, as the Portland semiconductor startup founded by two Intel veterans scales Cubelets, modular 3D blocks bundling compute, memory, power and cooling to cut AI data center power and density limits, already in use by AI chip startup d-Matrix | Estuary Biotherapeutics, Fission, Otter Health, HyLight | |
| 2026-10-17 | Chariot Claims | 10 million dollar Series A led by Silverton Partners, as the rebranded ClaimClam legal-tech platform scales automated matching of consumers to mass arbitration and class-action claims over hidden fees and hard-to-cancel subscriptions, building on more than 65,000 claims already processed toward an estimated 92 million dollars in settlements | Marklo, Siena, Rein Security, Peppermint | |
| 2026-10-16 | Salience Labs | 125 million dollar oversubscribed Series B led by Bullhound Capital, as the Oxford-spun-out photonics company wins new backing from AMD Ventures and Intel Capital for all-optical circuit switches meant to break the power and latency ceiling facing electronic switches as AI GPU clusters scale toward tens of thousands of chips | Navra, Type One Energy, Oratomic, Gallatin AI | |
| 2026-10-15 | Soufflé Therapeutics | 135 million dollar Series B led by Juvia Group, as the MIT bioengineer Robert Langer-founded biotech works to deliver RNA medicines to muscle and heart tissue, a problem that has stalled the entire siRNA drug class, backed by more than 3.5 billion dollars in big pharma partnerships before any program has reached the clinic | ICON, Pluto Security, Nous Research, Atomic Machines | |
| 2026-10-14 | Vitalize | 31 million dollar Series A led by Oak HC and FT, as the Y Combinator-backed startup unifying hospital staffing, scheduling, patient flow and capacity management expands after enterprise customers reported cutting manual scheduling work and premium labor spend | Gallatin AI, byteXL, Desible.ai, Credfix | |
| 2026-10-13 | Universal Quantum | 100 million dollar Series A co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, a record raise for a UK quantum computing company, as the University of Sussex spinout races to prove its modular trapped-ion chiplet interconnect can out-scale newly public rivals Quantinuum and IonQ | Atlas Atomics, Type One Energy, Sabi, Catalyst | |
| 2026-10-12 | Manus | 500 million dollar funding round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, the general AI agent's first raise since China blocked Meta's 2 billion dollar bid for the company and barred its founders from leaving the country, as Manus pursues a reported 4 billion dollar valuation on roughly 125 million dollars of annualized revenue | Oratomic, Matchpoint Therapeutics, Oxide Computer, Stuut | |
| 2026-10-11 | Arena | 200 million dollar Series B co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures at a 3.1 billion dollar valuation, as the company behind the Chatbot Arena leaderboard nearly doubles its valuation in ten months on roughly 100 million dollars of annualized revenue from selling AI evaluation and alignment benchmarking to labs and enterprises, while Scale AI's new Seal Showdown contests its neutral-referee position | Gallatin AI, Rein Security, Rivercell, TeddyHoldings.AI | |
| 2026-10-10 | Multiply Labs | 75 million dollar Series B led by Patrick Soon-Shiong's NantWorks with new investors AstraZeneca, Lingotto, Teradyne and Strange Ventures, as the decade-old biologics-manufacturing robotics company passes 100 million dollars raised on the strength of its first commercial sale, an up to 85 million dollar deal with Retro Biosciences, while competing against well-funded rivals Cellares and Ori Biotech to automate cell and gene therapy production | Zomint, Parakeet Health, OuterSignal, Efficient Computer | |
| 2026-10-09 | RougeTx | 58 million dollar Series A led by BioGeneration Ventures and Angelini Ventures with the European Investment Bank's Aurea facility and Kurma Partners also investing, as the Leiden University Medical Center spinout launches the first disease-modifying candidate for hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, a bleeding disorder with no approved therapies, built on more than two decades of pericyte research | GMI Cloud, Varda Space Industries, doxx.net, Beyond Appliances | |
| 2026-10-08 | General Medicine | 120 million dollar Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz with Eli Lilly and Mercy Health joining, as the PillPack founders' online healthcare marketplace brings total funding to 152 million dollars less than three years after launch on hundreds of thousands of customers and an 80 Net Promoter Score | Noah, Nous Research, Buntar Aerospace, Monid | |
| 2026-10-07 | Vinci | 250 million dollar Series B at a 1.5 billion dollar valuation co-led by Advent, Temasek and Xora Innovation, as the Palo Alto physics foundation model startup jumps from a 46 million dollar seed and Series A disclosed last December to a tenfold valuation leap less than a year later, aiming its technology at chip design incumbents Cadence and Synopsys | Spiko, Hadrian, WhiteLab Genomics, Inbolt | |
| 2026-10-06 | Pandektes | 13.5 million euro Series A led by Munich's Alstin Capital, as the Copenhagen legal-research startup grows revenue sixfold and wins customers switching off LexisNexis, Westlaw, Beck and Karnov with an API-first legal data platform | OneByZero, Fleuret AI, Laki Power, RobCo | |
| 2026-10-05 | PaleBlueDot AI | 200 million dollar Series C at a 3.2 billion dollar valuation led by ComputeCore, as the Palo Alto AI compute platform nearly triples its valuation in under nine months on more than 5 billion dollars of signed customer contracts | Simple Energy, Elio Mortgage, Menos AI, SedMed | |
| 2026-10-04 | Flow Engineering | 50 million dollar Series B at a 750 million dollar valuation co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Atreides Management, as the AI-native systems-engineering platform for hardware teams grows to over 100 million requirements managed and adds General Motors, Anduril and Intuitive Machines as customers less than a year after its Series A | Miter, Kanu AI, Beltic, Satlyt | |
| 2026-10-03 | EliseAI | 350 million dollar round at a 4 billion dollar valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, as the housing and healthcare conversational AI company nearly doubles its valuation in thirteen months on 200 million dollars of ARR and five straight years of 100 percent revenue growth | Kahua, Breye Therapeutics, Amara, Kuro | |
| 2026-10-02 | Armadin | 255.5 million dollar Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation, as Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia's agentic attacker-swarm security platform runs live attack campaigns for Fortune 500 and government customers seven months after stealth | Foundational, Seeds Fincap, Numeral, Chamelio | |
| 2026-10-01 | General Intuition | 220 million dollar Series B at a 6.2 billion dollar valuation, nearly tripling in three months, as the AI foundation model startup trains action models on billions of gameplay clips from its own sister company Medal | Varda, Jeeves, Sand.ai, Arivihan | |
| 2026-09-30 | Tiny Health | Oversubscribed $33M Series B led by B Capital as the at-home microbiome testing company posts 1,624% three-year revenue growth and quadruples its practitioner-facing business | Modulate, erad, Baselayer, Ande | |
| 2026-09-29 | Instinct | $1B Series C led by Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue at a $10B valuation, a roughly 4x jump in five weeks, as its text-message AI agent passes 100,000 users with 10% daily compounding growth | SiMa.ai, Quartermaster, Outmarket AI, Humanos | |
| 2026-09-28 | Solcoa Industries | $75M seed ($45M equity led by Bain Capital Ventures plus $30M JPMorgan-anchored debt) to build a 500-tonne Nevada plant using a novel rare-earth metalmaking process, aimed at breaking China's 95% grip on metallization | Clastix, Prevision Medicine, Spiich, Barq | |
| 2026-09-27 | Ultraviolette | $85M Series E led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures; Bengaluru performance EV motorcycle maker plans US entry by 2027 on 4-5x revenue growth | Micro1, Kasvu Therapeutics, HIFI, Dextr AI | |
| 2026-09-26 | Island | $400M Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners at a $6.4B valuation, more than doubling its 2024 valuation as the enterprise browser expands into governing AI agents | Cyera, Confido, Heidi Health, Firecrawl | |
| 2026-09-25 | Ema | $77M Series B led by Creaegis, more than quadrupling its valuation as every existing backer doubled down and Wipro scales its AI Employees to 240,000+ workers | Ando, Kasvu Therapeutics, HIFI, Nuvah | |
| 2026-09-24 | TEKEVER | $580M Series D led by UC Investments and Baillie Gifford; Ukraine-proven AI surveillance drone maker hits $6.4B valuation on a new 400M pound UK Army contract | Enveda Biosciences, Basecamp Research, Numeral, Brahma AI | |
| 2026-09-23 | Verda | $189M oversubscribed Series B led by Emergence Capital; profitable Nordic GPU cloud crosses $1B valuation on $165M ARR | Snorkel AI, Nexstrom, MacroCycle, Demoverse | |
| 2026-09-22 | BCI-Sonics | RMB 200M (~$30M) Pre-Series A led by HSG and Yunqi Capital; non-invasive ultrasound brain-computer interface racing China's invasive BCI leaders and OpenAI-backed Merge Labs | Spott, HighLife, CellPoint, Benford | |
| 2026-09-22 | Amber Electric | €49M Series E led by Morgan Stanley's 1GT; automates 50%+ of Australia's home batteries, expanding VPP software into Europe via E.ON | Corridor, Paymob, Unit1 Studio, Drivn | |
| 2026-09-18 | TypeSafe AI | $40M seed led by DCVC; "System One" model returns typed decisions for software, not chat — built by RLHF co-inventor Diogo Almeida | Space Epoch, Facilo, Treble Technologies, DheyaTech | |
| 2026-09-17 | Exein | $270M Series C at $1.7B valuation (30x in 2 yrs); kernel-level security layer for robots, drones and autonomous machines | Anew Labs, Delos Data, CADDi, AIUC | |
| 2026-09-16 | Euclyd | €200M+ Series A; Samsung-backed (investor + manufacturer) AI inference chip built to out-efficiency Nvidia, chaired by ex-ASML CEO | Profound, Flam, ENCOS, Nutshell Therapeutics | |
| 2026-09-15 | Fortaegis | $50M oversubscribed Series A; quantum-safe security rooted in silicon, chaired by Quantinuum founder Ilyas Khan | Qupital, Tandem Health, Atomarine, UniqYou | |
| 2026-09-11 | Positron AI | $875M Series C at $5B valuation; memory-first inference chips challenging Nvidia's HBM lock-in | The Boring Company, Mach Industries, Rogo Technologies, Swish | |
| 2026-09-10 | Cognition AI | $2B+ Series E at $48B valuation; Devin autonomous coding agent nears $900M run-rate | DigitalPaani, Algomatic Dynamics, Limetax, Fundly.ai | |
| 2026-09-09 | Bluecore Energy | Floating nuclear reactor barges for ports; $50M seed just 2 months after stealth launch | QNu Labs, ARC Ride, Circolife, Hope Care | |
| 2026-09-08 | Pixxel | $100M Series C, India's largest spacetech round; building orbital AI data centers | Nua, Navana.ai, GalaxEye, Atoms (Kalanick) | |
| 2026-09-07 | Medulance | GPS-dispatched ambulance network raises ₹24 Cr Series A-2 | Comet, Mokobara, Kit (Speakeasy), XDOF |
Sources
- Fortune — Serval's $150 million Series C puts it in a fight with ServiceNow at a $3 billion valuation
- TheSaaSNews — Serval Raises $150M Series C at $3B Valuation
- Tech Funding News — Kalshi Nearly Doubles to $40B in Five Months With $1B From Sequoia and Wellington
- TheSaaSNews — Mintive Raises $7M Seed
- Payload Space — MP Space Raises AUD $23M to Scale Satellite Battery Manufacturing
- FourWeekMBA — Waymo Pioneer Thrun's Dulo Raises $130M Seed for Hardware AI