Built By Berkeley

Welcome to Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻

Berkeley PhDs are at it again… Jiayi Pan, a PhD student at Berkeley, has taken a base AI model and, for just $30, managed to replicate some of the attributes of DeepSeek R1-Zero at a fraction of the cost. Read more here.

To be clear, this is cool but not groundbreaking—DeepSeek’s innovations have been widely distributed. However, it reinforces the idea that AI models are becoming cheaper and cheaper to build while still delivering massive value in certain areas.

One area where I’m personally seeing this play out is the speed at which startups are scaling with incredibly small teams. See some examples below—I’ve come across many more of these rocket ships out in the wild

Why are these startups able to grow so quickly with such small teams? My theory is threefold:

• AI native from the start: The startups that are winning—and winning efficiently—are fully leveraging existing AI tools, allowing them to focus on their core business. (I wrote about this recently here)

• ChatGPT3.5 as a Cambrian Moment: The launch of ChatGPT-3.5 by OpenAI in November 2022 brought AI into the mainstream, catalyzing conversations and making it so that everyone wants to try—or be seen trying—AI.

• Arming the Rebels: The mega tech companies, all of whom are experiencing massive FOMO, are expected to spend $320 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025, up from $246 billion in 2024. These numbers are staggering. The result? Better AI models at lower costs, giving lean startups powerful tools to scale.

I expect we’ll see a lot more of these $100M+ ARR startups with fewer than 50 employees. I’ll call them Velociraptors (in the Jurassic Park depiction)—small, agile teams using superhuman intelligence to take down markets.

So if you think you need to raise a ton of money to build a hyper-growth startup, think again. Be AI-native, ride the tsunami of AI interest, leverage the massive infrastructure spend—then build!

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 9 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $261M of capital raised from the 10th February to 16th February

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Closed Rounds

🤖 Eudia $105M Series A 🇺🇸 AI-powered legal automation.💰 Everywhere Ventures, Floodgate, General Catalyst

🐻 Omar Haroun, Co-Founder & CEO. BA Economics. Article

💊 Aardvark Therapeutics $94.2M IPO 🇺🇸 Obesity drug developer.

🐻 Tien Lee, CEO & Founder. BA Molecular Biology. Article

📊 AgVend $42.7M Series C 🇺🇸 Agri-business engagement platform.💰 8VC, FJ Labs, Precursor Ventures

🐻 Eli Rosenberg, Co-Founder & CPO. BS Applied Mathematics.

🔐 Nirmata $9.6M Seed 🇺🇸 Cloud security automation.💰 Peak XV Partners, Samsung NEXT Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures

🐻 Ritesh Patel, Co-Founder & VP Products. Haas MBA. Article

🎮 FrodoBot $6M Seed 🇺🇸 Sidewalk robot gaming.💰 Fabric Ventures, Solana Ventures

🐻 Michael Chung Yeung Cho, Co-Founder. MS Electrical Engineering. Article

🚁 Maglev Aero $2.5M Seed 🇺🇸 eVTOL flight systems.💰 Breakthrough Energy, Moai Capital, Stage 1 Ventures

🐻 Rod Randall, Co-Founder. MS Electrical Engineering.

☕ Rarebird $1M Accelerator 🇺🇸 Jitter-free coffee.💰 First Round Capital, SeaX Ventures, Soma Capital

🐻 Jeffrey Dietrich, Co-Founder & CEO. PhD Bioengineering. Article

🌍 Devera $0.7M Seed 🇪🇸 AI-powered sustainability tool.💰 Lanzadera Accelerator, Zubi Labs

🐻 Alexander Schwarz, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer. Haas MBA.

📈 Infina Undisclosed 🇻🇳 Digital investment platform.💰 1982 Ventures, 500 Global, Goodwater Capital

🐻 James Vuong, Founder & CEO. Haas MBA. Article

⚡ Virtual Peaker Undisclosed 🇺🇸 Energy assessment platform.💰 Chrysalis Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures

🐻 William Burke, Founder & CEO. PhD Mechanical Engineering. Article

Built By Berkeley Tracker

Our goal is to document the startup ecosystem of Berkeley-founded companies. Please share this newsletter with any Cal Bears in your network so we can crowdsource information about all investment rounds and job opportunities.

• Did we miss a company or want to announce a round? Add it here, and we will post it next week.

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• Is there someone in the Berkeley ecosystem that you would want us to do a profile on? A founder, funder, or general startup person? Add here.

Built By Berkeley is not affiliated with UC Berkeley, but maybe we will be one day if we get enough subscribers….