Startups are making bold moves with fresh funding and innovative launches, while some familiar names in the industry are introducing new features and products worth a closer look.
🏆 Funding Wins
Pruna AI Boosts AI Sustainability with $6.5M Seed Round
Pruna AI, the optimization engine empowering ML teams to streamline and compress AI models, has raised $6.5M in a seed round led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Daphni, Motier, Kima, and angels like Roxanne Varza and Olivier Pomel. Co-founders Rayan Nait Mazi, Bertrand Charpentier, John Rachwan, and Stephan Günnemann are leading Pruna’s mission to make AI development faster, cheaper, and greener. The funding will enable the Munich-Paris-based team to expand and help reduce AI-related carbon emissions by up to 91%.
Learn more about Pruna AI here – their logo is super cute too!
Roboflow Secures $40M to Transform Computer Vision
Roboflow, co-founded by Joseph Nelson and Brad Dwyer, has raised $40M in Series B funding led by GV, alongside Craft Ventures and Y Combinator. Roboflow’s platform empowers developers with tools for dataset management, model training, and deployment, making computer vision accessible to all skill levels. Nelson, who previously co-founded and sold Represently, and Dwyer, who built Hatchlings into a seven-figure social gaming company, aim to democratize computer vision. With over 500 million images hosted and a thriving open-source community, Roboflow is accelerating its mission to make the world programmable through visual AI.
Read more about Roboflow’s Series B here
Prompt Security Raises $18M to Tackle GenAI Risks
Prompt Security, a leader in securing Generative AI for enterprises, has raised $18M in Series A funding led by Jump Capital, with support from Okta, F5, Hetz Ventures, and Ridge Ventures. Founders Itamar Golan and Lior Drihem are addressing AI threats like data leaks and prompt injections, ensuring companies can adopt GenAI securely. “As enterprises accelerate their adoption of GenAI, so do the associated risks. This funding supercharges our mission to enable the safe use and deployment of GenAI in enterprises by mitigating such risks,” said Golan. “With the support of our investors, we will continue advancing our solutions and expanding both our geographic footprint and presence across different industries.”
Discover how Prompt Security is redefining AI security here
Zitadel Secures $9M to Revolutionize Identity Infrastructure
ZITADEL has raised $9M in Series A funding led by Nexus Venture Partners, with Floodgate participating. Co-founded by Florian Forster Zitadel’s open-source platform addresses the challenges of authentication, multi-tenancy, and data security with powerful identity management tools. This funding will fuel new features like AI-driven threat detection and enhanced observability, ensuring seamless integration for enterprises managing users at scale. Trusted by over 150 global businesses, Zitadel is shaping the future of cloud-native identity solutions. “Zitadel is more than just a tool; it is a comprehensive identity platform that caters to the diverse needs of developers, operators, and security professionals”, said Forster (CEO).
Learn more about Zitadel’s identity solutions here
🚀 3, 2, 1… Launches
Circlemind Unlocks Smarter AI Retrieval with Knowledge Graphs
Circlemind (YC F24) has launched an open-source retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) engine that uses knowledge graphs and PageRank for more accurate information retrieval—up to 3x better than vector databases. Founders Antonio Vespoli, Luca Pinchetti, and Yuhang Song bring deep expertise from Imperial, Oxford, and prior startups, aiming to simplify RAG pipelines for engineers tackling complex queries. The platform also offers built-in debugging tools and a managed service for easy adoption. Try it for free or explore the open-source engine today to experience next-level retrieval.
Coblocks Redefines Data Pipelines with AI-Powered Simplicity
Coblocks (YC F24) has introduced a streamlined platform for building data pipelines in minutes. Founders Kevin Schaich and Nisola Shobayo, seasoned engineers from Palantir and Square, have created an all-in-one solution with seamless integrations, lightning-fast compute, and collaborative tools. Whether you’re querying with SQL or automating workflows with Python, Coblocks helps teams focus on insights rather than infrastructure headaches. Check out the platform and experience a faster, easier approach to data engineering.
Learn more about Coblocks here
Relvy AI Puts Production Monitoring on Autopilot
Relvy AI (YC F24), founded by Bharath Bhat and Simranjit Singh, is here to take the manual work out of monitoring production logs. With its efficient language models, Relvy connects to your observability stack to identify and debug issues with actionable root cause analysis—all while reducing alert fatigue. Engineers can now say, “Hey Relvy, monitor my logs,” and trust the system to handle the rest. Setup takes just minutes, and you can try it for free.
Surge Simplifies SMS APIs for Developers
Surge (YC F24), founded by brothers Dennis Beatty and Brett Beatty, has launched an intuitive SMS API to help developers send and receive messages faster. By building compliance into their product, Surge gets teams through carrier registration in 1-2 days instead of weeks. Their high-level abstractions and embeddable UI components make setup seamless, while responsive support ensures teams of all sizes succeed. For developers tired of waiting, Surge offers a better way to text.
Fixa Speeds Up Bug Detection in Voice Agents
fixa is helping developers find bugs in AI voice agents faster. Founded by Oliver W. and Jonathan Liu, Fixa automates testing and analyzes thousands of calls at scale, pinpointing issues like hallucinations, interruptions, and transcription errors. Forget manual reviews—Fixa ensures voice agents deliver smooth interactions without the hassle. If you’re building voice AI, Fixa is ready to streamline your debugging process.
Locofy Brings Designs to Developer-Friendly Code in a Flash
Locofy.ai is officially out of beta! Co-founders Honey Mittal and Sohaib Muhammad have built a platform that converts designs into responsive, modular frontend code—complete with Figma-to-Angular support, CSS editing tools, and enterprise deployment options. Already trusted by 500,000+ users across 190 countries, Locofy is making frontend development faster and easier. Celebrate the launch with an exclusive Product Hunt discount for November!
Diffblue Cover Developer Edition Delivers AI-Powered Testing for All
Diffblue Cover is now available to individual developers! Known for its autonomous AI unit testing, Diffblue generates tests 250x faster than manual writing, providing instant feedback and continuous regression detection. “By lowering our product’s barrier to entry, we hope to empower more developers around the world,” said Zoe Laycock 🔥, Product Marketing Lead. Diffblue Cover Developer Edition is available now with flexible subscription plans.
Inferable Makes Building Secure AI Applications Simple
Inferable, launched by a team of seasoned developers, offers a managed platform for creating secure, reliable AI applications. With features like distributed tool calling, private networking, and built-in observability, Inferable simplifies LLM-powered app development while maintaining data privacy. The platform supports multiple languages, including NodeJS and Go, and is built for on-premise execution. For developers ready to build smarter, safer AI tools, Inferable is here to help.
Maxim Accelerates AI Development with End-to-End Evaluation Tools
Maxim, co-founded by Vaibhavi Gangwar (VG) and Akshay Deo, helps teams ship high-quality AI products faster with an end-to-end evaluation platform. From experimentation to production, Maxim enables collaborative testing, monitoring, and dataset curation. With tools to establish feedback loops and improve LLM performance, it’s designed to make AI development 5x faster. Try Maxim for free or book a demo to see how it streamlines your workflow.
🔦 DevTools of the Week
H Introduces Runner H to Power the Agentic Era
H Company, the Paris-based startup that turned heads with a massive $220m seed round earlier this year, is stepping into the spotlight with its first product: Runner H. Built on a compact 2-billion-parameter LLM, Runner H brings efficiency and adaptability to tasks like robotic process automation (RPA), quality assurance, and business process outsourcing (BPO).
The company’s journey hasn’t been without challenges—three of its five co-founders departed early on over operational disagreements. Yet H persevered, guided by CEO Charles A. Kantor‘s vision for the “agentic era.” Runner H offers APIs for pre-built agents and H-Studio, a management tool to test and customize workflows.
H has worked with early customers across e-commerce, banking, and insurance to refine Runner H, ensuring it solves real-world challenges like debugging and adaptable automation. Free trials are available now, with paid plans coming soon. With prestigious backers like Eric Schmidt and Amazon, H is gearing up for what Kantor calls the “second era” of AI.
Join the private beta waitlist here
MotherDuck Brings Local Power and Cloud Scalability Together
MotherDuck, the brainchild of BigQuery veteran Jordan Tigani and DuckDB creators Hannes Mühleisen and Mark Raasveldt, is rewriting how teams query and analyze data. Inspired by the elegance of DuckDB, MotherDuck blends the simplicity of local execution with the scalability of the cloud—making data analytics faster, cheaper, and more efficient for smaller workloads.
The journey began in 2022 when Tigani saw the potential for a cloud-based DuckDB service and teamed up with DuckDB Labs. In just over a year, the team has raised $100M, grown to nearly 2,000 users, and removed its waitlist. Notable backers include a16z, Felicis, and Redpoint. Recent updates, like enhanced programming notebooks and faster data imports, show a commitment to improving usability and performance.
“It’s about making analytics easy for the 95% of teams who don’t have petabyte-scale data,” says Tigani. With its unique approach, MotherDuck empowers developers to turn queries into actionable insights effortlessly.
This week’s newsletter has spotlighted some incredible innovation from the startup world, but it’s impossible to ignore the big moves happening across the broader developer tools space. Palantir hosted its first DevCon, rolling out AIP for Developers with tools like Ontology SDK 2.0 and Workflow Builder, designed to streamline backend development for commercial and government leaders alike. Meanwhile, Kong closed a $175M Series E round at a $2B valuation, bolstering its mission to become the universal API traffic broker in the AI era.
We also saw Weights & Biases deepen its collaboration with Microsoft, launching integrations with Azure OpenAI Service to simplify fine-tuning and empower enterprises to harness generative AI.
From scrappy startups to established giants, it’s an exciting time to be in developer tools.
Team Develocity
