Pre-Seed Funded Artificial Intelligence Startups
Pre-seed AI rounds tracked here span July through November 2025, with San Francisco emerging as the dominant hub.
Pre-seed AI rounds tracked here span July through November 2025, with San Francisco emerging as the dominant hub. A particularly sharp cluster formed between September 9 and 13, 2025: Freya Voice, PARES, Relling, idler, Certus AI, Metis, Mimos, NOSO LABS, and Okibi all closed $500K rounds within five days, most of them San Francisco-based — a pattern consistent with a cohort-style program announcement. London produced some of the larger checks: Palabra.ai raised $8M (the highest disclosed amount in the set) and Archestra.AI closed $3M, both in August 2025.
Geographic reach extends well beyond traditional hubs. Pre-seed AI capital reached Almaty (Nozomio), Riyadh (Wittify.ai, $2M), Cape Town (Akili AI), Osnabrück (Droidrun, $3M), Copenhagen (Propane, $1M), and Singapore (Zeya Health), among others — roughly half the 50 companies are headquartered outside the United States. Ten rounds carried undisclosed amounts. Among those that disclosed, $500K is the most common figure, while the $2M–$3M band represents the next most active tier.
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Frequently asked
What are the largest disclosed pre-seed rounds for AI startups in this dataset?
Palabra.ai, based in London, raised $8M — the highest disclosed figure in the set. Five companies each closed $3M rounds: Supermemory (Warrington, UK), Altan (Wilmington), Archestra.AI (London), CodeKarma (Bengaluru), and Droidrun (Osnabrück, Germany). The next most common tier is $2M, reached by nine companies including MiChamba, Rulebase, Coraly (Dubai), Emblematic, Hall (Sydney), Whisper (Amsterdam), Wittify.ai (Riyadh), and Kira (Miami).
Which cities show up most often in pre-seed AI deals from this period?
San Francisco is the dominant location by a wide margin, with over a dozen companies including Mohi, Freya Voice, PARES, Relling, idler, Certus AI, Metis, Mimos, NOSO LABS, Okibi, Complexiti, Loop Smart AI, and Autopoiesis Sciences. London is a clear second with four companies — Archestra.AI, Palabra.ai, AVIEL Intelligence, and Inntelo AI. India appears three times across Kolkata (Genovation), Bengaluru (CodeKarma), and Mumbai (Fire AI), plus Linkrunner in Bangalore.
What explains the cluster of $500K AI pre-seed rounds that all closed within days of each other in September 2025?
Nine companies — Freya Voice, PARES, Relling (all September 13), Certus AI and Metis (September 10), Mimos, NOSO LABS, and Okibi (September 9), and idler (September 11) — raised $500K within a five-day window, most headquartered in San Francisco. The tight date compression and uniform check size are consistent with a cohort-style program announcement, though the specific backer is not identified in the data.
How many of these pre-seed AI rounds have undisclosed amounts?
Ten of the 50 rounds do not disclose a figure: Midasify (Vancouver), WEELOCK (Santiago), mypaperwork.ai (Vienna), Plutus (Chicago), Compuvi (San Antonio), KOLBERA (Las Vegas), Fire AI (Mumbai), Akili AI (Cape Town), Complexiti (San Francisco), and Autopoiesis Sciences (San Francisco). That represents 20% of the listed deals — a proportion typical of early pre-seed activity where founders often omit amounts from public filings.
What does the round size distribution look like across these pre-seed AI deals?
Among the 40 companies with disclosed amounts, $500K is the single most common figure — appearing at least 12 times, largely concentrated in San Francisco. The $2M–$3M band is the next most active tier. Rounds below $500K do appear — Regulify.AI (Dallas) closed at $100K, Practice AI (Dover) at $180K, and Genovation (Kolkata) at $150K — while Palabra.ai's $8M stands as a clear outlier on the high end.
How geographically distributed is pre-seed AI funding in this dataset beyond the US?
Roughly half the 50 companies are headquartered outside the United States. The dataset includes deals in Kazakhstan (Nozomio, Almaty), Saudi Arabia (Wittify.ai, Riyadh, $2M), Chile (WEELOCK, Santiago), South Africa (Akili AI, Cape Town), Austria (mypaperwork.ai, Vienna), Denmark (Propane, Copenhagen, $1M), Netherlands (Whisper, Amsterdam, $2M), Singapore (Zeya Health, $500K), and the UAE (Coraly, Dubai, $2M), in addition to India, Australia, Germany, Canada, and the UK.
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