Top Startup and Tech Funding News – March 11, 2025

It’s Wednesday, March 11, 2026, and we’re back with today’s top startup and tech funding news. Today’s rounds highlight accelerating investment in AI-native infrastructure, robotics intelligence, developer tooling, and enterprise automation. As companies race to scale foundational systems for the AI economy, both strategic and venture investors are doubling down on platforms that can drive autonomous capabilities across physical and digital domains.

Major Series A and D financings underscore growing confidence in world-model robotics, code generation, and ultra-fast data infrastructure. Meanwhile, startups building AI agents for recruiting, restaurants, and enterprise workflows are attracting late-stage support to operationalize automation in everyday business functions. Today’s deals span AI infrastructure, robotics, dev tools, fintech, and consumer platforms—and point to a growing convergence between intelligent systems and real-world execution.

Tech Funding News

Funding Highlights

• Mind Robotics raises $500M Series A to automate industrial manufacturing
• Rhoda AI raises $450M Series A to advance real-world robotics intelligence
• Replit raises $400M Series D to scale its AI-powered coding platform
• VAST Data raises $500M to unify AI data infrastructure at $30B valuation
• Chowbus raises $81M to expand its AI platform for independent restaurants
• Juicebox lands $80M Series B to turn recruiting into an AI-driven outbound process
• Dify raises $30M Pre-Series A to build enterprise AI agent workflows
• Moxie raises $25M Series C to modernize medspa management with tech
• PactFi secures $25M Series A to streamline private credit transactions
• Ernesta raises $20M Series B to scale custom rug e-commerce platform

Investor Activity

Today’s funding drew heavy participation from both top-tier VCs and strategic investors shaping next-gen AI and automation. Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, and Sequoia backed robotics and developer platforms, while Nvidia and Tiger Global supported core infrastructure plays. Strategic partners like Accenture and Databricks joined high-velocity rounds in the developer and enterprise AI space. In vertical SaaS and fintech, firms like Prysm, DST Global, and 7RIDGE are fueling tools that embed automation into legacy industries. Across categories, capital is concentrating behind platforms with defensible AI stacks and tangible deployment pathways.

Mind Robotics raises $500M in Series A funding to automate industrial manufacturing

Mind Robotics, a startup spun out of EV maker Rivian, has closed a massive $500 million Series A round co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The Palo Alto-based company is building a full-stack industrial robotics platform – combining AI “foundation” models with purpose-built robots and deployment infrastructure – to automate factory and warehouse tasks at scale. This ranks among the largest Series A funding rounds in robotics, underscoring investors’ belief that advanced automation can address labor shortages and modernize aging production lines.

With Rivian as a partner and major shareholder, Mind Robotics can train its AI-driven robots on real manufacturing data, aiming to achieve human-level dexterity and adaptability in industrial settings. The fresh capital will go toward expanding its engineering team, deploying robots in pilot programs, and accelerating development of its AI models, as the startup positions itself to meet growing demand for intelligent automation in manufacturing.

• Startup: Mind Robotics (Palo Alto, CA; founded 2025 as a spinout of Rivian)

• Investors: Accel, Andreessen Horowitz (co-leads)

• Amount Raised: $500M

• Total Raised: $615M (including a prior $115M seed round)

• Funding Stage: Series A

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Rhoda AI raises $450M Series A to advance real-world robotics intelligence

Rhoda AI, a robotics and artificial intelligence startup, has emerged from stealth with a $450 million Series A funding round led by top deep-tech investors. Based in Palo Alto and led by serial founder Jagdeep Singh, Rhoda is developing a new class of AI “world models” for robots – systems trained on internet-scale video and real-world data to help machines understand motion, physics, and unpredictable environments. The goal is to enable robots that can adapt on the fly to changing conditions in factories, logistics centers, and other unstructured settings where traditional pre-programmed robots struggle. Rhoda’s technology continuously predicts future states through video-based models and converts those predictions into actions in real time, a novel approach to robotic control. The hefty funding will support expanded R&D and pilot deployments in industry. The backing from firms like Temasek and Khosla Ventures signals a strategic bet that Rhoda’s approach could unlock the next generation of robots capable of working autonomously outside of lab settings.

• Startup: Rhoda AI (Palo Alto, CA; founded 2024)

• Investors: Khosla Ventures, Temasek, Mayfield, Capricorn Investment Group, Premji Invest, Xora Innovation, John Doerr (among others)

• Amount Raised: $450M

• Total Raised: $450M (first institutional round)

• Funding Stage: Series A

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Replit raises $400M in Series D funding to scale its AI-powered coding platform

Developer platform Replit has secured a $400 million Series D investment at a $9 billion valuation, tripling its valuation in just six months. Replit offers an AI-enhanced cloud coding environment that enables users to write and deploy software in any browser, with an integrated AI assistant for generating and debugging code. The San Francisco-based company has seen explosive adoption: over 40 million developers and non-developers now use the platform, including teams at Fortune 500 firms.

Replit’s annual recurring revenue surged from under $3 million to $150 million over the past year, fueled by the launch of its Replit AI Agent, which allows even non-engineers to build applications via conversational prompts. The new funding — backed by a wide syndicate of venture firms (Georgian, Coatue, a16z, and more) and strategic investors like Accenture and Databricks — will help Replit expand globally and extend its product beyond coding into AI systems for “creative development.”

The raise positions Replit as one of the most valuable startups in the developer tools space and highlights confidence that its AI-driven approach can fundamentally reshape how software is created across industries.

• Startup: Replit (San Francisco, CA; founded 2016)

• Investors: Georgian, G Squared, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Y Combinator, and others; with strategic participation from Accenture, Databricks, Okta, and Tether

• Amount Raised: $400M

• Total Raised: ~$600M+ (to date)

• Funding Stage: Series D

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

VAST Data raises $1B in funding to unify AI data infrastructure at $30B valuation

New York-based VAST Data has raised $1 billion in fresh funding at a staggering $30 billion valuation to accelerate its vision of a unified data platform for the AI era. VAST Data has developed an “AI-powered data operating system” that converges ultra-fast storage, database engines, and compute integration, ensuring that modern AI and analytics applications can access massive datasets without bottlenecks. This new financing round — which includes a significant secondary component for early shareholders — brings VAST’s total equity raised to roughly $900 million since its 2016 founding.

The company’s technology, already backed by industry leaders such as Nvidia (an early investor and partner), has become a critical component of high-performance AI systems by feeding data to GPUs at extreme speeds. With this funding, VAST Data plans to scale its engineering and go-to-market teams globally and deepen its product’s capabilities for enterprise and cloud providers. The investment underscores the market’s conviction in core AI infrastructure plays: as companies race to deploy larger AI models, demand is soaring for VAST’s solution to eliminate the data throughput and storage hurdles that can slow advanced AI workloads.

• Startup: VAST Data (New York, NY; founded 2016)

• Investors: Undisclosed late-stage investors; supported by existing backers including Nvidia, Tiger Global, Goldman Sachs, NEA, and others

• Amount Raised: $500M

• Total Raised: $900M (equity funding to date)

• Funding Stage: Series E / Late Stage

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Chowbus raises $81M in funding to expand its AI platform for independent restaurants

Chowbus, a Chicago-based startup serving the restaurant industry, has raised $81 million in new funding to evolve its product from a niche ordering system into a full-fledged AI-powered restaurant operations platform. Launched initially to connect diners with authentic Asian eateries, Chowbus built an integrated point-of-sale and delivery marketplace used by thousands of independent restaurants.

The company has since achieved over $120 million in annual recurring revenue and processes about $4 billion in orders across all 50 states and Canada. With this funding round led by Prysm Capital and Left Lane Capital, Chowbus is broadening its services beyond online ordering to include marketing, supply chain management, accounting, and even insurance for restaurant owners – essentially becoming an operating system for culturally rooted restaurants.

The fresh capital infusion will fuel product development in AI-driven tools (such as automated ad creation and demand forecasting) that help mom-and-pop restaurants compete with larger chains. Chowbus’s significant growth and this expansion plan underscore how even traditional small-business sectors like restaurants are embracing AI to boost efficiency and level the playing field.

• Startup: Chowbus (Chicago, IL; founded 2016)

• Investors: Prysm Capital (lead), Left Lane Capital, with participation from Fika Ventures, Dutchess Capital and others

• Amount Raised: $81M

• Total Raised: ~$160M (estimated to date)

• Funding Stage: Series E (Late-stage)

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Juicebox lands $80M in Series B funding to turn recruiting into an AI-driven outbound process

Juicebox, an AI-native recruiting platform, has secured $80 million in Series B funding at an $850 million valuation to reinvent how companies find talent. The San Francisco startup has developed an “outbound recruiting” system that uses autonomous AI agents to seek out and engage top job candidates before they even apply, in effect treating talent acquisition more like proactive sales. Juicebox’s platform combs through a vast talent graph to identify qualified people for open roles, then automatically reaches out with personalized pitches at a scale and speed human recruiters alone could never achieve.

The approach addresses a key pain point for employers: traditional hiring funnels are overwhelmed by hundreds of inbound applications, many of which are low-quality, whereas Juicebox helps companies quickly zero in on high-intent candidates. The round, led by DST Global with participation from Sequoia, Coatue, Y Combinator, and others, comes after Juicebox tripled its annual recurring revenue since its Series A in mid-2025.

Now serving over 5,000 paying customers (from tech startups to Fortune 100 giants), the company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development, expand enterprise sales, and launch in new regions. Juicebox’s momentum reflects a broader shift in hiring, as organizations adopt AI tools to streamline recruiting and tackle talent shortages more efficiently.

• Startup: Juicebox (San Francisco, CA; founded 2023)

• Investors: DST Global (lead), Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Y Combinator, NFDG, Verified Capital

• Amount Raised: $80M

• Total Raised: ~$105M (estimated)

• Funding Stage: Series B

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Dify raises $30M in Pre-Series A funding to build enterprise AI agent workflows

Menlo Park-based Dify has raised $30 million in a Series Pre-A round at a $180 million valuation to accelerate its open-source platform for building “agentic” AI workflows. Dify provides a visual, no-code builder that lets companies design, deploy, and manage AI applications made up of multiple agents (for example, large language model components) working together. The startup’s platform aims to bridge the gap between experimental AI demos and production-grade enterprise applications by handling the underlying engineering, data integration, and scaling requirements. Enterprises can use Dify to create custom AI agents – for tasks such as customer support, data analysis, or internal operations – without having to start from scratch.

The new funding, led by HSG and joined by GL Ventures, 5Y Capital, and others, will help Dify expand its global team and double down on product development. Founded by Luyu Zhang, Dify taps into a wave of interest in autonomous AI agents that can act on instructions and automate complex workflows. By offering an open-source foundation, the company has attracted a community of developers and hopes to become a standard layer for organizations looking to incorporate AI agents into everyday business processes.

• Startup: Dify (Menlo Park, CA; founded 2025)

• Investors: HSG (lead), GL Ventures, Alt-Alpha Capital, 5Y Capital, and others

• Amount Raised: $30M

• Total Raised: $30M (pre-seed to date)

• Funding Stage: Pre-Series A

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Moxie raises $25M in Series C funding to modernize medspa management with tech

Moxie, a healthtech startup offering an all-in-one software platform for medical spas and cosmetic clinics, has raised $25 million in a Series C round to expand its footprint. Founded in 2022, the New York-based company provides a cloud-based solution that streamlines operations for medspa businesses – covering appointment scheduling, client management, payments, marketing, and more, all in one interface.

The new funding was led by Viewpoint Ventures and nearly doubles Moxie’s total funding to date ($51 million). It comes as the medspa and aesthetic treatment industry continues to grow and professionalize, driving demand for specialized software. Moxie’s platform helps often-fragmented medspa operators improve efficiency and customer experience, replacing a patchwork of generic tools with a tailored system for their niche. With this infusion, Moxie plans to accelerate product development (including new AI features for personalized marketing and inventory management) and scale its sales efforts to reach more clinics nationwide.

The Series C round signals investor confidence in Moxie’s traction and the broader opportunity to bring modern practice-management tech to the multi-billion-dollar cosmetic wellness market.

• Startup: Moxie (New York, NY; founded 2022)

• Investors: Viewpoint Ventures (lead)

• Amount Raised: $25M

• Total Raised: $51M

• Funding Stage: Series C

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

PactFi secures $25M in Series A funding to streamline private credit transactions

Fintech startup PactFi has raised $25 million in Series A financing to build out its platform for managing complex private credit deals. Based in New York and founded in 2021, PactFi provides a secure workflow tool that helps financial institutions and funds organize the many moving parts of private credit transactions – from deal structuring and documentation to investor reporting and compliance. The round was led by 7RIDGE’s Ecosystem Impact Fund, with participation from Vestigo Ventures and other fintech-focused investors. PactFi addresses a growing need in the private debt market: as private credit has boomed into a multi-trillion-dollar asset class, behind-the-scenes operations remain largely manual and fragmented.

The startup’s software centralizes these processes, reducing errors and delays for lenders and borrowers handling bespoke loans, credit facilities, and securitizations. PactFi plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering team and build integrations with more data sources and banking systems, aiming to become the default operations hub for private credit desks. The Series A comes after early pilots with banks and credit funds, and it highlights the fintech trend of bringing better infrastructure to alternative lending markets that until now have been served by spreadsheets and emails.

• Startup: PactFi (New York, NY; founded 2021)

• Investors: 7RIDGE (lead), Vestigo Ventures, and other fintech investors

• Amount Raised: $25M

• Total Raised: ~$25M (excluding seed)

• Funding Stage: Series A

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Ernesta raises $20M in Series B funding to scale custom rug e-commerce platform

Ernesta, a direct-to-consumer custom rug startup, has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Addition to fuel its national expansion. Ernesta was founded in 2022 by John Foley (the former co-founder and CEO of Peloton), along with Hisao Kushi and Yony Feng, with the vision of reinventing how consumers buy rugs. The New York-based company allows customers to order made-to-measure, design-forward rugs that fit their space, rather than settling for standard sizes. Ernesta has developed a tech-enabled supply chain to deliver custom-cut rugs quickly and at accessible prices.

The fresh capital brings Ernesta’s total funding to $57.5 million and will support the rollout of its e-commerce platform across the U.S., as well as investments in marketing and product development (including new materials and styles). The startup has seen strong early demand from design-conscious millennials and Gen Z consumers looking for affordable ways to personalize their homes. Investors are betting that Foley’s team can replicate some of Peloton’s playbook – combining brand storytelling with supply chain innovation – in the home decor sector. With this Series B, Ernesta is positioned to scale up production, form retail partnerships, and make bespoke home furnishings a mainstream option.

• Startup: Ernesta (New York, NY; founded 2022)

• Investors: Addition (lead), with participation from existing and new investors

• Amount Raised: $20M

• Total Raised: $57.5M

• Funding Stage: Series B

• Funding Date: March 11, 2026

Tech Funding Summary Table