AI Startup Roundup: Snowflake’s $100 Million Startup Fund

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Snowflake’s new $100 million startup fund

Data cloud company Snowflake announced a new program to invest up to $100 million in early-stage startups building Snowflake Native Apps.

The ‘Powered by Snowflake Funding Program’ features venture capital firms such as Amplify Partners, ICONIQ Growth and Menlo Ventures, which will invest in the new companies.

Part of the program will also see startups receive up to $1 million in free Snowflake credits on AWS.

“A new way to deploy enterprise applications is emerging as companies look to bring their apps and application code closer to their data,” said Stefan Williams, vice president of corporate development of Snowflake Ventures at Snowflake. “With our venture capital partners and AWS, the Powered by Snowflake Funding Program will accelerate this new era of software development.”

Funding news

Shield AI

Based in San Diego, California, Shield AI develops AI-powered defense technologies.

Its offerings include AI-powered drones built for battlefield operations and tech to pilot future fighter planes. Chief among them is Hivemind, an AI pilot that enables teams of intelligent aircraft to operate autonomously in high-threat environments.

Latest funding: $200 million, series F

Lead investors: U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, Riot Ventures

Other investors: ARK Invest,  Disruptive, Snowpoint

Funding plans: Shield AI said the funds will be used to scale and deploy its V-BAT Teams drone domestically and internationally as well as to accelerate tech integration with third-party uncrewed platforms.

Rymedi

Based in Greenville, South Carolina, Rymedi offers cloud-based health care record solutions.

The Rymedi platform is designed to remove the friction of paper-filled operations to quickly connect with customers and patients and scale lab processes with higher testing throughput and lower total cost of ownership.

Latest funding: $9 million, series A

Lead investors: RW3 Ventures, White Star Capital

Other investors: Blockchange Ventures, Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund

Funding plans: Rymedi will use the financing to increase data security and health care record accessibility for patients.

Wraithwatch

Newly emerging from stealth, Wraithwatch wants to create cyber defense tools to fight off “a tidal wave of emerging AI-powered cyber weapons.”

Its founders met at SpaceX, the Elon Musk-owned spacecraft manufacturer. They argued that cyber defense teams “are caught in a desperate, infinite loop of being reactive second movers.”

Wraithwatch is looking to leverage large language models to predict and prevent future attacks.

Latest funding: $8 million, seed round

Lead investor: Peter Thiel's Founders Fund

Other investors: XYZ Capital, Human Capital

Funding plans: Wraithwatch is looking for engineers who “share [its] vision to revolutionize the future of cyber defense.”

zeroRISC

Formally launched at the end of October, zeroRISC provides cloud security services for silicon, focusing on data centers and IoT and edge devices.

The Boston-based startup was founded by former Google staff who worked on OpenTitan where they built open source software for the silicon design space.

Latest funding: $5 million, seed round

Lead investors Cambridge Angels

Funding plans: The funding will be used to deliver the first commercial cloud security service for silicon built on the OpenTitan open source silicon root of trust (RoT) project.