Top 10 Most Successful Seed Stage Raises [2023 Report]

The entrepreneurial world is often a harsh one, particularly for businesses in the middle of seed funding. Though crowdfunding, angel investors, accelerators, corporate seed funds, and more all exist to help startups turn from idea to feasible reality, the competition is still incredibly stiff, and many won’t receive the investments required to move forward. However, here are ten recent ones who beat the odds and proved amazingly successful in their seed stage fundraising.?

[Note: These startups have been included because they were able to raise large amounts at seed stage. We are in no way affiliated with them.]

1. Farizon Auto

Total Funding Amount: $300M

Industry: Electric Vehicles, Clean Energy

Year Founded: 2014

Location: Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

Investors: 9

Who They Are: Launched by Geely’s new-energy-focused branch, Farizon Auto is a company that aims to usher in a green revolution by utilizing pure electric and other forms of sustainable power systems to their commercial transportation while laying the groundwork for others to do the same. Thanks to the reputation and industry knowledge of Farizon Auto’s parent company, seed-round investors have been eager to help make this dream possible. Critical investments from Hidden Hill Capital, Yinshan Capital, GLP, and recent additions like Xiangan Longye have added up to over 300 million US dollars, allowing the startup to not only provide proof of concept with a comprehensive fleet of earth-friendly trucks, buses, and LCVs but establish the largest new energy commercial vehicle research institute in all of China.

2. Stability AI

Total Funding Amount: $98.8M

Industry: Artificial Intelligence, Information Technology

Year Founded: 2019

Location: London, England, UK

Investors: 4

Who They Are: Stability AI is a startup founded by Emad Mostaque that develops generative AI tools within the artistic space. Their open AI technologies leverage the power of neural networks to turn users’ text commands into new, exciting open-source images and audio. Their project, Stable Diffusion, is among the most popular of these tools, able to help users construct countless new visual art models from the most photo-realistic to the truly abstract. However, this － along with their other tools － would have never been possible without the funding gained from US technology-focused investment firms like Lightspeed Venture Partners and Fourth Revolution Capital.

3. OatFi

Total Funding Amount: $61.3M

Industry: Finance, Lending

Year Founded: 2021

Location: New York, New York, US

Investors: 9

Who They Are: OatFi is a financial tech startup that provides end-to-end infrastructure for B2B payment solutions, thus allowing capital tools to be embedded directly into a company’s existing platform. This then maximizes cash flow and efficiency for businesses while making consumer purchases easier than ever with options such as “buy now, pay later.” The brainchild of software engineer John Jordan and former Morgan Stanley employee Mike Barbosa, it’s a fresh approach to business-to-business BNPL that’s only set to grow in popularity. Many tech and finance-focused investors seem to agree, funneling $60M+ OatFi’s way over the course of three funding rounds.

4. Rippl Care

Total Funding Amount: $32M

Industry: Health Care, Elder Care

Year Founded: 2021

Location: Seattle, Washington, US?

Investors: 5

Who They Are: Created by Inca Dieterich and Kris Engskov, Rippl Care is a healthcare company committed to helping seniors suffering from age-related neurodegenerative diseases. They seek to pioneer a new model for how to treat/manage mental and cognitive illnesses, harnessing the power of modern technology to expand health services access and ensure every patient receives the personalized care they deserve. Specialized AI and proprietary algorithms play a large role in this, funded in no small part by Google Ventures and Venture Partners, among others.?

5. Endor Labs

Total Funding Amount: $25M

Industry: Open-Source Software

Year Founded: 2021

Location: Palo Alto, California, US

Investors: 14

Who They Are: Endor Labs is a for-profit startup that’s purported to have crafted the first dependency life-cycle management platform capable of maintaining, improving, and protecting open-source software. Intended to address the “weakest link” in such software’s supply chain security, it not only makes end-stage OSS products safer to use but also decreases development time. The software venture － funded by heavy-hitting Google and company execs and engineered by veterans spanning Meta to Microsoft － has enjoyed great success since its 2021 founding, securing 25 million dollars in only two rounds of funding and launching a new Hyperdrive partner program.

6. Telda

Total Funding Amount: $25M

Industry: Banking

Year Founded: 2021

Location: Cairo, Al Qahirah, Egypt

Investors: 4

Who They Are: Founded in April of 2021 by Ahmed Sabbah and Youssef Sholqamy, Telda is a private fintech brand firmly rooted in the here and now rather than in the financial/personal preferences of yesteryear. It’s explicitly designed for millennial and Gen Z Egyptians, utilizing a 100% online experience to simplify and streamline the entire banking process from start to finish. Sending, spending, and saving are as easy as opening an app － no in-person bank runs required. Despite being a relatively new alternative to traditional banking, Telda has garnered solid support from investors and has received over 37,000 downloads in the last month alone.

7. Everstores

Total Funding Amount: $21.6M

Industry: E-Commerce, Commercial Platforms

Year Founded: 2022

Location: Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Investors: 3

Who They Are: Everstores is a European company that uses a next-gen technology platform to take small direct-to-consumer brands to the next level. Its proprietary analytics engine analyzes shop data to identify critical areas of growth, constructs a detailed valuation report, and prepares a final offer for merchants looking to sell. The company is still in relatively early stages, though it has pulled in an impressive 21.6 million USD from three investors: Viola Credit, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Picus Capital.

8. Shardeum

Total Funding Amount: $18.2M

Industry: Cryptocurrency

Year Founded: 2022

Location: Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland

Investors: 28

Who They Are: Cryptocurrency as a whole may have seen better days, yet Shardeum has carved out a great deal of early success for itself in the competitive industry. An earned value management-based smart contract platform and Layer 1 public chain, this recent startup features linear scalability, true decentralization, and delivers a high level of security through the use of dynamic state sharding. It’s a novel solution to a complex problem, but one many blockchain tech firms and crypto groups are happy to invest in. Foresight Ventures, The Spartan Group, Struck Crypto, and a host of individuals are just a few amongst these ranks, securing Shardeum approximately $18.2M in funding.

9. Immerok

Total Funding Amount: $17M

Industry: IT, Cloud Data Services

Year Founded: 2022

Location: Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Investors: 5

Who They Are: Composed of top-tier Apache Flink engineers, Immerok is a new cloud platform that builds upon the aforementioned framework. Meant specifically for large-scale data stream processing, Immerok’s Flink offering allows applications to analyze data (nearly) in real-time while remaining scalable, easy to manage, and fully serverless. After previously raising $17 million from five investors, including Cortical Ventures, the startup was acquired by Confluent for $100 million USD. The acquisition was announced in early January of this year and is currently pending.

10. Magna

Total Funding Amount: $15.2M

Industry: Finance

Year Founded: 2022

Location: San Francisco, California, US

Investors: 23

Who They Are: Another fintech company to come out of 2022, Magna was founded by Bruno Faviero to help businesses equitably distribute tokens and manage their cap tables. The result was Carta for Web3, yet the business has since pushed beyond offering one product and grown into a full-blown DeFi infrastructure provider. Embracing the power of blockchain protocols, Magna’s ultimate goal is to power collateralized lending and build a universal platform where borrowing and lending are genuinely secure. Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, and 21 other investors have contributed funds to move that dream forward, totaling up to $15.2M.?

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