Seed stage funding on the rise for Al-based startups

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCEBASED startups across sectors such as healthcare, logistics, energy, fashion and others are witnessing a growth in pre-seed and seed-stage funding.

- PADMINI DHRUVARAJ

According to data sourced from Tracxn, AI-based startups in the above sectors have already raised $6.7 million as seed and pre-seed funding in just two investment rounds. This marks a significant increase from the $8.6 million raised by such firms across 10 rounds in 2023.

The data further showed that so far in 2024, AI-related startups in total have raised $13.7 million in three rounds against $1.2 billion across rounds and categories this year. The AI-based startups raised $11.7 million in the quarter ended March across two rounds, a whopping 1,362% sequential increase from $0.8 million bagged in two rounds during October-December.

"We're basically seeing seed funding and pre-seed funding inclination towards companies that offer AI as service as people are now looking for a technological intervention in almost all aspects of their lives," Yagnesh Sanghrajka, founder and chief financial officer of 100X.VC said.

Incidentally, the top three deals made in 2024 were to AI-based startups. Attentive AI, a company that provides software as a service (SaaS) and AI-based mapping products for delivering actionable insights to businesses, bagged $7 million in its Series A round led by Vertex Ventures.