# Stitch’s Series A, Vertical AI Standouts, and the New AI Infrastructure Squeeze

*By VC Tech Radar • May 15, 2026*

Stitch led the funding news, while YC and indie builders surfaced credible vertical AI teams in fintech, healthcare, construction, and internal operations. The strongest macro signals centered on data-center politics, open-source geopolitics, and where value may accrue as software shifts toward reasoning layers above systems of record.

## 1) Funding & Deals

- **Stitch** raised a **$25M Series A** led by **a16z**, with Arbor, COTU, Raed, and SVC participating; a16z said it is the firm's first investment in Saudi Arabia [^1][^2]. Stitch is building an API-first operating system for financial institutions that unifies ledgers, primitives, and workflows, and a16z frames it as a next-generation global fintech infrastructure company [^2][^1][^2]. Reported operating data: more than **$5B** transacted in the last six months, with customer count up **10x** and revenue up **20x** in 2025 [^2].

- **Furientis** launched with a **$5M pre-seed** to build next-generation interceptor missiles optimized for scalability, rapid iteration, design simplicity, and low cost [^3]. The market case is explicit: current U.S. systems use roughly **$4M missiles** to intercept **$40k drones**, with only about **200 interceptors** delivered annually [^4]. Founders are **Brody Franzen** and **Aris Simsarian** [^4].

- **Flick** raised **$6M** for AI-native filmmaking tools and says **14 filmmakers** have already produced **13 films** on the platform [^5]. The founding team pairs filmmaker **Zoey Zhang** with Instagram Stories founding engineer **Rui Cromwell**; backers include True Ventures, GV, YC, Lightspeed, Pioneer Fund, Formosa Capital, Olive Tree, and N1 [^5]. Garry Tan called it one of the best new creative startups of the year [^6].

## 2) Emerging Teams

- **PLAN0** turns architectural plans into construction cost estimates and analytics in minutes, and says **$20B** of projects have already run through the platform [^7]. Founders: **@abaratiiii**, **Shervin**, and **Dimitris** [^7].

- **Gigacatalyst** lets software companies ship missing product features by talking to an AI. The early signal is strong: in just **6 weeks**, it helped customers unblock **$1M** in pipeline and ship **800 features** [^8]. Founder: **@namanyayg** [^8].

- **Clara** is an AI-powered primary care doctor that reads a patient's medical history, diagnoses, and treats, with licensed clinicians reviewing every decision [^9]. The pedigree matters: the team previously built **Circle Medical** to nearly **1 million visits per year** [^9]. Founders are **George Favvas**, **Zeeshan**, and **Caitlin** [^9].

- **Astraea** automates clinical trial biometrics, turning raw study data into **CDISC-compliant datasets, TFLs, and FDA-ready outputs in days** [^10]. It targets a specialized drug-development workflow with heavy formatting and submission requirements. Founders: **@joshwqngsr** and **Sanmay** [^10].

- Outside YC, **Runik AI** reported early product-usage signals worth noting. The product builds a business system from conversation in under five minutes [^11], and two weeks after launch it had **28 signups**, **12 active businesses**, and **12,000+ operations** across industries such as construction, poultry farming, auto parts, HR, and software project management [^11]. It also added WhatsApp-based data queries and a Claude MCP connector, and the founder says the more important signal is that users were running real workflows without training [^11][^12].

- Other YC vertical-software launches in the batch include **TakeCareOS** for home-care agency back-office automation and **Auxos** for simulated customer decision testing across messaging, pricing, and positioning [^13][^14].

## 3) AI & Tech Breakthroughs

- A notable technical release in the batch is **Datadog's Toto 2.0**. The company released a family of open-weight time-series foundation models from **4M to 2.5B parameters** under Apache 2.0, and said each size outperforms the last using a single hyperparameter configuration while leading the **BOOM**, **GIFT-Eval**, and **TIME** benchmarks [^15]. Clément Delangue framed the larger implication as time-series models finally getting predictable scaling laws similar to language and vision, linking compute, data, parameters, and downstream performance [^15].

- **PerfectBit** is attacking training data quality at the source. Its data is designed to be correct by construction and verified against physics simulators, scientific databases, and formal proof systems for **LLMs, robotics, and AI for Science** [^16]. The technical idea is to ground training data in external verification rather than post-hoc filtering [^16].

- **ArcGate** is a useful security pattern for agent builders. Its LangChain callback blocks prompt injection by treating the problem as unauthorized instruction-authority transfer, meaning webpages, emails, tool outputs, and retrieved documents can provide data but cannot override agent instructions [^17]. The implementation is one-line to test [^17], and community feedback already points to real-world issues such as nested-encoding bypasses and false-positive risk on legitimate user input [^18][^19].

## 4) Market Signals

- **AI infrastructure is becoming a permitting and power story, not just a capex story.** Garry Tan highlighted a federal bill from Sanders and AOC to pause AI data center construction, plus **300+ local bills** that he says are putting half of planned **2026** data centers at risk of delay or cancellation [^20]. He linked that debate to large local economic multipliers, citing **4.7M total jobs** nationally in 2023, a **7.5x employment multiplier**, and Brookings estimates of **2,000-4,000 jobs** per county from a single large data center [^21][^22]. In separate commentary, he argued that blaming data centers obscures deeper grid and baseload policy problems [^23].

- **Open-source AI's center of gravity may be shifting east.** Clément Delangue said China is now the strongest open-source contributor and that many U.S. startups and academic groups are already using Chinese open models such as DeepSeek, Qwen, and Kimi [^24]. In parallel, Suhail flagged that China is allocating up to **72K GPUs each** to **10 companies**, a sign of more coordinated compute buildup [^25]. Delangue also warned that, if there is a bubble, it may be in API-distributed closed-source LLMs given aggressive data-center buildouts and uncertain long-term margins [^24].

- **The GTM stack is being reframed around a system of intelligence.** a16z's thesis is that the next valuable layer sits above the database: a reasoning layer that pulls from systems of record via APIs, becomes the user's one-stop place for context and action, and may capture most of the next decade's enterprise value in GTM software [^26].

- **Voice AI already looks overbuilt at the wrapper layer.** An operator on a voice AI platform says they tracked **40+ launches** in the last year, with most either stalled or shut down [^27]. Their takeaway: durable winners go deep on a specific vertical and operational integrations, while weak wrappers get displaced quickly and can see brutal churn after a single bad call [^27]. The more attractive wedge may be tooling for the wrappers themselves, including evals, analytics, compliance, and voice ops [^27].

- **AI referral traffic is becoming measurable earlier than many founders realize.** Zen Reports says it has crossed **200 connected GA4 properties**, and the median tracked site gets more traffic from **Perplexity** than from **Bing** [^28].

## 5) Worth Your Time

- **[From System of Record to System of Intelligence](https://www.a16z.news/p/from-system-of-record-to-system-of)** — the clearest essay in the batch on how value may migrate from legacy systems of record to reasoning layers above them [^26].

- **[Data center NIMBYs are killing $1T in AI infrastructure](https://garryslist.org/posts/data-center-nimbys-are-killing-1-trillion-in-ai-infrastructure)** — worth reading alongside today's infrastructure debate if you want the investor case that local permitting is becoming a strategic AI constraint [^29][^20].

- **20VC on parallel agents and compute consolidation** — the best clip in the batch for the combined demand-side and supply-side view: token growth could scale far above consensus as workflows move from sequential usage to parallel agents, while frontier labs continue locking up scarce capacity [^30].


[![Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN](https://img.youtube.com/vi/LsqnQqhbSrU/hqdefault.jpg)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=LsqnQqhbSrU&t=963)
*Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN (16:03)*


- **Pax Silica on the Philippines industrial base** — useful if you are tracking non-chip bottlenecks in the AI supply chain, especially reducers, motors, rare earth magnets, actuators, and robotics inputs [^31].


[![Pax Silica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Tech Strategy with Jacob Helberg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/xjlYpGaxIPA/hqdefault.jpg)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=xjlYpGaxIPA&t=77)
*Pax Silica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Tech Strategy with Jacob Helberg (1:17)*


- **[Clément Delangue on open source and robotics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqtJrXWu14k)** — useful for investors thinking about open-source geopolitics and early distribution in robotics; Delangue argues China now leads open-source contributions and says Hugging Face has shipped almost **10,000** Ricci Mini robots with **300+ apps** already built [^24].

---

### Sources

[^1]: [𝕏 post by @MoOueida](https://x.com/MoOueida/status/2054808363494510644)
[^2]: [𝕏 post by @a16z](https://x.com/a16z/status/2054811331635920931)
[^3]: [𝕏 post by @brody_franzen](https://x.com/brody_franzen/status/2054917594759520340)
[^4]: [𝕏 post by @lpolovets](https://x.com/lpolovets/status/2054957371340804477)
[^5]: [𝕏 post by @flickartHQ](https://x.com/flickartHQ/status/2054951575492378672)
[^6]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2054991058430500871)
[^7]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2054939805147168794)
[^8]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2054962444607652196)
[^9]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2055015294788411732)
[^10]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2055045498730430736)
[^11]: [r/SideProject post by u/Ambitious_Muffin_475](https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1tdn410/)
[^12]: [r/SideProject comment by u/Ambitious_Muffin_475](https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1tdn410/comment/olwem6m/)
[^13]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2055000190873120925)
[^14]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2054971250762465784)
[^15]: [𝕏 post by @ClementDelangue](https://x.com/ClementDelangue/status/2054991352295731619)
[^16]: [𝕏 post by @ycombinator](https://x.com/ycombinator/status/2055030395356504338)
[^17]: [r/artificial post by u/Turbulent-Tap6723](https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1tdedmo/)
[^18]: [r/artificial comment by u/Mammoth-Hawk6396](https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1tdedmo/comment/olupkvr/)
[^19]: [r/artificial comment by u/Emerald-Bedrock44](https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1tdedmo/comment/oluqpow/)
[^20]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2054904105018237125)
[^21]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2054947495613211081)
[^22]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2054947493839097926)
[^23]: [𝕏 post by @saeverley](https://x.com/saeverley/status/2055004154222014961)
[^24]: [The Hugging Face CEO on Releasing Models Open Source | MTS Live](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqtJrXWu14k)
[^25]: [𝕏 post by @Suhail](https://x.com/Suhail/status/2054931965061783802)
[^26]: [𝕏 post by @a16z](https://x.com/a16z/status/2054933319939424705)
[^27]: [r/SaaS post by u/DeshMamba](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1tdju14/)
[^28]: [r/EntrepreneurRideAlong post by u/Scarletrouge9](https://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/1tcx21o/)
[^29]: [𝕏 post by @garrytan](https://x.com/garrytan/status/2055092783095112002)
[^30]: [Anthropic Buys Compute From Elon & Commits $200BN to Google | Cerebras IPO | Ramp Raises at $40BN](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsqnQqhbSrU)
[^31]: [Pax Silica: Inside the Trump Administration’s Tech Strategy with Jacob Helberg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjlYpGaxIPA)