The Venture Codex

Led · Series C · Jul 2026

BusinessNext develops an autonomous banking platform that uses AI agents to automate customer-facing banking workflows while keeping sensitive data on private AI infrastructure to meet regulatory and privacy requirements. The company says AI was built into its platform from the outset and it rewrote its stack and rebranded from CRMNext in 2022 to put AI at the core. BusinessNext is profitable, employs more than 1,300 people, and generated about $32 million in revenue in its latest financial year. It serves over 70 banks across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the U.S., including the Reserve Bank of India, State Bank of India and HDFC Bank. About half of its revenue comes from overseas markets, which the company expects to drive future growth. The ServiceNow investment is intended to accelerate BusinessNext’s international expansion by leveraging ServiceNow’s global sales and go-to-market capabilities.

Participated · Series B · May 2026

OpenRouter operates as middleware between developers and more than 300 open-source and proprietary large language models, offering a unified API that lets developers compare quality, price, and latency and dynamically route tasks to different models. The platform charges a percentage service fee when developers purchase credits to run models, generating revenue that the article reports has grown from about $10 million annualized in October to over $50 million annualized currently. Founded in 2023, the company enables multi-model architectures by allowing applications to call different models for different task types and supports developers in optimizing cost and performance. The article highlights OpenRouter's neutral positioning and broad model coverage as competitive advantages versus cloud providers and startups that may favor their own models. It faces competition from cloud giants offering multi-model access and startups like PortKey, and must manage neutrality and supplier relationships as it scales. The company is positioned as addressing developer demand for simpler multi-model orchestration amid growing AI application complexity.

Participated · Series E · May 2026

Sigma is built on the cloud data warehouse and provides a governed workspace that supports a spreadsheet interface, SQL, Python, and native AI to let teams explore live data, build applications, and automate workflows without moving data. The company emphasizes secure, warehouse-native architecture and has launched products including Sigma Agents (no-code agents), Sigma Assistant (an AI copilot), Sigma Data Modeling Skills for AI Agents, and the Sigma MCP Server for governed answers into AI chat assistants. Sigma reported strong financial momentum, surpassing $200 million in ARR in April 2026, achieving 100%+ year-over-year growth in the latest fiscal year, and adding over 1.1 million new active users in that period. It serves more than 2,000 customers worldwide, including large enterprises and AI innovators. The announcement originated from Sigma's San Francisco office and framed the company as driving adoption of agentic analytics and AI workflows while emphasizing governance, reliability, and security.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2026

Novaworks is positioning itself as an AI-native HCM operating system built on the ServiceNow platform to manage a modern, agentic workforce of employees, contractors, and AI agents. The company claims to embed AI directly into enterprise workflows to create a unified operating model for total workforce management. Novaworks was co-founded by Kelley Steven-Waiss and Eswar Vandanapu, and its leadership includes Chief Product Officer Melanie Lougee, a veteran of Workday, ServiceNow, Gartner, Oracle, and PeopleSoft. The founders previously built Hitch Works, which ServiceNow acquired in 2022. Novaworks is marketing itself as a next-generation alternative to legacy HR systems designed for a static workforce. Following its seed financing, the company plans to accelerate product development, hire more staff, and expand its customer base. The company’s current disclosed external financing is the $8 million seed round led by Stalwart Ventures with participation from ServiceNow Ventures and Bell Ventures.

Participated · Series C · Jan 2026

Deepgram operates a speech and voice AI platform positioned as infrastructure for developers and enterprises rather than a consumer app. Its platform powers over 200,000 developers and 1,400 organizations, and has processed more than 50,000 years of audio, transcribing over a trillion words. The company has seen rapid APAC growth, with a 96% year‑on‑year increase in API requests and presence in more than 20 APAC markets covering multiple regional languages and dialects. Deepgram plans to open an Asia‑Pacific headquarters in Singapore and expand local sales, support, and low‑latency inference infrastructure to better serve regulated industries and reduce latency. The firm has emphasized low‑latency inference and localized language expertise as key differentiators against large cloud providers and other speech specialists.