Joyce Shen’s picks: musings and readings in AI/ML, April 13, 2026

📌 Musings and Readings

“Why Every AI Coding Assistant Needs a Memory Layer” (Link)

“China moves to bring AI into classrooms in digital push” (Link)

“Gemma 4: Google’s updated open model” (Link)

“Simulate realistic users to evaluate multi-turn AI agents in Strands Evals” (Link)

“Accelerating Deep Learning: How Uber Optimized Petastorm for High-Throughput and Reproducible GPU Training” (Link)

👏 Deals

Miravoice, a CA-based startup providing a solution that automates phone-based surveys and interviews, has raised $6.3m in seed funding.

Noon, a CA-based startup building a product design solution that unifies design and code, has raised $44m in seed funding.

Wearable Robotics, an Italy-based wearable robotics startup for medical rehabilitation and industrial assistance, has raised €5m in series A funding. 

Coastal Measures, an ocean intelligence company building a solution that integrates real-time sensor data and analytics to deliver predictive coastal insights, has raised $1.2m in funding. 

Ridge AI, a Seattle-based company providing self-serve data insights and agents for data infrastructure, has raised $2.6m in pre-seed funding.

Golden Analytics, a Seattle-based company offering a business intelligence platform that uses natural language and automation to turn raw data into insights, has raised $7m in seed funding.

Modus, a NYC-based company building an audit platform that automates workflows, has raised $85m in seed and series A funding.

Trent AI, a London, UK-based startup developing a security platform that helps engineering and security teams safeguard AI agents, has raised $13m in seed funding.

Prism Layer, a Washington, DC–based company providing an enterprise risk management platform that converts institutional risk frameworks and regulatory knowledge into auditable, automated risk assessments, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

Natter, a NYC-based company offering a solution that replaces surveys with scalable conversations, has raised $23m in funding. 

Treon, a Finland-based company developing an industrial IoT platform to digitize physical assets, has raised €6.8m in additional funding.

Handhold, an Estonia-based company building an AI agent platform that automates inbound sales and onboarding with personalized product demos and qualified leads, has raised €3m in seed funding.

Rork, a CA-based AI company that helps create and launch fully functional mobile apps without coding, has raised $15m in seed funding.

Yellow Blue, a Tokyo-based AI startup building a solution that leverages advanced language models to translate and analyze complex documents, has raised $440K in seed funding.