Joyce Shen’s picks: musings and readings in AI/ML, August 17, 2026
📌 Musings and Readings
“Fields Medalist Terence Tao on Artificial Intelligence and Why We Do Math” (Link)
“Stripe will reportedly acquire AI gateway startup OpenRouter for $7B+” (Link)
“Consumers warm up to agentic AI purchases” (Link)
NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and NeMo Switchyard for Agentic AI (Overview and Benchmarking)
Amazon Quick for Microsoft 365: Agentic AI (Link)
A Year in LLM Serving: Workload Evolution, Caching and Load-Balancing (Technical Paper)
👏 Deals
Balance Theory, a Columbia, MD-based company providing a cybersecurity spend-management solution, has raised $19m in series A funding.
Harmony, a NYC-based company building AI-native enterprise service management, has raised $34m in seed funding.
Bloom Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based company focused on AI security, has raised $20m in seed funding.
Actualyze, a CA-based company focused on AI infrastructure, has raised $7m in seed funding.
Foundational Industries, a NYC-based company building the AI-enabled manufacturing solution, has raised $25m in seed funding.
Aavalynx, a London, UK-based company focused on dispute resolution, has raised £1.5m in pre-seed funding.
Reimagine Robotics, a London, UK-based robotics company, has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-seed funding.
Delightree, a Denver, CO-based company building an AI operating system, has raised $25m in funding.
Maximum, a Miami, FL-based company building an autonomous engineering solution, has raised $30m in seed funding.
Decade, a São Paulo, Brazil-based company providing an AI-powered wealth management platform, has raised $85m in seed funding.
Shelfmark, a Pittsburgh, PA-based company offering an industrial AI platform, has raised $3.5m in seed funding.
Pinegap, a NYC-based company building an AI-powered equity research solution, has raised $8m in series A funding.
Conmeet, a Borken, Germany-based company developing an AI-powered business management solution for construction and trade companies, has raised $6.8m in funding.
Visoid, an Oslo, Norway-based AI startup developing an AI-powered architectural visualization platform, has raised $2.5m in funding.
Blaze.tech, a CA-based company building a no-code application development solution for healthcare organizations, has raised additional funding.
Bios Life, a Boston, MA-based company offering a cancer care solution leveraging genomic, clinical, and lifestyle data to enable personalized risk assessment, early detection, and continuous surveillance, has raised $25m in seed funding.
Corma, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based cybersecurity company developing specialized AI models for autonomous defensive cybersecurity, has raised $60m in seed funding.
Axle, a NYC-based company building an AI-powered insurance data solution that automates policy verification, data extraction, and continuous coverage monitoring for businesses, has raised $17.5m in series A funding.
Legio, a Toronto, Canada-based company providing a safety and security operations solution that automates incident management, dispatch, patrols, investigations, and regulatory compliance for campus and healthcare security teams, has raised $5m in seed funding.
STRGY AI Oy, a Helsinki, Finland-based company that helps businesses translate strategic priorities into actionable plans with the help of AI technologies, has raised €1m in angel funding.
Diald, a CA-based company building an AI-powered real estate due diligence and underwriting solution, has raised $1m in funding.
Mindgard, A Boston, MA and London, UK-based AI cybersecurity company that identifies and mitigates real-world threats to AI models and applications, has raised $30m in series A funding.
Agent Energy, a Houston, TX-based energy technology company building an AI-powered solution that optimizes and monetizes distributed backup power assets for commercial and industrial customers, has raised $11m in seed funding.
