Kita bets AI can read messy loan documents; $4.5M seed, $130M processed
Stanford friends Limcaoco and Malhotra built Kita to turn crumpled payslips and handwritten bank records into credit signals for lenders.
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2,072 PUBLISHED CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDBeeX bets autonomous drones can replace divers and ROVs for subsea inspection
NUS-born BeeX builds hovering autonomous underwater vehicles that inspect subsea assets at up to 50% lower cost; $7.7M Series A closed 2026.
Read the caseKeystone's AI Engineer Bet: Founder Turns Down Acquisition, Open-Sources
Keystone (YC S25) bets AI fixes production bugs; had customers, turned down acquisition, renamed Proliferate, open-sourced.
Read the caseCalendly: Profitable for 7 Years, Raised at $3B in 2021
Founded in 2013 with savings, Calendly was profitable from 2016, hit $70M revenue in 2020, and raised $350M at $3B in 2021.
Read the caseSerbiz bets AI guides turn SEA's side-hustle culture into a gig marketplace
Gen Z founders hit 80,000 users in the Philippines, then 30,000 in Vietnam in four weeks with no paid ads; Antler Vietnam backs the AI gig marketplace
Read the caseJahez bet Saudi-owned delivery could beat global apps; first startup on Nomu, $2.4B IPO
Saudi food-delivery app with its own courier fleet raised $36M, rode COVID demand, and listed as the Kingdom's first startup IPO at a ~$2.4B market cap.
Read the caseAcrab bets agentic AI runs at the edge; $480M+ raised since 2024 stealth start
Singapore startup founded 2024 by an ex-Arm China co-CEO raises $130M Series B for edge AI silicon; cumulative funding tops $480M.
Read the caseNox Metals bets software-first metal service can win US reshoring; $11.5M seed
YC S25 alum Nox Metals runs a Detroit aluminum service center like a software company — AI-optimized cuts, instant quotes — and raised an $11.5M seed.
Read the caseKitopi's cloud-kitchen bet: SoftBank unicorn, dine-in pivot, then profitability by 2026
Dubai's 2018 bet on multi-brand ghost kitchens drew a $715M Series C and unicorn status, then a pivot to physical stores — and profit.
Read the caseInVision's $2B design-collaboration bet ended in a 2024 shutdown as Figma ate the market
The prototyping pioneer that hit a $2B valuation lost the design-tool race to Figma and shut its platform down on December 31, 2024.
Read the caseCifrato bets AI agents can automate Colombia's accounting firms; $1M ARR in a year
Bogotá startup replaces manual bookkeeping with AI agents wired to DIAN's e-invoicing; YC Winter 2025, >$1M seed, $1M ARR in under 12 months.
Read the casePicSee's AI photo-barter bet dies in 9 months; Koo founder returns 65% of ₹33 Cr
AI face-matching photo-sharing app launched Oct 2025, shut July 2026: retention was strong, but acquiring whole friend networks never scaled.
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