AI Startups to Watch (Sep 24): Island, DeepSeek & Lovable
AI startups raised big on September 24, 2026: Island's $400M at $6.4B, Enveda's $311M, Ema's $77M, plus DeepSeek's $1B run rate and Lovable at $600M ARR.
Thursday delivered both ends of the AI startup market at once. A Dallas browser-security company raised $400 million at a $6.4 billion valuation to police rogue AI agents, while a Chinese lab said it runs at a $1 billion annual revenue rate and is raising $7.45 billion. Here are the moves that matter today.
The Day's Bigger Story
DeepSeek: $1B run rate, a $7.45B raise and a Shanghai IPO in preparation
DeepSeek is the Hangzhou lab behind the V4.1-Flash and R-series models, known for selling inference far below US lab prices.
- Round: RMB 50B, about $7.45 billion, second external round
- Lead investor: not disclosed
- Valuation: RMB 500B, about $74 billion post-money
- Total raised to date: never disclosed
CEO Liang Wenfeng told investors the annualized revenue run rate has hit $1 billion, up from under $500 million a few months ago. Part of that came from lifting API prices 2.3x to 4.5x without losing demand. DeepSeek has retained CITIC Securities for a possible listing on Shanghai's STAR Market. Source: Reuters
Why it disrupts: a $74 billion Chinese champion with a $1 billion revenue base is now priced to undercut OpenAI and Anthropic on tokens while funding a domestic IPO narrative.
The Rounds
Island raises $400M at $6.4B to govern AI agents
Island is a Dallas enterprise browser with an "agentic control plane" that decides what employees, apps and AI agents are allowed to touch.
- Round: $400M Series F, led by Evolution Equity Partners, with Sequoia and JPMorgan participating
- Valuation: $6.4 billion post-money
- Total raised: over $1 billion since 2020
The step-ups tell the story: $100M at $1.5B in October 2023, $175M at $3B in April 2024, $250M at nearly $5B in March 2025, then $400M at $6.4B today. The timing is the pitch: this round was framed around enterprises needing to govern agents after a wave of agent-driven security incidents. Source: Island Source: Reuters
Why it disrupts: browser-level agent controls sit in a layer Zscaler, Netskope, Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft do not natively own.
Enveda Biosciences doubles its valuation to $2B with $311M
Enveda is a Boulder, Colorado company founded in 2019 by Viswa Colluru, an early Recursion Pharmaceuticals employee, that mines plants and microbes for medicines instead of synthesizing molecules from scratch.
- Round: $311M Series E, led by Catalio Capital Management, with Iconiq participating
- Valuation: $2 billion, double its valuation 12 months ago
- Total raised: not disclosed; $55M in June 2024 is the last verified round
Enveda has candidates in human trials for severe skin conditions and for maintaining weight loss after patients stop GLP-1 drugs. No AI-discovered drug has FDA approval yet. Source: TechCrunch
Why it disrupts: the GLP-1 maintenance indication points at pharma's most valuable franchise, and a 2x step-up on a pre-approval pipeline is a large bet.
Lovable crosses $600M ARR as vibe coding becomes enterprise budget
Lovable is a Stockholm company that turns prompts into deployed applications.
- Round: no new round today; $400M at a $13.3B valuation in August 2026, after $300M at $6.6B in December 2025
- Investors: Menlo Ventures, CapitalG and the Scaleup Europe Fund
- Total raised: over $700 million in eight months
Co-founder Fabian Hedin, speaking at the HumanX summit in Amsterdam, said annualized revenue is above $600 million, up from roughly $500 million in June, and claimed two-thirds of the Fortune 500 now use the product, naming Microsoft, Nvidia and Deutsche Telekom. His framing of the difference from coding agents: the output is a product, not code. Source: TechCrunch
Why it disrupts: at $600 million ARR it is Europe's strongest answer to the US coding agents, absorbing budget that once bought contracted engineering.
Ema adds $77M to sell "AI Employees" into HR, IT and finance
Ema is a San Francisco company with Bengaluru engineering, founded by former Google VP Surojit Chatterjee, deploying agents that do HR, IT and finance work.
- Round: $77M Series B, led by Bengaluru-based Creaegis
- Valuation: not disclosed, but more than quadrupled from its $50M Series A in 2025
- Total raised: $140 million, with Accel, S32 and Prosus increasing their stakes
Its agents handle more than a million IT service management tickets and a million calls a year across 15 languages. Source: TechCrunch Source: YourStory
Why it disrupts: seat-based SaaS from ServiceNow, Workday and Zendesk, and Indian IT services headcount, are both in the blast radius.
Ando exits stealth with $20M to rebuild team chat for agents
Ando is a team messaging platform from founder Sara Du where AI agents get their own identities and inboxes.
- Round: $20M combined pre-seed and seed, with Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence investing
- Valuation: not disclosed
Ando lets agents browse channels, join conversations without being tagged and message humans unprompted, rather than waiting to be installed as an app. Source: TechCrunch
Why it disrupts: Slack and Teams bolt agents onto architectures where agents are still apps, and Ando, alongside Jack Dorsey's Buzz, is betting that seam is structural.
Startup Snapshot
| Startup | What They Do | Latest Round | Valuation | Key Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek | Frontier LLMs, cheap inference | RMB 50B in progress | About $74B | $1B run rate, IPO prep |
| Island | Agentic control plane for browsers | $400M Series F | $6.4B | Governs what agents may touch |
| Enveda | AI drug discovery from plants | $311M Series E | $2B | GLP-1 maintenance candidate |
| Lovable | Prompt-to-product app building | Prior: $400M Aug 2026 | $13.3B | $600M ARR, product not code |
| Ema | AI Employees for HR, IT, finance | $77M Series B | Undisclosed, 4x | 1M tickets a year handled |
| Ando | Team chat built for agents | $20M pre-seed and seed | Undisclosed | Agents get their own inboxes |
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top AI startups to watch today?
Island raised $400 million at a $6.4 billion valuation, and DeepSeek told investors its annualized revenue has reached $1 billion. Lovable crossed $600 million in ARR, Enveda doubled its valuation to $2 billion, and Ema added $77 million.
Why is DeepSeek's $1 billion revenue run rate important?
It resets the idea that Chinese AI labs cannot monetize, and much of the growth came from raising prices rather than giving tokens away. DeepSeek lifted API prices by up to 4.5x and is raising $7.45 billion at a $74 billion valuation.
Why did Island's valuation jump to $6.4 billion?
Investors are paying for control over AI agents inside large companies after a wave of agent-driven security incidents. Its browser-level control plane manages what employees, applications and agents can access. It has raised over $1 billion since 2020.
Bottom Line
The money is split between two bets: that agentic software compresses headcount, and that whoever governs those agents owns the security budget. More AI startup coverage and yesterday's roundup show how fast both are being priced.
Related reading
If this story matters to you, these earlier editions cover the same ground in more detail:
- AI Startups to Watch (Oct 6): DeepSeek, Vinci & Hadrian
- DeepSeek's $74B Valuation, Perplexity's $30B Round & Nvidia's Big Bet: AI Startups to Watch for September 1, 2026
- Viral AI News (Oct 2): Pi 1.0, DeepSeek & 217-Year Cipher
- AI Startups to Watch (Sep 30): General Intuition & EliseAI
Building an AI agent, automation, or backend workflow? AsaanKaroobar builds custom AI solutions, apps, and digital experiences. Get in touch →
