Why Smaller Teams Are Outpacing the Giants

💸 Who Got Funded – Early July 2025

Here’s what’s moving money in the first half of July—and what you should take away from it:

🔥 Hume AI – $50M Series B
Emotionally intelligent AI voice interface startup
→ Why funded: Strategic partnerships (e.g. with major healthcare providers) show clear vertical traction.

🧬 Centivax – $45M Series A
Vaccine development using computational biology
→ Why funded: Deep IP and biotech tailwinds = long-horizon capital confidence.

🧠 Gradient Labs – $13M Series A
Tooling for fast ML deployment
→ Why funded: Dev tools that streamline AI adoption are riding a tailwind with engineering-light teams.

🔐 Castellum.AI – $8.5M Series A
Sanctions compliance + AML automation
→ Why funded: Regulatory tech has clear urgency—and fast-growing data sets make AI the obvious unlock.

📊 Layer – $6.6M Seed
Workflow management for hybrid teams
→ Why funded: Still a massive gap in how distributed teams collaborate deeply and transparently.

📉 Ryft Data – $8M Seed
Real-time AI search infra
→ Why funded: Fast-moving data teams need speed and cost savings. This is ROI-first AI.

💡 What this tells us:
Investors are backing specialized AI infrastructure, sector-specific execution, and startups that bridge compliance, coordination, and complexity. Founders who tell a focused, fast-path-to-impact story are winning.

🧠 Insight from Our AI Roundtables:

The Enemy of Strategic Transformation? Short-Term Thinking.

We’re seeing it again and again:
Startups—especially those with larger, older teams—are stuck in cycles of short-term wins and long-term decay.

Here’s what’s going wrong:

• Teams prioritize minor experiments over transformative initiatives

• The org says it wants “innovation,” but punishes bold moves that aren’t instant hits

• Leaders default to “what worked last time” instead of designing what’s needed next

Meanwhile, leaner, more focused teams with a shared strategy are catching up—and in some cases, overtaking.

💡 Your takeaway:
If you don’t create space and structure for long-horizon thinking, you’ll end up building only what's urgent—not what’s important.

⚙️ Founder Framework: Long-Term, Fast-Move Execution

Want to be both strategic and fast? Here’s what high-performing founders are doing:

1. Set dual-speed tracks: One for short-term growth ops, one for long-term infrastructure or strategic bets. Fund both—track separately.

2. Define “reimagination” projects clearly: Don’t just say “AI initiative”—define scope, owner, timeline, and success indicators.

3. Bring in fast-moving operators (even external): Internal alignment takes time. Outside consultants who know your industry can unblock slow teams.

4. Track throughput, not just outcome: Are teams making decisions fast enough to learn? Or just waiting to avoid being wrong?

🧭 Big Tip of the Week:

Your team doesn’t need more ideas—they need clearer swim lanes.
If everyone’s chasing experiments but no one owns the core system, you don’t have a strategy. You have chaos.

🎯 Want to unlock this at your company?

We’re coaching founders and exec teams on how to:

• Introduce dual-speed execution

• Reboot their strategy rhythms

• Build high-performance cultures without bloating headcount

Reply “STRATEGY” to schedule a 30-minute CEO coaching session.

Thanks for Reading,

Apryl Syed

Founders Edge