May 8, 2026

Phia: Recruiting From Social Platforms, Not Shopping Companies

New Intel: Phia is pulling data science talent from the TikTok and Pinterest pool, not the Honey and Shopify pool. Companies recruit against who they think they compete with. The public story is price comparison. The hiring pattern says social commerce.

Phia

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Shopping AI

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Series A

May 8, 2026

Upwind Security: First APAC Beachhead And Quiet Federal Prep

New Intel: Upwind Security is building FedRAMP-ready release processes and opening a Japan technical presence, both ahead of any public announcement. Series A cloud security companies almost never do federal prep this early, so someone there sees a specific opening.

Upwind Security

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Cloud Security

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Series A

May 8, 2026

ElevenLabs: The voice AI label expires this year

New Intel: ElevenLabs is moving beyond voice into image and video generation. That turns it from a voice AI company into a broader AI media platform, which is a much larger market.

ElevenLabs

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Voice AI

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Series D+

May 8, 2026

Deepgram: Working toward models that skip text entirely

New Intel: Deepgram is working on voice models that skip text entirely, going straight from audio-in to audio-out. If it works, today's voice agent stack starts to look slow.

Deepgram

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Voice AI / Speech Recognition

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Series C

May 8, 2026

SolveAI: Occupying the gap between demo-ware and consulting firms

New Intel: SolveAI is positioning between AI code tools and big consulting firms. The bet is that enterprises want production help, not another demo or another services army.

SolveAI

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Enterprise AI

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Series A

May 8, 2026

MeltPlan: Gulf and India before US saturation.

New Intel: MeltPlan is moving into the UAE and India early. For a US construction SaaS company, that suggests either a real founder network edge or slower domestic sales than expected.

MeltPlan

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Construction AI

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Seed

May 8, 2026

Waabi: No Sales Team On Purpose

New Intel: Waabi has no sales team. They route 100% of revenue through Uber Freight and Volvo instead of building enterprise sales. Most AV startups burn a quarter of their Series C on a go-to-market org. Waabi is betting two partnerships.

Waabi

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Autonomous Trucking

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Series C

May 8, 2026

Breaker: Killing LIDAR as a Dependency for Autonomous Navigation

New Intel: Breaker is betting autonomous navigation can work with passive sensors alone. If it scales, competitors using expensive lidar payloads have a cost problem.

Breaker

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Defense Robotics

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Seed

May 8, 2026

Jampack: Programmatic outbound replacing traditional SDR headcount.

New Intel: Jampack is building outbound infrastructure before scaling sales headcount. The bet is that systems-driven pipeline can beat the usual SDR hiring curve at this stage.

Jampack AI

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Wholesale Automation

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Seed

May 8, 2026

World Labs: Bazel Monorepo Signals Google-Scale Ambitions Early

New Intel: World Labs is setting up Bazel monorepo infrastructure unusually early. That is the kind of engineering system you build when you expect a huge, complex org fast.

World Labs

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Spatial AI

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Series D+