Generated: May 10, 2026

Criteria: AI companies that raised < $15M between May 2025 and May 2026

Source: Public news coverage (TechCrunch, Fortune, Crunchbase, Yale Ventures, GeekWire, etc.)

Summary

11 AI startups identified that raised under $15M in the last 12 months. List skews toward seed and pre-seed rounds across AI agents, vertical SaaS (healthcare, construction, finance), recruiting, security, and consumer AI.

1. Era

• Funding: $9M seed (Apr 2026); $11M total (incl. $2M pre-seed)
• Sector: AI hardware / gadgets platform
• What they do: Software platform / orchestration layer for AI gadgets — over 130 LLMs from 14+ providers powering glasses, jewelry, home speakers, etc.
• Investors: Abstract Ventures, BoxGroup, Collaborative Fund, Mozilla Ventures, Topology Ventures, Betaworks
• HQ: New York
• Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/era-world
• Founders:
  • Liz Dorman, CEO — ex-Humane (AI orchestration), HP. https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizdorman
  • Alex Ollman, CTO — ex-HP (agentic frameworks)
  • Megan Gole, CPO — ex-Sutter Hill, Jony Ive / Sam Altman io project
• News: TechCrunch — Era raises $11M

2. Nava

• Funding: $8.3M seed (Apr 2026)
• Sector: AI agents / fintech / crypto
• What they do: Trust + escrow layer for autonomous AI payments. Verifies agent transactions match user intent before releasing funds. Layer 3 on Arbitrum.