Metal, the high-precision fundraising platform for startup founders, has launched Raise Agent, an AI-powered copilot built to handle the parts of fundraising that used to eat up a founder's calendar. Renamed from its earlier version, Richard AI, Raise Agent now runs on two modes: Ask Mode and Agent Mode, with Agent Mode rolling out in August 2026 and further updates to the experience expected on the site soon. The launch targets a specific moment in a founder's raise: the research, list-building, and outreach work that sits between "who should I pitch" and "I'm in a meeting," work Metal says the agent can now compress from months into minutes.

Why Metal Built Raise Agent

Founders raising a round typically lose weeks to manual work: identifying investors, checking whether they're a fit, finding a warm path in, then drafting the outreach itself. Metal built Raise Agent to sit on top of its investor and user memory layers and automate that sequence directly. A Metal team member described Agent Mode as functioning like a plan mode for fundraising: it plans an end-to-end workflow, then executes it, rather than requiring a founder to manage each step by hand. Ask Mode takes a lighter touch, proposing workflow options a founder can choose from before anything runs.

Inside Raise Agent's Toolkit

Raise Agent identifies, qualifies, and ranks investors using Metal's proprietary investor memory layer, then goes deeper on any investor a founder flags for more research. From there, it surfaces warm introduction paths, drafts the introduction requests themselves, and analyzes a founder's existing fundraising pipeline. The workflow runs in five steps: a founder describes the task in natural language, confirms the proposed workflow, configures each step, reviews the plan, and lets the agent execute it. Raise Agent also connects to Claude and ChatGPT through a Fundraising MCP, so founders can pull fundraising data into tools they're already using without switching apps.

What Early Users Are Saving

The clearest signal so far is time. Max Ade, Founder and CEO of Pickleheads, said his team saved significant time and effort using Metal to identify well-suited investors with a clear path to introductions, which let them prioritize outreach instead of building lists from scratch. Pickleheads went on to raise $750,000 from investors including Overline VC, Boardroom TV, and Ardent VC. That outcome tracks with what Raise Agent is built to do: replace the manual research phase of a raise with a filtered, ranked list a founder can act on immediately, then hand off the outreach drafting as well.

What Founders Are Saying About Metal’s Raise Agent

Ade's account is the clearest on-record read on Raise Agent so far: "We've saved significant time and effort by using Metal to identify well-suited investors with a clear path to introductions, helping us prioritize our outreach." It's a founder describing a specific before-and-after, not a generic endorsement, and it lines up with the core claim behind the launch: that Raise Agent's Ask Mode and Agent Mode structure gives founders a choice between guided suggestions and full automation, depending on how much of the process they want to hand off.

Why Raise Agent Fits Where Founders Are Raising

Raise Agent extends the same infrastructure behind Metal's broader Autopilot platform, backed by Y Combinator and built through Andreessen Horowitz's Speedrun program, a pedigree that matters to the pre-seed through Series B founders Metal serves across B2B SaaS, fintech, AI, healthtech, and climate or deep tech. For founders already using Metal's Investor Patterns and Building Access to find and reach investors, Raise Agent adds a layer that acts on that data directly, drafting and executing the next step rather than leaving it to the founder. That combination, proprietary investor data paired with an agent that can run with it, is what the Ask Mode and Agent Mode launch is meant to deliver.