Press Release
Metal Raises $4.5M for AI Capital OS
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Metal has raised $4.5m to-date from a16z, Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Rebel Fund, Gaingels, Indus Valley Capital and others to build the AI-native operating system for founders navigating venture rounds.
In the below post, we are sharing our thesis on the creation of a new category of software, particularly focusing on what we have learned from founders and how we believe infrastructure for private markets will evolve from hereon.
In less than a year of our public launch, Metal is already used by thousands of founders and has consistently grown 30-40% each quarter. Metal has also entered into key partnerships with various founder ecosystems and VC firms in this duration. One such example is Metal for Techstars.
Today, we are sharing our thesis, what we have learned from founders and how we believe private market capital formation will evolve.
Getting Started
With our first startup (Airlift), we raised $120m in venture financing over a three-year period. During that time, we firsthand experienced the inefficiencies and pitfalls of raising venture capital.
With Airlift, over a three-year period, we spoke with ~300 unique investors, primarily through warm introductions. About 80% of these investors were not a fit for our stage, sector, geography and check size at the time when we engaged with them.
At Metal, we have seen the same problem repeat itself time and again. Founders speak with large numbers of investors, many of whom are not particularly relevant to their company or round, and then use those conversations to form conclusions about the broader market.
The fundamental problem isn't access to investor data alone. It is turning that data into company-specific intelligence about which investors matter, why they matter, and when.
We see this most clearly at Pre-seed. Founders frequently hear that they need revenue to raise, even though many Pre-seed investors regularly back pre-revenue companies. The disconnect often comes from speaking with investors whose mandate does not match the company or round — and then using those conversations to draw conclusions about the broader market.
We see the same pattern across stages, sectors and geographies.
In 2024, along with a small team of engineers, we set out to replace the guesswork that goes into venture rounds with data and software. Along the way, as we listened to customers, we came across some powerful insights.
Learning from Early Customers
We learned that fundraising remains defined by significant information asymmetry. Experienced founders and investors accumulate context that is rarely captured in software: how to approach specific investors, how to position a company in early conversations, and which relationship pathways are most effective.
We learned that it remains incredibly hard for founders to identify the “most likely” investors for their specific company and round. Traditional venture databases provide valuable foundational data, but filters around sector, stage, geography and check size alone cannot capture the context required to determine which investors are most relevant.
Ultimately, we learned that founders need an intelligence and execution layer that combines data and software to increasingly automate core fundraising workflows — from identifying relevant investors and determining how best to reach them to managing communications throughout and beyond a raise.
Metal’s Core Thesis
Our core thesis is that the defining infrastructure for capital formation will be an investor memory layer: a continuously evolving intelligence layer that understands investors deeply enough to power downstream workflows for founders.
Metal’s understanding of investors allows the platform to bring greater precision to downstream workflows including investor discovery, relationship intelligence, pre meeting preparation, post meeting insights, communications, pipeline management and investor relations.
As founders use Metal, the platform develops a richer understanding of both the company and the investors relevant to it. This allows Metal's recommendations and workflows to become increasingly personalized over the course of a raise. Each additional workflow creates new context that strengthens the underlying intelligence layer, allowing the platform to improve as usage grows.
By embedding accumulated investor intelligence directly into fundraising workflows, Metal allows founders to spend less time navigating the mechanics of a raise and more time building their companies. As usage grows, the intelligence underlying these workflows becomes increasingly valuable.
Fundraising is only the first part of the company-investor relationship. Last month, Metal launched Investor Relations, our first product extending the platform beyond an active raise. This represents an important step in our broader ambition: turning software that founders initially adopt while raising capital into infrastructure they continue using throughout the company-investor lifecycle.
Capital Formation in Private Markets
We believe fundraising in private markets is increasingly becoming a data and software problem. As the underlying intelligence improves, more of the administrative work involved in running a round can move from founders to software.
Metal Autopilot is our first step toward that future: using Metal's intelligence layer to automate more of the operational work surrounding a raise, while founders remain in control of investor relationships and financing decisions.
In the years ahead, we believe the software surrounding private-company capital formation will become increasingly connected. Fundraising, investor relations and ownership infrastructure have historically existed as separate workflows, despite representing different stages of the same underlying relationship between companies and their investors.
As these systems become more intelligent, information created at one stage of the company-investor relationship can play an important role in improving workflows elsewhere in the lifecycle.
We believe capital formation is emerging as a distinct software category in private markets.
Private-market software has historically built powerful systems of record across investor data, ownership and administrative infrastructure. We believe the next major opportunity is to build an intelligence and execution layer on top of that foundation — helping companies determine what to do and increasingly automating the workflows required to do it.
Over time, we expect these layers to become increasingly interconnected, with systems of record, market data and proprietary intelligence reinforcing one another.
Metal is building the intelligence and execution layer for that transition.
Leading The Shift
As of today, Metal has already automated major chunks of the raise process with data and software. The era whereby founders search for investors via databases, LinkedIn posts and manual search is behind us.
Today, Metal ranks relevant venture investors for each company and surfaces the factors driving those recommendations, turning what was historically a manual research process into an increasingly automated workflow. The output delivered far exceeds what most humans can build in a spreadsheet over a two-month time horizon.
In the months ahead, Metal is extending this intelligence into relationship intelligence and outreach — helping founders identify the strongest relationship paths and outreach strategies for reaching relevant investors.
We believe proprietary intelligence will become a foundational layer of private-market capital formation. Equipped with the right context, AI can increasingly automate workflows that have historically depended on manual research, fragmented information and accumulated institutional knowledge.
We believe this transition will fundamentally change how companies and investors interact across the capital lifecycle. Our ambition at Metal is to lead this transition.
In 2024, along with a small team of engineers, we set out to replace the guesswork that goes into venture rounds with data and software. Along the way, as we listened to customers, we came across some powerful insights.