Future Nexus

Hi there and welcome to Funded, where we spotlight the early-stage bets on the future of tech. This week, we’re looking at a company betting that the future of voice AI won’t be won by sounding impressive, but by sounding believable. Rime just raised fresh capital to bring more natural conversations to some of the most demanding enterprise environments.

When Adyen talked with more than 200 companies about the coming wave of AI shopping agents, one fear came up in every single conversation: disintermediation. Brands that spend millions building a relationship with a customer do not want an AI agent stepping between them and that customer, turning them into an interchangeable supplier. “They don’t want to be relegated to just being a fulfillment service,” said Karan Katyal, Adyen’s head of agentic commerce.

Open a bank account online today, and you will almost certainly be asked to do the same thing you were asked to do a decade ago. Hold up your driver’s license, take a selfie, and wait. It felt like magic in 2016. Today, it feels like a liability, because the one thing AI has gotten frighteningly good at is faking a picture of a document and a picture of a face.

Mercury’s VP of Product spent a decade at Facebook and WhatsApp learning what makes people trust software. Now he’s applying these lessons to AI-powered banking. At Facebook and WhatsApp, a broken feature costs you a user. In banking, it can cost someone their payroll. Ryan Wiggins spent a decade building consumer products at both companies, before joining as Vice President of Product at Mercury, the business-banking platform popular with startups and small companies.

Last week, we dug into the impact of the changing labor market on fintechs’ strategy. This week bears a fresh report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and alas, the mixed signals continue. The U.S. added just 57,000 jobs last month, the weakest hiring month since February, though unemployment ticked down just a bit from 4.3% to 4.2%. Are employers hesitant to add headcount, or will we see a revival this month? We’re holding our breath to find out.

Hi there and welcome to Funded, where we spotlight the early-stage bets on the future of tech. This week, we’re looking at a company betting that AI’s next role in sales isn’t documenting conversations, it’s helping close deals. Attention has raised a $30 million Series B to grow its AI platform for enterprise sales organizations and accelerate its expansion into larger revenue teams.

What is the moment you first realized “this is broken and I have to fix it”? Before we wrote a line of code at EarnBetter, we found people on Craigslist and manually helped them with resumes, interview preparation, and job searches. One experience that stuck with me was a person who had been rejected for a warehouse role. In a few minutes, we helped them reformat their resume to better highlight their skills and experience.

The labor market has become a study in contradictions. U.S. employers opened 172,000 new jobs in May, at a steady unemployment rate of 4.3 percent, according to the BLS. But long-term unemployment (27+ weeks) has been on the rise since 2023. Anecdotally, we also continue to hear that finding a job has become markedly harder, as layoffs dominate headlines (supposedly in an AI-fueled mania, even as data time and time again reveals this doesn’t tell the full story).

The OCC may have rolled out the welcome mat for bank charter applicants, but this week reminded everyone there’s still a bouncer at the door. Yesterday, the OCC released a statement clarifying the filing decision process for charter applicants. It emphasized, “the OCC may approve, conditionally approve or deny a filing.

With nearly a half-century in operation, and the experience only successful founders can bring, Matrix has a history of backing winners. The seven-person VC firm, which has raised $800 million through 12 rounds, bet early on Apple, FedEx and Canva. Matrix focuses on early-stage, preseed to Series A companies. Partner Matt Brown said they’re also picky.