Welcome to this week’s edition of Seed Watch, a featured segment of the Market Insyte Digest spotlighting standout Pre-Seed and Seed funding activity across the global startup ecosystem.
In this edition, we highlight innovative startups tackling critical challenges—from kidney health to cloud infrastructure—that successfully closed substantial early-stage funding rounds.
Read our roundup of the top 3 startups that secured the highest funding this week and see what’s driving investor interest across sectors.
Startup Name: Renasant Bio
Industry: Healthtech
Region: United States
Amount (USD): $54.5 million
The problem it is solving: Renasant Bio is tackling autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), a rare and currently underserved condition characterised by cyst formation in the kidneys, which progressively impairs kidney function. Existing treatments are limited and only modestly effective, with one main drug (Jynarque) on the market and others having failed in clinical trials.
What the Funds Will Be Spent On: The funds will support preclinical development of a new class of drugs—correctors and potentiators—aimed at fixing the faulty ion channels that drive ADPKD. Renasant plans to advance its lead small molecule candidate into clinical trials within the next few years and develop complementary therapies to prevent cyst formation and growth.
Startup Name: Arago
Industry: Computing
Region: France
Amount (USD): $26 million
The problem it is solving: AI adoption is growing rapidly, but it comes with massive energy consumption and heat generation challenges. Current GPUs are increasingly unsustainable for long-term AI scale. Arago aims to tackle this by revolutionising AI compute infrastructure with a photonic processor that uses light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) to dramatically reduce energy use and heat.
What the Funds Will Be Spent On: Accelerating development of its “JEF” photonic AI chip. Commercialisation of the processor. Team expansion in France, North America, and Israel. Business partnerships to support scaling.
Startup Name: Datafy Inc
Industry: Cloud Infrastructure
Region: United States
Amount (USD): $20 million
The problem it is solving: Enterprises often face excessive and inefficient cloud storage costs, especially with growing data needs from AI and other data-intensive workloads. Existing FinOps and automation tools only offer recommendations, leaving companies to manually right-size storage, which is time-consuming and prone to inefficiencies.
What the Funds Will Be Spent On: Expand operations in the U.S. Enhance Datafy’s autonomous optimisation engine. Grow its partner ecosystem. Build more advanced real-time, zero-downtime storage optimization solutions.