Pendants, Pepper, Primetime
$500M for Quince, $200M for AI code verification, voice-only wearables, ESPN's women's sports Sundays, and 20+ roles across AI and VC.
TL;DR: Happy Women’s History month ladies!! Quince hit a $10.1B valuation with a $500M Series E led by ICONIQ. Axiom raised $200M for AI code verification. Plus 20+ startup roles across AI, recruiting, growth, and VC, ESPN’s new “Women’s Sports Sundays” primetime slot, a $100K no-strings funding opportunity from Eigenprize, and a16z’s latest Gen AI consumer rankings showing ChatGPT at 900M weekly active users.
Welcome to our new readers, and if you have not yet subscribed, join the community below!
To read the full newsletter, please access it through our Substack site here.
Zunu Mittal, Co-Founder of Quince, the manufacturer-to-consumer e-commerce brand known for affordable luxury products, raised $500M in Series E funding at a $10.1B valuation led by ICONIQ.
Carina Hong, Co-Founder & CEO of Axiom, an AI startup building systems that formally verify and debug AI-generated code, raised $200M in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures.
Lalitha Rajagopalan, Co-Founder of ORO Labs, an AI-powered enterprise platform that orchestrates procurement workflows across large organizations, raised $100M in Series C funding led by Brighton Park Capital and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.
Ivana Tesanovic, Co-Founder of Pepper, an AI-enabled software platform modernizing workflows for independent food distributors, raised $50M in Series C funding led by Lead Edge Capital.
Meriem Sefta, Co-Founder & CEO of Waiv, a Paris-based AI precision oncology testing platform spun out of Owkin, raised $33M in funding co-led by OTB Ventures and Alpha Intelligence Capital.
Emma Zhang (CEO) and Alexa Valle Burguete (CTO), Co-Founders of PactFi, an end-to-end operational platform for the private credit market, raised $25M in Series A funding led by 7RIDGE.
Sylvia Hastanan, Founder & CEO of Greater Good Health, a value-based primary care platform focused on improving outcomes and lowering costs for Medicare patients, raised $20.5M in Series B funding led by Allumia Ventures.
Anne Ouyang, Co-Founder of Standard Kernel, an AI startup generating ultra-optimized GPU kernels to improve AI workload performance, raised $20M in seed funding led by Jump Capital.
Ria Shah, Co-Founder & CPO of Handl Health, an AI-powered platform helping employers design more affordable health insurance plans, raised $14.2M in Series A funding led by Arthur Ventures.
Jennifer Wirt, Founder & CEO of Coral Care, a platform connecting families with licensed clinicians for in-home pediatric therapy, raised $13M in Series A funding led by Haymaker Ventures.
Sherry Liu, Co-Founder of Tamarind Bio, an AI platform enabling scientists to run molecular AI models for drug discovery, raised $12M in Series A funding led by Dimension Capital.
Manal Habib, Co-Founder & CEO of MightyFly, an autonomous air logistics company building hybrid eVTOL cargo aircraft for expedited deliveries, raised $10M in funding led by Draper Associates.
Kristen Habacht, Founder & CEO of Elly, an AI-native recruiting platform that helps talent teams manage sourcing, interviews, and applicant tracking in one system, raised $8M in funding led by Sorenson Capital.
Charlotte Bax, Founder & CEO of Captur, an AI infrastructure platform that verifies user-submitted photos in real time directly on-device for enterprise mobile apps, raised $6M in seed funding led by Rally Ventures.
Elena Wagenmans, Founder & CEO of Taya, a wearable AI pendant that records and transcribes only the user’s voice for private note-taking, raised $5M in seed funding led by MaC Venture Capital and Female Founders Fund.
Vanessa Galarneau, Co-Founder & CFO of Pluvo, an AI-native financial analysis platform helping CFOs and finance teams turn data into decision-ready insights, raised $5M in seed funding led by a16z.
Cami Tellez, Co-Founder of Devotion, an AI-powered platform helping brands scale influencer discovery, management, and creator marketing programs, raised $4M in funding led by Basecase and Will Ventures.
Marie Schneegans, Co-Founder of 14.ai, an AI-native customer service agency that replaces traditional support teams for startups, raised $3M in seed funding led by YC.
Aditi Kothari, Co-Founder & CEO of Potpie AI, a platform enabling spec-driven development for large enterprise codebases, raised $2.2M in pre-seed funding led by Emergent Ventures.
🏗️ Patra from Structured AI (YC F25) is hiring NYC-based interns to help build AI agents that design and review infrastructure like hospitals, bridges, and cities.
🏡 Brianna from Copperlane (YC W26) is hiring Growth and SWE Interns (Spring & Summer 2026) to help build an AI mortgage loan officer.
🔗 Shensi from Merge is hiring across Sales, Engineering, Data, Marketing, Security, Finance, and Customer Success (SF & NYC) to help scale its integrations platform.
🛸 Taryn from Big Spaceship is hiring Summer Interns, an Associate Creative Director (art + copy), and an Associate Strategy Director to help shape culture-driven creative campaigns.
📣 Kawtar from Wealthsimple is hiring an Influencer & UGC Marketing Intern (Summer 2026, Toronto) to help run creator partnerships at the Canadian fintech.
🧩 Annette from Amdahl AI is hiring a Founding GTM hire to build the early sales, marketing, and growth engine.
🌍 Nell from EN-POWER Group is hiring a Marketing Intern (NYC) to work on sustainability and clean energy communications.
🎒 Nabila from Dose of Travel Club is hiring a Creative Producer & Content Lead to build scale the brand’s travel storytelling.
🎬 Sarina is hiring a Fractional Content Lead to run her founder content engine and build the brand voice for a stealth AI startup in the creator economy.
📊 Trata (YC W25) is hiring a Chief of Staff to help scale a platform delivering unfiltered stock insights from hedge fund analysts.
🌱 Synthica is hiring Growth Interns (no experience required) to help run a major marketing campaign and grow its platform bringing research opportunities to high school students.
🌊 Pond is hiring a Growth Manager (SF, new grads welcome) to own influencer partnerships, BD collaborations, and end-to-end growth strategy at his AI and crypto startup.
🎉 Partiful is hiring Campus Growth Managers (US, part-time) to launch the social events app on campuses.
🌱 Earth Brands is hiring a Head of Growth to own revenue across sales + marketing and scale sustainable packaging to businesses nationwide.
💸 Amy from defy.vc is hiring an Analyst to join the early-stage VC firm.
🧬 Morgan from M13 is hiring a Summer Investment Associate (NYC) to source AI-native founders and connect with technical builders across top universities.
🧪 Eigenprize is offering $100K (plus $250K total across 23 prizes) in no-strings-attached funding for builders, scientists, and operators through a ~10-min application.
💁♀️ Teli Labs matches and introduces young talent to founders at top early-stage startups & SMBs. Join here! Check out our job board with 10k live startup roles.
Women’s Sports Sundays. After opting out of its “Sunday Night Baseball” deal, ESPN is launching “Women’s Sports Sundays,” a new summer primetime slot featuring WNBA (basketball) and NWSL (soccer). The move reflects rising demand for women’s sports with WNBA games averaging ~1.3M viewers in 2025 and NWSL ratings up 22% year over year.
AI bodyguard for women. eNO badge, the world’s first mini AI bodyguard designed to detect threats and protect women walking alone, will debut at a private NYC event on March 19. Join using code HerHustle.
Making female founders visible. Diversify: Female Founders in Focus will showcase 200+ female founders who have collectively raised over $1B in venture funding at a portrait exhibition in SF on May 6, highlighting women building companies across AI, fintech, health, and climate.
From PE to India startup success. At 22, Anjali Sardana left a private equity career to launch Pronto, a marketplace connecting customers with trusted temporary house help in India. Just 12 months later, the company reached 18,000 bookings per day, $10M in GMV, and a $100M valuation.
AI reflects historical bias. Data scientist Amelia Bentley asked ChatGPT more than 50 times to name the ten most important people in history. The result was always ten men and zero women, highlighting how AI systems can mirror the gaps and biases embedded in the historical record.
AI notes for real life. YC W26 startup Pocket built a small device that records conversations and automatically generates transcripts and summaries. The company has shipped 30,000+ units in five months and reached a $27M annualized run rate.
Inc.’s 2026 Female Founders 500. The list highlights women leading 500 organizations across the U.S. and globally whose companies generated $12.3B in revenue in 2025 and $12.2B in funding to date.
The consumer AI race. In the latest a16z Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, ChatGPT remains dominant with 900M weekly active users, 2.7× larger than Gemini and 28× larger than Claude on web, while the broader ecosystem is splitting across Western, Chinese, and Russian AI platforms.
The new playbook for vertical AI. Forerunner’s Kirsten Green argues that the next wave of AI companies will build a single compounding engine across consumer and infrastructure, launching a consumer product first and then expanding into APIs, agents, and enterprise infrastructure that others build on.
📈 Partner with Her Hustle & Teli Labs if you are an early-stage startup interested in hiring top talent.
🗞️ Explore our other newsletters: Builders Report, spotlighting standout young founders, and Teli Digest, a roundup of startup hiring, funding, and ecosystem insights.