Powertown, Pressure, Platforms
Pressure geothermal, a $480M AI lab seed, AI for tort law and returns fraud, Powertown on the grid crisis, creator bootcamps, and startups hiring across every level.
Hope the ladies in the Northeast are staying warm and bundled up today! Her Hustle is Teli Labs’s weekly newsletter spotlighting female founders raising capital, hiring young talent, and sharing launches and insights.
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Andi Peng and Yuchen He, Co-Founders of humans&, a human-centric AI research lab focused on collaborative and relational AI systems, raised $480M in seed funding at a $4.5B valuation, with backing from Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and Emerson Collective.
Cindy Taff, Co-Founder & CEO of Sage Geosystems, a geothermal energy company pioneering Pressure Geothermal for firm power and long-duration energy storage, raised $97M in Series B funding co-led by Ormat Technologies and Carbon Direct Capital.
Lalarukh Haris Shaikh, Co-Founder & CTO of Mendra, an AI-enabled biopharma company focused on developing therapies for high-unmet-need rare diseases, raised $82M in Series A funding co-led by OrbiMed, 8VC, and 5AM Ventures.
Jaclyn Chen, Co-Founder & CEO of Benepass, a benefits capital management platform helping employers control rising healthcare costs, raised $40M in Series B funding led by Centana Growth Partners.
Irem Sumer, Co-Founder & CEO of TaleMonster Games, an Istanbul-based mobile puzzle game studio, raised $30M in Series A funding led by a16z and Arcadia.
Leia de Guzman and Stephanie Grayson, Co-Founders of Cambio, an AI-native commercial real estate operations platform using agentic AI to plan and prioritize building retrofits, raised $18M in Series A funding led by Maverick Ventures.
Kristen Wiley, Founder & CEO of Statusphere, an AI-powered influencer marketing platform helping brands scale micro-influencer programs with trust and compliance, raised $18M in Series A funding led by Volition Capital.
Claire Hae-Min Gusko, Co-Founder of one.five, an AI-powered sustainable packaging platform, raised €14M in Series A funding led by Dr. Hans Riegel Holding.
Eva Rosa Bian, Co-Founder & COO of Klearly, an Amsterdam-based payment acceptance platform for European SMBs in hospitality, raised €12M in Series A funding led by PayPal Ventures.
Jolena Ma and Jessica Ouyang, Co-Founders of Ditto, a product copy management platform that centralizes, governs, and deploys in-product text across teams, raised $12.2M in Series A funding led by Craft Ventures.
Shrestha Chowdhury, Co-Founder & CPO of GeneralMind, an AI startup building autonomous systems to automate complex enterprise workflows, raised $12M in pre-seed funding led by Lakestar.
Nancy Zayed, Co-Founder & CTO of MagicCube, a software-based device security company for payments and digital identity, raised $10M in new funding with strategic participation from Verifone.
Dana Rochman and Shlomit Tennenbaum, Co-Founders of Legato AI, an AI extensibility layer for SaaS platforms, raised $7M in seed funding led by S Capital VC.
Sara Dwyer, Co-Founder & CEO of Paramibil, an AI platform for tort law, raised $6M in seed funding led by Bling Capital.
Alexandra Shiluk, Co-Founder & COO of Transition Metal Solutions, a biotech startup reinventing bio-based copper recovery from low-grade and waste ores, raised $6M in seed funding led by Transition Ventures.
Arthi Rajan Makhijia, Co-Founder & CEO of Pinch AI, an AI-powered post-purchase intelligence platform helping retailers prevent return fraud and reward loyal customers, raised $5M in seed funding co-led by Dynamo Ventures and Infinity Ventures.
Alfia Ilicheva, Founder & CEO of Formulary Financial, an AI-native fund administration platform modernizing back-office operations for private markets, raised $4.6M in seed funding led by Khosla.
Corina Marshall, Founder & CEO of Another, an AI-native platform helping brands manage and monetize excess and off-channel inventory, raised $2.5M in seed funding led by Anthemis Group FIL and Westbound Equity Partners.
Elson Bankoff, Co-Founder of Powertown, an energy infrastructure startup deploying standardized battery systems for American real estate, closed a pre-seed round backed by Vine Ventures, Floodgate, SV Angel, and Nova.
✍️ Eve from Alinea is hiring an in-house Performance Copywriter to work closely with the growth team testing and scaling high-conversion copy for a 2M+ user investing app.
💘 Celeste from Known is hiring a GTM intern to work with the founding team on launching an AI-powered dating platform.
🚀 Christine from Veil is hiring ML talent to work hands-on at a seed-backed healthcare AI startup.
📊 Hyun from Terminal X is hiring business, econ, and finance undergrads and grads for part-time, paid roles supporting AI-powered investment research.
🎓 Erika from Leland is hiring interns across growth and ops to help build a platform connecting ambitious people with expert coaching and courses.
💫 Jolie from Beacons AI is hiring a paid campus ambassador at USC to help grow an all-in-one platform that lets creators build websites, connect with fans, and monetize their brand.
💄 Elizabeth from Hero Cosmetics is hiring college ambassadors to represent a skincare brand best known for the Mighty Patch acne patches.
🐶 Emily from Corgi is hiring its first BDRs in SF to help handle surging inbound and scale outbound sales following their recent launch.
🎥 Merry from Glimpse is hiring a Brand & Marketing Specialist to create fast, short-form video and shape the digital presence of an AI platform that automates revenue recovery for consumer brands.
🎙️ Piper from Talentpluto is hiring a founding engineer in NYC to build autonomous voice AI agents that run end-to-end recruiting workflows.
🧠 Rithika from Verita AI is hiring across engineering, ops, growth, and design to build high-trust data pipelines that turn human judgment into training and evaluation data for multimodal AI models.
📘 Noele from Articulate is hiring a Community Content & Engagement contractor to support its online training platform.
🤖 Lynette from 1mind is hiring for CMO, Head of Product, and Enterprise Sales to build AI-powered “superhumans” for GTM teams.
⚡️ Crow (YC W26) is opening Software Engineering and Ops & Growth internships to build a chat layer that lets users control apps with text.
🛠️ Fresco is hiring summer interns across SDR, growth, and AI engineering to build an AI tool that turns construction site walks into detailed, shareable notes in minutes.
🛰️ Constellation Space (YC W26) is hiring Summer 2026 interns to help build AI for space mission assurance.
🎥 KupidTV is hiring paid UGC creators to make short-form videos for live shows that power a real-time prediction market where viewers predict outcomes as they happen.
⏳ Listen Ventures is recruiting Spring–Summer interns across Investment, Consumer Insights, and Platform for its 2026 Listener Internship Program.
🧩 Female Founders Fund is hiring a full-time Platform Operations Associate in NYC to run events, newsletters, systems, and day-to-day execution that power the firm’s platform for supporting female founders.
💁♀️ Teli Labs matches and introduces young talent to founders at top early-stage startups & SMBs. Join here!
23 content creator fellowships, bootcamps, and programs worth knowing.
Covering traditional media, short-term intensives, and journalism-focused creator tracks.America’s power infrastructure is the real bottleneck. A Substack essay by Elson Bankoff, fresh off a pre-seed announcement this week, arguing that the US grid, not energy generation, is now the limiting factor for AI, manufacturing, and economic growth.
Marketplaces and semantic matching in the AI age. This week’s Teli Digest breaks down how hiring is shifting from keyword matching to semantic matching, why AI is reviving long-dead marketplace models, and more.
170+ Top Series B Startups. A list of VC-backed Series B companies with descriptions, raise amounts, employee counts, and industry tags.
1,197 dead startup ideas. A list of startups that died (mostly over the last decade) and burned over $44B VC dollars. One founder’s failure is another founder’s treasure.
Why you should move to New York in your 20s. Andrew Yeung argues that NYC accelerates ambition, kills limiting beliefs, sharpens decision-making, and creates unmatched serendipity.
Who wins the AI race? Ethan Choi (Khosla) argues it is still early, model leads will rotate, compute is the real bottleneck, and the major AI labs will all get very big.
📈 Partner with Her Hustle & Teli Labs if you are a early-stage startup interested in hiring top talent.
🗞️ Explore our other newsletters: Teli Digest, a roundup of startup hiring, funding, and ecosystem insights, and Dorm Report, spotlighting standout young founders.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter, Hustlers!
Love,
Daniela & Adrian