Raylu, an AI startup building agents for private-market investors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, bringing total funding to $12 million. The round was led by HighlandX, an early customer that became an investor after using the product. The company was founded in 2022 by three friends: Ali Dastjerdi and Nathan Ondracek, who were Harvard roommates, and Samuel Ilkka, who met Ondracek at AWS. The trio, all 28, now employ 11 people and plan to expand to 20 by January. The founders maintain an unusual tradition: a single unopened beer in their office fridge, reserved for the day the company collapses. The ritual symbolises their commitment to preserving their friendship regardless of business outcomes. They credit their success to deep trust, quick conflict resolution, and understanding each other's strengths.

Raylu raises $8M Series A to redefine deal sourcing in private markets. Today Raylu, Inc. is announcing an $8M Series A to build the platform for Deal Engineering in private markets - led by HighlandX. Raylu, Inc. is also sharing its previously unannounced $4M Seed, led by Conversion Capital and Unusual Ventures, with angels including Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Diego Oppenheimer (Algorithmia/DataRobot), and Trent Hedge (Pylon). Founded in 2022 by Ali Dastjerdi (CEO, ex-Insight Partners) and former AWS engineers Nathan Ondracek (CTO) and Sam Ilkka (COO), Raylu is an AI-native sourcing platform built for private-market investors. Venture, growth equity, private equity, and corporate development teams use Raylu to go from thesis to booked founder meetings in minutes instead of weeks. Today, more than 45 private-investment funds representing over $500 billion in AUM use Raylu as their AI sourcing engine. Why Deal Engineering. LLMs changed what's possible, but reliable origination demands more than models. Deal Engineering is the discipline of turning non-deterministic AI into repeatable sourcing outcomes - the craft that moves investors from thesis | market map | qualified outreach | meetings with rigor and speed. Traditional deal sourcing was far too manual. Analysts stitched together lists, Google searches, email hunting, and CRM updates by hand. Raylu was built to change that: instead of spreadsheets and browser tabs, investors use agents and workflows that instrument, evaluate, and integrate every step of origination. Agents are easy to prototype and hard to operationalize; inputs drift, outcomes branch, and reliability suffers. Deal Engineering solves that with instrumentation, evaluation, and deep integration across the investor workflow. Raylu, Inc. is building the platform for Deal Engineering becase sourcong deals involves more than just sourcing. What's in the raylu platform. Raylu's agents act as the sourcing infrastructure for private-market investors, handling the work that used to take weeks: * From thesis to market map Describe a thesis in natural language and generate a comprehensive, real-time market map in minutes, with coverage of bootstrapped and emerging companies. * 360° Company Intelligence Access concise, standardized profiles on every target: product details, GTM motion, hiring, customers, benchmarks, and competitive context - ready before the first call. * Fund-Voice Outreach Identify verified decision-makers and launch targeted, multi-touch emails written in your firm's voice - direct-to-CEO/founder outreach at scale. * Two-Way CRM Sync Sync companies, interactions, and insights directly into existing CRMs such as DealCloud, Affinity, and Salesforce. Enrichment without workflow friction; notes and attachments become structured signal. * Architecture & Trust Multi-model AI tuned for investor tasks, source-backed outputs, SOC 2, and zero AI data retention - enterprise-grade security and governance for sensitive deal flow. Across customers, hours collapse into minutes, coverage expands, and time-to-thesis shrinks - with cleaner CRM hygiene and higher reply rates. The outcome isn't just more names; it's more first conversations that matter. * Grow its engineering and product teams * Strengthen its security, compliance, and enterprise capabilities * Expand go-to-market as more funds modernize their sourcing workflows with AI Its goal is simple: make Raylu the default sourcing engine for private-market investors. About raylu. Raylu is an AI-native sourcing platform built for private-market investors. Founded by former Insight Partners investor Ali Dastjerdi (CEO) and ex-AWS engineers Nathan Ondracek (CTO) and Sam Ilkka (COO), Raylu helps funds accelerate proprietary deal flow by using AI agents to find, research, and engage companies that match their investment theses. Raylu is used by more than 45 private-investment funds representing over $500 billion in AUM. For more information, visit raylu.ai. About HighlandX. HighlandX, based in Boston and Menlo Park, is a venture firm dedicated to partnering with founders who are redefining the frontier of their categories. With a focused, hands-on approach, the firm identifies, supports, and accelerates high-growth companies with outlier metrics and market momentum. Join Raylu, Inc.. * See it live: [Book a demo link] * Raylu, Inc. is hiring: Help build the future of Deal Engineering. Thank you to its investors, customers, and partners for pushing Raylu, Inc. to raise the bar. The space moves fast - so do Raylu, Inc..