Meridian AI Raises $17M Seed at $100M Valuation
New York-based AI company Meridian raised a $17 million seed round at a $100 million valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and The General Partnership, underscoring a market dynamic where AI startups perceived as potential category winners can attract outlier valuations even at the earliest stages.
- Other investors in the round included QED Investors, FPV Ventures, and Litquidity Ventures, a venture firm with roots in the popular financial meme account. - The company, officially named Longitude Labs Inc., was founded by John Ling (CEO), Zach Kirshner, and George Fang. The team includes talent from AI companies like Scale AI and Anthropic, as well as financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs. - Meridian's product is a standalone, IDE-like workspace for financial modeling, which contrasts with AI agents that plug directly into Excel. This approach is designed to provide greater auditability and predictability, critical for financial services clients who need to trace and verify the AI's work. - The platform's AI agents are built to automate repetitive spreadsheet tasks like updating forecasts and rebuilding templates with new data, with the company claiming it can reduce time spent on these workflows by up to 90%. - Meridian is targeting its platform at professionals in banking, private equity, real estate, and other financial services sectors. Early customers already using the platform include Decagon and OffDeal. - The funding will be used to further develop the AI workspace, with a focus on enhancing the determinism and auditability of its outputs, and to expand its customer base. - Lead investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has been actively investing across the AI landscape, from infrastructure and developer tools to large language models, signaling a broad thesis that "AI will save the world". - Co-lead investor The General Partnership differentiates itself with a "sweat equity" model, where it embeds its team of engineers, recruiters, and sales leaders into portfolio companies to provide hands-on support.
