Axite Raises $25M Seed Round
Bay Area startup Axite raised $25M seed led by Primary Ventures and opened a Mission Bay lab. Santé Ventures raised $330M for biotech/medtech/digital health seeds, while Dfinite landed seed funding for enterprise AI/data integration. The Bay Area continues to dominate with 33 of 50 top private AI firms located in California and 51% of US AI funding flowing to the region.
- Primary Ventures, the lead investor in Axite's seed round, recently closed a $625 million Fund V to back early-stage startups, with plans to invest between $5 million and $10 million in each of the 40 to 50 companies it supports. - Santé Ventures' new $330 million "Fund V" exceeded its initial $300 million target and will focus on early-stage biotechnology, medical technology, and digital health companies. This is the firm's largest fund to date. - The new Santé Ventures fund will continue the firm's strategy of investing in companies addressing significant unmet medical needs, particularly in areas with high clinical complexity or outdated models of care. - Dfinite, a South Korean startup, secured its seed funding from Korea Investment Accelerator and the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency. The company is developing an AI-powered platform called DARVIS to integrate enterprise data from systems like ERP and SCM without needing infrastructure changes. - The Bay Area's dominance in AI funding is substantial, with the region securing nearly $70 billion of the $134.6 billion global AI funding in 2024. - In 2025, the Bay Area attracted an even larger share, accounting for $126 billion, or 60%, of the $211 billion in global AI investments. This influx of capital has led AI companies to significantly increase their real estate footprint in the area, growing from 280,000 square feet in 2021 to 2.4 million square feet in 2025. - The concentration of AI funding in the region is significant, with 81% of all startup capital in the Bay Area flowing directly into the AI sector in 2025. - Mission Bay, where Axite has opened its new lab, has historically been a major hub for biotech companies, largely due to its proximity to UCSF and a high concentration of incubators and accelerators. However, the area is seeing a transformation with major AI players like OpenAI leasing over 1 million square feet of space, some of which was previously intended for biotech.
