Startups: AI builders to watch
A longread spotlights Carina Hong’s Axiom Math, which compresses supercomputer‑scale math to run on a Mac Pro, and Daniel Ek’s Neko Health, which is pushing AI full‑body scanners for preventive medicine. (x.com) The piece also flags non-programmers coding via AI, SAP’s acquisition of Reltio to beef up AI data infrastructure, and China advancing 'embodied intelligence' standards — a neat snapshot of where AI productization and infra are moving. (x.com)
Axiom Math closed a $64 million seed round that investors say priced the company near a $300 million valuation and its early hires include researchers from Meta’s FAIR and Google Brain. (forbes.com) The startup’s Axplorer tool is a redesign of PatternBoost—software credited with cracking the Turán four‑cycles problem—and Axiom says Axplorer has matched or improved best‑known results on two other graph‑theory challenges. (technologyreview.com) MIT Technology Review notes Axplorer was repackaged to be freely distributable to researchers and links the release to DARPA’s expMath initiative, which aims to accelerate mathematicians’ use of AI tools. (technologyreview.com) Neko Health disclosed a $260 million Series B that valued the company in the roughly $1.7–$1.8 billion range and said demand has produced six‑figure waitlists for its scans. (techcrunch.com) The company reported more than 300,000 global sign‑ups and plans to open its first U.S. location in New York in spring 2026 as it scales clinical validation studies for cancer, cardiovascular and other early‑detection use cases. (nekohealth.com) SAP announced on March 27, 2026 that it will acquire Redwood‑City‑based master‑data firm Reltio to fold its cloud‑native MDM and AI‑based entity‑resolution tech into SAP Business Data Cloud; the companies gave no financial terms and said the deal is expected to close in Q2 or Q3 2026. (news.sap.com) (ciodive.com) China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology unveiled the “Humanoid Robot and Embodied Intelligence Standard System (2026 edition)” at the HEIS meeting on Feb. 28, 2026, a framework built by more than 120 institutions that sets six pillars—including brain‑like computing, limbs/components, full systems, applications, and safety/ethics—after a 2025 year that saw over 140 domestic humanoid manufacturers and 330+ models. (cgtn.com) (robottoday.com) Industry research and analysts trace the “non‑programmers coding via AI” trend to rising citizen‑developer programs and no‑code/low‑code platforms, with analysts saying enterprises are cultivating citizen developers amid a software‑talent shortage and projections that low‑code will account for a majority of new app builds; Gartner also expects widespread uptake of AI code assistants in enterprise engineering teams. (mitsloan.mit.edu) (kissflow.com) (gartner.com)
