VCs Fund Agentic AI in Vertical SaaS

- Venture capital investment in generative AI globally was expected to hit $45 billion in 2024, nearly double the $24 billion from 2023, with the average late-stage deal size for a GenAI company surging from $48 million to $327 million. - The founders of Grotto AI, Nick Deveau and Ben Epstein, previously led the development of core technology at EvolutionIQ, an AI company in the insurance space that had a $730M acquisition in 2024. - Stacks addresses fragmented financial data by first connecting to a company's systems (ERPs, spreadsheets, etc.) to create a unified data layer, then deploying AI agents on top to automate workflows like reconciliations and journal entries. - New York City has become a major hub for enterprise AI hiring; the most in-demand roles at fast-growing startups are Machine Learning Engineer (Python, PyTorch), Data Scientist (SQL, Python), and AI Product Manager with experience in LLM workflows. - Engineers building agentic AI applications are frequently using open-source frameworks like LangChain for custom workflows and CrewAI for orchestrating multiple AI agents, often integrating them with models from OpenAI or Hugging Face. - Indie hackers are successfully bootstrapping AI-powered side projects into profitable businesses; examples include SiteGPT, an AI chatbot builder which crossed $9,800 in monthly recurring revenue, and AudioPen, an AI summarizer that earned $73,000 in its first two months. - Grotto AI's models were trained on hundreds of thousands of leasing interactions and found that interpersonal signals were the strongest predictors of success; agents who initiated laughter were 48% more likely to convert a lead. - For founders raising early-stage capital for AI startups, a typical seed round is between $1 million and $5 million, intended to give a runway of 18-24 months to find product-market fit and grow the team to 8-15 employees.