Who is betting on what in AI, and against whom.
Wetware: lab-cultured neurons as a compute substrate; $10M pre-seed, Y Combinator S26.
The most literal version of the substrate bet. Founder Michael Domarkas, 19, grows neural tissue on electrode arrays and trains it as a learning system; memory and compute sit in the same place, so there is no data-movement bottleneck, and biological neurons learn from far less data than a network does. The stated target is a 500-million-neuron cluster by the end of 2026, orders of magnitude beyond Cortical Labs' CL1. The claim is unproven at that scale; what exists is a pre-seed and a demo playing Frogger.
| Amount | Kind | Valuation | Date | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $10M | pre-seed | Sep 2026 | General Catalyst, LocalGlobe, Amino Collective, Kaya, Long Journey Ventures, Off Piste Capital, SVA | Wowtale |