Sift raises $42mn Series B round as AI shift from ‘processing text to controlling physical machines’

This week, we lead with news that @ Sift , a company building the intelligence layer for mission-critical machines, has raised USD 42mn for its Series B round from StepStone, Google Ventures, Riot Ventures, Fika Ventures and CIV. The funding will be used to expand its engineering team. As AI shifts from processing text to controlling physical machines, a fundamental infrastructure gap has emerged — modern rockets, satellites, defense systems and autonomous vehicles are, in essence, computers wrapped in steel, generating millions of data points per second from hundreds of sensors. Without structure, AI cannot interpret this data. Sift addresses this by transforming raw sensor data into structured data that can be queried by both engineers and AI systems.

In other news..

1. GIC, Sequoia co-led Harvey’s $200mn investment round
   Harvey, the legal infrastructure company for law firms and in-house teams, has secured USD 200mn in new funding, an investment which values the company at USD 11bn. The round was co-led by GIC and Sequoia with Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Conviction Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Elad Gil and Evantic also participating.
   The investment will be used to expand the agents that customers run on Harvey and grow the embedded legal engineering teams, which support the company globally.
   
2. RCM platform Adonis raises $40mn for Series C
   Quadrille Capital along with existing investors General Catalyst and Bling Capital have invested in Adonis, a revenue cycle management company. The AI orchestration platform, which raised USD 40mn for its Series C round, will use the funding to accelerate product innovation across its intelligence, AI agents and orchestration platform, deepen its presence in the health system market and continue to expand its New York City-based team. This latest round brings the total the company has raised to USD 95mn.
3. Collectly completes acquisition of Pledge Health
   Collectly, an AI-powered patient financial experience platform, has bought Pledge Health, an AI automation company focused on reducing repetitive admin tasks across pre-service financial workflows. As healthcare organizations continue to face staffing constraints and rising pre-services complexity, the acquisition of Pledge Health’s workflow-first AI agent builder adds another tool in Collectly’s arsenal.
4. Blossom Health raises $20mn for Seed, Series A round
   Blossom Health, an all-in-one AI operating system for psychiatry, has announced USD 20mn in funding for both its Series A and Seed round. Headline led the Series A round with Village Global, TA Ventures, Operator Partners and Correlation Ventures also participating. Angel investors also participated in the round.
   With the proceeds, the company plans to expand its state coverage, establish contracts with national and regional health insurance payors, onboard more providers and invest in R&D.
5. AI assistant Littlebird raises $11mn Seed round
   Littlebird has raised a USD 11mn Seed round led by Lotus Studio, with participation from angel investors. The AI assistant is a native macOS application that reads the structured content of every application on your screen and transcribes meetings in real time, completely omitting the need to copy-paste, summarize meetings and write multi-paragraph prompts.
6. Shepherd completes $42mn Series B round
   Intact Private Capital has led the USD 42mn Series B round for Shepherd, an AI-native commercial insurance platform. Other investors are Spark Capital, Costanoa Ventures and others. This latest round of funding brings the total amount Shepherd has raised to USD 67mn.
   Shepherd combines proprietary AI underwriting technology, real-time construction data integrations and industry expertise to deliver insurance for companies operating in the construction, energy and infrastructure sectors—these range from mid-market general contractors to companies building frontier AI infrastructure.