Embedding VC Newsletter - May 2025

May 2025 NEWSLETTER

Hi friend,

As May comes to a close and summer peeks around the corner ☀️, we’re embracing the change in seasons and the energy it brings. It’s a time for new ideas, renewed focus, and catching the first rays of possibility 🌅.

Welcome to the May edition of the Embedding VC Newsletter, where we provide insights into the latest developments in our portfolio and the AI ecosystem. 

👋 Refresh about Embedding VC:

If it is the first time you received our newsletter. As a fresher, we invest $100K to $1M checks into early-stage generative AI startups. If you or your founder friends are building something exciting, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].

✨ Insight

Voice AI is finally having its moment. We believe “2025 Is the Year of Voice AI Agents”. After years of sci-fi dreams and disappointing early voice assistants, recent advances have aligned to make voice a viable, even preferred, interface. The combination of ultra-low latency, human-like quality, and drastically lower costs has unlocked true voice-native product development. The voice AI stack has matured to a point where voice-first products can thrive. We’re witnessing the transition of voice AI from a long-held promise to a practical platform for solving problems and creating value. Real-time voice agents and assistants are moving from hype to habit. More about voice agents on our substack.

🗞️ Vectors In The News

Updates from Embedding VC portfolio companies:

Cursor for creatives

  • $6.5M Seed Round: Flora announced its seed round led by Hanabi Capital with participation from Menlo Ventures, Twitch founder Justin Kan, and MSCHF founder Gabe Whaley. Excited to have backed the team since pre-seed!

  • New Feature: Flora just added Workspaces to the Editor for more collaborative features. Users are now able to invite anyone into their Workspace, where they can share credits, folders, resources with their team, while having their own private workspaces as well.

AI coding assistant for professional software engineers and large codebases

  • On track to hit $100M ARR! Mike Speiser from Sutter Hill Ventures calls out Augment Code as the clear leader in AI software agents, especially for its unmatched performance with a context-aware code engine plus agents. 

The AI inference platform redefining price and performance

The world's first open-source AI wearable device

  • Shipping Now! Omi has started shipping the first several batches of Omi AI. Can’t wait to hear early user feedback!

  • AI hardaware could be the next entry point for AI consumer products: OpenAI recently acquired Jony Ive's hardware startup io for $6.5B to develop AI-native devices that redefine human-computer interaction beyond traditional screens. This move shows the trend of combining advanced AI capabilities with innovative hardware design. These collaborations could create next-gen AI consumer hardware that interact more naturally with users, moving beyond conventional interfaces. Omi is precisely one of these innovative projects.

AI agent for desktop automation

  • New Product: The team launched a new product, Mediar AI — workflow automation agent for legacy Windows apps to transfer unstructured data into Windows apps, which is piloting with multiple clients and gaining exciting new B2B traction. 

First AI “software engineering mentor” to support engineers throughout the entire software lifecycle

  • New Launch: Entelligence launched DeepReviews, an AI-powered code review tool that analyzes the entire codebase to identify bugs that traditional tools miss. It also provides auto-updating documentation, in-editor reviews, and team insights. Teams using DeepReviews have experienced 3x faster merge times and caught 7x more bugs before production.

🎤 Builder Spotlight

Cristian Cibils Bernardes, Founder and CEO of Autograph

Meet the Founder: Cristian Cibils Bernardes, Founder and CEO, is a visionary entrepreneur dedicated to preserving human stories. Before founding Autograph, Cristian was Partner at Cibersons and Software Engineer at Google. He studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. On the side, Cristian is also a sci-fi writer; writing and building Autograph both use narrative as a tool to shape how we imagine and create the future through technology and collective curiosity.

Founder Fireside Chat - Q&A with Cristian

Q: What inspired you to start Autograph?

A: Autograph was started after my grandmother had a stroke and I couldn't complete a programmed interview to record her life story. That moment led me to the realization that a generation is sitting on treasure-grade lived experience and lonely, creating the space for a digital historian to capture their legacies for the future. What's even more exciting is the possibilities with those stories, including being able to talk to the past, and simulating the future.

Q: What are you most excited about for the next three years?

A: I'm excited to create a household name that reminds every person that their story is worth remembering, and that they are entitled to feel like the main character in their own story for at least 20 minutes a week. I'm excited for the derivative experiences we can create with our dataset, and I'm excited to watch how people grow through conversing with Walter.

Q. What have you enjoyed about working with Roger and Embedding VC?

A: Autograph exists because of Roger. He was the visionary investor and earliest believer, with true conviction in the thesis of voice AI + pro-human anthropomorphized products. His literacy at the bleeding edge of the technical layer is outstanding and it's always a delight talking engineering with him.

👋 Get ready for the summer! June is here.

See you soon! We are Embedding VC.

Embedding VC invests in early-stage Generative AI startups.