JustBacked · October 2026 · Edition 1

Breakout Seed Companies to Join

The 25 most promising Seed startups that raised in the last 180 days and are hiring now, ranked on hiring momentum, round strength, investors and traction. How we rank.

The top 25 Seed companies

1
Corridor
Seed · $25M · New York · BoxGroup
4 new roles / 30d4 roles78
2
Pilgrim
Seed · $25M · Redwood City
13 new roles / 30d15 roles77
3
Ent.AI
Seed · $100M · Santa Clara · Craft Ventures, Felicis
5 new roles / 30d16 roles75
4
Nomos
Seed · $23.1M · Berlin · Index Ventures
4 new roles / 30d11 roles74
5
Transfyr
Seed · $25M · Boston · General Catalyst, Lux Capital
1 new roles / 30d8 roles73
6
SkyPilot
Seed · $20M · San Francisco · Coatue, Lux Capital
4 new roles / 30d14 roles71
7
Physical Superintelligence
Seed · $58M · Cambridge · SV Angel
4 new roles / 30d18 roles69
8
Radical Numerics
Seed · $50M · Menlo Park · Emergence, Obvious Ventures
3 new roles / 30d16 roles69
9
fonio.ai
Seed · $17M · Vienna · Sequoia
27 new roles / 30d83 roles68
10
Westmag
Seed · $11M · South San Francisco · Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund
16 new roles / 30d16 roles68
11
Ciridae
Seed · $20M · San Francisco · Accel, Andreessen Horowitz
1 new roles / 30d7 roles68
12
TypeSafe AI
Seed · $40M · San Francisco
5 new roles / 30d15 roles67
13
Ineffable Intelligence
Seed · $1.1B · London · Index Ventures, Lightspeed
1 new roles / 30d3 roles67
14
Bluecore Energy
Seed · $50M · Long Beach
2 new roles / 30d8 roles67
15
Walden Robotics
Seed · $300M · Cambridge · Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA
4 new roles / 30d38 roles66
16
Cortea
Seed · $13.9M · Berlin · Atomico, Sequoia
4 new roles / 30d12 roles66
17
Mirendil
Seed · $200M · San Francisco · Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins
1 new roles / 30d13 roles66
18
Petual
Seed · $20M · San Francisco · Andreessen Horowitz, Elad Gil
5 new roles / 30d5 roles66
19
TYLsemi
Seed · $43M · San Jose
18 new roles / 30d67 roles66
20
Pramaana Labs
Seed · $27M · San Francisco · Accel, Khosla
3 new roles / 30d4 roles65
21
Zeit AI
Seed · $5.8M · Munich · Sequoia, Y Combinator
4 new roles / 30d7 roles65
22
Inherent
Seed · $50M · London · Index Ventures, NVentures
1 new roles / 30d6 roles63
23
Synthetic
Seed · $10M · San Francisco · Khosla
5 new roles / 30d5 roles62
24
Cloverleaf Bio
Seed · $33M · New Haven
2 new roles / 30d3 roles61
25
Ando
Seed · $20M · San Francisco · Accel, Contrary
1 new roles / 30d5 roles61

How we rank

Each month we score every startup that closed a venture round (pre-seed through Series C) in the previous 180 days, has at least 3 open roles, has raised under $2B in total and has fewer than 1,000 people. The score runs from 0 to 100 and mixes five signals:

Hiring momentum (30%). New roles posted in the last 30 days, relative to team size and in absolute terms, from the company's own hiring system. Companies closing more roles than they open are marked down.
Round strength (25%). How the round compares with other rounds at the same stage. A $15M seed is a strong signal; a $15M Series B is not.
Investors (20%). Whether a top-tier firm (Sequoia, a16z, Accel, Benchmark, Founders Fund, Khosla, Index, General Catalyst, Y Combinator and about 50 others) backed the company, otherwise how many investors did.
Traction (15%). Crunchbase rank, which reflects web traffic, news coverage and activity.
Freshness (10%). How recently the round closed. New money means new headcount plans.

The list is published on the 1st of each month and doesn't change afterwards; open-role counts are live. It's a signal of momentum, not an endorsement or a guarantee. Nobody pays to be on it.

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