The 75% Problem, or How This AI Startup Raised $13M in One Week 💸🤖

How ex-Monzo founders are automating the complex customer operations work financial services companies thought impossible 📈

👋 Hey, Linas here! Welcome to a special issue of my daily newsletter. Each day, I focus on 3 stories that are making a difference in the financial technology space. Coupled with things worth watching & most important money movements, it’s the only newsletter you need for all things when Finance meets Tech. If you’re reading this for the first time, it’s a brilliant opportunity to join a community of 355k+ FinTech leaders:

Gradient Labs closed a $13 million Series A in one week. This London-based AI startup, led by Redpoint Ventures with participation from LocalGlobe, Puzzle Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and Exceptional Capital, is building something that stands out in an overcrowded field: customer operations AI agents specifically for financial services that actually work in production.

The speed of the fundraise reveals something important about what they’ve built.

Most AI pitches in 2025 blur together into generic promises about automation and efficiency. Gradient Labs showed up with a product already live, real traction, and a solution to a problem most competitors are ignoring.

Inside, you will also get full access to Top AI Agent Startups of 2025 & their pitch decks and a list of the top 100 artificial intelligence startups of 2024 (& their pitch decks), and the storytelling patterns that make frontier startups irresistible.

Let’s dive in, break it down & understand why it’s special: