Recently funded startup founders: archetypes by team size, title, accelerator and industry

Who founded the startups that raised in the last 90 days. Solo founders and co-founding teams and how their rounds compare, CEO and CTO titles, accelerator and stealth founders, crypto founders and industries, with the API request behind each number.

ByRecent Funding

PublishedOctober 5, 2026

Data snapshotOctober 5, 2026

Tagsfoundersfunding roundsapi

3315 companies on Recent Funding announced their latest funding round between July 7, 2026 and October 5, 2026. 2093 of them have at least one named founder on record, 4030 founders in all. This post sorts those founders into archetypes the data can actually support: founding team size, the title a founder holds, the accelerator the company went through, whether it was flagged in stealth first, crypto or not, and industry. Each section ends with the Recent Funding API request that reproduces it, and the numbers refresh every week.

How the founders are counted

The window. A company is in it when its latest round was announced on or after July 7, 2026. That is 3315 companies; 1019 of those rounds have an amount linked to its source.
A founder is a person whose role on the company's record says founder (Founder, Co-founder, Founder & CEO and so on). Other people on record, such as advisors and board members, are left out. This is the API's scope=founders.
Founding team is how many founders are named at the company: one (solo), two, three, or four or more. It is the API's team field. It counts the founders we have names for, which can be fewer than the real team: a source that lists only the CEO makes a company look solo.
Coverage. 2171 of the window's 3315 companies have any named person on record, so every share below is a share of companies with named founders, not of every company that raised.
Names come from the page that listed the company, such as an accelerator's batch page or the company's own about page. Some records are wrong in ways that inflate team sizes: the same person under two spellings, or people taken from a company's X account who are not founders. We fix these as we find them. The example tables below show one founder per company, the best-attested one with a picture on record.

Get the founders from the API

Every founder record is in one endpoint. This returns the founders of two-founder companies, the companies that have raised the most first, with each founder's title, company and the company's funding:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/founders?scope=founders&team=duo&sort=raised&limit=2"

The response (each record also has avatar and company_logo, the paths of the founder's picture and the company's logo on recentfunding.com, and source_url, the page the founder was listed on):

{
  "scope": "founders",
  "sort": "raised",
  "team": "duo",
  "q": "",
  "total": 11324,
  "count": 2,
  "next_offset": 2,
  "founders": [
    {
      "name": "Doug Wightman",
      "role": "Founder",
      "x_handle": null,
      "linkedin_url": null,
      "slug": "groq",
      "company": "Groq",
      "crypto": false,
      "first_seen": "2026-09-29",
      "amount_usd": 350000000,
      "total_raised": 2690000000,
      "founders_at_company": 2,
      "team": "duo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jonathan Ross",
      "role": "Founder",
      "x_handle": null,
      "linkedin_url": null,
      "slug": "groq",
      "company": "Groq",
      "crypto": false,
      "first_seen": "2026-09-29",
      "amount_usd": 350000000,
      "total_raised": 2690000000,
      "founders_at_company": 2,
      "team": "duo"
    }
  ]
}

The endpoint has no date filter, so to limit it to the last 90 days, join it with the companies list sorted by latest round. This script prints the window's team counts in the table below:

import datetime, json, urllib.parse, urllib.request

API = "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1"

def pages(path, key, **params):
    offset = 0
    while offset is not None:
        query = urllib.parse.urlencode({**params, "limit": 2000, "offset": offset})
        page = json.load(urllib.request.urlopen(f"{API}/{path}?{query}"))
        yield from page[key]
        offset = page["next_offset"]

# Companies whose latest round was announced in the last 90 days (newest round first).
since = (datetime.date.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=90)).isoformat()
recent = {}
for c in pages("companies", "companies", sort="announced"):
    if not c["announced_at"] or c["announced_at"][:10] < since:
        break
    recent[c["slug"]] = c

# Their founders, counted by founding team.
teams = {}
for f in pages("founders", "founders", scope="founders"):
    if f["slug"] in recent:
        teams.setdefault(f["team"], set()).add(f["slug"])

print(len(recent), "companies;", {t: len(s) for t, s in sorted(teams.items())})

The same two lists answer every other cut in this post: the company record carries industry, crypto, stage, flagged_at and investors, and the founder record carries role and team.

Solo founders and co-founding teams

39% of the companies with named founders have one founder on record, 39% have two, 15% have three and 7% have four or more.

Founding team	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
Solo founder	825	825	39%	216	42%	$6M Handraise
Two founders	809	1618	39%	267	40%	$6M Konko AI
Three founders	320	960	15%	133	57%	$11M Complir
Four or more	139	627	7%	72	69%	$25M Corridor

"With amount" counts the companies whose latest round has an amount linked to its source, and "10M USD+" is the share of those whose latest round was 10 million USD or more. "Middle round" is the median of those latest rounds, shown as the round itself so it links to where it was reported.

Larger founding teams tend to raise larger rounds. Of the solo-founder companies with a known amount, 42% raised 10 million USD or more in their latest round; for teams of four or more it is 69%. Part of this is stage: 24% of the companies with four or more founders are at Series A or later, against 7% of the solo-founder companies.

The solo founders whose companies raised the largest latest rounds in the window:

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Adam Selipsky	Founder	Helix Digital Infrastructure	Solo founder	$1B	2026-09-28
Isaiah Taylor	Founder	Valar Atomics	Solo founder	$1B	2026-08-03
Alex Yeh	Founder	GMI Cloud	Solo founder	$668M	2026-09-30
Ethan Thornton	Founder	Mach Industries	Solo founder	$600M	2026-09-10
JB Straubel	Founder	Redwood Materials	Solo founder	$550M	2026-07-31
James Lee	Founder	Texas Stock Exchange	Solo founder	$430M	2026-09-30

And the largest rounds at companies with four or more founders on record (one founder shown per company):

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Shayne Coplan	Founder	Polymarket	Four or more	$1B	2026-08-31
Marco Ferrara	Founder	Form Energy	Four or more	$750M	2026-08-12
Ankur Singla	CEO & founder	Lumilens	Four or more	$700M	2026-08-06
Francesco Sciortino	Co-Founder and CEO	Proxima Fusion	Four or more	$468M	2026-07-07
Tamar Bar-Ilan	Co-founder, CTO	Cyera	Four or more	$400M	2026-09-22
Alexander Ratner	Founder	Snorkel AI	Four or more	$350M	2026-09-23

Request (the team filter takes solo, duo, trio or more):

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/founders?scope=founders&team=solo&sort=raised&limit=100"

The start of the response:

{
  "scope": "founders",
  "sort": "raised",
  "team": "solo",
  "q": "",
  "total": 5376,
  "count": 100,
  "next_offset": 100,
  "founders": [
    {
      "name": "JB Straubel",
      "role": "Founder",
      "x_handle": null,
      "linkedin_url": null,
      "slug": "redwood-materials",
      "company": "Redwood Materials",
      "crypto": false,
      "first_seen": "2026-09-29",
      "amount_usd": 550000000,
      "total_raised": 2675000000,
      "founders_at_company": 1,
      "team": "solo"
    }
  ]
}

CEOs, CTOs and founders with no other title

Most founder records give no title beyond "Founder" or "Co-founder": 80% of the founders in the window. Among the rest, CEO titles are the most common.

Title	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
Founder or co-founder, no other title	1779	3242	80%	549	46%	$7M SoloPulse
CEO	360	369	9%	174	57%	$12M Nexstrom
CTO or other technical title	175	194	5%	75	64%	$15M telli
Other title	113	133	3%	67	63%	$23M Hypervision Surgical
COO or operations	57	57	1%	25	64%	$15M prime minute
Product or design	34	35	1%	20	50%	$8M Cordant

Here "Share" is a share of founders rather than companies, since one company can have founders with different titles.

155 companies in the window list both a founder with a CEO title and one with a CTO or other technical title, the classic business and technical pairing. Because so many records have no title, this is a floor, not an estimate of how common the pairing is.

Technical founders (CTO, chief scientist, engineering titles) at the companies with the largest latest rounds:

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Tamar Bar-Ilan	Co-founder, CTO	Cyera	Four or more	$400M	2026-09-22
Michelle Nguyen	Co-Founder, Head of Engineering	Gimlet Labs	Four or more	$300M	2026-09-04
Pascal Stang	CTO & Co-Founder	Muon Space	Four or more	$250M	2026-08-20
Ezra Feilden LinkedIn	Co-Founder & CTO	Starcloud	Three founders	$250M	2026-08-21
Maximilian Hauck	Co-Founder & CTO	Reverion	Four or more	$175M	2026-09-28
Ant Wilson LinkedIn	Co-Founder & CTO	Supabase	Four or more	$150M	2026-10-02

Request. The API has no title filter, so filter the role field yourself, for example with jq:

curl -s "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/founders?scope=founders&sort=raised&limit=2000" | jq '[.founders[] | select(.role | test("\\bCTO\\b|Chief Technology"; "i")) | {name, role, company}] | .[:5]'

Accelerator founders

405 companies in the window with named founders came through an accelerator we track, detected from their investors and descriptions. By program:

Accelerator	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
Y Combinator	270	587	13%	63	57%	$11M Hop Aero
Plug and Play	37	83	2%	19	68%	$30M Lasso Security
a16z speedrun	30	57	1%	8	38%	$4M snag
Antler	18	33	1%	11	27%	$4.2M Navana.ai
500 Global	14	32	1%	7	71%	$15M Scaffold
Techstars	11	19	1%	5	20%	$1M Optio
ERA	9	25	0%	4	50%	$4.1M Beagle Labs
Seedcamp	8	15	0%	6	50%	$5M Catch
Alliance	7	15	0%	3	33%	$4M Crebit
Pear VC	5	12	0%	5	100%	$40M Vals AI

Accelerator companies are less often solo-founder companies: 20% of them have one founder on record, against 39% across the window. Programs such as Y Combinator list every founder of a batch company, so this gap is partly about which sources name more founders.

Founders at the accelerator companies with the largest latest rounds:

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Igor Babuschkin	Founder	River AI	Three founders	$1.1B	2026-08-11
Andy Lapsa LinkedIn	Co-Founder, CEO	Stoke Space	Three founders	$1B	2026-09-08
Anton Osika	Founder	Lovable	Two founders	$400M	2026-08-12
Philip Johnston LinkedIn	Co-Founder & CEO	Starcloud	Three founders	$250M	2026-08-21
Burak Cizmeci	Founder	Gravis Robotics	Four or more	$200M	2026-08-17
Justin Segall	Founder	Simple Energy	Two founders	$180M	2026-10-01

Request. The companies endpoint filters by accelerator; join its slugs with the founders list as in the script above (pass accelerator="yc" to the companies call):

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?accelerator=yc&sort=announced&limit=100"

Each program's companies and what they raised are on the accelerators pages, and Y Combinator companies on Recent Funding covers YC in detail.

Founders who were flagged in stealth first

Some companies are flagged while still in stealth, before they announce anything. 131 companies in the window were flagged before the round that put them in it, with 296 named founders between them.

Stealth flag	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
Flagged in stealth before the round	131	296	6%	84	73%	$30M Natural
Flagged after the round	8	20	0%	6	67%	$22M Ropedia
Not flagged	1954	3714	93%	598	43%	$6.3M Newtrace

Founders at those companies, newest round first:

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Alex Yeh	Founder	GMI Cloud	Solo founder	$668M	2026-09-30
Calvin Chen X	Cofounder	Proximal	Three founders	$15M	2026-09-29
Brett Harrison	Founder	Architect	Solo founder	$35M	2026-09-25
Sara Du	Founder	Ando	Solo founder	$20M	2026-09-24
Ali Ansari	Founder	micro1	Solo founder	$100M	2026-09-23
Chetan Kulhari	Founder	Midcentury	Two founders	$15M	2026-09-23
Pete Cooling	Founder	Atum	Solo founder	$13.5M	2026-09-22
Barak Naveh	Founder	Noetive	Solo founder	$41M	2026-09-22

Request. Every company in the list below carries flagged_at (null when it was never flagged). In the script above, keep the companies where c["flagged_at"] is set and earlier than c["announced_at"]:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?sort=announced&limit=100"

The live list of flagged companies is on stealth startups, and stealth startup founders explains how stealth founders can be spotted before they announce.

Crypto founders

Company	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
Not crypto	2009	3882	96%	646	48%	$8M Sazabi
Crypto	84	148	4%	42	36%	$6M Infini

84 of the 156 crypto companies in the window have named founders, so crypto is a small share of this post's founders. The crypto founders at the companies with the largest latest rounds:

Founder	Title	Company	Founding team	Latest round	Announced
Shayne Coplan	Founder	Polymarket	Four or more	$1B	2026-08-31
John Morrow	Founder	Gauntlet	Three founders	$125M	2026-07-09
Dileep Thazhmon LinkedIn	Founder & CEO	Jeeves	Two founders	$110M	2026-09-29
Esteban Castaño LinkedIn	Co-founder & CEO	TRM Labs	Three founders	$70M	2026-09-09
Calix Liu	Founder	FinTax	Two founders	$40M	2026-08-26
Nico Lechuga	Founder	Orange Juice	Solo founder	$40M	2026-07-16

Request (scope=crypto returns everyone on record at a crypto company; keep role values that contain "founder" for founders only). Crypto companies with three founders on record, the most raised first:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/founders?scope=crypto&team=trio&sort=raised&limit=100"

The start of the response:

{
  "scope": "crypto",
  "sort": "raised",
  "team": "trio",
  "q": "",
  "total": 385,
  "count": 100,
  "next_offset": 100,
  "founders": [
    {
      "name": "Michael Shaulov",
      "role": "Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder",
      "x_handle": null,
      "linkedin_url": null,
      "slug": "fireblocks",
      "company": "Fireblocks",
      "crypto": true,
      "first_seen": "2026-09-28",
      "amount_usd": 550000000,
      "total_raised": 993000000,
      "founders_at_company": 3,
      "team": "trio"
    }
  ]
}

For the companies themselves, see crypto startups that raised in the last 90 days.

Founders by industry

The industries of the companies with named founders in the window, top ten:

Industry	Companies	Founders	Share	With amount	10M USD+	Middle round
ai	718	1379	34%	195	44%	$7M RadiantOps
bio-health	236	440	11%	74	43%	$6M Vexev
robotics-hardware	156	318	7%	54	56%	$10.6M CorePower Magnetics
fintech	112	240	5%	45	53%	$12.5M Rezolv
infra-devtools	107	202	5%	44	59%	$12M Sent
energy-climate	87	172	4%	31	55%	$17M Novele
security-privacy	74	166	4%	34	59%	$12M Hakimo
consumer-social	64	118	3%	27	26%	$5.5M A Vinyl Bar in Shibuya
ai-agents	63	127	3%	25	76%	$20M Tangos
enterprise-software	61	118	3%	17	29%	$2.5M Funl Events

Request. The industry is on the company record; filter the companies call by it, for example industry=bio-health, and join as above:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies?industry=bio-health&sort=announced&limit=100"

Repeat founders: what the data can and can't show

A repeat founder is someone who has started a company before. Our founder records don't hold work history, so the only way to see a repeat founder here is the same person on record at two companies. Across every company on Recent Funding, 33 people, matched by LinkedIn profile, are on record at more than one company, and 0 of them are at a company in this post's window. That is too few to call an archetype, so this post doesn't. For the same reason it doesn't sort founders by previous employer.

The company endpoint shows the link where it exists: each founder has other_companies. Solomon Hykes, for example, is on record at both Dagger and Docker:

curl "https://recentfunding.com/api/v1/companies/dagger"

{
  "founders": [
    {
      "name": "Solomon Hykes",
      "role": "Co-Founder",
      "other_companies": [{ "name": "Docker", "slug": "docker" }]
    }
  ]
}

Pictures and profiles

2876 of the 4030 founders in the window have a picture on record. Linked profiles are rarer: 189 have a LinkedIn profile and 55 an X account. Names and titles come from the page that listed the company, which is usually a batch page or a company directory rather than the founder's own profile.

Browse the founders

Founders: every founder on record, filterable by team size (solo, two, three, four or more), crypto, and searchable by name, company or title.
Recently funded startups: the companies themselves, refreshed weekly.
Using the Recent Funding API and the API docs: every endpoint and field used here.