New York startup funding in May was dominated by two familiar themes in venture: artificial intelligence and health care.
At the top of the month’s deals was Modal Labs, which raised a $355 million Series C for its serverless cloud infrastructure used to run machine learning and data-processing workloads. That round far outpaced the rest of the pack and underscored investor appetite for the infrastructure layer supporting AI applications.
Health care also commanded major checks. Nourish, which connects patients to insurance-covered nutrition counseling through registered dietitians, raised a $100 million Series C. Garner Health, which helps employers steer workers toward higher-performing medical providers, also landed a $100 million round, this time a Series E. Together, the two financings showed that New York’s venture market continues to reward companies trying to lower health costs and improve care access.
Other sizable raises pointed to the breadth of the city’s startup base. Daloopa, which builds financial data and modeling tools for research and AI workflows, raised a $47 million Series C. OpenRouter, a platform that gives AI developers a single API for reaching large language models, secured a $40 million Series B. Reserv, which applies AI to property and casualty claims handling, also added capital in the insurance technology category.
Trust and safety remained another active corner of the market. Cinder Technologies, which sells tools for content moderation, data labeling and digital abuse detection, closed a $41 million Series B. The company says its software is designed to help organizations manage AI-driven threats, a signal that the rise of generative AI is creating fresh demand for defensive products as well as new applications.
Healthcare data company H1 also drew new backing, with CVS Health Ventures leading a $40 million investment. According to H1, the money will support its AI-powered platform for finding and engaging medical experts. The deal reflects a broader pattern in which health data providers are attracting strategic capital from industry incumbents looking to improve accuracy, analytics and provider directories.
Several other New York companies rounded out the month’s notable raises. Pace, which sells an AI operations platform for insurers, raised a Series B. Frame Security, focused on AI-powered cybersecurity and human-risk management, also closed a funding round. Moment, which builds software for wealth and investment management operations, added a Series C. RADAR, which applies computer vision and RFID tools to retail inventory and checkout, remained part of the city’s deep bench of enterprise software companies.
Taken together, the month’s biggest rounds suggest that New York investors are still putting serious money behind applied AI, insurance, finance and health care, while infrastructure companies like Modal Labs continue to capture the largest checks.
[Noah Wire Services helped in the writing of this article.]
