Fundamental Research Labs Raises $33M Series A for AI Platforms
Fundamental Research Labs, the innovative applied AI company formerly known as Altera, has successfully closed a $33 million Series A funding round. This substantial investment, led by Prosus with notable participation from Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, brings the company’s total funding to over $40 million. The capital infusion is earmarked to significantly expand its pioneering AI assistant and agent platforms, further solidifying its position in the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape.
Founded by Dr. Robert Yang, a former MIT faculty member, Fundamental Research Labs operates with a distinctive structure, comprising specialized teams focused on games, prosumer applications, core research, and platform development. This multi-faceted approach enables the company to explore the full spectrum of applied AI, from interactive bots in gaming to high-utility enterprise solutions. The company’s journey began with developing AI agents capable of playing games like Minecraft alongside human players, demonstrating its early prowess in creating intelligent, interactive systems.
The Series A round follows a successful seed round in May 2024, which secured $9 million and was co-led by First Spark Ventures and Patron. Other investors in the seed round included a16z SPEEDRUN, Vamos Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and prominent individual investors such as Mitch Lasky, Stephen Lim (co-founder of Valorant), Greg Harper (Supercell executive board member), Duolingo CBO Bob Meese, and Vertex Pharma co-founder Rich Aldrich. First Spark Ventures, founded in 2021, is a venture capital firm that primarily invests in deep-tech startups across various sectors, including high tech, enterprise applications, and biotechnology. Patron, also established in 2021, is an early-stage VC firm with a focus on gaming, consumer, and Web3 sectors, notably backing companies that cater to the “gaming-native generation” and leverage gaming technology for new products and services.
Fundamental Research Labs is already generating revenue from its AI agents, with users typically paying after a seven-day trial, validating the practical applications of their research. Among its flagship products are “Fairies” and “Shortcut.” Fairies is a general-purpose consumer assistant designed for natural interaction, application integration, knowledge base queries, and workflow automation, serving as a real-world testing ground for new AI model capabilities. Shortcut, on the other hand, is a spreadsheet-based AI agent tailored for financial analysis. This “superhuman Excel agent” mimics a junior financial analyst, autonomously creating models and performing complex analyses, and has reportedly outperformed first-year analysts from leading firms like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs in blind evaluations, winning 89.1% of the time.
The investment from Prosus aligns with its strategic focus on the application layer of AI, where AI embeds into workflows for tangible and transformative outcomes. Prosus Ventures committed and invested over US$400 million across more than 40 transactions in FY25, including US$88 million in AI-related investments, signaling a significant shift towards application-layer startups. Patrick Collison, known for co-founding Stripe, has a diverse investment portfolio spanning various sectors, including enterprise applications and high tech, with a keen interest in how new technologies like AI are reshaping the economic landscape.
This funding round underscores a broader industry trend of increasing investment in agentic AI startups, which are designed to operate as autonomous digital co-workers. Global investment in agentic AI startups surged to $2.8 billion in the first half of 2025, with forecasts predicting it will account for approximately $6.7 billion in investment for the full year. Fundamental Research Labs’ strategic focus on building practical AI applications has drawn praise from investors, with Prosus noting the team’s mission-driven approach and the real-world impact of their products. With this capital, Fundamental Research Labs is poised to accelerate its research and development, expand its team, and potentially venture into embodied AI, including physical robotics, to further redefine productivity and AI’s real-world impact.