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It’s true: Businesses are turning to AI to get things done faster and better.
Take it from Nick Gomez, the 28-year-old founder of Inkeep, a startup helping more than 200 companies create and use AI agents that can handle everything from writing blog posts to responding to customer service requests. On Friday, the company announced it has raised $13 million in a seed round, led by Great Point Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator, with participation from other investors.
“AI agents” have become one of the hottest trends in tech, with a wave of startups (many founded by entrepreneurs under 30) gaining traction and billion-dollar valuations seemingly overnight.
Decagon, for example, was founded by Jesse Zhang and is now valued at $1.5 billion. It powers AI agents for clients like Duolingo, Hertz and Notion, handling tasks like product returns, subscription cancellations and replacement credit card orders. Meanwhile, ElevenLabs, cofounded by Under 30 alums Piotr Dabkowski and Mati Staniszewski, is pushing AI even further with real-time voice agents. The company is now valued at $3.3 billion and sells voice AI agents capable of resolving customer issues on the spot.
Inkeep is a newer player in the space, but it’s already landed major customers, including AI leaders like Anthropic and image generator Midjourney. What makes Inkeep different, according to Gomez, is that it’s designed so that anyone—not just coders, but also a marketing executive—can build their own AI assistant and use it for anything from asking questions about their documents to creating product presentations.
The company offers a “no-code visual builder” that lets users create AI assistants using plain English, while still supporting a code-based version for developers, allowing for a full-stack platform designed to work across departments.
“‘AI agents’ is very buzzy, but to 99% of non-developers, AI agents are fuzzy,” says Gomez. “It hasn’t really reached them in a way that’s tangible because there’s just no platforms that are oriented around support teams, marketing teams, sales teams to be able to create these AI agents.”
Gomez launched the company alongside cofounder Robert Tran and five other engineers from MIT, all under the age of 30. After working in product and development at Microsoft, Gomez joined Y Combinator with the original idea of building AI tools for developers, but that focus quickly shifted. “What we learned there is that even with our very technical and forward-leaning customers, they still had this need where both their engineering teams and support teams wanted to control these experiences.”
Today, Inkeep’s customers pay for a platform that connects to the entire organization’s internal data and ingests company-wide knowledge. And on Friday, alongside the funding news, Inkeep also launched an open-source version of its platform, allowing anyone to test it out for themselves.
“Every CEO, every board, every VP knows that they need to incorporate AI in some way to make things efficient, to lower costs, but also make people more productive,” he says. “Where people struggle today is okay, ‘What does that mean? How do I actually translate that into something that individual contributors within my company can actually utilize for their jobs and roles?’”
See you next week,
Zoya and Alex
How Protein-Packed Junk Food Could Make America Fit Again
Ron Penna has always been all about protein, and he doesn’t care if it comes from cookies or cake. After selling his protein bar brand Quest Nutrition for $1 billion, he’s back with another venture aimed at health-conscious snackers. His latest company, Legendary Foods, is putting a nutritious spin on favorites like donuts and cinnamon rolls—and it’s already bringing in around $180 million in revenue. Read more here.
Lister Lowdown
–The Forbes Cloud 100 published this week, naming the top companies across cloud computing, with multiple Under 30 companies making the ranks. Those include Sam Altman’s OpenAI, at No. 1, Patrick Collison’s Stripe at No. 3, Melanie Perkins’ Canva at No. 5, among others. Plus, 2025 Under 30 AI honoree Anysphere, run by CEO Michael Truell (who turned 25 this week. Happy birthday, Michael), debuted at a standout No. 8. See the full list here.
-Following the release of Swag, Under 30 lister Justin Bieber’s surprise album from July, the singer has released a second rendition, Swag II, this week. He announced it via billboards, lit up buildings, and merch drops across more than a dozen Instagram posts. But don’t worry, he intermixed some announcement posts for his wife and fellow Under 30 lister Hailey Bieber’s launch into Sephora with her beauty brand Rhode.
–Three out of four U.S. Open women’s singles semifinalists were U30 stars: 2024 Sports honoree Jessica Pegula (who earned $10.2 million in 2024, by Forbes estimates) took on 2024 Europe Sports & Games honoree Aryna Sabalenka ($27.4 in annual earnings) in the first semifinals match. And Naomi Osaka, Under 30 Asia Entertainment & Sports lister and the first Japanese player to win a Grand Slam event, made her way to her first major semifinals since 2021 but lost to American Amanda Anisimova. Up next: Anisimova will take on Sabalenka for the final trophy.
On Our Radar
–Vogue is entering a new era, kind of. Longtime editor in chief Anna Wintour announced in June that she’d be stepping down from her top editor role at Vogue (but would keep her title as the magazine’s global editorial director and Condé Nast’s chief content officer). Since then the industry has had its eyes peeled for who’s set to take over next. Enter: Chloe Malle. She was the digital editor at Vogue (overseeing Vogue.com and hosting their podcast, The Run-Through), and she wrote that cover story on Lauren Sánchez Bezos on her infamous wedding weekend. Malle will now be the head of editorial content for American Vogue. (Vogue)
-Mental health startup Wondermind was launched by Selena Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey, and entrepreneur and Under 30 lister Daniella Pierson in April 2022. It was built as a multimedia platform offering tools, resources and community across a newsletter, podcasts, film and TV and more. But just three years into the making, the company has gone through layoffs, late payments to employees, and a list of promised projects that never came to fruition. Here’s a deep dive into the rise and fall, with a brief cameo by this Forbes piece from May on the startup. (The Cut)
-American Eagle says the viral Sydney Sweeney ad worked. In fact, the brand’s CMO said on an earnings call this week that “In just six weeks, the campaign has generated unprecedented new customer acquisition.” Plus, he says that new acquisition is not just coming from one part of the country, but “from every single county in the U.S.” (The Wall Street Journal)