Top 100 Seed Investments and Investors

Getting funds for a new business is always crucial and probably one of the hardest challenges new business owners go through. Most startups seek help from seed investments and investors to help their business through its early stages. Investors usually exchange funding for an equity stake of the business, giving them partial ownership, and business owners will receive the funding that will help their business grow. 

One of the most crucial stages for company funding is through seed investments. Read more about what a seed investment is, its usage, and when is the best time to raise seed money. We also list out the top 100 seed investments and investors.

What is a seed investment?

Seed investment is a private investment of capital in a startup in exchange for equity. The money invested in a company as seed money typically ranges between hundreds and thousands of dollars. This range exists because venture capital firms typically won’t invest less than $1 million. This also represents the maximum you can expect or ask from seed investors.

Another major difference is that venture capital investments most often come from institutions. In contrast, seed funding typically comes from individual investors, such as angel investors, crowdfunding, and even family or friends.

Types of Seed Investments

There are different types of seed investments available for startups. It’s important to understand the different types of investors or potential investors since there are multiple sources you can get funding from:

• Crowdfunding
• Corporate Seed Funds
• Incubators
• Accelerators
• Angel Investors
• Personal Savings
• Debt Funding
• Convertible Securities
• VC Funding
• Angel Funds or Angel Networks

What is seed investment used for?

The main aim of getting seed funding for a company is to get a business off the ground. One major struggle that startups face is turning a profit simply because they lack the funding needed to get their business going. In addition to this, acquiring debt-based capital is not always easy. It is not easy because of the lack of cash flow and limited operating history. Seed funding provides a simple and effective funding solution. Key purposes of raising seed funding are:

• Additional time to set your business model.
• Extra time to connect with effective business partners.
• Assists in lower dilution and capital for future rounds.
• Extra flexibility to pivot and adjust course according to market demand.

Some of the most common sources of seed funding involve angel investors, accredited investors, and equity crowdfunding investors. With that said, it is not uncommon for a startup business’s founders to provide seed funding.

When to raise seed money? 

If you have a game-changing business idea, most investors will want to back you and fund your startup. It is important to remember that investors want to see you succeed and accomplish your vision for your business. Before you go looking for investors, you must prepare your presentation, your story, your goals and vision. Know that when a founder is ready to tell their story and aim, they can raise money quickly. 

For some founders, having an adequate story and a reputation is enough to raise money. Despite this, it will need an idea, a product, and customer adoption, a.k.a. traction for most. Fortunately, today’s software development ecosystem is such that a sophisticated web or mobile product can be built and delivered in a brief period at a low cost. Hardware can also be quickly prototyped and tested. However, investors also need persuading. Usually, a product they can see, use, or touch will not be enough. They will want to know that there is a product-market fit and that the product is undergoing real growth.

Therefore, founders should raise money to figure out their market opportunity and who their customers are. After delivering a product that matches your market’s needs, it’s important to keep working on your product and communicate with your customers to know how else to improve your product and what other features you can add. The more you work on your product and meet your market’s needs, the more investors you get.

Top Seed Investments 2022

Here is a list of the top Seed Investments to date:

Below is the list of the top 10 seed investment companies:

1.  Farizon Auto

Located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, Farizon Auto is one of the leading new energy commercial vehicle brands. Established in 2014, the company mainly focuses on commercial electric vehicles and related spare parts. With a recent funding round, led by GLP, Hidden Hill Capital, Yinshan Capital and other top-tier investors on October 26, 2022, from a Seed round of $300 million, Farizon Auto aims to launch a series of new energy commercial vehicles and solutions. It is in the process of launching China’s first large-scale mass production of small electric buses and trucks, and a complete range of parts, and aims to become the first integrated energy commercial vehicle brand in China.

2. Stability AI 

It is a new AI-based visual art company that specializes in the creation of images based on text inputs. Emad Mostaque, the founder of Stability AI, launched the company in 2020 to provide the latest AI technology and the world’s first open art platform. The platform is designed to help artists unleash their full creativity while giving them access to the latest AI technology. Headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom, Stability AI raised $101 million in Seed funding on October 10, 2022, from investors such as Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners, O’Shaughnessy Asset Management, LLC (OSAM).

3. OatFi

Founded in 2021 by Mike Barbosa and John Jordan, Oatfi offers B2B payment solutions, enabling end-to-end digital financial transactions. It provides fast, secure, seamless and cost-effective digital payments. Based in New York, New York, United States, OatFi raised $8 million in Seed funding on October 11, 2022, from leading investor QED Investors and other top investors. To date, the total funding raised by the company stands at $61.3 million. With an aim to keep growing, OatFi has plans to expand globally. The success of its end-to-end digital payments and commerce platform will further accelerate the growth of the company.

4. Rippl Care

Rippl Care, launched in 2021, is a digital healthcare startup that connects and provides expert care to senior patients living with dementia and other neurocognitive disorders. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States, and was founded by Kris Engskov, Rippl Care’s CEO. On September 28, 2022, the startup raised $32 million in a Seed round of funding from investors such as ARCH Venture Partners, and General Catalyst. Rippl Care uses proprietary data science algorithms along with the latest artificial intelligence technology to provide the most relevant care recommendations to patients.

5. Endor Labs

Endor Labs provides a dependency lifecycle management tool to help with the security and maintenance of open-source software. Founded in 2021, the company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. Varun Badhwar founded Endor Labs with the goal of applying data science and other technologies to address the challenge of software dependency management. Endor Labs raised $25 million on October 10, 2022, from top investors, Dell Technologies Capital, Sierra Ventures in a Seed funding round. While it is still early days for the startup, Endor Labs has plans to expand its services further.

6. Telda

Founded in 2021 by Ahmed Sabbah and Youssef Sholqamy, Telda is a FinTech startup that provides the easiest and fastest to send, receive, and save money by using a user-friendly interface, and is based in Cairo, Al Qahirah, Egypt. With seed funding of $20 million on October 12, 2022, from investors such as Global Founders Capital and Sequoia Capital, Telda aims to expand its services worldwide. While the total funding raised by the startup stands at $25 million. The startup’s best-in-class user experience and easy-to-use UI have attracted the attention of both local and international investors.

7. Everstores 

Established in 2022, Everstores is developing a technology platform to enable large-scale D2C (direct-to-consumer) e-commerce asset classes at scale. It is still in its early stages and is based in Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Kristoffer Herskind, the founder of Everstores, launched the company with a vision to leverage its platform to resolve difficulties faced by companies in launching their e-commerce infrastructure. It raised $8 million in Seed funding on September 30, 2022, from investors including Earlybird Venture Capital, and Viola Credit. To date, $20 million is the total funding raised by the company, making it one of the few startups in the D2C (direct-to-consumer) e-commerce segment to have raised significant funds.

8. Shardeum

Through dynamic state sharding, Shardeum, an EVM-based, linearly scalable smart contract platform, keeps actual decentralization and reliable security while offering minimal gas fees. Founded in 2017, Shardeum is headquartered in Geneva, Geneve, Switzerland. The startup was founded by Omar Syed Shardeum with a mission to optimize blockchain-based decentralized applications for a wide range of industries. On October 18, 2022, Shardeum raised $18.2 million in a Seed funding round from investors including Big Brain Holdings, Digital Finance Group (DFG), Ghaf Capital Partners, and other top-tier. Shardeum strives to develop a scalable blockchain-based decentralization solution that is ideally suited to the needs of enterprises and institutions.

9. Immerok 

Associated with Apache Flink, a popular open-source data streaming framework, Immerok is building a scalable and high-performance cloud-based extended Apache Flink implementation for stream processing. Founded in 2022 by Austin Cawley-Edwards, David Moravek, and other founders, the company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Immerok aims to provide an end-to-end streaming platform that is scalable and easy to implement and manage. On October 3, 2022, Immerok raised $17 million in a Seed round of funding from investors such as 468 Capital, Cusp Capital and other leading investors. It is expected to use the funds raised to grow its team, enhance its development capabilities, and further expand its global footprint.

10. Magna

Founded in 2022, Magna is a token lending and DeFi infrastructure provider, enabling the creation and management of decentralized financial products. Bruno Faviero, the founder of Magna, located in San Francisco, California, United States, believes that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology can transform financial services; Magna seeks to facilitate these changes by developing unique decentralized financial products that are based on blockchain protocols. Magna raised $15 million in Seed funding on September 9, 2022, from investors like Tiger Global Management, and Tusk Venture Partners. Magna strives to develop a universal lending platform that can leverage blockchain technology, and provide a secure way to borrow and lend.

Seed Investors

Aside from seed investments, startups can also seek funding from seed investors. Seed investors are somewhat different from seed investments, but nonetheless, they also offer funding for new businesses (especially for very early startups).

Who are seed investors?

Seed investors usually invest in the very early stages of startups. These investors can be the founders of the business, your friends and family, incubators and venture capital companies. One of the most common types of seed investors are called “angel investors”:

• Venture Capital (VC): VC is a type of private equity and a type of funding that investors provide to startups (especially for businesses that have potential for long-term growth).
• Corporate venture capital (CVC): Also known as corporate venturing, CVCs invest in innovative startups in order to obtain competitive advantage and get new ideas, markets and technologies. Compared to VCs, which prioritise ROI with their funding, CVCs aim for getting industry knowledge, market and brand reputation.
• Angel investors: Angel investors are wealthy individuals who provide capital for startups in exchange for convertible notes or ownership equity. They can provide either a one-time funding to help you get your business up and running, or an ongoing funding to help carry the business through the early stages (which can be difficult for most startups).

What do seed investors look for?

In order to get the attention of seed investors, there are several things you have to prepare. Aside from having a prototype of your product to present, it’s important to have a well-prepared business plan. There are many components in a business plan, but you should put your goals, vision, market analysis, products, and any other information that you deem important for your potential investors to know.

Top Seed Stage Investors

Here is a list of the top Seed investors: 

Below are the top 10 seed stage investors:

1. Y Combinator

Launched in March 2005, Y Combinator is an American technology startup accelerator that provides seed funding for startups to help them get through the first phase of their business. It has launched more than 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Cruise Automation, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Dropbox, Twitch, and Reddit.

2. National Science Foundation (NSF)

Created in 1950 by the US Congress, the NSF is an independent federal agency that focuses on the advancement of science, health and welfare. The NSF supports the research and people in the fields of mathematics, computer science and the social sciences.

3. Techstars

Techstars has invested in over 3,000 early-stage startups and is considered one of the largest pre-seed investors in the world. Launched in 2006, the investment firm focuses on healthtech, fintech, web3 and cleantech startups. They provide startups with  access to capital, finding customers, hiring, mentoring and many more.

4. 500 Global

500 Global is a venture capital firm that invests in mostly tech companies. With $2.7 billion in assets under management, 500 Global has support over 5,000 founders and over 2,700 companies. Their portfolio includes 49 companies valued over $1 billion and more than 150 companies valued over $100 million.

5. SOSV

SOSV is a venture capital firm that support companies in multiple stages. They operate several development programs for early stage startups, including HAX, IndieBio, Orbit Startups and dlab. SOSV’s main goal is to support and fund visionary, deep tech ideas who will have a big impact on the human and planetary health. As of 2022, SOSV’s top 100 climate tech companies had a valuation of $11 billion, and raised $3.85 billion.

6. Accel

Formerly known as Accel Partners, Accel is a US venture capital firm that works with startups in seed, early and growth-stage investments. Founded in 1983, Accel has amassed a large portfolio of tech firms in different industries, including consumer, infrastructure, media, mobile, SaaS, security, customer care services, enterprise software and e-commerce.

7. Bossanova Investimentos

Founded in 2011, Bossanova Investimentos is a Brazilian micro-VC that focuses on pre-seed stage technology companies. It is the number one micro venture capital in Brazil, with over 1,200 investments in over 1,000 startups. Their investments are not limited to only Latuin American companies, but also company worldwide.

8. Intel Capital

Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation that focuses on managing corporate venture capital, global investment and mergers and acquisitions. Founded in 1991, Intel Capital invests in technology startups and companies that offer hardware, software, as well as services in AI, cybersecurity, data center and other technologies.

9. Plug and Play Ventures

Plug and Play is a VC firm that consists of 50,000 startups and over 500 world-leading corporations. It focuses on seed and early-stage startups, and in 2021, the VC firm accelerated over 2,500 startups. Plug and Play has helped grow market leaders including PayPal, Google, DropBox and has over 400 early-stage startups in its portfolio.

10. IDG Capital

Launched in 1993, IDG Capital is a pioneer in venture capital business in China, and is a world-leading private equity investment institution. They mainly focus on areas of technology, media and telecommunications, new forms of consumption and services, consumer and entertainment, healthcare, advanced manufacturing/clean-tech and clean energy. Their investments cover from startup to post-IPO and range from $1 million to $500 million.

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