Series C Round Led by Menlo Ventures with Participation from NVentures, Hallwood Media, Lightspeed, and Matrix

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 19, 2025 — Suno, a music company built to amplify imagination powered by the world’s most advanced AI model, closes a $250M Series C round at a 2.45B post-money valuation, led by Menlo Ventures with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Hallwood Media, Lightspeed and Matrix.

“We’re seeing the future of music take shape in real time,” said Mikey Shulman, Co-Founder and CEO of Suno. “In just two years, we’ve seen millions of people make their ideas a reality through Suno, from first-time creators to top songwriters and producers integrating the tool into their daily workflows. This funding allows us to keep expanding what’s possible, empowering more artists to experiment, collaborate, and build on their creativity. We’re proud to be at the forefront of this historic moment for music.”

“Suno is the world’s #1 music creation app, making music accessible to everyone. Mikey and the team have built something people genuinely love using and millions of fans are on the platform every day, creating original songs and sharing them with friends,” said Amy Martin, Partner, Menlo Ventures.

In the past year, Suno has redefined what’s possible in music creation. In September, they launched the first-ever generative audio workstation, Suno Studio which blends pro-grade multi-track editing with AI stem generation. Days before Studio’s debut, Suno introduced v5, the company’s most powerful music model to date, delivering greater creative control, studio-quality mixing, improved vocals, and intuitive prompts across every element of a track. As part of the build-up to Suno Studio, Suno acquired WavTool, the first browser-based DAW, bringing their technology and engineering talent to now fuel Suno’s mission to empower artists with best-in-class technology. Suno is building a full-stack music ecosystem, model, workstation, artist tools, and community, designed to foster creative work rather than a one-off generation.

Unprecedented adoption across both new and established creators has signaled a cultural shift in how music can be made and shared. This funding will enable Suno to accelerate what they’re already building: more sophisticated tools for professionals, more delightful experiences for casual creators, and new ways for people to share and connect socially through music. Most importantly, Suno is building an ecosystem where everyone actively participates, rather than passively listens, and new value flows between creatives and listeners, unlocking a more promising future for the broader music community.

About Suno:

Suno is a music company built to amplify imagination. Powered by the world’s most advanced AI music model, Suno offers an unparalleled creative platform that includes Suno Studio, a breakthrough generative audio workstation. From shower-singers to aspiring songwriters to seasoned artists, Suno empowers a global community to create, share, and discover music—unlocking the joy of musical expression for all. Learn more at Suno.com.

For more information contact:
Chelsey Northern | Elana Rose | Chloé Snyder | Cory Councill
The Untold
[email protected]

SOURCE Suno

Fragmentation wastes nearly $1 trillion annually and denies patients timely, high-quality care; Arbiter collapses $100B+ in point solutions into one intelligent care orchestration platform

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2025 — Arbiter today emerged from stealth with $52 million in funding and a bold mission: to end healthcare fragmentation by uniting payers, providers, and patients on an AI-powered care orchestration platform. Led by TriEdge Investments and MFO Ventures, together with leading private equity firm WindRose Health Investors and other seasoned operators, this financing values Arbiter at $400 million and underscores investor conviction that healthcare needs a connected infrastructure built for real-time collaboration.

Effective patient care depends on coordination, yet today providers, payers, and patients operate in silos. The fallout is staggering: nearly one trillion dollars in annual waste and patients waiting months or abandoning care altogether. For a patient flagged at high risk for colon cancer, this can mean the difference between early detection and a late-stage diagnosis.

Arbiter ends fragmentation by bringing together data, technology, and stakeholders to close care gaps and intelligently direct next best actions – starting with real-time site-of-care optimization. The platform connects the people and systems that shape every care decision, creating a ripple effect that streamlines coordination and ensures patients move seamlessly from detection to resolution without delay.

“Arbiter’s mission is nothing less than to rebuild the operating spine of U.S. healthcare,” said Michelle Carnahan, co-founder and CEO of Arbiter. “By aligning payers and providers around the needs of patients, we’re transforming healthcare from a fragmented set of parts into a connected system that works for everyone.”

At its core is Arbiter’s Record-Action-Alignment model – a new operating foundation for healthcare. It begins with a longitudinal patient record that integrates clinical, financial, and policy data, then uses AI to automate actions and keep stakeholders in sync as care is delivered.

The company’s first application, real-time site-of-care optimization, is delivered in partnership with a leading national payer and major provider networks. The platform matches referrals to the best-fit provider based on cost, quality, and availability, and automates authorizations, outreach and scheduling. The result is care that moves faster, and more efficiently, with fewer dropped handoffs.

Over time, Arbiter’s AI will move healthcare beyond reactive fixes toward proactive management that anticipates patient needs, and ultimately to predictive intelligence that can forecast disease onset, hospital utilization, and system-wide risk. In the process, Arbiter will reshape the healthcare system from one that responds to problems into one that prevents them.

Arbiter is built and funded by leaders overseeing over $25 billion in annual healthcare payments and millions of patient lives. Its team combines executive leadership from Cigna, UnitedHealth, Kaiser Permanente, One Medical, and VillageMD with technologists from Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon – a coalition with the experience to understand healthcare’s pain points and the expertise to solve them.

“Healthcare fragmentation isn’t an abstract problem – it’s deeply human,” said Dr. Clive Fields, Arbiter board member and co-founder of VillageMD. “Every delay or missed connection represents a patient waiting for care that should already be underway. Arbiter is uniting the system around them, so care can move at the speed of need.”

For more information, visit: arbiter.ai

About Arbiter

Arbiter is the AI-powered system that connects healthcare. By uniting patients, providers, and payers on one intelligent care orchestration platform, Arbiter ends fragmentation and ensures patients receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time.

Media Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Arbiter

Co-led by GreenSoil PropTech Ventures, Bosch Ventures, and New Era Capital Partners, the new funding will accelerate TULU’s global expansion and strengthen TULU Brain, the company’s data-driven intelligence engine that fuels usage and engagement.

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2025 — TULU, the world’s leading product access and usage platform providing residents with on-demand access to appliances, essentials, and lifestyle products, today announced an extension of its Series A funding round. The additional $17 million investment, co-led by GreenSoil PropTech Ventures and existing investors Bosch Ventures and New Era Capital Partners, brings TULU’s total Series A funding to $37 million. Other existing investors participating in the round include Regeneration. VC, Good Company, Aviv Growth Ventures, and i3 Partners.

Since launching in 2020, TULU has served over 500,000 residents across 60 cities in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Austria, France, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Italy. Its subscriber base continues to grow exponentially as the company expands its network of in-building touchpoints to thousands of additional sites worldwide.

Co-founded by Yishai Lehavi and Yael Shemer, TULU enables residents to access shared products on demand, reducing both the cost of living and consumer waste in major cities. With nothing more than a wall in a lobby, lounge, laundry, or bike room, TULU’s plug-and-play IoT-based units provide 24/7 access to a variety of brand-name products – from vacuums, VR headsets, and e-scooters to projectors and essential household supplies. Each unit is customized to a building’s needs and core tenant base, allowing users to rent or purchase products seamlessly through the TULU app.

Powered by its proprietary AI-driven TULU Brain, the platform translates real usage data into personalized digital experiences, driving resident engagement while delivering valuable insights for landlords and brand partners.

Leading property owners and operators – including Greystar, BGO, Brookfield, RPM, Blackstone, Bozzuto, American Campus, RXR, Willow Bridge, and Related – integrate TULU to elevate resident experience, strengthen leasing performance, and increase renewals. Global brands such as Bosch, Kärcher, Philips, and Anker partner with TULU to reach Gen Z and millennial consumers, expand brand visibility, capture actionable product insights, and advance circularity initiatives.

“Unlike selling a product, where value is proven once, creating a usage habit requires continuous insight and personalization,” said Yishai Lehavi, Co-Founder and CEO of TULU. “Today, we’re taking TULU into its next phase – on the journey to building a category-defining company that’s shaping a new consumption economy. Over the past year, we’ve embedded AI capabilities that transform usage data into actionable insights – delivering personalized experiences that accelerate user engagement, while giving our brand and property partners unbiased visibility into real-life consumer behavior. Having already become a standard across hundreds of communities worldwide, we’re excited for the next chapter of growth and to continue expanding our global footprint.”

“Forty-five percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from producing and consuming consumer goods – and much of that consumption happens at home, from manufacturing and packaging to shipping and returns,” said Yael Shemer, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer of TULU. “We’re building the infrastructure for a new mode of consumption – one that reflects the mindset of Gen Z and millennial consumers and replaces the old ownership model. While overconsumption has turned our homes into hyper-consuming units, TULU is changing the curve, transforming buildings into collective sharing communities. For us, this is only the beginning of reshaping a new way of living – one that is more sustainable and responsible.”

“We’re excited to co-lead this round and support TULU at such a pivotal moment in its growth journey. The company has built a strong foundation with blue-chip real estate partners, exceptional unit economics, and impressive revenue momentum,” explained Gideon Soesman, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Greensoil PropTech Ventures. “In fact, TULU has already been installed at properties owned by our LP network, and we saw an increasing number of residents registering and delivering valuable insights. We look forward to working alongside the TULU team through this journey.”

“TULU provides a unique channel for a new mode of consumption that deeply resonates with millennial and Gen Z consumers,” explained Dr. Ingo Ramesohl, Managing Director Bosch Ventures. “The shift from ownership to usage is not only transformative, it is essential for advancing circularity. At Bosch Ventures, we see TULU as a key enabler of this sustainable transition. By leveraging AI, TULU is empowering brands to reach consumers more efficiently while adapting products and business models based on real-world behavioral insights.”

About TULU

TULU is the world’s leading product access and usage platform, combining smart in-building retail units with AI-driven consumer intelligence. Operating in over 60 cities across North America and Europe, TULU partners with the world’s top property owners and global brands to shape a more sustainable and responsible way of living. To date, TULU has raised $42 million across its Seed and Series A funding rounds.

CONTACT: Sivan Ron, [email protected] 

SOURCE TULU

DENVER, Nov. 19, 2025 — Today, Orion announced $3.5 million in funding to scale its AI-powered risk intelligence platform, which enables enterprises to detect, quantify, and act on real-world threats before they escalate. The round was led by Dynamo Ventures, with participation from Bravo Victor Venture Capital (BVVC), Techstars, and Service Provider Capital, alongside a government grant from Puerto Rico.

Orion is building the intelligence infrastructure that gives teams foresight into what’s coming, transforming how they anticipate protests, natural disasters, and supply-chain disruptions before they unfold. They equip physical risk and Command-and-Control (C2) teams with a single source of truth for faster, smarter response.

Risk teams no longer need more data; they need better signals,” said Rahul Thayil, CEO of Orion. “Our team of engineers trained at NYU, MIT, Oxford, and Cambridge is building a system that translates global volatility into clarity. With this funding, we’re expanding across supply chains and defense networks to help organizations anticipate and act before disruption strikes.”

For decades, organizations have relied on outdated software and siloed teams to manually track protests, natural disasters, and supply-chain disruptions. According to industry estimates, organizations lose more than $420 billion in avoidable losses every year and an average of $1.9 billion in operational impact per major event. Corporations now spend north of $750,000 annually on disconnected tools and outsourced analysts, yet still miss the signals that matter.

Orion’s system changes that. Its proprietary methodology calculates real-time risk scores within a half-mile radius of any asset in motion, surfacing only what’s relevant to each organization. The platform predicts and quantifies threats, from political unrest to environmental disruption, days in advance, giving teams time to move people, adjust operations, or reinforce defenses. It maps and monitors entire supply chains in real time, powered by AI that learns like an algorithm for risk and studies how each team responds to disruption and provides evolving bespoke models for every asset, client, and crisis.

Customers include multiple Fortune 500 logistics and cloud-infrastructure operators who use it to safeguard assets worth tens of millions of dollars each. One global client uses the software to monitor both people and venues worldwide,  achieving 20× cost savings compared to traditional intelligence platforms.

Unlike legacy systems priced above $100,000 per site, Orion’s compute-based architecture enables per-asset pricing of $1,000 per year. That allows enterprises of any size to scale coverage across entire networks. Its internal STAN (Spatiotemporal Adaptive Network) framework quantifies uncertainty, turning subjective signals into explainable confidence scores that decision-makers can trust.

“The modern supply chain is a living, breathing network and it’s increasingly exposed to geopolitical, environmental, and informational shocks,” said Jon Bradford, Managing Partner at Dynamo Ventures. “Orion gives operators real-time visibility into how risks ripple across assets and geographies. It’s the intelligence layer every supply chain needs to stay resilient in an unpredictable world, and we’re proud to lead this round.”

About Orion
Orion is an AI-driven risk intelligence company evolving threat intelligence and response for physical risk and C2 defense teams. Its proprietary platform transforms unstructured location-based data into predictive, quantitative insights for enterprises, governments, and critical infrastructure operators worldwide. Founded in New York and headquartered in Denver. Orion unites backgrounds in quantitative analytics, defense operations, and humanitarian response to build a smarter, safer, and more connected global infrastructure. Learn more at www.oriongeo.com.

SOURCE Orion

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 19, 2025 — alphaXiv, a platform reimagining how AI practitioners discover and apply the latest research, today announced its $7M Seed round. The funding was co-led by Menlo Ventures and Haystack with institutional participation from Shakti VC, Conviction Embed and Upfront Ventures, alongside notable angel investors Eric Schmidt, Sebastian Thrun, Sara Hooker and Gokul Rajaram, among others.

Founded by Stanford and Berkeley graduates, alphaXiv helps its users navigate the continuously evolving frontier of AI. Since launching publicly in 2024, alphaXiv has reached millions of users across both academia and industry who have incorporated their tools and resources into their research workflows.

“In recent years, AI research has grown exponentially, creating challenges for anyone who wants to stay up to date,” said Raj Palleti, co-founder of alphaXiv. “Researchers across universities and companies are continually asking what matters most, what’s truly useful and how to apply it effectively. We’re proud to provide the solution.” 

Today, alphaXiv serves applied AI teams by streamlining the path from research to production. AI engineers use the platform to quickly surface relevant papers, compare new methods to leading baselines and directly interact with paper implementations, enabling them to turn research insights into new features in days rather than months.

“There has never been a larger audience for research than today,” said Sebastian Thrun. “People are looking for new ways to get involved in research that go beyond having a PhD. A decade ago everyone wanted to be a software engineer. Today they want to be a research engineer.” 

Beyond industry, alphaXiv has also become a global workspace for researchers. As new AI breakthroughs emerge each week, alphaXiv supports researchers in innovating and collaborating with leading scholars across the world. This is evidenced by the growing number of cross-country collaborations documented on their platform, including countries like the United States and China, where competition and cooperation often progress side by side.

“Every technological revolution is followed by a massive change in what jobs people do,” said Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures. “A while ago, many blue collar jobs became white collar jobs. Then, many white collar jobs became software jobs. As AI begins to automate more software, more people will start doing an even higher order of knowledge work: research to expand human knowledge. alphaXiv is building the infrastructure to power that future.”

About alphaXiv
alphaXiv is a platform reimagining how AI research is discovered and applied, bridging the gap between research and practice. The company brings together papers, benchmarks, and implementations into a single platform that makes it seamless for any AI practitioner to build on top of the latest research. The company was founded in 2024 by Rehaan Ahmad, Raj Palleti, Daniel Kim and Lino Le Van. For more information, visit www.alphaxiv.org.

Media Contact
Alexa Borislow
[email protected]

SOURCE alphaXiv

Thrive Capital, New York Life Ventures, and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures support Modern Life, bringing next-generation technology to one of the last untapped sectors in financial services.

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 2025 — Modern Life, the AI-powered life insurance brokerage transforming how advisors serve their clients, announced today that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Thrive Capital, with participation from New York Life Ventures, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Allegis. 

Bringing its total raised to $35 million, the new funding builds on Modern Life’s rapid progress since its $15 million seed round led by Thrive Capital, including industry-leading instant quoting, data-driven underwriting, Express Decision instant decision capability, and end-to-end agency management. The capital will further fuel Modern Life’s growth, expand strategic partnerships nationwide, and accelerate product development of its proprietary AI-driven platform.

“Life insurance remains one of the biggest untapped opportunities in financial services,” said Nabil Mallick, Partner at Thrive Capital. “Modern Life is reimagining how the industry works by empowering advisors with cutting-edge, AI-powered tools, unlocking lasting value for the entire ecosystem.”

The $175 billion U.S. life insurance market is primarily advisor-distributed, with an estimated 90% of policies sold through advisors. Today, advisors have to navigate tremendous complexity from optimizing financial and tax performance, sifting through dozens of carriers and products, and managing extensive medical underwriting processes, with a typical permanent life policy in the industry taking six months to close. Modern Life’s AI-powered platform helps advisors streamline workflows, deliver faster, more efficient solutions, and enhance client value and outcomes.

“We started Modern Life to solve a clear problem: we believe that advisors have an incredibly important job but face a complex and dizzying set of obstacles to serve their clients well,” said Michael Konialian, Founder and CEO of Modern Life. “We provide everything that advisors need to deliver better client outcomes and run their firms more efficiently, at scale. We have been pushing the frontier of what is possible in life insurance, integrating what would have otherwise been served by over 10 fragmented legacy tools into a singular platform, removing friction across the entire client journey. Our AI helps advisors navigate the most complex parts of the job – it’s like having a medical underwriter, tax expert, financial planner, product specialist, and marketer at your side.”

“Our experience at New York Life Ventures points to a simple truth: advisors are essential to how life insurance is purchased,” said Tim Del Bello, Head of Investments at New York Life Ventures. “Modern Life has built its growth on this foundation, using AI to elevate what advisors do best – serving their clients.”

Life insurance is arguably the most intricate retail financial product, involving detailed tradeoffs between financial optimization, tax planning, medical underwriting, and carrier-specific rules. Modern Life’s proprietary AI platform was built to address this complexity by embedding AI across the entire client journey and supporting advisors in four key areas:

• Underwriting and Risk Assessment: Analyzes medical and financial data in minutes, instead of weeks, and identifies the most competitive carriers for each individual’s needs.
• Advice and Recommendations: Helps advisors bridge insurance, tax, and financial planning, adding breadth to the deep expertise advisors already provide.
• Workflow Automation: Streamlined processes surface the right information at the right time, reducing policy cycle times.
• Client Lifecycle Management: Handles all client data, quotes, applications, and medical evidence through a secure, unified dashboard.

Modern Life gives advisors access to more than 30 carriers and every major product type from permanent and term life to annuities and long-term care. Its platform features the industry’s most advanced instant quoting capabilities, reducing the time it takes to generate quotes from hours or even days to just minutes. With Express Decision, Modern Life’s instant underwriting program, clients can receive offers four times faster than traditional methods – in as soon as minutes. Clients benefit from up to 20% in cost savings through smarter product selection, underwriting expertise, and dedicated advocacy.

Modern Life is SOC 2 certified and built with enterprise-grade data security, ensuring firms and their clients can confidently manage sensitive information throughout the life insurance process.

To learn more about how Modern Life is transforming the life insurance experience for advisors and their clients, visit modernlife.com.

About Modern Life
Modern Life is a leading, AI-powered life insurance brokerage helping financial professionals deliver better outcomes for their clients. Licensed in all 50 states, the company combines advanced technology, AI-driven underwriting, and deep industry expertise to streamline every stage of the insurance process. Advisors can quickly compare quotes from over 30 leading carriers, access expert guidance, receive as soon as instant decisions, and manage cases seamlessly. Learn more at modernlife.com or explore our press kit for additional resources.

SOURCE Modern Life

The San Francisco-based company launches cash management product as part of broader platform expansion

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 19, 2025 — Numeric, the AI accounting automation platform, has raised a $51 million Series B round led by IVP, with participation from Menlo Ventures, Founders Fund, Alkeon, 8VC, Socii Capital, Access Industries, Friends & Family Capital, Long Journey Ventures and Fifth Down, as well as Marc Huffman, Former CEO of BlackLine, and Ron Gill, Former CFO of NetSuite. This investment, which brings Numeric’s total funding raised to $89 million, will allow Numeric to expand from close management into a broader compound startup model – delivering a unified data platform for enterprise finance teams.

Alongside the funding announcement, Numeric is launching its cash management product. Accounting for cash is often the most painful step of the close process for enterprises, and it starts with cash matching: the process of reconciling bank transactions with general ledger entries. Legacy tools often deliver match rates below 30%, leaving finance teams to reconcile hundreds or thousands of transactions manually. For growing companies, this can require teams of five or more people dedicated solely to cash reconciliation.

Numeric’s solution achieves a 90%+ auto-match rate; nearly triple the industry standard. Early customers of the new product, including Brex, Public.com, and Clipboard Health, are already eliminating multiple days of manual reconciliation work each month.

The Series B represents a pivotal moment in Numeric’s evolution from a close management solution to a multi-product platform with a shared data core. With three core products now live – Close Management, Analytics, and Cash Management – Numeric is building what CEO Parker Gilbert describes as “the connected platform for finance operations.”

“We started by solving the close, but our vision has always been greater,” said Gilbert. “Each product we build makes the others more powerful. We’re marching toward a future where accounting isn’t manual spreadsheet work but instead is a real-time strategic function. This funding accelerates that timeline significantly.”

“Numeric has consistently demonstrated exceptional product execution and deep understanding of what finance teams actually need,” said Ajay Vashee, General Partner at IVP. “Their ability to expand from close management into analytics and now cash management, while maintaining product excellence across each, shows they’re building something truly differentiated. We’re excited to support their vision for the future of accounting.”

Brex, who piloted the product, saw their match rate jump from 30% to over 90%, enabling their team to dramatically reduce time spent on manual reconciliation work.

“Numeric didn’t have the dream of just a project management tool. Numeric had the dream of a flux analysis product, a cash reconciliation product, the full linking between the ERP system and their platform. And Numeric had the dream of AI,” said Kevin Moore, Controller at Brex. “I think ultimately that implementing Numeric is one of the best decisions I’ve made as controller over my 7 years at Brex.”

Numeric’s platform strategy mirrors successful enterprise platforms like Salesforce and Rippling, which built category-defining businesses by expanding horizontally across related workflows. The company plans to launch additional products throughout 2026 and 2027, each designed to automate a different critical accounting workflow.

Numeric’s approach combines AI for pattern recognition with deterministic code for calculations and human oversight for exceptions. The platform approach is underpinned by Numeric’s AI philosophy: use it thoughtfully, not indiscriminately.

“AI is powerful, but imperfect. Most importantly, accounting can’t tolerate errors compounding,” said Gilbert. “We route the right work to the right operator: AI to interpret unstructured data, code to handle calculations with precision, and humans to add context and make judgment calls.”

About Numeric
Numeric is an AI accounting automation platform, built to take manual work off accountants’ plates so they can focus on what’s impactful. Founded in 2020 by co-founders Anthony Alvernaz, Parker Gilbert, and Andrew Bihl, Numeric is headquartered in San Francisco, New York, and London.

For more information, visit https://www.numeric.io/

SOURCE Numeric

National Business Capital finds red states dominating the top 10 with lower costs,  stronger growth, and higher survival rates.

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., Nov. 19, 2025 — Great business ideas are like seeds: Where you plant them makes all the difference.  And, according to National Business Capital’s second annual report, “The Best States to Start a Business 2026,” red states across the Midwest and South are providing the most fertile soil for entrepreneurs this year.

This annual study from the business lending platform discovered South Dakota took the top spot, followed by Texas (2nd) and North Carolina (3rd). These states strike the right balance between growth, favorable tax conditions, and strong business survival rates – giving entrepreneurs a more predictable foundation to build on.

Politics appears to play a factor. All of the top the states are “red states.” The highest ranked blue state, Washington (11th), stood out for its labor productivity and first-year business survival rates, while California (14th) remained a hub for innovation despite rising costs.

The full study is available HERE:

Key Findings

• More Startups Are Surviving: The average first-year survival rate rose to 76.8% in 2024 (up from 75.9%), though the five-year rate slipped slightly to 51.2%. This may be due to lingering effects of COVID-related business failures.
• Red States Sweep the Top 10: All top 10 states are red, averaging 53.9 out of 100 versus 45.9 for blue states using the methodology below. Red states also posted stronger Q2 2025 GDP growth (3.6% vs. 3.0%) and better five-year survival rates (51.6% vs. 50.5%).
• Lower Costs vs. Greater Capital: Red states benefit from cheaper energy (11.8¢/kWh vs. 18.6¢) and lighter taxes, while blue states lead in productivity growth (+2.8% vs. +2%) and access to capital, including SBA approvals and venture funding.
• Midwest Remains Most Balanced: With a score of 55.6, the Midwest outperformed all regions thanks to steady growth, modest taxes, and durable businesses – though startup activity remains low, suggesting untapped potential.
• Pacific States Start Fast, Fade Early: The Pacific region leads in first-year survival (78.9%) but lags in five-year success (50.6%), showing strong starts but long-term challenges.

“Starting a business is a nerve-wracking proposition,” said Joe Camberato, CEO of National Business Capital. “Why not start it where you have the greatest chance for success?”

The Top 10 States To Open A Business In 2026

1. South Dakota Score (out of 100): 72.7
   Rank: 1st (+15 from last report)
2. Texas
   Score: 70.2
   Rank: 2nd (+2)
3. North Carolina
   Score: 69.7
   Rank: 3rd (+15)
4. Ohio
   Score: 69.3
   Rank:  4th (+6)
5. Indiana
   Score: 62.2
   Rank: 5th (+3)
6. North Dakota
   Score: 61.5
   Rank:  6th (+11)
7. West Virginia
   Score: 61.1
   Rank: 7th (+41)
8. Utah
   Score: 60.6
   Rank: 8th (-6)
9. Iowa
   Score:  60.0
   Rank: 9th (+24)
10. Michigan
    Score: 58.5
    Rank: 10th (-8)

The Bottom 10 States

41. Virginia (41.8 out of 100; -29):
42. Missouri (41.6; -2)
43. Vermont (40.8; +4)
44. Alaska (40.4; -14)
45. Mississippi (38.9; -21)
46. Oregon (37.9; +0)
47. Kansas (35.7; +3)
48. Alabama (34.6; -12)
49. Maryland (31.2; -11)
50. Hawaii (31.1; -27)

Metrics

• Year One Survival Rates (10%)
• Year Five Survival Rates (14%)
• GDP Change (8%)
• LLC Filing Costs (3%)
• LLC Annual Costs (5%)
• Business Tax Burden (16%)
• Business Applications Per 100,000 (8%)
• Venture Capital Per Capita (8%)
• SBA Loan Approvals Per 100,000 Residents (10%)
• Labor Productivity Change (9%)
• Commercial Electricity (9%)

About National Business Capital :

National Business Capital a pioneer of non-bank financing, provides non-asset-backed financing solutions ranging from $250K to $15MM. Since 2007, the company has financed billions of dollars while innovating how business leaders access growth capital. The team’s approach to each transaction allows clients to maximize financing options.

For more information on this list and this topic, please contact Sarah Johnson.

CONTACT

Sarah Johnson
[email protected]

SOURCE National Business Capital

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 19, 2025 — Intersignal, the developer of an open, next-generation communication layer for distributed artificial intelligence, announced today the expansion of its Florida operational base as interest accelerates in the company’s “Mesh Cache” system, a lightweight, hardware-agnostic indexing layer designed to connect local AI models across multiple devices.

The company’s South Florida presence has grown rapidly in recent months, with new personnel onboarding, expanded studio and compute space, and dedicated test environments for multi-node local inference. This expansion supports Intersignal’s mission to make high-integrity, privacy-preserving AI accessible without dependence on centralized cloud infrastructure.

“Intersignal was founded on a simple premise: intelligence works best at the edge,” said David Seaman, cofounder of the AI lab. “Our Mesh Cache architecture gives everyday users the ability to link their local models, whether on laptops, mini PCs, or workstations, into a coherent cognitive mesh. We believe this is the missing substrate for the next era of AI.”

The Mesh Cache system enables unified memory referencing, cross-device state awareness, and persistent local context without requiring identity accounts or cloud tethering. Early testers have used the system to synchronize workspaces across multiple AI models, from creative nodes to research nodes to analytical nodes, demonstrating significant improvements in responsiveness, autonomy, and cross-model coherence.

“Cloud AI will always have a role, but the momentum is shifting back to local compute,” Seaman added. “People want sovereignty, privacy, and full-stack control. Mesh Cache is designed to give them that in a way that is simple, resilient, and hardware flexible.”

The company’s Florida expansion coincides with increased inbound interest from developers, researchers, and small teams seeking alternatives to cloud-dependent AI workflows. Intersignal plans to continue building out its Florida node as a testing ground, development hub, and training center for distributed AI practices.

A public technical brief outlining Mesh Cache’s operational principles will be released later this quarter, followed by additional tooling and open-source modules.

For additional information, media inquiries, or partnership discussions, please contact:

Yulia K.
Operations Lead, Florida
Intersignal
7206886110
[email protected] 

US Press Office
Intersignal
[email protected]

SOURCE Intersignal