A new entrant in the enterprise AI space has secured an unusually large seed round, signaling strong investor confidence in the growing market for AI agent infrastructure. Sycamore, a startup focused on helping enterprises build, manage, and secure AI agents, has raised $65 million in seed funding. The round was led by Coatue and Lightspeed, with participation from a wide network of prominent angel investors, including former OpenAI chief scientist Bob McGrew, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi.
One of the key factors attracting investors is the experience of Sycamore’s founder, Sri Viswanath. Unlike many early-stage AI startups led by younger, first-time founders, Viswanath brings over two decades of enterprise technology expertise. He previously worked at major companies such as Sun Microsystems, VMware, Groupon, and Atlassian, where he served as CTO and played a critical role in scaling the company’s cloud infrastructure and engineering teams. Before launching Sycamore, he was also an investor at Coatue, stepping away from venture capital to build the company.
Viswanath emphasized that long-standing industry relationships helped bring the funding round together quickly. However, beyond his background, Sycamore’s broader product vision has also played a major role in generating interest. Rather than focusing on a single, narrowly defined use case, the company aims to build a comprehensive orchestration layer for enterprise AI agents. This platform is designed to handle everything from coding tasks to backend systems and data integrations, adapting dynamically to different enterprise needs.
According to Viswanath, many current tools simply layer AI agents onto existing workflows. In contrast, Sycamore’s approach starts by identifying the core problem and then building a tailored solution, whether that involves agents, infrastructure, or full-stack integrations. This more flexible and foundational strategy is intended to differentiate the company in an increasingly crowded market.
Although Sycamore has reportedly already secured interest from major enterprise clients, specific customer names have not been disclosed.
Despite the strong start, the company faces intense competition. The enterprise AI agent space is rapidly filling with startups of all sizes, from smaller players like Maisa AI to well-funded ventures such as Isara, which recently raised $94 million. More established companies are also expanding aggressively in this domain. Firms like Airia and Port have each raised $100 million rounds, while major AI providers—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft Azure, and AWS—are all developing their own enterprise agent platforms.
Additional investors in Sycamore’s seed round include Abstract Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, 8VC, Fellows Fund, and E14 Fund. Notable angel backers also feature industry leaders such as Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest, Rubrik and Wisdom AI co-founder Soham Mazumdar, and Zapier co-founder Mike Knoop.
As the race to define enterprise AI infrastructure intensifies, Sycamore is positioning itself to compete in what many believe will become a massive and transformative market.
