Listen to today’s podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/silk-logic-small-business-daily/id1841930957
Small Business Daily Podcast
Today’s podcast episode was created from the following stories:
This startup is using AI agents to automate HR tasks like onboarding — read the pitch deck it used to raise $24 million
Tel Aviv-based Shapes raised $24 million to scale its modular “PeopleOS,” an app store-like HR platform with AI agents that automate onboarding, payroll, and retention. With hundreds of customers across 79 countries, the company says its modular design lets businesses tailor workflows and even build bespoke apps via prompts. The funding will help more than double headcount and support expansion as Shapes competes with larger HR tech players integrating AI.
SuperCircle raises $24M to scale AI-powered circularity as retail waste costs mount
SuperCircle secured a $24 million Series A to expand AI-driven sorting, textile recovery, and processing that help retailers recapture value from unsold, returned, and damaged inventory. Processing over 650,000 units weekly, the company routes goods across resale, donation, and recycling while preparing brands for coming EPR regulations. With retailers facing an estimated $165 billion in excess inventory each year, SuperCircle pitches circular logistics as both cost-saving and compliance-ready.
Thredd helps Netbank roll out Cards-as-a-Service solution
Netbank in the Philippines tapped Thredd to launch Cards-as-a-Service, enabling rapid issuance of virtual and physical cards with real-time controls and Google Pay integration. The move targets the country’s fast-growing digital payments market while supporting use cases like expense cards, disbursements, and gig worker payouts. Thredd’s broader infrastructure and Visa Cloud Connect integrations aim to speed market entry and improve fraud defenses.
AgentField aims to fix agentic AI’s coordination crisis with cryptographic IDs and Kubernetes-style orchestration
AgentField launched an Apache 2.0 open-source platform that gives AI agents cryptographic identities and Kubernetes-style orchestration to deliver traceable, enforceable permissions. The system creates verifiable chains of authority across multi-agent workflows, offering cryptographic receipts for every action — critical for high-stakes sectors like finance and healthcare. The goal is a control plane for autonomous software that brings identity, policy, and observability to agentic AI.
Fertility startup Inito wants to use AI-designed antibodies to expand at-home health tests
Inito raised $29 million in Series B funding to scale its at-home diagnostics platform and develop AI-engineered antibodies that enable more sensitive, accurate tests beyond fertility. Already analyzing over 30 million hormone data points, Inito plans to expand into pregnancy, menopause, and broader endocrine monitoring with lab-grade confidence from home. The funding will support manufacturing scale-up and global expansion.
The startup taking direct aim at Nvidia’s AI iron grip
Modular is building a portable AI software stack — including the Mojo language, MAX inference, and Mammoth cluster management — to run models across Nvidia, AMD, and other chips. Backed by $380 million, the company reports top-tier performance on both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, giving developers a more level playing field and hardware flexibility. Early customer tests suggest significant latency and cost improvements, challenging CUDA lock-in without requiring Nvidia’s demise.
Quick-fashion startup Knot ties up $5 million funding from 12 Flags, others
Mumbai’s Knot raised $5 million to expand 60-minute fashion delivery with doorstep trials and AI-powered virtual try-ons aimed at cutting returns. The company plans new micro-warehouses and stronger last-mile ops as daily orders climb and rapid fashion delivery draws more VC interest. The pitch: blend creator-driven trends with instant fulfillment to boost conversion and reduce costly returns.
Lightrun brings real-world runtime visibility to AI code generation
Lightrun introduced a Model Context Protocol-based Runtime Context that lets AI coding assistants see production behavior and debug across staging, preprod, and live environments. By securely adding logs, traces, and snapshots in real time, AI agents can propose fixes based on actual runtime signals, reducing resolution time from days to minutes. The approach targets a major gap in AI-generated code: high failure rates once exposed to real-world traffic and dependencies.
Together, these stories show how AI is moving from hype to hard outcomes: automating back-office work, recapturing value in retail supply chains, modernizing payments, making agents auditable, accelerating at-home diagnostics, loosening hardware lock-in, speeding instant commerce, and hardening developer workflows. For small businesses, the throughline is clear — use AI where it reduces costs, increases speed, or opens new channels, and favor modular, portable tools that won’t box you in as the tech and market evolve.
