Phaze, Finpilot, and Horizon3 raise on agent infrastructure

Desktops built for agents

Phaze, founded by Benjy Boxer and Christopher Dickson, raised an $8.75 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Lerer Hippeau also investing. The founders previously built Parsec, the remote desktop product for graphics-intensive applications that Unity acquired. Phaze is headquartered in Salt Lake City, and it decouples compute power from the desktop screen so physical machines become a shared resource accessible by employees and agents. m:…7835

Andreessen Horowitz's thesis is that AI agents are more productive when given full access to desktop environments rather than restricted agent APIs. Phaze provides a high-performance remote desktop solution for AI agents and humans, designed to support latency-sensitive workloads such as Blender and Unreal Studio. The argument is that agents should work where the work already happens, on a full desktop, instead of through a narrow API that hides half the tools. m:…4861

Specialized roles like computer-aided design, video production, engineering, and game development rely on high-end hardware, according to Lerer Hippeau, and Phaze turns those machines into a shared resource. The pitch to enterprises is utilization: expensive workstations that sit idle for part of the day become available to agents and to other employees, rather than being bought one per person. m:…7835

Institutional capital goes AI-native

Finpilot, which builds AI-native software for institutional capital, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Capital, with Madrona participating after leading the seed round in 2024. The platform aims to replace manual, spreadsheet-based workflows in institutional investment teams with AI agents that research managers, prepare reports, and run diligence. m:…3889

Finpilot's agents learn team-specific workflows over time, according to Madrona, and the company names users including Seattle Children's, Children's Health of Dallas, Hackensack Meridian Health, TIFF, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the Wyoming Retirement System. Institutional investment teams often rely on manual processes to extract data from PDF statements, and sectors like pensions and hospital systems were historically overlooked by financial software providers, Madrona says. m:…3889

The funding logic is about an underserved buyer. Software companies historically focused on buyers that were easy to reach and quick to sign, while institutional capital teams did slow, document-heavy work with spreadsheets. An agent that reads statements, prepares reports, and runs diligence is aimed directly at that gap, and the $10 million round funds hiring across product, engineering, sales, marketing, and client success. m:…3889

Security testing scales up in Asia-Pacific

Horizon3's $250 million Series E, at a valuation above $2 billion, is the largest of the three rounds, and it funds geographic expansion rather than a new product line. The company is hiring more than 50 people across Asia-Pacific and Japan, appointed Chris Wood as Director of Sales for Australia and New Zealand and Vivienne Horsfall as Growth Marketing Director for Asia-Pacific and Japan, and launched a Sydney point of presence to support local security data hosting requirements. m:…8758

Horizon3's NodeZero platform has executed more than 350,000 production-safe autonomous security tests and has been used by more than 7,000 organizations worldwide, according to the company. The company was also named the fastest growing cybersecurity company in North America by the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and one of the most innovative companies by Fast Company in 2026. Those are vendor-reported scale claims, but they frame the expansion: the product is established, and the new money buys regional presence. m:…8758

Taken together, the three rounds share a thesis. Agents need infrastructure that was not built for them: desktops they can fully use, workflows that treat them as workers, and security testing that keeps up with autonomous systems. The checks are landing on the companies building that layer, not on the model labs, and the geographic spread of Horizon3's round suggests the buyers are everywhere, not just in one market. m:…8758