In a testament to the continued investor fervour for foundational AI infrastructure, Lucent, a startup targeting the data bottleneck for AI agents, has closed an oversubscribed $2 million AUD ($1.3 million USD) pre-seed round in a blistering 36 hours. 

The round saw participation from prominent US-based firms, including Long Journey Ventures, Horizon, Browder Capital, and Weekend Fund, the firm started by Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover.

The company is the brainchild of 22-year-old solo founder Alisa Wu, who is already on her second startup. Lucent is addressing what many in the industry see as a critical challenge: sourcing high-quality training data for AI agents designed to operate web browsers to accomplish user tasks. 

Considered the next major frontier for leading AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, aiming to develop agents that can autonomously handle complex tasks online, such as making travel arrangements, completing online forms, or managing e-commerce shopping.

Wu argues that as AI models become more advanced, the key to a competitive edge lies not just in the model architecture, but in the uniqueness and quality of the data it's trained on.

“Frontier labs that want to differentiate need unique datasets for specific use cases,” Wu stated. “Lucent provides data that allows them to build differentiated capabilities: we provide behavioural datasets grounded in real web interactions”.

The rapid-fire funding round was catalysed by Wu’s strong connections within the San Francisco founder ecosystem, where friends provided warm introductions to venture capitalists who had backed their own companies. U.S.-based investors had also proactively reached out via LinkedIn to express interest in her next venture.

Investors are betting heavily on Wu herself, whose track record belies her age. Her previous venture, an AI startup called Stella AI, was built and exited within nine months and was acquired by an NSW-based education company in 2024 Before that, Wu was a founding engineer at MagicBrief, an AI-powered advertising platform that Canva acquired for over $20 million.

Sandy Kory, General Partner at Horizon, commented on the firm's investment decision, saying, "We invested in Lucent because of Alisa. She has a unique mix of founder experience, deep technical ability, and sharp insight into where AI is headed".

Vedika Jain, a General Partner at Weekend Fund, echoed this sentiment, highlighting the market opportunity. "Lucent is tackling one of the most important bottlenecks in AI today: training data for browser agents. We backed Alisa because she combines the vision to see a category-defining opportunity with the execution to build it. In a short time, Alisa has galvanised excitement from frontier labs and assembled an impressive group of backers. Lucent is positioned to become a foundational player in the future of browser agents".

With the new capital, Wu plans to establish Lucent's headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing the funds on product development and securing initial pilot customers.

“Over the next 12 months, we’ll be relocating to San Francisco to focus on expanding our unique dataset and deepening partnerships with frontier labs,” Wu said.