Index Ventures

As a girl growing up in Denmark and Sweden, Anine Bing dreamed of seeing the world. At 14, she convinced her parents to let her fly to Milan to pursue a career in modeling. “I was determined to go out in the world and make something for myself,” she says. Meanwhile, her future husband Nico was starting his first business at 17, running a clothing store that would grow to multiple locations across Denmark. “Whatever I could get my hands on, I tried to spin that around and make a little money and move on,” he recalls. Today, Anine and Nico are the powerhouse duo behind ANINE BING, a global fashion brand with more than 30 stores worldwide. They’ve built their success on complementary strengths — Anine’s creative vision and Nico’s business acumen — and a shared determination to create something bigger than themselves. Explore more perspectives from our founders at indexventures.com

The best startups thrive in chaos. They move fast, break barriers, and rewrite the rules. Amid the uncertainty, they strip problems down to first principles, find innovative solutions, and set new records for growth. But as AI evolves from a feature to a fundamental building block, a new question arises: how much more efficiently can companies scale? New data shows a stark divide between the US and Europe when it comes to AI’s impact on hiring. In Europe, 84% of founders expect headcount to grow in the next 12 months, while in the US that number drops to just 54%. US founders are more cautious, prioritizing lean, highly efficient teams and bracing for AI-driven headcount shifts over the next five years. On March 10th at HumanX in Las Vegas, Index partner Martin Mignot will host a masterclass on Scaling Through Chaos in the Age of AI with Scale AI's Vijay Karunamurthy and Remote’s Marcelo Lebre. In this exclusive roundtable discussion, we’ll explore how AI is redefining startup growth, from hiring and GTM to sales training and customer support. To be part of the conversation, apply through the link below: https://lnkd.in/gHtC6sm9

As capital floods into AI, the real skill lies in distinguishing signal from noise, predicting where value will accrue, and managing risk in an unpredictable landscape. On March 12th at HumanX, Index partner Jahanvi Sardana joins James Currier (NFX), Marcie Vu (Greycroft), and Viviana Faga (Felicis) as they break down what separates a winning AI investment from a fleeting trend, including actionable strategies for staying on top of the next wave of AI innovation.

Heading to HumanX? Join us in Las Vegas as our Partners take the stage to talk all things AI with the top founders, investors, and industry leaders at the biggest AI event of the year. 🎲 Space is limited to join Martin Mignot's workshop on AI's transformative role in scaling startups - sign up soon to secure your spot!

Congrats to Index-backed Taktile on raising $54m to enable AI Adoption for decision making in financial services. "AI’s rapid adoption in business has largely been concentrated in low-risk areas like content generation and customer support. However, its true potential lies in tackling high-stakes, business-critical decisions. Taktile exemplifies this shift — underway in many enterprises around the world — bringing AI to the forefront of risk decisioning in financial services, where accuracy is paramount, and errors carry significant consequences," writes Index Partner Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas. Thank you Maik Taro Wehmeyer, Maximilian Eber and team for 4 years of partnership. Onwards!

The AI lip sync era is over: our team at Captions is excited to usher in a new era of audio-to-video foundation models. Captions was among the first to commercialize lip sync models, launching the original "lipdub" and "AI dubbing" in 2022. We trained our models and worked with companies like synclabs (pre-YC) as early as 2022. These models gained massive popularity and are used today by companies like Captions, Heygen and Synthesia for everything from dubbing to AI avatars. As the AI lip sync use cases have grown, a key weakness has emerged — half of visual communication happens through facial expressions and body language, not just lip movement. We've all seen it: AI lip sync videos saying one thing with their lips, but their expressions or body language saying another. This is the definition of bad acting. Enter Mirage by Captions, the world's first audio-to-video foundation model. Mirage uses audio alone as an input to generate realistic talking video at 720p resolution — all with "people" who don't exist. Optionally, you can prompt with text for changing location, clothes, accessories, and more. Today, we're releasing an early preview of Mirage to show that audio is enough to drive full-body animation, facial expression, eye movement, and more. To underscore an important point: We recognize this an incredibly useful foundation model, but one that can be dangerous if used incorrectly or maliciously. We are carefully crafting the surface areas where Mirage will be available to consumers in a safe way, and access will be limited as we release this technology. Mirage will be released within Captions suite of AI video editing and production tools over the coming weeks. Please apply below for access.

We’re excited to welcome Eryk Dobrushkin to the Index team! Eryk joins us after several years at Databricks, where as Chief of Staff he helped scale the company from a startup to a leader in enterprise tech. Before that, he began his career at BCG, focusing on enterprise software, cybersecurity, and digital health. Eryk’s passion for innovation and his unique perspective as a second-generation immigrant will fit right in at Index, where we’ve always believed in backing outsiders and fresh thinkers. At Index, Eryk will be focused on investing in AI, infrastructure, and robotics—industries that are changing how we live and work. We’re glad to have him in our San Francisco office and can’t wait to see his impact on the next generation of visionary founders! 💫

Already trusted by hundreds of businesses to streamline payments and save founders and accountants countless hours, Adfin is on a mission to eliminate financial admin for professional services firms. Index partner Julia Andre caught up with co-founders Tom Pope and Ciprian Diaconasu as we double down on their vision with a fresh seed investment. Watch the full conversation to hear how they plan to put the funding to work (spoiler: it’s all about people and product), what it takes to build a payments platform in today’s high-expectation world, and which founder plays the optimist or realist. Congrats to Tom, Ciprian, and the entire Adfin team!

🛠️ Bay Area engineers: join us for Contrary's SF Tech Talk on March 27th, where you'll hear from top voices at Baseten, Codeium, Doss and more. Details & sign up link below 👇

Congratulations to Plain on raising a $15M Series A to expand its AI-powered customer support platform—building new product capabilities, growing the team, and opening a US office in San Francisco! We’re excited to back Plain again after leading its seed round and to continue supporting Simon, Matt, and the team as they redefine how B2B companies deliver customer support. We got to know Simon when he was at Deliveroo, where he and Matt worked on scaling the company’s design and engineering systems. Simon later joined us as a mentor-in-residence at Index. Matt, a developer and designer, went on to help grow Echo into one of the UK’s largest chemists. Both saw firsthand how difficult it was to improve tooling for customer service teams and founded Plain in 2020 to build the platform they wished they had—one designed for modern B2B companies. Customer support is undergoing a fundamental shift. AI is reshaping the function, freeing teams from manual tasks and enabling them to focus on high-value, proactive interactions. At the same time, support is moving away from traditional email-based ticketing toward real-time collaboration on platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams. Plain is building for that future.