General Catalyst leads $1.1B round into 2-month-old River AI
AI startup River AI has raised $1.1 billion in a seed/Series A round led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC. Founded by former xAI and OpenAI veteran Igor Babuschkin, the company aims to build personally trainable AI agents that function as individual assistants rather than worker replacements.
Why it matters
The massive funding for a two-month-old company highlights the intense investor appetite for next-generation AI infrastructure and the shift toward personalized, agentic models.
River AI, an AI startup founded by xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, has secured $1.1 billion in funding in a seed/Series A round led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC, with participation from Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Y Combinator, and Temasek.
(AMP PBC is an AI-focused investment firm founded in 2026 by former Andreessen Horowitz general partner Anjney Midha, backer of companies at a16z like Black Forest Labs, Mistral AI, LMArena and OpenRouter.)
River came out of stealth in June with a fascinating mission. Babuschkin, whose resume includes AI roles at DeepMind and OpenAI, intends to reinvent AI from scratch, beginning with how models are trained. This is in order to turn agents into personally trainable assistants, rather than following the trajectory other AI labs are on: human worker replacements.
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