5 startups that caught VCs’ attention at the latest PearX demo day

TechCrunch attended Pear’s latest demo day and discovered which startups generated the most buzz, from spatial models to chips for local AI. There isn’t a shortage of accelerators for startups, but one of the few that investors watch closely is PearX, a 12-week program that caps its cohorts at a mere 20 startups and is run by Pear VC, a pre-seed and seed-focused venture firm. PearX’s biannual demo day is consistently attended by top venture capitalists, reflecting the historically strong caliber of companies in each batch. Some of the startups that came out of recent cohorts include Known, which uses voice AI to match people for dates and secured funding from Forerunner Ventures.

Another is Andera, a startup that automates corporate audit and compliance tasks and raised a $37 million Series A from Lightspeed this summer. The PearX program distinguishes itself from Y Combinator, the OG of startup accelerators, in several ways. Besides being much smaller, it doesn’t offer companies standard terms. Its investments can be as high as $2 million. Moreover, unlike YC, where some of the buzziest startups raise funding before the program ends, PearX claims to keep its participants under wraps until demo day. TechCrunch attended Pear’s latest demo day, which took place in San Francisco last week, and then stuck around to ask some of the