Paris AI startup Steerlab raises USD $1.9 million in pre-seed round

Steerlab, a Paris-based AI startup, has successfully raised USD $1.9 million in a pre-seed funding round.

The company aims to enhance its AI platform, designed to automate responses to Requests For Proposals (RFPs) and security questionnaires for PreSales and security teams. The new capital will enable Steerlab to attract top engineering talent and scale its sales operations, targeting prominent tech firms in the United States and Europe.

The funding round was led by Nordic early-stage investor Dreamcraft VC, with considerable contributions from Berlin-based early-stage firm Heartfelt_, AI specialist VC Lumire AI Ventures, and more than 20 hand-picked angel investors. These angel investors include founders and leaders from notable firms such as AWS, Cloudflare, Databricks, and Datadome. Additionally, Steerlab received investment from Station F, a globally recognised startup hub, after being acknowledged as a top startup in its selective programme.

Rami Iguerwane, CEO of Steerlab, expressed his enthusiasm for the support from renowned investors. "We're glad to have won such renowned investors who back our mission. We're not just building another AI co-pilot for RFPs; our mission is to rethink the end-to-end response workflow and help our customers focus on what really matters: winning more deals," Rami said.

"This funding will help us execute our vision of making Steerlab the worldwide leader in our space. To achieve this, we are doubling down on the international strategy we have pursued from day one. This is reflected in our customer base, our international investors, and our multicultural team."

Steerlab’s platform leverages fine-tuned language models and Multi-Modal agentic AI systems to automate and enhance the response process for RFPs and security questionnaires. The company's mission is to empower PreSales teams in B2B software companies by facilitating the creation of high-quality, winning proposals efficiently and providing actionable insights to improve deal success rates.

Mathilde Lyet, Investment Manager at Dreamcraft Ventures, commented on her excitement to support Steerlab. "Right from the start, we have been impressed by founders Rami Iguerwane and Othmane Hamzaoui and their ambition to solve the critical inefficiencies in responding to tenders, a pain they have experienced firsthand," Lyet noted. "They iterate rapidly based on market feedback, ensuring their AI platform meets customer needs effectively and we are excited to support a team so dedicated to using GenAI technologies to solve a concrete pain point in B2B sales processes."

In 2023, Rami Iguerwane and Othmane Hamzaoui founded Steerlab after experiencing the inefficiencies in responding to RFPs and vendor questionnaires in their previous roles. Companies often invest thousands of hours annually in these processes without guaranteed success. Steerlab's solution addresses this inefficiency by fully automating the workflow - covering tasks from managing the content library and generating responses to assigning reviewers and providing insights. This approach aims to streamline operations and enhance the chances of securing more deals.

Already, Steerlab has garnered the trust of several prominent tech companies in the US, Canada, France, and Germany. By transforming old manual processes into fully automated, intelligent workflows, Steerlab aspires to revolutionise the PreSales landscape, significantly boosting efficiency and maximising success in winning more deals.