BrainGrid, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI product planner service for non-technical builders, has raised $1 million in a Pre-Seed funding round led by Menlo Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Next Tier Ventures and Brainstorm Ventures.
The company plans to use the funds to grow its operations and continue developing its products.
AI coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor let non-technical founders create working software using natural language. But writing code isn’t the same as building a full product. Once projects go beyond simple prototypes, development often breaks down—features clash, integrations fail, and AI produces fragile results from vague instructions.
The issue isn’t code generation—it’s that no one is planning the whole product.
With AI handling coding, the main challenge in building software is now planning. BrainGrid provides a structured planning layer that helps non-technical builders create revenue-generating products.
In traditional teams, a Product Manager handles this, setting scope, managing dependencies, and ensuring the final product matches the vision. In AI-native development, that role is missing. BrainGrid fills that gap.
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BrainGrid has helped more than 500 builders launch AI-native SaaS products across fitness, healthcare, productivity, and venture studios. These aren’t just prototypes—they are live apps with paying customers, created by people ranging from first-time founders with no engineering experience to senior engineers working solo.
“Nico and I have been building software for over 25 years. The constraints haven’t changed—only where the bottleneck happens,” said Tyler Wells, co-founder and CTO of BrainGrid. “As AI agents handle more complex tasks, the quality of the initial plan matters even more. That’s what we’re solving.”
“BrainGrid is the most flexible part of my stack. I can change models, but I won’t drop planning,” said Clay Unicorn of Unicorn—love, a Denver venture studio that has shipped over 200 features using BrainGrid.
“Nico and Tyler really understand how software is built at scale,” said Shawn Carolan, Partner at Menlo. “BrainGrid brings that expertise to the millions of new founders empowered by AI.”
About BrainGrid
Founded in 2025 by Nico Acosta and Tyler Wells, BrainGrid is an AI Product Planner for non-technical builders. The founders, former Twilio product and engineering leaders, bring over 25 years of software experience. BrainGrid turns messy ideas into clear designs and structured product plans that AI coding tools can execute reliably. The platform uses a four-step process—Capture, Structure, Build, Verify—and works with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and other coding agents.
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