Lahore: After raising over USD 120 million for his startup Airlift, Pakistani entrepreneur Usman Gul is building a new AI platform called Metal to make venture fundraising more targeted.
For startup founders, raising capital can involve months of identifying investors, securing introductions and discovering that potential backers may not be suitable for a particular company. Metal was founded by Gul in 2024 and seeks to reduce that uncertainty by applying artificial intelligence to the fundraising process.
Gul’s idea draws on his experience at Airlift, the Pakistani logistics startup he cofounded. According to Gul, Airlift spoke to about 300 investors over roughly three years while raising around USD 120 million . He says about 80 percent of those investors ultimately did not match the company’s requirements at the time, including its growth, sector, geography or funding needs.
Metal was built around addressing that mismatch. Its platform uses company and investor information to identify potentially relevant backers, while helping founders manage fundraising pipelines, identify relationship pathways and handle investor communications. The company has since expanded its offering beyond investor discovery to cover broader aspects of the founder investor relationship.
Its newer AI tools are designed to automate parts of the fundraising process, including investor research, preparation, pipeline management and investor relations. Metal’s longer term proposition is to make fundraising less dependent on manually searching through personal networks and more reliant on structured data and automation.
The approach has attracted fresh backing. Metal announced a USD 4.5 million seed round led by investors 16z Speedrun and Y Combinator, with several other investors participating. The company says paying customers raised USD 542 million through the platform during FY2026 and that more than 1000 founders use Metal each year.
The venture therefore represents a shift for Gul from navigating the inefficiencies of fundraising himself to building technology around them. Metal is now seeking to apply that experience at scale, turning investor discovery and engagement into a more systematic part of the startup funding process.
