The Australian-born startup Lucent has announced a $2 million raise, thanks to the work of its sole team member and founder, 22 year old Alisa Wu.
Wu managed to achieve the pre-Seed round within 36 hours of launching, crediting the support of AI for making it happen. She named Chat GPT as her Chief Technology Officer in a story in Capital Brief.
It’s familiar territory for Wu, having already launched a series of startups, including Stella AI, which was acquired in 2024. She was also a founding engineer in the ad platform, MagicBrief, later acquired by Canva.
Lucent aims to address what Wu describes as “one of AI’s biggest bottlenecks: training data for browser agents — the kind that helps models actually use the internet to get things done.”
Lucent will utilise browser interaction data to address a gap in training data, thereby supporting models such as OpenAI and Anthropic. It’s believed this training data can support AI agents to be better equipped to tackle taskings like filling in forms, booking flights and completing online purchases.
Wu has already announced the business will be relocating to San Francisco in the coming months, with the initial funds used to build the product, secure the first pilot customers and deepen its existing base with advanced AI labs.
She announced the pre-see round by sharing the Capital Brief story on LinkedIn over the weekend, crediting her investors and “early believers” and announcing she’ll be hiring a founding full-stack engineer.
Wu and her former co-founder, Simran Nandan, sold Stella AI in late 2024, just nine months after launching. Wu said she launched the HSC tutoring platform after seeing an opportunity to transform tutoring through AI. She leveraged her experience as a private HSC tutor to come up with and build the idea, and then scouted the first users at local libraries.
Lucent’s investors now include Horizon, Browder Capital, Long Journey, Weekend Fund and Firestreak Ventures.