Banza raises $1M pre-seed to build your personal AI twin
What's the deal? Banza, an AI-driven data sharing startup, has raised $1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Campus FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with participation from AvalancheDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and a group of angel investors. Founded in January 2026 by Mehdi A and Aditya Vijayakumar, the company is building what it calls an "AI twin" — a personalised digital intelligence that learns continuously from a user's behaviour.
The fresh capital will go toward product development, user experience improvements, and team expansion.
Why now? Banza's core thesis is that today's digital ecosystems capture fragmented user data across dozens of platforms, leading to disconnected and inefficient experiences. Its platform aims to unify personal data streams into a single AI layer that works for the user — offering deeper personalisation and more meaningful recommendations over time, from what to watch and eat to how to plan purchases.
The startup is riding a broader shift in the AI ecosystem from generic tools to user-owned, context-aware intelligence systems.
What could go wrong? Building a product that aggregates personal data across platforms raises obvious privacy and regulatory concerns. Convincing users to centralise their data with a brand-new startup — at a time when data trust is low — will be a steep climb.
At just $1 million in pre-seed funding, Banza will also need to prove its concept quickly to attract the next round of capital in a competitive AI landscape.
The signal: Campus Fund, an investment fund backing early-stage ventures, leading this round alongside Avalanche — a corporate investor — suggests conviction that user-owned AI layers could become viable infrastructure rather than a niche experiment. Banza's January 2026 founding-to-funding timeline of just four months signals urgency in the personal AI space, though at the pre-seed stage the startup has everything still to prove.
Read more: startupbydoc.com
