Eren Bali's Monogram Emerges From Stealth With $40M Seed Led By DST Global
Udemy and Carbon Health co-founder Eren Bali's third act is a $40 million seed for an iPhone app that turns AI responses into interactive visual interfaces.
Key Takeaways
Monogram, co-founded by Udemy and Carbon Health veteran Eren Bali with Edouard Tabet and Murat Akbal, emerged from stealth on July 7, 2026 with a $40 million seed round led by DST Global and Lux Capital.
Additional backers include Conviction, SOMA Capital, Gradient Ventures, e2vc and Maxitech, plus angels such as Mistral's Arthur Mensch, Lyft's Logan Green, Ramp's Karim Atiyeh, Garry Tan, Pete Flint and Mario Schlosser.
The free iPhone-only app generates a bespoke visual, interactive interface for each query in seconds — trip planners, EV comparisons, restaurant pickers and recipe views — instead of a chatbot thread.
Monogram requests Google Sign-In and read-write Google Calendar access; its privacy label discloses collection of location, contact info, identifiers and usage data, while its terms exclude Google API data from model training.
Bali frames Monogram as his third act, 'inventing a new type of software,' with the company's manifesto comparing today's AI chat window to the command line before graphical interfaces.
Kaan Tınmaz
Monogram, the consumer AI startup co-founded by Udemy and Carbon Health veteran Eren Bali, has emerged from stealth with a $40 million seed round and an iPhone app that treats the chat window as technical debt.
DST Global and Lux Capital lead the round
The financing announced on July 7, 2026 was led by DST Global and Lux Capital with participation from Conviction, SOMA Capital, Gradient Ventures, e2vc and Maxitech, plus a deep angel roster that includes Mistral's Arthur Mensch, Lyft's Logan Green, Ramp's Karim Atiyeh, Y Combinator's Garry Tan, Trulia's Pete Flint and Oscar Health's Mario Schlosser. Bali announced the launch on X as Monogram's exit from stealth.
A visual interface for consumer AI
Monogram, co-founded by Bali with Edouard Tabet and Murat Akbal, ships a free iPhone-only app that generates a bespoke visual interface for each user query in seconds — rendering trip planners, EV comparisons, restaurant pickers and recipe views instead of a chatbot thread. The App Store listing pitches it as an app that answers questions with a visual and interactive response, and the company's manifesto compares today's AI chat window to the command line before graphical interfaces or the internet before browsers.
The privacy test comes early
Monogram requests Google Sign-In and read-and-write access to Google Calendar so it can schedule events and use them to shape AI outputs. Its privacy label discloses collection of location, contact info, identifiers and usage data, and its terms carve out Google API data from model training. That trust posture will be tested quickly as Monogram competes for user habits against DeepSeek-class open models running on Ollama and closed labs like Anthropic and OpenAI.
Bali's third act
Bali built Udemy around access to instruction and Carbon Health around software wrapped around a clinic network. Monogram, he says on LinkedIn, is about “inventing a new type of software.” The $40 million seed buys the team time to prove that the winning consumer AI interface will feel less like asking a search box for help and more like receiving a custom mini-app for the task at hand.
Reporting based on coverage from RuntimeWire and Monogram.
Monogram is a consumer AI startup that ships a free iPhone-only app generating a bespoke visual interface for each user query in seconds, rendering things like trip planners, EV comparisons, restaurant pickers and recipe views instead of a chatbot thread.
Who funded Monogram's $40 million seed round?
The round was led by DST Global and Lux Capital, with participation from Conviction, SOMA Capital, Gradient Ventures, e2vc and Maxitech, plus angels including Arthur Mensch, Logan Green, Karim Atiyeh, Garry Tan, Pete Flint and Mario Schlosser.
Who founded Monogram?
Monogram was co-founded by Eren Bali, who previously co-founded Udemy and Carbon Health, together with Edouard Tabet and Murat Akbal.
What data does Monogram collect and how does it handle privacy?
Monogram requests Google Sign-In and read-and-write Google Calendar access to schedule events and shape AI outputs. Its privacy label discloses collection of location, contact info, identifiers and usage data, and its terms carve out Google API data from model training.
