Author: Jesse Landry

Copper doesn’t exactly scream “sexy,” but without it, your EV is a brick, your grid is a paperweight, and the energy transition is a fantasy. Still Bright gets that. And they just hauled in $18.7 million in seed capital to prove copper can be pulled out of the ground cleaner, faster, and without the environmental baggage that’s been holding the industry hostage for a century. Founded in 2022, Still Bright is the product of some serious chemical engineering horsepower. Chief Executive Officer Ranulfo (Randy) Allen PhD MBA isn’t just another tech founder with a pitch deck, he’s got a Stanford…

There’s a special kind of chaos that lives in a company’s legal inbox. It’s not the charming, champagne-fueled chaos of closing a big deal. It’s the soul-draining slog of triaging a thousand Slack pings, email chains, Salesforce tickets, and hallway drive-bys that all start with “Quick question…” and end with three lost days of your life. Most companies just learn to live with it. Kathy M. Zhu didn’t. As Associate General Counsel during DoorDash’s rocket-ship years, Kathy watched legal requests pile up like uncollected recycling. No central system, no visibility, no mercy. Meanwhile, Julian Wimbush, a former Google product lead…

In prehospital medicine, there’s no such thing as a “do-over.” You either have the blood when it’s needed, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you already know the ending. Delta Development Team isn’t here to make that ending acceptable. On August 4, 2025, the Tucson-based company locked in a $5 million Series A3 round, blending strategic capital with non-dilutive fuel from the U.S. Air Force TACFI program. That’s not just money, it’s a vote of confidence from some of the sharpest investors in the game, including Central Texas Angel Network, Arizona Tech Investors, Desert Angels, Baylor Angel Network, and…

In an industry where “innovation” often means a shinier PowerPoint, GeoWealth has been quietly rewriting how registered investment advisors operate. Not with hype, but with hard tech and the kind of growth numbers you don’t just stumble into. Today, the Chicago-based turnkey asset management platform just dropped a $38 million Series C raise, led by Apollo (NYSE: APO), locking in a strategic partnership to expand customizable public-private model portfolios for RIA. Colin Falls didn’t take the CEO chair the traditional way. He went from lighting up the scoreboard as Notre Dame’s captain and Big East sharpshooter to running plays in…

There are companies that sell products, and then there are companies that make sure those products actually get into the hands of people who need them. Afaxys, Inc. falls into the second camp, which is the harder one, the one where mission isn’t just a press release line but the business model itself. Founded in 2008 by Ronda K. Dean and Susan Overly, Afaxys was built for one purpose: to make sure public health providers can get reliable, affordable contraceptives without playing supply chain roulette. The name itself is a mashup of affordable and access. It’s not a marketing trick;…

If you’ve ever tried to manage employee benefits with a patchwork of systems, you know it’s like juggling flaming bowling balls while riding a unicycle. On ice. George Reese III knew that game all too well. After building and selling FlexAmerica back in 2007, he spotted the gaping hole: insurance brokers and employers were drowning in outdated, carrier-tethered tech. So in 2008, George teamed with insurance-tech veteran Walter Hill and built Employee Navigator, a cloud-native, broker-first platform designed to pull the chaos into one clean, connected ecosystem. Seventeen years later, that bet looks prophetic. Employee Navigator now serves over 180,000…

When it comes to tax law, time isn’t just money, it’s sanity. And Blue J just banked $122 million in Series D funding to make sure you keep both. The Toronto-based generative AI powerhouse is turning tax research from a grind into a conversation, answering the questions that used to chew up billable hours before you could even pour your second coffee. This round, announced August 4, 2025, was co-led by Oak HC/FT and Sapphire Ventures, joined by Intrepid Growth Partners, Ten Coves Capital, and CPA.com. Sapphire Ventures partner Cathy Gao now joins the board, adding more firepower to an…

If you’ve ever wrangled open source packages at enterprise scale, you know it’s less “neat row of snakes in a basket” and more “Indiana Jones running for his life.” Anaconda, Inc. has made a career out of turning that chaos into something you can actually trust your business on. Now they’ve just fed the beast a fresh $150 million Series C, led by Insight Partners with returning backing from Mubadala Capital, putting the company’s valuation at $1.5 billion. That’s not just growth. That’s validation. Born in 2012 as Continuum Analytics, Peter Wang and Travis Oliphant weren’t chasing unicorns. They were…

Augmodo saw an empty shelf and went after a trillion-dollar problem hiding in plain sight. In 2022, during the baby formula shortage, Ross Finman walked into a store, found nothing but air where the product should have been, and realized something far bigger was missing: a real-time understanding of what’s actually on the shelf. That moment wasn’t a brainstorm. It was an unmissable signal that retail’s eyes and ears were still stuck in the Stone Age. Founded in 2023, Augmodo took that frustration and turned it into a Spatial AI platform that doesn’t just see the store, it maps it…

Let’s talk about what happens when you mix generative AI with researcher-grade rigor, drop it in the middle of Austin, and add founders who actually understand both tech and humans. You get Knit: a platform that’s not just disrupting the $20 billion insights market, it’s rewriting how consumer truth gets delivered at enterprise scale. Founded in 2021 by Aneesh Dhawan and Raahish Kalaria, Knit started as a dorm-room passion project and has now stitched together a clean $16.1 million Series A. The round was led by GFT Ventures and Sound Ventures (yes, that Ashton Kutcher), with backup from Silicon Road…