Author: Jesse Landry

Ephemera just pulled in a $20M Series B, with the kind of investor lineup that makes you double-check if your wallet’s still warm, Union Square Ventures, a16z crypto, and Lightspeed Faction led the charge, with Coinbase Ventures, Sound Ventures, Offline Ventures, and Distributed Global stacking the round. It’s equity, sure, but laced with token warrants, because in Web3, capital and community can’t be strangers. And let’s not pretend this came out of nowhere. Ephemera has been laying signal-grade groundwork since back when “wallet-to-wallet chat” still sounded like sci-fi. They’re the minds behind XMTP, an open, end-to-end encrypted messaging protocol built…

What happens when you hand the mic to two media veterans with zero interest in playing safe and every intent to own the story from pitch to production? You get Kaleidoscope, not just another podcast studio, but a straight-up narrative engine built to turn high-concept science and tech into IP that doesn’t just stream, it sticks. Founded in 2022 by Oz Woloshyn, Peabody, and Emmy-winning storyteller behind Sleepwalkers and Forgotten: Women of Juárez, and Mangesh Hattikudur, the podcast exec who helped build iHeartMedia’s audio game and co-founded Mental Floss back when print still had muscle, Kaleidoscope was never built to…

What happens when you hand the mic to two media veterans with zero interest in playing safe and every intent to own the story from pitch to production? You get Kaleidoscope, not just another podcast studio, but a straight-up narrative engine built to turn high-concept science and tech into IP that doesn’t just stream, it sticks. Founded in 2022 by Oz Woloshyn, Peabody, and Emmy-winning storyteller behind Sleepwalkers and Forgotten: Women of Juárez, and Mangesh Hattikudur, the podcast exec who helped build iHeartMedia’s audio game and co-founded Mental Floss back when print still had muscle, Kaleidoscope was never built to…

What happens when you hand the mic to two media veterans with zero interest in playing safe and every intent to own the story from pitch to production? You get Kaleidoscope, not just another podcast studio, but a straight-up narrative engine built to turn high-concept science and tech into IP that doesn’t just stream, it sticks. Founded in 2022 by Oz Woloshyn, Peabody, and Emmy-winning storyteller behind Sleepwalkers and Forgotten: Women of Juárez, and Mangesh Hattikudur, the podcast exec who helped build iHeartMedia’s audio game and co-founded Mental Floss back when print still had muscle, Kaleidoscope was never built to…

ValGenesis, Inc. is compliance, digitized, AI-enhanced, and globally deployed. While most folks were still stapling validation packets, Dr. Siva Samy built a platform that turned paper into legacy and made digital the new default. Founded back in 2005, ValGenesis didn’t just show up to the party, they started the movement. From Santa Clara to São Paulo, they’ve scaled what regulators feared and enterprises needed: a single system to manage every step of the validation lifecycle. The kind of system that doesn’t blink at FDA audits, doesn’t break under the weight of global deployments, and doesn’t miss a beat when the…

When chemotherapy comes for your hair, it doesn’t just take strands, it hijacks identity. For too long, patients had to choose between fighting cancer and holding onto any version of themselves they recognized in the mirror. Cooler Heads Care didn’t just cool scalps, they cooled the system. Today, Cooler Heads Care locked in an $11 million Series A to do what legacy medtech wouldn’t: put dignity and control back in the patient’s hands. Led by Mutual Capital Partners with heavy hitters like SHD Partners, Crescent Ridge VC, Cal Innovation Fund, NuFund, Robin Hood Ventures, Golden Seeds, HIP VC, and a…

Out of Redmond, Washington, Lumotive isn’t just tinkering with optics. They’re engineering the future of beam control with chips that steer light like it owes them money. Born in 2017 from the brainpower of Intellectual Ventures and Duke University’s Center for Metamaterials, the company’s been in stealth mode on steroids, until now. They’ve just secured another $14 million in a Series B extension, stacking their total Series B to $59 million and pushing overall venture funding north of $100 million. And this isn’t casual money. Amazon’s Industrial Innovation Fund and ITHCA Group, Oman’s tech investment powerhouse, led the latest round.…

Phlow Corp. just dropped a $37 million Series C, and no, this isn’t your typical “another day, another round” pharma headline. This is a chemical-level shift in how America defends its drug supply, built not in some offshore lab, but right in Richmond, Virginia, where the molecules mean business. Align Private Capital led the round, joined by a mix of new and returning believers. That’s over $93 million in private backing, plus more than $600 million in government contracts. When your private and public books both look like this? You’re not raising capital, you’re raising eyebrows. This isn’t just about…

When spreadsheets are running your compensation strategy, you’re not managing your people, you’re gambling with your budget. And most companies? They’re playing poker with Excel while their chips burn in a fire called “head count planning.” That’s the mess CandorIQ just walked into with a lighter, a plan, and a $4.8 million seed round to fuel the cleanup. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in San Francisco, CandorIQ isn’t some warmed-over HR tool. It’s an AI-powered system that unifies compensation, headcount planning, benchmarking, and equity strategy. Think of it as the ops room where Finance, HR, and leadership finally speak the…

When compensation tech finally decided to grow up, BetterComp showed up like it had been waiting in the alley with a crowbar and a clipboard. While everyone else kept using spreadsheets and pushing clunky HR software from a bygone era, Alan Miegel, Sandra Leon, and Derek Watson knew exactly what time it was. They didn’t walk into the space, they walked back in like they built it the first time and got tired of watching it fall apart. Founded in 2019 out of Alamo, California (yes, the other Bay), BetterComp was born from a collective 60+ years of been-there, priced-that.…