Author: Jesse Landry

Pear VC does not chase noise. It studies formation. In a market that rewards later-stage certainty, Pear VC built its reputation inside the startup ecosystem, where risk is still raw and conviction is the only real currency. Soil first. Seed next. That is not branding. It is portfolio construction. Pejman Nozad arrived in the United States as an immigrant and became known for seeing founders before the crowd did. Mar Hershenson earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University, founded multiple companies, and understands firsthand how fragile zero to one can be. As Founding Managing Partners, Pejman Nozad and…

Some companies raise money. Others raise eyebrows. Scala just raised $8.5M in seed funding and did both without breaking a sweat. Bellevue just got louder. Scala, founded in 2025, has officially stepped out of stealth with $8.5M in seed capital backed by Madrona and FUSE. No smoke machines. No inflated promises. Just a clear signal that serious operators are building for a problem most enterprises feel in their bones but struggle to articulate. Congratulations to Ardie Sameti, Co Founder and CEO, and Rajeev Singh, Co Founder and Executive Chair, on bringing this vision into the light. When you blend Ardie…

San Francisco just delivered a headline that cuts through the noise in tech news. On February 8–9, 2026, Databricks, Inc. reported a $5.4B annualized revenue run rate, more than 65% year over year growth in fiscal Q4, and over $7B in newly closed capital. This is not speculative heat. It is audited momentum. In a market that rewards proof over promise, Databricks showed its work. Ali Ghodsi, Co Founder and CEO of Databricks, framed the moment with numbers, not adjectives. Roughly $5B in equity closed at a $134B valuation, alongside about $2B in new debt capacity. That capital stack signals…

There is a quiet panic running through engineering leadership right now. Teams are shipping more. Dashboards glow greener. AI licenses get renewed without a fight. And yet when the board asks the simplest question, did this actually make us better, the room goes oddly silent. Velocity is loud. Impact is not. That gap is where a lot of confidence goes to die, and it is exactly where the conversation needs to get sharper. The Engineering Leadership Community has always been good at sensing pressure points before they become public problems. On February 27, 2026, ELC is hosting an online roundtable…

This is the best fit because the event sits at the intersection of culture, capital, education, and leadership that shapes how technology companies are built, staffed, and sustained. It is not product-level or funding news. It is about the operating climate founders, executives, and institutions are navigating right now. The tech industry is having a quiet identity crisis in public. Language is retreating while decisions harden. DEI slides are disappearing. Budgets are tightening. In 2025, corporate mentions of DEI dropped 72%. Meta dismantled its DEI team and reassigned Maxine Williams after more than 10 years. Google, Salesforce, Microsoft all found…

Plano, Texas is not where most people expect to find the front line of the industrial renaissance. But that is exactly where Training All People, founded in 2022, is building its case for how America trains the hands that keep the lights on and the machines humming. Training All People, known as TAP, just secured fresh backing announced on February 10, 2026 from Stand Together Ventures Lab, Cubit Capital, 8VC, and GSV Ventures. The dollar amount stays private and is unconfirmed. The signal does not. When Jonathan Jou at Stand Together Ventures Lab, Gui Hadlich at Cubit Capital, Joe Lonsdale…

Apollo just pulled up with a war chest heavy enough to bend gravity. Apptronik closed a $520M Series A extension, stacking on top of the $350M Series A announced in February 2025. That brings the Series A total to $935M and total funding to roughly $963M when you add the earlier $28M. Valuation now sits in the $5B–$5.5B+ range depending on which tier 1 outlet you read. Either way, that is not a science project. That is scale. Congratulations to Jeff Cardenas, Co Founder and CEO, and Nicholas Paine, Co Founder and CTO. Built out of the Human Centered Robotics…

There is something beautifully irrational about building a biotech company around love. Not love in the Hallmark sense. Love in the 6 a.m. walk, rain in your face, dog looking back at you like you hung the moon sense. That is the market Loyal is playing in. And now that market just wrote a $100M Series C check. Loyal, the San Francisco clinical stage animal health company developing prescription drugs to extend the healthy lifespan of dogs, announced a $100M Series C led by age1, the next chapter of Laura Deming’s Longevity Fund. Existing investors including Baillie Gifford participated. Since…

Cancer care is 1 of the most complex and costly arenas in healthcare. Fragmented incentives. Siloed data. Patients juggling appointments like it is a 2nd job they never applied for. That is the chaos Atlas Oncology Partners walked into, not with a whiteboard fantasy, but with a balance sheet and a backbone. Now Atlas Oncology Partners secures $28M in Series A funding. Flare Capital Partners leads the round, with Rubicon Founders doubling down on the company it founded. That is not polite applause. That is conviction capital. When Flare Capital Partners and Rubicon Founders lean in, they are not chasing…

$60M for a seed round used to be the kind of headline that made the Valley spit out its cold brew. Now it is the opening chord. And when Thomas Dohmke walks back onto the stage, people listen. Entire just secured $60M in seed funding at a $300M valuation. Felicis led the round, with Madrona, M12, and Basis Set in the mix. Angels include Gergely Orosz, Theo Browne, Jerry Yang, Olivier Pomel, and Garry Tan. That is not a cap table. That is a signal flare. Congratulations to Thomas Dohmke, Founder and CEO of Entire, for stepping out of GitHub…