Author: Jesse Landry

Let’s talk Taste. You ever watch someone order food like it’s a mission briefing? One’s keto, another’s gluten free, someone else only eats purple vegetables on Tuesdays. Welcome to the food world in 2025, where “I’ll have what she’s having” got replaced by “What’s your microbiome saying today?” Now imagine trying to build a global CPG brand in that chaos. Enter Tastewise, the AI whisperer to the food and beverage industry. These folks aren’t guessing where the market’s headed, they’re already cooking the future with generative AI, billions of food signals, and the kind of data depth that makes even…

Laurel didn’t just raise $100M, they reclaimed time as a currency. And like any good currency, it’s not just about how much you have, it’s about how well you use it. Founded in 2016 by former litigator turned founder Ryan Alshak, Laurel was born not from a business school case study, but from something real, watching his mom fight brain cancer and realizing just how brutal and beautiful time really is. That realization? It became the company’s north star, “Return time to the world.” That’s not branding, that’s bloodline. Fast forward to 2025 and Laurel’s raised a crisp $100M Series…

What happens when the data dealer becomes the kingmaker? You get a $14.8B check from Meta and a front-row seat to build the future. Scale AI isn’t just labeling the internet anymore, they’re engineering its next evolution. And Alexandr Wang just flipped his own game board. Founded in 2016 by Wang and Lucy Guo, Scale AI started with a simple premise: every AI model is only as good as the data it feasts on. While everyone else was chasing compute or algorithm tweaks, Wang was betting on the third pillar, data. Not just quantity, but quality. Think billions of annotations,…

Let’s talk about the kind of deal that doesn’t just move markets, it moves megawatts. rPlus Energies just secured a $500 million+ tax equity commitment led by RBC Community Investments, with FJ Management riding shotgun, to bring its Green River Energy Center to life. We’re talking 400 MW AC of solar paired with 400 MW AC/1.6 GWh of Tesla battery storage. This isn’t your cousin’s solar panel on the garage, this is industrial-grade, utility-scale, Intermountain West power, pumped into the grid with surgical precision and steel-backed financing. If you’re still measuring deals in hype cycles, you’re missing the real wattage.…

There’s no such thing as an off day in utilities. Just blue sky or grey sky, and ARCOS® LLC built a platform that thrives in both. If you know, you know, and if you don’t, Bain Capital just dropped a powerful reminder with a fresh strategic growth investment in the Columbus-based crew orchestration heavyweight. Let’s be clear, this isn’t your average “workflow automation” story wrapped in today. ARCOS started back in ‘93 as McLeod & Associates, hacking away at manual callout chaos for Alliant Energy before spinning up an artificial intelligence fueled SaaS platform decades before “AI-fueled SaaS” was dinner…

When your name means “water,” you better move like it. Seamless, unstoppable, essential. VODA.ai just did exactly that, closing a Series A led by CRH Ventures, with a heavy nod from L-Stone Capital, and a tight commercial lock-in with Oldcastle Infrastructure. This isn’t just capital, it’s catalyst, and it flows straight into one of the most critical issues plaguing civilization’s backbone: water infrastructure. Let’s not sugarcoat the situation. We’ve got pipes in the ground older than Sinatra’s debut, leaking billions of gallons like it’s tradition. But VODA.ai isn’t here to patch, it’s here to predict. Using its daVinci™ AI engine,…

Enterprise procurement just got its AI enforcer. Pactum AI just locked in $54 million in Series C funding to take autonomous negotiations global, and if you think this is just another funding headline, you haven’t been paying attention. This isn’t automation, this is agentic AI at work, handling supplier contracts like a Wall Street trader with machine-speed instincts and a better bedside manner. Led by Insight Partners with Josh Zelman stepping onto the board like it’s Game 7, and backed by heavyweights like Atomico, Project A, 3VC, Karma Ventures, and Superangel, this round brings Pactum’s total raise to $109M. But…

Cody Cornell and Brian Kafenbaum just locked in $45 million. But let’s be clear, this isn’t about more cash for a security startup. This is about a company built by security vets who got tired of watching threat intel teams drown in alerts and duct-taped dashboards. Cody Cornell and Brian Kafenbaum didn’t just build a product. They built a lifeline. Founded in 2014 and forged in the fires of real cyber trenches, DISA, DHS, IBM, American Express, Swimlane was never about selling dashboards. It was about survival. It was about speed. And now, it’s about dominance. This latest growth round,…

Mortgage rates at 7%? That’s not a financial forecast, that’s a blockade. But there’s a crew in San Diego cutting a path through it, with artificial intelligence, ambition, and a playbook nobody else bothered to write. Meet RetroRate. Founded in March 2024 by CEO Andy Taylor and CTO Tom Hartwell, this startup isn’t tiptoeing into the PropTech party. They’re breaking through the back wall with a freemium platform built for real estate agents who are tired of watching great deals die on the vine because no one knows how to handle assumable mortgages. Assumable loans aren’t new. But the pain…

Let’s talk about parking. Not the kind where you’re circling for 12 minutes, dodging scooters and existential dread. I mean the trillion-dollar urban mobility mess most cities haven’t solved, and where one startup just punched through the noise. Modii Inc., born in 2015 and recently rebranded from Spot Parking, isn’t just another SaaS player chasing municipal contracts. It’s a Denver-based disruptor engineering the digital spine of future cities. And now, they’ve got fresh fuel: a just-closed seed round led by Australian VC powerhouse Equity Venture Partners (EVP), announced June 9, 2025. Translation: Modii’s no longer quietly mapping the mobility grid,…