Author: Jesse Landry

Some founders build tools. Some founders build leverage. Quill just raised $6.5M to build something more dangerous than both. San Francisco based Quill secured a $6.5M seed round led by Basis Set Ventures, with 500 Global, Naval Ravikant, Morado Ventures, and AME Cloud Ventures stepping in like they have seen this movie before and know how it ends. When that lineup writes checks, it is not charity. It is conviction. Congratulations to Michael Daugherty, Co Founder and CEO, and Nick Adams, Co Founder and former Managing Director at AME Cloud Ventures and Zoom board member. Also to Yacob Berhane, Founding…

Elly just secured $8M, and if you think this is another AI recruiting headline drifting through your feed, slow down and actually look at what is happening under the hood. Recruit Tech Labs, doing business as Elly, is building an AI native hiring platform out of New York, and they are doing it with intention. Founded in 2022, with Founder Nic Mahaney stepping in publicly from 2023, Elly was created inside Atomic, the venture studio led by Jack Abraham. That origin story matters. Venture studios do not swing unless they see a category begging for reinvention. The round was led…

There is a quiet advantage sitting inside every top-tier investment firm. Years of memos. Models. Monday morning debates. Buried PowerPoints that once moved nine figures with a single slide. Most of it trapped in folders and half-remembered instincts. Rowspace just raised $50M to turn that buried edge into something that compounds. San Francisco based Rowspace was founded in 2024 by Michael Manapat and Yibo Ling, two MIT grads who have lived on both sides of the capital stack. Michael Manapat, now Co-founder and CEO, built machine learning systems at Stripe and Notion. Yibo Ling, Co-founder and COO, led finance teams…

Some founders chase signals. Adam S. Warmoth chased power. Not the ego kind. The literal kind. The volts that keep radios alive, drones humming, sensors seeing, edge AI thinking when the grid is a rumor and the generator is a liability. Chariot Defense, Inc. just secured $34M in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz through its American Dynamism strategy, with DCVC, LMNT, Marlinspike, Overmatch, Shield Capital, Ensemble, Trenches Capital, and existing investors General Catalyst and XYZ stepping in again. Total capital now sits at $41M, including the earlier $8M seed led by General Catalyst and XYZ, with Cubit Capital,…

Most security teams wake up to the same horror movie sequel. The scanner screams, the dashboard sweats, and suddenly you are starring in “3M Vulnerabilities and 0 Time,” filmed on location inside a ticket queue that never ends. Attackers love that. Noise is their favorite camouflage. Astelia came out of stealth in Feb 2026 with a very specific grudge against that chaos, and a very adult solution: proof. Founded in late 2024 through the Team8 Venture Creation model, headquartered in New York with R&D and operations in Israel, and now 30+ people across the US and Israel, Astelia built an…

AI does not run on hype. It runs on infrastructure. And infrastructure is where SambaNova Systems decided to play. Founded in 2017 by Rodrigo Liang, Kunle Olukotun, and Christopher Ré, SambaNova Systems was built on a simple premise that most people underestimated at the time. Training grabs headlines. Inference pays the bills. Rodrigo Liang, CEO and Co-Founder, brought 20+ years of semiconductor experience, including leading Oracle SPARC server and ASIC programs. Kunle Olukotun, Co-Founder and Chief Technologist, brought the architectural depth of a Stanford pioneer in multicore and domain specific systems. This was not a science project. It was a…

There is a moment in every hardware story when the room goes quiet. The demo lands, the data holds, and the skeptics stop asking if it is real and start asking if it scales. That is the sound of physics becoming a business. Myrias Optics backed that silence with a $2.1M Seed 1 round led by MassVentures, closed in January 2026 and announced February 24, 2026. Returning support came from Hoss Investment Inc., Maroon Venture Partners, and Tenon Venture Partners, with new capital from Mill Town Capital, TiE Boston Angels, and Doug Crane. Myron Kassaraba is joining the Board, which…

There is a moment every utility leader knows, even if it never makes the board deck. The lights are on, the metrics behave, everything hums. Then 1 transformer wants attention. 1 storm drifts off script. 1 overloaded corridor reminds you that electricity is the only product people notice when it fails. Gridco was built for that moment. Founded in 2023 in Birmingham, Alabama by Brad Weaver, CEO, and Patrick Russo, with Trent Weaver joining the founding team in 2024, Gridco is a founder-owned, employee-focused platform that skips theatrics. It is bucket trucks, tight planning, and field discipline that holds when…

In drug delivery, nobody claps for the pump until the pump is the line between “today” and “not today.” Quiet hardware. Loud outcomes. That is where EMED Technologies Corporation operates out of El Dorado Hills, California, building mechanical subcutaneous infusion systems for real life. Home. Ambulatory care. Rooms with pets, noise, and zero tolerance for fragile tech. EMED’s subsidiary just closed an $8M equity round led by an undisclosed multibillion dollar healthcare company. I respect the silence. When a strategic writes the check and skips the spotlight, that is not branding, that is belief. Capital talks. Conviction barely raises its…

The internet used to be 10 blue links and a prayer. You typed. You scrolled. You clicked. Brands fought for position like it was the last chopper out of Saigon. Now you ask a machine. And it answers. That quiet shift just minted a unicorn. Profound, the New York based AI marketing platform, just secured $96M in Series C funding at a $1B valuation. Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Saga VC, South Park Commons, and Evantic Capital leaning in again. When that lineup keeps wiring capital, it is not charity. It is pattern recognition. Respect…