New facility with California Bank & Trust strengthens capital structure and supports continued growth

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., May 5, 2026 — Buyerlink, a leading online auction marketplace for performance-based marketing, today announced it has secured a $40 million senior secured credit facility with Zions Bancorporation, N.A., dba California Bank & Trust.

The new credit facility enhances Buyerlink’s financial flexibility and strengthens its capital structure, supporting the company’s continued growth.

“This financing provides additional balance sheet flexibility and supports our long-term growth strategy,” said Payam Zamani, Founder and CEO of One Planet Group, Buyerlink’s parent company. “We’re pleased to partner with California Bank & Trust as we continue to invest in and strengthen our leadership in the AI-driven ad tech space.”

Jaime Keane, SVP, Commercial Banking Group at CB&T commented, “We are impressed with Buyerlink’s continued growth, both organically and via strategic acquisitions. We are proud to support the company with a financing solution that aligns with their growth trajectory and operational strength.”

Over the past several years, Buyerlink has experienced significant growth to over $125M in revenue while generating industry leading EBITDA through a combination of organic expansion and strategic acquisitions. The company has built a strong presence in the automotive sector, generating more than one million buyer leads monthly, while also serving industries including real estate, home services, insurance, and legal.

Buyerlink is further strengthening its foundation as it accelerates its transformation into an AI-native leader in adtech.

About California Bank & Trust
Headquartered in San Diego, California Bank & Trust (CB&T) has been helping California families and businesses thrive for over 70 years. With local decision-making backed by regional strength, CB&T’s knowledgeable bankers provide personalized solutions that go beyond what traditional banks offer.  CB&T has earned consistent recognition, including being voted:

• “Best Bank” by San Diego Union-Tribune readers for 15 consecutive years
• “Best Commercial Bank” for 12 years running
• “Best Bank” in The Orange County Register and Sacramento Bee readership polls

CB&T is a division of Zions Bancorporation, N.A. (NASDAQ: ZION) and has been recognized for its excellence in Middle-Market and Small Business banking by Coalition Greenwich Best Bank Awards. CB&T is an Equal Housing Lender.  Additional information may be found at calbanktrust.com.

About Buyerlink
Buyerlink is a leading online auction marketplace for performance-based marketing. Conducting millions of auctions monthly, Buyerlink’s patented technology allows businesses to access hyper-targeted consumer demand at any scale. Increasingly AI-driven, the platform leverages machine learning to optimize performance and deliver more efficient outcomes for buyers and sellers.

Offering Enhanced Clicks™, qualified leads, inbound calls, transfers, call-verified leads, and pre-set appointments, Buyerlink enables businesses to meet customers where they are. The Buyerlink platform is category-agnostic and currently serves the automotive, home services, home warranty, insurance, legal, real estate, and solar sectors.

Buyerlink is fully owned by One Planet Group, a closely held private equity firm that owns a suite of online technology and media businesses. Spanning a variety of industries including ad tech, publishing, and media, One Planet’s mission is to support strong business ideas while building an ethos that helps improve society and gives back to communities.

Buyerlink’s global headquarters is located in Walnut Creek, California, with employees in over ten countries. For more information visit buyerink.com.

Media Contact
pr (at) buyerlink.com

SOURCE Buyerlink

One Platform. Smarter Workflows. Better Care.

ANDOVER, Mass., May 5, 2026 — XCaliber Health (XCaliber), the agentic operating system purpose-built to reduce administrative burden, cut millions in operational waste, and improve the quality of clinical care delivered to patients, today announced $6.5 million in seed funding. Led by ManchesterStory with participation from Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) and Arka Venture Labs, the capital will be used to accelerate product development and scale the platform across organizations nationwide. Health systems, provider groups, and digital health partners use XCaliber to replace manual, fragmented workflows, from prescription refill and referral coordination to lab notifications and care gap management, with autonomous execution and humans in control of every critical decision.

For two decades, health systems have accumulated tools such as electronic health records (EHRs), billing platforms, and scheduling systems without ever acquiring the operating system to coordinate them. Artificial intelligence (AI) arrived and added recommendations on top of the same fragmented infrastructure. The underlying problem remained: no system could take action across silos, automate workflows end-to-end, or operate with meaningful autonomy. Staff spend an average of 15.5 hours per physician, per week on record retrieval, prior authorization, referral coordination, scheduling, and clinical documentation. At a 20-provider practice, that translates to $1.4 million in annual costs from manual workflows, scheduling gaps, prior authorization delays, and reactive patient outreach, a burden that persists whether or not the organization has quantified it.

XCaliber addresses this gap with a single, seamless agentic operating system, where data, workflows, and autonomous action converge. XCaliber was built around a single conviction that healthcare organizations can operate as semi-autonomous enterprises, where agents handle routine administrative and operational workflows, clinical and operational teams oversee every decision, and care teams have the information and time to make every patient interaction count. Unlike point solutions that automate in isolation, XCaliber connects every system a provider touches and orchestrates work across all of them in real time. Clinical and operational teams get a unified view of their practice and patients, semi-autonomous workflows that execute without manual handoffs, and the time to focus on the work they were trained to do. Key differentiators include:

1. Data Rich Insights: Quality decision-making grounded in the individual healthcare system or enterprise’s own data, resulting in highly-personalized outcomes
2. Human-in-the-Loop Structure: Agents automate clinical workflows and coordination with human oversight and decision-making
3. Autonomous Spectrum: Semi-autonomous in nature, with different levels of autonomy and human interaction based on agent function (i.e., operational vs. clinical use cases)

Before XCaliber, scheduling a follow-up appointment meant staff manually reviewing patient records, calling or messaging patients, waiting for responses, and updating the EHR, a process that could take days and often resulted in missed appointments and lost revenue. With XCaliber, that same process runs automatically. Patients are contacted through their preferred channel, appointments are confirmed, and the EHR is updated in minutes, with staff notified only when intervention is needed.

“Healthcare does not need more disconnected point solutions. It needs a system that can coordinate work across all of them and take the administrative burden off clinical and operational teams,” said Prakash Khot, co-founder and CEO of XCaliber. “That is where XCaliber is focused. We are helping healthcare organizations move beyond manual work toward automated workflows that reduce costs, accelerate care delivery, and give clinical teams back the time to focus on patients. We’re honored to be backed by investors who believe in our mission to fundamentally reshape how healthcare operates.”

That mission is already reflected in measurable, daily outcomes across XCaliber’s customer ecosystem. The platform delivers pre-built agents for interoperability, healthcare analytics, scheduling, prescription refills, and more, processing more than eight million chart updates and generating more than 160,000 EHR updates daily across more than 700,000 unique patients. For prescription refills alone, XCaliber’s patient navigator agent saves providers an average of six hours of manual, repetitive work every day, time that goes directly back to patient care.

“We invest in companies that move beyond pilots and demonstrate real adoption and change in the market. XCaliber is the perfect example of this,” said Matt Kinley, Founding Partner at ManchesterStory. “The company is tackling one of healthcare’s most persistent challenges: how to make fragmented systems work together to improve operations and support better care. XCaliber isn’t promising that future. It’s already delivering it.”

For more information or if you’re interested in learning how XCaliber can support your operations, visit https://www.xcaliberhealth.ai/.

ABOUT XCALIBER
XCaliber Health is an agentic operating system where data, agents, and knowledge converge into one intelligence layer. The platform unifies siloed data, automates fragmented workflows, and delivers real-time intelligence across the full care continuum. One platform. Every system. Every workflow.

For more information, visit https://www.xcaliberhealth.ai/ or on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/xcaliber-health/.

SOURCE XCaliber Health

New venture arm to invest in and scale companies driving the next generation of packaging and reimagining how products move through the global supply chain

CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 5, 2026 —Atlantic Packaging, the largest privately held industrial packaging company in North America, has launched New Earth Ventures (“NEV”), a dedicated innovation and investment arm focused on building the next generation of technology-forward packaging and supply chain solutions. The announcement was made today by Wes Carter, President of Atlantic Packaging and General Partner of NEV.

“We launched New Earth Ventures because packaging is one of the most essential and overlooked opportunities in the global economy,” said Wes Carter, President of Atlantic Packaging. “Brands are under real pressure right now — costs are up, supply chains are uncertain, and the impact of packaging on the global environment is accelerating. We’re backing founders solving those problems today, with better processes, smarter technology, and materials that enable a cleaner world.”

NEV will focus on a combined addressable market exceeding $500 billion, spanning alternative packaging materials ($300 billion-plus), packaging automation solutions ($140 billion-plus), and supply chain AI tools ($60 billion-plus).

NEV’s investment strategy centers on three key focus areas: packaging intelligence, supply chain optimization, and next-generation materials. This includes companies at the forefront of packaging, such as those pioneering the AI and machine learning technologies revolutionizing every aspect of the supply chain. By leveraging Atlantic’s Packaging’s people, reputation, relationships, and best-in-class resources, NEV can identify and scale founder-led companies that that:

• Transform the supply chain through advanced deep tech innovation
• Apply AI, machine learning and automation to optimize and streamline supply chains
• Replace single-use packaging with next-generation materials

NEV is led by Managing Partner Matt Saunders, a seasoned investor with expertise across alternative packaging materials and supply chain optimization as well as the broader U.S. energy transition. Mr. Saunders brings an exceptional amount of experience to NEV in addition to a proven-track record of early-stage investing and previous emerging investment fund leadership.

In addition to Atlantic Packaging’s 80-year track record and deep customer relationships across Fortune 1000 enterprises, NEV is launching with strategic support from the Minderoo Foundation and Hula Fund.

“As regulators, brands, and consumers demand measurable progress, and as technology enables swift innovation, startups require more than capital. They need deep industry expertise and a clear path to market with the right customers,” said Saunders. “Our model delivers that. By blending the rigor of venture capital with the operational strength of an established major packaging company, we are well-positioned to reinvent global supply chains.”

NEV has built strong industry relationships, such as Specright, a pioneer in Specification Data Management™; Forest, an AI-powered packaging intelligence and sourcing engine; and Sway, a materials innovator converting seaweed into plastic packaging alternatives.

About New Earth Ventures

New Earth Ventures (NEV) is the innovation and investment arm of Atlantic Packaging. NEV backs visionary founders advancing packaging technology, material innovation, and modernization of supply chains. NEV portfolio companies gain access to Atlantic’s industry expertise, customer ecosystem, and operational infrastructure. For more, visit www.nev.vc.

About Atlantic Packaging

Atlantic Packaging is the largest privately held packaging solutions provider in North America. Known for engineering excellence, sustainability leadership, and customer-centric service, Atlantic supports industries ranging from food and beverage to pharmaceuticals and e-commerce. Its Packaging Solution Center in Charlotte, N.C. is a first-of-its-kind hub for testing, automation, and responsible materials development. For more, visit www.atlanticpkg.com.

Contact:
For Atlantic Packaging:
Jennifer Mihalic
864.271.0718
[email protected]

For New Earth Ventures
Gasthalter & Co.
212-257-4170
[email protected]

SOURCE New Earth Ventures

Los Angeles-based company creates the first pediatric connected platform powered by AI to unite families, providers, pediatricians, and payers around coordinated care teams for children with developmental, behavioral, and mental health needs.

LOS ANGELES, May 5, 2026 — When Brandon Terry’s young daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition, his family spent years navigating fragmented waitlists, thousands of dollars in monthly out-of-pocket costs, and a care experience where no two providers ever spoke to one another. One in five children in the U.S. — roughly 15 million — face the same reality. Today, Village (village.health) announced it has raised $9.5M led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from Bling Capital, GTMFund, and Perceptive Ventures, to build the modern health system that should have existed all along.

“The system today forces parents to be the quarterback, texting session notes between therapists and hoping everyone is working toward the same goals,” said Terry, who co-founded Village with Allan Smith. “That’s not a health system. We’re building one that is.”

Unlike platforms that connect families to individual providers, Village also assembles and coordinates entire care teams — occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, behavioral therapists, and pediatricians — around each child in a single AI-powered platform. Families find and afford the right specialty providers in minutes. Providers collaborate in real time: sharing progress, aligning on goals, and delivering coordinated care that drives better outcomes. And for the first time, every member of a child’s care community is connected.

In less than a year, Village has built what is believed to be the largest coordinated network of independent pediatric specialty care providers in Southern California with more than 400 providers across occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, and behavioral health. The company has secured contracts with top commercial insurers including Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Cigna, and United Healthcare and has deployed AI agents that match families to complete care teams in minutes. The platform provides independent clinicians and established practices with Vera, an AI agent they’ve built in-house that acts as a dedicated operations person for every provider on the network — handling documentation, scheduling, billing, and care coordination end-to-end, so clinicians can focus entirely on their patients.

Village’s network is growing organically: providers inviting patients, families inviting providers, leading to 5x growth in patients served and total platform users since the start of the year.

“When enough providers, families, and pediatricians are connected in one place, you don’t just improve individual sessions — you change how an entire community cares for its children,” said Terry. “That’s what we’re building in Southern California. And then we repeat it.”

The funding will fuel Village’s continued market-by-market expansion across Southern California, into additional California markets, and new states — leveraging national insurance contracts and a repeatable launch playbook refined through its Los Angeles rollout.

“Too many families spend precious time and money navigating a system that was never designed for them — a journey marked by confusion, isolation, and unmet expectations,” said Kesar Varma, partner at Upfront Ventures. “Village is the first intelligent care platform built specifically for this journey. Instead of endlessly searching for providers, guessing at costs, and coordinating between specialists who don’t talk to each other, families get the team, the tools, and the financial support they need for their children, all in one place.”

About Village
Village is building the modern health system for specialty pediatrics — an AI-powered platform connecting families, providers, pediatricians, and payers so the 1 in 5 children with developmental, behavioral, and mental health needs can receive coordinated, team-based care. The company was founded by Brandon Terry and Allan Smith, former leaders at Procore Technologies, and is backed by Upfront Ventures, Bling Capital, GTMFund, and Perceptive Ventures. Learn more at myvillage.co.

SOURCE Village

Strategic investment brings together RTI’s scientific leadership and Navidence AI-native platform to improve research quality, reproducibility, and patient outcomes across the life sciences

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., May 5, 2026 — Independent scientific research institute RTI International today announced a partnership and strategic equity investment in Navidence, a technology and knowledge content company focused on defining health data and enabling more efficient, transparent and scientifically rigorous clinical research and real-world evidence (RWE) generation. The investment and collaboration reflect RTI’s continued commitment to leveraging data, technology and partnerships to advance high-quality evidence that supports better decision-making across the life sciences and healthcare ecosystem.

As part of the investment, RTI will engage with Navidence through a planned strategic collaboration focused on product evolution and commercialization. The collaboration will combine RTI’s scientific leadership and real-world research expertise with Navidence’s data science and medical informatics capabilities to help standardize disease definitions across the industry, strengthen research insights across programs and support more effective therapeutic interventions for patients.

“One of the most persistent challenges in real-world evidence generation is the inconsistency and lack of standardization in how diseases, treatments and outcomes are defined,” said Aaron Kamauu, Navidence CEO. “Navidence was built to solve exactly that. RTI’s investment validates our approach and accelerates our ability to bring transparent CODefs to research teams across the life sciences, ultimately improving the quality and credibility of evidence for all stakeholders. Together, we’re building something the industry has needed for a long time and we’re just getting started.”

Founded in 2022 by experienced real-world evidence, medical informatics and data science leaders, Navidence offers AI-native technology and professional services centered on Computable Operational Definitions (CODefs), which are standardized, human- and computer-readable definitions of key study elements, including diseases, treatments, outcomes, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. Defining these elements is a critical but resource-intensive step in clinical research, often requiring weeks or months of manual effort across epidemiology, informatics, statistics, and clinical teams – a burden that AI alone cannot resolve without an expert-curated and pragmatically validated foundation to draw from. The Navidence platform and curated CODef libraries help researchers more precisely define study criteria and move more efficiently from protocol development to real-world data (RWD) evaluation and evidence generation, improving speed, reproducibility, consistency, and trust in study results.

“High-quality real-world evidence demands scientific rigor, scalable infrastructure and a clear understanding of our clients’ needs,” said Asli Aras, vice president and head of corporate development at RTI. “Navidence tackles a long-standing challenge in life sciences research by bringing clarity and standardization to how health data are defined and operationalized. This investment and collaboration build on RTI’s continued commitment to AI-enabled technologies that help clients generate precise, scientifically sound evidence more efficiently to inform healthcare and life-sciences decision making.”

Billions of dollars in life sciences research are built on inconsistently defined data. RTI and Navidence are partnering to change that using AI to accelerate evidence that moves patients toward better care. By combining RTI’s scientific leadership with Navidence’s AI-native platform, we’re standardizing how diseases, treatments, and outcomes are defined—giving researchers, regulators, and clinicians the clarity they need to make decisions that advance life changing medicines. Together with investments in Nested Knowledge, b.well Connected Health, and BEK Health, today’s announcement reflects RTI’s commitment to advancing the technologies that will define the next era of evidence generation.

About RTI International
RTI International is an independent scientific research institute dedicated to improving the human condition. Our vision is to address the world’s most critical problems with technical and science-based solutions in pursuit of a better future. Clients rely on us to answer questions that demand an objective and multidisciplinary approach—one that integrates expertise across social, statistical, data, and laboratory sciences, engineering, and other technical disciplines to solve the world’s most challenging problems. For more information, visit www.rti.org. 

About Navidence
Navidence is a technology company focused on defining health data and supporting researchers in study design through the use of Computable Operational Definitions (CODefs). Its AI-native platform helps life sciences organizations design, deploy, and scale real-world evidence studies with greater efficiency, consistency, and trust.

Media Contact:
RTI International Media Relations
919-541-7300
[email protected] 

SOURCE RTI International

KAILUA-KONA AND HONOLULU, Hawaii, May 5, 2026 — Pacific Hybreed, a Big Island-based aquaculture biotechnology company, today announced the close of a $1 million funding round with participation from Hawaiʻi Angels and Blue Startups.

The investment will support the company’s expansion of commercial-scale hatchery operations as it works to meet growing demand from shellfish farmers across Hawaiʻi, the West Coast, and beyond.

Pacific Hybreed is the first company to commercialize hybrid breeding in shellfish, applying the concept of “hybrid vigor”—a method long used in agriculture—to oysters and clams. The company’s approach builds on traditional selective breeding techniques and does not involve genetic modification, instead producing high-performance seed tailored to specific farm conditions that helps growers improve survival, increase yields, and reduce labor costs.

Shellfish farming is a high-risk business, with farmers often losing a significant portion of their crop before harvest due to environmental stressors and inconsistent seed performance. Pacific Hybreed’s approach addresses this challenge at the source by delivering more resilient, uniform seed that performs reliably in real-world farm conditions.

The impact is both biological and economic. Pacific Hybreed’s seed has demonstrated approximately 30% greater yield and up to 50% reductions in harvesting costs due to uniform growth. By offering these gains at commodity pricing, the company enables farmers to increase output and profitability without requiring changes to their existing operations.

The company is already working with more than 20 farm customers and research sites across North America, and demand for its seed continues to outpace current production capacity.

“When we stocked Pacific Hybreed seed while we were growing oysters, we consistently found more uniform growth and very few double set oysters. Growing oysters in Hawaii can be more labor intensive than farming in cooler regions, so the performance and quality of each individual oyster seed is critical,” said Dave Anderson, Product Manager at Kauai Sea Farm.

“Closing this round allows us to move from proven field results to scaled commercial production at a critical moment for the industry,” said Melissa DellaTorre, CEO of Pacific Hybreed. “Hawaiʻi Angels and Blue Startups represent an incredible base of local support. It’s so meaningful to build this company here at home with investors who understand both the opportunity and the impact.”

Pacific Hybreed will use the funding to scale hatchery production, expand its farm-specific breeding programs, and continue broadening into additional species beyond Pacific oysters, including clams.

“Pacific Hybreed is addressing a critical bottleneck in aquaculture. Improving survival and yield at the seed level has a direct impact on farm economics and the resilience of the broader seafood supply chain,” said Rajeev Rai, Hawaiʻi Angels member and deal lead on the investment.

About Pacific Hybreed
Pacific Hybreed is a Big Island, Hawaiʻi-based aquaculture biotechnology company developing high-performance oyster and clam seed through advanced hybrid breeding techniques. By delivering more resilient and productive shellfish, the company helps farmers improve yield, reduce costs, and operate more sustainably. Learn more at pacifichybreed.com.

About The Hawaiʻi Angels
The Hawaiʻi Angels is a Honolulu-based network of early-stage investors that has supported founders in Hawaiʻi and beyond since 2002. Members invest individually but often collaborate on deals like Pacific Hybreed, offering not just capital but also coaching and connections to help startups grow. Learn more or inquire about membership or corporate/VC sponsorship at hawaiiangels.org.

Media Contacts:

Melissa Dellatorre, Pacific Hybreed
207-807-5753
[email protected]

Joey Katzen, Hawai’i Angels
[email protected]

SOURCE Hawaiʻi Angels

Oversubscribed Series B brings total funding to over $100M to scale domestic manufacturing and energy storage deployment across the US and Canada

Addresses AI power bottleneck by unlocking a dormant domestic resource: EV batteries

AUSTIN, Texas, May 5, 2026 – Moment Energy, a North American leader in EV battery repurposing, today announced a $40 million Series B funding round. The financing brings the total capital raised to over $100 million. The Series B round was led by Evok Innovations, with participation from Liberty Mutual Investments, W23 Global Fund, and Acario (the corporate venture capital arm of Tokyo Gas), joining the company’s major investors, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Voyager Ventures, and In-Q-Tel.

The funding will accelerate the expansion of Moment Energy’s North American manufacturing footprint, solidifying its position as the leading second-life battery manufacturer. This capital will scale specialist teams and boost production capacity across the US and Canada to satisfy the rapidly increasing demand from data centers, utilities, and industrial customers. It will also fuel the scaled deployment of state-of-the-art commercial energy storage systems, positioning the company as a key infrastructure provider in the transition to more resilient, domestically-powered energy systems.

The funding comes as accelerating demand from AI and data centers places increasing pressure on aging grid infrastructure, with power availability emerging as a critical constraint. At the same time, battery supply chains remain bottlenecked by long lead times and geopolitical risk. Moment Energy addresses both challenges by unlocking the largest untapped domestic resource: EV batteries already on North American roads.

“As energy demand continues to increase, Moment Energy is focused on one mission: improving grid resilience and reducing energy costs,” said Edward Chiang, Co-Founder and CEO of Moment Energy. “We are building a new generation of energy infrastructure that can be deployed rapidly, manufactured domestically and powered by existing battery resources.”

Moment Energy is advancing battery repurposing from experimental use cases to commercial deployment. The company has uniquely achieved critical safety milestones, including UL 1974 and UL 9540A certifications, making it the only provider able to deploy second-life battery storage systems in the built environment without special dispensations.

The company is redefining the economics of energy storage. Its proprietary pack-swapping architecture extends system lifespan to 30 years, compared to the typical 15-year lifecycle of conventional systems. Combined with domestic tax incentives, this enables up to three times lower net costs, reducing cycling costs to as low as 3 cents per kWh for industrial users.

“Moment Energy is the only player in the EV battery repurposing industry that has proven safety and scalability are not mutually exclusive,” said Marty Reed, Partner at Evok Innovations. “With a deep understanding of battery health and chemistry, Moment Energy is uniquely positioned to build and deploy high-performance, second-life systems at enormous scale. This is a real-world use case for Physical AI: turning complex data into the reliable energy storage needed to power our future.”

Moment Energy has developed the world’s most energy-dense second-life battery systems that are FEOC compliant, insurable and scalable. Its compact footprint enables up to 164 MWh of storage per acre, maximizing ROI per square foot in high-value, space-restricted environments.

A selection of hi-res images to accompany this press release can be accessed here.

About Moment Energy

Moment Energy is the first and only company in North America to manufacture certified, commercial-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) using repurposed batteries. Founded on the belief that every battery deserves a second life, Moment Energy’s technology platform safely extends the useful life of EV batteries and diverts them from premature recycling and landfill disposal. Moment Energy delivers cost-effective and sustainable BESS for commercial and industrial applications, including data centers, hospitals, factories, and microgrids. 

For more information, please visit https://www.momentenergy.com/ 

SOURCE Moment Energy

Germany’s state economic development bank, the KfW, says that financing of start-ups increased by six percent annually in the first quarter of this year.

BERLIN, May 5, 2026 — 1.7 billion euros flowed into young companies in Europe’s largest economy, according to a new KfW study. The rise is down to a broad development on the VC market rather than a handful of mega-deals, the bank added.

International investors are playing a major role in this trend. 34 percent of the capital given to German companies came from the United States.

“The robust international presence reflects both the fundamentally high level of activity of US investors and the abiding confidence of international providers of capital in Germany as a location for starting technology companies,” said KfW head economist Dirk Schumacher in a statement.

18 percent of German-based start-ups receiving capital in the first three months of 2026 come from the health sector, followed by fintechs with 15 percent. Companies developing artificial intelligence applications accounted for over half – 967 million euros – of investments.

“The increasing capital flowing to German start-ups shows that the activities of young non-LLM artificial intelligence companies are eliciting significant interest from foreign investors,” says Germany Trade & Invest AI expert Asha-Maria Sharma. “The proximity to renowned universities and research institutions and the focus on technology-driven business models make fledgling companies in Germany attractive to VC investors.”

Germany Trade & Invest is the German government agency for international business promotion and is owned by the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It helps international companies do business in Germany and German companies do business abroad. 

Contact:
Jefferson Chase
Senior Communications Manager
Germany Trade & Invest
Friedrichstrasse 60
10115 Berlin, Germany
[email protected]
+49 30 200099170 

SOURCE Germany Trade & Invest

Leumi Partners has joined the fund as an anchor investor

The fund has already invested in five companies, including ones founded by serial entrepreneurs and alongside some of the world’s leading venture capital firms

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 5, 2026 — After leading dozens of investments, primarily in the cybersecurity space that have so far generated 22 exits with a combined value of approximately $2.5 billion, Yaron Elad and Elik Etzion are embarking on a new path. Together with their US-based partner Gurinder Sidhu, they are launching AlphaDrive, a $100 million fund focusing on cybersecurity and AI, operating under a unique investment model.

Leumi Partners, the investments arm of Bank Leumi, has joined the fund as an anchor investor, alongside additional investors including “Aurum” the Kahn family office, cybersecurity entrepreneurs from Israel and the U.S., venture capital fund managers, and other investors from the U.S. and Europe.

Yaron Elad, a seasoned venture capital investor and former CEO of Elron Ventures, and Elik Etzion, a cybersecurity and AI expert and former deputy head of the cyber division of Unit 8200 and former CISO of Bank Hapoalim, stepped down from the management of Elron Ventures in 2025, after leading it to top-decile performance in Cyber investments.

Gurinder Sidhu is a seasoned investment banker who until recently led the cybersecurity and infrastructure software sector at UBS, the world’s largest wealth management bank. In his role, Sidhu led M&A and financing transactions for leading cybersecurity companies including CrowdStrike, CyberArk, SentinelOne, Barracuda, Sophos and Varonis.

AlphaDrive plans to invest in companies across various stages, from seed to later stages, alongside larger-scale co-investments with Leumi Partners. The fund is expected to invest in companies founded by Israeli entrepreneurs. To date, it has invested in five startups, including companies founded by serial entrepreneurs operating at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, alongside leading funds such as Greylock, Accel, CRV, Notable, Viola Ventures, and others.

AlphaDrive focuses on the intersection of the AI revolution and the cybersecurity world, a convergence that is driving profound change in the industry. At a time when AI giants are developing and releasing dedicated models used by both attackers and defenders, the industry is being fundamentally reshaped as these models absorb the logic of existing cybersecurity products. This trend is already reflected in the pricing volatility of publicly traded cybersecurity companies.

Alongside these challenges, significant opportunities are emerging for startups to challenge established cybersecurity companies through AI-native products that integrate multiple models, automate workflows via AI agents that replace human labor, and introduce new business models.

The AI revolution is also reshaping the venture capital industry itself, the boundaries between product and service companies are blurring, distinctions between early and late-stage companies are fading, development cycles are shortening, and AI-native companies can achieve meaningful revenues in a short time. Even internal fund operations are adapting to the AI era.

Against this backdrop, AlphaDrive has developed a unique investment model that combines several complementary and dynamic strategies. Integrating venture capital and private equity methodologies for AI-driven roll-up strategies (technology-enabled serial M&A), investing across the full company lifecycle, and building companies with serial entrepreneurs under a Foundry model. This model is supported by a global, multidisciplinary team with extensive shared experience.

The fund’s team also includes Sharon Wagner, a serial entrepreneur who has sold several companies to technology giants including Microsoft; Dr. Uri Geiger, a venture capital and private equity investor; Kobi Katz, CTO of Maccabi Healthcare Services; and Susanne Senoff, who serves as CISO at Thoma Bravo Group company. In addition, senior technology and cybersecurity executives from international companies. Including TikTok, Warner, Chime, and Medtronic, are part of the extended team.

Yaron Elad, Managing Partner at AlphaDrive, said: “We built AlphaDrive after decades of working closely with entrepreneurs across the entire lifecycle of companies, from the earliest stages, through growth, to exit. Building a company has always been a roller coaster, but in the AI era it has become faster, sharper, and far more unpredictable.

“We see our role as partners in this journey, with a deep understanding of what it takes to build companies that succeed over time. AlphaDrive was established to operate precisely at these inflection points, with expertise in cybersecurity and AI, and with the ability to work with companies at different stages helping them grow effectively in the new world being built before our eyes.”

Elik Etzion added: “We are in the midst of a powerful convergence between two of the world’s fastest-growing industries, AI and cybersecurity, and this convergence is reshaping the rules of the game. At AlphaDrive, we are here to seize the moment. We have built a dedicated Cyber-AI task force, a unique team with proven experience navigating previous waves of transformation and disruption in the industry. Our goal is to enable entrepreneurs to seize the current window of opportunity and provide them with a broad value platform that will allow them to build companies shaping the future of the industry.”

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2972725/AlphaDrive_Cofounders.jpg
Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2972726/AlphaDrive_Logo.jpg

Contact:
Yonatan Levin
[email protected]
+972 54-798-7326

SOURCE AlphaDrive