SEATTLE, July 30, 2026 — ACT Capital Advisors today announced that it has secured $30 million in development line financing from Pathward^®, N.A. on behalf of Teichos Energy, LLC, a utility-scale renewable energy developer. BridgePeak Energy Capital, LLC served as lender service provider to Pathward. Teichos plans to access this capital to support continued development of its late-stage solar-energy projects. 

The transaction was led by ACT Managing Directors Brad Bodenman and Matt Latimer.

“ACT Capital was pleased to work with Pathward, BridgePeak, and Teichos Energy to facilitate this transaction and help deliver a tailored capital solution to a growing solar-energy developer,” said Brad Bodenman, Managing Director of ACT Capital.

Stephen Voorhees, Chief Executive Officer of Teichos Energy, stated: “This development line will give our company access to new capital and help us advance a variety of solar-energy projects in Northeastern United States. We greatly appreciate the support of ACT Capital, Pathward, and BridgePeak and their close cooperation in working with our talented team.”

About Teichos Energy

Teichos Energy, LLC is a Seattle-based utility-scale renewable energy developer focused on solar projects and a diversified national portfolio of clean energy assets. Founded in 2012, the company is led by CEO Steve Voorhees and supported by a team with extensive experience in renewable energy project development, construction, and operations. Many members of the team have worked together for more than 25 years starting with the successful launch of Ridgeline Energy, a developer of wind projects in Northwestern U.S.

About Pathward^®

Pathward^®, N.A., a national bank, is a subsidiary of Pathward Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq: CASH). Pathward is focused on financial access and strives to increase financial availability, choice and opportunity across our Partner Solutions and Commercial Finance business lines. These strategic business lines provide support to individuals and businesses. Learn more at Pathward.com.

About BridgePeak Energy Capital

BridgePeak Energy Capital, LLC is the country’s leading energy‑focused commercial loan service provider, specializing in arranging, servicing, and managing commercial loans on behalf of banks and institutional lenders. With a deep focus on energy and infrastructure finance, BridgePeak provides compliant, scalable, and data‑driven loan management solutions that empower lenders to deploy capital efficiently and confidently.

As of June 30, 2026, BridgePeak services a $4.79 billion commercial loan portfolio. BridgePeak, founded in 2020, has closed more than $6.06 billion in loans to U.S.-based energy projects across 27 states.

About ACT Capital Advisors

ACT Capital Advisors is a premier advisory firm representing lower to middle-market companies across all industries. ACT has a 40-year history of deal-making, closing 250+ transactions, and unlocking over $2.5 billion in wealth for its clients. For more information, visit actcapitaladvisors.com.

SOURCE ACT Capital Advisors

New capital follows the selection of the company’s E1 800G DPU and X2 switch by multiple global network operators and accelerating traction across hyperscalers, service providers, and OEMs

SAN JOSE, Calif. and TEL AVIV, Israel, July 30, 2026 — Xsight Labs, a fabless semiconductor company providing intelligent connectivity solutions for next-generation hyperscale, edge, and AI data center networks, today announced the closing of a $300+ million funding round establishing a $2.8 billion post-money valuation. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from new and existing investors.

“This valuation is a testament to the team’s relentless execution and reflects the market need for a high-performance alternative to closed, legacy architectures,” said Yossi Meyouhas, CEO of Xsight Labs. “We are grateful to our investors, new and longstanding, for the confidence they continue to place in this team.”

The funding follows rapidly expanding commercial traction. The company’s E1 Data Processing Unit (DPU) and X2 switch have been selected by multiple global network operators to power next-generation edge and network infrastructure. Xsight Labs silicon is also under evaluation in the labs of Tier-1 hyperscalers, alongside a growing roster of design wins across service providers and OEMs.

Why Operators and Vendors Are Choosing the E1 and X2

Network operators and vendors face unprecedented scale, latency, and power constraints at the edge and in the data center. Xsight Labs is the only semiconductor company shipping both high-end DPUs and Ethernet switches that are fully programmable and open. The E1 and X2 architectures address all three constraints:

• Line-rate 800G processing at connection scale. The E1 processes millions of connections per second at full 800 Gbps line rate — with zero packet drops. It is the first 800G DPU to ship and the first to complete SONiC-DASH Hero 800G validation, sustaining more than 14 million connections per second in industry-standard benchmark testing. Hardware-accelerated inline crypto (AES-GCM/XTS) secures that traffic at the same line rate.
• No “slow path.” All 64 Arm Neoverse N2 cores sit directly in the data path, so routing, telemetry, and packet inspection run on every packet at line rate rather than being punted to an underpowered exception handler that slows everything down.
• Fully open, standard Linux environment. The E1 runs native Linux, DPDK, and SONiC out of the box, letting engineering teams deploy existing software stacks without proprietary SDK lock-in, accelerating development and time to market.
• Power efficiency. Operating at an ultra-efficient sub-75W footprint, the E1 delivers 4x the performance per watt of previous-generation designs, reducing the energy footprint of expanding edge and data center infrastructure. The same power-performance profile suits constrained environments including satellite communications and connectivity, mobile data centers, and other space- and power-limited deployments.
• Programmable switching at 12.8 Tbps. The X2 is a fully software-defined Ethernet switch: its data plane can be reprogrammed after deployment through XISA (Xsight Instruction Set Architecture) with full SONiC integration, letting operators and vendors add protocols and features in software instead of waiting for new silicon.
• Switching efficiency. The X2 operates under 200W with deterministic, sub-700ns latency and a 40 percent lower power profile than legacy 12.8 Tbps switches, cutting power and cooling costs at the top of rack.

Use of Capital

The new capital will accelerate the multi-generational switch and DPU roadmap, including support for emerging Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC) standards; grow engineering and customer support teams across the US, Israel, Europe, and Asia to support this rapid expansion; and scale manufacturing, supply chain, and customer delivery operations to fulfill high-volume Tier-1 customer orders.

The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from Aliya Capital Partners, Atreides Management, Artisan Partners, Battery Ventures, Diagonal Capital, Intel Capital, Key1 Capital, Maverick Capital, Sienna, T. Rowe Price, Union Group, and Valor Equity Partners.

About Xsight Labs

Xsight Labs is a leading fabless semiconductor company providing intelligent connectivity solutions for next-generation hyperscale, edge and AI data center networks. Xsight Labs’ technology delivers exponential bandwidth growth and unmatched versatility while lowering power and total cost of ownership. Founded in 2017, Xsight Labs is headquartered in Tel-Aviv, Israel, with additional offices in Kiryat Gat and Haifa, and international offices in Boston, Raleigh, and San Jose in the United States, as well as in Yerevan, Armenia. For additional information, visit www.xsightlabs.com.

SOURCE xsight labs

WESTPORT, Conn., July 30, 2026 — Balance Point Capital Advisors, LLC (“Balance Point”), in conjunction with its affiliated funds, is pleased to announce its investment in ShipSigma (the “Company”). Balance Point provided debt and equity capital to facilitate Inverness Graham Investments’ (“IGI”) recapitalization of the Company.

Founded in 2018, ShipSigma has become a leading parcel and supply-chain optimization partner for small and medium-sized enterprises. Powered by more than 20 billion parcel and less-than-truckload data points, ShipSigma analyzes each customer’s shipping profile to identify and execute opportunities for greater efficiency and savings. The Company combines proprietary cost modeling with carrier expertise to optimize contracts and automate invoice audits.

“Balance Point is thrilled to partner with ShipSigma and IGI on this transaction and support the Company’s next phase of growth” said Adam Sauerteig, Partner at Balance Point. “We believe ShipSigma provides immediately quantifiable and impactful savings for customers in a complex and ever-changing parcel shipping ecosystem, and we look forward to supporting the Company’s expansion.”

“Balance Point continues to be a value-added partner to Inverness Graham,” said IGI Principal Ryan Geary. “ShipSigma represents the fourth executed investment with Balance Point over the past few years; we appreciate their strong support for our investment approach, and we look forward to continuing to find ways to work with Balance Point in the future.”

About Balance Point

Balance Point is an alternative investment manager focused on the lower middle market. With approximately $2.4 billion in assets under management, Balance Point invests debt and equity capital in select lower middle market companies across a variety of investment vehicles. Balance Point takes a long-term, partnership approach to investing and is committed to building lasting relationships with its partners, management teams and intermediaries. Balance Point is a registered investment advisor. Further information is available at www.balancepointcapital.com.

About ShipSigma

ShipSigma is a tech-enabled parcel spend management platform serving middle-market shippers. The Company uses proprietary analytics and carrier contract expertise to offer a white glove service that helps businesses negotiate better contracts with shippers, monitor ongoing contract compliance, and audit invoices. To learn more, visit www.shipsigma.com.

About Inverness Graham

Inverness Graham is a Philadelphia-based, operationally focused private investment firm that partners with innovative, high-growth businesses where technology is transforming traditional industry. With more than $1.8 billion in assets under management, Inverness Graham brings institutional-scale capabilities to the North American lower middle market while maintaining a focused partnership approach with founders and management teams. To learn more, visit www.invernessgraham.com 

Adam H. Sauerteig
Office: 203-652-8555
[email protected]

SOURCE Balance Point Capital

Move follows acquisition of WHISPS^® and sets stage for national growth in cheese snacking category

BURLINGTON, Vt., July 30, 2026 — The Farmer Companies today announced the appointment of Randy Johnson as Chief Executive Officer, succeeding founder Adam Farmer, who will remain active as Chairman. Johnson joins the company following this month’s closing of a $17 million Series A financing led by Raff Ventures, alongside AJAX Capital Partners, as The Farmer Companies accelerates its strategy to build North America’s leading cheese snacking business through its ownership of WHISPS^® and exclusive licensing partnership with Cabot Creamery^®.

Johnson previously led Dot’s Pretzels, growing the company from $19 million to $250 million in annual sales in just three years prior to its 2021 acquisition by Hershey^® for $1.2 billion.

“Under Randy’s leadership, Dot’s Pretzels became one of the greatest success stories in snacking history. Randy set Dot’s up for a strategic next step, and led the company through its transformational growth phase,” said Farmer. “Bringing him on means The Farmer Companies can build toward our goal of redefining cheese snacking for the next generation. Our business model is clear; we make the highest-quality cheese snacks with the best cheeses in the world.  Randy is leading our business to new heights.”

The Farmer Companies’ premium cheese snacking portfolio includes WHISPS, the iconic 100% cheese crisp brand, and an exclusive licensing partnership with Cabot Creamery to produce Cabot Creamery Popcorn, the fastest-growing popcorn brand in U.S. Food among the top 13 brands tracked by NielsenIQ. Both brands are built on the same foundation: award-winning cheese, premium ingredients, and exceptional flavor. Proceeds from the Series A financing will support continued investment in manufacturing partnerships, national distribution, and strategic acquisitions.

“Randy joining our talented team as CEO lets me focus on what I do best: finding great brands, made with premium ingredients, to create unforgettable flavors,” said Farmer.

Johnson added: “I’m excited to help build one of North America’s great consumer products companies. Adam has already proven this category has room to grow. My job is to help it scale.” 

About The Farmer Companies
Founded in 2021, The Farmer Companies acquires, builds, and grows iconic consumer brands with a focus on premium snacking. The company is currently investing in its vision to become North America’s leading premium cheese snacking company through a portfolio of owned and licensed brands, including WHISPS Cheese Crisps and Cabot Creamery Popcorn. By combining world-class cheese partners, category-leading brands, and innovative product development, The Farmer Companies is redefining the future of cheese snacking.

About Raff Ventures
Raff Ventures is the direct private investment arm of Rafferty Holdings. It invests permanent balance-sheet capital in early-stage companies across a range of sectors. Raff Ventures backs strong teams with capital, strategic guidance, and operational expertise. The result is a diversified portfolio focused on growth and reliable cash flow.

About AJAX Capital Partners
AJAX Capital Partners is a private investment firm focused on providing investors with access to differentiated private market opportunities while supporting entrepreneurs building category-defining companies. Through a relationship-based investment approach, the firm partners with exceptional founders and management teams in innovation-driven industries and sectors benefiting from long-term secular trends, including AI/automation, robotics, critical infrastructure, energy and CPG.

SOURCE The Farmer Companies

TORRANCE, Calif., July 30, 2026 — K2 Space, the leading manufacturer of big, high-power satellites, announced today a $500 million Series D funding round at a $6.8 billion valuation. Kleiner Perkins and ICONIQ led the round, with participation from CapitalG, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, ARK Invest, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.*, and other existing investors. 

“When my brother Neel and I started K2 four years ago, we took a contrarian bet that building bigger would be the future for exploring and developing space,” said Karan Kunjur, Co-Founder and CEO of K2 Space. “This latest round validates that thesis and gives us the capital to accelerate scaling as we prepare to build up to 100 large satellites per year.” 

“Every important mission in space comes back to power and mass, and K2 recognized that before anyone else,” said Lucas Oliveira, principal at Kleiner Perkins. “Karan, Neel, and the team spent four years solving the engineering challenges of a larger, more powerful platform, proved it in orbit, and are now winning major commercial and national security programs. This round marks the start of their next phase, scaling production to meet the demand and becoming critical infrastructure for an era of abundance in space.” 

“K2 started from a simple insight: in orbit, power determines capability. With Gravitas now on orbit and operational, K2 is beginning to prove out their thesis. K2 can deliver high power, high mass satellites at volume because they build more than 85% of its platform in-house. That vertical integration is what may take the company from one satellite to dozens to hundreds. We believe space will be one of the defining frontiers of the coming century, and K2 is building the platform to power the next generation of the space economy,” said Tengbo Li, General Partner at ICONIQ. 

With this latest round, K2 has cumulatively raised over $1 billion in capital and secured over $1 billion in signed commercial and government contracts to build the biggest, high power and high payload mass satellites currently flying in space for initiatives such as: 

• The “meoSphere” network planned by commercial satellite provider SES, for which K2 will provide an initial tranche of 30 satellites. 
• The Golden Dome for America space-based interceptor missile defense program, in which K2 will provide satellites to our program partner, Anduril. 
• The Space Force’s Protected Tactical Satcom-Global program, for which K2 will be the bus provider – marking K2’s first selection for a Pentagon program of record. 

“We’ve carefully planned and positioned our infrastructure, supply chain, and talent pipeline to meet the significant production demand from our customers,” Karan continued. “Our 180,000 sq ft factory in Torrance, California, is designed to manufacture up to 100 satellites per year. Our supply chain is 85 percent vertically integrated, which allows us to build our large satellites quickly and at low cost. We also continue to attract the most brilliant engineers and technicians who want to come work on the hardest challenges in space.”  

“In addition to expanding our factory footprint and growing our accomplished workforce, we’ll also be scaling up the satellite itself,” said Neel Kunjur, K2 Space Co-Founder and CTO. “We’ll be introducing our 100kW Giga-class satellite in the second half of 2028, which will be the foundational platform for deploying massive amounts of compute on orbit.”  

In addition to building and deploying the Giga satellite, K2 will focus on delivering large constellation orders on schedule for its customers’ ambitious programs over the next 24 to 48 months. K2 Space’s next mission, Trinity, will launch multiple satellites in Q2 2027.  

“As space infrastructure becomes a key factor in customers’ missions, K2 will continue to invest in research and development that gives our large platforms a key advantage in the satellite market,” Karan continued. “Designing this cutting-edge platform, and then building it reliably and repeatedly, will allow us to best serve our customers as the leading manufacturer of large, high-power satellites.” 

*Accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. 

[email protected]

SOURCE K2 Space

With demonstrated enterprise demand and a partner-led sales model, DataBahn will invest in R&D and new product capabilities that turn data in motion into intelligence in action 

DALLAS, July 30, 2026 — DataBahn today announced the closing of a $40 million Series B funding round led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Forgepoint, GTM Capital and S3 Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to $59 million.

The funding comes as enterprises face a fundamental shift in how their data is consumed. Security platforms, data warehouses and analytics tools are no longer the only systems that depend on enterprise telemetry. AI agents, copilots and autonomous applications increasingly require trusted, contextualized data to reason, make decisions and take action. 

At the same time, organizations are confronting rapidly rising costs associated with collecting, moving, storing and processing that data. Cloud ingress and egress fees, expanding storage requirements, AI inference costs and growing data volumes are exposing the limitations of data architectures designed for an earlier generation of enterprise applications. 

This shift is creating a new infrastructure category. Enterprises no longer need another data pipeline; they need an agentic data control plane that can intelligently reduce, enrich, govern and activate data for both enterprise applications and AI systems. DataBahn is positioned to define this category through its technical architecture, execution and neutrality across the enterprise technology ecosystem. 

The Series B funding will accelerate investments in R&D and product innovation, expanding DataBahn’s agentic data control plane to serve organizations of every size, from large global enterprises to mid-market businesses. 

As the enterprise data market works through its present evolution, DataBahn can be thought of as the intelligent connective tissue for enterprise data. Traditional data pipelines were designed to move data from a source to a destination in a single direction, an architecture that once worked well. But now organizations need to control cloud egress costs, retain ownership of their data, and provide AI systems with secure access to rich enterprise context without replicating everything into another platform. 

Unlike traditional data pipelines that simply move data from one system to another, DataBahn intelligently governs, orchestrates and activates enterprise data across sources, destinations and AI models. It continuously reduces, enriches and routes only the data required for real-time operations while retrieving additional enterprise context on demand. The result is richer context for AI, faster decisions, and dramatically lower storage, compute, AI token, and cloud data movement costs. 

“Traditional data pipelines were built to move data. AI is changing every enterprise application, and AI is only as good as the enterprise data it can understand,” said Nanda Santhana, CEO and co-founder of DataBahn. “The next generation of enterprise infrastructure won’t be built around moving more data — it will be built around intelligently orchestrating the right data at the right time. We believe every enterprise will need an agentic data control plane that continuously reduces, enriches, governs and activates enterprise data for both applications and AI. Organizations that build this foundation will accelerate AI adoption while dramatically reducing the cost of moving, storing and processing data.” 

Read Santhana’s blog post on the funding round and why The Pipeline Was Never the Point.

DataBahn achieved early product-market fit by building an enterprise-grade platform designed for the scale, complexity and security requirements of some of the world’s largest organizations. That foundation enabled the company to scale primarily through channel and strategic partners. Today, DataBahn powers enterprise data operations for some of the world’s largest organizations, including Fortune 100 companies across healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and transportation. The results include more than 400% year-over-year revenue growth, 180% net revenue retention, zero customer churn, and a 97% proof-of-concept win rate. 

“The next generation of enterprise infrastructure won’t be defined by where data is stored, but by how intelligently it can be orchestrated for AI,” said Max Wolff, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “DataBahn is building that layer, and enterprise leaders across industries describe DataBahn as foundational to their future security architecture. We look forward to supporting the team through this next stage of growth.” 

In its Trends Report: The Future Of Data Modeling, April 2026, Forrester Research observed that “Organizations face growing pressure to scale AI and analytics, yet fragmented data models and inconsistent definitions remain major obstacles.” And, in Best Practices To Optimize AI Data Fabrics, February 2026, Forrester reported that, “A modern AI-enabled data fabric provides the intelligent foundation for delivering trusted, accessible, and governed data to support advanced analytics and informed decision-making.”

DataBahn Customer Voices
“DataBahn’s agentic data control plane helped us modernize and streamline our processes, which was key in supporting our fleet of AI agents. Their platform ingests multiple data formats from diverse sources while incorporating our regulatory requirements, audit controls and validation processes into a single, cohesive solution,” said Parrish Gunnels, CISO, MVB Bank. “The results have been significant. We have realized savings while improving consistency and reliability. More importantly, we have been able to redirect valuable team resources toward higher-value governance, risk management and oversight activities.” 

“Our telemetry was fragmented across multiple platforms and teams. Onboarding a new log source took custom integrations and significant engineering effort, and we had limited insight into whether critical systems were actually sending logs as expected,” said Ricardo Henry, Lead, Security Architecture & Engineering, Information & Corporate Security at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). “DataBahn gave us a standardized, repeatable way to onboard security data. New sources come online more efficiently, we can identify coverage gaps quickly, and as a result the platform has become an important part of our operational ecosystem. As our logging requirements have grown, it has flexed to support new data sources and use cases without extensive rework.”

DataBahn will preview new capabilities in its agentic data control plane at Black Hat USA 2026, booth # 5923. 

About DataBahn
DataBahn is the Agentic Data Control Plane for the enterprise. Its platform ingests, normalizes, enriches, governs, and routes telemetry from 600+ sources with complete data and AI neutrality: any source, any destination, any model, no vendor lock-in, at Fortune 100 scale. DataBahn is headquartered in Dallas and serves Fortune 500 enterprises. Learn more at databahn.ai. 

About Insight Partners
Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. As of December 31, 2025, the firm has over $90B in regulatory assets under management. Insight Partners has invested in more than 900 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO. Headquartered in New York City, Insight has a global presence with leadership in London, Tel Aviv, and the Bay Area. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with tailored, hands-on software expertise along their growth journey, from their first investment to IPO. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on X @insightpartners.

Media Contact:
Cristin Connelly
Cathey Communications for DataBahn
[email protected]

SOURCE DataBahn

SAN DIEGO, July 30, 2026 — Embark, a leading financial, technology and business consulting firm, proudly announces the appointment of Naseem Anzari as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). An experienced CFO with extensive experience in PE-backed professional services, financial advisory, and M&A, Naseem brings the financial leadership and strategic depth needed to drive the firm’s financial strategy and investment in growth.

“Naseem has spent his career building the financial infrastructure that enables high-growth, PE-backed firms to scale and acquire with discipline, and his leadership experience will directly strengthen Embark’s finance and M&A strategy.” said Embark CEO L. Felice Gorordo. “I’m proud to welcome Naseem to the Embark team and excited to build alongside him as we enter our firm’s next chapter of growth.”

As Chief Financial Officer, Naseem will lead Embark’s financial strategy and operations, overseeing the financial infrastructure that supports the firm’s continued expansion and focusing on the firm’s acquisition strategy. With continued growth on the horizon, Naseem will play a central role in building the financial foundation that powers Embark’s next phase of scale.

Most recently, Naseem served as CFO at Lido Advisors, where he aided the business to grow 4x and complete several acquisitions. Prior to Lido, he was a CFO at Sound United, a consultant at Accordion, spent time in Portfolio Operations at Terra Firma and Phoenix Equity Partners and began his career at KPMG. He will be based in Embark’s San Diego office.

“What drew me to Embark is the ambition behind the growth plan. This firm has a real strategy for scaling through acquisition, not just organic expansion. I’ve spent my career building the financial discipline that lets a high-growth firm move quickly on the right deals without losing control of the business. That is exactly the mandate here, and I’m glad to be building it alongside a team that has already shown it can execute,” said Naseem Anzari, Chief Financial Officer at Embark.

About Embark: Embark is a leading finance, technology and business consulting firm helping companies navigate complex accounting, deal and advisory, transformation, risk, compliance, and related business needs. Built around elite talent, flexible delivery, and a culture of fanatical hospitality, Embark partners with clients to deliver practical guidance, measurable impact, and scalable support through every stage of growth. With more than 800 team members across more than 40 markets nationwide, Embark transforms complex problems into clear solutions. Learn more at embarkwithus.com.

SOURCE Embark

Veteran security executive brings decades of experience building security organizations and advising technology companies to Costanoa’s investment team as a Venture Partner

SAN FRANCISCO, July 30, 2026 — Costanoa, a venture capital firm investing in companies of consequence across Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech, today announced that Joe Sullivan has joined the firm as a Venture Partner, a part-time advisory role. Sullivan will advise Costanoa’s cybersecurity portfolio and help the firm source and evaluate new investments in the sector.

Sullivan brings more than three decades of experience spanning cybersecurity, technology, law enforcement, and national security. He served as Chief Security Officer at Meta, Uber, and Cloudflare, where he built and scaled each security organization. He began his career as a federal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, prosecuting cybercrime, economic espionage, and computer hacking cases.

“Joe has an exceptional ability to see where cybersecurity is going because he has spent his career helping shape it,” said Greg Sands, Founder and Managing Partner at Costanoa. “We’re excited to have his perspective as we work with founders building the next generation of  enterprise security and look for the opportunities that will define the industry in the years ahead.”

Sullivan has worked closely with technology founders throughout his career, advising many leading security and AI companies and serving on the board of StackHawk, a company powering secure AI-driven development. The Venture Partner role is a natural extension of that work — and of his existing relationships with Costanoa’s investment team and founders.

“Joe has a rare understanding of what it takes to build and lead security organizations at scale, and he brings that perspective to every conversation,” said Joni Klippert, CEO and co-founder of StackHawk. “He’s a deeply product-minded leader who asks the questions that shape strategy and understands the challenges security teams are facing as AI changes how software is built. He’s been an invaluable thought partner to us, and I know that perspective will be just as valuable to other founders Costanoa works with.”

“Some of the most important cybersecurity companies of the next decade will come from founders who are solving problems the industry hasn’t fully recognized yet,” said Joe Sullivan, Venture Partner at Costanoa. “I’m excited to work with a team that has the conviction to find those founders early, help them navigate the challenges of building enduring companies, and invest in the ideas that can fundamentally change how security works.”

Sullivan is also CEO of Ukraine Friends, a nonprofit providing humanitarian support to children in Ukraine. His public-sector service includes serving on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and as a commissioner on the National Cybersecurity Alliance.

Sullivan’s addition deepens Costanoa’s cybersecurity and national security practice, where the firm has backed companies like Empirical Security, SGNL, Cyberhaven, Cape, and Vannevar at the formation stage.

About Costanoa 

Costanoa exists to elevate founders building companies of consequence. We lead investments from formation through Series A in Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. With $2.8B of AUM, we’re boutique by design—making fewer investments to deliver deeper expertise and operational support when it matters most: the early, defining stages of growth. For more information, please visit www.costanoa.vc.

SOURCE Costanoa Ventures

Built by veteran security researchers, Cantina introduces autonomous security workers that identify security issues, drive remediation, and verify fixes before attackers act

NEW YORK, July 30, 2026 — Cantina today announced it has launched from stealth backed by $8 million in funding led by Framework Ventures, bringing the company’s total amount raised to $16.5 million. The company has built the first community-powered agentic security platform that helps organizations proactively find, prioritize, and remediate security issues at machine speed.

Cantina was founded by veteran security researchers and engineers who have spent years uncovering vulnerabilities and defending against attacks across some of the world’s most critical software systems. They saw firsthand how AI was accelerating the speed and sophistication of attacks while forcing defenders to keep pace.

Today, Cantina helps organizations across healthcare, financial technology, and other regulated industries, from mid-market companies to Fortune 500 enterprises, automate security work before attackers get the chance to capitalize. The team also holds trusted access with OpenAI and participates in Anthropic’s Cyber Verification Program, giving Cantina early visibility into the model capabilities reshaping both attack and defense.

The Cost of Attack Is Collapsing

For decades, many vulnerabilities went unexploited because finding them, understanding them, and building reliable exploits required significant time and expertise. AI has dramatically lowered the cost of finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.

According to the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, vulnerability exploitation overtook stolen credentials as the leading breach entry point for the first time in the report’s 19-year history. Yet only 26 percent of critical known-exploited vulnerabilities were fully remediated last year, down from 38 percent. Half of ransomware victims also had credential exposure detected before the attack. Organizations increasingly know where their risks are but cannot resolve them before attackers move.

The problem is that finding vulnerabilities is only the beginning. Security teams still need to determine ownership, assess real risk, coordinate remediation across engineering teams, validate fixes, and confirm issues have actually been resolved. Most organizations still rely on human-driven workflows for this work, while thousands of security teams independently investigate the same vulnerabilities and build the same response playbooks instead of benefiting from what others have already learned.

“AI has dramatically accelerated the pace of attack,” said Hari Mulackal, CEO and co-founder, Cantina. “Attackers can identify vulnerabilities, understand systems, and build exploits faster than ever before. Security teams cannot keep responding with workflows built for a pre-AI world. Defenders need AI that doesn’t just identify problems, but helps investigate them, coordinate remediation, validate fixes, and continuously gets smarter with every issue it resolves.”

Introducing the First Autonomous Security Workforce to Enable Security Teams

Cantina has built a platform that customers use to automate security work from discovery through remediation, using out-of-the-box agents, custom-built agents, and proven community-built agents shared by other Cantina customers.

The platform builds a living understanding of each customer’s environment. It maps every entity across the environment and how they relate, whether that’s an Okta user, a server, a GitHub repo, an AWS IAM role, or a database holding customer PII, then layers in the business context around them: who owns each system, what it supports, what has changed recently, and what past investigations have revealed. That shared context is how Cantina determines which issues demand immediate action, and it gives security teams a single, current picture of risk.

Every investigation teaches the platform more about the customer’s environment, so Cantina gets more precise over time rather than starting from zero with every alert.

Rather than generating more findings, Cantina focuses on prioritizing issues that actually matter and helping organizations resolve them to the standard of a staff-level security engineer.

The platform helps organizations understand, prioritize, and remediate security risks across their environments, including:

• Security Memory Layer: Maintains a dynamic digital twin of the organization’s cybersecurity, technology, and compliance environment, continuously mapping assets, identities, systems, and their relationships.
• Risk Prioritization: Identifies and ranks the security issues that pose the greatest business risk.
• Autonomous Remediation: Automates the investigation, coordination, and remediation workflows that traditionally consume security team resources.
• Verified Resolution: Confirms that fixes have been implemented successfully and maintains auditable evidence that risks have been resolved.

“Every security team I know can find problems faster than they can fix them. The backlog is where the risk lives,” said Matt Mock, Chief Information Security Officer at Trend Health Partners. “Cantina is the first platform we have used that carries the work through from finding an issue to driving the fix, and it lets my team operate like one far larger than it is. We keep finding new uses for it across our security program.”

About Cantina

Cantina is the community-powered agentic security workforce that helps organizations identify, prioritize, remediate, and verify security risks at machine speed. Built by veteran security researchers, Cantina combines autonomous security workers with a continuously evolving understanding of each customer’s environment to automate security work from discovery through resolution.

For more information, visit https://www.cantina.security/ 

SOURCE Cantina