Firm led by veteran investors brings hands-on expertise to founder- and family-owned businesses

DALLAS, June 17, 2025 — Astria Elevate (“Astria”), co-founded by Shaun R. Gordon and long-time collaborator John S. Ehlinger, today announced the formal launch of a growth-oriented and operationally focused private investment firm specializing in partnering with founder, family, and entrepreneur-owned businesses.

Drawing on their extensive backgrounds, Gordon—an award-winning investor and operator known for founding and leading AGI Partners—and Ehlinger—a seasoned executive and turnaround investor who most recently led a turnaround and M&A roll-up in the healthcare services sector—bring a hands-on, value-driven approach to Astria Elevate. Their leadership, marked by industry recognition, successful exits, and transformative growth in challenging markets, inspired the creation of Astria Elevate, a firm dedicated to delivering value beyond capital by operationalizing strategic plans, empowering teams, and building lasting business foundations.

Astria Elevate focuses on investing in growing businesses and supporting management teams that deliver critical services to support modern society. The firm targets platform companies with $3 million to $20 million in EBITDA characterized by highly visible revenue streams, profitable operations, and compelling opportunities to drive transformative growth. Astria Elevate is actively pursuing opportunities in sectors where the firm and its partners have direct operating experience including asset-light business services, industrial automation, technical services, manufacturing, experiential marketing, and healthcare services.

To support these efforts, Astria Elevate recently appointed Matt Hawkins as Vice President to support investment execution and portfolio management, bringing deep private equity and operational expertise from Nonantum Capital Partners and Boston Consulting Group. He joins a multidisciplinary team of seasoned experts, operators, and advisors, including leaders in law, strategy, organizational transformation, and business development, who provide ongoing strategic guidance to help businesses achieve transformative, sustainable growth.

“We founded Astria Elevate to partner with founders and families seeking to meaningfully grow their businesses beyond their local markets. By bringing our firsthand operational and entrepreneurial experience to these investment partnerships, we aim to help management teams break through their current barriers and realize substantial improvement in sales, profitability and market reach,” said Gordon. “As experienced operators ourselves, we understand that true business value extends beyond spreadsheets. Our team leverages deep expertise in operational performance, analytics, leadership development, and organizational strategy to enhance and accelerate the success of our partner businesses.” 

Ehlinger added, “Our collaborative approach with management teams differentiates us significantly from traditional investors in the lower-middle-market. By aligning with the values and ambitions of the entrepreneurs we partner with, Astria Elevate fosters an environment conducive to growth, innovation, and sustained excellence. We believe successful organizations already know at their core what they need to do to meaningfully scale their operations. Our past successes have come by turning that knowledge into strategic action.” 

Astria Elevate is anchored by select family office investors and backed by institutional equity partners, ensuring a patient, supportive, and flexible investment approach tailored to founder and family-led businesses.

The name “Astria” is inspired by the Greek word for “star” and the mythological figure Astraea, symbolizing guidance, excellence, and the pursuit of stellar outcomes. Astria Elevate embodies this spirit by helping businesses reach their brightest potential.

For further information about Astria Elevate, please visit astriaelevate.com. 

About Astria Elevate LP 

Astria Elevate LP invests in founder- and family-owned businesses with an emphasis on operational excellence and strategic partnership. Recognizing that lasting business value comes from exceptional leadership, operational discipline, and strategic execution, Astria Elevate provides targeted expertise in performance improvement, analytics, leadership development, and organizational design to drive significant, sustained growth. The firm’s investment team combines substantial experience as both investors and operators of lower-middle-market companies, enabling them to offer practical, hands-on support tailored specifically to each platform business. 

SOURCE Astria Elevate L.P.

New capital will be used to scale unmanned defense systems, expand resilient manufacturing and deepen strategic defense partnerships 

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., June 17, 2025 — Mach Industries, a new industrial base for the unmanned era of American defense, today announced the close of its $100 million Series B. The round was led by Khosla Ventures and Bedrock, with participation from Sequoia Capital and existing investors. Bedrock previously backed the Company at the Seed stage and led its Series A.

Mach Industries is building a vertically integrated, full-stack industrial base for the era of unmanned warfare. Through its decentralized manufacturing platform, Forge, and a growing portfolio of autonomous defense systems, the company delivers modern military speed, scale, and survivability to the U.S. and its allies.

The new capital will accelerate the expansion of Forge Huntington, Mach’s flagship manufacturing platform; scale Mach Propulsion, its tactical engine division; and drive continued deployment of its core systems: Viper, Glide, and Stratos. Mach works with customers across the U.S. Department of Defense–including the Army, Air Force, and SOCOM–as well as allied governments. Second-generation systems are also in development.

“Mach Industries exists to enhance national readiness and preserve America’s strategic edge,” said Ethan Thornton, Founder and CEO. “Global security depends on America’s ability to create asymmetric unmanned capability. That means scaling production, building new facilities and fielding systems that deter conflict.”

With this funding, Mach will further industrialize its operations, deploying production capacity faster, closer to demand, and at greater scale. Its distributed model is designed for operational resilience and rapid iteration, ensuring the U.S. and its allies can field next-generation systems when and where they’re needed most.

“Mach’s vertically integrated and distributed model is exactly what the future of defense requires,” said Ben Kany, Principal at Bedrock. “In an era where speed and resilience define strength, Mach is delivering the systems that safeguard peace.”

As one of the round’s lead investors, Khosla Ventures highlighted Mach’s unique position in the evolving defense landscape:

“Mach has developed a fundamentally new way to deliver tactical unmanned capabilities–faster, cheaper, and with fewer constraints than traditional defense players,” said Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures. “Their model is purpose-built for the realities of modern conflict.”

This funding announcement follows recent Mach milestones including multiple industry partnerships and contracts, the launch of the company’s flagship factory, Forge Huntington; and the launch of Mach Propulsion.

About Mach Industries:
Founded in 2023, Mach Industries is a defense manufacturing company headquartered in Huntington Beach, California. The company develops advanced unmanned systems and the manufacturing infrastructure to scale their production. By vertically integrating weapons, propulsion, and manufacturing, Mach delivers the speed, adaptability, and resilience required to preserve the allied edge in an increasingly contested world.

Media Contact:
[email protected]

SOURCE Mach Industries

Closed in just over a year since the Series E announcement, this transaction demonstrates the company’s hypergrowth and cements its leadership position in the vehicle intelligence market

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 17, 2025 — Applied Intuition, Inc., the leading vehicle intelligence company for automotive, trucking, construction, mining, agriculture and defense, today announced it has closed a $600 million Series F fundraise and tender offer at a $15 billion valuation. This fresh round of funding, co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and accounts and Kleiner Perkins, will propel Applied Intuition into its next phase of vehicle intelligence, deeper product expansion, and global team growth. Other new investors in the round include Franklin Templeton, Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Premji Invest, Stripes, Greycroft, BAM Elevate, and 137 Ventures. Existing investors participating in the round include Fidelity Management & Research Company, General Catalyst, Lux, BOND, Elad Gil, Addition, and Tribe Capital.

“Applied Intuition is entering its next era,” said Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “We’re scaling up our investments in bringing intelligence into every moving machine. Everything from cars and trucks to drones and factories will be powered by AI, and our mission is to connect AI with the physical world it will transform.”

“The last eight years have been about building the infrastructure to enable vehicle intelligence at scale,” said Peter Ludwig, co-founder and CTO of Applied Intuition. “The focus of this next phase is to accelerate the rollout of intelligent, software-defined systems across all domains — defense, automotive, trucking, construction, mining, and agriculture. With the continued backing of our investors, we’re just getting started.”

Applied Intuition closed this major up round just over a year after announcing its Series E in March 2024. Since then, the company has maintained strong momentum with AI innovations and product launches, including strategic partnerships with OpenAI, TRATON, Isuzu, Porsche and Audi; the release of its off-road autonomy stack; the acquisition of defense technology company EpiSci and the launch of its newest defense products, Axion and Acuity; and recent global office expansion into the United Kingdom.

“At BlackRock, we invest in the long-term megatrends reshaping the global economy, including AI, autonomy, and the broader digital evolution,” said BlackRock Managing Director Samir Menon. “Our platform has been actively investing in the autonomous driving sector for years, and Applied Intuition has emerged as a key innovation leader. We are proud to back Applied Intuition as they continue their mission to make all vehicles intelligent.”

“Since our initial investment six years ago, we’ve believed deeply in Applied Intuition’s vision and team,” said Mamoon Hamid, Partner at Kleiner Perkins. “Qasar and Peter had the foresight to start building toward a future shaped by vehicle intelligence and autonomy well before it became widely understood. Now, in 2025, with the world taking notice, we are deepening our commitment to what we believe is a generational company.”

To learn more about how Applied Intuition is the leader in vehicle intelligence and catapulting the autonomy industry forward, go to appliedintuition.com.

About Applied Intuition
Applied Intuition is the vehicle intelligence company that accelerates the global adoption of safe, AI-driven machines. Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition delivers the toolchain, Vehicle OS and autonomy stacks to help customers build intelligent vehicles and shorten time to market. Eighteen of the top 20 global automakers and major programs across the Department of Defense trust Applied Intuition’s solutions to deliver vehicle intelligence. Applied Intuition services the automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining and agriculture industries and is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Diego, CA, Ft. Walton Beach, FL, Ann Arbor, MI, London, Stuttgart, Munich, Stockholm, Seoul and Tokyo. Learn more at appliedintuition.com.

SOURCE Applied Intuition, Inc.

Backed by top-tier investors, HOPPR is scaling its secure platform for enabling developers
and medical imaging partners to build, refine, and deploy AI applications.

CHICAGO, June 17, 2025 — HOPPR, the company revolutionizing how AI imaging applications are built, validated, and deployed, announced today that it has secured $31.5a million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by Kivu and Greycroft, with participation from PSG Equity, Morningside Capital, Fortitude Ventures, and existing investor Health 2047.  This round demonstrates exceptional investor confidence in HOPPR’s ability to innovate and scale in the rapidly evolving medical AI imaging space.   

With Series A funding, HOPPR intends to accelerate platform development, scale operations, expand its foundation model capabilities to enable unprecedented flexibility and precision in developing imaging AI applications, and grow its team of top-tier engineering, AI, and compliance talent.

HOPPR’s platform addresses a critical challenge in the development of medical AI imaging applications by enabling fine-tuning and validation of models in a secure and compliant environment. Built for medical imaging vendors and developers, HOPPR provides tooling and data access that enables the development of high-performing, reliable AI models with full transparency and traceability throughout the process.

“At HOPPR, we’re building the secure infrastructure Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) vendors and developers need to fine-tune and deploy foundation models for real-world clinical use,” said Dr. Khan Siddiqui, CEO and Co-founder of HOPPR. “Our vision is to democratize access to high-performing, trustworthy imaging AI by giving developers the tools, data, and compliant environment they need to fine-tune models safely and at scale. By doing so, we enable innovation that ultimately improves diagnostic workflows, supports radiologists, and enhances patient care across the globe.”

Unlike marketplaces that offer prebuilt AI applications, the HOPPR platform empowers users to fine-tune foundation models using their own data or HOPPR’s expertly curated datasets. Based on a quality management system, the platform combines trusted data provenance with secure development pipelines, streamlining the process of concept to clinical deployment.

“HOPPR has one of the most unique teams made up of the world’s leading AI specialists, technologists, and radiologists who are specifically suited to solve the major challenges facing healthcare developers,” said Seth Berman, Co-founder and General Partner at Kivu Ventures. “We’re excited to support a platform that is built from the ground up for clinical readiness and commercial impact.”

“We are excited to partner with HOPPR as they enable customers to deploy state-of-the-art medical imaging AI into diagnostic workflows—ultimately improving patient outcomes in radiology,” said Bryan Subijano, Investor at Greycroft. “HOPPR simplifies the most complex aspects of healthcare AI, from data curation and data provenance to model validation and refinement.” 

Larry K. Cohen, CEO at Health2047, a venture studio founded by the American Medical Association added, “We’re proud to have supported HOPPR’s vision and team from day one. Their platform enhances diagnostic accuracy and brings clinicians into direct dialogue with imaging studies—an approach that’s truly first-of-its-kind. The potential for both physicians and patients is nothing short of transformational.”

About HOPPR

HOPPR is the leading infrastructure platform for building, fine-tuning, and deploying AI foundation models and applications in medical imaging. Purpose-built for developers and PACs vendors, HOPPR offers secure tooling and access to curated data with known provenance, enabling the rapid development of clinically ready AI applications. With integrated quality management systems and support for marketing authorization, HOPPR bridges the gap between innovation and real-world deployment, helping transform diagnostic workflows and improve patient care globally.  For more information, visit www.hoppr.ai. 

SOURCE HOPPR

New Funding from Leading Insurers and Asset Managers to Fuel Insurtech Firm’s Expansion

BERWYN, Pa., June 17, 2025 — Fiduciary Exchange, LLC (FIDx), an Insurtech leader providing integrated tools that connect financial professionals with insurance companies and asset managers, today announced the closing of new growth capital. Prudential Financial, Inc. (Prudential) was the lead investor in this latest funding round, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Invesco LLC, and Axonic Insurance Services.

“We are excited to add Franklin Templeton, Invesco, and Axonic to our strategic investor group and highly value Prudential’s ongoing leadership and commitment to our growth,” said Rich Romano, CEO of FIDx. “This capital raise demonstrates the broader industry’s confidence in and recognition of the vision and strategy that FIDx continues to execute. We remain fully committed to enabling every advisor to seamlessly integrate income and protection solutions into every client’s financial plan. Our strategic investors clearly recognize the importance of this evolution for their businesses.”

FIDx empowers financial professionals through its established Insurance Exchange and the soon-to-launch Insurance Overlays Marketplace. After nearly eight years of operation, FIDx and its platforms currently collaborate with over 20 leading insurance carriers, prominent asset management firms, and wealth management platforms, connecting advisors to an extensive range of commission- and fee-based insurance products.

Strong demand for retirement income solutions such as annuities persists; however, many advisors still find integrating them into client plans overly complex. FIDx addresses this challenge by eliminating barriers created by outdated, disconnected systems, making insurance solutions more accessible and manageable throughout the full product lifecycle within client portfolios.

Ann Nanda, Head of Future Growth Initiatives and Distribution Enablement for Prudential Retirement Strategies, stated, “At Prudential, we are committed to expanding access to retirement security by empowering advisors with more effective and integrated tools. FIDx is a key innovator in this space, providing platforms that connect wealth managers with lifetime income strategies that can help them protect their life’s work, so they can live better lives, longer.”

Significantly highlighting the value of FIDx, asset managers have joined the cap table for the first time. Investors Franklin Templeton and Invesco emphasized FIDx’s substantial contributions to the advisory landscape:

“The connectivity between wealth managers and insurance providers enabled by FIDx is key to integrating insurance and income strategies into holistic client solutions,” said Roger Paradiso, Head of Custom Client Solutions at Franklin Templeton.  “Our work to connect FIDx and our Canvas Custom Indexing platform continues the ongoing expansion of innovative solutions available to clients on the Canvas platform while also creating an additional access point for partners across the industry to tap into these offerings.”

“Our investment in FIDx reflects Invesco’s commitment to delivering innovative retirement solutions that help advisors and their clients achieve greater financial security,” said John McDonough, Head of Americas Distribution at Invesco. “By integrating FIDx’s powerful technology with our investment expertise, we’re expanding access to lifetime income and decumulation strategies that are essential for today’s evolving retirement landscape.”

About FIDx
Fiduciary Exchange, LLC (FIDx) powers a technology-empowered network that seamlessly integrates the brokerage, insurance, and advisory ecosystems to offer best-in-class annuities and insurance solutions from the industry’s leading carriers. FIDx enables advisors to offer guaranteed income and downside protection as core components of their clients’ portfolios, integrated within the same wealth management platforms they already use every day. An independent technology firm, FIDx connects advisory firms to insurance carriers and asset managers through a seamless, digitally enabled process so advisors can truly deliver comprehensive advice and help clients reach their goals. To learn more, please visit www.fidx.io and follow FIDx on LinkedIn.

Media contact:
Laura Simpson
JConnelly for FIDx
[email protected]

SOURCE Fiduciary Exchange, LLC (FIDx)

Round led by Founders Fund as 40,000 customers drive more than $80B in payment volume

NEW YORK, June 17, 2025 — Ramp, the leading financial operations platform, announced its Series E financing, bringing its valuation to $16 billion. For the fifth time, a Ramp funding round was led by Founders Fund – the company’s first and largest investor. Total size was capped at $200 million and included participation from Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, General Catalyst, GIC, ICONIQ Growth, Khosla Ventures, Sands Capital, 8VC, Lux Capital, Stripes, 137 Ventures, Avenir Growth, and Definition Capital.

Fast Facts

• To date, Ramp has saved customers $10 billion and 27.5 million hours.
• Ramp currently powers over $80 billion in annualized purchase volume across card transactions and bill payments.*
• Ramp serves more than 40,000 companies, including CBRE, Shopify, Anduril, Notion, Cursor, Vercel, Barry’s, and MAGNA-TILES.
• Ramp’s product line includes corporate cards and expense management, bill payments, procurement, travel booking, and treasury. Half of Ramp customers use two or more products across its platform.
• With this round, Ramp has raised $1.4 billion in total equity financing.

What follows is a letter Eric Glyman, co-founder and CEO of Ramp, shared with customers here.

* Ramp does not include bank transfers or non-monetized payments when calculating Total Purchase Volume.

*****

LET THE ROBOTS CHASE RECEIPTS

Today, Ramp reached a new valuation: $16 billion.

My favorite companies’ missions are simple:

• Increase the GDP of the internet (Stripe)
• Make humanity a multiplanetary species (SpaceX)
• Be Earth’s most customer-obsessed company (Amazon)

Ours can fit on a post-it too:

• Save your company time and money (without you noticing)

We’re building the financial operations platform for your business. Corporate cards, spend management, bill pay, procurement, travel, treasury, accounting automations. Yes, it all might sound quite boring! And that’s precisely why we’re building it.

Let the robots chase receipts and close your books, so you can use your brain and build things.

That’s the way AI was meant to be. Not the other way around.

You don’t lose the day. You give it away, five minutes at a time.

Five minutes searching for the hotel. Five minutes booking it. Five minutes chasing a receipt. Five minutes uploading it. Five minutes for your manager to approve it. Five minutes for finance to check if it’s policy compliant. Five minutes reconciling the books.

One hotel booking. Three employees. Five interruptions. Suddenly it’s lunch. What have you done today?

Ramp is your net for catching hours and dollars. It’s ‘quiet efficiency.’

It’s why we called our company Ramp. A ramp is quite literally a simple machine; like the lever or pulley, it helps you do more work with less force. The less you have to think about it, the better we’re doing our job.

For example, just last month we launched Price Drop. Book a hotel and our AI will automatically rebook it if the price drops. Time and money saved. Best of all, you barely notice.

Today is Day 2,283

Let me tell you about what we built for you in the last three-hundred and sixty-five.

1. We didn’t set out to create a better expense report, we set out to eliminate it. We doubled the percent of employee expense reports fully completed and coded without humans needing to lift a finger.
2. We want every minute you do choose to spend on Ramp to go further. We decreased the time spent per administrative task – reviewing expenses, approving trips, paying bills, moving deposits to grow yield, etc. – by more than 50%.
3. We believe every support ticket is a signal that our product should be more intuitive. We launched 300+ features and made it easier to contact Ramp; still, customers contacted us 34% less often.

Put together, our customers are getting three times more work done per minute spent on Ramp than they did just two years ago. Everything is faster and more intuitive.

From startups to family owned companies to leading enterprises, 40,000 businesses across every sector are choosing Ramp to reclaim their time and money.

Here are a few:

1. Construction One reduced their AP team’s time spent on monthly close by 75%, saving them 360 hours in the last year.
2. Poshmark hit their free cash flow goals 5 months ahead of schedule by redirecting their team’s energy toward strategic projects, not administrative burden.
3. An industrial company (we can’t name) processed $47 million through Ramp cards, using our built-in controls to prevent 9% of spend that was out-of-policy and saving $4 million.

What connects all these companies is their obsession with efficiency. We’re proud to play a small role in helping them move faster, operate smarter, and stretch every dollar further.

There’s never been a better time to be a Ramp customer. And here’s our commitment to you: this is the worst our product will ever be.

It’s time to talk about AI

Every finance professional is being asked how they use AI. And yet, most businesses don’t have a single software engineer – let alone one dedicated to finance.

We believe every business, no matter the size, should benefit from world-class engineering and recent breakthroughs in reasoning. It’s why we spend over 50% of our payroll on research and development. It’s also why we have more IOI and IMO medalists (world champion programmers and mathematicians) on our team than most countries – 13 if you’re wondering.

In 2025 alone, we’ve shipped 270 features. All were quietly built with the help of AI. It works, you don’t notice it. And that’s the way we like it. Here are my favorite three:

• Card & Expense: Our AI auto-fills memos and categories as soon as a swipe clears, flags anything that looks out of policy, and automatically suggests memos for any transactions that still need human context.
• Procurement: Price and Seat Intelligence benchmarks every SaaS quote against anonymized market data; if you’re paying above the 80th percentile or holding unused seats, Ramp surfaces the delta and recommends a target price.
• Treasury: Our cash forecasting predicts your liquidity needs and sweeps idle funds into higher-yield instruments. When upcoming payroll or vendor runs tighten the buffer, we automatically pull the cash back, so you earn more without risking an overdraft.

Ramp isn’t ‘with the help of AI’, it’s ‘done for you and we don’t mention it’ AI. Michael, Cursor’s CEO, and Rama, Notion’s CFO, summed it up better than I can…

“People ask how we’re using AI in finance and I have a simple answer for them. We use Ramp.” – Rama Katkar, CFO Notion

“Most finance tools feel like they were built by people who’ve never worked at a high-velocity startup. Ramp’s engineering team is elite and ships fast. They actually understand what velocity means.” – Michael Truell, CEO Cursor

We still serve just 1.5% of the US market

That’s our motivation.

Right now, we’re saving thousands of companies billions of dollars and hours a year. We should be saving millions of companies trillions of dollars and hours a year.

I can assure you I’m not just writing this because it sounds good.

There’s a lot more to do and a lot more to build. We’re grateful for the opportunity to earn your business every day – and we’ll keep delivering more time and money back to you with each one.

Job’s not finished.

– Eric

About Ramp
Ramp is a financial operations platform designed to save companies time and money. Our all-in-one solution combines payments, corporate cards, vendor management, procurement, travel booking, and automated bookkeeping with built-in intelligence to maximize the impact of every dollar and hour spent. Over 40,000 customers, from family farms to space startups, have saved $10 billion and 27.5 million hours with Ramp. Founded in 2019, Ramp enables tens of billions in purchases annually. Learn more at www.ramp.com.

Media Contact
[email protected]

SOURCE Ramp

CoinFund Leads Seed Round for iGaming Platform From Former Facebook Games Executive Sean Ryan

NEW YORK, June 17, 2025 — ZOOT (getzoot.us), a sweepstakes gaming platform bringing video game sensibilities to iGaming entertainment, today announced it has raised $6 million in seed funding led by CoinFund, one of the world’s first cryptonative investment firms, with participation from Griffin Gaming Partners to expand the current US-focused business to a global-facing, stablecoin-driven one. The investment further grows the opportunities for instant, borderless payments in digital entertainment as stablecoin adoption surges past $239 billion in circulation, with payment giants like Visa and PayPal racing to integrate crypto rails for faster, cheaper transactions.

Co-founded by gaming industry veterans John Cahill (ex-Sega, Shockwave, Yahoo Games and Open Wager) and Sean Ryan, who led Facebook’s multi-billion dollar games business, ZOOT is building an iGaming platform that pioneers a new approach to iGaming that combines the engagement of video games with the efficiency of blockchain-based payments. Ryan brings decades of experience from leadership roles including CEO of digital music service Listen.com/Rhapsody and co-founder of social casino games company OpenWager (home of leading sweeps product Luckyland Slots), which was successfully acquired by VGW in 2017.

“Blockchain gaming with real currency integration represents one of the most compelling opportunities in digital entertainment today,” said Sean Ryan, CEO and Co-Founder of ZOOT. “We’re bringing video game design principles to iGaming to create experiences that are not only entertaining, but also transparent and instantly rewarding. With stablecoins eliminating traditional payment friction, we can serve players globally with zero fees and instant payouts.”

Building on its successful launch in the US-focused sweepstakes sector, ZOOT’s upcoming global platform addresses key friction points in traditional online gaming—namely payment processing delays and geographic restrictions. The platform’s flagship games, including its leading Beer Pong adaptation of the classic Plinko game, show how traditional chance-based mechanics can be reimagined through a video game lens with more interactivity and greater audio and graphical fidelity.

“We are now seeing explosive growth in stablecoin adoption, and real-money gaming is a trillion-dollar market waiting to be transformed by crypto rails,” said David Pakman, Managing Partner and Head of Venture Investments at CoinFund. “Sean is one of the most thoughtful and experienced entrepreneurs in gaming, and we believe he and his team will be one of the largest winners in this market as they create a much more mainstream experience for real-money gaming players around the world.”

CoinFund, founded in 2015, has established itself as a leading blockchain investment firm with a portfolio of over 105 companies. The funding will accelerate ZOOT’s platform development and help the team prepare for international expansion. While ZOOT currently operates in the U.S. market, the company sees its biggest growth opportunity in bringing stablecoin-powered gaming to markets across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The company plans to launch additional game titles and enhance its blockchain integration capabilities in the coming months.

About ZOOT

ZOOT is an innovative gaming platform that provides engaging gameplay leveraging blockchain technology to enable real-money gaming powered by stablecoin technology. Co-founded by industry veterans Sean Ryan and John Cahill, the company is headquartered in New York with a technology team based in Europe.

For more information, visit getzoot.us.

About CoinFund

CoinFund is one of the world’s first cryptonative investment firms founded in 2015 with over 105 portfolio companies and 6 investment vehicles. The firm champions the leaders of the new internet through venture investments, liquid strategies, and active participation in blockchain networks.

For more information, visit coinfund.io.

SOURCE CoinFund

The round follows a wave of adoption across U.S. health systems, with Nabla’s AI assistant now embedded in more than 130 healthcare organizations, including major academic medical centers, safety-net hospitals, community health centers and physician groups nationwide. Now, Nabla is expanding beyond documentation into a more agentic model of clinical AI. This next phase enhances clinical documentation integrity (CDI), initiates EHR actions, and adapts across care settings to support diverse clinical roles. By unifying ambient listening, dictation, coding, and command capabilities into a single extensible agentic platform, Nabla is building toward its long-term vision: a proactive assistant that intuitively streamlines existing workflows.

“We’re going even deeper into clinical workflows while continuing to offer a highly customizable assistant that works across specialties,” said Alex Lebrun, co-founder and CEO of Nabla. “Clinicians already trust our accuracy and speed, and this funding allows us to expand that impact by embedding intelligent support directly into care delivery. We see a future where AI not only documents care, but actively drives efficiency by executing actions within complex clinical workflows and environments.”

Nabla’s assistant is now used by leading systems and providers, including CVS Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Carle Health, Denver Health, University of Iowa Health Care. Over the past year, adoption has surged across ambulatory, behavioral health, pediatric, and emergency settings, with early expansion into inpatient and nursing workflows underway. Nabla is helping clinicians cut documentation time by more than half: peer-reviewed studies from University of Iowa Health Care and real-world data from Denver Health confirm significant reductions in clinician burnout and a 15-point increase in patient satisfaction.

The company has multiplied its revenue by five over the past 6 months and now supports more than 85,000 clinicians and 20 million annual encounters. Designed to serve a broad range of care environments, Nabla’s assistant is available in 35 languages and is increasingly used in rural hospitals, FQHCs, and children’s hospitals, where clinician time is stretched and operational efficiency is mission-critical. The platform integrates with Epic, Cerner, athenahealth, NextGen, Greenway and other major EHRs and is built on a privacy-first model.

Nabla is also a member of the Coalition for Health AI, helping shape responsible AI governance in clinical care. At its core is a domain-specific large language model, refined over several years using clinically grounded data and a robust evaluation framework. This foundation enables advanced customization without compromising accuracy. Nabla now processes more than 30 billion tokens each month, a scale that supports continuous refinement and delivers measurable ROI for health systems.

With this new capital, Nabla will build a comprehensive Adaptive Agentic Platform, accelerating product development:

• Proactive Coding Agent: Improving existing real-time support for ICD-10, HCC, and MCC coding, with upcoming features to guide E/M coding and surface compliance nudges.
• Context-Aware Agent: Building on existing support for patient summaries and pre-charting, Nabla is expanding its use of historical data to introduce smarter documentation, initiate orders, and direct EHR commands through an intuitive interface.
• Custom Care Setting Agent: Deploying new capabilities tailored for nurses, with early expansion into inpatient environments and other frontline roles.

“Nabla stands out as a pioneer in clinical AI—not just for its bold vision, but for its enterprise-grade product and remarkable speed of execution,” said Alexander Joel-Carbonell, Partner at HV Capital. “What Alex, Delphine, and Martin have built is nothing short of extraordinary. I’ve rarely seen a technology scale this quickly, earn this level of trust, and deliver such exceptional accuracy. Today, more than 130 Tier 1 healthcare organizations rely on Nabla, a testament to the team’s ability to pair technological excellence with deep empathy for clinicians. It’s a privilege to support this exceptional team on their mission to transform healthcare.”

Nabla’s growth has been accompanied by a strong focus on clinician experience and enterprise readiness. The platform consistently outperforms alternatives in side-by-side pilots based on note quality, deployment speed, and overall clinician preference. Health system partners cite streamlined onboarding, high adoption rates, and strong alignment with clinical workflows. The company’s customer success model is built on responsiveness and rapid iteration, with health system partners citing hands-on support and real-time feedback loops as key drivers of adoption and sustained use.

“We’ve never seen a technology adopted like this across our organization. As an academic medical center, we serve a wide range of clinical needs. Nabla’s lightweight rollout made it easy for clinicians to start using it immediately,” said Dr. James Blum, Chief Health Information Officer and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, University of Iowa Physicians. “It fits cleanly into Epic and supports how our clinicians deliver care. What stands out just as much as the speed of adoption is the partnership. Nabla listens, adapts, and builds with us. That kind of collaboration drives meaningful change, and we’re excited for what’s ahead.”

About Nabla
Nabla is on a mission to restore the human connection at the heart of healthcare through industry-leading clinical AI that optimizes clinical and financial workflows. Its assistant helps clinicians generate high-quality notes in seconds through ambient documentation, dictation, and real-time coding support. Nabla integrates with all major EHRs, supports more than 35 languages, and is used across over 130 health systems and provider groups.

The company is evolving into an adaptive agentic platform that supports a wider range of clinical workflows, care settings, and provider roles, empowering clinicians to dedicate more time to patient care.

Nabla was founded by Alex LeBrun (CEO), Delphine Groll (COO), and Martin Raison (CTO). Its leadership includes Dr. Ed Lee, Chief Medical Officer and former CIO of The Permanente Federation. Nabla’s advisors include Yann LeCun (Meta) and Tony Fadell (Build Collective). The company has raised $120 million from HV Capital, Highland Europe, Cathay Innovation, and others.

Learn more at www.nabla.com

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Experienced biotech executive joins board to support RBL’s venture creation and growth strategy

HOUSTON, June 17, 2025 — RBL LLC, a pioneering biotech venture creation studio dedicated to rapidly building companies based on breakthrough medical technologies from Rice University, announced the appointment of James Watson to its board of directors. Watson, an operating partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a seasoned executive in the life sciences sector, brings to RBL LLC extensive experience in business strategy, corporate development and venture-backed company building, strengthening the organization’s mission to accelerate lifesaving therapies from lab to clinic.

“The appointment of James Watson to our board reflects a powerful endorsement of RBL’s model and potential,” said Paul Wotton, RBL’s managing partner. “James has occupied high-level positions across the full life cycle of biotech innovation, from company formation and financing to the construction of valuable partnerships in this field. His insights into market dynamics and his ability to drive successful outcomes for emerging ventures such as ours will be critical as we continue to grow.”

“James’ leadership spans both operational roles within biotech companies and strategic roles at one of the world’s top venture firms,” said Omid Veiseh, Rice professor of bioengineering and managing partner of RBL. “His ability to bridge science and business, along with his track record in corporate development, aligns perfectly with RBL’s mission to translate Rice University’s biomedical breakthroughs into high-impact startups.”

“RBL is approaching company creation in an innovative and differentiated way, with a positive impact that is starting to be seen across the broader Houston life sciences community,” Watson said. “RBL has distinguished itself through its efficient approach to company formation, identifying substantive technologies with clear clinical applications and establishing focused enterprises to advance them. I was also particularly drawn to the strategic positioning of the studio in Houston, where it operates at the intersection of world-class academic research, clinical scale and entrepreneurial rigor, all fundamental components of building a successful scientific venture.”

Watson is currently serving as operating partner on the Bio + Health team at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads business and corporate development for the firm’s life sciences portfolio. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, he held executive positions at numerous biotech companies, including Carmot Therapeutics, where as chief business officer, he was head of strategy, finance and corporate development. At Carmot, Watson led the raising of over $200 million for the company’s pipeline and discovery platform and built business development relationships that significantly contributed to Carmot’s $2.7 billion acquisition by Roche. Notably, he also served as chief business officer and president ICT at Sigilon Therapeutics, where he led a $485 million cell therapies partnership with Lilly. Earlier in his career, Watson served as CEO of merchant banking at Burrill & Company, a life sciences investment bank, and held leadership roles at Alvine Pharmaceuticals, Incyte, Chemdex, The Wilkerson Group and Eli Lilly. He earned an MBA from Indiana University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Portsmouth.

Watson will join existing board members Wotton, Veiseh, Rima Chakrabarti, John Jaggers, Devyn Smith and Paul Cherukuri, an accomplished group of leaders with deep expertise in biotech innovation, clinical translation and venture building who together provide strategic guidance to help drive RBL’s continued growth and success.

About RBL LLC:

RBL LLC is a pioneering biotech venture creation studio based in Houston that is dedicated to accelerating the development of breakthrough medical technologies and therapies through company formation. RBL provides entrepreneurs, researchers and innovators with infrastructure, financial support and strategic guidance as well as access to laboratory space and shared resources in the Texas Medical Center Helix Park. For more information, please visit https://www.rbl-llc.com/.

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Russo Partners
David Schull or Liz Phillips
(347) 956-7697
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