Record growth, expanding product adoption, and strong unit economics position Current for profitability in 2026

NEW YORK, June 11, 2026  — Current, the consumer fintech platform helping everyday Americans improve their financial lives, today announced an $80 million Series E equity financing at a $1.5 billion valuation led by Springcoast Partners. This funding builds upon previous backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Avenir, Foundation Capital, Wellington Management, Sapphire Ventures and QED Investors.

In conjunction with the financing, Current expanded its financing partnership with Cross River, increasing the company’s capacity to scale its liquidity and credit products as customer demand continues to accelerate. Additionally, Current also expanded and extended its existing multi-year commitment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, which has allowed the company to rapidly grow while continuing to invest in product and engineering.

As part of the investment, Springcoast Partners will join Current’s Board of Directors.

The financing comes as Current enters its third consecutive year of growth exceeding 70%, advances toward profitability in 2026, and continues building the operational scale, governance, and financial profile expected of a public company. The milestone underscores Current’s emergence as one of the leading scaled consumer fintech platforms in the United States.

“Over the last several years we’ve focused relentlessly on building products that solve real financial problems for everyday Americans,” said Stuart Sopp, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Current. “That focus has driven three consecutive years of more than 70% growth, strong unit economics, and a crossing over to profitability. This investment reflects confidence in the strength of our business, our progress toward public market readiness, and the value we’re creating for millions of members. We’re building a durable company designed to deliver long-term value for our members, employees, and shareholders.”

Current serves millions of Americans with products designed to help them access liquidity, manage cash flow, build savings, and improve their financial outcomes. The company’s growth has been fueled by significant investments in technology and AI infrastructure, enabling it to deliver highly personalized financial experiences at scale while maintaining strong operating leverage.

“Current has been at the forefront of innovation in banking, with a modern, cloud-native platform and product depth that better serves the needs of customers,” said Chris Dederick, Partner at Springcoast Partners.

“Current has built a platform with comprehensive banking solutions that are making real differences in people’s lives,” added Holger Staude, Managing Partner at Springcoast Partners. “Their growth over the last few years shows the proven demand for their products and the unique value they’re providing. We’re proud to support Stuart and the team as they enter their next phase of growth.”

The new capital will support continued investment in product innovation, AI-powered financial services, and the expansion of Current’s banking, payments, liquidity, and credit offerings, helping more Americans access the tools they need to improve their financial lives.

About Current

Current is a leading consumer fintech platform helping everyday Americans improve their financial lives. We’re focused on building integrated solutions to solve needs that stand between Americans and their financial goals, making it easier for everyone to build the future they deserve. To learn more about us, visit http://www.current.com or download our app on the App Store or Google Play.

Current is backed by investments from Springcoast Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Avenir, Foundation Capital, Wellington Management, Sapphire Ventures, General Catalyst, Cross River, and QED Investors.

About Springcoast Partners

Established in 2023, Springcoast is a New York-based growth equity firm focused on partnering with market leading software and technology companies. To learn more about Springcoast, please visit www.springcoast.com.

Media Contact:
Erin Bruehl
VP of Communications, Current
[email protected]

SOURCE Current

Funding Fuels Gourmet Convenient Coffee’s Next Chapter: New SKUs, Military Channel Entry, and a Founder-Led, Digital-First Growth Strategy

CHICAGO, June 11, 2026 — Diamond Brew, maker of America’s first shelf-stable brewless coffee pod, today announced the close of an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. Investors include G/7 Venture Studio, Filipp Chebotarev of Cambridge Companies SPG, Beckett Industries, SGL Acquisitions, LLC, music executive and strategic advisor Charlie Walk, Kingsland Capital Group, Nobel Partners, Daniel Faierman of Habitat Partners, and a group of NFL players, including Sean Clifford and DeAndre Hopkins.

The round also drew participation from seasoned CPG operators Alex Sourry, Lily Rogath, and Dom Purpura, whose brand Mela was recently acquired.

Diamond Brew’s trademarked hexagon pods use a proprietary flash-freezing process with liquid nitrogen to lock in freshly brewed espresso’s full flavor profile at peak, sealed in 100% recyclable aluminum, third-party lab tested for mold and toxins, and engineered for a precise, easy pour. The coffee crystals dissolve instantly in hot or cold water, taste machine-made, and need nothing else. Spent coffee grounds are upcycled into furniture, reflecting a zero-waste ethos built into the brand from day one.

Since launch, Diamond Brew has converted hardened instant coffee skeptics and won over coffee snobs, busy moms, night shifters, healthcare workers, and on-the-go professionals. Its hero SKU, Single Serve Craft Espresso, has sold out three times. The lineup has since expanded to Decaf Bliss and the brand’s strongest release yet, Magic Highland Midnight Roast, each SKU driven entirely by direct consumer feedback.

That feedback comes from the ground up. In 2025 alone, Founder & CEO Douglas Yu logged over 2,000 hours on TikTok Live, building first-hand intelligence on shopping behaviors and demand signals that inform every product decision.

“Those 2,000 hours aren’t just a content strategy, they’re our R&D. Our customers don’t just buy Diamond Brew, they help build it,” said Yu. “Diamond Brew debunks decades of stigma around instant coffee and reinvents convenient gourmet coffee entirely. One sip, you’ll never go back. This is just the beginning of the Brewless revolution, one hexagon pod at a time.”

G/7 Venture Studio joins as both investor and embedded strategic partner, working day-to-day on brand, creative, and growth. This new capital infusion will fuel innovation, and expansion through imminent channels including the military channel through Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES).

About Diamond Brew: Diamond Brew (Onward N Upward Inc.) is America’s first machine-free, shelf-stable craft coffee. Available at DiamondBrewCoffee.com, TikTok Shop, and Amazon. Follow @diamondbrewcoffee on Instagram and @diamond.brew on TikTok.

ABOUT DIAMOND BREW

Launched in late 2024 in Chicago, Illinois, Diamond Brew (Onward N Upward Inc.) makes America’s first shelf-stable, machine-free craft coffee pod. Using a proprietary flash-freezing process with liquid nitrogen, each trademarked hexagon pod locks in freshly brewed espresso’s full flavor profile at its peak.

Diamond Brew’s lineup includes Craft Espresso, Midnight Roast, and decaffeinated Decaf Bliss. Each pod delivers quality and flavor in every cup:

• Craft Instant Coffee Pods
• Dissolves in hot or cold water
• 0g sugar, 0 additives, 100% Arabica Coffee Beans
• Third-Party Lab tested safe from mold, heavy metals, and toxins
• Recycleable and Upcycled
• Flavor locked at peak freshness

Available at DiamondBrewCoffee.com, TikTok Shop, and Amazon. Follow @diamondbrewcoffee on Instagram and @diamond.brew on TikTok.
Media Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Diamond Brew Coffee

Led by a16z crypto, the new funding will support the adoption of Canton across regulated financial markets

NEW YORK, June 11, 2026 — Digital Asset (DA), the creator of Canton, today announced a $355 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, a16z crypto, with participation from leading institutions across traditional and decentralized finance, including 7RIDGE, ABN Amro, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (through a wholly owned subsidiary), Alumni Ventures, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Greenwulf Asset Management, Hanwha Investment & Securities, HSBC, iCapital, Liberty City Ventures, Optiver, Polychain, R136 Ventures, S&P Global, SBI Group, Smash Capital, SoFi, Tradeweb, and William Blair. Financial Technology Partners (FT Partners) served as the exclusive strategic and financial advisor to DA on this transaction.

The funding will support DA’s next phase of growth as more institutions bring assets, applications, and regulated workflows onto Canton. DA plans to use the capital to expand offerings across the Canton ecosystem, deepen engagement with developers and financial institutions, and support continued network growth.

While much of the blockchain sector continues to search for durable real-world use cases, DA has designed Canton to address one of the central barriers to blockchain adoption in financial markets: enabling institutions to use shared infrastructure while preserving the privacy, compliance, control, and interoperability required in regulated finance.

The round also marks the start of a partnership between Digital Asset and a16z crypto, giving DA access to a16z crypto‘s expertise across company building, crypto, policy, and research as Canton scales and the ecosystem expands.

“Blockchain adoption will be defined by practical, production-grade applications in the world’s largest markets,” said Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Asset. “For capital markets to move onchain, institutions need infrastructure that reflects how they actually operate– with privacy, compliance, scale, and interoperability built in from the start. Canton was purpose-built for this, and Digital Asset is working with more than 700 ecosystem participants to make Canton the core infrastructure for global finance. This investment brings additional expertise, reach, and ecosystem support at an important moment for both Digital Asset and Canton’s growth.”

“One of the most compelling blockchain opportunities is no longer theoretical; it is emerging as real-world assets and institutional workflows move onchain,” said Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z crypto. “Digital Asset has built one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance. We believe that Digital Asset is building foundational infrastructure for the next generation of financial markets.”

With support from existing ecosystem participants and new entrants, DA will continue expanding the assets, applications, and participants on Canton. The company will focus on use cases where shared, privacy-enabled infrastructure can reduce friction and improve capital efficiency– including tokenization, collateral mobility, settlement, payments, and other regulated financial workflows.

About Digital Asset
Digital Asset is a leading innovator in blockchain technology, transforming traditional and digital financial markets with privacy-enabled solutions that improve capital flow and create a more efficient, fair, and resilient global system. As the creator of the Canton Network, the only public layer-one blockchain with institutional-grade privacy, and a founding member of the Canton Foundation, Digital Asset has pioneered this open, secure, and interoperable infrastructure for regulated finance. Founded in 2014, Digital Asset is committed to reshaping the future of finance by enabling real-time efficiencies, 24/7 global transactions, and unlocking the full potential of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and the continued convergence of decentralized and traditional finance.

Media Contact:
Paul Patella
[email protected]

SOURCE Digital Asset (US) Corp.

Investment supports one of the fastest-scaling U.S. robotics platforms as AI-native automation becomes critical to industrial productivity and national competitiveness

• Invested in Standard Bots’ $200 million Series C financing at a $1 billion valuation
• GiantLeap Capital joins General Catalyst, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Next, RoboStrategy (Nasdaq: BOT), and other existing institutional investors

NEW YORK, June 11, 2026 — GiantLeap Capital today announced a strategic investment in Standard Bots, America’s largest manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots, as part of the company’s recently announced $200 million Series C financing.

The investment underscores GiantLeap’s continued focus on backing category-defining companies operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, defense, and critical infrastructure.

As global competition intensifies and industrial capacity becomes increasingly strategic, robotics is emerging as one of the most important technologies shaping economic productivity and national competitiveness. Standard Bots is helping lead this transition through AI-native robotic systems that can be taught through demonstration rather than traditional programming, dramatically expanding the range of manufacturing tasks that can be automated across aerospace, defense, automotive, energy, logistics, and industrial production.

Standard Bots has deployed robotic systems across hundreds of manufacturers nationwide, including customers such as Lockheed Martin, NASA, and the U.S. Army, demonstrating the growing role of AI-native automation in strengthening America’s industrial base. The company is on pace to account for approximately 10% of new industrial robot deployments in the United States next year.

“We are entering a decade in which manufacturing output, industrial resilience, and national competitiveness will increasingly be determined by software, AI, and robotic density rather than labor arbitrage,” said Samir Parikh, Founder and Managing Partner of GiantLeap Capital. “Standard Bots has built a differentiated AI-native robotics platform that can compress deployment cycles, improve unit economics, and learn continuously from real-world operating data. We believe the company can expand the productivity frontier for American industry while reinforcing the industrial base that underpins economic and national security. We are excited to partner with Evan and his team as they execute on an ambitious vision for the future of American manufacturing.”

“Scaling intelligent automation in America requires more than great technology; it requires manufacturing depth, strategic relationships, and partners who understand how to build enduring companies,” said Evan Beard, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Engineer of Standard Bots. “GiantLeap brings that perspective, along with deep experience across industrial technology, aerospace, and defense. We are excited to work with Samir and the GiantLeap team as we expand production, accelerate adoption across American industry, and build an enduring company that can help define the future of manufacturing.”

The Series C financing is expected to support continued expansion of Standard Bots’ domestic manufacturing footprint, increased production capacity, accelerated AI development, and broader deployment of robotics across American industry. 

About GiantLeap Capital
GiantLeap Capital is a growth equity firm investing in tactical opportunities across private and public markets, partnering with exceptional founders building transformative technology companies. The firm takes a high-conviction, long-term approach to investing across sectors where technology and innovation have the potential to reshape industries and outcomes at scale. 
www.giantleapcapital.com. 

About Standard Bots
Standard Bots is America’s largest manufacturer of AI-native industrial robots, helping manufacturers automate complex industrial workflows through robotic systems that learn through demonstration rather than traditional programming. Headquartered in Glen Cove, New York, Standard Bots designs and manufactures its robotic systems in the United States, advancing the adoption of intelligent automation across industries.
www.standardbots.com.

SOURCE GiantLeap Capital

New funding led by Kleiner Perkins accelerates Poetic’s mission to automate complex, high-stakes business processes at super-human quality and reliability as compared to traditional AI agents

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, 2026 — Today, Poetic (formerly known as Forge), the company building a new class of software that learns like AI but runs like code, announced that it has raised a $50M Series A at a $500M valuation led by Kleiner Perkins. Founders Fund, First Harmonic and OpenAI also participated in the round.

The industries that power our lives, from healthcare to banking to insurance, still run on decades-old processes and manual work. The underlying software that permeates them has helped, but regular software has been unable to automate the real complexities of these industries with their dynamic nature and unstructured problem spaces. For years, generative AI has promised to solve these problems, yet its impact has remained largely superficial, with arms-length integrations via LLMs that aren’t built to handle mission-critical tasks.

Poetic takes a fundamentally different approach. The company built a new kind of system for the work nothing else could handle — multi-hour processes that run thousands of times a day, demand near-perfect accuracy, and depend on thousands of rules no one ever wrote down. Rather than relying on autonomous “agents” that can be difficult to control, Poetic’s purpose-built programming language lets operators define complex workflows in natural language, then encodes that expertise into deterministic, near-tokenless execution. The result: 99% accuracy on processes companies have failed to automate for decades, at a fraction of the cost of traditional AI agents.

“Right now in AI, there’s too much attention on quick demos and shiny objects, and not enough on outcomes,” said Markie Wagner, CEO and Founder of Poetic. “We built a new kind of software that learns like AI but runs like code, so the hardest work in your business finally gets done reliably, allowing your business to evolve faster and operate at a scale that was previously impossible.”

Poetic is already deployed at some of the world’s largest financial services organizations, having driven double-digit millions in savings for Fortune 500 companies automating their most difficult, high-stakes processes like transaction monitoring and disputes investigations. The company reached an eight-figure run rate in 2025 with just four employees.

At SoFi, the public US bank, Poetic reached 99%+ quality executing fraud investigations end-to-end in just five weeks. At AIG, one of the largest insurance companies, Poetic similarly reached 99%+ accuracy on a complex, multi-hour process that previously required significant manual effort.

According to SoFi CEO Anthony Noto, “In just weeks, Poetic was able to execute many of our fraud processes end-to-end, all while improving quality metrics and the member experience. With auto-decisioning, members get access restored right away, instead of days. As we’ve scaled across the business, we’ve seen 100% process adherence, even in our most complex compliance investigations.”

“Markie is one of the most prescient founders I’ve encountered on AI, and I’ve had a front row seat since the beginning,” said Leigh Marie Braswell, Partner at Kleiner Perkins who led the Series A. “What Poetic has built is genuinely different – a platform that can execute the complex, high-stakes processes that large enterprises actually run, with accuracy that exceeds what human teams can deliver. The fact that they were able to automate at the largest companies with the highest requirements is a reflection of how deeply the product works. And they’ve done so with one of the strongest teams – leaders from Palantir, UiPath, Ramp, Scale, Retool, and many more.”

With this new funding, Poetic will scale its forward-deployed team, expand into new complex industries, and bring its platform to more of the world’s largest enterprises.

“The enterprise AI landscape is littered with pilots that never made it to production,” said Wagner. “For us, we’ve had a 100% pilot to production conversion rate. Our technology works, and we hire the best of the best – because we’re not here to run pilots. We’re here to transform businesses.”

SOURCE Poetic

Calibrate Ventures leads investment in code-first engineering intelligence; deepens analysis and expands capabilities connecting code changes to quality, security, and technical debt

BOSTON, June 10, 2026 — Flux, the code–first engineering intelligence platform, today announced $5 million in new funding led by Calibrate Ventures, with participation from existing investors True Ventures and Glasswing Ventures. The capital will accelerate product development and go-to-market efforts, helping engineering leaders stay ahead as AI reshapes software development.

Engineering leaders are losing visibility into the work actually happening across their organizations, turning engineering into a black box at the moment clarity matters most. Traditional platforms, built for a human-paced world and reliant on manually updated ticketing systems, weren’t designed to keep up. Flux gives engineering leaders ground–truth visibility into codebases by analyzing code changes and surfacing risk, technical debt, and team dynamics, enabling them to ship faster without losing control.

“Flux insights are based on the source of truth, the code, so leaders can lean into AI without flying blind,” said Ted Julian, CEO and Founder, Flux. “Every other major business function has a system of record. Engineering needs one that’s ready for the Age of AI. We’re building that system around the code itself, so leaders can easily and confidently answer the questions that matter most: Are we really getting value from AI? Where could we be doing better? Is our AI transformation creating risk we can’t see?”

One example is Cobalt, the pioneer of penetration testing as a service (PTaaS) and a leading provider of human-led, AI-powered offensive security, where AI-assisted development has become central to engineering culture and reshaped output. Flux’s work–type charts turned a year of intuition into hard data, revealing a clear shift from maintenance to feature delivery that Finance used to pursue increased R&D tax credit eligibility.

“There is so much enthusiasm now. We’ve brought playfulness back into building software, and it’s paying off,” said Mike Garon, VP of Engineering, Cobalt. “Engineers are exploring ideas freely, then turning the best ones into production-ready capabilities that move the needle for customers.”

“Engineering leaders don’t need more dashboards. They need a direct line into how their code is evolving day to day,” said Jason Schoettler, Co–Founder and Managing Partner, Calibrate Ventures. “Flux’s code–first approach gives them exactly that, tying code changes to quality, security, and business impact. We’re excited to back Ted and the Flux team.”

Flux will use the new capital to:

• Deepen its AI–powered analysis of complex codebases.
• Expand capabilities linking AI transformation to cost, quality, security, and technical debt.
• Grow its go–to–market and engineering teams.

To learn more about Flux, visit www.askflux.ai.

About Flux
Flux is a code-first engineering intelligence platform that helps engineering leaders make better decisions with ground-truth visibility into the work actually happening across today’s complex, AI-accelerated codebases. Instead of relying on tickets, Flux reveals the work teams are doing, surfaces risk and technical debt, and connects engineering activity to business outcomes. With this visibility, leaders can distinguish innovation from maintenance, spot emerging issues before they become incidents, and understand collaboration patterns to build healthier, higher-performing teams across their engineering organization. Learn more at www.askflux.ai, explore the resource library, and follow Flux on LinkedIn.

About Calibrate Ventures
Calibrate Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm investing in deep tech at the forefront of autonomous systems, machine learning, and robotics. The firm backs technical founders applying breakthroughs to transform trillion-dollar industrial and enterprise markets, including manufacturing, logistics, transportation, healthcare, and services.

Media Contact:
Haidee LeClair
978-235-2256
[email protected]

SOURCE Flux

DermiSphere^™, the first of its kind hydrogel Dermal Regeneration Template, attracts world-class financial and strategic investors as clinical momentum accelerates

NEW YORK, June 10, 2026 — FesariusTherapeutics, a commercial-stage medical technology company reimagining dermal repair, today announced the close of an oversubscribed $20 million Series A financing round. The round was anchored by Jefferson Life Sciences (JLS) and joined by Johnson & Johnson (through its corporate venture capital organization, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc.), Empire State Development’s NY Ventures, and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), marking its inaugural institutional investment. The company’s flagship product, DermiSphere^™, which is the first of its kind hydrogel Dermal Regeneration Template (hDRT) on the U.S. market, was cleared by FDA in 2025 for managing various wound types¹.

The financing marks a significant milestone for Fesarius, validating its technology in the clinic, building commercial momentum across U.S. hospital systems, and positioning the company for its next phase of growth. With this capital, Fesarius will build on its existing commercial presence across multiple U.S. hospital systems by accelerating its commercial infrastructure, including additional direct field representatives to broaden national market coverage, pursue Breakthrough Device Designation with expanded reimbursement pathways and advance the clinical trial for its OneStep procedure – the placement of DermiSphere^™ and a skin graft in a single surgery, which is the subject of a future application for label expansion. This use of the device has the potential to eliminate the second surgery currently required by the current standard of care, which could reduce patient recovery time, pain, and total cost of care.

The $1.6 billion U.S. market for dermal regeneration has seen virtually no innovation over the last 30 years. As the first of its kind hDRT, DermiSphere’s^™ novel dual-density collagen microarchitecture is designed to drive faster cellular infiltration and vascularization to support the body’s natural wound healing process.

“We are excited to support Fesarius’ vision to revolutionize deep wound care and help improve outcomes for millions of patients that require skin grafts. DermiSphere^™ is already making a difference for patients. We believe Fesarius is positioned to redefine the category.” – Laura Lande-Diner, Managing Partner, Jefferson Life Sciences

“New York is building one of the nation’s most dynamic life sciences ecosystems, and companies like Fesarius are exactly why. DermiSphere^™ is the kind of innovation we want developed and scaled here, with the potential to dramatically improve outcomes for patients while creating high-quality jobs and economic opportunity across the state. Through NY Ventures, we’re proud to invest in New York innovators defining the future of medicine.” – Jennifer Tegan, Managing Director, New York Ventures, Empire State Development

“This inaugural investment in Fesarius marks a new chapter for ASPS Ventures, one where we move from advocates to active partners in advancing technologies developed by our members. We are proud to play a role in helping to bring this technology to the patients who need it most.” – Michael Costelloe, Executive Vice President of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and CEO of ASPS Ventures, LLC

“DermiSphere^™ is creating a new frontier in dermal repair by fundamentally changing how surgeons treat seriously destructive skin loss. Patients are experiencing promising outcomes already and this financing accelerates our clinical programs, expands our commercial reach, and ensures that every patient can access the truly remarkable outcomes we are seeing with DermiSphere^™hDRT.” – Tom Roueche, President and CEO, FesariusTherapeutics

About FesariusTherapeutics
FesariusTherapeutics is a commercial-stage medical technology company reimagining dermal repair. Its flagship product, DermiSphere^™ is the first of its kind hydrogel Dermal Regeneration Template (hDRT), with a patented, dual-density collagen microarchitecture that is designed to facilitate cellular integration and vascularization to support wound healing. The device is 510(k)-cleared by FDA for wound management and commercially active across multiple U.S. hospital systems. The company is headquartered in New York and is advancing toward a pivotal clinical trial to support a planned future label expansion and Breakthrough Device Designation. For more information, visit fesariustherapeutics.com.

About Jefferson Life Sciences
Jefferson Life Sciences, part of Jefferson River Capital, is an investment firm committed to advancing transformative innovations in medicine. The firm brings versatile investment structures and a long-term view to support companies across their full lifecycle—from early development through commercialization, in both private and public settings. By combining intelligent financing with deep operational expertise, we help turn bold scientific ideas into meaningful therapeutic solutions for patients in need.

About Empire State Development
Empire State Development is New York’s chief economic development agency, and promotes business growth, job creation, and greater economic opportunity throughout the state. With offices in each of the state’s 10 regions, ESD oversees the Regional Economic Development Councils, supports broadband equity through the ConnectALL office, and is growing the workforce of tomorrow through the Office of Strategic Workforce Development. The agency engages with emerging and next generation industries like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing looking to grow in New York State, operates a network of assistance centers to help small businesses grow and succeed, and promotes the state’s world class tourism destinations through I LOVE NY. For more information, please visit esd.ny.gov, and connect with ESD on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X.

About Empire State Development’s New York Ventures
New York Ventures, a division of Empire State Development, strategically invests in high-growth companies that leverage technology to solve critical challenges across New York State. Through targeted investments and partnerships, the division expands access to venture capital for underserved regions and traditionally underrepresented entrepreneurs, including women and minority founders and fund managers. By bridging public and private sector resources, NY Ventures is building a dynamic, inclusive startup ecosystem that drives innovation throughout the state.

About the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and ASPS Ventures, LLC
The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), founded in 1931, is the largest organization of board-certified plastic surgeons in the world. Representing more than 11,000 physician members globally, the society is recognized as a leading authority and information source on cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. ASPS Ventures, LLC, is the strategic investment arm of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The organization invests in emerging technologies across medtech, regenerative medicine, robotics and diagnostics that have the potential to improve patient outcomes and advance the future of plastic and reconstructive surgery. The ASPS Ventures leadership team includes some of the most influential surgeons and innovators in the specialty who focused on supporting companies developing innovative solutions for unmet clinical needs.

Media Contact

Jennifer Hanley
Communications, FesariusTherapeutics
347-819-0402

¹ DermiSphere^™ received FDA 510(k) clearance (K241904) in January 2025. Full indications for use are available in the public 510(k) summary at: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf24/K241904.pdf

SOURCE FesariusTherapeutics, Inc

Funding led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from a16z speedrun, Designer Fund, and Essence VC, will expand Fearn’s AI-native patent platform built for a first-to-file world

SAN FRANCISCO, June 10, 2026 — Fearn, the AI-native patent platform, today announced a $5.5 million seed round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from a16z speedrun, Designer Fund and Essence VC. The funding will expand Fearn’s purpose-built patent models and product capabilities — including automated labeled figure generation — that let any inventor, from a solo researcher to an enterprise R&D team, draft a Big Law quality patent. By cutting patent drafting from 50+ hours to just 20 minutes and reducing costs by up to 96%, Fearn lets any inventor file faster than even the best-resourced IP organizations today.

Every patent system in the world is now first-to-file, and the priority filing date is what matters — not who invented first, but who filed first. This has produced a quiet two-tier system. Inventors with access to elite in-house IP teams can file in 48 hours, while everyone else waits weeks. Those weeks make the difference between saying yes to a speaking invitation and turning it down, between publishing and staying silent, between closing a deal and watching it slip. Those weeks are, very often, the difference between winning and losing.

“Patents are how inventors turn ideas into lasting value, but in a first-to-file system, the priority date is everything, and access to fast priority dates has been gated by cost, complexity, and institutional connections for far too long,” said Han Kim, co-founder and CEO of Fearn. “I spent years in Big Law drafting patents the traditional way before building Fearn, and experienced firsthand what the gap looks like. Innovation moves at one speed and protection moves at another, and that mismatch is where inventors lose ground. We built Fearn so protection moves at the speed of the work itself — leveling the playing field for a solo researcher and an enterprise R&D team alike.”

Fearn’s co-founders bring a rare combination of patent law experience and original technical research. Han Kim previously drafted and prosecuted patent applications across software, life sciences, and mechanical arts as a scientific analyst at Morrison Foerster and conducted bio-inspired neural algorithms research as a PhD student at Caltech. Co-founder and CTO Angela Gao completed her PhD at Caltech under Professor Katie Bouman — where she and Han first met — with peer-reviewed work on physics-aligned generative models published at NeurIPS, CVPR, and TMLR. She also developed proprietary AI models at Google Research and now leads Fearn’s technical work.

Fearn is not a wrapper on a general-purpose model. The company’s architecture composes dozens of small models — some LLM-based, some built entirely from scratch — engineered to resist hallucination and to produce drafts with formally verified guarantees against the failure modes that matter most in patent prosecution, including written-description sufficiency under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) and the figure-labeling requirements of 37 C.F.R. § 1.84(p)(5) and MPEP § 608.01(g). Several of Fearn’s models are built on a deliberate inversion of standard technical practice: rather than training on large, noisy corpora, they are designed to extract maximum signal from small, hand-corrected, expert-labeled datasets — the regime that truly matches what patent prosecution requires.

“Our world is accelerating due to speedups in technology and science, due to human ingenuity and AI model advancements. Intellectual property is the record-of-truth for technology, the design, engineering, and science carta for the world’s industries, and the law and economics code by which we operate as innovators and capital markets,” said Steve Jang, Founder and Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures. “To modernize this critical cortex of our innovation economy, Fearn is developing custom IP-specific models for deeptech, biotech, and hardware companies to quicken and accelerate their drafting and enforceability, and also a multi-model agent harness and patent drafting agent that orchestrates at the speed of GPU compute these once-antiquated and slow workflows.”

“The massive wave of attention on our ambient robotics thesis and inaugural product, the Lume, meant we needed to move incredibly fast to protect our technology,” said Aaron Tan, CEO and Co-Founder of Syncere. “Traditional patent drafting takes months of man-hours — and lots of precious capital — that a pre-seed startup just can’t spare. Fearn changed the game for us, turning our engineering explanations into high-quality drafts in minutes and a fraction of the usual cost, allowing us to lock down our IP overnight and ensure it was fully protected.”

Fearn makes zero external API calls to outside AI models. The company self-hosts every model in its stack, eliminating the indemnification and public-disclosure risks that have made enterprise IP teams wary of generative AI. Enterprise customers can choose customer-hosted VPC, single-tenant VPC, or multi-tenant VPC deployment; all customer data is held under AES-256 encryption, with SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, and GDPR compliance.

Fearn is already trusted by engineers and scientists at companies including Unity, Dandelion Energy, Serova Bio, Capsule, Syncere, Sans Strings, Taya, and Cainex.

To learn more or start drafting for a flat $2,000 per patent, visit https://fearn.ai/.

About Fearn
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SOURCE Fearn

LONDON, June 10, 2026 — Mindflair plc, the AIM-quoted company focused on investing in Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) related technology, is pleased to announce that MySafeDrive Limited (“CameraMatics”), a portfolio company in Sure Valley Ventures’ (“SVV”) first fund (“SVV1”), in which Mindflair holds an interest, has raised up to €49 million in new funding for expansion from  a consortium led by Blume Equity, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and Goodbody Capital Partners.

As part of this transaction, a portion of SVV1’s investment in CameraMatics will be repaid to SVV1 investors which will equate to €280,000 in cash being received by Mindflair. The amount repaid effectively returns the initial investment made by SVV1 in CameraMatics, whilst still enabling a shareholding in the company to be retained by SVV1.  Furthermore, in July 2025, Mindflair, along with a small consortium of investors, provided CameraMatics with a working capital facility to help fund the company whilst it sought a significant tranche of longer-term funding.  This facility is also being repaid which will result in a further cash return of €320,000 to Mindflair, representing a 78% cash return on this additional investment made. 

Mindflair therefore expects to receive a cash inflow, in aggregate, of €600,000 whilst still retaining an interest in CameraMatics via SVV1, thereby being well positioned to make further returns from this investment as the company, with the necessary funds in place, implements its expansion strategy. 

Furthermore, Sure Ventures plc, the London listed venture capital fund, in which Mindflair has a 24.4% shareholding, is also expected to receive cash proceeds from this transaction, amounting to an aggregate figure of €880,000.

CameraMatics has an AI platform enabling transport fleet managers to reduce risk, increase driver safety and comply with growing industry governance and compliance.  Since it was founded, CameraMatics has made significant progress in both the UK and US in terms of winning new contracts.

CameraMatics has built one of the leading connected fleet intelligence platforms in the market, combining AI-driven video intelligence, advanced driver assistance systems and real-time operational analytics to help commercial fleet operators improve safety, reduce operational risk and lower carbon emissions.

CameraMatics’ mission is to reduce driving and work-related accidents to zero by transforming driver behaviour, improving fleet visibility and raising driving standards globally through advanced AI-powered technology. The company continues to invest heavily in innovation, machine learning, predictive safety technologies and connected fleet intelligence solutions designed to reshape commercial driving standards worldwide.

The company has delivered consistently strong revenue growth since it was founded, expanding its customer base across international and domestic markets and securing leading blue-chip customers, accelerating enterprise adoption. Now serving nearly 1,000 fleet customers, CameraMatics supports operations across thousands of commercial vehicles throughout the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe and the US. The company employs more than 150 people across offices in Dublin, Waterford, Darlington, London, Amsterdam, Barcelona and the United States.

Recent enterprise contract wins include major organisations such as Royal Mail, Calor Gas, Wolseley, XPO and DFDS, while in the US, the company has expanded significantly through deployments with NASDAQ-listed Installed Building Products, which operates across more than 250 depots nationwide.

Over the past two years, CameraMatics has experienced particularly strong momentum in the enterprise fleet segment, where demand for AI-powered safety, compliance and operational efficiency solutions continues to accelerate across logistics, distribution, utilities and infrastructure sectors.

The investment will be used to accelerate CameraMatics’ go-to-market expansion, strengthen its enterprise sales and customer success capabilities, further invest in AI and sustainability-focused product innovation, and support the company’s continued growth across North America and mainland Europe.

This realisation represents a significant cash inflow for Mindflair compared to the Company’s current market capitalisation of £2.6 million.  Furthermore, this is the sixth cash realisation achieved to date by SVV1 and follows on closely from the substantial return and cash proceeds of €2.6 million generated from the sale of Getvisibility in April 2025, thereby further demonstrating the current attractiveness and future potential of the Company’s investment portfolio.

Nicholas Lee, Director of Mindflair plc, commented:

“This is another excellent result for Mindflair which enables the Company to achieve a further significant cash realisation whilst still retaining an investment in an exciting company on a growth trajectory with new funding of up to €49 million.  This also highlights the potential value within Mindflair’s portfolio and the potential for further substantial returns from our underlying investments.”

The Directors of the Company are responsible for the release of this announcement. The person who arranged for the release of this information is Nicholas Lee, a director of the Company.

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Notes to Editors

Mindflair plc (AIM: MFAI) is an investment company providing investors with access to a portfolio of next generation technology businesses focused on AI with significant growth potential. The Company is building an investment portfolio of high-tech businesses focused on Artificial Intelligence, across such areas as Internet of Things, Cyber Security, Machine Learning, Immersive Technologies and Big Data, which the Board believes demonstrate evidence of traction and the potential for exponential growth, due to increasing global demand for development in these sectors. For further information, visit: http://www.mindflair.tech/.

Cameramatics has an AI  platform enabling transport fleet managers to reduce risk, increase driver safety and comply with growing industry governance and compliance.  It has made significant progress in both the UK and US in terms of winning new contracts.

SOURCE Mindflair Plc