SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18, 2025 — Jiga, the AI-driven sourcing platform used by NASA, Siemens, as well as hundreds of companies across aerospace, defense, and robotics today announced a $12 million Series A led by Aleph, with participation from Symbol which led the Seed round, and Y Combinator.

According to the team, a software engineer deploys an autonomous agent in 3 hours. The mechanical engineer down the hall waits 3 weeks for a quote on a custom robot chassis. This isn’t an edge case; it’s how hardware companies operate today. While software moves at AI speed, sourcing the physical parts needed to build breakthrough products is stuck in 2005. The result: AI development is constrained by hardware procurement cycles that can’t keep pace.

The problem was never talent. It was tedious, unstructured coordination that couldn’t be automated. – until Jiga.

Founded by Adar Hay (CEO), Yonatan Wolowelsky (CTO), and Assaf Geuz (COO), Jiga solved this by bringing the entire sourcing workflow into an AI-native manufacturing platform. Engineers upload drawings and specs, get matched to vetted manufacturers, and order parts directly through Jiga, which serves as the vendor of record. The platform’s AI extracts requirements from drawings, pulls context from communications, detects risks before delays escalate, and structures all documentation into one transparent view with direct supplier communication channels. Humans control the decisions that matter, while Jiga automates the administrative burden and owns the outcomes using its manufacturing AI platform.

What once took weeks now takes hours—at a fraction of the cost. 

As the U.S. works to reindustrialize, this speed gap has become a strategic bottleneck. Advanced manufacturing companies- whether building rockets, satellites, jets, or drones- outsource 80-90% of their custom parts. Hardware demand is exploding: the robotics market is forecast to grow from $90 billion in 2024 to $206 billion by 2030, according to GlobalData, while the space economy reached $570 billion with projections approaching $2 trillion by 2040, per the Space Foundation. Every AI company ultimately runs on atoms: servers, enclosures, cooling systems, precision components. Yet the supply chain behind them remains stuck in unstructured chaos—technical drawings buried in PDFs, specs scattered across emails, quotes in incompatible formats.

“Hardware can’t keep pace if engineers chase quotes instead of design, and supply chain teams are buried in spreadsheets instead of strategy,” said Adar Hay, co-founder and CEO. “We’re eliminating the administrative burden so teams can move at AI-era speed. The capital will allow us to support the exponentially growing market demand.”

Teams across aerospace, defense, and robotics—the sectors building physical AI—already rely on Jiga-native manufacturing platform. The platform now processes thousands of RFQs each month for the world’s most demanding hardware organizations.

“Hardware moves only as fast as its supply chain,” said Eden Shochat, Equal Partner at Aleph. “For decades, custom parts procurement couldn’t be automated—buried in PDFs, emails, spreadsheets. Jiga is finally cracking it. What took three weeks now takes three hours. This is the hardware manufacturing pipeline rebuilt for software speeds.”

Despite already being profitable, Jiga raised the Series A to meet surging demand from aerospace, defense, and advanced manufacturing companies that can no longer afford weeks-long procurement cycles. The capital will expand the platform’s premium production capabilities, deepen AI-driven quality assurance for mission-critical parts, and scale enterprise infrastructure to support larger deployments across new manufacturing categories.

About Jiga

Jiga is an AI-native manufacturing platform where engineers source and buy custom mechanical parts from vetted suppliers at AI-era speed. The platform automates the administrative chaos of custom parts procurement: coordinating communication, finding the right suppliers, managing documentation, ensuring transparent pricing, and guaranteeing that parts arrive accurately and on time. This advanced capability enables teams to complete sourcing processes in hours instead of weeks, while maintaining full control and efficiency.

Contact

PR
Orian T.
Jiga.io
[email protected]

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2826374/Jiga_Photo.jpg

SOURCE Jiga

Chargeflow’s AI-powered platform prevents and combats illegitimate chargebacks – delivering up to 80% success rate against friendly fraud, helping merchants reclaim billions in lost revenue

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 2025 — Chargeflow, the leading AI-powered chargeback automation platform, today announced a $35 million Series A funding round — including a $10 million debt facility, led by Viola Growth, with participation by existing investors OpenView Venture Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $49 million.

The new capital will fuel Chargeflow’s AI-driven product innovation and complete its end-to-end chargeback automation suite, while scaling global go-to-market operations to meet accelerating enterprise demand. Chargeflow has tripled revenue year over year and now powers over 15,000 merchants worldwide.

Originally meant to protect consumers, chargebacks have become a major source of loss for merchants. Mastercard projects chargeback volume to rise 24% by 2028, reaching 324 million chargebacks annually, with nearly 80% driven by “friendly fraud.” Merchants now lose over $100 billion each year to disputes. Chargeflow’s AI platform automates the process end-to-end — preventing disputes before they occur and recovering lost revenue with up to four times higher win rates.

Each chargeback requires merchants to manually gather and submit evidence across fragmented systems, consuming valuable time and resources. Chargeflow eliminates this friction through full automation, integrating with over 100 leading payment, data, and eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce, Adyen, and Afterpay, to detect, manage, and prevent chargebacks at scale.

The platform automatically collects and analyzes transaction data, builds and submits evidence, and tracks dispute outcomes in real time. Powered by AI-driven fraud detection, Chargeflow also proactively identifies and prevents friendly fraud before it occurs, alerting merchants the moment a potential chargeback is detected and giving them a decisive advantage.

“Chargebacks were designed to protect consumers, but over time the system has become unbalanced, favoring buyers and leaving merchants powerless,” said Ariel Chen, CEO and Co-founder of Chargeflow. “We’re on a mission to redefine the chargeback system itself, using AI to shift the balance of power back to merchants and create a truly fair, transparent, and automated future for digital commerce. With our industry-leading technology, we prevent nine out of ten disputes before they even occur and recover more revenue from the rest, restoring billions in fairness to the ecosystem. This funding enables us to expand globally, launch additional products that complete the Chargeflow AI ecosystem, and realize our vision for what chargebacks should be: intelligent, automatic, and equitable for every business.”

“As global retail e-commerce has doubled in recent years to reach $7.5 trillion, chargeback volumes have also surged, becoming a significant challenge for merchants,” said Natalie Refuah, General Partner, Viola Growth. “We were highly impressed by how Chargeflow has established itself as the industry’s gold standard, achieving growth-stage revenues with an AI-first product built with remarkable efficiency. Beyond its powerful dispute automation platform, we’re equally excited about the company’s expansion into new products—Chargeflow Connect and Chargeflow Prevent—which will further enhance its value to merchants worldwide.”

Chargeflow’s AI-driven platform applies machine learning and data automation to manage and prevent chargebacks at scale. Using proprietary algorithms and generative AI, Chargeflow automatically compiles and submits dispute evidence, enriches merchant data for accuracy, and continuously learns from millions of resolved cases across its 15,000+ merchant network. This same foundation now powers Chargeflow Prevent, extending the company’s technology beyond chargeback recovery to proactively mitigate post-purchase fraud and friendly fraud disputes before they are initiated.

Having established its leadership among small and medium-sized businesses, Chargeflow is now expanding to serve enterprise-level merchants where transaction volumes – and consequently chargeback risks – are exponentially higher. The company has recently built out a new enterprise sales team headquartered in New York to support this next phase of growth.

About Chargeflow

Chargeflow is the world’s first fully automated chargeback management platform, built by eCommerce entrepreneurs to fight friendly fraud and restore fairness to digital commerce. Powered by generative AI, proprietary automation, and deep payments expertise, Chargeflow enables merchants to recover and prevent chargebacks at scale — completely hands-free.

With industry-leading win rates, a security-first architecture, and a guaranteed ROI model, Chargeflow protects billions in revenue for more than 15,000 merchants worldwide. Learn more at www.chargeflow.io

About Viola Growth

Viola Growth is Israel’s first and largest growth fund, with >$1B AUM. Founded in 2008, The fund specializes in propelling Israeli startups through their growth stages, developing robust growth strategies, scale efficiently, and global partnerships. Viola Growth invested in 36 companies with 12 exits to date.  www.violagrowth.com

Contact:

Jack Mendel
[email protected]

SOURCE Chargeflow

AutoGrid Veterans Unveil Orchestrated Reinforcement Learning (RL) Control Agents to Maximize AI Tokens and Accelerate AI Deployment Without Waiting For The Grid

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 18, 2025 — Today, Hammerhead AI is emerging from stealth with $10 million in seed funding to accelerate AI factory deployment by enabling operators to maximize their power utilization for AI workloads. The oversubscribed seed round was led by Buoyant Ventures, with participation from SE Ventures (the venture fund backed by data center equipment leader Schneider Electric), AINA Climate AI Ventures, MCJ Collective, WovenEarth Ventures, Bombellii Ventures, Clearvision Ventures, Stepchange, Acclimate Ventures, and individual contributions from prominent industry leaders such as Jack Cogen, a member of the Board of Directors at CoreWeave.

As AI factories scale to train and serve models, the sector is colliding with a hard limit: power. GPUs are sitting idle on racks because operators can’t secure enough power. These factories — from colocation providers to hyperscalers — often operate well below their potential, typically running at only 30 to 50% utilization. This gap between peak and average usage leaves vast amounts of power capacity underused, stranding megawatts that could be used for token generation.

Hammerhead’s Orchestrated RL Control Agents (ORCA) platform optimizes token processing capacity and power utilization, boosting output by up to 30%. By dynamically orchestrating workloads within existing power budgets, ORCA enables AI factory operators and colocation providers to deploy workloads faster, improve gross margins and capture revenue from power that currently sits idle. In constrained markets, each additional megawatt of stranded power unlocked using ORCA can be worth more than $20 to $50 million.

While many focus solely on power utilization efficiency, ORCA targets system-wide token productivity. Its software-first solution optimizes on-site generation and storage, non-IT equipment such as chillers and cooling distribution units, IT equipment including racks, servers and GPUs, and if required, AI workloads themselves. ORCA’s autonomous, power-aware RL controllers adapt in real-time to complex, data-rich environments, maximizing token throughput while enforcing operator-defined power guardrails.

“Power is the critical bottleneck in today’s AI landscape, but it doesn’t have to limit what’s possible,” said Rahul Kar, CEO and Founder of Hammerhead AI. “With ORCA, we’re enabling AI factory operators to achieve greater output from existing resources. Our investors recognize the potential for AI factories to transform their business models and move beyond grid infrastructure limits.”

Hammerhead AI, part of SE Ventures’ inaugural Accelerator Program and Nvidia’s Inception Program, is led by a founding team with deep roots in power orchestration and implementing large, 24/7 mission-critical enterprise systems. CEO Rahul Kar and CTO Rajeev Singh previously built and scaled AutoGrid, where they helped pioneer power orchestration technologies and guided the company through its acquisition by Schneider Electric. They are joined by Sadia Raveendran, who managed AutoGrid’s strategic partnership with Schneider Electric from early investment through acquisition. Together, the team brings hard-won experience in orchestrating 8,000 megawatts of energy assets across more than 20 countries. The leadership team also includes data center infrastructure and cloud operation veterans from Dell, HPE, Microsoft, Meta and Lambda Labs.

“Hammerhead enables AI infrastructure providers to unlock the full potential of their data centers,” said Aaron Binkley, VP of Sustainability at Digital Realty. “Along with unlocking new revenue, Hammerhead helps solve one of the most pressing problems in the industry: powering AI workload sustainably. Their unique go-to-market strategy, OEM integrations and AI-driven orchestration sets them apart.”

“The Hammerhead team represents the rare combination of deep technical expertise and proven scaling experience needed to redefine the economics of AI infrastructure,” said Laura Katzman, Partner at Buoyant Ventures.

Amit Chaturvedy, Global Head and Managing Partner at SE Ventures, added, “We selected Hammerhead AI from over 400 applicants to join SE Ventures’ first Accelerator Program because the team and solution immediately stood out. During our program, Hammerhead established strong alignment with Schneider Electric’s data center businesses, and there is an opportunity to launch reference designs for future AI factories. Hammerhead is the only company positioned to boost data center operators’ revenue through its unique power-aware token maximization approach. SE Ventures is proud to double down on our investment.”

Hammerhead AI will use the funding to accelerate product development, scale global deployments, and deepen ties with leading infrastructure OEMs and AI factory operators. The company welcomes engagement from operators, OEMs, enterprises and AI cloud providers seeking to reshape AI factory economics. Learn more at hammerheadco.ai.

About Hammerhead AI
Hammerhead AI enables AI factory operators to maximize revenue using Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents for power-aware orchestration. Its flagship Orchestrated RL Control Agents (ORCA) platform maximizes token processing capacity by converting power constraints into revenue and shareholder value — without waiting for grid expansions. Founded by veterans in AI, power and cyber-secure orchestration of mission-critical assets, Hammerhead is backed by Buoyant Ventures, SE Ventures, AINA Climate AI Ventures, MCJ Collective, WovenEarth Ventures, Bombellii Ventures, Clearvision Ventures, Stepchange, Acclimate Ventures and prominent investors like Jack Cogen from CoreWeave’s board. Learn more at hammerheadco.ai.

SOURCE Hammerhead AI

Maveron and Serena Ventures lead $7M Investment in safe, creativity-first AI for Kids

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Nov. 18, 2025 — Hapiko, a Brooklyn-based company building creative technology for children, announced today the launch of Stickerbox, the first AI-powered voice-to-sticker printer designed to bring kids’ imaginations to life.  The device requires no smartphone, no laptops, and offers hours of independent play – no adult help needed. Following a $7 million funding round led by Maveron (investors behind Lovevery) and Serena Ventures (founded by tennis champion Serena Williams), Stickerbox introduces a new category of creativity-first AI designed for safe, hands-on play.

“Stickerbox is one of the first products to make AI feel magical for kids and grounded for parents. It’s an exciting glimpse of what creative play will look like for the next generation,” said Jerry Lu, Partner at Maveron.

Unlike passive screen-based tools, Stickerbox encourages real-world, open-ended play. Kids can simply speak their ideas, from “a dinosaur on a skateboard” to “a Viking ship sailing through outer space” and watch as their imagination instantly becomes a high-quality black & white sticker. The kid-safe thermal printer produces unlimited creations that children can color, customize, and use to decorate their world.

“There’s nothing like a child’s imagination, how it sees the world and turns the everyday into magic,” said Arun Gupta, CEO of Hapiko. “We built Stickerbox as a springboard for that creativity: real stickers, no rules, just endless imagination manifested.”

Kid-Safe AI Meets Creative Freedom

Stickerbox was built from the ground up for children’s safety and privacy. It operates with minimal data collection, no cameras, it only listens when given permission, and has built-in moderation filters that ensure every image is age-appropriate.

“As both an investor and a mother, I’m passionate about tools that empower children to create and express themselves safely,” said Serena Williams, Founder of Serena Ventures. “Stickerbox shows how technology can enhance childhood creativity – not replace it.”

“We designed our AI system with intention,” added Robert Whitney, CTO of Hapiko. “Every decision, from privacy to prompt safety, was made to give families peace of mind while inspiring kids to think bigger.”

Key Features & Benefits

Designed with both fun and functionality in mind, Stickerbox features:

• Voice-to-Image Generation: Kids simply describe what they imagine and Stickerbox instantly creates a printable sticker.
• Hands-On Creativity: Built to minimize passive screen time, Stickerbox encourages real-world, tactile play.
• Thermal Printing: Ink-free technology delivers crisp outlines, no mess or maintenance required. The paper is BPA and BPS-free so parents can feel confident this product is safe for use.
• Kids-centric AI: Purpose-built for young creators, Stickerbox uses Kid-safe AI within a durable, family-friendly design that prioritizes privacy, safety, and ease of use.

“We’re starting with stickers because they’re the perfect bridge between imagination and the real world,” said Robert Whitney. “But this is just the beginning,  Kids have so much creative potential, and we’re really excited to see where things go when they’re given safe tools made just for them.”

Stickerbox is now available in the US market at stickerbox.com for $99.99.

About Hapiko

Hapiko is a Brooklyn-based company building creative technology for the next generation. By combining child-centric design with the possibilities of kid-safe AI, Hapiko is redefining how kids play and express their imagination. The company is proudly backed by Maveron and Serena Ventures.

Media Contact:
5W Public Relations
[email protected]

SOURCE Hapiko

The Company Also Announces More Than $115 Million in Booking Contracts

BERTHOUD, Colo., Nov. 18, 2025 — Ursa Major today announced that it closed $100 million in its Series E funding round and received an additional $50 million in debt funding commitments. Investors include both new and long-term supporters of Ursa Major’s mission, including Eclipse, who led the round and were joined by Woodline Partners, Principia Growth, XN, and Alsop Louie Partners, among other institutional shareholders.

Ursa Major also announced more than $115 million in bookings through the first three quarters of 2025, which includes both government and commercial partnerships with the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Stratolaunch, and BAE Systems. The fundraise will support Ursa Major’s business goals of scaling manufacturing and production across product lines.

“This year, our Ursa Major team has proven we are building the next great aerospace and defense company. Our investors recognize our milestones this year – flying hypersonic several times, advancing our solid rocket motor programs, completing tests for space propulsion systems, and securing a record booking portfolio – are just the start of this next chapter for our company,” said Dan Jablonsky, CEO of Ursa Major. “This investment gives us the tools to solve critical strategic industrial base and national security challenges for the United States and our allies.”

Ursa Major is using this investment to address urgent needs in the U.S. industrial base for modernized solutions that can deliver capabilities faster and more affordably than what legacy providers can supply. The Company will rapidly field its throttleable, storable, liquid-fueled hypersonic and space-based defense solution, as well as scale its solid rocket motor and sustained space mobility manufacturing capacity.

“Ursa Major is doing what few others in defense have achieved — scaling manufacturing and supply chains to deliver hypersonic systems and advanced propulsion at industrial scale,” said Lior Susan, Founding Partner at Eclipse. “The Eclipse team is proud to support their mission to strengthen the U.S. and allied industrial base with real capability, built here and built now.”

Recently, Ursa Major announced the addition of Ronald Sugar and Gilman Louie to their corporate board and since the last round of funding, Ursa Major has successfully flown its hypersonic engines and tactical missiles several times, demonstrating the rapid, yet sustainable growth.

About Ursa Major
Ursa Major is an aerospace and defense company delivering flight-proven capabilities for hypersonics, solid rocket motors, space mobility and launch. Headquartered in Berthoud, Colorado, with additive manufacturing operations in Youngstown, Ohio, Ursa Major leverages advanced production techniques and flexible architectures to build systems for all domains: land, air, sea, and space. The company is revitalizing the defense industrial base for the U.S. and its allies, flying faster to accelerate delivery of critical capabilities where speed and adaptability matter most. For more information, visit www.ursamajor.com.

SOURCE Ursa Major

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 2025 — Apono, the cloud identity-security company pioneering Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) access management, today announced a $34 million Series B led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), with participation from Swisscom Ventures, Vertex Ventures, 33N Ventures, and existing investors. The round brings Apono’s total funding to more than $54 million. Over the past year, Apono established product-market fit with a fourfold increase in client count.

Apono’s platform helps enterprises manage the explosion of cloud permissions by eliminating standing privileges, a long-standing vulnerability in identity and access management. Built on Just-in-Time (JIT) and Just-Enough-Access (JEA) models, Apono grants and revokes access dynamically based on real-time context and business logic, ensuring teams can move fast without compromising security.

The company’s vision anticipates a future where human and AI identities coexist and collaborate. As agentic systems proliferate, managing their access requires a level of automation, context-awareness, and scale that static IAM models can’t deliver. Apono’s dynamic permissioning engine meets that challenge by validating every access request in real time, enforcing security without slowing down developers or operations.

“The large-scale adoption of AI agents exponentially scales the problem of getting access right,” said Rom Carmel, Co-founder and CEO of Apono. “Achieving ZSP with a dynamic access management approach is the only sustainable way to secure Agentic operations at scale.”

Customers, including Intel, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Monday.com, rely on Apono to secure access across hybrid and multi-cloud environments while meeting compliance standards and accelerating incident response.

Jacques Benkoski, General Partner at USVP, will join Apono’s board. A longtime enterprise software investor, Jacques has helped scale leading cybersecurity companies, including Trusteer, Medigate, and Kenna Security. He will work closely with Rom Carmel, Ofir Stein, and the Apono team to help drive the company’s growth and leadership in the emerging field of agentic identity security.

“Apono is leading the next evolution of identity security – one that brings zero trust to identity access, following the zero trust of network access we’ve seen in recent years,” said Jacques Benkoski, General Partner at USVP. “The company’s dynamic, context-aware approach is exactly what enterprises need to secure both human and machine identities in the AI-driven era.”

The new funding will be used to accelerate development of AI-powered access intelligence and policy automation, expand go-to-market operations in the U.S. and new international markets, and scale Apono’s engineering and sales teams to meet growing enterprise demand.

Apono will be featured at AWS re:Invent, December 1–5, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV., where attendees can see live demos of its dynamic access platform built for this new era.

About Apono

Apono is redefining identity security with its Cloud Privileged Access Platform, purpose-built for the agentic AI era. Founded by cybersecurity and DevOps veterans, Apono empowers enterprises operating in modern cloud environments to eliminate standing privileges and adopt just-in-time, just-enough access across all identities – human, machine, and AI agents. Trusted by global Fortune 500 companies, Apono bridges the gap between security and engineering teams, enabling organizations to move fast without compromising security.

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2826199/Apono_Logo.jpg

Contact Information
Stephen Lowing
VP Marketing
[email protected]
apono.io  

SOURCE Apono

Funding round led by Forerunner, and will accelerate the shift of $800B of digital ad spend to creators

NEW YORK, Nov. 18, 2025 — Agentio—the AI-native platform for creator-led advertising—raised a $40M Series B led by Forerunner to scale the infrastructure enabling brands to shift hundreds of billions of digital advertising spend to creators. The round includes additional investments from Benchmark, Craft Ventures, AlleyCorp, Antler, and Starting Line, bringing total capital raised to $56 million and valuing the company at $340 million.

The creator economy is expected to reach $500B by 2027 as creators become the most trusted voices for consumers. But while brands recognize the opportunity, creator advertising has remained stuck in a manual, inefficient model — individual negotiations, inconsistent measurement, and workflows that don’t scale beyond a handful of partnerships. The result: less than 2% of digital advertising spend flows to creators despite their outsized influence on purchasing decisions.

“Advertising follows attention, and attention has moved to creators. The shift is already happening — brands are moving billions into creator-led marketing,” said Arthur Leopold, co-founder and CEO of Agentio. “What’s been missing is infrastructure that lets brands scale creator programs the way they can easily scale their search and paid social campaigns — thereby making creators part of their media plan. We’ve built that infrastructure. Brands can now build creator programs on Agentio that run at the scale of their paid media budgets. This new funding will allow us to expand that infrastructure globally and across platforms, establishing Agentio as the most important growth engine for brands, and unlocking the movement of hundreds of billions of dollars into the creator economy.”

Agentio’s AI infrastructure powers this shift by automating end-to-end creator campaign lifecycles at scale, from creator-brand matching to content briefing, brand safety, bids, contracting, approvals, payments, and real-time performance tracking. The platform enables brands to build and scale creator programs with the same efficiency, speed, measurement, and control as any digital media buy, while giving creators automated access to enterprise advertising budgets. In 2025 alone, over 100 leading enterprise brands, including Uber, Tecovas, DoorDash, CashApp, and Olipop, have shifted tens of millions of dollars in paid media budgets to creator campaigns built on Agentio’s platform.

“Every previous attempt to scale creator advertising required armies of people negotiating individual deals. It couldn’t work at the scale brands needed,” said Jonathan Meyers, co-founder and CTO of Agentio. “What’s changed is that AI can now automate the manual administrative tasks that once took weeks or months. Marketers can train custom agents in natural language to translate their ideas into fully contracted creator campaigns in minutes. Our platform analyzes a brand’s needs, evaluates tens of thousands of creators for audience and content fit, determines optimal matches, and automates the entire workflow, from brief to payment. This end-to-end automation is powered by the underlying technology, network, and data on Agentio that turn creator marketing into a scalable system.”

Agentio’s AI platform operates as a two-sided network connecting brands and creators: brands get agentic tooling to build, automate, and scale their creator programs, and creators get personalized opportunities from top brands without endless back and forth or negotiation. The company has achieved 5x+ year-over-year growth, with brands using the platform to run creator campaigns that outperform their best digital channels. Bombas recently achieved 5.3x better ROAS from Agentio campaigns compared to digital video campaigns.

“Creators have become one of the most powerful forces shaping consumer behavior, but the infrastructure to support them hasn’t kept pace,” said Eurie Kim, Managing Partner of Forerunner. “Just as Google and Meta built platforms to unlock search and social, Agentio is building the infrastructure needed for creator-led ad development and monetization at scale. Arthur and Jonathan recognized early on the opportunity for AI to bridge the execution gap between creators and marketers, and we believe the Agentio platform will power the next generation of efficient, scalable marketing alpha in the ever-evolving competition for customer acquisition and awareness.”

Several Forerunner portfolio companies, including Warby Parker, Away, Chime, and The Farmer’s Dog, run successful creator programs on Agentio’s platform.

“Agentio completely transformed our YouTube creator strategy,” said Steven Vigilante, Director of Media and Partnerships at Olipop. “What used to require months of coordination for a handful of partnerships now happens in days, allowing us to activate dozens of top-tier creators while improving performance tracking. For the first time, we can scale this channel and measure the ROI on every dollar spent, just as we would with any paid media channel.”

Agentio will use the Series B funding to advance its AI infrastructure, expand creator content buys beyond YouTube to Meta Partnership Ads and additional platforms, and grow its team from 35 to over 100 employees in 2026. The company recently added Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal (best known as Rhett & Link), acclaimed Creators and hosts of Good Mythical Morning, the most-watched daily morning show on the internet, as advisors after growing their branded revenue through Agentio.

About Agentio
Agentio is the AI-native platform for creator-led advertising. It automates campaigns end to end, enabling advertisers to scale creator programs across Meta, YouTube, and beyond in hours, not months, while connecting creators with the world’s top brands. For more information, visit www.agentio.com.

SOURCE Agentio

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 18, 2025 — Big Rentals, the Los Angeles-based equipment rental platform modernizing the $80+ billion U.S. equipment rental industry, today announced it has raised $2.8 million in seed funding. The round was led by SNAK Venture Partners with participation from Ironspring Ventures, Forum Ventures, Jason Calacanis’ LAUNCH Fund, and NuFund Venture Group.

The funding will accelerate Big Rentals‘ expansion into the construction and heavy equipment segment, building on strong early traction in the category through its nationwide partner network. It will also support continued development of HQRent.com, the company’s AI-powered software that helps independent rental businesses run online by managing bookings, payments, and fleet operations in one place.

“For too long, local rental companies and small business owners have had to stitch together outdated tools, paper, and spreadsheets,” said Pablo Fernandez, Co-Founder and CEO of Big Rentals. “We put the same technology used by national chains into the hands of independent operators, making it easy and affordable for anyone to start and scale a professional rental business.”

Founded in 2023, Big Rentals is a dual-sided platform that combines a national rental marketplace with modern operating software for independent equipment owners. Rental businesses use Big Rentals to automate scheduling, payments, and inventory, replacing legacy workflows with streamlined, digital operations. The marketplace brings new demand directly to local operators, driving higher utilization and unlocking new revenue opportunities across the U.S.

The investment marks growing recognition of Big Rentals‘ pioneering mission to modernize a historically offline industry. “Big Rentals is transforming an overlooked yet essential backbone of our economy. Pablo and the team are building a category-defining marketplace, and we’re thrilled to back a founder who combines deep industry insight with a software-first mindset,” said Sonia Nagar, Co-Founder of SNAK Venture Partners, who will join the Big Rentals board. Nagar brings extensive experience scaling leading marketplaces including BacklotCars and Sittercity, with investments in Machinery Partner, Cameo, and Coinbase at Pritzker Group Venture Capital.

Surging demand for equipment rentals is driven by record U.S. manufacturing investment, massive infrastructure projects, and a nationwide data center boom. U.S. manufacturing construction is at $223 billion – well above historic highs – and data center construction hit a $40 billion annual run rate this year, up 30%. As contractors shift from owning to renting, the $80+ billion equipment rental market is being reshaped in real time. In this new wave of American reindustrialization, Big Rentals‘ is positioned to unify the fragmented long tail of suppliers and capture the next decade of growth with a technology-first platform built for small businesses.

About Big Rentals

Big Rentals builds technology for the U.S. equipment rental industry, helping independent rental businesses manage bookings, payments, and inventory online. The platform uses AI automation to simplify scheduling and operations for small business owners. Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and Nashville, TN, Big Rentals is backed by SNAK Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, LAUNCH Fund, Forum Ventures, and NuFund Venture Group.

SNAK Venture Partners, Ironspring Ventures, LAUNCH Fund, Forum Ventures, and NuFund Venture Group

Learn more at bigrentals.com.

Media Contact:
Name: Ludington Media on behalf of Big Rentals
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 551-795-5950

SOURCE Big Rentals

Nudge Security is the only solution that secures AI and SaaS at the Workforce Edge—the critical point where employees make technology decisions that shape the organization’s security posture. Rather than relying solely on reactive monitoring or restrictive controls that slow business innovation, Nudge Security delivers automated, policy-driven guardrails that reach employees in real-time, transforming security from a barrier to productivity into a natural part of how work gets done.

“Nudge Security is at an exciting time in their journey and we’re thrilled to partner with Russ, Jaime, and the team,” said Morgan Mahlock, Director at Cerberus Ventures. “Nudge has cultivated incredible customer loyalty due to its intuitive product that both security teams and employees appreciate for its ease of use. It can deliver immediate value by providing an automated inventory of the SaaS and AI tools being used across an organization. With the vision to expand governance of interactions with SaaS and AI at the Workforce Edge, Nudge will become even more essential for highly distributed, AI-first organizations.”

Since its initial launch in October of 2022, Nudge Security has experienced exponential growth, achieving 3x growth in ARR for two consecutive years, onboarding nearly 200 customers, and delivering rapid product innovation to address customers’ needs for scalable security and governance of workforce use of AI and SaaS.

The explosion of AI , particularly AI embedded throughout the SaaS ecosystem, has introduced unprecedented security challenges as organizations now grapple with hundreds of AI-enabled applications, complex networks of integrations, and non-human identities with access to sensitive data across their environment.

“The difference between AI apps and SaaS has all but disappeared—almost every app has embedded AI capabilities, agents, and integrations. In order to secure workforce AI use at scale, you need to consider the entire SaaS ecosystem, including all SaaS and AI tools, their integrations, and the non-human identities that connect them,” said Russell Spitler, Co-Founder & CEO of Nudge Security. “This funding will enable us to continue to expand our capabilities and help organizations confidently embrace innovation while maintaining security and control.”

Customer growth

Customers  include forward-thinking IT and security teams at cloud-native organizations spanning software, financial services, healthcare, biotechnology, entertainment, and more.

“Nudge Security has been a big win for our security program at Reddit,” says Fredrick Lee, CISO of Reddit. “Within hours of deployment, we gained complete visibility into our SaaS footprint across the organization. It’s rare to find a solution that’s both incredibly powerful and remarkably easy to use.”

Product Innovation

In the last 12 months, Nudge Security has shipped over 60 feature releases, adding significant new capabilities to improve AI governance, harden security posture, combat identity security risks, and mitigate third-party risks.

“Our team’s ability to innovate at this pace is a direct reflection of our deep understanding of the challenges our customers face,” said Jaime Blasco, Co-Founder & CTO of Nudge Security. “We’re not just building features—we’re solving real problems that security and IT teams encounter every day as they navigate the complexities of AI adoption and SaaS sprawl. This funding allows us to continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible and deliver unparalleled value to organizations looking to embrace innovation without compromising on security.”

Notable Nudge Security capabilities:

• Day One discovery of the entire SaaS and AI footprint including apps, integrations, human and non-human identities, user activities, and more
• Scalable AI security and governance with visibility into AI apps, users, and integrations as well as AI embedded in other SaaS apps via AI agents and MCP servers
• Proprietary risk intelligence to accelerate vendor security assessments, alert on SaaS supply chain breaches, and surface other high-priority risks
• Automated guardrails that nudge the workforce toward safe SaaS and AI adoption, delivered just in time in the browser as well as via Slack and Teams
• Security posture monitoring to continually assess app configurations, integrations, and identity security against best practices, complete with step-by-step remediation guidance and orchestration workflows
• Identity security and governance workflows to identify and fix poor identity hygiene, streamline user access reviews, and automate employee offboarding

Comprehensive SaaS and AI Security Governance from Day One

Nudge Security offers a fully-functional free 14-day trial which delivers a complete inventory of all SaaS and AI apps, users, and integrations after a quick 5-minute set-up. The trial is completely self-driven with no credit card or sales conversation required to get started.

About Nudge Security

Nudge Security  delivers SaaS and AI security governance at the Workforce Edge—where employees make thousands of technology decisions daily. Our automated, policy-driven guardrails reach employees when and where they work, enabling rapid technology adoption while minimizing risk and sprawl. Through unrivaled discovery capabilities, AI-driven risk insights, and behavioral science-based engagement, we make security a natural part of how modern work gets done rather than an obstacle to innovation. Nudge Security was founded in 2021 by Russell Spitler and Jaime Blasco and is backed by Cerberus Ventures, Ballistic Ventures, Forgepoint Capital, and Squadra Ventures.

Learn more at www.nudgesecurity.com and follow Nudge Security on LinkedIn, Reddit, X, BlueSky, and Instagram.

SOURCE Nudge Security