Medical devices are increasingly defined by software, with value moving from hardware to real-world data and AI-driven intelligence delivering guidance and interpretation

NEW YORK, May 18, 2026 — Aegis Ventures, a next-generation startup studio that partners with entrepreneurs and industry leaders to originate, launch, and scale transformative companies, today released a new whitepaper, Medical Devices in the AI Era, examining why medical devices have historically underperformed in venture portfolios, and why the next decade is likely to look different.

Medical devices have produced some of the most important companies in healthcare, yet sparse venture-scale outcomes. Over the past two decades, very few venture-backed medical device companies have exited above $1 billion, with most requiring long, capital-intensive development cycles of more than ten years from founding to exit.

Even as healthcare’s share of U.S. venture capital has grown from ~21% to over 32% since 2018, medical devices have remained flat at 2–3% of overall investment. The new Aegis whitepaper posits that the conditions which produced this gap are beginning to shift.

“The next era of medtech will be defined by platforms that combine sensing technologies, AI, and real-world data to generate clinically meaningful insights over time,” said John Beadle, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Aegis Ventures. “As these structural shifts converge, we believe medical devices can evolve into platforms that expand across clinical applications, make specialist-level insight accessible in more care settings, and generate proprietary data that improves performance and creates advantages that become increasingly difficult to replicate. While AI does not reduce all of the barriers that make medtech challenging to build, for companies that get it right, it can meaningfully raise the ceiling for both impact and scale, enabling a new generation of medtech companies to support a more intelligent, proactive model of medicine.”

The Aegis whitepaper identifies three AI-driven structural shifts already reshaping the medical device category:

1. expanding total addressable markets, such as a single sensing platform supporting multiple clinical applications
2. tapping into higher-value clinical workflows, such as AI-guided systems that allow generalists to perform tasks previously reserved for specialists
3. building compounding data advantages, with devices that create proprietary datasets tied to real-world usage and outcomes

Taken together, these shifts suggest that while the category remains difficult to build in, the ceiling for outcomes is rising meaningfully, with the potential to generate larger venture-scale companies than the category has historically produced.

Aegis points to its own portfolio companies as examples of these shifts.

Optain Health has built an AI-powered retinal imaging platform to enable primary care providers to identify eye and cardiovascular diseases earlier than the traditional specialist referral pathway typically allows. While currently deployed for diabetic retinopathy screening, there is promising potential to expand Optain’s clinical utility to assess additional types of disease by developing new algorithms, while using the same hardware.

Wavelet Medical, another Aegis portfolio company, uses AI to non-invasively capture and reconstruct EEG signals through the mother’s abdomen to identify signs of fetal distress in real-time. The platform leverages sensors, data, and AI in service of reducing brain injury at birth and unnecessary C-sections.

The Aegis whitepaper Medical Devices in the AI Era is available now at https://aegisventures.com/insights/medical-devices-in-the-ai-era

About Aegis Ventures

Aegis Ventures is a next-generation startup studio that partners with entrepreneurs and industry leaders to originate, launch, and scale transformative companies. The Aegis platform brings together market-shaping ideas, permanent growth capital, and ambitious individuals who are driven to solve major societal problems. We aim to build companies with the capacity for vast impact, with an initial focus on artificial intelligence and health technology. Within these verticals, Aegis seeks to create companies that use technology to transform healthcare quality, access, and cost, focusing on innovations that promote seamless continuity of care, patient empowerment, and better-informed clinical decision-making. In parallel with launching our first six successful portfolio companies over the last several years, Aegis has created the Digital Consortium, a group of fourteen leading health systems that will partner with Aegis to co-develop, invest in, and launch new companies. To learn more about Aegis, visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn.

Media Contact:
Kara Spak
[email protected]

SOURCE Aegis Venture Partners LLC

NEW YORK, May 18, 2026 — Searchable, the AI performance marketing platform helping businesses compete in AI-driven search, has raised $14 million in funding led by global venture capital firm Headline. The latest round of funding values the company at $85 million, reflecting investor confidence that AI-led search will be one of the most important customer acquisition channels of the next decade. 

The funding follows a period of rapid growth, including reaching $2 million in revenue in 4.5 months and onboarding nearly 1000 customers.

Headline, whose portfolio includes Bumble, Farfetch, Goop and Sonos, has a track record of backing global category leaders, including Semrush, the SEO software group acquired by Adobe in a $1.9bn deal. Its investment comes as CMOs confront what many see as the biggest change in online visibility since the early days of Google.

With fresh capital from Headline, Searchable plans to accelerate product development across its execution engine and expand its presence in both the US and UK markets.

Dominic R. Wilhelm, Partner at Headline, said:

“AI–driven discovery is rewriting how customers find products. As more searches are answered directly by AI, brands that are invisible in this layer of search will see less demand. The companies that adapt first will grow market share; those that don’t will lose it quietly.”

Wilhelm adds: “We see Searchable becoming part of the core infrastructure for this shift, not just reporting on what AI engines say about a brand, but directly improving the visibility and revenue outcomes that matter to management teams and boards.”

AI-enabled search is projected to reach roughly 70 percent penetration by 2027, while 65 percent of searches already end without a click. AI-generated overviews now appear in nearly half of Google searches, reshaping how consumers discover products and services.

Chris Donnelly, founder of Searchable, said: “Search is going through a once–in–a–generation reset. When an AI assistant recommends your brand, customers arrive with more trust and a shorter path to purchase. Based on our own data customers are converting at 3x higher when they arrive from ChatGPT and other LLMs. If you aren’t visible in those answers, you’re giving ground to competitors every day.”

Over the next 12 to 24 months, the company expects three structural shifts: the automation of repetitive manual SEO labour through agentic systems; the rise of AI commerce as a standalone optimisation layer; and the convergence of paid and organic AI visibility into unified attribution models.

British serial entrepreneur Donnelly, who sold SEO agency Verb for $25 million and scaled Lottie Org to a nine-figure valuation, explains: “For more than a decade, SEO has been labour–intensive and expensive. Over the next two years, a large share of that work becomes automatable. Our goal is to give companies an execution layer for AI search that cuts SEO costs by up to 40 percent while growing high–intent traffic.”

Searchable works with brands including American Express, KPMG and Siemens. On average, enterprise-scale customers report a 22 percent increase in AI-driven traffic within their first 60 days of using the platform. The US-based company is incorporated in Delaware and operates between New York and London.

About Searchable
Founded in 2025 by British serial entrepreneur Chris Donnelly, Searchable is a new AI performance platform that helps brands understand, track and improve how they appear across AI-led search. Acting as a growth command centre, it tracks visibility on 10 AI engines, surfaces insights through interactive agents, connects analytics from Google Analytics & Search Console, and turns data into actions that drive traffic growth. The US-based company is incorporated in Delaware and operates between New York and London, and is redefining performance marketing for the age of AI.

For further information see: https://www.searchable.com/

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2982026/Chris_Donnelly_Founder_of_Searchable.jpg
Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2982025/Searchable_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Searchable

BOSTON, May 18, 2026 — Tomorrow.io, the world’s leading Resilience Platform™, today announced an additional $35 million investment from existing partner Pitango, and their partner Harel Insurance, joining Stonecourt Capital and HarbourVest Partners, bringing the company’s previously announced Series F to $210 million. The expanded investment reflects a multi-year partnership and deepening conviction in Tomorrow.io’s role as critical AI weather intelligence infrastructure for organizations operating in an increasingly volatile world.

The extension follows Tomorrow.io’s $175 million Series F earlier this year, which supported the planned deployment of DeepSky—the world’s first AI-native weather satellite constellation—alongside broader investments in its space infrastructure and the advancement of its AI-driven platform. The additional capital will further accelerate AI capabilities, expand the company’s space-based observation network, and advance development of its agentic platform to deliver real-time, actionable resilience intelligence at a global scale.

Weather-driven disruption is increasingly impacting day-to-day operations across industries, raising the stakes of how organizations plan, respond, and allocate resources. At the same time, as AI adoption moves from experimentation to scaled deployment, the need for proprietary, high-quality data has become foundational. Against this backdrop, Tomorrow.io’s combination of space-based observation, advanced weather modeling, and generative AI is transforming weather intelligence into mission-critical infrastructure for the modern enterprise.

“Our continued investment in Tomorrow.io reflects what we believe defines truly category-shaping companies: visionary founders, a long-term mission, and a partnership that compounds over time. This team isn’t simply building a product: they’re laying down critical infrastructure for how the world adapts to volatility. We’re proud to keep building alongside them,” said Aaron Mankovski, Managing Partner at Pitango.

“Weather is one of the most powerful forces shaping the global economy, yet it remains one of the least fully integrated into how decisions are made,” said Shimon Elkabetz, CEO and Co-Founder of Tomorrow.io. “Tomorrow.io was built to change that by transforming how the planet is observed and turning data into real-time, actionable intelligence. As AI becomes embedded in operations, that capability becomes foundational. With Pitango’s continued partnership, we are accelerating Tomorrow.io into the infrastructure layer organizations depend on every day.”

Together, Tomorrow.io and Pitango remain focused on building the AI-based foundational layer for resilience in the global economy, helping the world’s largest organizations adapt, decide, and act in real time as weather, supply chains, and operating environments grow more volatile.

About Tomorrow.io

Selected as a TIME 100 Most Influential Company and a Fast Company Most Innovative Company, Tomorrow.io is the world’s leading Resilience Platform™. With a fully operational proprietary satellite constellation and a generative AI–integrated forecasting engine, Tomorrow.io delivers the world’s most accurate and actionable weather intelligence. Combining next-generation space technology, advanced AI, and proprietary weather modeling, the platform empowers organizations to proactively manage risk, seize opportunity, and improve operational efficiency. Trusted by six of the top ten Fortune 500 companies, Tomorrow.io serves as essential infrastructure for the global economy, enabling industries from aviation and energy to logistics and government to adapt in real time to an increasingly volatile world.

About Pitango

Pitango is Israel’s largest and longest standing venture capital fund. We have raised 13 funds to date that amount to $3+ billion in assets, and invested in over 300 companies including Via, AppsFlyer, Finout, DriveNets, AI21 Labs, QuantHealth and Protai. We have overseen 91 exits and IPOs, including Taboola, Riskified, Vertos, and Forescout. Our firm operates through three dedicated funds: Pitango First, Pitango Growth, and Pitango HealthTech.

MEDIA CONTACT 
Tomorrow.io
[email protected]

SOURCE Tomorrow.io

Funding will accelerate the expansion of Wirestock’s data platform and the company’s ability to deliver premium, ethically sourced multimodal datasets to the world’s leading AI labs while deepening its commitment to empowering creators globally

SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2026 — Wirestock, the platform connecting the world’s creative community with the frontier of artificial intelligence, today announced the close of a $23 million Series A funding round led by Nava Ventures with participation from SBVP (co-founded by Sheryl Sandberg), Formula VC, I2BF Global Ventures and other strategic and existing investors. The investment will fuel the next chapter of Wirestock’s mission: building the definitive platform for creators to monetize their skills while powering the most advanced AI models in the world with premium, human-made multimodal data. Data that isn’t scraped or repurposed, but made intentionally.

Since its founding, Wirestock has grown to a community of more than 700,000 creators spanning photographers, videographers, graphic designers, 3D artists, filmmakers, and musicians who have collectively contributed millions of assets to the platform, with millions of dollars paid directly to creators monthly. These figures are evidence that human creativity and technological progress reinforce rather than undermine each other. Moving to an AI licensing model has driven 20x YoY growth in creator payouts, and aided in the business surpassing a 40M annual run rate.

“Wirestock has built an incredibly versatile platform that orchestrates the creation, curation, and delivery of complex multimodal datasets,” said Mikayel Khachatryan, CEO and co-founder of Wirestock. “By learning from this data, AI models gain a deeper understanding of the world around us and become more capable of performing creative tasks. With all this innovation, we never lose sight of what powers Wirestock, our global community of creators. We remain deeply committed to fair compensation, transparency, and providing ethical data that drives responsible AI development.”

“This investment will allow us to deepen our research and continue expanding the platform to meet the evolving data needs of future AI models. We’re excited to partner with Nava Ventures and other like-minded investors who share this vision.”

Next Generation Multimodal Data

Wirestock’s datasets are built for the demands of modern multimodal architectures, serving major hyperscalers and frontier AI labs. Most visual data used to train AI models today was never intended for that purpose. It was produced for entertainment, marketing, or social media, and repurposed after the fact. Wirestock takes the opposite approach. Every asset on the platform is sourced, curated, and structured specifically for AI learning, spanning images, video, 3D models, design, and real-world spatial data.

Curation is handled through layered pipelines combining human expert review and AI-assisted moderation, producing datasets with high signal-to-noise ratios, dense semantic annotations, and tight image-text alignment essential for vision-language model training. The result is something closer to a textbook than a data dump: content organized intentionally around how AI models practically learn to understand the visual world and human creativity. For the AI labs building the next generation of foundation models, that distinction directly impacts convergence speed, downstream task performance, and deployment robustness. With over 700,000 credentialed creators contributing across a wide range of creative disciplines, Wirestock has assembled a data sourcing and curation infrastructure that no competitor has replicated.

This is the position that Wirestock’s Series A will strengthen. The investment will expand the company’s capacity to execute on increasingly complex custom datasets, extend coverage across emerging creative modalities, and deepen the integrations that make Wirestock’s data pipelines a seamless extension of its AI lab partners’ research workflows. As the models being built today push into new domains of perception, generation, and reasoning, the infrastructure required to train them must keep pace. Wirestock is building that infrastructure.

“Wirestock is at the cutting edge of the rapidly growing multimodal data ecosystem,” said Freddie Martignetti of Nava Ventures. “As artificial intelligence progresses past language-based systems, multimodal data will become an increasingly important part of any model’s training.  Mikayel and the team at Wirestock have a deeply prepared mind in the space, and have positioned themselves as clear leaders in the category.”

Building the World’s Leading Monetization Platform for Creators

A significant portion of the Series A will be directed toward expanding Wirestock’s creator platform developing new tools, capabilities, and earning pathways that make it easier for creative professionals at every stage of their career to contribute meaningfully and earn consistently.

The platform already supports a wide range of disciplines in photography, video, graphic design, motion design, 3D modeling, music, and more and will continue expanding its creative disciplines, project formats, and compensation structures. Every creator on Wirestock knows precisely where their work goes and how they will be paid for it. That transparency is foundational, and it is not negotiable.

About Wirestock

Wirestock is the world’s leading platform for creators to monetize their skills while powering the frontier of artificial intelligence with premium, ethically sourced multimodal training data. With a global community of over 700,000 creators who have earned millions of dollars on the platform, and partnerships with the world’s leading AI labs, Wirestock operates at the intersection of the creative economy and cutting-edge AI development. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Learn more at: wirestock.io 

About Nava Ventures

Nava Ventures is a modern, early-stage investment firm built on more than a decade of venture capital experience. The firm partners with founders who are creating new markets, changing industries, and building companies with a positive impact on the world. For more information, visit nava.vc.

SOURCE Wirestock

Funding brings total raised to $14M. Sprouts.ai’s differentiated GTM data layer powers autonomous Revenue Agents already trusted by Global Brands like Hewlett Packard, Razorpay, HighRadius, and Udemy.

SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2026 — True Global Ventures (TGV) and Accel today announced a $9 million Pre-Series A round in Sprouts.ai, bringing the company’s total funding to $14 million. Sprouts.ai is a fast-growing AI native startup delivering Revenue Agents for B2B enterprises, anchored in a proprietary go-to-market (GTM) data layer.

The platform enables revenue teams to identify, enrich, engage, and convert ideal customers with precision using deep account intelligence. Its Deep AI GTM Engine powers several first to market AI functionality like complex query search, product heatmaps, buyer committee mapping, relationship networks, and autonomous AI workflows. Sprouts.ai delivers this functionality natively, inside customer CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, and through leading LLMs like Claude.

The investment underscores TGV and Accel’s conviction in AI-first companies transforming how businesses grow revenue, and marks another milestone in TGV’s global strategy of backing visionary founders at the intersection of AI and enterprise GTM.

Solving the B2B GTM Intelligence Gap

Sprouts.ai is headquartered in Palo Alto and addresses one of the most persistent challenges in modern B2B: efficiently identifying and engaging the right buyers at the right time. One key reason for the same is dirty and siloed data. According to Gartner, 85% of enterprise AI initiatives fail due to dirty data. Enterprises run an average of more than 20 GTM tools, compounding data-quality problems across silos, with CRM the largest offender with 30 to 40 percent of records being inaccurate, stale, or missing.

Sprouts.ai replaces the fragmented stack with a unified AI-native layer that maintains high-fidelity data and auto-cleans the surrounding ecosystem. The platform discovers ICP-qualified accounts, enriches contacts with high accuracy, surfaces real-time buying signals, and automates multi-channel outreach.

Trusted by leading global brands including Razorpay, Hewlett Packard, HighRadius, and Udemy, Sprouts.ai has delivered measurable outcomes. Customers report a 3x increase in ICP-qualified leads, a 25% lift in Sales Qualified Leads, a 3x improvement in response rates, and a 35% reduction in GTM tooling costs.

“The B2B revenue stack is broken. Sales and marketing teams operate across more than 20 tools, work off dirty data, and bolt AI on top of infrastructure that was never built for it. We built Sprouts.ai to replace that fragmentation with a unified data and agent layer that actually moves the pipeline. With TGV and Accel, we have the partners and the global reach to put Revenue Agents inside every enterprise running on Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and the leading LLMs.”

Karan Chaudhry, Co-Founder and CEO, Sprouts AI

“Sprouts AI is exactly the kind of company TGV looks for — a Californian AI-first business with real traction, clear product-market fit, and a data moat accelerated by distribution channels. B2B go-to-market has historically been expensive, fragmented, noisy and opaque. Karan and his team have built something genuinely transformative: a platform that brings together data, intent, and automation into a single intelligent layer that helps companies grow faster and smarter. We are thrilled to support Sprouts AI’s next chapter of growth in agentic AI to help the sales team perform better without additional headcount.”

Beatrice Lion, General Partner and CEO, True Global Ventures

“At Accel, we’ve long believed that the future of B2B growth lies at the intersection of AI, data, and automation. Sprouts AI embodies that thesis. Their platform gives revenue teams unprecedented intelligence and execution capability, dramatically compressing the time from prospect identification to closed deals. Native integration with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics accelerates distribution across enterprise clients. We’re excited to have TGV join us in backing Sprouts as they scale.”

Shekhar Kirani, Partner, Accel

ABOUT SPROUTS AI

Sprouts.ai builds Revenue Agents that turn traditional revenue teams AI-native. The company has invested in a deep data intelligence moat to power autonomous agents across the full funnel, from ICP to Closed Won. Customers can run Sprouts.ai inside the platforms they already use, including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Copilot and Claude. Built for enterprises that demand secure, compliant, and trusted data, Sprouts.ai is disrupting a $250B category by replacing fragmented legacy tooling and dirty data with a unified GTM intelligence layer. Founded in 2023 by Karan Chaudhry, Kapil Chaudhry, and Avinash Nagla, the company is headquartered in Palo Alto and trusted by leading global brands. Learn more at www.sprouts.ai

ABOUT TRUE GLOBAL VENTURES

True Global Ventures (TGV) is a global venture capital firm investing in post-revenues AI-first companies at the early stage. TGV’s current portfolio includes Prezent, Cynch, COVU, Obligo, Ledger, Animoca Brands, Jus Mundi, Coding Giants and many others. Almost all portfolio companies are in the U.S. or entering the U.S. With presence in San Francisco, New York, Paris, London, Stockholm, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong, TGV backs visionary founders building the next generation of transformative technology ventures. www.trueglobalventures.com

ABOUT ACCEL

Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Browserstack, Bumble, CrowdStrike, Freshworks, Flipkart, Ola Cabs, Qualtrics, Scale, Segment, Slack, Spotify, Swiggy, and UiPath are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 40+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses. For more, visit www.accel.com.

SOURCE True Global Ventures

WASHINGTON, May 15, 2026 — Arkeus, a defense technology company building AI powered sensing systems that serve as the eyes and brains of autonomous platforms, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to accelerate its global expansion and scale manufacturing capability in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

The round, led by QIC Ventures with participation from U.S. and international investors, positions Arkeus to significantly scale its core technology, which is already deployed with the U.S. Department of War and Australian Department of Defence to meet growing global demand. The technology is also integrated with major drone manufacturers including AeroVironment, Textron, Tekever and Boeing subsidiary Insitu.

Arkeus has secured multiple defense contracts for its flagship Hyperspectral Optical Radar, a world-first ISR capability designed for autonomous-enabled operations, as well as for the expedited delivery of its AI-powered hyperspectral sensors in response to growing Pentagon demand for real-time ISR. The contracts followed competitive evaluations against incumbents, in which Arkeus’ sensing systems demonstrated it could detect targets up to eight times further than existing optical systems in degraded visual conditions.

“Machines can’t act autonomously if they can’t truly perceive their environment. In the moments that matter most, systems are still flying blind. Data is collected but not understood in time to act. That’s the problem we set out to solve,” said Arkeus CEO and co-founder Simon Olsen. “The next generation of autonomy isn’t limited by platforms; it’s limited by perception. Decision-making is moving closer to the edge, and that requires a completely different approach to sensing and autonomy.”

While billions have been invested globally in drones, aircraft and autonomous systems, most still rely heavily on human interpretation and external processing to make decisions. Arkeus’ core technology, including hyperspectral optical radar systems, captures multiple layers of visual data simultaneously, allowing AI to detect, classify and track objects across any domain, day and night, and even in degraded or contested environments where traditional sensors struggle.

With a growing pipeline of defense programs and expanding global demand, the company is positioning its systems as foundational infrastructure for the next generation of autonomous operations.

Led by QIC Ventures, the $18M Series A raise saw participation from new investors R+VC, Folklore Ventures and DYNE Ventures, alongside continued support from existing investors Main Sequence Ventures, Salus Ventures and Beaten Zone.

Images to accompany this release will be regularly updated.

About Arkeus

Arkeus is a defense technology company developing AI powered sensing systems that enable real-time perception and decision-making for autonomous platforms. Its hardware-enabled software approach combines advanced sensing with onboard AI to deliver situational awareness at the edge, supporting defense, security and civil applications globally.

Founded in 2020 by CEO Simon Olsen and CTO Dr Jonathan Nebauer, Arkeus was built to solve the perception limitations of autonomous systems operating in complex environments. Olsen brings more than 15 years’ experience in defense, autonomy and ISR systems, including senior leadership roles at Sentient Vision Systems and across the Australian uncrewed systems sector.

Dr Nebauer is an aerospace engineer and optical sensing specialist with deep expertise in autonomous software and hardware systems. He holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering focused on spectral-method solutions, alongside degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Physics with a concentration in High Performance Computing.

SOURCE Arkeus

Water-tech company closes round across equity and non-dilutive capital sources to deploy patented technology at more wastewater utilities, reducing costs and delivering verified carbon dioxide removal

BROOKLYN, N.Y., May 14, 2026 — CREW Carbon, Inc. (CREW) announced today it has closed an oversubscribed Series A round led by Burnt Island Ventures with participation from AP Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Builders Vision, Kibo Invest, Idemitsu Ventures, New York Ventures, and family office investors, alongside existing investors Counteract, ANIMO Ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Ponderosa Ventures, and Echo River Capital. The raise includes $19 million in equity and $6 million in grant and other non-dilutive funding.

The wastewater treatment industry faces mounting pressure from tighter regulations and having to treat higher volumes of wastewater with aging legacy infrastructure, leading to treatment costs doubling over the last 20 years. Utilities need solutions that work within and expand the capacity of existing systems without requiring massive capital investments.

CREW’s patented technology helps utilities get more out of their existing infrastructure. By improving pollutant removal, boosting settleability, and reducing reliance on costly chemicals, CREW increases plant capacity and efficiency, lowering both capital and operating costs and easing the burden on ratepayers.

Because CREW’s solution integrates into existing wastewater processes, utilities can see measurable results in weeks. CREW has already secured several long-term RFPs with utilities across the U.S.

“CREW’s water technology is driving jaw-dropping results for wastewater customers,” said Tom Ferguson, Partner at Burnt Island Ventures. “On top of the improvements they deliver to wastewater utilities, CREW’s precise measurement of permanent carbon removal is highly differentiated in the crediting market and empowers carbon credit buyers to know exactly what they are paying for. Together, CREW’s technology and business model are aligning good environmental outcomes with the bottom line for a massively impactful industry.”

Process optimization and decarbonization at scale
CREW’s process that improves wastewater treatment performance also permanently removes carbon dioxide.

CREW uses strategically-sourced alkaline minerals, such as calcium carbonate, to optimize key conditions like pH and alkalinity in the wastewater treatment process. CREW delivers better biological performance for operators while locking away CO2 and superpollutant emissions in a permanent, measurable form — all by leveraging existing industrial infrastructure, with none of the federal funding or permitting support that other carbon removal approaches typically require.

That precision and pragmatism has allowed CREW to deliver verified carbon removal credits to corporations in long-term agreements including JP Morgan, Google, Autodesk, Stripe, and others through Frontier. CREW has also signed other long-term offtakes. Carbon credit buyers increasingly realize that highly measurable, engineered CO2 removals are key to net-zero goals.

“We are pleased to welcome CREW to our portfolio,” said Andrew Hinkly, Managing Partner at AP Ventures. “CREW has impressed us with its rapid progress, ability to deliver real carbon dioxide removal, and high-quality low-cost approach to CDR. The team is focused on executing a clear go‑to‑market strategy that leverages existing industrial infrastructure and well‑defined customer pain points to unlock decarbonisation at scale. CREW is advancing quickly, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.”

Positioned to become a category-defining leader in water and climate tech
Since launching commercial operations in 2024, CREW has:

• Deployed at nearly 10 wastewater treatment facilities across the US and Europe, including leading utilities like HRSD (Hampton Roads Sanitation District)
• Delivered measurable performance improvements at wastewater treatment facilities, with one utility considering deferring $350 million in planned capital upgrades
• Secured $33+ million in carbon removal offtake agreements
• Captured 2,000+ tons of CO₂ faster and more cost effectively than other carbon removal credit suppliers
• Recently won a $2.3 million award from the Colorado Energy Office as part of the state’s Clean Air Program
• Developed proprietary measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) capabilities that enable high-confidence carbon removal quantification
• Initiated development of a scalable analytics platform for wastewater treatment facilities, delivering actionable operational insights and process optimization capabilities to drive performance improvements

“Startups advancing frontier technologies to tackle global environmental challenges are central to building more sustainable, resilient industries – and a key focus of Sony Innovation Fund’s investment strategy,” said Austin Noronha, Managing Director, Sony Ventures-US. “CREW combines deep geochemistry expertise with a pragmatic business approach to seamlessly integrate carbon capture into existing infrastructure, making it both scalable and commercially viable. With multiple deployments already underway, CREW is well-positioned to help various industries accelerate decarbonization.”

Since closing its Series A round, CREW is focused on working with more wastewater utilities and on adding to the talent on the team. Some of the high-priority roles to fill in 2026 including:

To learn more about job opportunities at CREW, visit: crewcarbon.com/careers

About CREW
CREW is a water technology company providing wastewater treatment facilities with a process intensification solution that improves performance, lowers costs, and permanently removes greenhouse gases. By optimizing key environmental conditions such as pH and alkalinity through smart-dosing of strategically-sourced calcium carbonate, CREW delivers better biological treatment, improved settleability, reduced chemical usage, and increased capacity and efficiency. Our data-driven solution integrates seamlessly into operators’ existing processes, with measurable results in weeks, to better serve communities. To learn more, visit: crewcarbon.com

Media Contact:
Clare Bennett
[email protected]

SOURCE CREW Carbon

Founded and seeded by Jasper Lau’s Era Funds, Exponent — the first integrated capital, expense management, and AI-powered accounting platform built for the $921 billion U.S. franchise economy— closes Series A anchored by Chailease, Taiwan’s largest leasing corporation, and Andre Koo, the Chairman of Chailease, with significant participation from K8 Capital, Inauguration Capital, and NBA star Kyle Kuzma.

To learn more, visit www.exponentfi.com

NEW YORK, May 14, 2026 — Exponent, the financial platform built for multi-location franchise operators, today announced it has raised more than $40 million in combined equity and credit capital to expand access to modern financial infrastructure for one of the largest and most underserved segments of American small business.

The round is anchored by a $7.5 million Series A equity investment led by Chailease, the multinational asset-backed finance institution founded in 1977 and one of the largest non-bank lenders in Asia, and Andre Koo, the Chairman of Chailease, with co-lead participation from Era, the New York-based investment firm founded by Jasper Lau and backed by family enterprises across 19 countries. Inauguration Capital, the venture studio founded by Tim Hwang, is a founding investor in Exponent. Hwang also serves as co-founder and chairman of Nitra, the AI-native financial operating platform for healthcare practices that recently surpassed $1 billion in annualized processing volume.

The financing further includes more than $30 million in committed credit facilities supporting Exponent’s lending products, including a previously announced $20 million revolving credit facility from Jovian Capital Management, with additional equity and debt capacity actively being added in the coming quarters.

Franchising is one of the largest engines of small business formation in the United States. Franchised establishments now generate more than $921 billion in annual output, support nearly 9 million American jobs, and operate across 845,000 locations nationwide, according to the International Franchise Association’s 2026 Economic Outlook. Roughly 43,000 multi-unit operators control more than half of every franchised unit in the country — yet the operators in the five-to-fifty location range, the segment where the next generation of regional and national franchise leaders are built, remain systematically underserved by both traditional banks and the consumer-grade fintechs that have dominated the last decade of innovation.

“Franchise operators are some of the best small business operators in the country. They build durable cash flows, employ millions of Americans, and own real assets. They have been handed antiquated tools to run their businesses on,” said Sohel Roopani, CEO of Exponent. “Capital providers don’t provide a good experience for multi-unit operations. Technology firms focus on brands, and not enough on operators. We built Exponent because this industry deserves a financial partner that actually speaks its language — and gives it the same caliber of capital, data, and software that’s being delivered to other high income, high asset sectors of the economy today.”

A purpose-built financial platform for a $921 billion industry

Exponent’s integrated platform combines three products engineered for the operating realities of multi-unit franchise businesses:

• Expansion and acquisition capital. Exponent’s lending product funds new unit build-outs, franchise acquisitions, remodels, and bridge financing — the capital that fuels operator growth. Loans are underwritten against unit-level economics and operator track record, with turnaround measured in days rather than the months typical of traditional bank development lines.
• A corporate charge card built for franchise operators. Exponent’s card delivers automatic accounting categorization and rich rewards for business spending cash back with no category restrictions, multi-entity controls designed for operators running multiple locations and legal entities, and a forthcoming suite of embedded microfinance features that extend working capital flexibility directly inside the card product.
• AI-powered accounting and bookkeeping, piloting end of summer. Most multi-unit operators today wait until the 5th to 15th of the following month to learn what their previous month actually earned. They run blind. Exponent’s accounting suite, with its first pilot cohort launching at the end of summer, will deliver real-time net financial estimates in the palm of operators’ hands at a cost of under $250 per location per month — compared to the $350 to $1,000 per location per month operators typically pay for outsourced bookkeeping that still produces unreliable, weeks-late data. A waitlist of more than 600 locations is already in place. The product will be staffed by U.S.-based accountants equipped with modern, AI-enabled tooling, returning onshore a category of skilled work that has been steadily moved offshore for decades because no one bothered to innovate on it.

“The accounting and bookkeeping products are going to be the most important thing we ship this year,” Roopani added. “There has been almost no real innovation in franchise accounting in twenty years. The default answer in this industry has been to send the work to India or the Philippines to chase labor arbitrage, because the underlying workflow is so manual that the only lever was cost. Modern AI changes that math entirely. We can build a better product, deliver real-time financials instead of month-end-plus-fifteen-days, and do it with American accountants. That’s a meaningfully better outcome for operators, for the profession, and for the country.”

Investor and customer momentum

Exponent serves more than 100 multi-unit franchise operators representing over 10,000 locations across the United States, with revenue growing approximately 800% year over year since the platform launched commercially in 2025. Operator customers include the Dhanani family’s HAZA Group (the largest Wendy’s franchisee in the world), Capstone Restaurant Group (the second-largest Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s franchisee), and the Chunara Group, TIG Corp, and Epic Group of Companies — among the most significant regional multi-unit platforms in the country.

Brands with operators or partnerships on the Exponent platform include Burger King, Dunkin’, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jack in the Box, Blaze Pizza, Dave’s Hot Chicken, Take 5 Oil Change, Grease Monkey, Dessange Paris, Nothing Bundt Cakes, and Golfzon — spanning QSR, casual dining, automotive services, personal care, and specialty recreation.

“The franchise operator segment is exactly the kind of market we look for at Era — large, essential, profoundly underserved by incumbents, and ready for a vertically integrated software-and-capital approach,” said Jasper Lau, founder and CEO of Era. “What the Exponent team has built is not a single product. It is the financial operating system this industry has been waiting for, and the team executing it has the depth in payments, credit, and operations to actually deliver it. Era is proud to have founded and seeded Exponent and to co-lead this round as the company scales.”

“Exponent is exactly the kind of company we exist to help build at Inauguration Capital: an AI-native financial platform serving a foundational American industry — the franchise operators who run the small businesses anchoring every community in the country,” said Tim Hwang, founder and managing partner of Inauguration Capital “Returning skilled accounting work onshore through modern AI tooling isn’t just a better product; it strengthens American competitiveness. We have deep conviction in this business model and in our team.”

What’s next

Exponent is actively expanding both its equity and credit capacity, with additional facility commitments in late-stage diligence. The company is hiring across engineering, credit, and accounting in its New York City headquarters, and is onboarding new franchise brands and operators on a rolling basis. The AI-powered accounting suite begins pilot with its first operator cohort at the end of summer.

About Exponent

Exponent is the financial operating system for America’s franchise economy. Built specifically for multi-location franchise operators — the segment that runs more than half of the country’s 845,000 franchised units — Exponent integrates expansion and acquisition lending, a corporate charge card with embedded microfinance, and an AI-powered accounting suite into a single platform. Exponent serves more than 100 multi-unit operators representing over 10,000 locations, across brands spanning QSR, casual dining, automotive services, personal care, and specialty recreation.

Exponent was founded and seeded by Era and is led by CEO Sohel Roopani, a former Visa and Stripe executive with more than a decade of experience building payments and credit infrastructure for the financial ecosystem. The company is headquartered in New York City and is backed by Era, Chailease, Inauguration Capital, Jovian Capital Management, K8 Capital, HAZA Foods, Chunara Group, NBA forward Kyle Kuzma, and other leading global investors and operators. Learn more at exponentfi.com.

About Era

Founded by Jasper Lau, Era is an investment firm anchored by some of the world’s most influential family enterprises across 19 countries and 25 industries. Era builds invests in category-defining technology companies, with a portfolio that includes Anduril, Crusoe, Thinking Machines, Harmonic, EquipmentShare, Oklo, and Nitra. Learn more at erafunds.com.

About Inauguration Capital

Founded by Tim Hwang, Inauguration Capital is a venture studio at the intersection of industrial policy and private innovation, creating iconic American companies that serve the national interest. The firm’s portfolio includes Nitra, the AI-native operating platform for healthcare practices, that has raised more than $200 million and processes over $1 billion in annualized transaction volume; Jericho Security, a generative AI cyber defense platform; and Vibranium Labs, building reliability infrastructure for AI-driven cloud software. Learn more at inaugurationcap.com.

About Chailease

Founded in 1977, Chailease is Taiwan’s largest leasing firm and one of Asia’s largest non-bank financial institutions, with more than $30 billion in assets under management and a 49-year history in asset-backed lending, equipment finance, and credit solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises across more than ten countries. Learn more at chailease.com.

SOURCE Exponent

Women-led angel group aims to educate new investors and close the funding gap for female founders with 2026 programming; inaugural pitch event

ATLANTA, May 14, 2026 — TBH Angels, a women-founded angel investment group dedicated to supporting early-stage women founders and cultivating the next generation of investors, today officially announces its new brand identity and 2026 programming for members and founders.

Formerly launched as ATL TrailblazHER Angels, the organization’s rebrand to TBH Angels reflects a bold evolution of its mission to create greater access to capital, community and opportunity for women entrepreneurs and underrepresented founders. Rooted in Atlanta’s thriving startup ecosystem, with a focus on national growth, TBH Angels is building a network of accredited investors, founders and advocates committed to reshaping the future of early-stage investing.

“TBH Angels was created to address a challenge we can no longer afford to ignore: talented female founders continue to be dramatically underfunded despite consistently outperforming expectations,” said Jen Bonnett founding board member and former Vice President of Technology and Entrepreneurship at Invest Atlanta.

The need for this work remains critical:

• Female founders continue to miss out on 97% of venture capital opportunities.
• Black women founders receive just 0.27% of venture funding.
• Female-founded companies generated 35% higher return on investment than male-led companies last year.

“Beyond funding, our founding board was deliberately curated to provide meaningful guidance, strategic connections and hands-on support to the founders we back. TBH Angels is designed to be a true growth partner for women entrepreneurs navigating the challenges of scaling their businesses. As part of our efforts, we look forward to collaborating with allied groups and resources in our ecosystem,” says Genna Keller, founding board chair and Co-CEO of Trevelino/Keller.

TBH Angels was founded to close what the organization calls the “double-sided funding gap” by providing not only organized capital for underserved founders but also organized access for investors.

With two membership pathways, TBH Angels is designed to meet investors where they are in their angel investing journey. The organization’s Core Membership is designed for accredited investors and includes annual dues of $1,000 along with a minimum investment commitment of $10,000 annually for two years. Core members receive access to a curated selection of founders looking for investment, choose were to invest their funds and receive exclusive access to founder pitch days, investor programming and curated networking opportunities.

TBH Angels also offers a Collective Membership, an educational and community-focused option with annual dues of $500 and no investment commitment requirement, providing access to community events and opportunities to upgrade into Core Membership over time. TBH Angels invites accredited investors, founders, strategic partners and community advocates to join the movement and help create a more equitable future for entrepreneurship and innovation.

TBH Angels’ upcoming events will continue to focus on community and education, including WEI Graduation on June 9^th and Atlanta Tech Week on August 9^th. TBH Angels inaugural pitch day is September 29^th. Call for founder applications and details will be released later this summer.

For more information about TBH Angels, membership opportunities and upcoming events, visit: TBHAngels.com, LinkedIn and Instagram.

About TBH Angels

TBH Angels is a women-founded angel investment group dedicated to funding and supporting early-stage women founders while cultivating the next generation of women angel investors. Through strategic capital deployment, educational programming and community-building initiatives, TBH Angels empowers founders with access to capital, mentorship and meaningful investor relationships, while equipping experienced and emerging investors with the tools, network and opportunities to participate more actively in angel investing. The organization brings together a community committed to building a stronger, more inclusive startup ecosystem. To learn more about TBH Angels, follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram.

CONTACT: Kate Clay, [email protected] 

SOURCE TBH Angels