SINGAPUR, 28. Januar 2026 — EPG hat kürzlich seine Serie-B-Finanzierung abgeschlossen und dabei fast 100 Millionen US-Dollar eingeworben. Die Runde wurde von den internationalen Investmentfirmen Forebright und Silicon Peak gemeinsam angeführt, mit Beteiligung von GL Ventures, NRL Capital, YF Capital und Rockets Capital. Im Jahr 2025 schloss EPG zudem seine Serie-A- und Serie-A+-Runden ab und nahm dabei mehrere zehn Millionen US-Dollar von Investoren auf, darunter Eastern Bell VC. Damit schuf das Unternehmen eine solide Grundlage für die nächste Wachstumsphase.

EPG wurde 2004 von einem Team gegründet, das über mehr als zwei Jahrzehnte Branchenerfahrung verfügt, und ist ein Anbieter modularer Rechenzentrumslösungen, der auf die werkseitig vorgefertigte Integration von Energieversorgung, IT sowie Kühlsystemen spezialisiert ist. Die Erlöse aus der Serie-B-Finanzierung dienen der Kapazitätserweiterung, dem Betriebskapital sowie dem globalen Wachstum und stärken die Fähigkeit von EPG, weltweit große KI-Rechenzentren mit hoher Leistungsdichte bereitzustellen.

Die globale Rechenzentrumsbranche steht vor wachsenden Effizienzproblemen, insbesondere in Überseemärkten wie Südostasien und Europa, wo schwache lokale Lieferketten und ein Mangel an qualifizierten Arbeitskräften zu langen Bauzyklen und höheren Kosten führen. Gleichzeitig erhöhen KI-gesteuerte Arbeitslasten die Anforderungen an Liefergeschwindigkeit, Leistungsdichte und thermische Effizienz, wodurch herkömmliche Konstruktionsmodelle an ihre Grenzen stoßen.

Vor diesem Hintergrund begegnet EPG diesen Herausforderungen mit modularen, werkseitig vorgefertigten Rechenzentrumslösungen. Der MDC-Ansatz verlagert den Großteil der Bauaktivitäten in die Fabrik, wo Module vor der schnellen Installation und Inbetriebnahme vor Ort montiert sowie getestet werden. Gestützt auf Fertigungsstandorte in Johor Bahru und Shanghai, durchgängige globale Teams für die Umsetzung sowie hauseigene Technologien wie Cold-Plate-Flüssigkühlsysteme mit einem PUE-Wert von unter 1,3 und selbst entwickelte Dieselgeneratoraggregate ermöglicht EPG eine schnellere, zuverlässigere sowie kosteneffiziente Bereitstellung von Rechenzentren in internationalen Märkten.

Alick Wan, Gründer, Vorsitzender und Geschäftsführer von EPG, sagte: „Diese Serie-B-Finanzierung spiegelt das große Vertrauen führender globaler Investoren wider. Auch in Zukunft werden wir weiter in Forschung und Entwicklung, Fertigung sowie globale Lieferkapazitäten investieren, um Kunden weltweit bei der schnellen und zuverlässigen Bereitstellung von Rechenzentren zu unterstützen.”

Weitere Informationen finden Sie auf www.epg-module.com oder [email protected]. 

Informationen zu EPG

EPG ist ein in Singapur ansässiger Anbieter modularer sowie vorgefertigter Rechenzentrumsinfrastruktur, gestützt auf zwei Forschungs- und Entwicklungszentren in Singapur sowie in Shanghai und fortschrittliche Fertigungsstandorte in Malaysia sowie China. Mit über 20 Jahren Engineering-Expertise liefert EPG innovative sowie nachhaltige Lösungen für Hyperscale-, Cloud- sowie Unternehmensbereitstellungen in APAC, EMEA, Nord- und Südamerika sowie weiteren globalen Märkten.

SINGAPOUR, 28 janvier 2026 — EPG a récemment conclu son financement de série B en levant près de 100 millions de dollars américains. Ce tour de table a été organisé conjointement par les sociétés d’investissement internationales Forebright et Silicon Peak, avec la participation de GL Ventures, NRL Capital, YF Capital et Rockets Capital. En 2025, EPG a également conclu ses séries A et A+, levant des dizaines de millions de dollars américains auprès d’investisseurs tels qu’Eastern Bell VC, posant ainsi des bases solides pour sa prochaine phase de croissance.

Fondée en 2004 par une équipe ayant plus de vingt ans d’expérience dans l’industrie, EPG est un fournisseur de solutions modulaires pour centres de données, spécialisé dans l’intégration de systèmes d’alimentation, d’informatique et de refroidissement préfabriqués en usine. Le produit du financement de la série B permettra d’augmenter la capacité, le fonds de roulement et la croissance mondiale, renforçant ainsi la capacité d’EPG à fournir à l’échelle mondiale, des centres de données d’IA à grande échelle et à haute densité de puissance.

Le secteur mondial des centres de données est confrontée à des défis croissants en matière d’efficacité, en particulier sur les marchés étrangers tels que l’Asie du Sud-Est et l’Europe, où la faiblesse des chaînes d’approvisionnement locales et la pénurie de main-d’œuvre qualifiée entraînent des cycles de construction longs et des coûts plus élevés. Parallèlement, les charges de travail pilotées par l’IA augmentent les exigences en matière de vitesse de livraison, de densité de puissance et d’efficacité thermique et les modèles de construction traditionnels atteignent leurs limites.

Dans ce contexte, EPG relève ces défis avec des solutions modulaires de centres de données préfabriquées en usine. Son approche de centre de données modulaire transfère la majorité des activités de construction à l’usine, dans laquelle les modules sont assemblés et testés avant d’être rapidement installés et mis en service sur le site. S’appuyant sur des centres de fabrication à Johor Bahru et Shanghai, des équipes de livraison mondiales de bout en bout et des technologies internes telles que des systèmes de refroidissement liquide à plaque froide atteignant une efficacité énergétique inférieure à 1,3 et des groupes électrogènes diesel auto-développés, EPG permet un déploiement international plus rapide, plus fiable et plus rentable des centres de données.

Alick Wan, fondateur, président et directeur général d’EPG, a déclaré : « Ce financement de série B témoigne de la confiance des principaux investisseurs mondiaux. À l’avenir, nous continuerons à investir dans la recherche et le développement, la fabrication et les capacités de livraison mondiales afin de permettre un déploiement rapide et fiable des centres de données pour les clients du monde entier. »

Pour plus d’informations, consultez le site www.epg-module.com ou contacter [email protected]. 

À propos d’EPG

EPG est un fournisseur d’infrastructures modulaires et préfabriquées pour centres de données, basé à Singapour, qui s’appuie sur deux centres de recherche et développement à Singapour et à Shanghai et sur des centres de production avancés en Malaisie et en Chine. Avec plus de 20 ans d’expertise en ingénierie, EPG fournit des solutions innovantes et durables pour les déploiements hyper-échelle, cloud et d’entreprise à travers l’APAC, l’EMEA, les Amériques et d’autres marchés mondiaux.

Investment advances Balerion’s thesis on mission-critical infrastructure, as ground systems emerge as a defining bottleneck in expanding the space economy

DALLAS, Jan. 27, 2026 — Balerion Space Ventures today announced its strategic investment in Northwood Space’s $100 million Series B funding round. The investment represents Balerion’s continued deployment of capital into the foundational infrastructure powering the emerging space economy and reinforces the firm’s position as a leading investor in companies building the critical systems required to scale space operations.

“Private capital is accelerating the commercialization of space at an unprecedented pace,” said Phil Scully, Co-Founder and General Partner at Balerion Space Ventures. “As launch costs collapse, the bottleneck shifts to Earth. Ground infrastructure is the critical foundation every orbital mission depends on, and the companies building that enabling layer will define the space economy for decades to come. That’s where Balerion invests.”

The investment reflects Balerion’s conviction that the next phase of value creation in the space economy will be driven by infrastructure companies addressing real operational constraints. As orbital activity accelerates and satellite constellations scale, ground systems have emerged as a defining limitation. Northwood’s vertically integrated approach aligns directly with Balerion’s strategy of backing foundational platforms that unlock scale across commercial and government missions.

Northwood also announced a $49.8 million contract award from the U.S. Space Force to upgrade the Satellite Control Network, validating the dual-use value proposition that is central to Balerion’s portfolio strategy across space and defense technologies.

Balerion’s investment in Northwood follows the firm’s recent announcements of investments in Antares Industries, Samara Aerospace, and Valar Atomics, demonstrating the firm’s systematic approach to backing mission-critical platforms across launch, in-orbit systems, advanced manufacturing, energy, and dual-use defense technologies. The firm’s multi-disciplinary team leverages deep expertise in aerospace engineering, venture capital, and institutional investing to identify and support companies building the backbone of the new space economy.

About Balerion Space Ventures
Balerion Space Ventures is a frontier technology capital firm backing the infrastructure of the emerging space and national security economy. The firm’s multi-disciplinary team, with expertise spanning aerospace engineering, venture capital, and institutional investing, has been investing in companies defining the next industrial revolution beyond Earth’s surface since 2022. With a portfolio of investments across launch, in-orbit systems, advanced manufacturing, energy, and dual-use defense technologies, Balerion focuses on mission-critical platforms with durable, scalable economics. The firm backs founders building the backbone of the space economy as private enterprise unlocks the next generation of trillion-dollar markets. For more information, visit www.balerionspace.com.

Media Contact:
Helen Ferguson
JConnelly
973-214-4306
[email protected]

SOURCE Balerion Space Ventures

Tenbin’s mission is to make tokenized assets better than their offchain counterparts by combining TradFi liquidity with DeFi composability, enabling onchain assets to trade, settle, and earn yield in ways previously inaccessible to traditional and crypto markets. 

NEW YORK, Jan. 27, 2026 — Tenbin Labs, a next-generation tokenization protocol, announced a $7 million seed round led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Wintermute Ventures, FalconX, GSR, Nascent, Variant, Archetype, Bankless Ventures and more. Tenbin is building the next generation of tokenized asset infrastructure by making onchain assets faster, more liquid, and more capable than their offchain counterparts. Tenbin’s mission is to accelerate the global adoption of onchain capital markets and tokenized assets, starting with gold, FX, and commodities.

Tokenization has exploded over the past few years. Treasuries, credit, gold, and FX are now being tokenized onchain at a rapid pace. The global tokenized asset market (excluding stablecoins) is valued at $33 billion in 2025 and, according to research from Deutsche Bank, is projected to reach $3-4 trillion by 2030 (150%+ CAGR). Institutional allocators are expected to deploy 7–9% of their portfolios into tokenized assets by 2027.

However, most tokenized assets are structurally inferior to their offchain equivalents, with limited utility and scalability. Today’s tokenization models wrap assets without rebuilding the market infrastructure that gives these assets utility. As a result, tokenized gold, FX, and commodities often trade with shallow liquidity, delayed settlement times, and onchain price distortions that limit their usefulness as collateral or store-of-value. Tenbin was launched to solve this.

Tenbin reverses this pattern by connecting onchain assets directly to the global derivatives infrastructure where real liquidity resides, starting with the CME futures markets. Tenbin’s architecture aligns pricing, liquidity, and yield with the real-world markets underlying each asset. This design enables Tenbin’s tokenized assets to inherit deep real-world liquidity onchain while unlocking yield originating from both institutional carry and DeFi. The result is a new class of institutional-grade, yield-bearing, tokenized assets that remain fully liquid and composable across the onchain ecosystem.

“Tokenization only works if onchain assets become more useful than their off-chain equivalents. Simply wrapping gold or FX onchain without rebuilding the underlying market structure creates assets that are slower, less liquid, and harder to use. Tenbin is the solution built to fix this broken structure,” said Yuki Yuminaga, Co-Founder & CEO, Tenbin Labs who previously was a research partner at Fenbushi and Head of Growth at Sorella. “Our goal is simple, it is to make tokenized assets trade more efficiently, settle faster, and deliver utility that legacy off-chain assets cannot offer.”

Through a structured exposure mechanism and a dual onchain/offchain collateral architecture, Tenbin enables:

• ≈30-second minting and redemption (≈3 Ethereum blocks)
• Zero mint/redemption fees under normal conditions
• Yield-bearing exposure sourced from institutional carry and onchain stablecoin yield
• Deep liquidity inherited from underlying TradFi markets
• Full composability across the DeFi ecosystem

“What impressed us about Tenbin is their approach. They’re not wrapping assets, they’re rebuilding the entire issuance and liquidity stack for onchain markets. We believe Tenbin will play a foundational role in the evolution of onchain capital markets,” said Will Nuelle, General Partner of Galaxy Ventures

Tenbin will debut its first asset, yield-bearing tokenized gold, in early 2026, through integrations with major market makers and prime brokers including Hidden Road, Ripple Prime, and additional partners to be announced.

Following the gold launch, Tenbin will expand its asset suite to include global FX currencies (BRL, MXN, JPY, etc.), commodities and metals, energy products and more. 

About Tenbin Labs 

Tenbin is a tokenization protocol founded on a simple but uncompromising belief that tokenized assets should be better than the assets they represent. Faster to redeem, easier to use, more composable, and capable of generating yield. By combining institutional derivatives infrastructure with transparent on-chain collateral systems, Tenbin creates a new class of assets that are liquid, accessible, yield-bearing, and instantly redeemable. Tenbin is building the next foundation for the onchain financial system. For more information, please visit https://tenbinlabs.xyz/.

SOURCE Tenbin Labs

The company’s AI agents execute audit plans end-to-end, reducing the cost, friction, and manual work of SOX compliance

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27, 2026 — Midship, an AI-native platform automating Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) testing and internal audit workflows, today announced  $4.15 million in seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Seguin Ventures and additional angel investors. The funding will be used to scale its team and accelerate adoption among public companies facing rising audit complexity, talent shortages, and mounting compliance costs.

The average U.S. public company spends roughly $2.3 million annually on SOX audit services, with an estimated 10x more in hidden costs by internal teams across finance, IT, and operations. Despite decades of tooling, SOX testing remains largely manual, tying up internal audit teams in repetitive evidence collection, testing, and documentation rather than higher-value advisory work.

Midship’s agentic AI takes on the full SOX testing lifecycle. The platform’s agents follow audit plans, reason over complex enterprise documentation, perform control testing, and generate audit-ready work papers, delivering a complete evidence trail that reduces manual effort while keeping human auditors firmly in the loop.

Founded by Kieran Taylor (CEO), Aahel Iyer (CPO), and Max Maio (CTO), Midship was born out of the team’s firsthand experience navigating SOX audits at scale. The founders supported audit and compliance teams at companies including Instacart, Deloitte, Amazon, Lyft, Faire, and PayPal, before ultimately coming together as a product trio at Dashworks (acquired by HubSpot). While preparing Instacart for its IPO, the team experienced the full burden of first-year SOX compliance, sparking an internal AI hackathon that uncovered a larger opportunity: automating the entire SOX testing lifecycle.

“SOX was meant to address core risk, not bog audit teams down with busy work,” said Kieran Taylor, CEO and co-founder of Midship. “Teams spend months proving controls work instead of improving how the business runs. Midship flips that equation by letting AI handle the execution, evidence, and documentation, so humans can focus on judgment and real risk.”

Midship differentiates itself from legacy SOX platforms by going beyond workflow management. While systems of record like AuditBoard and Workiva track the administration of a SOX program, Midship automates the actual testing itself. Unlike deterministic automation tools, Midship’s fully agentic approach can handle the real-world variability and unstructured data inherent in enterprise audit work.

“While most ‘AI for audit’ tools focus on replacing individual tasks,” said Amy Cheetham, Partner at Costanoa. “Midship goes further by enabling agents to execute end to end testing across entire audit programs. This lets teams keep controls in their native audit language and allow the agents to determine the steps needed to complete the work.”

Midship is already being used by leading public companies, including a top social media platform and major fintechs, helping internal audit teams reduce manual effort and scale their impact without growing headcount.

To learn more, visit www.midship.ai.

About Midship
Midship is an AI-native platform that automates SOX testing and internal audit workflows. Its agentic AI follows audit plans, performs control tests, evaluates enterprise evidence, and generates fully documented work papers, allowing audit teams to do more with less while maintaining rigor and accountability. Founded by former operators at Instacart, Dashworks, and other leading technology companies, Midship is redefining how audit work gets done.

About Costanoa Ventures
Costanoa exists to elevate founders building companies of consequence. We lead investments from formation through Series A in Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. With $2.3B AUM, we’re boutique by design—making fewer investments to deliver deeper expertise and operational support when it matters most: the early, defining stages of growth. For more information, please visit www.costanoa.vc.

Media Contact:
[email protected] 

SOURCE Midship

Unicorn status validates momentum as the only unified global payments network for today’s borderless, tokenized economy

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27, 2026 — Mesh, the leading crypto payments network, today announced it closed a $75 million Series C funding round, bringing its total amount raised to over $200 million and valuing the company at $1B. Dragonfly Capital led the round, with participation from Paradigm, Moderne Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, SBI Investment, and Liberty City Ventures.

Crypto is making the payment rails built for an analog world obsolete, and Mesh is leading this movement by connecting a fragmented global crypto market and bypassing the slow settlements and excessive fees long established by traditional finance. As the industry moves from experimentation to real-world adoption, capital is increasingly flowing toward infrastructure rather than speculation, with Mesh standing out as the only unified payment network for a borderless, tokenized economy.

The round also accelerates Mesh’s expansion into regions like Latin America, Asia and Europe, fueling product development and strengthening a global network that already reaches more than 900 million users worldwide. Previously, the company announced its expansion into India, citing the country’s young, tech-savvy population and $125B+ in annual remittances as reasons for the move. Mesh also previously announced support for Ripple USD and forged new partnerships with Paxos and Rain.

“Crypto is crowded by design, with new tokens and new protocols emerging every day,” said Bam Azizi, Co-founder and CEO of Mesh. “That fragmentation creates real friction in the customer payment experience. We are focused on building the necessary infrastructure now to connect wallets, chains, and assets, allowing them to function as a unified network. This funding validates that the winners of the next decade won’t be those who issue the most tokens, but those who build the network of networks that makes traditional card rails obsolete.”

“Payments are entering a new era where value moves as software. Mesh is building the interoperability layer that makes crypto practical at scale: consumers can spend any asset, merchants can settle instantly in the stablecoin or fiat they want, and the complexity stays under the hood. That ‘any-to-any’ experience is exactly what mainstream adoption demands, and we’re excited to lead this round as Mesh becomes the universal network for global, compliant crypto payments,” said Rob Hadick, General Partner at Dragonfly.

Solving the “Stablecoin Paradox” Through Universal Interoperability

While the rapid growth of new stablecoins and blockchains signals a healthy industry, it’s also reintroducing fragmentation that crypto was designed to solve. In 2025, stablecoins reached a historic $300B market cap and processed over $27T in annual transaction volume.

This rapid growth has created isolated pockets of liquidity, however, forcing users to navigate a maze of disparate platforms and complex network choices. Mesh serves as the neutral layer that unifies this fragmented landscape, ensuring the future of payments is built on infrastructure that makes all assets universally spendable.

As the only network that works with all crypto, Mesh remains asset-agnostic, providing the infrastructure that allows the entire industry to function as a single system. Through its proprietary SmartFunding technology, Mesh enables a true “any-to-any” advantage: consumers pay with any asset they hold – from Bitcoin to Solana – while merchants receive instant settlement in their preferred stablecoin (e.g., USDC or PYUSD) or local currency (e.g., dollars or euros).

A portion of Mesh’s $75M Series C round was settled using stablecoins to demonstrate that this infrastructure is ready for high-stakes, real-world use. This milestone serves as definitive proof that global institutions are now comfortably relying on blockchain-native settlement when enterprise-grade execution, auditability, and controls are firmly in place.

For more information about Mesh, visit https://meshpay.com/.

About Mesh
Founded in 2020, Mesh is building the first global crypto payments network, connecting hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and financial services platforms to enable seamless digital asset payments and conversions. By unifying these platforms into a single network, Mesh is pioneering an open, connected, and secure ecosystem for digital finance. For more information, visit https://www.meshpay.com/. 

Contact: [email protected]

About Dragonfly Capital
Dragonfly is a $4B crypto-focused global investment firm. Since 2017, Dragonfly has been at the forefront of blockchain and crypto innovation with a long-term oriented, technical, and research-driven approach, having been early backers of some of the most influential protocols and companies in the industry.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Mesh

With today’s launch, any finance team can begin using Concourse for free in minutes through a new open-access onboarding experience. Teams can immediately connect core data sources such as QuickBooks, Ramp, Stripe, or CSVs, without custom setup or long implementation cycles. Previously available only through limited access and supported by a multi-thousand company waitlist, Concourse is now bringing its enterprise-grade AI agents to teams of all sizes, with transparent, usage-based pricing.

“Finance teams have long been forced to choose between flexibility and automation,” said Matthieu Hafemeister, CEO and Co-Founder of Concourse. “Concourse eliminates that tradeoff by embedding AI agents directly into the financial stack. Our agents automate analysis using natural language, while showing their work, from logic to underlying queries, so teams can trust the answers and understand what’s driving the business.”

While traditional finance software relies on rigid, deterministic workflows, critical insights still live across spreadsheets and disconnected systems. As companies scale, this fragmentation creates manual work, slows decision-making, and limits finance teams’ ability to keep up with the pace of the business. Concourse addresses this by connecting AI agents directly to a company’s existing financial stack, including ERPs, billing systems, CRMs, expense tools, and data warehouses.

Customers using Concourse are able to move faster and operate with significantly greater capacity. Teams generate reports and presentation-ready outputs in minutes, automate recurring analysis through proactive reporting agents, and keep pace as the business grows. Finance teams report reducing manual work by up to 75%, freeing leaders to focus on higher-value analysis rather than data manipulation. Within months of adoption, teams typically produce multiple times more analysis than before, driving deeper insights and better decision-making.

“Concourse is the kind of company we like to fund with strong product-market fit, clear and growing demand,” said Dalton Caldwell, Co-Founder and Partner at Standard Capital. “Matthieu and Ted have already demonstrated how impactful these agents can be inside large organizations. We’re excited to support this next phase, where any finance team can start using Concourse immediately,” added Paul Buchheit, Co-Founder and Partner at Standard Capital.

Concourse agents are already deployed across finance teams at companies including Palo Alto Networks, Front, and Tecovas, spanning Fortune 500 enterprises, unicorns, and high-growth startups. With the platform now generally available, Concourse is extending the same capabilities trusted by large enterprises to finance teams of any size. The Series A funding will also support continued investment in agent capabilities for enterprise customers, while broadening access across the broader finance market.

Concourse includes a built-in transparency panel that surfaces each agent’s reasoning, including the underlying SQL and Python used to generate outputs. The platform is designed with enterprise-grade security and compliance, including SOC 2 Type II certification, encryption, SAML/SSO support, and strict data-handling controls. The new funding will further support investments in security, reliability, and agent development as Concourse continues to scale.

ABOUT CONCOURSE

Concourse builds AI agents for corporate finance teams. The platform works alongside finance teams to automate the most manual and time-consuming aspects of day-to-day operations. Concourse’s agents are purpose-built for finance, with full connectivity to a company’s existing financial systems, enabling teams to retrieve and analyze data through natural language and dramatically increase productivity. Concourse is backed by leading Silicon Valley investors including Standard Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, and Y Combinator.

Learn more at www.concourse.ai or connect with us via LinkedIn or X.

MEDIA CONTACT
[email protected]

SOURCE Concourse

New funding will scale a privacy-first platform that helps counselors adapt as admissions outcomes change year to year

NEW YORK, Jan. 27, 2026 — Nerd Apply, a privacy-first platform for outcome-driven college counseling, today announced it has raised $3.2 million in seed funding. The round included participation from Riverpark Ventures, Alumni Ventures, 1.61 Ventures and a group of highly notable angel investors including Gokul Rajaram and David Krane, CEO and Managing Partner of Google Ventures. The new capital will be used to scale distribution, deepen the company’s security, compliance, data governance infrastructure, and enable overall company growth.

Additional angel investors in the round include Will Griffith, Founder of ICONIQ Growth, Jeff Crowe, Managing Partner of Norwest Ventures and Chris Moore, Partner at Redpoint Ventures. The funding will also support continued product development to make the company’s qualitative admissions outcomes data more usable and actionable within counselor workflows and real-world advising conversations, alongside disciplined investments in go-to-market, customer success, and select engineering and product roles as the company scales.

“Students are making life-shaping decisions with incomplete or misleading information,” said Braden Weissman and Cooper Weissman, Co-Founders of Nerd Apply. “By aggregating real admissions outcomes from real students, we give counselors the clarity so they can guide students with confidence. This seed round allows us to scale responsibly while maintaining our standards for privacy, security, and trust.”

College admissions have grown increasingly complex, with students navigating rankings, anecdotes, and headlines while counselors are expected to provide confident, evidence-based guidance with limited reliable data. Nerd Apply addresses this gap by aggregating completed, fully de-identified admissions outcomes shared by counselors for counselors, enabling more realistic guidance without exposing student identities.

“I’m proud to be an investor in Nerd Apply, a company that is fundamentally shifting college counseling from guesswork to data-driven certainty,” said Gokul Rajaram. “By leveraging the world’s largest dataset of successful applications, they are empowering advisors with the objective insights needed to help every student find their best-fit path.”

As Nerd Apply grows, the company aims to become the trusted infrastructure for qualitative admissions outcomes data, helping counselors widen options, reduce uncertainty, and bring greater transparency to the college admissions process.

“Nerd Apply’s organic traction reflects a stellar team that is deeply committed to bringing clarity to an increasingly difficult to navigate college admissions process,” said Chris Moore. “The company sits at the intersection of data infrastructure, analytics, and trusted platforms – areas where their exceptional group of investors have spent decades operating. I’m excited to participate in one of the most influential rounds in education technology that is already delivering meaningful education outcomes at scale.”

ABOUT NERD APPLY
Nerd Apply helps students find their best-match schools by giving counselors a privacy-first data platform. Trusted by 500+ counselors and powered by over 100,000 real applications, Nerd Apply makes it easy to organize student information, understand admissions patterns, and share insights without exposing identities. Instead of chasing the same 80 ultra-selective colleges, counselors use Nerd Apply to widen options, set clear expectations, and reduce anxiety for families.

Media Contact:
Paul Bilardo
[email protected]

SOURCE Nerd Apply

AURORA, Colo., Jan. 27, 2026 — Navidence, a technology company focused on defining health data and supporting researchers in study design, today announced it has completed its Series Seed preferred funding round, co-led by Grand Ventures (Grand Rapids, Michigan) and Nina Capital (Barcelona, Spain).

The life sciences industry is increasingly embracing ethically obtained health data, or real-world data (RWD), but determining which RWD is appropriate for specific research use cases, such as clinical trials, remains hampered by tedious, manual processes that burden research teams.

Founded in 2022, Navidence offers AI-native technology and professional services that make it radically easier to design and deploy clinical research studies using RWD. The company’s platform develops Computable Operational Definitions (CODefs)—standardized, human and computer readable definitions of key study elements—creating a bridge between clinical healthcare and research while providing the consistency, precision, efficiency, and trust demanded by regulatory agencies.

“There’s an enormous opportunity to make real-world data more usable and trustworthy,” said Aaron Kamauu, CEO and co-founder of Navidence. “With this funding, we’re advancing tools that directly reduce burdens on research teams, making the work—from protocol creation to study execution—more efficient and quickly aligning stakeholders throughout the process.”

RWD plays an increasingly significant role in how therapies are developed, evaluated, and used, but researchers often struggle with fragmented and inconsistent definitions—the basic building blocks of data science. Navidence’s approach combines technology, curated CODef libraries, and expert services so teams can more confidently design studies, agnostically and objectively selecting fit-for-purpose RWD.

“As real-world data becomes increasingly central to drug development and regulatory decision-making, the industry needs more than access to data—it needs clarity, consistency, and trust in how that data is defined and used,” said James Hill, Partner at Grand Ventures. “Navidence is building foundational infrastructure that helps life sciences teams translate complex, fragmented healthcare data into standardized, computable definitions that can be reused and trusted across studies. Their combination of software and thought-leading domain expertise is deeply embedded in customer workflows, and we believe it positions Navidence to become core infrastructure for RWD-driven research.”

“At Nina Capital, we back companies that solve fundamental bottlenecks in healthcare through meaningful innovation,” said Sebastian Anastassiou, Partner and Head of Investments at Nina Capital. “Navidence is providing the essential ‘Rosetta Stone’ for real-world data, transforming disparate health information into standardized, computable evidence. By bridging the gap between clinical care and rigorous research, they aren’t just improving study design—they’re building the infrastructure necessary to make RWD-driven research a global standard.”

About Grand Ventures

Grand Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in high-growth companies across sectors including digital health, Fintech, and DevOps. The firm partners with founding teams in the U.S. and beyond to help them scale category-defining technologies.

About Nina Capital

Nina Capital is a European venture capital firm based in Barcelona that invests in early-stage health technology companies at the intersection of data, computing, and life sciences. The firm backs founders around the world building technology-enabled solutions to address critical healthcare needs, deploying pre-seed and seed capital to fuel their growth.

About Navidence

Navidence is a technology company that helps healthcare and life sciences organizations design and assess the use of real-world data in clinical research studies and clinical trials. Through its platform and Computable Operational Definitions (CODefs), Navidence enables consistent, transparent, and reproducible analysis of complex real-world data to support smarter research and better patient outcomes.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Andrew Ecob
Chief Commercial Officer
Navidence, Inc.
+1 (833) 991- 0344
[email protected]
navidence.com

SOURCE Navidence, Inc.