KYIV, Ukraine and ODENSE, Denmark, July 9, 2026 — MITS Capital has invested in Dropla Tech, a Danish-Ukrainian dual-use defense technology company that develops edge-AI explosive-threat detection systems and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that respond to them.

This partnership will support Dropla Tech’s next stage of growth as the company scales its production capacity and deepens integration between Ukraine’s and Europe’s defense tech ecosystems. The deal is also part of a broader strategy to strengthen the Danish-Ukrainian defense-industrial cooperation axis for both parties.

The deal size and the company’s valuation were not disclosed.

Founded by four Ukrainians in 2023 and headquartered in Odense, Denmark, Dropla Tech operates with engineering and operations in Ukraine (DROPLA TEK LLC). “We were not looking for capital. We were looking for infrastructure,” said Viacheslav Shvaidak, co-founder and CEO of Dropla Tech. “MITS Capital brings an operating back office across jurisdictions, a portfolio of Ukrainian defense companies we can build with on joint R&D, sub-integration, and interoperability,” he adds. “For a company scaling between Denmark and Ukraine, that is worth more than any check.”

As part of the partnership, Dropla Tech joined the MITS Acceleration Program, which focuses on operational scaling, NATO market entry, and access to expertise across the MITS Capital platform. It has become one of the eight companies in MITS Accelerator’s Batch 3 and the first participant from the cohort to be publicly disclosed.

“We are excited to welcome Dropla Tech to the MITS family,” said Perry Boyle, co-founder and CEO of MITS Capital. “Viacheslav has achieved an important feat of creating a truly transnational Danish-Ukrainian defense company. We look forward to working with Dropla Tech’s team as a key pillar of MITS Capital’s mission: to defeat Russia in Ukraine and integrate Ukraine into Europe’s defense architecture.”

Dropla Tech builds AI that detects small-sized explosive threats. The company’s flagship product, Blue Eyes Warbox, is an edge-AI system that detects and identifies explosive threats – mines, IEDs, and, most importantly, ambush drones – protecting military personnel. It operates in real time on aerial sensor feeds, directly at the tactical edge, and without cloud connectivity. The system will also be used for humanitarian demining in the future.

Blue Eyes is codified in the NATO Stock System under NATO Stock Number 7010-61-019-5238, assigned by Ukraine’s National Codification Bureau. This makes the system procurable by NATO members through standard channels. Blue Eyes is currently deployed with Ukrainian Armed Forces units and several Ukrainian security services.

In parallel, the company has created two modular UGV platforms: Dropla 4×4 and Dropla 6×6. The platforms support CASEVAC, logistics, ISR, RWS and counter-UAS configurations. Both products were initially created to operate with the Blue Eyes system and are designed for European series production.

Dropla Tech’s third product is Dropla Seer, a mobile, multi-sensor reconnaissance complex that combines aerial and ground sensors with Blue Eyes AI processing for postwar humanitarian mine action.

In August 2025, Dropla Tech secured €2.4 million from Maj Invest, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), Final Frontier, and other investors to accelerate its edge-AI capabilities. In less than a year, the company increased the number of confirmed explosive-threat detections in Ukraine from several hundred to more than 5,000, with accuracy above 90%.

One of Dropla Tech’s core product advantages is that its systems are designed to plug into larger unmanned ecosystems, creating opportunities to expand its network of strategic partnerships with Ukrainian and European defense technology players. In July 2026, the company announced that it had started integrating its UGVs into MOSAIC UXS, the AI-powered mission software developed by Germany’s Quantum Systems. Earlier, at Eurosatory 2026, Dropla Tech signed a memorandum of cooperation with Frontline Robotics, a Ukrainian developer of robotic systems.

Dropla Tech’s next major ambition is to participate in the Build with Ukraine program while scaling production capacity to up to 3,000 UGVs per year, Viacheslav Shvaidak said. MITS Capital’s portfolio, which includes 20 defense technology companies as of July 2026, gives Dropla Tech a broader network of potential technology and business partners. This creates opportunities for cooperation across sensing, electronic warfare, communications, and unmanned systems.

About Dropla Tech. A Danish-Ukrainian dual-use defense technology company headquartered in Odense, Denmark, with engineering and operations in Ukraine (DROPLA TEK LLC). Dropla Tech develops Blue Eyes, a NATO-codified edge-AI explosive threat detection system (NSN 7010-61-019-5238) with more than 5,000 confirmed detections in Ukraine, and the Dropla 4×4 and Dropla 6×6 unmanned ground vehicles, designed for European series production. The product line also includes Dropla Seer, a mobile multi-sensor reconnaissance complex deployed in Ukraine.

About MITS Capital: An American-Ukrainian investment group established in early 2024 to channel capital into Ukraine’s defense industrial base. The company runs MITS Lightning Fund – an early-stage venture fund investing in high-potential Ukrainian defense and dual-use startups.

MITS Capital’s platform also includes MITS Accelerator, an investment advisory unit, and the MITS LAB Initiative. Its mission is to bring global capital into Ukraine’s defense industrial base and help turn the country’s defense technology industry into a major sector of the national economy.

As of July 2026, MITS Capital’s portfolio includes 20 companies. MITS Accelerator has graduated two six-month cohorts of startups. A third cohort – Batch 3 – is now in acceleration, focused on critical defense components, connectivity and control systems, AI-driven software, advanced weapons, counter-drone systems, and battlefield automation.

Media Contact:
Valentyna Dudko
0966494566
[email protected] 

SOURCE MITS Capital

SALT LAKE CITY, July 9, 2026 — Databento, the market data platform for modern finance, today announced a $97 million Series B financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from strategic and existing investors, including DRW Venture Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Tribe Capital, among others. The round was significantly oversubscribed, drawing over $300 million in total demand.

“Every firm in finance depends on market data, but accessing it has been one of the industry’s longest-running bottlenecks. For decades, it’s meant months of procurement and integration work just to get to the starting line,” said Christina Qi, co-founder and CEO of Databento. “Databento was built by practitioners across quant trading and high-frequency market making to eliminate this overhead, making institutional-grade market data available on demand. Our growth has driven a shift in how teams expect to acquire and work with market data, and this round positions us to lead it globally.”

Three years after launch, Databento has emerged as one of the fastest-growing companies in fintech. It is now the market data provider of choice for some of the world’s most demanding financial firms, whose daily trading activity is measured in the trillions of dollars. The company’s trajectory has accelerated rapidly: it reached profitability with just 24 employees, more than doubled its active API users in recent months, and grew revenue 6.65x year over year while maintaining over 97% enterprise logo retention since inception.

NEA quickly identified Databento as a generational opportunity and moved decisively in the round. The firm’s partners, Rick Yang and Danielle Lay, will join Databento’s board, with Yang as a director and Lay as a board observer.

“It’s rare to encounter a company where the product, the traction, and the founding team all point in the same direction with this much clarity,” said Rick Yang, Partner and Head of Technology at NEA. “Databento has built the modern foundation this industry has needed for a long time, and the fact that it’s earned trust everywhere from students running their first strategies to the world’s most sophisticated trading desks isn’t by design—it’s what best-in-class looks like in a category this fundamental. This is exactly the kind of company we back at NEA, and we’re thrilled to be along for the ride.”

DRW Venture Capital’s investment is shaped by the operational demands of its parent firm, one of the most active proprietary trading firms across global markets.

“As a diversified trading firm, our experience with modern data workflows gives us a clear perspective on Databento’s value, as we know how critical high-quality data and reliable tooling are in practice,” said Kim Trautmann, Partner and Head of DRW VC. “Databento pairs robust data infrastructure with developer-friendly libraries that shorten the path from idea to production. That combination is only becoming more important as automated and agent-driven workflows take hold across trading and research.”

The new capital will be used to broaden Databento’s coverage across asset classes and geographies while continuing to scale the infrastructure that sets it apart. The company colocates its servers at exchanges to capture data directly from the source and is set to expand to over 20 data centers worldwide following this round. It has also secured an additional 100+ petabytes of storage capacity, more than doubling its previous footprint.

About Databento
Databento is the market data platform for modern finance. The company provides real-time and historical data across futures, options, and equities through a unified API. By owning the entire market data stack end-to-end, Databento is the first platform of its kind to combine the performance and reliability demanded by the world’s leading trading firms with a dramatically simpler developer experience. To learn more about Databento, visit https://databento.com.

About NEA

New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has more than $28 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2025 and invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long track record of investing includes more than 280 portfolio company IPOs and more than 510 mergers and acquisitions. For more information, please visit www.nea.com.

Media Contact:

Andrew Young

6175534000

[email protected]

SOURCE Databento Inc.

QINGDAO, China, July 9, 2026 — On July 8, the 2026 Qingdao Venture Capital Conference concluded successfully at the Qingdao International Conference Center. Held under the theme “Empowering New Quality Productive Forces, Shaping a Shared Industrial Future: VC/PE Opportunities under the 15th Five-Year Plan,” the event brought together over a hundred government officials, investors from leading financial institutions and venture capital firms, entrepreneurs, and renowned scholars to discuss how long-term capital can accelerate technological innovation and industrial transformation in the opening year of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan.

Hosted by the Qingdao Municipal People’s Government, co-organized by the Office of the Financial Affairs Commission of the CPC Qingdao Municipal Committee and the Qingdao Municipal Finance Bureau, and co-sponsored by China Bridge, the one-day conference adopted a format of one plenary forum and five parallel forums, covering topics such as capital’s role in empowering new quality productive forces, blue finance, future industry ecosystems, asset revitalization, cross-border financial cooperation, and a sci-tech innovation project roadshow — where ten startups spanning AI and embodied intelligence, integrated circuits, biopharmaceuticals, new energy and low-altitude economy presented directly to investors.

At the plenary forum, a series of major launches and strategic partnerships were announced. The Qingdao Fund Industry Development Alliance and Zhongtai Capital Equity Investment Management (Shandong) Co., Ltd. were officially unveiled, while the Qingdao Municipal Government signed strategic cooperation agreements with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Guotai Haitong Securities and Zhongtai Securities. The “Qingdao-Hong Kong Integration, Linking the World” initiative was also launched at the plenary, bringing together the international investment banking arms of China’s five major state-owned banks to support local technology companies in accessing global capital markets and channeling long-term capital into strategic emerging and future industries. Funds under Qingdao’s “10+1″ Innovative Industry System were also signed on site, further directing patient capital toward the city’s modern industrial system.

The event also marked the release of the China Venture Capital & Private Equity Annual White Paper (2026), offering an overview of global and domestic investment trends. According to the report, global venture capital investment reached US$301 billion in the first quarter of 2026 — the highest first-quarter total in five years — with artificial intelligence accounting for more than 80% of total funding. In China, new-generation information technology, advanced manufacturing and healthcare remained the top three sectors by investment amount in H1 2026, while AI, robotics, semiconductors and integrated circuits emerged as the sub-sectors most favored by capital. The report noted that the global shift toward hard technology and the real economy is creating new opportunities for innovation-driven cities, with Qingdao’s strengths in marine technology providing a solid foundation for its future growth.

Sun Ximin, Vice Governor of Shandong Province; Ren Gang, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Qingdao Municipal Committee and Mayor of Qingdao; and Gao Tianhong, Party Committee Member and Vice President of the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC), delivered remarks at the conference. The event also featured keynote speeches by Liu Shijin, Chief Chinese Advisor of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development and former Deputy Director of the Development Research Center of the State Council; Wang Zhongmin, former Vice Chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund; and Wu Xiaoqiu, former Vice President of Renmin University of China and Dean of the National Academy of Financial Research.

Since its launch in 2019, the Qingdao Venture Capital Conference has evolved into one of China’s leading platforms for venture capital and private equity cooperation. As China embarks on its 15th Five-Year Plan, this year’s conference further underscores Qingdao’s commitment to attracting long-term capital, deepening the integration of technology, industry and finance, fostering a world-class innovation ecosystem, and strengthening its position as a leading hub for innovation-driven development.

SOURCE 2026 Qingdao Venture Capital Conference

HONG KONG, BEIJING and SHANGHAI, July 9, 2026 — Grace Investment Machine (“GIM”), an AI-native investment technology company building agentic systems for capital markets, today announced the close of its US$20 million Series A financing. The round was co-led by a leading US venture capital firm and Hony Capital, with participation from IDG Capital and existing investor Monolith Capital. The financing marks GIM’s third funding round within its first year of operations.

GIM is building agentic AI systems designed to go beyond assisting investment research. The company describes this approach as a “Visionary Machine”: AI systems that generate, test, and refine investment hypotheses through market data, feedback loops, and coordinated agents.

Capital markets offer a uniquely rich learning environment. Every investment hypothesis can be translated into action, and every action produces measurable feedback. Over time, this closed learning loop allows intelligent systems to sharpen judgment not by memorizing the past, but by continuously learning from the market itself.

“We believe investment AI is moving from information assistance to autonomous hypothesis generation and testing,” said Jiahao Xu, founder and CEO of GIM. “GIM is building systems that can reason across market data, evaluate signals through feedback, and improve over time in real-world capital markets.”

The company is advancing on two fronts: foundation models tailored to capital-market environments, and multi-agent systems that generate, validate, and evolve investment signals across coordinated reasoning layers. Its flagship paper, CogAlpha, was accepted to the ACL 2026 main conference with an Oral recommendation. The paper presents a seven-layer agent architecture that moves from raw data to actionable investment signals.

GIM’s broader ambition is captured in a second phrase: Shared Prosperity. As intelligence systems compound at different rates, the company believes the defining question of the next decades will be who gets to own and harness that growth. Its long-term bet is to build products — from institutional strategies to individual-accessible vehicles — that turn self-evolving intelligence into a widely held asset, rather than a concentrated advantage.

This vision has drawn support from investors with long-term conviction in both AI and capital markets. The round brings together long-term investors with experience across artificial intelligence, financial technology, and global markets. Alongside its research efforts, GIM is also bringing AI-driven strategies and investment products into live validation across multiple asset classes and markets.

SOURCE GIM（Grace Investment Machine）

• 23i brings strong content planning and production capabilities built around multi-persona virtual artists
  
• Internalized virtual content production technologies including real-time motion capture and toon shaders, enabling high-quality, high-frequency content that builds narratives together with fandoms
• NAVER D2SF continues to invest across the full spectrum of virtual technologies, exploring potential collaboration opportunities as the global virtual entertainment market grows

SEONGNAM-SI, South Korea, July 8, 2026 — NAVER D2SF, the corporate venture capital arm of NAVER, has made a new investment in 23i (CEO, Hyungmin Kim), a virtual entertainment startup. As the global virtual entertainment market continues to grow rapidly, particularly in Korea and Japan, NAVER D2SF decided to invest in the team based on its ability to create expanded entertainment IP through strong content production capabilities and an in-house technology pipeline designed to maximize the strengths of virtual artists.

For virtual artists to build lasting fandoms, they need to deliver high-quality content at a high frequency, vividly expressing their talent and personality while offering fresh fan experiences enabled by technology. To address this, 23i has developed its own virtual UX technologies, including real-time motion capture, toon shaders, quadrupedal and flying motion control systems. The company has also built an efficient production workflow that enables a small team to rapidly plan and produce new content.

Based on a deep understanding of the entertainment industry and fandom culture, 23i is developing differentiated content and narratives. Its virtual boy group WE GO-6, unveiled last year, is built around the original concept of a “multi-persona idol,” where each member expresses a distinct persona. Through this approach, the company is expanding the storytelling potential of virtual artists while deepening communication with fans.

“With this investment, we plan to strengthen our content production infrastructure and deliver content with an even higher level of quality,” said Hyungmin Kim, CEO of 23i. “By building our own technology, we aim to create fan-participatory content that has not been possible in the traditional entertainment industry.”

“Virtual entertainment is a market with strong growth potential, going beyond technical implementation to enable artists and fandoms to communicate in entirely new ways,” said Sanghwan Yang, Head of NAVER D2SF. “23i is a team boldly challenging the scalability of the virtual industry, backed by groundbreaking content planning and an excellent production workflow.” He added, “As NAVER D2SF has continued to invest across the full spectrum of virtual technologies, we will also explore potential collaboration opportunities with NAVER’s entertainment businesses and related teams such as Motion Stage.”

NAVER D2SF has consistently invested across the virtual content technology stack, including 3D engines and data, motion capture, and the creation and operation of virtual character IP. Going forward, NAVER D2SF plans to continue discovering and supporting technology startups creating new possibilities in the virtual content market.

About NAVER D2SF

NAVER D2SF is NAVER’s in-house corporate venture arm, supporting sustainable growth by collaborating with startups. Founded in 1999, NAVER has maintained its position as Korea’s leading search engine for over 20 years and operates across commerce, content, fintech, and cloud services. Under the technological vision of D2SF, NAVER is actively developing new technologies and global partnerships to grow as a leading tech company.

To learn more, visit https://d2sf.naver.com

SOURCE NAVER D2SF

New investment will accelerate product innovation, deepen institutional partnerships, and help colleges deliver more transparent, student-centered enrollment experiences.

LOS ANGELES, July 8, 2026 — EdVisorly today announced the close of $13.3 million in a Series A financing round led by Breachway Capital, with participation from U.S. News & World Report, Lumina Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, Motley Fool Ventures, Juvo Ventures, Zeal Capital Partners, and others. This capital enables EdVisorly to support colleges and universities as they modernize admissions and enrollment operations to better serve the next generation of students.

Higher education institutions are under growing pressure to process more applications, evaluate more transfer credit, and deliver faster admissions decisions with fewer staff and tighter budgets. Yet many of these critical workflows still rely on decades-old technology or are even done by hand. At the same time, today’s learners expect a modern enrollment experience with transparency and personalized support.

EdVisorly was built to help colleges and universities meet these challenges. Its EddyAI platform automates time-intensive workflows like transcript processing and evaluation, transfer credit mapping, and GPA recalculations, allowing admissions and enrollment teams to spend less time on paperwork and more time supporting students. Institutions using the platform have reduced manual processing up to 85% while increasing admissions data processing productivity by more than 6x.

“What sets EdVisorly apart is that they show up like an actual partner and care deeply about the students. Their team has been in the weeds with ours through the EddyAI implementation, and the impact on our students and staff has been tangible and positive. We’re proud to be part of what they’re building.”

— Lawrence Walsh, Associate Director for Operations and Transfer Admissions, University of Connecticut

Today, EdVisorly partners with over 100 colleges, universities, and higher education systems across the full spectrum of American higher education, including the University of Connecticut, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, University of Massachusetts, and Carnegie Mellon University. By helping institutions reduce bottlenecks, improve staff capacity, support enrollment growth, and serve students with greater speed, accuracy, and care, EdVisorly enables enrollment teams to focus on the work that matters most.

EdVisorly was founded by Manny Smith, an Air Force veteran and officer who built technology systems for the Air Force and Space Force. As a first-generation graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Smith experienced firsthand the transformative power of higher education and recognized that too many students face unnecessary barriers navigating college and university admissions.

“From day one, EdVisorly has been built on the belief that college and university enrollment teams play a critical role in the lives of students. As the front door to social and economic opportunity for millions of students, our partner institutions are shaping the future of our communities, one decision at a time. They deserve an innovative and values-aligned partner dedicated to driving long-term success. This Series A is EdVisorly’s commitment to our institutional partners that we’re going to keep building to elevate access, outcomes, and opportunity for the next generation of students.”

— Manny Smith, Founder & CEO, EdVisorly

The new capital will be invested in three areas that directly support institutional success: advancing product and engineering initiatives, accelerating new feature development, and expanding the experienced leadership required to serve partner colleges and universities at scale. Since March, EdVisorly has more than doubled its engineering and product teams, while hiring a new CTO and COO who bring deep experience in education and building operationally excellent technology companies.

“Higher education institutions are being asked to deliver more support, more transparency, and better outcomes for students than ever before. What impressed us about EdVisorly is not just the technology, but the company’s deep understanding of the challenges enrollment leaders face every day and its commitment to helping institutions better serve students and families. We believe EdVisorly is building an essential platform for the future of admissions and enrollment, and we’re excited to support the company in its next chapter of growth, maturity, and impact.”

— Jason Krantz, Managing Partner and Founder, Breachway Capital

A major focus of the investment will be expanding support for EdVisorly’s institutional partners. The company will grow its partner success and implementation teams, invest in dedicated onboarding and adoption resources, and build new tools and services that help institutions realize value faster. These investments are designed to ensure colleges and universities have the expertise, guidance, and support required to modernize enrollment operations with confidence.

“We sought a partner to support a vision of automation, consistency, transparency, and equity in processes and decisions, helping students, faculty, and staff. EdVisorly committed to building a future state thoughtfully and intentionally alongside us by clarifying decision-making authority and translating institutional priorities into scalable workflows. They pushed us to think differently, and we challenged them to evolve their solutions. We are both benefiting from this collaboration.”

 — Keith Gehres, Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Innovation and Student Experience, Carnegie Mellon University

Looking ahead, EdVisorly will continue investing in the infrastructure, expertise, and product innovation required to help colleges and universities meet the evolving expectations of students and families. As institutions navigate increasing complexity, the company remains focused on a simple objective: helping enrollment teams create more capacity for students, make better decisions, and deliver an enrollment experience that reflects the value and mission of their institution.

Institutions, strategic partners, and mission-aligned organizations interested in learning more about EdVisorly can visit www.edvisorly.com or connect with the team directly.

About EdVisorly

EdVisorly understands that enrollment and admissions teams are the front door to social and economic opportunity for millions of students. The company helps higher education institutions streamline admissions and enrollment operations, advance transfer pathways, and expand capacity for student engagement and improved decision-making. By combining modern technology with deep higher education expertise, EdVisorly enables colleges and universities to deliver a more transparent, responsive, and student-centered enrollment experience. Learn more at www.edvisorly.com.

Media Contact
Charlotte Ward
[email protected]

SOURCE EdVisorly

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8, 2026 — Hostie, the AI-powered virtual concierge for restaurants, today announced a $12 million Series A funding round led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Scribble Ventures, Burst Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures, bringing total funding to $16 million. The round also includes investments from leading restaurant operators Tim Stannard of Bacchus Management Group and Stuart Brioza, Nicole Krasinski, and Elizabeth DePalmer of Atomic Workshop, underscoring Hostie’s growing role in modern restaurant operations.

The funding follows a year of rapid growth in which Hostie increased revenue 10x, expanded to hundreds of restaurant partners nationwide, and helped operators manage more than 2 million guest conversations and 24 million messages, book over 400,000 covers, and support more than 50,000 private event inquiries. The company is advised by Thomas Layton, former CEO of OpenTable; Mike Dodson, former SVP of Sales at OpenTable and Resy board member; and Mike Stoppelman, former VP of Engineering at Yelp.

Since launching, Hostie has become a trusted virtual concierge for hundreds of restaurants and hospitality groups nationwide, including Flour + Water Hospitality Group, Riviera Dining Group, Bacchus Management Group, Cactus Club Cafe, Cunningham Restaurant Group, Merchants Hospitality, State Bird Provisions, Wayfare Tavern, Mirra, and The Progress. The platform helps operators manage calls, texts, reservations, takeout inquiries, private events, and guest questions while delivering a seamless guest experience and freeing teams to focus on in-person hospitality.

“At Back to Back, I saw firsthand how difficult it became for restaurant teams to keep up with the growing volume of guest communication while still delivering great hospitality,” said Randall Hom, co-founder and CEO of Hostie and co-owner of Back to Back in San Francisco. “Restaurants are being asked to manage more calls, texts, reservations, takeout, and guest questions than ever before. We built Hostie to help teams keep up with that demand while staying focused on the people in front of them.”

“Hospitality is one of the most operationally complex industries in the world, and Hostie understands that deeply,” said Kahini Shah, Partner at Obvious Ventures. “Randall and Brendan are building an essential platform for restaurants at a time when operators are being asked to do more with less. What stood out to us was the team’s deep hospitality expertise, the product’s quality, and the clear market demand. Hostie has built the most thoughtful and intuitive AI solution in the category, and we’re excited to support the company’s next phase of growth.”

“I first discovered Hostie when I called Flour + Water to say I was running late for a reservation, and the experience was so seamless I immediately wanted to know what was powering it,” said Andrew Brackin, Partner at Gradient. “What Randall and Brendan have built is best-in-class technology grounded in a deep understanding of hospitality. From the beginning, operators weren’t just using the product; they were helping shape it. That combination of exceptional product and customer obsession is incredibly rare. We believe AI will transform how restaurants engage with guests, and Hostie is leading that transformation.”

With the new funding, Hostie plans to accelerate product development and grow its leadership team, including recent additions Jeff Jones, a former OpenTable executive, as Head of Sales, and Hayley Foppiani, formerly of BentoBox, as Head of Marketing. The investment also accelerates Hostie’s broader vision of transforming how restaurants connect with their guests at every touchpoint, across every channel.

About Hostie
Hostie is the AI-powered Virtual Concierge for restaurants, helping operators manage calls, texts, reservations, takeout orders, private event inquiries, and guest communications while keeping hospitality at the center of the experience. Headquartered in San Francisco, Hostie partners with independent restaurants, hospitality groups, and enterprise restaurant brands across the country.

Learn more at Hostie.ai or follow on Instagram.

Media Contact:
Hayley Foppiani
[email protected]

SOURCE Hostie AI

The company reached profitability in 2025 and is projected to generate $500 million in gross healthcare system savings while tripling its patient base from 2024 through the end of 2026.

NEW YORK, July 8, 2026 — Pearl Health, a healthcare technology company helping manage risk and deliver better care to Medicare patients, today announced a $110 million capital raise, comprised of equity investment led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, Ulysses Capital, and a debt facility led by Trinity Capital. The new capital will expand Pearl’s AI platform, turning clinical intelligence into measurable outcomes, and accelerate its growth across enterprise health system and payer partnerships, its expansion into Medicare Advantage, and new risk offerings.

More than 70 million people today rely on Medicare, with costs exceeding $1 trillion and climbing. Across healthcare, reimbursement is increasingly tied to outcomes rather than utilization, creating powerful incentives for providers to prevent avoidable illness, intervene earlier, and manage patient populations. As healthcare shifts from reactive treatment to preventative care, demand is accelerating for technologies that enable providers to succeed in this new model.

“Pearl was founded on a simple belief: healthcare should reward keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they are sick,” said Michael Kopko, co-founder and CEO of Pearl Health. “Unnecessary costs and poor outcomes persist in US healthcare because most providers lack the capabilities to shift to outcomes-based care alone. With this financing, we are investing in accelerated innovation and growth to expand our impact across the healthcare system.”

“Pearl has demonstrated that managing risk across large patient populations across many different settings of care can improve patient outcomes, generate meaningful savings, and support a sustainable business model at scale,” said Vineeta Agarwala, MD, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Pearl’s ability to enable providers to participate in value-based payment p”rograms successfully – and to do so through technology, rather than clinical workforce expansion – is a testament to both the vision and execution of the Pearl team.”

“We believe Pearl Health is changing how providers participate in value-based care, simplifying the data and daily workflow so they can spend more of their time and attention on their patients,” said Phil Gager, Senior Managing Director, Tech Lending at Trinity Capital. “We are proud to support this team and what they are building as they enter their next stage of growth.”

Pearl’s AI platform helps providers across the country manage and predict risk, orchestrate workflows, and automate action before issues become costly emergencies. Pearl’s continued expansion of Performance Intelligence will empower population health leaders and care teams with AI-driven, chat-enabled expertise focused on their unique patients and opportunities – delivering real-time insights on total cost of care, quality, and utilization patterns to surface the highest-impact actions. Pearl is also advancing development of Care Orchestration AI agents to further automate administrative workflows such as annual wellness visit scheduling, post-discharge follow-ups, and care management outreach, freeing clinicians to spend more time on patient care.

Pearl supports a network of more than 10,000 providers, including health systems like University of Vermont Health and MDX Hawaii, across over 40 states, caring for over 250,000 Medicare beneficiaries. The company manages approximately $3.6 billion in annualized medical spend, up from $2.4 billion the prior year and $1.6 billion the year before that. Pearl is projected to deliver $500 million in gross savings and triple its patient base from 2024 through the end of 2026. The company reached profitability in 2025 – a milestone few in this space have achieved while maintaining aggressive growth. 

The new raise includes a $50 million equity round and a $60 million credit facility, which will power the next phase of the company’s growth, bringing its intelligent risk management model to more providers, more patients, and new segments of the Medicare market.

About Pearl Health
Pearl Health enables clinicians and care organizations to deliver smarter, more affordable care outcomes through AI-powered predictive insights, financial risk modeling, and streamlined workflows. The company is building the platform for healthcare outcomes, identifying at-risk patients so providers can intervene before issues become emergencies. Founded in 2020, Pearl supports a network of over 10,000 providers and leading health systems across more than 40 states. Learn more at pearlhealth.com.

About Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
a16z invests in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies across AI, bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, infrastructure, and companies building toward American dynamism. We believe the future belongs to builders, and our job is to make sure they have what they need to build it. 

About Trinity Capital Inc.
Trinity Capital Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIN) is an international alternative asset manager that seeks to deliver consistent returns for investors through access to private credit markets. Trinity Capital sources and structures investments in well-capitalized growth-oriented companies across five distinct lending verticals: Sponsor Finance, Equipment Finance, Tech Lending, Asset Based Lending, and Healthcare & Life Sciences. As a long-term, trusted partner for innovative companies seeking tailored debt solutions, Trinity Capital has deployed more than $5.7 billion across over 470 investments since inception in 2008 (as of March 31, 2026). Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Trinity Capital’s dedicated team is strategically located across the United States and Europe. For more information on Trinity Capital, please visit trinitycapital.com and stay connected to the latest activity via LinkedIn.

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Media Contact
Ksenia Kulik, Interdependence
(919) 349-3786
[email protected]

SOURCE Pearl Health

Backed by Leading Investors Including B Capital, Redpoint Ace, Goodwater Capital, and DCM, Kaon’s Berkeley-Educated Founders are Outpacing Big Tech in Building a Vertically Integrated AI Entertainment Empire.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8, 2026 — Kaon AI, a generative AI platform and research lab pioneering the next era of interactive entertainment, today announced it has closed a Series B round to advance what is quickly becoming one of the most engaging generative AI content experiences. Backed by marquee tech and consumer investors, including B Capital, Redpoint Ace, Goodwater Capital, and DCM, the capital milestone validates an up-and-coming, Berkeley-educated founding team quietly re-architecting how millions of everyday users consume digital media.

While Big Tech races to automate the workplace, Kaon AI is capturing the most valuable commodity of the generative era: attention. The future of entertainment lies in long-horizon, hyper-personalized consumer content: a shift Kaon has capitalized on to build an AI-native ecosystem that is currently generating an eight-figure ARR. Led by CEO Jay Dang, CTO Alex Xi, and COO Lifan Wang, the company’s flagship consumer product, Emochi, already commands an average daily session time of 150 minutes among more than two million daily active users. By treating deep computer science as a vehicle for mainstream culture, Kaon is achieving sustained user engagement metrics that are simply out of reach for most general-purpose AI startups today.

The Founders Rewriting the Economics of Trillion-Token Media
Traditional media is losing its audience. As AI drives the cost of content production toward zero, Kaon’s Berkeley-bred founding team saw a different problem worth solving: not how to make more content, but how to make content that actually responds to the person consuming it, turning passive viewers into co-creators powered by AI

By focusing on content generation rather than distribution, Kaon inverts the legacy media model. Instead of matching a user to an existing video or story, Kaon’s proprietary architecture serves as a “customization engine” that writes, illustrates, and evolves immersive multimedia narratives frame-by-frame based on real-time human behavior.

To make this vision economically viable, the technical team is building a custom full-stack inference infrastructure that manages more than a thousand GPUs across dedicated partners like Nebius and DigitalOcean. The result is an operation that processes trillion-level daily token volumes at roughly 10x lower cost than a legacy cloud structure.

“We believe interactive AI entertainment is emerging as the next distinct consumer category,” said Daisy Cai, General Partner, B Capital. “Kaon stands out because Jay, Alex, and Lifan have built a full-stack powerhouse that owns its data pipeline from the ground up. That level of integration creates a compounding advantage in performance, data, and product iteration that is difficult to replicate, and we are excited to support the Kaon team as they help define this new category.”

The Strategy Bridging Deep Computer Science and Mainstream Digital Culture
As model access commoditizes, Kaon’s founders’ insistence on a token-to-application structure has become a compounding competitive advantage. While most competing platforms rely on a partner-oriented open structure, the founding trio controls the entire ecosystem end-to-end, ranging from front-end consumer interactions and token economies to core inference infrastructure. This autonomy turns what is typically a massive operational bottleneck for startups into a highly defensible, low-cost moat.

This token-to-application ownership also shapes the team’s approach to AI research. Their new research arm, Kaon Labs, will leverage Kaon’s hyper-engaged, millions-strong consumer base as its live scientific sandbox, enabling rapidly iterative models to be brought to market in days, rather than months.

“Every streaming platform today recommends what could be your next favorite show from a long list of preset options. In the generative AI era, though, this finite catalog is poised to become the ‘Blockbuster’ of the 2020s,” added Jay Dang. “At Kaon, we’re building a new type of content engine to create individualized narratives that truly resonate, moving the industry past static text prompts and into real-time multimedia.”

Scaling the San Mateo R&D Footprint for Personalized Content Generation
With deep roots in the Bay Area research community and at its founders’ alma mater, UC Berkeley, Kaon Labs is actively in discussions with academic advisors, collaborators, and other top-tier research talent as they look to expand to a new R&D hub in San Mateo. For more information on Kaon Labs, including initial research documentation, technical pillars, and the core mission statement, visit kaonlabs.com.

About Kaon AI
Kaon AI is building the customization engine for AI-native entertainment. Moving beyond the era of static recommendations, Kaon AI uses real-world user behavior to generate personalized stories, characters, and video experiences in real-time. Headquartered in San Mateo, Kaon AI powers a global ecosystem of creators and consumers through its flagship products FlowGPT, Emochi, Tickle, and Branches. For more information, visit www.kaon.io.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Michael McKay
(406) 369-2093
[email protected]

SOURCE Kaon AI