BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 7, 2025 — Parker Beauchamp of Markd announced the reopening of its debut fund up to an additional $500 million in commitments. Through the end of the year, Markd, in consultation with existing fund investors, may consider even further increasing the overall fund size to accept additional commitments from insurance companies.
The fund will continue Markd’s exclusive focus on the insurance industry’s future. It will invest strategically in private companies to seek investment returns and innovation partnerships for its insurance company investors and their distribution partners. The fund may also seek to become more acquisitive, taking on larger stakes in its targets.
Markd launched its debut fund of $100M in March 2022, making 68 investments in 22 active portfolio companies.
About Markd
Markd is a venture capital firm investing in the future of insurance. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the firm manages capital on behalf of insurance companies. It takes its name from fire marks as a salute to its insurance legacy, and was founded by fifth-generation insurance professional and innovator Parker Beauchamp.
Fresh off a Series A, the workplace operations platform leveraged by companies like Boeing and Intel launches first-of-its kind AI-powered solution to help leaders adapt to hybrid work realities
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7, 2025 — Kadence, a workplace operations platform, today announced the launch of Kadence SpaceOps: an AI-powered product built to help enterprises model, test, and execute space decisions with confidence and unprecedented speed.
Kadence Launches AI Platform SpaceOps as Enterprises Restructure $10T in Office Real Estate
As companies grapple with unprecedented shifts in how and where work happens, SpaceOps is a first-of-its-kind AI-powered platform that enables scenario planning, stack planning, and move management. It empowers CFOs, COOs, CHROs, and real estate leaders to model scenarios with a predictive occupancy engine, design optimal stack plans, and automate every move, all without the complexity of legacy integrated workplace management system (IWMS) tools and spreadsheets.
“At Kadence, we believe the workplace should be a catalyst for human flourishing. SpaceOps embodies this vision by providing leaders with the transformative AI tools needed to do their best work—turning wasted space into new opportunities, reinvesting in their teams, and creating an environment where every person can achieve their highest potential.” said Dan Bladen, CEO and co-founder of Kadence. “With real estate costs as the second-largest expense for most enterprises and occupancy rates at historic lows, organizations face increasing pressure to optimize their real estate portfolios. SpaceOps is a game-changer to help companies adapt to this new future of work, disrupting the $22T corporate real estate market. We’re already seeing strong demand that will accelerate our growth goals.”
The launch comes on the heels of Kadence’s $20M Series A led by High Alpha, with participation from Kickstart and Midwich Ignite, alongside support from Okta co-founder Frederic Kerrest, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson and Pluralsight founder Aaron Skonnard, who recently joined Kadence’s board.
From Human Tetris to Intelligent Strategy Until now, enterprises have relied on a patchwork of legacy tools to manage workplace changes, often taking months to plan space reallocations or policy shifts. With SpaceOps, organizations can model scenarios, forecast costs, and automate moves all in one place. Key differentiators include:
AI-Driven Scenario Planning: Leaders can simulate policy changes, forecast space needs, or evaluate consolidation strategies with financial clarity, seeing cost per employee, and capacity projections before making a move.
Intelligent Move-Management: SpaceOps orchestrates every move from approvals to communication, reducing disruption and ensuring productivity from day one.
Dynamic Stack Planning: Drag-and-drop layouts enable real-time configuration testing, allowing teams to design smarter, more efficient floorplans across buildings and campuses.
Built for today’s hybrid, multi-site reality, SpaceOps also integrates seamlessly with tools like Microsoft Places, Outlook, ServiceNow, and JSM, bridging the gap between employee experience and back-office execution.
About Kadence Kadence is the workplace operations platform for people and spaces. Designed for modern enterprises, Kadence unifies space management, team scheduling, occupancy insights, and AI-powered coordination into one seamless platform. Organizations around the world use Kadence to lower real estate costs, increase employee engagement, and drive better business outcomes in today’s flexible work environment. Today, over 10,000 teams across 600+ companies in 40+ countries rely on Kadence to coordinate people and places across their organizations. For more information, please visit Kadence.co and follow us on LinkedIn.
TOKYO, Oct. 7, 2025 — Celaid Therapeutics Inc. (“Celaid”), today announced the successful completion of the 1st Close of its Series B financing round, raising JPY 1.055 billion (USD 7.2 million) from venture capital firms and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). Including grants and subsidies, Celaid’s cumulative funding has reached JPY 2.52 billion (USD 17.14 million).
This financing reflects recognition of the progress in the company’s lead pipeline program CLD-001, a novel ex vivo-expanded hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) therapy for severe pediatric non-malignant diseases, as well as growing collaborations with global pharmaceutical and biotech companies leveraging Celaid’s proprietary platform technology.
CLD-001 Development Progress
Positive non-clinical data demonstrating efficacy and safety in animal models
Significant advancements in cell manufacturing and CMC (Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls)
Pre-IND preparation with the U.S. FDA progressing according to plan
Collaboration on HSC Expansion Platform
The newly raised capital will be used to support GMP manufacturing and non-clinical studies in preparation for the initiation of clinical trials of CLD-001 in the U.S. In addition, the company will further strengthen its proprietary HSC expansion platform and expand its applications to broader cell and gene therapy programs.
“We are deeply grateful for the continued support from our venture capital partners and AMED. This financing represents an important milestone that brings us closer to delivering transformative hematopoietic stem cell therapies to patients worldwide. As Japan’s leading university-origin hematopoietic stem cell company, we will continue to advance both our HSC pipeline development programs and our platform business.” — Nobuyuki Arakawa, President & CEO, Celaid Therapeutics Inc.
Overview of Series B Financing (1st Close)
[Amount Raised] JPY 555 million (USD 3.77 million) [Method] Third-party allocation of new shares (private placement) [Investors (existing investors)]
Osaka University Venture Capital Co., Ltd.
The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners Co., Ltd.
Techno Science Co., Ltd.
Joyo Capital Partners Co., Ltd.
[Grant Awarded] Approx. JPY 500 million (USD 3.4 million)
Comments from Investors
“We are very pleased to have had the opportunity to make an additional investment in this financing round. Over the past year, Celaid Therapeutics has achieved continuous and tangible milestones, including advancements in non-clinical studies and collaborations with domestic and global partners, and has also successfully advanced to the next stage of the AMED Strengthening Program for Pharmaceutical Startup Ecosystem. We find great significance in having been able to support these steps forward together. With this new financing as a catalyst, we look forward to working with Celaid to further accelerate the development of cell therapy products and to deliver innovative technologies to patients as quickly as possible.” — Yuki Taga, Investment Director, Osaka University Venture Capital Co., Ltd.
“We have had the privilege of working with Celaid Therapeutics Inc. since its founding. Over the years, Celaid has steadily advanced the accumulation of non-clinical data for its proprietary pipeline and the establishment of its manufacturing capabilities, while also actively pursuing partnerships with industry players leveraging its HSC expansion platform technology. These efforts have driven significant business growth. With this latest financing, we are confident that Celaid will further accelerate its global expansion and make substantial contributions both to providing new treatment options for patients worldwide and to advancing the broader cell therapy industry. We look forward to Celaid’s continued success.” — Atsushi Usami, Ph.D., Partner and Board Director, The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners Co., Ltd. (UTEC)
“We deeply resonate with Celaid Therapeutics’ mission of developing innovative cell therapies for non-malignant diseases, hematologic cancers, and genetic diseases. We are also very pleased to see the significant progress made in the lead development pipeline since our fund’s participation in the Series A round. With this new financing, we are confident that Celaid will accelerate its activities toward initiating clinical trials in the United States, as well as advance its platform technologies. We look forward to seeing these efforts lead to the realization of next-generation cell therapy products and technologies that can benefit a wide range of patients.” — Shigeto Ikeda, President, Joyo Capital Partners Co., Ltd.
About Hematopoietic Stem Cells (HSCs)
Hematopoietic stem cells are multipotent stem cells capable of generating all blood cell lineages, including red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. They possess the capacity for self-renewal, ensuring life-long maintenance of the hematopoietic system. However, HSCs are naturally scarce in the body or in collected samples, making it a major challenge to secure sufficient numbers for therapeutic use.
About CLD-001, an allogeneic HSC Therapy
CLD-001 is being developed as an HSC product for severe pediatric non-malignant diseases. Rare blood diseases such as aplastic anemia, primary immunodeficiency, inherited metabolic disorder, and sickle cell disease, which start in childhood and are associated with various physical and neurological complications, have very poor prognosis. Currently, the only curative therapy is allogeneic HSC transplantation (HSCT). On the other hand, there are still significant unmet needs for allogeneic HSCT due to donor problems such as bone marrow donor shortage and HLA type mismatch, as well as side effects such as transplant-related mortality and graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). CLD-001 is designed to address the donor shortage, transplantation-related risks, and other limitations described above.
In addition to solving the donor problem by using frozen cord blood stored in a cord blood bank as the cell source, CLD-001 also solves the bottleneck of low HSC counts in cord blood with our proprietary HSC expansion technology, enabling us to provide HSCs with the best HLA type for the patient. CLD-001, the HLA best-matched and bone marrow-engrafting HSCs, is expected to significantly improve overall survival after HSC therapy.
About Celaid Therapeutics Inc.
Celaid Therapeutics Inc. is a startup born out of the University of Tokyo and University of Tsukuba with proprietary technology for selective ex vivo HSC expansion. By safely and efficiently expanding human HSCs, Celaid aims to provide the next generation of cell and gene therapy products for cell therapies targeting hematologic and genetic diseases, ex vivo HSC gene therapies for genetic disorders, and angiogenesis for ischemic diseases.
Contact Information Celaid Therapeutics Inc. Address: UTokyo Entrepreneur Lab., South Clinical Research Bldg., 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8485, Japan E-mail: [email protected] URL: https://celaidtx.com/en/
Company’s leading hardware-agnostic fleet orchestration software platform delivers operational savings and worker safety to its customers
DARMSTADT, Germany, Oct. 7, 2025 — Energy Robotics, the leading AI software platform for autonomous inspection with robots and drones, today announced the successful close of $13.5m of Series A funding. Energy Robotics has completed over one million inspections across five continents, saving 32,000+ hours of hazardous human labor for customers across oil and gas, industrial, chemical, and utility sectors, including Shell, BP, Repsol, BASF, Merck and E.ON. This funding cements the company’s position as a market leader of full-stack, hardware-agnostic, fleet-management AI software autonomy platform for critical infrastructure.
The Series A was co-led by Blue Bear Capital and Climate Investment (CI), with participation from Futury Capital, Hessen Capital, Kensho VC, and TADTech. The funding will accelerate the commercial deployment of Energy Robotics’ software across energy, chemicals, industrial, and security sectors.
Operational Savings and Safety Delivered Existing infrastructure and industrial facilities are confronting two major challenges: a shrinking skilled workforce and increasingly complex, aging equipment that requires specialized maintenance. Energy Robotics addresses this through its AI software platform for autonomous robots and drones that cuts operating costs by up to 40% while significantly enhancing worker safety.
“This funding round will help us scale autonomy to serve the world’s most critical infrastructure, giving energy, chemicals, utilities, and security operators greater resilience, safety, and efficiency,” said Marc Dassler, CEO and co-founder of Energy Robotics. “As a skilled workforce retires, critical infrastructure operators face a significant demographic shift. This is compounded by the fact that many of the world’s most vital energy and chemical assets are decades old, requiring more frequent and intricate monitoring, inspection, and maintenance. This combination of an aging workforce, a shrinking talent pool, and deteriorating infrastructure creates a perfect storm of operational risk. Our platform provides a timely and scalable solution, enabling customers to not only maintain but also improve operational efficiency and safety, while actively mitigating the challenges of this workforce transition.”
Operational Reliability and Productivity Delivered Industries served by Energy Robotics have significant operational risks, including exposure to fires, explosions, toxic chemicals, leaks, physical dangers and cybersecurity breaches. Autonomous robots and drones powered by Energy Robotics’ platform perform essential daily and hourly tasks, including visual inspections, thermal scans, and leak detection, eliminating the need for humans to enter dangerous environments while keeping proprietary data secure. By automating these tasks, worker safety is improved, human error is reduced, and more frequent data can be collected. This proactive approach leads to more efficient maintenance and less plant downtime overall, increasing operational reliability and productivity.
“The industrial robotics market has reached an inflection point,” said Cindi Bough, Managing Director at Climate Investment. “Energy Robotics has built an AI software platform that orchestrates diverse fleets of robots and drones, integrates seamlessly with existing enterprise workflows, and delivers actionable data services at scale today. Also, Energy Robotics delivers climate impact by using autonomous robots to spot gas leaks early, so harmful emissions are fixed before they escape into the atmosphere. This is why we are excited to co-lead their Series A investment.”
AI-Powered Fleet Orchestration Software Platform Energy Robotics offers a comprehensive platform of AI-powered fleet orchestration software that eliminates the need for fragmented tools, with key features that include:
Hardware-Agnostic Operating System: Seamlessly integrates with 8 leading robots and drones and OEM hardware manufacturers (e.g., Boston Dynamics, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, DJI), giving customers the flexibility to build mixed fleets without vendor lock-in;
AI-Powered Analytics: An advanced AI analytics library interprets multimodal sensor data, from gauge readings to leak detection, continuously learning and improving with every mission;
Simple, LLM-Driven Mission Control: Integrated large language model system enables operators to simply prompt the platform to generate and execute inspection tasks across entire fleets of robots and drones;
Real-World Data vs. Synthetic Data: Fleet orchestration and autonomous operations are based on millions of data points gathered in complex, dynamic real-word facilities such as refineries and power plants;
Evergreen Digital Twin: Each inspection mission automatically updates a live, evolving digital replica of facilities, providing real-time visibility and predictive insights that feed directly into customer ERP, CMMS, and digital twin platforms; and
Data Privacy & Cybersecurity: Energy Robotics strengthens cybersecurity and data sovereignty by providing a platform that keeps sensitive inspection data within customer-controlled IT systems, independent of vendor-specific software platforms.
“The global energy transition relies on a more resilient, efficient, and secure infrastructure,” said Dr. Carolin Funk, Partner, Blue Bear Capital. “Energy Robotics’ autonomous inspection platform, powered by AI, directly addresses this need. It provides a scalable solution that improves the safety and operational efficiency of key energy and industrial assets, while taking advantage of the global robotics expansion.”
About Energy Robotics Energy Robotics provides the leading AI software platform for autonomous industrial inspection. Its hardware-agnostic solution integrates with multiple robot platforms, generates Evergreen Digital Twins of critical infrastructure, and delivers actionable insights directly into customer workflows. Headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, the company operates on five continents. For more information, please visit https://www.energy-robotics.com/.
About Blue Bear Capital Blue Bear is a venture capital and early growth equity firm driving digital technologies and machine intelligence into multibillion-dollar verticals across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries. The team comes from leading energy private equity firms, startups, and large industrial technology developers. Blue Bear typically leads Seed through Series B rounds, with a portfolio covering operational AI, IoT, and cybersecurity technologies, all deployed with enterprise customers to drive connectivity and intelligence across the world’s most critical industries. For more information, visit www.bluebearcap.com.
About Climate Investment (CI) Climate Investment (CI) is an independently managed investor focused on driving industrial decarbonization. The firm provides venture to growth equity capital to innovative companies and partners with industry to drive market adoption, create value for infrastructure owners and deliver measurable greenhouse gas (GHG) impact. Operating since 2017, CI has invested in over 40 climate tech companies across energy, transportation, buildings and industry that have collectively delivered 133 MT CO2e of cumulative greenhouse gas reduction in the period 2019-2024. Climate Investment was founded by member companies of the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative (“OGCI”). They have invested in Climate Investment funds and deployed many of its portfolio innovations, supporting their early commercial development. For more information, visitwww.climateinvestment.com
Media Contact for Energy Robotics and Blue Bear Capital Chris Krolak [email protected]
Media Contact for Climate Investment (CI) Jason Dela Cruz [email protected]
Highly competitive NIH program validates science, funds costly toxicology work, and accelerates progress toward IND for a one-time gene therapy for hemophilia A, with or without inhibitors
RALEIGH, N.C., Oct. 7, 2025 — GeneVentiv Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering next-generation gene therapies for rare diseases, today announced that it has been selected into the Catalyze Program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Through this program, NIH will fund and provide preclinical services with leading national providers for the GLP toxicology study required for the company’s IND submission of GENV-HEM, its investigational one-time gene therapy for hemophilia A, including patients with inhibitors.
GeneVentiv Therapeutics receives prestigious NHLBI Catalyze Award to fund IND-enabling toxicology study for its one-time gene therapy, GENV-HEM.
The NHLBI Catalyze Program is an ultra-selective initiative that supports only the most promising medical innovations with the potential for transformative patient impact. By covering the most resource-intensive portion of IND-enabling toxicology, Catalyze support significantly reduces capital requirements and accelerates the company’s timeline to clinical entry.
“Selection into the NHLBI Catalyze Program represents strong validation of our science and regulatory strategy,” said Damon Race, Chief Executive Officer of GeneVentiv Therapeutics. “It removes a significant cost barrier in gene therapy development and directs investor capital to higher-return activities to advance GENV-HEM into the clinic. This also frees capital for further development of GENV-002, our gene editing therapy for both Infantile and Late Onset Pompe disease.”
This Catalyze support complements GeneVentiv’s ongoing NHLBI Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award, which funds development of critical IND-enabling assays and a confirmatory large-animal (canine) efficacy and safety study. Together, these programs provide broad-based, non-dilutive support across efficacy, safety, and regulatory preparation, substantially reducing costs and de-risking the path to IND.
“Having merit-based NHLBI awards for both efficacy and toxicology underscores the strength and broad applicability of our approach,” said Dr. Paris Margaritis, Chief Scientific Officer of GeneVentiv Therapeutics. “GENV-HEM is designed to be the first gene therapy to treat all hemophilia A patients, including those with inhibitors, using a single product. With NHLBI support for critical preclinical studies, we are uniquely positioned to bring forward a one-time therapy with transformative potential for the hemophilia community.”
About GeneVentiv Therapeutics
GeneVentiv Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing transformative gene therapies for rare and serious diseases. Its lead program, GENV-HEM, is an AAV-based gene therapy expressing activated Factor V, designed as a one-time treatment for patients with hemophilia A, including those with inhibitors. The company’s second program, GENV-002, is a dual-vector CRISPR gene editing therapy for both Infantile and Late Onset Pompe disease, using a liver-depot strategy to secrete GAA systemically. GeneVentiv’s mission is to pioneer therapies that reach every patient within a disease area, not just a select few.
Specialized AI agents combined with precise human-in-the-loop control points create accurate, high-quality regulatory documents up to 94% faster
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 7, 2025 — Peer AI, a leading agentic AI platform for life sciences regulatory documentation, today announced $12.1 million in total funding, led by Flare Capital Partners and SignalFire. Other investors included Greycroft, Atria, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, and Mana Ventures, along with strategic angel investors from across the life sciences, healthcare, and technology industries.
Peer AI combines AI agents with strategic human control points to scale regulatory documentation and accelerate drug development workflows.
Generating documentation for regulatory approval remains a critical drug development bottleneck. New drugs require over 200,000 pages spanning more than 1,500 unique documents. Manual and fragmented processes lead to missing data and discrepancies, often stalling approvals. Nearly one-third of FDA submissions have quality issues, and regulators reject almost 75% of applications, causing delays of 435 days.
The Peer AI platform deploys purpose-built, domain-specific AI agents combined with an intuitive AI-powered user interface that allows medical writers to apply their subject matter expertise at critical control points during documentation workflows. Top 20 pharmas and emerging biotechs are saving thousands of hours and improving quality of regulatory documents across pre-clinical, clinical, regulatory affairs, and chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) with Peer AI.
Customers are accelerating drafting times by 55–94%, cutting costs, and improving consistency and accuracy, while maintaining regulatory compliance. Medical writing teams have reduced clinical study report (CSR) drafting time from 40 to 17 working days and cut protocol turnaround from 6-8 weeks to just one week. Daily active use has grown 3X in the first three quarters of 2025, while overall platform volume has increased 6X, demonstrating strong adoption.
“Our vision is to create an intelligent regulatory workflow that connects documentation, data, and decision-making to speed drug approvals,” said Anita Modi, CEO and co-founder of Peer AI. “Documentation drives every step of the drug development process. We’re putting agentic AI in the hands of expert medical writers to create documents faster, improve quality, and, ultimately, accelerate treatments to patients.”
Agentic AI addresses regulatory documentation challenges
Peer AI uniquely combines agentic AI automation with strategic, easy to use human control points to scale AI-powered regulatory documentation efficiently and with the highest level of integrity. Purpose-built medical writing agents support experts in multi-step document creation, generating documents such as protocols, CSRs, investigational new drug (IND) applications, investigator’s brochures (IBs), and plain language summaries. Data source agents extract information from complex sources and ensure database integration. Authoring agents create accurate drafts aligned with regulatory guidelines, style agents ensure compliant formatting, and post-processing agents perform final validation checks.
With an intuitive user experience, experts can verify, validate, and quality control content throughout documentation workflows. A peer-led deployment model provides an expert team of medical writers to lead training, onboarding, and change management to help customers achieve the quickest time to value.
Strong market opportunity and validation
Today’s news signals a significant investment in an important market – which is estimated to be $15 billion – to make regulatory documentation more efficient. The funding will accelerate product development and commercial expansion as Peer AI scales to meet growing market demand. Founded by industry veterans with decades of experience in AI and life sciences, Peer AI is speeding timelines while ensuring accuracy and consistency across thousands of interconnected pages and documents.
“We see enormous opportunity in GenAI-based tools to unlock value in drug discovery and clinical development processes, including automating the end-to-end process of regulatory documentation,” said Ian Chiang, partner at Flare Capital Partners. “Peer AI’s distinctive approach and specialized agentic AI platform are shaped by in-house medical writer expertise. They’re already demonstrating strong early client engagement and poised to become a category-defining platform.”
“The Peer AI team’s deep expertise across life sciences and AI uniquely positions them to drive greater efficiency in the entire drug development workflow,” said Sooah Cho, partner at SignalFire. “They’re establishing the foundational regulatory backbone for life sciences to transform a historically fragmented, manual process with a unified agentic platform and intuitive user experience that brings experts in the loop at the right times.”
Peer AI has attracted leading advisors, including Ariel Katz, CEO and co-founder of H1, a data, analytics, and AI platform connecting the world to the right doctors, Brian Longo, veteran life sciences advisor and former executive at Veeva Systems, and Hanlin Tang, co-founder of MosaicML and currently the CTO for Neural Networks at Databricks.
About Peer AI Peer AI transforms regulatory documentation for life sciences companies through specialized AI agents that reduce drafting time. The agentic AI platform automates document creation across protocols, clinical study reports (CSR), narratives, investigational new drug (IND) applications, investigator’s brochures (IBs), and plain language summaries, while medical writers maintain oversight and control. Peer AI serves pharmaceutical, biotech, and CRO organizations worldwide. The company is backed by top investors and led by industry veterans with decades of experience in AI and life sciences. For more information, visit getpeer.ai.
About Flare Capital Partners
Flare Capital Partners is the leading healthcare technology venture capital firm advancing innovation-driven companies to improve positive health outcomes, broaden care access, and lower healthcare costs. We partner with exceptional founders solving healthcare’s hardest challenges, supporting each with our deep sector expertise, unparalleled industry resources, and proven access to commercial opportunities. Our team of established investors and senior operating executives has invested in 70+ companies and has nearly $1 billion in assets under management. To learn more about Flare Capital Partners, please visit flarecapital.com or follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Spotify.
About SignalFire
SignalFire is the first AI-native VC firm built like a technology company to better serve the needs of founders as they build and scale their startups. With approximately $3B in assets under management, SignalFire invests in applied AI companies from pre-seed to Series B in key sectors, including Health & PharmaTech, cybersecurity, infrastructure, consumer, and other enterprise verticals.
The firm’s Beacon AI platform tracks over 650M employees and 80M organizations, giving the firm an unmatched data advantage in identifying and supporting world-class startups. Its sector-focused investors, XIRs from leading Health & PharmaTech unicorns, and a dedicated team of seasoned operators drive SignalFire at startup speed. They provide support across a company’s full lifecycle through data and resources tailored by growth stage, plus a diverse ecosystem of partners and customers. Notable investments include Grow Therapy, Ro, EvenUp, Frame.io, Grammarly, and Stampli.
Company Welcomes Dr. Chuck Mattera, former Chair and CEO of Coherent Corp as new Chairman
ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 7, 2025 — HyperSpectral, the world’s first AI-powered spectral intelligence company, today announced the close of a $7M Series A-2 capital raise. The round will fuel accelerated development, expand partnerships, and position the company for a Series B round in 2026.
The financing was co-led by RRE Ventures and Kibo Ventures, with continued support from existing investors. New investors include Avalanche Thinking, whose Chairman and CEO, Dr. Vincent D. (Chuck) Mattera, former Chair and CEO of Coherent Corp, joins the HyperSpectral Board as Chairman. His appointment expands the company’s leadership network in photonics and industrial manufacturing, and his governance experience will reinforce the company’s readiness to scale ahead of its next financing round.
Since emerging from stealth mode in 2024, HyperSpectral has built significant momentum. In the past 12 months, its SpecAI™ platform was recognized as a Gartner Emerging Tech Innovator in Computer Vision Applications, named a 2025 R&D 100 Finalist, and honored with the coveted SPIE Prism Award. The company’s co-founders, CEO Matt Theurer and COO Lauren Stack, were honored by Washingtonian Magazine as 2025 “Tech Titans of the Year”.
“This round underscores investor conviction in our progress and potential,” said CEO Matt Theurer. “We are aiming to scale rapidly into the broad biotech, industrial, and defense markets and are excited to have Chuck Mattera join our Board. Chuck’s leadership and experience will be instrumental as we penetrate these markets in the U.S. and expand globally. In its initial deployments, HyperSpectral’s platform combines chemical physics and materials-science-based spectroscopy with advanced AI algorithms trained on proprietary data sets, enabling the rapid, non-invasive detection of bacteriological pathogens in minutes and without specialized lab preparation. This results in immediate breakthroughs in lower costs, faster cycle times, higher quality and better reliability,” said Theurer.
The $7M raise will provide resources to develop HyperSpectral’s technology platform further ahead of commercial scaling and solidify its leadership position with key customers and partners.
“Spectral Intelligence can change the way industries organize to leverage AI to help make decisions and control processes by providing data instantly, with differentiated advantages including reliability and scale,” said Dr. Chuck Mattera. “HyperSpectral has the vision, team, and technology to lead this transformation, and I am pleased to have been selected to join the Board and for Avalanche Thinking to support the company’s exciting growth aspirations.”
About HyperSpectral Based in Alexandria, VA, HyperSpectral combines physics-based spectral data and advanced AI to deliver rapid, reliable answers in MedTech, food safety, and defense—enabling confident decisions when and where they matter most. For more information, visit https://www.hyperspectral.ai.
Funding round led by Healthy.Capital and Nina Capital, with participation from Jeroen Tas and Harm-Jan Wessels
AMSTERDAM, Oct. 7, 2025 — Datamonk, the agentic AI-powered platform automating medical imaging data migrations, today announced it has raised $1.9 million in pre-seed funding to address one of healthcare IT’s biggest challenges: moving and cleaning decades of medical imaging data. The round was led by Healthy.Capital and Nina Capital, with participation from notable angel investors including Jeroen Tas, former Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer at Philips, and Harm-Jan Wessels, founder of Applicare (acquired by GE), Forcare (acquired by Philips), and Healthsage AI. The total also includes earlier support from Antler and Rabobank. The funding will support platform development, the advancement of AI capabilities, and team growth.
Hospitals and imaging providers hold decades of X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs in Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). They want to modernize, consolidate, and enable AI, but consultant-led migrations of millions of studies are slow and expensive, often taking a year or more to complete.
Datamonk uses agentic AI to automate PACS migrations while improving data quality. Its software agents detect and fix metadata issues, standardize study naming, and validate data integrity during the migration process. This enables hospitals to go live five to ten times faster and avoid much of the manual effort and cost of traditional consultant-led projects.
“Clean and connected data is the foundation for modern healthcare, from everyday clinical decisions to the deployment of new AI applications,” said Jaap Gielink, CEO and co-founder of Datamonk. “We don’t just move imaging data, we clean it and make it usable so hospitals can trust it is ready for clinical workflows, research, and innovation.”
“Getting access to integrated diagnostic data and insights is critical for healthcare providers, but imaging data migrations to the cloud have been a major showstopper. The Datamonk team brings a rare mix of healthcare, data, and AI expertise to solve this problem at scale,” said Jeroen Tas, former Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer at Philips.
“Imaging data is one of the most technically demanding areas of healthcare IT, given its scale and complexity. Datamonk’s use of agentic AI offers a scalable way to standardize and migrate data, creating the foundation for interoperability and future innovation,” said Marta G. Zanchi, founder and Managing Partner at Nina Capital.
“Datamonk is solving a problem for every hospital and vendor. Datamonk’s platform will help keep radiology affordable and accessible. We are excited to back the team in their mission to power healthcare with clean, connected data,” said Douwe Jippes, co-founder and Managing Partner at Healthy.Capital.
Datamonk was founded by Jaap Gielink (serial entrepreneur), Jai Bhatia (co-founder of Viewics Inc., a healthcare analytics platform acquired by Roche Diagnostics), and Matthew Condron (former CTO of leading healthcare data migration consultancy DesAcc). Datamonk’s growing team combines deep expertise in healthcare data, cloud technologies, and AI to build the data layer for modern healthcare.
About Datamonk
Founded in 2024 in the Netherlands, Datamonk builds the data layer for modern healthcare. Its platform uses agentic AI technology to automate PACS and VNA migrations, fix data quality issues, and help hospitals prepare imaging data for clinical use, research, and AI applications. Learn more at www.datamonk.ai.
About Healthy.Capital
At Healthy.Capital, we believe the future of healthcare starts with a digital revolution. We invest in startups that develop technological and digital solutions that reduce the demand for care, increase the productivity of healthcare professionals, and lower healthcare costs. In doing so, we contribute to a sustainable healthcare system for the future.
About Nina Capital
Nina Capital is an international, specialized venture capital firm investing in healthcare transformation powered by information technology and led by need-driven founders. Focused on pre-seed and seed-stage investments and guided by deep industry experience, Nina Capital supports health technology solutions that drive lasting healthcare impact. Nina Capital’s diverse, multinational, and multidisciplinary team is led by former healthcare technology founders and operators and combines expertise from numerous healthcare and technology sectors. Since 2019, Nina Capital has invested in 50 companies across nearly 20 countries, touching the lives of over 15 million people through healthcare technology innovations.
Media Contact: Concetta Rasiarmos Amendola for Datamonk (630) 740-3152 [email protected]
SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 6, 2025 — GAIM.FUN, an innovative AI-powered platform transforming how virtual worlds and games are built, today announced the successful completion of its Seed funding round. This round attracted a distinguished group of investors specializing in AI, gaming, and Web3, including Griffin Gaming Partners, Bitkraft Ventures, Benchmark, 1Up Ventures, Playground Global, Norwest Venture Partners, and Hiro Capital, signaling strong market confidence in GAIM.FUN’s pioneering vision.
GAIM.FUN empowers creators by enabling them to turn a single sentence into a fully explorable, interactive 3D environment within minutes. Its cutting-edge AI engine generates modular, editable assets seamlessly integrated with physics properties, dynamic narratives, and intelligent NPC behaviors. Compatible with Unity and Unreal engines, GAIM.FUN dramatically accelerates development pipelines for indie developers, small studios, educators, and UGC creators alike.
The platform’s unique approach combines generative world models with a user-friendly editor, eliminating traditional barriers in 3D content production. With GAIM.FUN, users can automatically generate branching storylines, intelligent quest logic, and deeply simulated environments—all customizable to fit any creative vision.
Proceeds from the seed round will propel further AI advancements, expand the engineering and creative teams, and amplify global marketing to grow a vibrant user ecosystem. GAIM.FUN is positioned to lead the future of immersive virtual experience creation.
About GAIM.FUN Founded to empower creators through AI, GAIM.FUN turns natural language prompts into dynamic, interactive 3D worlds ready for game engines. The platform’s modular assets, integrated physics, and adaptive narratives enable rapid prototyping and production, making it a hub for modern digital storytelling.
