Investment enables breakthrough technology that recycles hazardous steel grinding sludge into secondary resources, delivering up to 470 kg CO₂e savings per tonne

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, June 25, 2026 — SKF today announced a strategic investment, together with Stephen Industries and Chalmers Ventures, in startup Anferra AB to tackle one of the industrial sector’s most persistent waste challenges – hazardous steel grinding sludge.

Grinding sludge is a finely powdered mixture of metal particles, abrasives, and contaminated grinding emulsion generated during metal grinding operations. It is commonly classified as hazardous waste with most non-recycled volumes handled through incineration or landfill. Globally, around 12 million tonnes are produced each year, creating both environmental risks and significant costs for industry. Additionally, variability in sludge composition makes standardized recycling difficult.

Anferra’s innovative process converts steel grinding sludge into ferric chloride which is a common chemical agent used for wastewater and water treatment. Another by-product is hydrogen gas which can be further used as an energy carrier, contributing to green energy solutions. This enables a potential net climate benefit of negative 470 kg CO₂-equivalents per tonne of sludge (equal to driving an electric car for 7500 km) compared to conventional disposal.

The process achieves up to 90% iron recovery with significantly lower energy demand, effectively transforming a costly waste problem into a valuable resource stream. Most importantly, the technology has the potential to shift grinding sludge from being treated as hazardous waste towards becoming a secondary raw material, aligning with the EU’s efforts to harmonise waste regulations and build a stronger market for secondary raw materials.

“Grinding sludge is one of the toughest recycling challenges in the steel and bearing industry. Anferra’s approach represents a smarter way forward and positions us well to drive circularity and decarbonization. This investment, which is the first initiative coming out of SKF Ventures – SKF’s initiative to accelerate new innovations, enables us to influence solution development, positioning SKF as a first mover in circular recycling innovations and creating new value from waste streams,” says Mikael Krook, Director, SKF Ventures.

“We are very happy to deepen our collaboration with SKF through this investment. SKF has been an important partner since the early stages of Anferra’s development and with their support and close collaboration, we can accelerate our journey toward industrial implementation around the world. Our ambition is to significantly reduce the landfilling of grinding sludge while increasing circularity and resource efficiency on a global scale,” says Ebba Adolfsson, CEO and Co-founder, Anferra.

This investment brings together complementary expertise across the three investors. Stephen Industries brings its expertise in scaling high-impact deeptech and greentech ventures. SKF contributes with industrial application knowledge, waste stream volume, and decades of experience in sustainability leadership. Chalmers Ventures provides venture building capabilities and close connection to the research ecosystem, enabling further development and commercialization.

SKF applies various circularity principles across its operations, including, remanufacturing bearings and circular oil use via RecondOil. Other initiatives such as exploring recycled steel solutions with ultra-low emissions and investigating hydrometallurgical methods are underway to minimize resource loss and accelerate the transition to a net-zero, more circular industrial ecosystem.

Aktiebolaget SKF
      (publ)

For further information, please contact:
Technology communications: Aparna Srivastava, +46 707 576 468; [email protected]
Press Relations: Carl Bjernstam, +46 31-337 2517; +46 722 201 893; [email protected]
Anferra: [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com.

https://news.cision.com/skf/r/skf-invests-in-startup-anferra-to-transform-industry-s-toughest-waste-problems-into-circular-resourc,c4367194

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-Developing agentic AI-powered cross-border commerce infrastructure that automates shipping and customs duty prediction, translation, payment, and customs clearance

-Monthly transaction volume grew approximately sevenfold over the past six months through its Korea-Japan cross-border service; secured partnerships with Mercari, Rakuten, and more

-NAVER D2SF continues to discover and invest in young founders challenging global markets, while exploring potential collaboration with NAVER Commerce

SEONGNAM, South Korea, June 24, 2026 — NAVER D2SF, the corporate venture capital arm of NAVER, has made a new investment in SAZO (CEO, Maro Gil), a cross-border commerce startup building agentic AI-powered infrastructure for global shopping. SAZO has developed a platform where AI agents automate key processes required for overseas purchases, including shipping fee and customs duty prediction, translation, local pricing, payment, and customs clearance. NAVER D2SF decided to invest in the team based on its ability to rapidly build a product for the global market and validate its business potential through transaction growth and partnerships across Korea and Japan.

Demand for cross-border commerce is growing rapidly, with 59% of consumers worldwide having purchased products from overseas retailers. As interest in content and creator IP increasingly translates into product purchases, demand is also rising for overseas goods, fashion items, secondhand products, and other long-tail items that are difficult to access through conventional distribution channels. On the supply side, e-commerce sellers, creators, and IP owners are increasingly seeking ways to sell their products to global customers.

SAZO addresses the information asymmetry and complex purchasing process in cross-border commerce through agentic AI. For overseas purchases, consumers often face uncertainty around final shipping costs and customs duties until the point of payment, while differences in language, currency, and customs regulations across countries create additional friction that limits conversion. SAZO predicts shipping fees, customs duties, and service charges with approximately 95% accuracy, while enabling AI agents to automate translation, local pricing, payment, customs clearance, and other transaction processes.

Through this infrastructure, consumers can purchase overseas products in a way that feels similar to domestic online shopping. Platforms and sellers can also expand their sales regions without building separate systems or taking on overseas inventory burdens. By connecting local platforms with logistics and payment infrastructure across countries, SAZO lowers the barriers to cross-border commerce for both consumers and sellers.

SAZO currently operates a cross-border commerce service connecting Korea and Japan, with monthly transaction volume growing approximately sevenfold over the past six months. The company has secured partnerships with leading commerce platforms in Korea and abroad, including Mercari, Rakuten, and Bungaejangter. In 2025, SAZO also attracted a strategic investment from Japan Post Capital, the venture capital arm of Japan Post Group, which operates one of Japan’s largest cross-border logistics infrastructures. Building on this foundation, the company is advancing its cross-border shopping experience and currently operates services in Korea, the United States, and Japan. Going forward, SAZO plans to expand into additional markets and grow into a global infrastructure company for cross-border agentic commerce.

Maro Gil, CEO of SAZO, is a founder in his twenties who founded the company in 2023 after leaving his studies in Japan, where he had been studying on a government scholarship. Since its founding, SAZO’s co-founding team has built its product and business structure for the global market, based on a deep understanding of AI agents and cross-border commerce. With this investment, the company plans to expand partnerships with brands and platforms targeting global markets, while actively hiring talent to build its next stage of growth.

“Cross-border commerce is not simply about exposing products to overseas customers. It requires connecting different languages, payment systems, logistics networks, and customs processes into a single purchasing experience,” said Sanghwan Yang, Head of NAVER D2SF. “SAZO is currently discussing various forms of collaboration with NAVER Shopping, and we expect the team to provide users with a more convenient overseas shopping experience while creating new global sales opportunities for sellers and creators.”

NAVER D2SF has recently been actively supporting and investing in young founders in their teens and twenties who are boldly challenging global markets. As AI continues to lower the barriers to product development, NAVER D2SF plans to further expand collaboration opportunities with young founders who quickly identify market problems and turn them into global products.

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 D2 (For Developers, By Developers), 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

Financing co-led by TCGX and ARCH Venture Partners with participation from a syndicate of premier healthcare-focused institutional investors

Proceeds will support global Phase 3 trials of IBI324 (Ollin R&D code: OLN324), a potential best-in-class VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody, in $15 billion retina market addressing leading causes of vision loss

OLN324 demonstrated faster and greater retinal drying and numerically greater vision gains versus Vabysmo® in a randomized head-to-head proof of concept JADE clinical trial, as reported earlier this year

SAN FRANCISCO and SUZHOU, China, June 24, 2026 — Innovent Biologics, Inc. (“Innovent”) (HKEX: 01801), a world-class biopharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures, and commercializes high-quality medicines for the treatment of oncology, autoimmune, cardiovascular and metabolic, ophthalmology and other major disease areas, today announced that the company’s partner Ollin has completed an oversubscribed $330 million Series B financing. The financing round was co-led by new investor TCGX and founding investor ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from a syndicate of leading healthcare-focused crossover investors, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional investors new to Ollin, including a16z Bio+Health, Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, Commodore Capital, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), RA Capital Management, accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Inc., and a leading sovereign wealth fund, alongside continued investment from co-founding investors Mubadala Capital and Monograph Capital.

Proceeds from the Series B financing will support global Phase 3 development of OLN324, a next-generation VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody, in DME and wet AMD, as well as the advancement of another drug candidate into clinical development this year.

In the recently completed 164-patient, head-to-head, randomized, proof-of-concept JADE clinical study comparing OLN324 to faricimab (Vabysmo®), OLN324 demonstrated meaningfully faster and greater improvements in retinal anatomy versus faricimab, in both DME and wAMD, as well as numerically greater vision gains.

Ollin has completed an End-of-Phase 2 meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and has received scientific advice from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on the Phase 3 program, and plans to initiate global Phase 3 trials of OLN324 in DME and wAMD in the second half of 2026. And through partnership with Innovent, the global Phase 3 trials will plan to include China and South Korea.

“We founded Ollin to challenge the status quo in ophthalmology. We are delighted to welcome a premier syndicate of new and existing investors who share our vision of advancing OLN324 as a potential new standard of care in retinal vascular disease. Their support reflects confidence in the strength of our scientific rationale and clinical data, the significant commercial opportunity in DME and wAMD, and the differentiated clinical profile we believe OLN324 can offer physicians and patients,” said Jason Ehrlich, M.D., Ph.D., Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ollin Biosciences. “Following positive randomized clinical data and constructive feedback from both FDA and EMA, we believe OLN324 is well positioned to enter global Phase 3 development. This financing provides the resources to execute a registrational program designed to maximize the clinical and commercial potential of OLN324 while positioning Ollin for its next phase of growth as a company.”

“We are very pleased to see our partner Ollin complete this round of financing, which underscores the confidence of leading global investors in the differentiated clinical profile of IBI324 (OLN324) and its potential to become a best-in-class therapy for retinal vascular diseases,” said Dr. Lei Qian, M.D., Ph.D., Chief R&D Officer of General Biomedicine at Innovent Biologics. “As a partner and investor, we look forward to continuing our close collaboration with Ollin and, following discussions with regulatory authorities, to accelerate the global Phase 3 clinical development of IBI324 (OLN324), and to bring this promising therapy to patients worldwide.”

About IBI324 (OLN324)

Building on the clinical success of intravitreal VEGF/Ang2 inhibition, IBI324 (OLN324) is discovered by Innovent Biologics and in collaboration with Ollin Biosciences, as a next-generation VEGF/Ang2 bispecific antibody engineered with substantially higher Ang2 potency relative to faricimab, increased molar dosing relative to both faricimab and aflibercept (including Eylea HD®), and a smaller protein format. VEGF and Ang2 are central drivers of retinal vascular diseases such as diabetic macular edema (DME) and wet (neovascular) age-related macular degeneration (wAMD), with Ang2 playing a key role in vascular instability, leakage, inflammation, and fibrosis. In the recently completed head-to-head Phase 1b JADE clinical study comparing OLN324 to faricimab (Vabysmo®), OLN324 demonstrated meaningfully faster and greater anatomic outcomes in both DME and wAMD versus faricimab as well as numerically greater vision gains. Ollin plans to initiate global Phase 3 trials of OLN324 in DME and wAMD in the second half of 2026. And through partnership with Innovent, the global Phase 3 trials will plan to include China and South Korea.

About Innovent

Innovent is a leading biopharmaceutical company founded in 2011 with the mission to empower patients worldwide with affordable, high-quality biopharmaceuticals. The company discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes innovative medicines that target some of the most intractable diseases. Its pioneering therapies treat cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic, autoimmune and eye diseases. Innovent has launched 18 products in the market. It has 1 asset under NMPA review, 5 assets in Phase 3 or pivotal clinical trials and 15 more molecules in early clinical stage. Innovent partners with over 30 global healthcare companies, including Lilly, Roche, Takeda, Pfizer, Sanofi, Incyte and MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Guided by the motto, “Start with Integrity, Succeed through Action” Innovent maintains the highest standard of industry practices and works collaboratively to advance the biopharmaceutical industry so that first-rate pharmaceutical drugs can become widely accessible. For more information, visit www.innoventbio.com, or follow Innovent on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: Innovent does not recommend any off-label usage.

Vabysmo® is a registered trademark of Genentech, Inc.; Eylea® and Eylea HD® are registered trademarks of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

About Ollin Biosciences

Established in 2023, Ollin Biosciences™ is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to acquiring and developing best-in-disease therapies for vision-threatening diseases. With a differentiated pipeline, world-class team, and strong investor syndicate, Ollin is redefining what’s possible in ophthalmology. For more information, please visit www.ollin.bio and follow Olllin on LinkedIn and X.

Forward-looking statement

This news release may contain certain forward-looking statements that are, by their nature, subject to significant risks and uncertainties. The words “anticipate”, “believe”, “estimate”, “expect”, “intend” and similar expressions, as they relate to Innovent Biologics (“Innovent”), are intended to identify certain of such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements regularly.

These forward-looking statements are based on the existing beliefs, assumptions, expectations, estimates, projections and understandings of the management of the Company with respect to future events at the time these statements are made. These statements are not a guarantee of future developments and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond the Company’s control and are difficult to predict. Consequently, actual results may differ materially from information contained in the forward-looking statements as a result of future changes or developments in our business, the Company’s competitive environment and political, economic, legal and social conditions.

The Company, the Directors and the employees of the Company assume (a) no obligation to correct or update the forward-looking statements contained in this site; and (b) no liability in the event that any of the forward-looking statements does not materialise or turn out to be incorrect.

SOURCE Innovent Biologics

New capital brings total funding to more than $76 million and will fuel continued expansion of the company’s platform for turning fragmented medical records into decision-ready clinical data.

OAKLAND, Calif., June 24, 2026 — xCures®, a pioneering healthcare data company focused on improving healthcare outcomes, today announced the close of a $46 million Series B financing round led by Innovius Capital, with participation from iGrow, GKCC, Spring Mountain Capital, and existing investors. The new capital brings xCures’ total funding to more than $76 million and will support the continued expansion of the clinical clarity layer to turn fragmented medical records into decision-ready clinical data.

Patient information is scattered across thousands of labs, hospitals, imaging centers, and EMRs, often arriving as unstructured documents that are difficult to use in clinical workflows. The xCures Clinical Clarity Engine brings together three integrated capabilities: decision-ready checklists built from automated patient histories and backed by evidence-grade data. It creates the clarity that providers, value-based care, diagnostics labs, and consumer health organizations have long needed.

To date, xCures has processed over 300 million medical records sourced from more than 550,000 healthcare locations nationwide, supporting clinical decisions for millions of patients across the U.S.

“Healthcare has spent decades generating enormous amounts of patient data without a reliable way to make that information usable. We’re changing that,” said Mika Newton, CEO of xCures. “This financing allows us to accelerate product development, expand our team, and help more organizations turn fragmented records into information they can actually act on.”

Stu Posluns, Partner at Innovius, added, “The promise of AI in healthcare depends on having accurate, complete, and trustworthy clinical data. xCures has built by far the most compelling platform we’ve seen for turning fragmented medical records into actionable clinical intelligence. We’re proud to support Mika and the team as they expand that impact across healthcare.”

xCures is the Clinical Clarity Engine for healthcare, assembling and structuring patient medical records into decision-ready data.

To learn more about the Clinical Clarity Engine and how xCures is transforming fragmented medical records into decision-ready data, visit www.xcures.com.

About xCures®
xCures is the Clinical Clarity Engine for healthcare, assembling and structuring patient medical records into decision-ready data. The company is focused on improving healthcare outcomes by increasing the value of medical records. Its Clinical Clarity Engine is built on almost a decade of work in the most complex area of medicine, oncology, and is now used across all clinical domains, scaling across care and workflows.

The Engine extracts decision-ready data from medical records retrieved across U.S. healthcare systems and delivers it via a web UI or a developer-friendly API. Every answer links to its source document, enabling teams to make better-informed decisions.

For more information, visit www.xcures.com.

SOURCE xCures

Unlocking economic value and accelerating path to patient benefit from Ontario-made cancer innovations

TORONTO, June 24, 2026 – FACIT is pleased to announce the addition of an Investment and Asset Management Committee (“Committee”) to provide strategic and expert advice on investment opportunities and advise on the growth and performance of its asset portfolio. To date, the commercialization venture firm’s portfolio of Ontario-based oncology start-ups has attracted over $1.7 billion in follow-on investment and has generated significant local economic value including 11 successful exits, formation of 20 new start-ups, and supported 17 first-in-human clinical studies bringing innovations closer to better patient care.

Leading the Committee as the inaugural Chair is Dr. Elizabeth Douville, Vice-President, Corporate Development at Biologics Manufacturing Centre. She is joined by Committee members Mr. Kelly Holman, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Genesys Capital, Mr. Ken Newport, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Virica Biotech, and Dr. Tom Hudson, Venture Partner at Versant Ventures and former President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). FACIT will draw on the Committee’s deep health sector expertise and investor experience to advise on strategic investment opportunities arising from Ontario’s leading research institutions and cancer start-ups to ensure the portfolio continues its track record of success including company scale-up and job creation.

Venture investments through FACIT’s Compass Rose Oncology Fund capitalize on Ontario’s world-leading excellence in research innovation to advance cancer care for patients. Distinct from traditional venture capital funds, FACIT’s investments strategically balance value creation through both economic priorities and potential healthcare impact. In addition, FACIT reinvests the proceeds from its returns for future opportunities in the province’s innovations, further multiplying the value of every dollar invested.  The Compass Rose Fund is integral to FACIT’s continuum of commercialization capital and entrepreneurial support programs, strategically targeting pre-seed and seed stage ventures and helping to bridge the funding gap commonly faced by early life science start-ups. The addition of the Committee’s expertise further strengthens FACIT’s advisory support in helping start-up management teams navigate financing and commercialization challenges.

“This Investment Committee represents an important step in FACIT’s strategy to help unlock the full value and potential of Ontario innovations,” remarked Ms. Susan Fitzpatrick, Chair of FACIT’s Board of Directors. “Its guidance will be invaluable as we accelerate the development of cancer solutions that deliver meaningful impact for patients and the local economy.”

“FACIT has built a distinctive commercialization model supporting high-potential oncology ventures and creating long-term value for Ontario’s healthcare and life sciences ecosystems,” said Dr. Douville. “I look forward to working with my fellow Committee members and the FACIT team to continue strengthening the portfolio and help position companies to successfully attract and secure additional capital.”

About FACIT         
FACIT is an award-winning commercialization venture firm that builds companies with entrepreneurs to accelerate oncology innovation, with a portfolio that has attracted more than $1.7 billion in investment to Ontario. Blending industry experience, capital and the unsurpassed clinician-scientist network of its strategic partner the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), FACIT capitalizes on the province’s investment in research and healthcare to the benefit of the local economy and patients worldwide. Cancer Breakthroughs. Realized. facit.ca

SOURCE FACIT Inc.

NEW YORK, June 24, 2026 — Trovy, the consumer fintech replacing high-interest debt with home equity-powered financing, today announced a $15 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital, bringing total funding to $25 million. Existing seed investors Kleiner Perkins, DCM Ventures, and Camber Creek also participated. The funding will accelerate Trovy’s national expansion, deepen its product platform, and grow the team building the definitive financial home base for America’s 85 million homeowners.

Homeowners Are Sitting on a Fortune – And Needlessly Paying a Fortune in Interest

Household debt has reached record levels, with nonmortgage consumer debt in the United States exceeding $5 trillion, costing Americans an estimated $550 billion in interest annually, much of it at APRs above 20%.¹ For the roughly 85 million homeowners sitting on trillions of dollars in untapped home equity, a far cheaper source of capital is hiding in plain sight.

Trovy was built to close that gap by giving homeowners a smarter, faster way to put their equity to work and dramatically reduce their borrowing costs. Its flagship product is a home equity–backed credit card that gives homeowners on-demand access to low-cost capital they can use anywhere – replacing the high-rate credit cards, personal loans, and specialty financing that most homeowners cobble together to cover everyday needs.

“As a homeowner, you’ve spent years building equity and you deserve a better way to put it to work,” said TJ Milani, Trovy Co-Founder and CEO. “Trovy gives you the low interest rates of a home equity line of credit with the everyday flexibility of a credit card, unlocking smarter financing that works the way your life actually does.”

More Than a Lender – A Platform Built for Homeowners

Trovy is building what it describes as a financial home base for homeowners: a unified platform combining smarter financing with a suite of tools built around the home. The financing side gives homeowners on-demand access to their home equity to cover life’s expenses at a fraction of the cost of conventional debt, whether that’s a home renovation, a dental bill, a family vacation, or everyday purchases. In addition, a homeowner hub – a home management platform with maintenance reminders, expert tips, document storage for insurance policies, warranties, and home records, and insights to help homeowners protect and maximize the value of their home – and a rewards program built around the things homeowners actually spend on and care about.

“We are building the platform homeowners have never had – one that helps them manage and enjoy their home, and leverage their equity for low-cost financing, whether that’s handling the costs of homeownership or funding the rest of their lives,” said Ashley Harris, Trovy Co-Founder and COO. “We want Trovy to be the home base for every homeowner. Once you have it, you won’t want to own a home without it.”

Trovy is launching its second financial product this summer: the 1Loan, a HELOC purpose-built for home purchases and refinances. Unlike a traditional mortgage, the 1Loan gives homeowners flexible, on-demand access to equity for whatever comes next, from home improvements to debt consolidation and beyond. The 1Loan meets homeowners at the moment of purchase or refinancing and grows with them from there.

Built Differently From the Ground Up

Less than 18 months after founding, Trovy is live in 27 states and licensed in 30, having launched its first product in June 2025, roughly eight months after formation. Unlike fintech platforms that layer on top of bank partnerships, Trovy is a licensed consumer lender, giving it direct control over its product, underwriting, and the full borrower experience. The Trovy card is issued by Cross River Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard.

“TJ and Ashley have built something rare, and they have the backgrounds to match,” said Henry Toole, Partner at Left Lane Capital. “The team has a wealth of fintech experience from Figure, SoFi, and JPMorgan. Home equity is one of the largest and most underutilized categories in consumer finance, and we believe Trovy is building the definitive modern platform for it. We’re proud to lead this round as they scale.”

“TJ, Ashley, and the Trovy team are building for a simple but enormous reality: for most Americans, the home is their largest asset, yet the financial products around homeownership still feel fragmented, slow, and expensive,” said Leigh Marie Braswell, Partner at Kleiner Perkins. “Trovy is turning home equity into something homeowners can actually use in everyday life. We’ve believed in this team from the beginning, and we’re thrilled to continue supporting them.”

About Trovy

Trovy is a consumer fintech platform that gives homeowners a smarter way to access and leverage their home equity. The Trovy card is issued by Cross River Bank pursuant to a license from Mastercard. Equal Housing Lender. NMLS #2676733. Learn more at www.trovy.com.

About Left Lane Capital

Founded in 2019, Left Lane Capital is a New York and London-based venture capital and growth equity firm investing in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses globally. Left Lane’s mission is to partner with extraordinary entrepreneurs who create category-defining companies across growth sectors of the economy. Select investments include Bilt Rewards, M1 Finance, LemFi, Talkiatry, Ownwell, Moove, Wayflyer, Blank Street, and more. For more information, visit www.leftlane.com.

Contact: 
[email protected]

¹ Non-mortgage consumer debt figure per the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (Q1 2026, published May 12, 2026). Interest cost estimate based on average APRs by product category as reported by LendingTree.

SOURCE Trovy

NEW YORK, June 24, 2026 — Attention, the AI platform for revenue teams, announced a $30 million Series B led by RTP Global, with participation from returning investors Aglaé Ventures, Eniac, and Alven, new investor Linea, and a group of angel investors drawn from Attention’s own customer base. The company will use the funding to expand its agentic offering and move further upmarket into enterprise revenue organizations.

Most AI tools for sales watch the call and write up what happened. Attention takes the action. It drafts and sends the follow-up, updates the CRM, and runs the next play. Because it takes the action, it can tie the outcome back to its own work. That closed loop is the thing observation-only tools can’t do: if software only records and summarizes, it can never prove what it changed.

Attention is now running more than 20 million agent actions per month for customers since launching the capability, and annual recurring revenue is up 4x year over year. As the platform has moved upmarket, ACV has grown 10x over two years. The company now serves more than 500 customers, including Abridge, Scale, Lovable, Preply, and BambooHR.

Earlier this month, co-founder and CEO Anis Bennaceur open-sourced a stripped-down version of what Attention does and posted it to LinkedIn. It drew more than 500 comments from people asking for access – a signal of how much demand sits in the gap between tools that record the call and a system that acts on it.

Customers report outcomes that show up in revenue, not just in hours saved. Abridge, the healthcare AI company, credits Attention with 5x coaching efficiency while their sales organization experienced 4x growth. Unify improved its win rate 40%. Because Attention takes action, each of these traces back to work the platform did.

“Attention serves as a fundamental operating layer across our go-to-market. It’s one of those win-win-win solutions — a win for the rep, a win for the company, and a win for managers. The ability to customize prompts and workflows has been a game changer for our forecasting accuracy and pipeline hygiene.” — Jeremy von Halle, VP of Revenue Operations, Abridge

“The simplest way I describe Attention is that we automate smarter work for sales teams over time. Most software in this space watches the call and writes up what happened. We take the next best action, and because we take it, we can see what actually worked and didn’t, and get smarter every time we do.” — Anis Bennaceur, co-founder and CEO, Attention

The funding goes toward Attention’s next step: an autonomous action engine that surfaces each rep’s highest-impact next moves, ranked by likely revenue, and executes the ones they approve, then learns from the outcome of every action it takes.

Attention was founded in 2021 by Anis Bennaceur (CEO) and Matthias Wickenburg (CTO), who were formerly competitors at their previous startups.

The round also drew angel investments from leaders at companies that run on Attention, including Preply co-founder and CEO Kirill Bigai, Pavilion CEO Sam Jacobs, and executives at Engine, Abridge, and Scale AI.

About Attention

Attention is the AI platform for revenue teams. Its agents act inside the revenue workflow, drafting and sending follow-ups, updating the system of record, and running the next play, so teams can see and prove outcomes. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in New York, Attention serves more than 500 customers, including Abridge, Scale, Lovable, Preply, Engine, and BambooHR. Learn more at attention.com.

SOURCE Attention

SAN FRANCISCO, June 24, 2026 — Valence AI, an emotional intelligence infrastructure company, today announced $5 million in total funding, including a seed round led by Differential Ventures, with participation from Difference Partners, Willowtree Ventures, Change Paradox Ventures, and SRI International. The announcement coincides with the issuance of two U.S. patents on the company’s proprietary audio signal processing pipeline, among the only patents ever issued on identifying emotional state from live speech in real-time conversation using deep learning.

The company builds the emotional intelligence infrastructure for voice AI. Its Pulse Emotion model analyzes live calls and classifies emotional state from speech in real time, turning tone, pacing, and other vocal cues into structured data that voice agent builders, contact center platforms, and sales and support teams can act on alongside transcripts and intent. The company was founded by Chloe Duckworth and Shannon Brownlee, who launched Valence AI after a hackathon project focused on helping neurodivergent people better understand emotional cues in conversation.

Valence AI develops and publishes its own foundation models, trained on proprietary speech datasets built to reflect a wide range of demographic and neurotype diversity, and reports 92 percent accuracy on internal benchmarks. Products include emotion-aware IVR, an Agent Assist copilot for live call coaching, emotionally intelligent AI voice agents, and post-call quality assurance. Integrations with ElevenLabs and Cartesia enable realistic, expressive audio informed by its emotional analysis of the speaker. In production deployments, the company reports handle time reductions of 30 percent, alongside gains in customer satisfaction scores, close rates, and time to close.

“Voice AI has made enormous progress toward understanding what people say. The more challenging gap remains what people mean, and emotional state understanding is the signal that closes that gap,” said Nick Adams, Managing Partner at Differential Ventures. “Valence AI is building the infrastructure layer that makes that signal usable, and they are doing it with proprietary models, issued patents, and enterprise-scale deployments that deliver measurable business impact.”

The company holds two U.S. patents on identifying emotional state from live speech in real-time conversation, both issued in June 2026. The patents cover how Valence AI converts raw audio into an emotion classification, normalizing for pitch and timbre so the signal reflects a speaker’s emotional state rather than their demographic profile. One patent covers the core signal processing pipeline; the other extends that method to include live haptic feedback. Valence AI both owns the IP and runs commercial deployments on the same technology, a combination that remains uncommon in the emotion AI market.

“Voice AI has gotten remarkably good at understanding what people say, but it still can’t hear how they feel: the frustration under a polite request, the hesitation before someone hangs up,” said Chloe Duckworth, co-founder and CEO of Valence AI. “That gap between human experience and machine intelligence is exactly what we close. Real emotional alignment begins when models understand both the intent and impact of their output. We’re building the emotional communication layer that gives voice AI that understanding.”

The new funding will support expansion of Pulse’s language coverage, currently live in English with additional languages underway, deeper integrations across voice AI orchestration platforms, and new hires in engineering, go-to-market, and customer success. Valence AI’s customers include Harte Hanks, CustomerHD, and BPO Centers. Its technology is deployed across Fortune 500 retailers, healthcare, and clinical research environments. The company has also introduced the Emotion Quotient, a customer satisfaction metric calculated from real-time emotional signals during each turn of a call rather than post-call surveys, designed as a more precise alternative to NPS for voice-heavy businesses.

About Valence AI
Valence AI builds emotional intelligence infrastructure for voice. Its patented signal processing pipeline and Pulse Emotion models listen to how people sound on calls, detect how they feel in real time, and turn that into data voice AI systems can use alongside intent and transcripts. The company holds two issued U.S. patents on its core signal processing methodology and serves customer intelligence and contact center operators across customer support, financial services, and healthcare. Its products, including emotion-aware IVR, Agent Assist, AI Agent, and post-call quality assurance, are SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliant. Learn more at getvalenceai.com.

About Differential Ventures
Differential Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2018, that invests in enterprise AI and data infrastructure companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. The firm partners with technical founders building dynamic AI systems and data technologies that enable the data-driven economy. Differential is comprised of industry experts from leading hedge funds and executives from high-growth tech companies who provide domain expertise, operational support, and a specialized network to help portfolio companies scale. For more information, visit https://www.differential.vc/.

Media Contact 
Laura Anderson McGrath for Valence AI
[email protected]

SOURCE Valence AI

Felicis and Khosla Ventures double down to help Runlayer bring AI enablement and governance to the entire enterprise workforce

NEW YORK, June 24, 2026 — Runlayer, the platform helping companies become AI-native, today announced a $30 million Series A led by Felicis, with participation from Khosla Ventures. This brings Runlayer’s total capital raised to $42 million.

Runlayer gives every employee a golden path to delegating real work to agents, with AI enablement and control built into one platform. The platform’s customers include Fortune 500s and high-growth companies such as Instacart, Gusto, Decagon, Opendoor, dbt Labs, AngelList, Lemonade, and more. Runlayer has attracted engineers and operators from NVIDIA, Anthropic, Cursor, Databricks, Snowflake, Uber, Meta, Google, Block, Palo Alto Networks, Glean, Vercel, Applied Intuition, and Zapier.

In the future, people will go from asking AI questions, to delegating tasks, to directing agents, to supervising self-directed agents on whole missions. The most effective way for enterprises to be truly AI-native is for every employee’s tens-to-hundreds of agents to be governed by an interoperability layer—with security, observability, and cost control built in.

Today’s AI tools still force enterprises into an impossible tradeoff between adoption and control. Lock AI down and employees will use whatever helps them move faster anyway. Open the gates without control and security teams lose the visibility they need to move confidently. The companies that succeed are the ones that make using AI both safe and cost-effective for every employee.

Runlayer gives companies a golden path: a sanctioned way for employees to use and direct AI agents across their everyday work. When the right way is also the easy way, it becomes the default.

With Runlayer:

• Teams can use any AI client, agent, MCP, skill, or plugin, or create agents on demand by describing the work they want done. Runlayer gives them a sanctioned golden path with the right tools, permissions, and company context already connected, so agents can work across systems like CRM, Atlassian, Notion, meeting notes, and the data warehouse.
• AI transformation teams get a single control plane and interoperability layer across the enterprise AI stack. Runlayer supports the 5–20 AI clients the average enterprise uses, including IDEs, chat clients, vertical AI apps, independent agents, and platforms like Salesforce Agentforce. Teams get one managed home for all agentic work in the enterprise, with identity, permissions, policy enforcement, audit logs, and real-time visibility tied to every action.
• Security and IT teams use the same control plane to secure AI activity and uncover shadow AI. Runlayer combines security, observability, and cost control in one layer, with control over agent, token, and model consumption across the platform. Static and dynamic security models give full-session observability into every call, catching prompt injection, tool poisoning, output manipulation, exfiltration, and intent drift. Runlayer Watch identifies shadow MCPs, skills, plugins, clients, and unmanaged agents, routing employees toward approved tooling instead of relying on blanket bans.

Runlayer is led by Andrew Berman, a three-time founder who was most recently Director of AI at Zapier, working closely in partnership with OpenAI and Anthropic.

“Every employee will delegate their work to swarms of agents,” said Andrew Berman, co-founder and CEO of Runlayer. “Not as a novelty, and not as a side tool, but as a core part of how work gets done. AI-maximalist companies already understand the future is not a handful of power users experimenting with agents, but entire workforces operating alongside them. The challenge is that most companies still do not have a secure, scalable way to make that possible. That is the problem Runlayer exists to solve.”

“Runlayer is solving one of the most important enterprise problems of this moment: how to adopt AI at scale without losing control. This is the right team, in the right market, at the right time, which is why Felicis pre-empted this round. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a team that more deeply understands the entire ecosystem. When we introduced Runlayer to AI teams and CISOs in our network, the response was immediate and overwhelming; this is exactly the infrastructure enterprises have been waiting for. We’re proud to have led the series A and to double down on Runlayer as the golden path for every workforce going AI-native,” said Jake Storm, General Partner at Felicis. 

“Runlayer is one of those rare companies where the consequences of success are so large that almost nothing else matters. The team has found a powerful wedge by giving enterprises the solution they need to become AI-enabled. Their execution has been exceptional and adoption is accelerating because they are solving a problem no one else really delivers end-to-end, making them the first solution that makes it easy to become AI native versus trying to stitch together multiple point solutions,” said Jon Chu, the Partner at Khosla Ventures that led both their seed and A round investments into Runlayer.

“What makes Runlayer especially exciting is that this is not just a point solution for today’s AI adoption,” said Vinod Khosla. “As agents become ubiquitous, every employee will own tens or even hundreds of agents, and enterprises will need a new security fabric that governs how those agents access systems, handle data, and share information. Runlayer has the potential to become that foundational layer for the AI-enabled enterprise that every company must inevitably become to stay relevant.”

“Once it became clear Runlayer could become the agentic interaction fabric of the future, Vinod and I wanted to buy every available dollar of the round,” Chu added.

The funding will go toward expanding Runlayer’s engineering and go-to-market teams. If you want to help build the infrastructure that will fundamentally change how every person thinks, builds, creates, and operates at work, visit runlayer.com/careers.

About Runlayer

Runlayer is the way to become an AI-native company. It gives every employee a golden path to delegating real work to agents, with AI enablement and control built into one platform. Customers include Instacart, Gusto, Decagon, Opendoor, dbt Labs, AngelList, and Lemonade. Learn more at runlayer.com.

SOURCE Runlayer