La plataforma europea de asistencia a vehículos totalmente digital cierra una nueva ronda de financiación de 20 millones de euros y anuncia la adquisición de Carvoilà.

MILAN, 23 de septiembre de 2026 — hlpy, la ‘scale-up’ italiana que está rediseñando la asistencia a vehículos y la movilidad en toda Europa mediante una plataforma totalmente digital impulsada por inteligencia artificial anuncia una nueva ronda de financiación de 20 millones de euros y la adquisición del 100 % del capital social de Carvoilà, empresa especializada en servicios de transporte y logística de vehículos. Como parte de la operación, BNP Paribas BNL Equity Investments (BBEI), la compañía de BNP Paribas Group especializada en inversiones minoritarias en pequeñas y medianas empresas italianas, se incorpora al accionariado de hlpy. Esta transacción supone un paso más en la estrategia de crecimiento externo de hlpy, orientada a ampliar progresivamente su oferta de servicios a lo largo de toda la cadena de valor de la automoción y a reforzar su papel como orquestador paneuropeo de servicios para vehículos.

Gracias a los nuevos recursos financieros y a la adquisición de Carvoilà, hlpy suma un nuevo hito a su trayectoria de crecimiento, evolucionando de una plataforma digital de asistencia a la movilidad a un ecosistema integrado de servicios para vehículos, capaz de conectar tecnología, datos, redes operativas y experiencia especializada a lo largo de toda la cadena de valor de los servicios de automoción.

Tras la adquisición, las fundadoras de Carvoilà, Francesca Vidali y Michela Conti, se incorporarán al Grupo hlpy con el objetivo de seguir ampliando el modelo de negocio y aprovechar las sinergias operativas.

Valerio Chiaronzi, consejero delegado de hlpy, comentó: “Estamos evolucionando nuestra plataforma, que ahora es capaz de dar soporte a los vehículos a lo largo de toda la cadena de valor de los servicios de preventa y posventa —desde la asistencia hasta la reparación, el mantenimiento y la logística— gracias a la combinación de tecnología, datos y redes operativas. La nueva ronda de financiación y la entrada de BBEI en nuestro accionariado confirman la confianza en nuestro modelo industrial y nos permitirán acelerar aún más tanto el crecimiento orgánico como el crecimiento mediante adquisiciones”. 

Lorenzo Langella, consejero delegado de BBEI, añadió: “La inversión en hlpy se alinea plenamente con la misión de BBEI: crear asociaciones estratégicas con empresas que operan en sectores dinámicos y dirigidas por emprendedores visionarios”.

Francesca Vidali, fundadora de Carvoilà, dijo: “Estamos encantados de unirnos al Grupo hlpy. Carvoilà se fundó con una visión clara: aportar innovación y eficiencia a la logística de vehículos, rediseñando la forma en que se organiza y se vive el transporte por carretera”.

Con la integración de Carvoilà, hlpy se acerca a su objetivo de superar los 100 millones de euros en ingresos recurrentes para 2027. Gracias a esta operación, la empresa alcanza un total de 45 millones de euros en financiación captada desde su fundación en 2020 y suma dos adquisiciones realizadas en sus seis años de actividad.

Funding will accelerate R&D, global go-to-market and a significant Silicon Valley presence as Brahma AI builds the operating system for enterprise audiovisual content

LOS ANGELES and LONDON and MUMBAI, Sept. 23, 2026 — Brahma AI, the AI-native operating system for enterprise audiovisual content, today announced that it has raised $150 million through the issuance of preferred shares with a $100 million investment by Multiples Alternate Asset Management. The company has also received a further $100 million of investor interest.

Brahma AI is focused on four global verticals: media & entertainment, sports, healthcare and advertising. Global anchor customers include Warner Bros, the NBA and Mayo Clinic and strategic distribution partners include Google, Hakuhodo and DNEG.

Brahma AI was founded and is led by Founder & CEO Prabhu Narasimhan. Brahma AI was born from Narasimhan’s vision to bring together the technology stack and capabilities developed across DNEG, Metaphysic and Prime Focus Technologies to build an AI-native platform for the world’s largest enterprises. Under his leadership, Brahma AI has developed its AI-native platform around Brahma AI Core and Brahma AI Studio, secured major global customers and partnerships, and expanded the application of its technology across media & entertainment, sports, healthcare and advertising.

Today, Brahma AI combines enterprise content intelligence and management with sophisticated AI creation technologies spanning visual AI, digital humans, voice and multilingual performance. Its technology has received significant industry recognition, including a 2026 Technology & Engineering Emmy^® Award.

Jo Plaete, Co-Founder & CTO and one of the world’s leading experts in AI, visual AI, digital humans and high-fidelity synthetic media, heads Brahma AI’s technology and R&D division as the company continues to develop and expand its AI platform.

Renuka Ramnath, Founder, MD & CEO of Multiples

“Brahma AI is reimagining the content supply chain in the age of AI. Built on a unique heritage of Hollywood-grade technology and enterprise innovation, the company is helping organizations unlock greater value through AI-powered content, intelligence, localization, digital humans, and workflow automation. Its strong customer traction, differentiated capabilities and recognition thereof, including a 2026 Technology & Engineering Emmy^® Award, reinforce our conviction in its ability to appropriate the multi-billion-dollar market opportunity.

Our investment is anchored in the belief that every enterprise is becoming a content enterprise. Prabhu, Jo and the broader team bring a deep understanding of the industries they serve and have translated cutting-edge AI into highly relevant solutions, spanning enabling multilingual visual experiences for films to developing digital twins for physicians. Multiples Private Equity will be an active partner as the company navigates the next phase of growth through investments in R&D, global market expansion, and talent & process build-out. The company has all the ingredients required to build an enduring global institution in a category that is only beginning to take shape.”

Namit Malhotra, Founder & CEO of DNEG

“Brahma AI began with Prabhu’s bold idea: to bring together the technology stacks and capabilities developed across DNEG, Metaphysic and Prime Focus Technologies and create a new, independent technology company built for the AI era. What he and his team have built from those foundations in such a short period of time has been remarkable.

Under Prabhu’s leadership, Brahma AI has developed its own technology and products, won major global customers and partnerships, and established a clear identity and ambition of its own. There is also a special symmetry to this moment. Prabhu, United Al Saqer Group and Thor Björgólfsson backed and invested in Prime Focus Limited, DNEG and me at an important stage in our journey. Today, all of us are backing Brahma AI and Prabhu alongside new investors led by Multiples.”

Prabhu Narasimhan, Founder & CEO of Brahma AI

“What excites me most about this investment is what it allows us to build next. We are close to launching interactive digital humans, we are building Brahma AI to be model agnostic, and we are taking our technology into entirely new use cases. And security, authenticity and provenance are such an important part of what we are building.

What resonated with us about Multiples is our shared belief that category-defining companies are built through a combination of bold ambition, disciplined execution and long-term thinking. I could not be more excited to have Multiples alongside us as we scale globally and continue pushing the boundaries of enterprise AI.”

Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. served as sole placement agent on this equity financing.

About Brahma AI

Brahma AI is the AI-native operating system for enterprise audiovisual content. Its platform combines Brahma AI Core, its enterprise content intelligence and management layer, with Brahma AI Studio, its AI-powered creation platform spanning visual AI, digital humans, voice and multilingual performance. Brahma AI works with some of the world’s leading content owners and enterprises and is the recipient of a 2026 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award for its visual AI technology.

Mind² — Human emotion. Machine execution.

About Multiples

Multiples is India’s leading Alternate Asset Management company, distinguished by its long and successful experience of partnering with entrepreneurs. Multiples has backed over 35 enterprises to build aspirational, distinctive, and responsible businesses. Multiples identifies opportunities that benefit from big shifts in its chosen sectors and partners with exceptional entrepreneurs and management teams in creating transformational growth.

Multiples focuses on core sectors of financial services, pharma & healthcare, consumer and technology and more recently the green economy. Some of Multiples’ distinctive investment partnerships include ACKO, Delhivery, Encube Ethicals, India Energy Exchange, Kogta Financial, Licious, Milltec, MoEngage, PVR, Quantiphi, TI Clean Mobility, Vastu Housing Finance, VIP Industries, and Zenex.

SOURCE BRAHMA AI

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Snorkel AI, the frontier AI data lab, today announced it raised $350 million at a valuation of $3.5B in a round co-led by Insight Partners and S32, with significant participation from existing investor Addition. The round included new investors March Capital, Blumberg Capital, Allegis Capital, Frontline, Standard, and Third Point Ventures, along with existing investors Greylock, Lightspeed, GV, Factory, Prosperity7, Walden Catalyst, and Wells Fargo. The investment will expand Snorkel’s agentic data factory, which supplies the data and environments behind the world’s most advanced AI lab systems.

The raise comes amid a fundamental phase shift in AI data. Building AI in the Data 1.0 era meant simple labeling tasks, a volume problem solved with headcount. Today’s frontier and agentic systems demand Data 2.0: expert agentic tasks, environments, and rubrics that take even the most qualified humans hours or days to construct. Designing them well is research work, where quality and complexity determine value.

Meeting that bar requires a wholly new paradigm for data development, which is partly why Snorkel has grown rapidly since launching its expert Data-as-a-Service offering in September 2025. The company works with leading AI labs and enterprises on the data behind frontier model evaluation and training. The work is a natural outgrowth of Snorkel’s roots: the company grew out of the Stanford AI Lab nearly a decade ago with a founding team that pioneered the field of data-centric AI and continues to contribute science on data at the jagged frontier of AI development. That body of work spans 250+ peer-reviewed papers cited more than 25,000 times.

“The teams pushing the frontier want a research data partner who pioneers the science of data development,” said Alex Ratner, co-founder and CEO of Snorkel AI. “That’s what Snorkel was built to be: the frontier lab for agentic data, combining human excellence with over a decade of research and technology.”

“Snorkel’s research-grade approach to AI data, environments, and measurement is becoming an increasingly important ingredient in building capable and reliable AI systems – and their demonstrated growth at scale reflects that,” said Lonne Jaffe, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “We’re excited to back Alex and the team as they continue to bring their frontier AI data factory capabilities to longer-running, complex work in high value industries like healthcare, law, and software engineering.”

“Snorkel’s expert-agentic environments create a unique flywheel between human expertise and AI, delivering data at the speed and quality that enables a new era of efficiency and accuracy for model development,” said Andy Harrison, CEO and General Partner of S32. “Working with Snorkel ensures the highest frontier model success rate and creates a true partnership between model developer and data provider.”

Snorkel plans to use the funding to grow the capacity of its agentic data factory to meet demand, accelerate investment in vertical and enterprise AI, and extend its core research and technology into new domains and modalities. The company will also deepen its investment in open research, building on programs like its Open Benchmarks Grants initiative.

About Snorkel AI

Snorkel AI is the frontier AI data lab, helping teams build the data and environments behind high-performing frontier and agentic AI. We combine technology with research-driven AI data development to create datasets, benchmarks, evals, and custom solutions for real-world AI systems. Founded out of the Stanford AI Lab in 2019, Snorkel works with leading AI labs and enterprises to move from better data to better outcomes.

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. As of December 31, 2025, the firm has over $90B in regulatory assets under management. Insight Partners has invested in more than 900 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO. Headquartered in New York City, Insight has a global presence with leadership in London, Tel Aviv, and the Bay Area. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with tailored, hands-on software expertise along their growth journey, from their first investment to IPO. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on X @insightpartners.

Media Contact [email protected]

SOURCE Snorkel AI

Ande brings corporate entertainment into a single platform and gives venues a direct channel to enterprise bookings.

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2026 — Ande, the AI-native network for corporate entertainment, emerges from stealth with more than $52 million in seed and Series A funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Duration Ventures, and Sierra Ventures, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures.

Enterprises spend an estimated $325 billion a year on entertainment from client dinners and team outings to catering, sporting events, and gifting. Yet the booking and expense management behind it is fragmented across credit cards, AP systems, and consumer apps creating an extremely manual reconciliation process for finance teams.

Ande brings structure to one of the last unmanaged categories of enterprise spend by giving teams a single platform to book entertainment effortlessly, while finance and legal teams keep full visibility and control over every dollar spent.

Ande’s agentic workflows surface venue availability, book experiences, route approvals, execute contracts, and reconcile expenses automatically. Executive assistants, office managers, field marketers, GTM teams, and their managers all work together in a single, multiplayer workspace in order to book team offsites and deal-closing dinners, while the agents move each request through approval, signing, and payment.

More than 60 enterprises already run their entertainment on Ande, reporting savings of 12 to 15 percent. Customers like Cloudflare, Salesforce, McGraw Hill, Netskope, Navan, Sigma Computing, Monday.com, Workato, Semgrep, Checkout, Rillet, and many more contribute to over $400 million in entertainment spend flowing through the platform annually.

“Entertainment is one of the most important things a company does. It builds culture, closes deals and deepens the relationships that matter most. Yet the infrastructure to manage it is broken on both sides of every transaction,” said Lohit Sarma, CEO and co-founder of Ande.

“Ande is the first enterprise channel between corporate buyers and the world’s best entertainment vendors. Part of the reason this is such a hard problem to solve is that venues and entertainment providers don’t have a centralized distribution system to plug into. We had to build it. We’ve spent two and half years working with venues to digitize their data, and train models and agents for these workflows that are unique to enterprises,” continued Sarma.

For venues on the other side of the transaction, Ande is the corporate sales and marketing channel that never existed. Venues have historically had no pipeline into the corporate market. Ande gives them a platform to market to, engage with, and transact with corporate buyers at scale. Among the current partners are 1,600 hospitality venues including some of the largest and most decorated hospitality groups like Altamarea Group, Che Fico, Gracious Hospitality, JKS, The Mina Group, MML, Nobu, Riviera Dining Group, Tao Group Hospitality, Unapologetic Foods, Bacchus Management Group, Wish You Were Here, and Wolfgang Puck. Over 93,000 entertainment venues are on Ande’s network today.

“Our programs are high stakes and high visibility, with our executive leadership team and key customers at the core of each event we host,” said Vicky Chung, Director of Corporate Events at Netskope. “My team and I trust Ande’s platform, and especially the team behind it. I have real-time visibility into what’s happening across every event, and when I need something done right, I know it will be. My team is now focused on reaching the executives that matter and scaling the program vs. worrying about the logistics.”

“Entertainment is every enterprise’s biggest expense line that is not yet well managed. For that reason, there are financial inefficiencies and a poor experience,” notes Arif Janmohamed, Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and Co-Founder of Duration Ventures. “Ande is the connective tissue, the perfect handshake between corporations and venues. Lohit is an exceptional founder, and the size of the market opportunity is largely unbounded.”

Redpoint Ventures Managing Director Alex Bard notes, “Particularly when we invest in an early-stage company, our confidence has everything to do with the founder and their ambition. Lohit has both startup DNA and the enterprise experience to solve this problem. His vision for Ande is bold and ambitious.”

About Ande

Ande is the AI-native network for corporate entertainment. Over 60 enterprises, including Cloudflare, Salesforce, and McGraw Hill already book, manage, and measure every experience through Ande, moving more than $400 million a year through a network of 93,000 entertainment providers across 90+ cities. For the vendors on the other side of the transaction, Ande is the dedicated corporate channel that’s never existed. Learn more at ande.ai.

SOURCE Ande

Investment will accelerate commercialization, strategic partnerships, product development and expansion of CellsBin’s clinical and technical capabilities

BRANFORD, Conn., Sept. 22, 2026 — CellsBin, a biotechnology company pioneering Rare-Cell Biology™, today announced the closing of its Series A financing, led by 108 BioCapital.

CellsBin is building a new observational layer for precision medicine through its Rare-Cell Intelligence™ Platform. By integrating advanced microfluidics, patented multimodal imaging, single-cell analysis and artificial intelligence, the platform makes rare cells visible, measurable and actionable—revealing biological signals that are often missed by conventional methods.

The company’s platform combines ultrasensitive rare-cell detection, high-dimensional cellular profiling, longitudinal biological monitoring, proprietary datasets and AI-driven analysis. Together, these capabilities are designed to help researchers and clinicians understand how therapeutic cells behave, how diseases evolve and why patients respond differently to cell therapy.

CellsBin’s initial applications focus on cell and gene therapy monitoring and hematologic cancers, with the broader goal of establishing Rare-Cell Biology™ as a foundational discipline across research, drug development and clinical medicine.

“CellsBin is building a differentiated platform at the intersection of single-cell biology, artificial intelligence and translational medicine,” said Sasha Bakhru, Managing Partner of 108 BioCapital. “Its ability to detect and characterize extremely rare cells could unlock important insights into therapeutic response, disease progression and patient outcomes. We have been impressed by Ali and the CellsBin team’s scientific rigor, platform vision and commitment to translating complex biology into actionable intelligence.”

CellsBin will use the proceeds to accelerate commercial adoption, expand strategic and channel partnerships, advance its research and product-development roadmap, strengthen its clinical evidence base and grow its commercial, scientific and technical teams.

“We are excited to partner with CellsBin and support the company as it expands its network of strategic, clinical and commercial relationships,” said Shahryar Oveissi, General Partner of 108 BioCapital. “We are already seeing strong interest from leading healthcare institutions in CellsBin’s technology and its potential to create meaningful clinical impact. We believe the 108 BioCapital ecosystem can help accelerate the company’s next phase of growth.”

“This financing represents an important milestone in our mission to make rare cells visible, measurable and clinically actionable,” said Ali Kabiri, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of CellsBin. “108 BioCapital shares our conviction that rare cells contain critical biological information that can enable earlier, more precise and more confident decisions. This partnership will help us advance the Rare-Cell Intelligence™ Platform, deepen our market and channel reach, and build the capabilities required to establish Rare-Cell Biology™ as a new foundation for understanding disease and therapeutic response.”

About CellsBin

CellsBin is pioneering Rare-Cell Biology™ to reveal the rare cells that shape human health. It’s Rare-Cell Intelligence™ Platform integrates advanced microfluidics, multimodal imaging, single-cell analysis and artificial intelligence to detect, characterize and monitor rare cells at scale. Through applications in precision diagnostics, therapeutic-cell monitoring and translational research, CellsBin is working to enable smarter decisions, earlier care and better lives.

For more information, visit 108.bio.

About 108 BioCapital

The 108 Bio Capital Fund seeks to generate superior returns through a differentiated investment strategy that leverages the founding team’s exceptional technical expertise and deep networks within the US healthcare ecosystem. The Fund’s approach is built upon decades of combined experience in biomedical technology, pharmaceutical development, medical device innovation, and regulatory navigation, enabling the identification and nurturing of breakthrough technologies that address significant unmet medical needs. This technical foundation, combined with proven track records in scaling MedTech ventures and executing successful exits, positions the Fund to capture value creation opportunities that may be overlooked by generalist investors lacking domain-specific expertise.

Media Contact

Steve Ward
Chief Financial Officer
[email protected]

SOURCE 108 Bio Captial

Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel reunite after xtraCHEF to build an AI platform designed specifically for restaurant operators

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 22, 2026 — xtraCHEF co-founders Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel are teaming up again to launch Tandem, an AI company focused on transforming how restaurants operate. Acclaimed chef and restaurateur Michael Schulson has joined the company as a Founding Partner, bringing decades of restaurant operating experience directly into Tandem’s product strategy and development.

Schwartz and Patel previously built restaurant technology company xtraCHEF, which was acquired by Toast. After spending years working alongside thousands of restaurant operators, the pair are returning to restaurant technology with a new thesis: AI creates an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how technology supports restaurant operators and their teams.

Tandem has also closed an initial seed financing to accelerate product development, expand its team and support its early restaurant deployments. The company is already working with operators across 100 restaurant locations through its pilot program, with a growing waitlist of additional restaurant groups interested in deploying the platform.

Restaurants today operate across an increasingly fragmented technology ecosystem spanning point-of-sale, labor, accounting, inventory, purchasing, reservations, delivery, marketing and more. While these systems have digitized much of the restaurant, operators and their teams still spend significant time manually moving information between platforms, analyzing data, identifying issues and completing repetitive administrative tasks.

Tandem is being built to change that.

Rather than adding another dashboard or standalone application for restaurant teams to manage, Tandem is building AI agents designed to work across the systems restaurants already use. These agents can help operators analyze information, identify what requires attention, automate repetitive workflows and take action across the business. Tandem will also act as a multiplayer workspace for the human employees to communicate with their agentic co workers.

“Bhavik and I spent years building technology alongside restaurant operators at xtraCHEF, and we came away with a very clear understanding of both the power and limitations of traditional restaurant software,” said Andrew Schwartz, Co-Founder and CEO of Tandem. “Restaurants don’t need another system to log into or another dashboard to manage. We believe AI gives us the opportunity to build technology that actually works alongside the operator — understanding what’s happening across the business, handling repetitive work and helping teams take action.”

As Co-Founder and CPO/CTO, Bhavik Patel leads Tandem’s technology, AI and engineering strategy. Patel previously served as CTO and Co-Founder of xtraCHEF, where he helped build the technology platform that ultimately became part of Toast following the company’s acquisition.

“The technology available to us today allows us to approach restaurant operations in a fundamentally different way,” said Patel. “We’re moving beyond software that simply stores data or presents information. AI gives us the ability to build systems that can understand context, reason across multiple sources of information and help execute work. Our focus at Tandem is turning those capabilities into reliable, practical products that solve real problems for restaurant operators.”

Joining Schwartz and Patel as a Founding Partner is Michael Schulson, one of the country’s most accomplished chefs and restaurateurs and founder of Schulson Collective. Schulson brings decades of hands-on experience building and operating successful restaurant concepts and will work closely with Tandem on product strategy, operator needs and the real-world application of AI inside restaurants.

Schulson’s involvement reflects a core part of Tandem’s approach: build with restaurant operators, not simply for them.

“There is an enormous opportunity for AI in restaurants, but it has to solve the problems operators actually deal with every day,” said Schulson. “What excited me about Tandem is the opportunity to build this from the operator’s perspective. We’re identifying the work that takes time away from our teams and asking a simple question: why can’t technology do more of this work for us?”

Together, Schwartz, Patel and Schulson bring a combination of restaurant technology, product development, AI expertise and hands-on restaurant operating experience to Tandem.

The company sees applications for AI across nearly every part of restaurant operations — from finance and accounting to labor, purchasing, inventory, marketing, guest engagement and day-to-day operational management. Tandem’s strategy is to introduce agents around specific, high-value workflows and increasingly connect those capabilities across the restaurant organization.

Tandem is also developing integrations across the restaurant technology ecosystem, allowing its agents to work with the systems operators already rely on rather than requiring restaurants to replace their existing technology stack.

The company will use its seed capital to expand its engineering and product teams, deepen these integrations and accelerate deployments with restaurant groups.

“We think the restaurant technology industry is entering a major new chapter,” Schwartz added. “The last generation of restaurant technology was about digitizing workflows and putting software into every part of the restaurant. We believe the next generation will be about intelligence and action — technology that understands the business and actively helps operators run it. That’s the company we’re building with Tandem.”

About Tandem

Tandem is an AI platform built specifically for the restaurant industry. The company develops intelligent agents that work across restaurant systems to automate operational and administrative tasks, analyze information and help restaurant teams take action.

Tandem was co-founded by Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel, the co-founders of restaurant technology company xtraCHEF, which was acquired by Toast. Acclaimed chef and restaurateur Michael Schulson serves as a Founding Partner, bringing deep restaurant operating expertise to Tandem’s product development and strategy.

Tandem is operated by AI Labz Inc.

Media Contact
Andy Schwartz
[email protected]
www.usetandem.xyz

SOURCE Ai Labz Inc

The funding enables the next generation of AI and high-performance computing chips beyond the limit of silicon, while accelerating the industry’s first 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductor platform

SINGAPORE, Sept. 22, 2026 — Nexstrom, the semiconductor company building the first wafer-scale platform for 2D semiconductor materials, today announced it has raised a $12 million seed round led by Xora Innovation, with participation from Foothill Ventures and SEEDS. The round brings Nexstrom’s total capital raised to $15 million, including $3 million in non-dilutive funds. The funding will accelerate commercialization of Nexstrom’s wafer-scale 2D semiconductor platform, driving toward the industry’s first 12-inch 2D wafer growth on production-ready manufacturing tools. The Singapore-based company is also working closely with prominent industry partners to validate its technology within existing chip manufacturing workflows, positioning Nexstrom to bring next-generation semiconductor materials into large-scale commercial production.

As AI workloads drive demand for faster, more energy-efficient computing, the semiconductor industry is approaching the physical limits of silicon. There is a hard ceiling to how much silicon channels can continue to shrink before electrons begin leaking, causing significant power loss. Nexstrom aims to bypass this bottleneck by developing the industry’s first platform for growing 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductor materials. These atomically thin materials support precise electron control, reduce energy loss at the transistor level, and improve efficiency, while remaining compatible with advanced foundry manufacturing. Nexstrom is developing the commercial-scale platform advanced foundries need for next-generation computing.

“Silicon has fueled decades of computing innovation, but the industry now needs a new materials platform to continue scaling performance,” said Dr. Lance Li, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist. “For years, the challenge has not been demonstrating the promise of 2D materials, but manufacturing them at the scale and quality advanced foundries require.” Nexstrom was incubated through Xora’s venture-building model to bridge the gap between academic research and commercial semiconductor manufacturing. Through this model, Nexstrom developed a practical path to manufacturing wafer-scale single-crystal 2D semiconductors, allowing chipmakers to move beyond the limitations of conventional materials and build the next generation of AI infrastructure.

Unlike existing methods that yield only small laboratory samples or require changes to existing foundry manufacturing processes, Nexstrom’s full-stack platform integrates proprietary chemical vapor deposition (CVD) hardware, process technology, and wafer-scale 2D material growth right into a foundry’s existing workflow. By combining advanced equipment, specialized chemistry, and manufacturing expertise, Nexstrom’s technology promises continuous, single-crystal 2D material growth across industry-standard 12-inch wafers, providing a clear path to commercial adoption.

Nexstrom’s technical foundation is anchored by Dr. Lance Li, a globally recognized leader in 2D materials and a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2018, a distinction recognizing roughly the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide by research influence. A pioneer in single-crystal MoS₂ (molybdenum disulfide) growth since 2012, he later led corporate research at TSMC on post-silicon electronics, bringing decades of expertise across 2D materials, atomic-layer chemistry, and semiconductor manufacturing to Nexstrom.

Nexstrom is also supported by a board and advisory group that includes semiconductor industry leaders Dr. Sundar Ramamurthy, Dr. Philip Wong, Dr. Aaron Thean and Dr. John Langan. “The question is no longer whether 2D semiconductors matter. They are already on the technology roadmap of major semiconductor companies. The challenge is making them manufacturable,” said Dr. Philip Wong, Board Advisor at Nexstrom and Inez Kerr Bell Professor at Stanford University. “The industry needs high-quality, uniform 2D materials on 300 mm substrates, and solving that materials bottleneck is exactly where Nexstrom is focused.”

By enabling wafer-scale 2D semiconductors compatible with advanced manufacturing, Nexstrom is laying the foundation for the post-silicon era of computing. The new funding will support ongoing platform development, strategic collaborations with semiconductor foundries, and the expansion of Nexstrom’s engineering and leadership teams as the company advances high-performance, low-power chips for AI, data centers, and future computing applications.

To learn more, visit: https://nexstrom.com/.

About Nexstrom
Founded in 2024, Nexstrom is a semiconductor technology company advancing wafer-scale 2D materials for next-generation AI and high-performance computing. The company has developed the industry’s first platform for producing 12-inch single-crystal 2D semiconductors, allowing chipmakers to overcome silicon’s limitations and create faster, more energy-efficient devices. Backed by Xora Innovation, Foothill Ventures, and SEEDS, an arm of SG Growth Capital, Nexstrom is helping bring 2D semiconductor technology from the lab to commercial manufacturing.

SOURCE Nexstrom

6 of the 10 largest independent mortgage banks use Sela while crossing $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 22, 2026 — Sela, the market-leading voice AI system for mortgage sales, today announced a total of $21 million in funding across Seed and Series A, led by Costanoa, with participation from Emergence Capital. Today, Sela’s AI agents help loan officers originate more than $1 billion in new mortgages per month, and the company has crossed $10 million annualized run-rate revenue in 18 months. Sela will use the funding to grow its team and continue to develop agents that guide borrowers through the entire consumer finance journey.

Sela’s AI agents answer complex questions, build rapport, educate borrowers, and bring in a loan officer when necessary. Its agents are built to maximize conversion, benefiting from hundreds of optimizations and AB tests to create a system that consistently outperforms human teams and other AI solutions. Sela designs, runs, and continuously improves its agents for each lender, measuring success in borrowers reached, productive conversations held, and loans closed, not minutes used.

Large lenders typically A/B test Sela’s agents against existing systems before rolling out widely. In one A/B test involving more than 10,000 prospective borrowers, Sela produced a 9% increase in lead-to-lock rates, yielding more than 40% higher profit for the lender than their existing process. In an A/B test with a top-five mortgage servicer, Sela outperformed another voice AI solution by 41% on a lead-to-lock basis, across 7,000+ leads.

“At my last company, I watched the strongest salespeople outperform the average by three or four times, and how hard it was to coach an entire team to that level,” said Nate Becker, Co-Founder and CEO of Sela. “Sela’s agents take the best performing sales behaviors, learned across tens of millions of calls, and employ them consistently across every customer interaction. Automating the mortgage process with AI doesn’t actually help anyone unless it improves the experience for consumers and makes the process more effective for lenders. We have built a system that does both of these things, and we’ve proven it works at scale. In the next 12 months, our AI agents will run more of the mortgage sales process, as we aim to make financial decisions less anxiety-inducing, more pleasant, cheaper, and easier for consumers.”

“Every lender’s P&L comes down to the same two numbers: conversion and cost per funded loan, and both are under more pressure right now than at any point in a decade,” said David Cheng, Partner at Costanoa. “What convinced us to lead was that Nate and Vahe fundamentally sell the ability to do more funded loans. That’s why six of the ten largest independent mortgage banks put Sela in production in under two years.”

Sela was founded by Nate Becker, a former co-founder of VoiceOps and a data scientist at LinkedIn, and Vahe Tshitoyan, a former senior machine learning engineer and tech lead at Google. The company now has 17 full-time employees and plans to grow to 50 over the next year, hiring across product, engineering, and go-to-market roles.

About Sela

Sela builds AI agents for consumer lending. Its agents hold millions of real conversations with consumers, help them navigate complex decisions, and connect engaged borrowers to loan officers to complete the loan. Founded by Nate Becker and Vahe Tshitoyan and backed by Costanoa and Emergence Capital, Sela is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at sela.io.

About Costanoa

Costanoa exists to elevate founders building companies of consequence. We lead investments from formation through Series A in Applied AI, AI Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, National Security, and Fintech. With $2.5B AUM, we’re boutique by design—making fewer investments to deliver deeper expertise and operational support when it matters most: the early, defining stages of growth. We have been recognized as one of America’s Top Venture Capital Firms by TIME and named to a top 4 Seed-Stage firm on Inc.’s Founder-Friendly Investors list. For more information, please visit www.costanoa.vc.

About Emergence Capital

Emergence Capital backs visionary founders transforming the way the world works. We partner from the earliest stages and stay committed as companies scale. Notable investments include Bill, Box, Doximity, Genspark, Gusto, Mercor, Physical Intelligence, Salesforce, Together AI, Veeva, and Zoom. More than 1 in 5 of our early-stage investments have exceeded a billion-dollar valuation. Learn more at emcap.com.

Media Contact

Press Team, Sela

[email protected]

SOURCE Sela AI, Inc. / BAM Agency

Transformational investment will elevate the Psaros Center’s national and global impact, advancing its position as the preeminent nonpartisan institution at the center of financial markets and policy

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22, 2026 — The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has received a total investment of $25 million from Michael G. Psaros (B’89), his wife Robin and their family to expand the Center’s position as the preeminent nonpartisan institution at the intersection of financial markets and public policy and deepen its ability to inform policy and practice in the United States and around the world.

“The financial markets touch every aspect of American life. Financial policy, from legislation to regulation, has an outsized influence on our financial markets and our economy,” said Michael G. Psaros, co-founder and managing partner of KPS Capital Partners, LP. “The Psaros Center serves the national interest by helping ensure that financial policy is informed by rigorous research, practical experience and bipartisan dialogue. My family’s gift to the Psaros Center is an act of patriotism, not an act of philanthropy. It is our way of giving back to our country.”

The Psaros Center conducts original research and provides objective, rigorous analysis on major issues facing financial markets. It brings together policymakers, regulators, financial market leaders and academics to examine issues at the intersection of finance and policy, and shares its work broadly with industry professionals, policymakers, students and other stakeholders.

The Center was founded by Reena Aggarwal, the Robert E. McDonough professor of finance and director of the Psaros Center, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Aggarwal sought to create a global hub at Georgetown to bridge the divide between policymakers and financial-sector leaders through objective, data-driven research and convenings. Psaros provided the seed funding at that time to help bring that vision to life.

The Center is now the preeminent forum for dialogue among leaders shaping financial markets and policy. Its annual Financial Markets Quality Conference and other convenings bring together senior figures from across the financial and policy communities to discuss the most pressing issues facing global markets, most recently including the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board and the CEOs of JPMorganChase and Goldman Sachs.

The Psaros Center’s distinguished fellows – including Rostin Behnam (C’00), former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Dr. Lael Brainard, former director of the White House National Economic Council and vice chair of the Federal Reserve Board; and Patrick McHenry, former member of Congress from North Carolina and chair of the House Financial Services Committee – extend the Center’s reach across government, financial regulation and industry, bringing firsthand expertise to its research and programming. The Psaros Center also connects Georgetown students directly with leaders shaping financial markets and policy through opportunities such as the FinPolicy Trek and other experiential programs.

“Mike Psaros and his family have made an extraordinary investment in the future of the Psaros Center and in Georgetown’s ability to contribute to the most important conversations shaping financial markets and public policy,” said Paul Almeida, dean and William R. Berkley Chair of Georgetown McDonough. “Their commitment gives the Center the resources and reach to bring together leading voices from Wall Street, government and academia, advance rigorous nonpartisan research and extend its influence well beyond Washington, DC. We are deeply grateful for their vision and confidence in what the Psaros Center can accomplish on a national and global stage.”

The investment comes as the financial system undergoes rapid transformation. Artificial intelligence, crypto and digital assets, prediction markets, data and changing market structures are creating new opportunities while raising consequential questions for policymakers, regulators and market participants.

To lead the center through this next phase, Georgetown recently appointed Michael Piwowar (MBA’94) as executive director. Piwowar previously served as executive vice president of Milken Institute Finance leading financial market policy and held senior positions in federal financial regulatory agencies, including serving as acting chairman and commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from 2013 to 2018.

“What excites me most about joining the Psaros Center is building on its momentum through engaging students; engaging business leaders; and bringing students, policymakers and market participants together through thought leadership and nonpartisan debate on today’s most pressing issues,” said Piwowar.

The Psaros Center’s expanded capacity will allow it to build on its preeminent position and broaden its reach at a time when financial markets and public policy are increasingly interconnected.

“Georgetown University is honored by the significant investment the Psaros family has made in establishing the Psaros Center as a leading source for vital thought leadership, scholarship and discussion shaping the future of finance and policy,” said Georgetown University President Eduardo M. Peñalver. “This transformative commitment reflects Michael, Robin and the Psaros family’s steadfast dedication to Georgetown University, to the McDonough School of Business and to our students who are the next generation of leaders.”

“We are where Wall Street meets Washington, and I am proud that the Psaros Center is recognized as one of the few truly nonpartisan institutions in Washington respected by both sides of the aisle,” Psaros said. “The Psaros Center is moving the needle in policy and practice in the real world, and elevating Georgetown University’s role in shaping the conversation around finance and public policy.”

About Georgetown University
Established in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll, Georgetown is the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university in the United States. Located in Washington DC, Doha, Qatar, and around the world, Georgetown University is a leading academic and research institution, offering a unique educational experience that prepares the next generation of global citizens to lead and make a difference in the world. For more information about Georgetown University, visit Georgetown.edu or connect with Georgetown on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.

About the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy
The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy is the preeminent destination for unbiased expertise at the intersection of finance and policy. The Psaros Center provides thought leadership and actively contributes to shaping global finance. Located in Washington, D.C., we connect policymakers, industry leaders, and scholars through solutions-driven platforms.

Housed at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy serves as an impartial, academic-based research center. The Psaros Center integrates practice with policy: facilitating a forum for solutions-oriented discussion, conducting relevant and original research on key global market issues, and engaging students interested in the nexus of finance and policy. Collectively, our efforts impact policy and practice by informing current industry professionals, the next generation of finance and policy leaders, and the world, to create meaningful change.

SOURCE Georgetown University