EVANSVILLE, Ind., May 13, 2025 — ePackageSupply.com, a leading supplier of food-grade containers and packaging, announced today that it has secured a strategic investment from Michael Wittmeyer, former CEO and co-founder of JM Bullion, one of the nation’s largest online precious metals retailers. Wittmeyer will also join the company as Managing Director, supporting the team’s efforts to expand its digital capabilities and scale nationwide.

The announcement comes during a period of significant momentum for the Indiana-based company. ePackageSupply.com recently opened a new Midwest distribution facility and now serves more than 6,000 businesses nationwide, shipping over 3 million containers monthly. The company’s customers range from food distributors and co-packers to small manufacturers and emerging consumer brands.

Amid growing tariff uncertainty and rising interest in domestic sourcing, ePackageSupply.com‘s U.S.-based supply chain has become a key differentiator. Over 98% of the company’s products are made in the USA, enabling faster fulfillment, more reliable quality, and protection from global shipping volatility.

“We’ve always believed in the importance of American manufacturing and supply chain control—not just for reliability, but for our customers’ peace of mind,” said Paul Saunders, Founder and CEO. “As we grow, we’re doubling down on that commitment while continuing to improve the customer experience.”

Wittmeyer, who led JM Bullion from its founding to over $1 billion in annual revenue, brings experience in ecommerce strategy, performance marketing, and logistics. At ePackageSupply.com, he will advise on strategic planning, digital growth initiatives, and operational scaling.

“This is a well-run company with strong values, loyal customers, and a huge opportunity to modernize a traditionally offline industry,” said Wittmeyer. “The team is already doing excellent work—I’m just here to help support their vision and accelerate what’s already working.”

Eric Reffett, General Manager, added:

“We’re growing across both B2B and direct-to-consumer channels, and continuing to invest in technology, automation, and service. Having additional experience and perspective around the table will help us execute even more effectively.”

Later this year, ePackageSupply.com plans to launch a revamped ordering experience featuring self-service bulk ordering, custom labeling and design tools, and a wider selection of eco-friendly products.

About ePackageSupply.com 

ePackageSupply.com is a U.S.-based, majority Veteran-owned supplier of food-grade containers, lids, and packaging products. The company serves small to midsize businesses, food distributors, and manufacturers with a focus on fast shipping, custom solutions, and responsive support. Learn more at ePackageSupply.com.

Media Contact:

Paul Saunders
Founder/CEO
[email protected]

SOURCE ePackageSupply

CALGARY, AB, May 13, 2025 — Scription Maintenance, a pioneering technology startup in the commercial foodservice industry, is transforming equipment maintenance from hourly rates into a subscription model. Their Scription360 program eliminates financial risk for restaurant equipment operators while aligning the incentives of equipment service companies to financially benefit from equipment uptime, rather than equipment breakdowns. 

Founded in 2020, Scription launched the program to provide predictable recurring revenues for the service company, while resulting in stable monthly costs, simplified operations, and faster and more efficient repair for the equipment operator. This alignment of incentives is ushering in a new era of technology adoption and reducing the total cost of equipment ownership for top franchise brands in the quick-serve restaurant industry. 

“We’re excited to leverage this capital towards expanding the Scription360 program throughout North America, and to welcome an incredible industry leader, Gerritt Graham, as our new CEO to do it,” said Scription Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Justin Villiers.

“Coming off a decade in the insurance industry, I understand the power of products that offer business owners stability and certainty in running their operations. Scription is uniquely positioned to lower the total cost of risk for our clients. I am honored and excited to be joining this exceptional management team,” stated Gerritt Graham, CEO of Scription.

Scription is the only outcome-based service platform for the foodservice industry, and its predictive maintenance technology is the future of the equipment maintenance space. With customized, hassle-free, monthly fixed-price coverage for equipment assets, Scription simplifies foodservice equipment maintenance across the board for restaurant owners and operators. By improving equipment replacement planning, removing cost uncertainty, and increasing visibility into equipment spending, restaurants lower their total cost of risk and gain control of cash flow, saving both time and money.

“Scription is bringing about a paradigm shift in how restaurant owners and operators manage equipment risk to the P&L,” said Rick Viton, Partner at IA Capital Group. “The management team’s deep understanding of the industry, data analytics capabilities and unparalleled service network uniquely position Scription to deliver on this vision. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Justin, Gerritt and the whole Scription team.”

To date, Scription has raised $10.35M USD. In 2023, Scription raised $2.5M USD in a pre-seed round, led by investor Markd. A $7.85M USD seed closed in January 2025 led by investors IA Capital and further participation from Markd. 

“The overwhelming response from national franchisees and investors since launch has exceeded expectations. With this new round of funding, we’re awfully proud of Scription and its expanded reach and remain excited to watch it continue to develop more partnerships with ambitious operators,” said Parker Beauchamp, Managing Partner at Markd.

About Scription

Scription is a pioneering technology company that is aligning the incentives of the commercial foodservice maintenance and repair industry through their innovative new program; Scription360. Founded in 2020, Scription is on a mission to use predictive analysis to drive equipment uptime and reduce total cost of ownership. With customized, hassle-free, monthly fixed-price coverage for equipment assets, Scription eliminates financial risk for restaurants and creates incentives for both operators and equipment service technicians to prioritize consistent equipment uptime. For more information, please visit www.scription.ai.

About IA Capital

IA Capital Group is a New York-based venture capital firm and manager of the Inter-Atlantic funds, with a 25-year track record of successfully partnering with founders to shape the future of financial services and insurance. IA Capital manages strategic venture capital programs on behalf of more than 20 insurance companies and is the most experienced venture capital firm focused primarily on insurtech.

About Markd

Markd is a venture capital company focused on funding and partnering with transformative insurtechs. It pays homage to the insurance industry’s legacy while helping design its future. Markd’s mission is to power substantial work and continually inspire more ideas to prevent hurt and loss.

SOURCE Scription

Bestow tripled revenue in 2024, achieved 10x growth over two years, and expects to continue growing exponentially, with profitability on the horizon

DALLAS, May 13, 2025 — Bestow Inc., a leading insurance technology company, today announced the close of a $120 million oversubscribed Series D funding round, including primary and secondary investments. The round was co-led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Smith Point Capital. In addition to the equity financing, Bestow also secured a $50 million credit facility from TriplePoint Capital.

The capital will fund the development of new products and services and help accelerate the expansion of Bestow’s platform in the life and annuities space. Bestow plans to increase its workforce to meet growing enterprise demand.

“This investment strengthens Bestow’s position as the preferred partner for life insurance and annuity providers seeking to modernize and scale,” said Melbourne O’Banion, CEO and Co-founder of Bestow. “We are accelerating product innovation to help the industry stay ahead of market trends, unlock new opportunities, and build lasting competitive advantages through technology. We are deeply grateful to our investors and carrier partners for their support and shared belief in our mission to modernize the life insurance and annuities space.”

As part of the investment, Ashwin Gupta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, will join Bestow’s board of directors. “There is a growing need for a modern insurance technology platform that enables better solutions and outcomes for life and annuity carriers,” said Gupta. “We believe Bestow has developed such a platform and is driving innovation in the industry. We are excited to invest in Bestow as they continue to expand their capabilities and reimagine the future of insurance technology.”

“The life insurance industry has remained virtually untouched by innovation for three decades,” said Keith Block, Founder and CEO of Smith Point Capital. “Bestow isn’t just offering another tech tool—they’re fundamentally transforming how insurers create and deliver products at the very core of their business operations. Their impressive enterprise customer roster, unprecedented for such a young company in this traditionally risk-averse market, demonstrates that Bestow has identified a truly mission-critical opportunity. Smith Point Capital is incredibly proud to not only invest in Bestow to help them accelerate their growth, but also partner with them as they redefine the industry.”

This funding milestone follows Bestow’s 2024 divestiture of Bestow Life Insurance Company, a direct-to-consumer life insurance carrier, to Sammons Financial Group, marking a strategic shift to focus exclusively on enterprises through its vertical software platform, purpose-built for the entire life insurance value chain.

Today, Bestow partners with industry leaders, including Nationwide, Transamerica, USAA, Sammons Financial Groups, among others, and will be announcing additional partners in the coming months. The company continues to boast a 100% customer retention rate and has achieved a 245% year-over-year increase in transaction volume. The Series D round caps a period of strong growth for Bestow, and the company expects this growth to continue exponentially.

About Bestow

Bestow built the leading end-to-end platform for life insurers to drive efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance profitability across the entire value chain. From product development and advanced underwriting to seamless policy administration, our solutions enable carriers to deliver exceptional products and experiences to agents and customers. Discover how Bestow is shaping the future of insurance at Bestow.com.

About Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives

Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is one of the leading investors in alternatives globally, with over $500 billion in assets and more than 30 years of experience. The business invests in the full spectrum of alternatives including private equity, growth equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, sustainability, and hedge funds. Clients access these solutions through direct strategies, customized partnerships, and open-architecture programs.

The business is driven by a focus on partnership and shared success with its clients, seeking to deliver long-term investment performance drawing on its global network and deep expertise across industries and markets.

The alternative investments platform is part of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, which delivers investment and advisory services across public and private markets for the world’s leading institutions, financial advisors and individuals. Goldman Sachs has more than $3.1 trillion in assets under supervision globally as of December 31, 2024.

Since 2003, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives has invested over $13 billion in companies led by visionary founders and CEOs. The team focuses on investments in growth stage and technology-driven companies spanning multiple industries, including enterprise technology, financial technology, consumer and healthcare.

About Smith Point Capital

Smith Point Capital Management, LLC is a venture capital firm redefining growth equity for the intelligent enterprise. We invest in mission-critical enterprise software at the convergence of data, AI, edge computing, and precision applications. Our operator-led approach combines Fortune 500 executive experience with deep investment expertise, providing both hands-on operational support and strategic capital to help companies accelerate growth and maximize market impact. For more information, visit www.smithpointcapital.com.

###

SOURCE Bestow Inc.

BOSTON, May 13, 2025 — Somite AI, a TechBio company leveraging foundation models and proprietary AI to accelerate human cell therapy development, closed its Series A funding round, raising more than $47 million. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from SciFi VC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Fusion Fund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, TechAviv, Harpoon Ventures, along with angel investors such as Dr. R. Martin Chavez (former Chairman of Recursion), and Fidji Simo (outgoing CEO of Instacart and incoming CEO of Applications at OpenAI).

Somite AI is building DeltaStem, a platform and foundation model designed to revolutionize the production of human cells. This funding positions Somite AI to accelerate key therapeutic programs, including beta cells for type 1 diabetes, articular cartilage for orthopedic applications, satellite cells for muscular diseases, and hematopoietic cells for blood disorders, and further develop the capabilities of its DeltaStem platform.

“We’re building the foundation model for the human cell,” said Dr. Micha Breakstone, Founder and CEO of Somite AI. “By generating the world’s largest cell signaling dataset at 1000x the efficiency of current methods, we’re training DeltaStem to deliver protocols with unmatched purity, scalability, and reliability. We are rapidly driving towards an AlphaFold moment for developmental biology, enabling the scalable production of any cell, for anyone.”

Somite AI’s proprietary capsule technology generates cell state transition data at an unprecedented scale, achieving efficiency 1000x greater than existing methodologies. This data feeds into the DeltaStem foundation model, significantly accelerating and optimizing the development of novel cell differentiation protocols.

“Traditional cell therapies are expensive, slow to develop, and unpredictable. AI can systematically solve these challenges,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “Somite AI’s foundation models, once fully developed and validated, will not only create value for their own pipeline, but have the potential to reshape the entire field of human cell therapy.”

Somite AI was co-founded by Dr. Micha Breakstone, a seasoned AI entrepreneur (Chorus.ai, acquired for $575 million), and Dr. Jonathan Rosenfeld, Head of the Fundamental AI Group at MIT, alongside prominent scientific co-founders:

• Prof. Olivier Pourquié, member of the National Academies of Science and Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
• Prof. Allon Klein, James Prize recipient, Harvard Medical School
• Prof. Jay Shendure, member of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington
• Prof. Cliff Tabin, Chair of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, member of the National Academy of Sciences

Media Contact:
[email protected]

Website: www.somite.ai

SOURCE Somite Therapeutics

Fincom and Nasdaq Verafin enter global partnership, bringing clients holistic sanctions screening and anti-money laundering compliance solutions

TEL-AVIV, Israel, May 13, 2025 — Fincom, a leader in anti-money laundering (AML) Sanction Screening and Entity Resolution technology, today announced the successful completion of its Series B funding round, securing a strategic investment led by Nasdaq Ventures, with participation from Macquarie Group, G1 Ventures, and existing investors including AnD Ventures and ff Venture Capital. This investment marks a significant milestone in Fincom’s growth journey and underscores confidence in its vision and market potential.

Global banks are facing increasing complexity in managing sanctions compliance, with resource constraints, evolving regulatory requirements, and limitations in legacy Sanctions and Watchlist screening solutions that result in high volumes of false positives. According to research by Celent, sanctions screening alone makes up 20% of the $35 billion spent on Financial Crime & Compliance technology by financial institutions globally. The digitization of financial services has led to faster payments, requiring scalable solutions that handle an increased volume of transactions. Meanwhile today’s geopolitical landscape underscores the need for additional data and multilanguage capabilities.

Fincom’s unique approach to sanctions screening leverages proprietary computational linguistics, distance-based algorithms, and advanced phonetics that are structure-, language-, and data source-agnostic. This innovative approach enables Fincom to more seamlessly compare and match written text in multiple languages and sources, delivering greater accuracy and efficiency in alerts all while consistently driving over 80% operational cost savings for its clients. Today, dozens of U.S. banks leverage Fincom’s AML compliance solutions to mitigate sanctions risk and ensure regulatory compliance.

Gideon Drori, Founder and CEO of Fincom, said “This investment is a testament to the hard work and achievements of our team, our customers’ confidence in our solutions, and the trust our investors have in our vision. We are excited to take the next step in enhancing the AML compliance space, making a substantial positive impact and delivering significant value to our current and future customers.”

In addition to joining the Nasdaq Ventures portfolio, Fincom will enter a global partnership with Nasdaq Verafin, Nasdaq’s financial crime management technology business. A trusted partner to more than 2,600 financial institutions, Nasdaq Verafin has delivered industry-leading solutions and innovative data approaches to address the complex needs of banks’ anti-financial crime programs for more than two decades. Through this partnership, financial institution clients of Nasdaq Verafin and Fincom will benefit from advanced Sanctions Screening capabilities, leading to increased efficiency, reduced costs, better compliance, and improved customer engagement through innovative technology.

“Fincom brings a wholly unique and innovative approach to sanctions screening that delivers faster, more accurate results when compared to legacy approaches, simplifying the increasingly complex world of AML compliance and enabling improved regulatory adherence,” said Gary Offner, Senior Vice President, Head of Nasdaq Ventures at Nasdaq. “We are pleased to welcome Fincom to the Nasdaq Ventures portfolio. With the launch of our new partnership between Nasdaq Verafin and Fincom, we have an opportunity to build upon the natural synergies between our two platforms, leveraging state-of-the-art technologies to help our clients better identify and address instances of potential financial crime.”

Gary Munitz, Global Co-Head Macquarie Capital Venture Capital, said “Fincom’s AML solutions deliver exceptional value, as evidenced by the company’s extraordinary growth and stellar client retention. We are excited to partner with Fincom’s founders and employees to accelerate their strategy of replacing legacy providers and manual processes with cloud-based, market-proven AML solutions.”

Earlier this year, Fincom announced the expansion of its U.S. team to support the growing North American market. Proceeds from the Series B financing will support Fincom’s efforts to accelerate its international growth and launch new offerings, including screening for Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs) and adverse media, as well as Verification of Payee (VOP) services.

About Fincom
Fincom brings innovation to AML Technologies, delivering cutting-edge solutions for Sanctions Screening and enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of AML compliance. It offers a unified suite supporting diverse AML sanction screening applications, all payment types (Wire, Instant Payments, ACH, and Swift), KYC Onboarding and Ongoing (pKYC), Trade Finance, and improving compliance activities while reducing sanctions screening operational costs.
To learn more, visit Fincom’s website.

About Nasdaq Ventures
Launched in 2017, Nasdaq Ventures is the global venture investing program of Nasdaq, Inc. (Nasdaq: NDAQ). Focused on cultivating technology advancement within financial services, Nasdaq Ventures invests in companies driving innovation in market infrastructure, data, analytics & workflow technologies, anti-financial crime, digital assets, ESG, and emerging asset classes. To learn more, visit: www.nasdaq.com/nasdaq-ventures.

About Nasdaq Verafin
Nasdaq Verafin provides Financial Crime Management Technology solutions for Fraud Detection, AML/CFT Compliance, High-Risk Customer Management, Sanctions Screening and Management, and Information Sharing. More than 2,600 financial institutions, representing more than $10T in collective assets, use Nasdaq Verafin to prevent fraud and strengthen AML/CFT efforts. Visit www.verafin.com. 

About Macquarie Capital Venture Capital
Macquarie Capital is the advisory, capital markets and principal investment arm of Macquarie Group. It encompasses corporate advisory, a full spectrum of capital solutions, including capital raising services from equity, debt and private capital markets and principal investments from Macquarie’s balance sheet. Macquarie Capital’s Venture Capital team partners with founders to build great companies. With a successful 30-year track record of combining expertise and capital to accelerate growth, the team invests in early-stage companies and help build them into global businesses that make a real-world impact. Visit

Macquarie Capital Venture Capital.

Fincom Media Contact:
Ofer Farkash
[email protected] 
+1.302.455.2216

Nasdaq Media Contact:
Nick Eghtessad
[email protected]
+1.929.996.8894

SOURCE Fincom

JERSEY CITY, N.J., May 13, 2025 — 1Konto, the institutional platform transforming global settlement through stablecoin infrastructure, has won the 2025 Fintech Meetup Pitch Competition. The company was selected as the top innovator among hundreds of fintech startups and growth-stage ventures building the future of financial infrastructure.

Trusted by banks, corporate FX platforms, and payment service providers, 1Konto is enabling real-time cross-border payments and FX settlement for institutions at scale. The company’s flagship platform, 1KPrime, replaces outdated SWIFT-based workflows with capital-efficient digital rails that reduce settlement times from days to minutes. The prize included a $50,000 investment from Commerce Ventures. Judges included senior leaders from Commerce Ventures, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and Goodwin Law.

“After completing extensive theme work on stablecoin infrastructure for cross-border payments, 1Konto’s presentation at Fintech Meetup stood out to us as a real-world solution that institutions are already using at scale,” said Dan Rosen, General Partner at Commerce Ventures. “It represents exactly the kind of infrastructure layer we think is critical in this next phase of FinTech innovation.”

“Winning this competition reflects the market’s demand for faster, smarter infrastructure,” said Edwin Handschuh, Cofounder and CEO of 1Konto. “Our real-time settlement platform is solving critical friction for institutions — especially those moving funds across borders with stablecoins.”

1Konto’s platform enables under-one-hour settlement, deep liquidity access via OTC and API, and integrated compliance controls designed to streamline complex fund flows across fiat and stablecoins. Clients use 1KPrime to move money across USD, EUR, GBP, MXN, AUD, and major stablecoins in a compliant, transparent, and capital-efficient manner.

The company has processed over $3.5 billion in volume and serves over 80 institutional counterparties. Revenue has increased more than 7.4x year-over-year as adoption accelerates across the payments and capital markets sectors.

Following the competition win, 1Konto is focused on expanding its institutional client base, launching additional settlement corridors, and deepening integrations with leading custodians and liquidity providers. Through the rest of the year, the company will continue building out automated, composable fund flows to support scalable global treasury operations.

Where We’re Headed

As traditional financial institutions increasingly seek faster, programmable alternatives to legacy rails, 1Konto is positioning itself as the aggregation and orchestration layer connecting global capital flows. In addition to expanding corridor coverage, the company is developing infrastructure to support automated, rules-based treasury workflows. This will enable counterparties to initiate, route, and settle payments programmatically across fiat and stablecoins. With growing demand from regional and global banks, cross-border PSPs, and corporate FX platforms, 1Konto’s roadmap includes deeper integrations with banking and custody partners, expanded access via white-label APIs, and real-time audit trails to support compliance in multi-jurisdictional environments. This next phase of infrastructure aims to give institutions more control, speed, and transparency in how they move value globally.

About 1Konto

1Konto is building the neo-industrial bank powering the next generation of financial platforms. Operating at the core of institutional fund flows, 1Konto replaces outdated FX, payments, and settlement systems with real-time, programmable infrastructure built on stablecoins. Trusted by banks, corporate FX platforms, payment service providers, asset managers, and OTC desks, 1Konto enables fast, compliant, and capital-efficient trading, treasury, and cross-border settlement across fiat and digital assets.

Media Contact:
Alexandra Cech
302-291-2479
[email protected]

SOURCE 1Konto Inc.

As demand grows for AI-powered internal audit tools in labor-intensive industries,
the company secured a seed funding round led by Team8

TEL AVIV, Israel, May 13, 2025 — Celery, a financial operations platform that leverages artificial intelligence to automate internal controls, today announced that it has raised $6.25 million in seed funding. The round was led by Team8, with participation from Verissimo Ventures, Centre Street Partners, 97212 Ventures, and additional strategic angel investors. This brings the company’s total funding to $9 million.

Designed for healthcare and other labor-intensive industries, such as construction, hospitality, and manufacturing, Celery replaces hours of manual reviews with intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks, and financial inefficiencies in minutes, with no software setup or system integration required.

Celery has rapidly evolved from a payroll auditing tool identifying discrepancies, policy violations, and overtime inefficiencies to a comprehensive financial monitoring system for corporate revenue and expenses.

The company’s solutions can reduce manual oversight by up to 91%, cut payroll costs by 0.6% on average, and deliver 8x ROI. To date, Celery has processed over 430,000 payslips, analyzed more than $550 million in payroll data, and prevented $2.3 million in losses for its customers.

“Finance leaders today are being asked to do more with less,” said Yuval Brot, CEO and co-founder of Celery. “Yet, financial controls are still being done manually—often across massive spreadsheets and disconnected systems. We built Celery to replace this outdated workflow with real-time, automated oversight that’s accurate, fast, and cost-effective.”

Celery was founded by Yuval Brot (CEO), a serial entrepreneur; Noam Slomianko (CTO), a cyber expert and the first employee of Vulcan Cyber (acquired by Tenable); and Hillel Shalev (COO), a CPA and former biotech CFO who knows the challenges of managing complex, error-prone financial systems.

“I spent years chasing down revenue leakage errors and reconciling spreadsheets that should never have needed fixing,” said Shalev, co-founder and COO of Celery. “I knew there had to be a smarter way—one that could reduce risk, flag unprofitable clients, and detect potential revenue losses, all while giving finance leaders confidence that nothing is slipping through the cracks.”

Celery’s solutions are already used by dozens of U.S. healthcare organizations, including New York-based provider Ultimate Care, which reduced its annual overtime and billing discrepancies by more than $200,000 after adopting the platform. Within weeks, the company found hidden payroll issues, gained immediate ROI, and automated their auditing process..

“Finance leaders are under pressure to cut costs and ensure compliance, yet many still rely on manual oversight,” said Hadar Siterman-Norris, Partner at Team8. “Celery gives CFOs precision and visibility into risks hidden in their data, enabling smarter, leaner operations. With 82% of CFOs increasing fintech spend in 2025, this is exactly the kind of high-ROI solution they’re prioritizing. Automation is solving what manual reviews can’t.”

The company will showcase its platform later this month at LTC 100, alongside leading fintech investors and CFOs across the healthcare industry.

The new capital will be used to expand Celery’s go-to-market operations, accelerate product development, and launch new audit agents focused on expense review, fraud detection, and fixed asset controls. The company is also exploring channel partnerships with payroll providers and accounting platforms.

About Celery
Celery is an AI-driven financial oversight platform that helps finance teams catch costly financial errors — before they impact the bottom line. Built for healthcare and other labor-intensive industries, Celery replaces manual complex reviews with intelligent audit agents that detect fraud, compliance risks, and inefficiencies in minutes. Starting with payroll audits, the platform has expanded to revenue and expense monitoring, giving CFOs real-time visibility into profit gaps and opportunities for optimization. Founded in 2023, the company is trusted by leading U.S. healthcare providers and supports finance teams nationwide. Celery is SOC 2 certified. Learn more at celeryway.com.

Media Contact:
Sivan Ron
LoBello Communications 
[email protected]

SOURCE Celery

This vision is backed by a $6 million seed funding round, led by Elevation Capital, with support from Foster Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures, Darkmode Ventures, and notable angel investors. The funding underscores the significant potential of Adopt AI’s agent experience solution to disrupt the market.

Founded by Deepak Anchala, Rahul Bhattacharya, and Anirudh Badam, Adopt AI is emerging from stealth mode with a platform designed to enable applications to instantly deliver an agentic experience to their end users.

Deepak and Rahul, former co-founders of Slintel, a sales intelligence platform, have a proven track record in building successful ventures. Their previous venture, Slintel, raised $25M from top investors, scaled to 100+ employees and over 300 customers before being acquired in 2021 by 6sense.

Adopt has assembled an accomplished team of AI engineers from industry leaders such as Microsoft and Google. Anirudh Badam, Chief AI Officer, brings more than a decade of AI/ML expertise from Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters, while Vijay Sagar, a founding AI engineer, spent a decade at Google’s Silicon Valley office developing machine learning models.

We are at a pivotal moment in how software is built and experienced,” said Deepak Anchala, Founder and CEO of Adopt AI. “For too long, users have had to adjust to the rigid workflows of applications. Adopt AI shifts this by enabling B2B and consumer applications with complex workflows to evolve into intelligent agents without the need to re-architect the stack. Our platform integrates with existing applications, transforms them into agent-driven experiences, and ensures users can take actions with natural language—boosting retention and driving engagement, while providing companies full control over the underlying AI technology.

“Adopt AI is at the forefront of a transformative shift in how applications engage with users,” stated Krishna Mehra, Partner, Elevation Capital. “Their innovative approach to empowering applications with intelligent AI agents has the potential to redefine user experiences across industries. We are excited to support a team that is not only building the future of AI-powered interactions but also delivering tangible value to businesses today.”

Adopt AI’s solution streamlines the creation and deployment of AI agents for applications, offering businesses a no-code solution that accelerates agent creation and deployment while reducing costs. Key features include:

• Agent Builder: A no-code builder that helps companies build, launch and monitor the agent experience for their application instantly by automatically learning the application and automagically generating actions
• Agent Experience: An AI-powered conversational interface that offers flexible embedding capabilities, both within and external to the application, and can execute actions via natural language, providing users with a more intuitive and efficient way to accomplish their tasks.

The announcement coincides with the launch of Adopt AI’s Early Access Program, offering businesses the opportunity to pilot the solution and collaborate closely with the Adopt AI team. Companies eager to transform their applications are invited to learn more and apply for the program – Early Access Program

Early Access Program Quotes:

‘We’re entering a new era where software adapts to human language, not the other way around. Point-and-click interfaces will give way to natural conversations — through text or voice. Adopt provides the tools to accelerate that transformation.’ – Viral, Cofounder and CTO, 6sense

“As the industry accelerates towards agentic AI, Adopt AI stands out as a highly promising platform. Adopt AI has the potential to be a game-changer in how organizations approach intelligent workflow automation and multi-step task orchestration. Its approach is forward-thinking and well-aligned with where the future of enterprise AI is headed” – Neel Mehta, Senior Product Manager, Zuora

“Adopt AI provides the tools and flexibility needed to build agentic solutions quickly and effectively, giving companies a significant advantage in streamlining their operations.” – Pushpak Teja, Senior Product Strategy Manager at Moengage     

“Adopt has fundamentally changed how we think about building our product. It gave us a faster go-to-market, complete control over AI behavior, and exponential coverage of actions across our product without needing to rebuild anything. It fits right into our existing infrastructure, brings discipline to how we design APIs, and lets us focus on core product development while Adopt handles the AI heavy lifting. This is how modern products should think about agentifying their platforms.” – Ajay Vardhan, CTO & Co-Founder Spendflo

About Adopt AI: Adopt AI is an Agentic AI company focused on helping applications get jobs done for their end users. Adopt agentifies applications instantly – by automatically fetching APIs, content, entities, URLs, and other tools from applications and auto-generating a variety of actions (including CRUD actions, navigation, assist, and analytical actions) that work via natural language prompts. Development teams can refine workflows, introduce advanced logic and test via in a sandbox environment before they deploy the agent experience for their end users.

Adopt AI’s solution enables application companies to rapidly transition to the agentic era, leading to enhanced user experience, greater adoption rates, and reduced customer support costs. By simplifying the interaction layer between humans and applications, Adopt AI streamlines the software development process, expedites feature launches, and envisions a future where AI agents act as the main point of interaction for end users of applications.

Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE Adopt AI

Funding from new investor Future Ventures and returning investor Khosla Ventures follows the company’s record-breaking achievement of the highest magnetic field ever applied in a magnetic confinement experiment last July

MADISON, Wis., May 13, 2025 — Fusion energy startup Realta Fusion today announced an oversubscribed $36 million Series A round to bring its compact, scalable, modular magnetic mirror fusion technology closer to commercialization.

Future Ventures led the round with participation from Mayfield, GSBackers, SiteGround, Avila VC, and other investors. Existing Realta Fusion investors Khosla Ventures, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, and TitletownTech also participated in the round.

“This funding allows us to validate our plasma simulations using real-world experimental data, bringing us dramatically closer to making fusion energy real,” said Realta Fusion CEO Kieran Furlong. “From there we will design a prototype fusion device that is as de-risked as you can get it, before we actually go build it. We aim to have it operating by 2028.”

The need for limitless energy

Today’s energy sources are insufficient to handle the increasing global demand in the decades to come. Fusion energy – which recreates the conditions that power the sun and stars – could provide nearly limitless power that is safe, reliable, and zero-carbon.

Compact, scalable, modular fusion energy systems

Realta Fusion’s device is a compact, scalable, modular (CoSMo^™) fusion energy system, which offers the lowest cost and shortest pathway to commercial fusion energy. Realta Fusion’s energy system is designed to deliver industrial heat and power on-site for a wide range of applications, including data centers, chemical plants, metal recycling, remote mining, and other heavy industry.

The system is based on the compact magnetic mirror concept, in which extremely strong magnets trap super-heated hydrogen gas between two ends of a simple cylinder. Hydrogen atoms within the cylinder collide and fuse together, releasing massive amounts of carbon-free energy that can be delivered as heat or electricity.

Customer benefits of CoSMo^™ fusion energy systems

CoSMo^™ fusion energy systems offer clear benefits to industrial customers compared to other plasma confinement approaches:

• Compact: Relying on the latest generation of high temperature superconducting magnets allows Realta Fusion to build much more compact fusion energy systems, offering a substantially smaller footprint suitable for a wide variety of industrial sites.
• Scalable: Realta Fusion’s CoSMo^™ energy systems would scale from 50MW to 500MW of power output. Multiple units can be used for very large applications, providing multiple paths to market for fusion energy.
• Modular: The cylindrical form of Realta Fusion’s energy systems allows them to scale linearly by inserting additional standard modules, which can be manufactured repeatedly and reliably at a central facility. This enables on-site assembly to match the specific power needs of customers across multiple industries at lower cost. Realta Fusion’s CoSMo^™ energy systems would be manufactured in a factory setting and shipped on-site for assembly to match the specific power requirements of customers across multiple industries.

“As one of the few fusion startups that have demonstrated an actual operating plasma, they can be one of the leaders in this space,” said Future Ventures co-founder Steve Jurvetson, an early investor in Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, xAI, and D-Wave.

De-risked path to commercial fusion

With this funding, Realta Fusion will advance the physics of the experimental magnetic mirror fusion device currently operating at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and support the engineering and design of their own prototype CoSMo^™ fusion energy system. Additionally, the company will continue to grow its team and complete plans for The Realta Forge – a purpose-built fusion R&D facility.

“Realta Fusion is taking a truly different approach by building compact, modular reactors that can scale to meet the needs of a wide range of customers and create multiple viable paths to market,” said Alice Brooks of Khosla Ventures. “We led their first seed round and are excited to continue backing Kieran and the team.”

Future Ventures co-founder Maryanna Saenko noted “We’re investing early in Realta Fusion because they’re charting a faster, more flexible path to commercial fusion. By focusing on compact magnetic mirror systems, Realta addresses a critical decarbonization need that larger projects aren’t targeting. It’s a nimble, application-driven strategy that could bring fusion benefits to market sooner.”

About Realta Fusion

Realta Fusion spun out of an experiment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. The experiment was the first to use high temperature superconducting magnets in a magnetic mirror configuration and confined its first plasma at a world-record breaking magnetic field strength of 17 Tesla.

SOURCE Realta Fusion Inc