AI-powered digital health platform addresses cognitive wellness during the menopausal transition, backed by Bayless Ventures and AZ Venture Capital Inc.

PHOENIX, Feb. 20, 2025 — Prickly Pear Health, a digital health company focused on brain health during the menopausal transition, announced today that it has secured institutional pre-seed funding led by Bayless Ventures and AZ Venture Capital Inc. The company has surpassed its initial funding target of $250,000, with strong potential to double this figure by Q1 2025.

“Securing institutional backing this early in our journey validates both our mission and market opportunity,” said Imen Maaroufi Clark, Founder and CEO of Prickly Pear Health. “This investment accelerates our ability to address the critical gaps in menopausal health support, particularly around cognitive and neurological wellness.”

The funding round attracted notable investors and advisors, including AZ-VC (Arizona’s largest venture capital fund), Dr. Alyx Porter Umphrey, Neurooncologist at Mayo Clinic; Dr. Heidi Jannenga, Co-founder of WebPT; and Ginny Wright, CEO of Audemars Piguet, Americas. This early institutional support positions Prickly Pear Health as Arizona’s leading femtech startup.

“Prickly Pear Health represents exactly what we look for in early-stage investments,” said James Goulka, CEO and President of AZ Venture Capital Inc. “The combination of a compelling founder story, clear market need, and innovative technology solution presents an exceptional opportunity to transform women’s health.”

Clark’s journey to founding Prickly Pear Health began in North Africa, where she witnessed her mother’s struggles with surgical menopause following an emergency postpartum hysterectomy. This personal experience, combined with her background in technology, drove her to develop solutions for the often-overlooked cognitive and neurological aspects of menopausal transition.

“Issues like brain fog and memory deficits due to hormonal fluctuations are affecting the 28 million women currently in menopausal transition and will continue to grow by 2 million per year,” said Dr. Heidi Jannenga. “With their innovative technological platform, Prickly Pear is poised to help women not just tolerate, but thrive during and beyond their reproductive years with their evidence-based approach to navigating these transition periods. I proudly support Imen as a female founder transforming the brain health approach.”

The platform is leveraging the latest advancements in AI to address hormonal fluctuations’ impact on brain health, particularly during the menopausal transition, and provide personalized insights and recommendations. Prickly Pear Health is redefining how women navigate this inevitable life transition. Currently in closed beta, Prickly Pear is actively developing partnerships with healthcare providers and research institutions to expand its impact.

About Prickly Pear Health

Prickly Pear is a NextGen digital health solution designed to champion brain health during and beyond reproductive years. By integrating conversational AI, behavioral analytics, and wearable technology, the platform delivers personalized insights to support emotional well-being, mental clarity, and cognitive resilience, particularly for women in the menopausal transition. By fostering sustainable lifestyle modifications, the platform empowers them to fuel cognitive performance and optimize overall well-being. To learn more, visit https://pricklypear.io/.

About Bayless Ventures

Bayless Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on disruptive healthcare technology and technology-enabled services. The firm invests and advises companies from incorporation through Series A funding round. Bayless Ventures is dedicated to supporting the next generation of healthcare leaders that will create a positive shift in the healthcare industry. To learn more about Bayless Ventures, please visit https://baylesshealthventures.com/.

About AZ Venture Capital Inc.

AZ Venture Capital Inc. is an Arizona venture capital fund that invests in pre-seed through Series B rounds of funding of early-stage Arizona startups and early growth companies that solve important customer problems. They invest in software; IT hardware; health tech, including medical devices, diagnostics, and therapeutics; and green tech. AVC has a particular focus on bringing its own and other equity capital sources to founders from traditionally underserved communities. For more information, visit: https://azventurecap.com/.

SOURCE Prickly Pear Health

PHOENIX, Feb. 20, 2025 — Trinity Capital Inc. (NASDAQ: TRIN) (“Trinity Capital”), a leading alternative asset manager, today announced the commitment of $15 million in growth capital to Cagent Vascular Inc., a leading developer of serration technology for vessel dilation in endovascular interventions. This capital augments $45 million of equity financing led by US Venture Partners in 2024.

Cagent Vascular is a medical device company pioneering innovative vascular treatment technologies. The company’s flagship product, Serranator^®, helps improve angioplasty procedures by providing more predictable and controlled lumen gain with minimal dissection, while mitigating vessel recoil. Cagent Vascular aims to enhance patient outcomes and advance minimally invasive interventions by developing advanced endovascular solutions.

“We are excited to partner with Cagent Vascular as they continue to innovate and expand their platform of valuable solutions for physicians treating patients with peripheral artery disease,” said Ryan Kaeding, Managing Director, Life Sciences at Trinity Capital.

“Cagent Vascular’s Serration technology has been used in over 20,000 procedures and offers a growing library of compelling clinical evidence. We’re confident this additional capital will help scale our commercial infrastructure and further accelerate clinical adoption,” said Brian Walsh, Chairman and CEO of Cagent Vascular. “Trinity Capital’s support is appreciated as we build a leading vascular company and make a difference in the lives of patients around the globe.”

About Trinity Capital Inc.

Trinity Capital Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIN) is an international alternative asset manager, aiming to provide investors with stable and consistent returns through access to the private credit market. We source, vet, and invest in dynamic privately funded growth-oriented companies, giving our investors access to a strong and diversified portfolio. With distinct business verticals, Trinity Capital stands as a trusted partner for innovative companies seeking tailored growth capital solutions. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, the firm has an international footprint, supported by a dedicated team of strategically located investment professionals. For more information, visit the company’s website at trinitycapital.com and stay connected by following us on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter).

About Cagent Vascular Inc.

Cagent Vascular Inc., founded and led by serial medical technology entrepreneurs, is the leader in Serration Technology to treat peripheral artery disease. The company has developed a transformative improvement to conventional angioplasty, which is the most commonly performed procedure to restore blood flow. Although angioplasty has been used clinically for over 50 years, there remain significant opportunities to optimize the therapy and to improve the treatment outcomes of cardiovascular disease. To learn more about Cagent Vascular’s mission to fight PAD, visit www.cagentvascular.com.

SOURCE Trinity Capital Inc.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 19, 2025 — OpenEvidence, the fastest-growing platform for doctors in history, has closed a Series A with Sequoia Capital at a $1 billion valuation. This milestone marks OpenEvidence’s first institutional investment and brings the company’s total capital raised to over $100 million.

OpenEvidence is on a mission to organize and expand the world’s collective medical knowledge, offering a groundbreaking AI copilot for doctors that assists them in making critical decisions at the point of care. This innovative platform is now a trusted resource for hundreds of thousands of verified doctors at over 10,000 care centers across the United States. Built from the ground up specifically for medical professionals, OpenEvidence is trained on specialized content, including the New England Journal of Medicine, through strategic partnerships. As a professional tool available exclusively to healthcare providers, OpenEvidence is free for verified doctors in the United States.

“As we come upon our platform’s two-year anniversary later this spring, OpenEvidence is trusted and used daily by hundreds of thousands of doctors. But we’re just getting started,” said Daniel Nadler, Founder of OpenEvidence. “Our Series A with Sequoia will enable OpenEvidence to continue building the most trusted AI platform for doctors and other medical professionals in the world.”

OpenEvidence, whose team is largely made-up of AI scientists from PhD programs at Harvard and MIT, will use the funding to train its next generation of medical domain-specialized Large Language Models (LLMs) and continue to assemble and grow the best team of scientists working at the intersection of LLMs and medicine. 

“As growing caseloads and patient demands make it near impossible for doctors to stay current and deliver the best care, OpenEvidence is the solution physicians have been yearning for,” said Pat Grady, partner at Sequoia Capital. “The scale of OpenEvidence’s life-saving impact is massive, positioning it to become one of the most important companies of the next decade. We’re proud to partner with Daniel and the OpenEvidence team as they transform healthcare delivery for both physicians and patients.”

OpenEvidence will also use the funding to forge strategic content partnerships, as well as to build and grow its own library of advanced medical knowledge through direct collaboration with world-leading medical researchers in oncology, neuroscience, cardiology, and other specialties.

Accordingly, OpenEvidence is today also announcing that it has signed a multi-year content agreement with NEJM Group, publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Under this agreement, all published content and multimedia from 1990 forward from NEJM, NEJM Evidence, NEJM AI, NEJM Catalyst, and NEJM Journal Watch will be provided to OpenEvidence to inform answers delivered on the OpenEvidence platform.

“In serving clinicians, it is crucial that the trusted evidence we publish informs clinical decisions,” said David Sampson, Vice President and Chief Publishing Officer of NEJM Group, publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine. “OpenEvidence is emerging as a preferred resource for many clinicians. We are delighted to support OpenEvidence as a content partner, and we look forward to further collaborating with OpenEvidence to improve the delivery of clinical knowledge.”

About OpenEvidence

OpenEvidence’s mission is to organize and expand the world’s collective medical knowledge. OpenEvidence’s first product, its eponymous copilot for doctors that helps them make high stakes decisions at the point of care, is now used by hundreds of thousands of logged-in, verified doctors at 10,000+ care centers across the United States. Launched in 2023, OpenEvidence became the fastest platform in the history of the medical industry to surpass 100,000 verified doctor users in the United States. As of this writing, 40,000 verified U.S. doctors and other active healthcare providers are registering for OpenEvidence each month (there are only about one million active physicians in the United States). Aside from the iPhone, there has never been a piece of technology adopted by doctors as quickly as OpenEvidence. Doctors leverage OpenEvidence multiple times a day on average and more than 75% of doctors use OpenEvidence during office hours for clinical decision support at the point of care, using it to inform patient care plans by querying how treatments affect patients with specific comorbidities or assessing drug efficacy. It also assists in addressing common issues by providing information on drug safety profiles, disease causes, the risks of discontinuing medications and more. With medical knowledge doubling every 73 days, OpenEvidence empowers doctors to stay current with this rapid pace of change, ensuring they deliver informed patient care. OpenEvidence is built from the ground up specifically for doctors, and is trained on specialized medical content, such as the New England Journal of Medicine (through strategic partnerships). OpenEvidence is free for verified doctors in the United States but is a professional tool available only to professional healthcare providers.

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE OpenEvidence

Inevitable Games Fund returns underscore the resilience, growth and surging user demand in web3 gaming

NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2025 — Immutable, in collaboration with King River Capital and Polygon Labs, today announced the inaugural returns on liquid investments of the Inevitable Games Fund (IGF).

The fund recorded a 2.8 Multiple on Invested Capital (MOIC) for investments that have launched token generation events (TGEs), outpacing the 1.36 Multiple seen from Bitcoin during the same time period.

Anchored by Alpha Wave Ventures, backed by Alpha Wave Global and the Abu Dhabi Royal Group’s Chimera Capital, IGF has made investments in 16 gaming projects over the last nine months.

“The success of the performance of the Inevitable Games Fund to date underscores the strength and resilience of the web3 gaming sector,” said Robbie Ferguson, President and Co-Founder of Immutable. “Web3 gaming is driving a revolution in technology and content development, redefining how players are rewarded for their time and empowering them to invest in and shape their gaming communities for the long term. This is a groundbreaking category that has incredible opportunity for the most discerning and strategic firms and investors that are paying close attention”

Other early investors include Merit Circle, Mike Arrington, Co-Founder of CrunchFund and Arrington Capital, Steve Kokinos, of Sonic Boom Ventures and former CEO of Algorand, and Sandeep Nailwal, Co-Founder of Polygon Labs.

“The outstanding performance of  IGF in such a short timeframe is a testament to the momentum and resilience of the web3 gaming landscape,” said Zeb Rice, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at King River Capital. “With the fund’s strong performance, we continue to solidify our commitment to revolutionizing the gaming industry through digital ownership and blockchain technology.”

Immutable and Polygon represent key driving forces in the web3 gaming industry, together representing approximately 70% of the total market share in the sector. Since launching the IGF, Immutable has established itself as the fastest-growing web3 gaming ecosystem, with 500 games total and one of the largest number of monthly active users (MAUs). In 2024 alone, Immutable onboarded over 250 games and recorded 4.6 million signups for its Immutable Passport onboarding platform, further solidifying its position as one of the most successful blockchain gaming companies in operation today.

Any information stated in this document is intended to be general in nature and is not personal financial product advice, and furthermore this document has been prepared without taking account of any person’s objectives, financial situation or needs. Before considering an investment, you should consider the appropriateness of the investment having regard to your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. This document and the information conveyed is also not intended to be in any way a general solicitation of interests in any financial product or for the provision of any financial service. Any reference to the names, service marks or trademarks of parties are for and held by each of those parties and is not an acknowledgement of a permission or right, license or sub-license the use, exclusive or otherwise, of those names, service marks or trademarks.

About King River Capital

King River Capital invests in early to mid-stage high-growth technology businesses solving critical problems. Since its founding in 2019, King River has raised three software and two blockchain funds and has invested in 50+ companies, primarily across North America and Australia.

King River’s gaming and blockchain equity investments include Immutable; Discord (the defacto locus for blockchain and gaming communities ); Splash (one of the world’s most popular music games on Roblox), Paystand (B2B payments platform leveraging the blockchain), Consensys (Developer of MetaMask and other Ethereum tools), LayerZero (Cross-chain communication platform), Layer3 (Token distribution and quest platform) and several others King River also actively invests in liquid tokens.

King River Capital has a global team of 25 professionals operating from offices in Sydney, New York, Denver, and London.

About Immutable
Immutable is a global leader in gaming on a mission to bring digital ownership to every player by making it safe and easy to build great web3 games. Immutables gaming platform and has onboarded over 500 well-funded games onto the platform and has raised $300M+ USD from leading global investors including Temasek, Tencent, Bitkraft, King River Capital, and Galaxy.

The Immutable gaming platform makes it easy for game studios and independent developers to safely and confidently build and launch successful games on Ethereum. The product suite includes pre-built solutions, optimized for usability, that help developers get to market faster without sacrificing security or player experience. Builders get personalized web3 guidance, live support for their communities, and access to the largest ecosystem in gaming.

Immutable was the first gaming platform to deliver a zero-knowledge (zk) scaling solution to the Ethereum community and provides developers with zk-based scaling solutions like Immutable zkEVM, powered by Polygon.

Join the Immutable community on Discord, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, Telegram and Youtube

SOURCE Immutable

AI-powered platform improves observability data quality and prevents system outages while enabling vendor flexibility

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 19, 2025 — Sawmills, the first smart telemetry data management platform, emerged from stealth today with $10M in seed funding. The highly oversubscribed round was led by Team8, with participation from Mayfield and Alumni Ventures. Founded by enterprise software veterans who were previously executives at New Relic, CloudBees, and Tricentis. Sawmills’ AI-powered platform allows enterprises to manage the data flowing from engineering teams to their observability tools, identifying opportunities for cost reduction while enhancing critical monitoring capabilities.

As modern software architectures grow more complex, observability has become critical for maintaining reliable systems – but organizations face dual challenges of unsustainable costs and data quality issues. The median company now spends nearly $2M annually on observability, and the majority of companies report experiencing unexpected cost spikes on a monthly basis. The scale of the problem was highlighted when a financial services firm was famously hit with a staggering $65M observability bill from Datadog.

“Engineering teams are grappling with both cost and quality challenges in their observability data,” said Ronit Belson, CEO of Sawmills, who founded the company alongside Amir Jakoby and Erez Rusovsky. “Missing data points, inconsistent formats, and duplicate data drive up costs and make root cause analysis unreliable and time-consuming. Observability has become the second-largest expense after cloud costs for most companies. In our conversations with VPs of Engineering at leading companies, they consistently tell us that up to 90% of their observability data is useless – yet they’re still paying to collect, process, and store all of it. Unpredicted spikes are another major challenge. We recently spoke with one company where a single developer’s mistake led to $250,000 in additional fees in just one day. Engineering teams need intelligent telemetry data management that not only improves data quality but also prevents costly mistakes before they happen. Sawmills automatically identifies optimization opportunities and implements guardrails to protect against unexpected cost spikes while ensuring you capture the data that matters.”

Sawmills enables companies to optimize their observability practices through intelligent data management. The platform uses AI models to analyze telemetry data as it streams through the system, automatically identifying opportunities to reduce spending, improve data quality, and prevent observability system outages. Companies can implement Sawmills’ recommendations with a single click and set automated policies to prevent unexpected cost spikes and availability issues. The platform’s intelligent routing capabilities not only direct data to cost-effective storage solutions but also provide organizations with the freedom to switch between observability vendors without disrupting their monitoring infrastructure.

The impact of Sawmills’ approach is already evident among early adopters. Edi Buslovich, a VP of Engineering at Via, said: “Partnering with Sawmills has set us on a path toward optimizing our telemetry data—paving the way for streamlined costs, improved observability resource allocation aligned with our business needs, and enhanced data governance.”

“Telemetry data management is emerging as a critical new category in enterprise cloud infrastructure,” said Liran Grinberg, Managing Partner at Team8. “The Sawmills team has a deep understanding of the problem and a comprehensive vision that perfectly positions them to own this new category. This isn’t just about cost reduction; we believe Sawmills’ approach to intelligent telemetry data management will massively improve observability and become essential infrastructure for modern enterprises.”

Built on the OpenTelemetry Collector, Sawmills enhances this widely adopted open-source standard with advanced AI-powered capabilities to deliver:

• Real-time Processing: The platform’s AI-powered engine processes logs, metrics, and traces as they stream in, automatically detecting and fixing issues like missing data points and inconsistent formats while optimizing costs through smart sampling, routing, dropping, aggregation and more.
• Comprehensive Control: Organizations gain complete control over their observability strategy through smart policies that automatically enrich telemetry data, improve data quality, and protect against unplanned data spikes and system outages.
• Vendor Flexibility: Sawmills’ architecture ensures enterprises can maintain robust observability while having the freedom to adapt and switch between observability vendors as their needs evolve.

To learn more about how Sawmills can help your organization optimize observability costs and improve data quality, visit www.sawmills.ai 

SOURCE Sawmills

NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2025 — Gomboc AI, the industry’s first deterministic AI solution for cloud security remediations, today announced it has raised $13 million in seed-stage funding. A new $8 million seed investment was led by Ballistic Ventures, with continued support from Glilot Capital Partners and Hetz Ventures, which co-led Gomboc AI’s initial $5 million seed investment. The funding will accelerate the company’s mission to eliminate the security backlog that delays critical business transformation.

Built by a CISO Overwhelmed by Tickets
The inspiration behind Gomboc AI was born out of frustration and curiosity. As a former Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) responsible for securing 15 businesses under one corporate entity, Gomboc AI Co-founder and CEO Ian Amit faced the overwhelming challenge of managing insurmountable tickets and extensive vulnerability reports, often spanning hundreds of pages.

“I started asking: What if there was no backlog, no more tickets? What if the inefficiencies we’ve normalized didn’t have to exist? The security industry is drowning in alerts, and no solution has fundamentally solved the root problem of remediating issues with minimal friction,” said Amit.

Determined to reduce weeks or months of manual fixes down to minutes, Amit, alongside Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Matthew Sweeney, created a deterministic AI engine that does more than just flag cloud security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities – it fixes them.

The Deterministic AI Approach to Remediation
Cloud security products on the market today rely on signatures, rigid templates, and/or generative AI. Whereas GenAI is associated with unpredictability and variability, Gomboc AI’s unique approach employs a patent-pending deterministic AI engine to ensure consistent, repeatable, and contextual code-level fixes. The platform integrates seamlessly with cloud infrastructure through Infrastructure as Code (IaC), enabling organizations to remediate misconfigurations while preserving functionality and agility.

“Many tools provide visibility into issues, but none address the root of the problem – systematically fixing vulnerabilities in a developer-friendly way,” said Amit. “Gomboc AI eliminates the backlog, reduces Mean Time To Remediate (MTTR) from months to minutes, and enables security and DevOps teams to focus on higher-value work.”

Key Features and Benefits

• Provides actual fixes, not just alerts: The platform generates accurate, repeatable, and context-aware code-level changes through Infrastructure as Code (IaC) while preserving the functionality of the environment.
• Eliminates security backlogs: Instead of creating more tickets, Gomboc AI drastically reduces, and most often eliminates and prevents, the avalanche of issues produced by Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools and other security scanners.
• Policy-driven, developer-friendly: Built on a simple policy framework (aligned with NIST CSF, CIS, etc.), Gomboc AI tailors its remediations to each organization’s unique environment. Changes always require DevOps approval, and scanning triggers can be configured to run as part of the DevOps pipelines.
• No Generative AI: Gomboc AI’s focus on deterministic AI sets it apart from other solutions that rely on generative AI or rigid templates, ensuring accurate, context-aware code fixes that do not rely on customer data for model “learning.”

“Gomboc AI is solving a massive, universal problem that organizations face: transforming the overwhelming security-ticket backlog into an automated, policy-driven remediation process. This company is a game-changer for how security and DevSecOps teams can work together more efficiently and effectively,” said Roger Thornton, Co-founder and General Partner of Ballistic Ventures. “We’re thrilled to have Gomboc AI’s talented team join the portfolio and look forward to their visionary approach changing the way organizations manage cloud security.”

“There’s been a lot of talk about AI helping security teams, but in my view, most aren’t realistic,” said Kobi Samboursky, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Glilot Capital. “Gomboc AI is a great example of AI that really works. Its technology deeply understands your code and security posture, solving issues and reducing noise like no other. If you’re a cyber expert, take a look at Gomboc to see AI’s real potential.”

“The cybersecurity market is at an inflection point—threats are evolving faster than companies can hire and train security engineers,” said Pavel Livshiz, General Partner at Hetz Ventures. “Gomboc AI is uniquely positioned to solve this bottleneck with AI-driven remediation, turning security from a constant fire drill into a seamless, automated process. This funding reflects their rapid progress, strong market traction, and an outstanding team. We’re excited to double down.”

Organizations can start remediating issues within minutes of onboarding. See how with Gomboc AI’s free trial.

About Gomboc AI
Gomboc AI is the leading authority in cloud security remediations, delivering the industry’s first deterministic AI solution to fix security misconfigurations in cloud environments. Founded in 2022, Gomboc AI empowers organizations to eliminate security backlogs, reduce attack surfaces, and free up engineering resources to drive innovation. For more information, visit gomboc.ai.

SOURCE Gomboc AI

Eclipse leads $21.5M seed round to fuel AheadComputing’s development of next-generation processors that meet the demands of server, client, mobile, and edge computing

PORTLAND, Ore., Feb. 19, 2025 — AheadComputing today announced it has secured $21.5M in seed funding to rapidly develop and commercialize its breakthrough microprocessor architecture designed to meet the new, unique computing demands across AI, cloud, and edge devices. The funding was led by Eclipse, with participation from Maverick Capital, Fundomo, EPIQ Capital Group, LLC, and legendary CPU architect and current Tenstorrent CEO Jim Keller, who developed cutting-edge semiconductors for Apple, AMD, Tesla, and Intel.

Today, general-purpose computing faces unprecedented challenges due to the rapid expansion of AI and machine learning workloads. A recent report found that 82% of organizations experienced performance issues with their AI workloads over the past year, primarily due to bandwidth shortages and data processing limitations. While specialized accelerators dominate headlines, they rely heavily on general-purpose processors for critical tasks before, after, and in-between AI operations. Existing architectures have struggled to keep pace with the demands of these emerging workloads, creating a bottleneck in compute performance that impacts industries ranging from cloud to edge computing. AheadComputing addresses this critical gap by providing innovative solutions designed to transform how general-purpose computing meets modern demands.

AheadComputing was founded in 2024 by semiconductor industry veterans and former Intel CPU architects Debbie Marr, Jonathan Pearce, Mark Dechene, and Srikanth Srinivasan who collectively have a century of experience in identifying CPU bottlenecks, dreaming up innovative ways to resolve them, and shipping them in real products. They saw an opportunity to develop 64-bit RISC-V application processors that deliver breakthrough per-core performance. The company aims to address the growing demand for general-purpose computing performance amid the rapid rise of AI applications. The demand is fueled in part by many everyday AI applications with limited to low parallelism. These AI workloads will run on general purpose computing platforms. On top of that, programmers are increasingly relying on AI generators to assist in programming tasks for productivity.  These generated programs are single or low-parallelism workloads and will run on general-purpose platforms. AheadComputing’s microarchitecture innovations will drive breakthrough performance improvements while optimizing power efficiency, making it a game-changer for server, client, mobile, and edge applications, justifying the move away from legacy computer architectures to RISC-V.

“The compute landscape is evolving rapidly, and AheadComputing is positioned to lead this transformation by delivering unprecedented performance in general-purpose processors,” said Debbie Marr, CEO of AheadComputing. “With this funding, we will expand our world-class engineering team and accelerate the development of our core IP, enabling customers to meet their most demanding computing needs.”

AheadComputing’s approach focuses on overcoming the limitations of current architectures, addressing challenges such as per-core performance, thermal density constraints and multiprocessor scalability. The company’s first products will provide industry-leading single-thread and multi-core performance, setting new benchmarks in the computing landscape.

“As esteemed former senior Intel CPU architects, AheadComputing’s leadership team is uniquely equipped to solve the complex challenges facing today’s computing industry,” said Greg Reichow, Partner at Eclipse. “Their commitment to delivering the highest performance cores — while ensuring energy efficiency — will significantly impact multiple industries like mobile, industrial and networking.”

The seed funding will be used to continue expanding their world-class team, advance microarchitecture development, and demonstrate the company’s leadership in CPU core performance. The company has grown from four to 40 employees in just five months, underscoring the demand for its cutting-edge solutions and strong market traction.

AheadComputing is actively seeking strategic partners to bring its core technology to microprocessors and specialized logic chips across diverse sectors, including cloud computing, AI, and mobile devices.

For more information, visit aheadcomputing.com

About AheadComputing
AheadComputing is an IP design house focused on developing, licensing, and supporting high-performance microprocessor cores and related technologies. With a leadership team boasting decades of experience in CPU architecture and innovation, the company is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of compute performance through cutting-edge RISC-V processors. AheadComputing’s solutions empower industries ranging from cloud computing to AI and edge applications, providing unmatched efficiency and scalability. Headquartered in Portland, OR, the company is poised to revolutionize the computing landscape by delivering breakthrough per-core performance and setting new industry benchmarks. For more information, visit www.aheadcomputing.com

About Eclipse
With ~$5 billion in assets under management and a team of investors with deep operating expertise in technology, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, healthcare, and consumer products, Eclipse is a leading U.S. venture capital firm. Its leadership team has the experience necessary to create and scale complex operations. Eclipse partners with exceptional companies that make physical industries more efficient, resilient, and profitable. For more information, visit www.eclipse.vc.

Media Contact
[email protected] 

SOURCE AheadComputing

Built out of New York City’s Foremost Venture Community, Terrarium will Accelerate and De-Risk Pathways for Founders; Launches in Partnership with Cactus and Wellstar Health System; Announces Launch of First Startup, Rota Health

NEW YORK, Feb. 19, 2025 — Company Ventures, the premier startup talent ecosystem in New York City, today announced the launch of Terrarium, a new venture studio to incubate healthcare technology startups, in partnership with Cactus, a premier innovation-focused advisory firm working with many of the largest healthcare systems in the U.S.

Terrarium will provide an accelerated and de-risked pathway for founders to build new companies by combining best-in-class research, talent, capital, and deep industry relationships. The studio aims to incubate up to ten companies over the next three years by taking a thesis-driven, research-intensive approach focused on segments of healthcare that are being transformed by technology and regulatory pressure. 

The -1 to 0 phase is often the hardest and most risky part of the startup journey with founders spending up to two years bootstrapping their companies. Terrarium accelerates this process by testing and validating multiple ideas before funding each incubation. “When founders join a Terrarium incubation, they are armed with the market validation and capital to build the next wave of great health tech companies,” said Mark Rosenblun, CEO of Terrarium.

The company is taking a more talent-centric approach to the studio model. “First and foremost, Terrarium incubations will be remarkably founder friendly from an ownership perspective. As we’ve seen for over ten years, companies succeed for a number of reasons, but chief among them is the caliber of talent on the core team,” said Nelson Schubart, managing partner at Company Ventures. “We have invested in a data-driven talent platform to find and attract the most exceptional entrepreneurs.”

“With signs of a capital investment boom in digital health and myriad compelling applications for AI across the healthcare sector, the timing is right,” said Matthew Harrigan, CEO, Company Ventures. “The opportunity for advancement in technology adoption in healthcare to impact lives is vast. Terrarium will build on Company Ventures’ successful track record in digital health which includes investments in Maven, Centivo, Octave, and Stepful and benefit from our deep network of existing co-investor relationships from downstream capital, our start-up ecosystem and founder network, and our proprietary technology.”

Terrarium was conceived in partnership with Cactus. “We partnered with Company Ventures to launch Terrarium as a smarter alternative for Health Systems to invest in venture: a less capital-intensive and de-risked model that brings the best minds in the venture community into direct collaboration with health system leaders,” said Noah Waxman, CEO of Cactus. “Cactus brings deep knowledge of U.S. health systems’ innovation agendas, strong relationships inside those organizations, and a clear understanding of which opportunities should be pursued in-house versus those best served by new, venture backed businesses.”

Terrarium is also announcing a strategic partnership with Wellstar, a Georgia health system with an expansive network that includes 11 hospitals, 5 health parks, 300+ medical office locations, numerous specialty centers, and Catalyst by Wellstar, the system’s innovation and venture arm. 

“Wellstar’s deep clinical and healthcare expertise uniquely positions our team to accelerate the timeline to positively impact patients and communities with early-stage technologies,” said Hank Capps, M.D. FAAFP, executive vice president and chief information and digital officer, Wellstar Health System, and president of Catalyst. “We sit closest to the patient which empowers Catalyst to bridge the gap between groundbreaking technology and real-world clinical application. By collaborating with Terrarium, we can provide invaluable insights, validation, and pathways for startups shaping the future of healthcare.”

The studio’s first incubation, Rota Health, aims to solve the massive problem of data interoperability in healthcare, which represents 30% of all data in the world. The company’s AI-enabled data integration platform allows healthcare organizations to seamlessly connect and analyze disparate datasets across organizations.

“Healthcare data integration is a hair-on-fire problem with a $50B unserved market,” said John Ciccio, co-founder and CEO, Rota Health. “Large healthcare enterprises are integrating with hundreds of external tech vendors which is becoming untenable even for the most sophisticated organizations. I chose to work with Terrarium because of the tremendous potential to disrupt the healthcare integration market and their impressive network of top-tier talent.”

About Terrarium
Terrarium is a venture studio seeding the next wave of transformational healthcare technology companies. The company was launched in 2024 out of Company Ventures, the premier startup talent ecosystem in New York City. Terrarium incubates companies from -1 to 0 by combining best-in-class research, talent, capital & deep industry relationships. For more information, visit us at Terrarium and follow us on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Terrarium

OTTAWA, Canada, Feb. 19, 2025 — Hyperlume, Inc. (“Hyperlume” or the “Company”) has completed a $12,500,000 USD seed round to commercialize its high bandwidth, low latency, low power interconnects for AI data centers and high-performance computing systems. The oversubscribed round, led by BDC’s Deep Tech Venture Fund and ArcTern Ventures with participation from MUUS Climate Partners, SOSV and Intel Capital also includes a strategic investment from LG Technology Ventures. 

Hyperlume was founded in 2022 by Mohsen Asad and Hossein Fariborzi to develop breakthrough technology that addresses connectivity bottlenecks in accelerated computing and AI data centers. Hyperlume’s unique technology uses specialized, ultra-fast microLEDs and ultra-low power circuitry to achieve significant performance, cost and energy-efficiency gains relative to the traditional copper interconnects. 

“This funding represents a significant step in Hyperlume’s journey as we continue to push the boundaries of optical communication and deliver transformative solutions for the AI and semiconductor industries,” said Mohsen Asad, Co-founder and CEO of Hyperlume. “We are grateful for the trust and support of our investors who share our vision of a more efficient and sustainable future for computing.”

A New Paradigm in Computing
As AI models exceed 1 trillion parameters and high-performance computing clusters surpass 100,000 GPUs, today’s interconnect technology is becoming a critical bottleneck to computing performance. The future of computing requires a new level of connectivity—higher bandwidth, lower latency, and step-change improvements in energy efficiency.

Hyperlume’s novel technology is designed to overcome the energy and bandwidth bottlenecks inherent in traditional electronic interconnects, offering pluggable, mid-board and co-packaged optical alternatives.

With this funding, the company plans to:

• Accelerate development of optical interconnect technologies
• Expand its product, engineering and R&D teams
• Strengthen strategic partnerships with leading hyperscalers, chip manufacturers and AI infrastructure providers
• Prepare steps for production of its optical technology to meet industry demand for 800G and 1.6T interconnects.

“BDC’s Deep Tech Venture Fund is committed to supporting visionary companies that are reshaping industries through cutting-edge technology. Hyperlume’s optical interconnect technology represents a transformative leap forward in energy-efficient AI and semiconductor infrastructure. We are proud to be part of their journey as they redefine the future of computing,” said Charles Lespérance, Partner at BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund. Murray McCaig, Managing Partner at ArcTern Ventures added, “The carbon emissions from data centers are projected to more than double by 2030, underscoring the urgent need to invest in technologies that reduce energy consumption. Hyperlume’s groundbreaking ultra-low-power microLED interconnect technology not only significantly reduces energy usage in networking but also delivers exceptional high-bandwidth performance.”

“As the demand for AI grows, so do its energy requirements, placing a significant burden on traditional copper interconnects,” said Srini Ananth, Managing Director at Intel Capital. “Hyperlume’s technology effectively tackles the bottlenecks hindering optimal performance in AI and data centers, representing a significant step forward for the semiconductor industry as it supports the demands of an AI-driven future.”

About Hyperlume
Hyperlume is a cutting-edge technology company focused on developing a low-energy optical interconnect solution to revolutionize chip-to-chip communication. The Company aims to enable efficient, low-power AI infrastructure through innovative optical solutions. For more information, visit www.hyperlume.com.

About BDC: 80 Years as Canada’s Bank for Entrepreneurs
BDC is a partner of choice for all entrepreneurs looking to access the financing and advice they need to build their businesses and tackle the big challenges of our time. Our investment arm, BDC Capital, offers a wide range of risk capital solutions to help grow the most innovative firms. BDC’s development role means we are in a state of perpetual evolution – wherever entrepreneurs go and whatever the Canadian economy needs – we will be there to help them defy the odds. 80 years later, that commitment remains very much alive. BDC’s services in 2024 alone will add an estimated $25.5 billion in GDP to Canada’s economy over the next five years. We are one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers and Canada’s Best Diversity Employers, and the first financial institution in Canada to receive the B Corp certification in 2013. For more information on our products and services and to consult free tools, templates and articles, visit bdc.ca or join BDC on social media. 

About ArcTern
ArcTern Ventures is a venture capital firm committed to addressing the climate crisis and advancing sustainability. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Oslo and San Francisco, ArcTern invests globally in innovative technology companies focused on climate action and sustainability—what we call Earthtech. The firm was founded on the premise that accelerating the transition to a carbon-neutral economy can disrupt industries and present an unprecedented opportunity for outsized financial returns, benefiting companies, investors, and the planet. ArcTern’s latest fund, Fund III, closed in January 2024 with US$337M from leading institutional investors, with a focus on Series A and B startups. Visit www.arcternventures.com.

About Intel Capital
Over three decades, Intel Capital has invested more than US $20 billion in the future of compute, funding standout, early-stage startups across four key areas of the tech ecosystem; Silicon, Frontier, Devices and Cloud. Intel Capital-funded companies created more than US $170 billion in market value in the past 10 years. For more information, visit www.intelcapital.com or follow @Intelcapital.

SOURCE Hyperlume, Inc.