Topical LUT014 Treats EGFRi (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Inhibitor) Induced Acneiform Rash, Potentially Improving The Treatment’s Efficacy And Patients’ Quality of Life

TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 28, 2025 — Lutris Pharma, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on improving anti-cancer therapies by reducing cutaneous dose-limiting toxicity, today announced that it has secured a $30 million financing to advance the development of LUT014, an innovative topically applied gel aimed at reducing EGFRi-induced rashes, a common adverse side effect of these cancer-fighting therapies. The round was led by Columbus Venture Partners and Pontifax Venture Capital, an existing investor, with Peregrine Ventures and aMoon Fund also participating.

While EGFRi therapies are highly effective for the treatment of cancer, they have dose-limiting skin toxicities, leading to substantial discontinuation of patients’ treatment in less than three months due to intolerable acneiform rashes. LUT014, a novel B-Raf inhibitor, is used for patients who develop dose-limiting rashes, potentially allowing them to continue EGFRi treatment with an improved quality of life.

“We are grateful to these investors who recognize the potential of LUT014 to address the significant unmet need caused by the toxicity of EGFRi therapies, which are otherwise effective therapeutic regimens. This financing will enable us to continue the clinical development of LUT014 with the goal of treating the acneiform rash to improve life quality and enabling adherence to EGFRi therapies,” stated Noa Shelach, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Lutris Pharma. “The development and ultimate commercialization of LUT014 aligns with our mission to improve anti-cancer therapy effectiveness and to meaningfully impact the quality of life for patients.”

In October 2024, Lutris successfully completed enrollment in the international phase 2 trial of LUT014 in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) treated with EGFRi therapy who develop dose-limiting acneiform rash. The company expects to report top-line results from this trial during the first half of 2025 at a major medical meeting.

“Based on the broad use of EGFRi’s to treat cancer and the dermal toxicity that often emerges, many of these patients do not receive the optimal treatment against their cancer, either due to dose reduction or outright discontinuation in response to the intolerable dermal toxicity,” stated Antoni Ribas, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman and Founder of Lutris Pharma. “Despite extensive research efforts in the past, no standard of care has emerged to deal with this prevalent issue, leading to a significant unmet medical need. By reversing the inhibitory effect of EGFRi therapy on downstream signaling in the skin cells, we believe that LUT014 has the potential to become an important therapeutic for EGFR inhibitor induced skin toxicity and can have a tremendous impact for patients who currently have no other effective treatment options.”

“Acneiform rash is the most common side effect of EGFRi therapies, with up to 90% of patients experiencing an adverse dermatologic event, taking a toll which can be detrimental to their therapy. It is all too common that patients terminate treatment due to these effects, leading to continued disease progression and prolonged treatment. The need to manage this condition is crucial and Lutris is doing just that with the advent of LUT014,” said Dr. Yael Gruenbaum-Cohen, DMD, PhD, Partner at aMoon Fund. “As development of LUT014 proceeds, we can foresee a paradigm shift wherein EGFRi treatment will be regularly coupled with LUT014 as a valuable adjunct. This aligns with aMoon’s mission of helping people live longer, healthier lives, and we are proud to support Lutris on their journey towards success.”

About EGFR Inhibitor-Induced Rash
EGFR is a receptor on the surface of cells which is expressed in many normal epithelial tissues, including skin. The EGFR signaling pathway is one of the key pathways that regulate growth, survival, proliferation, and differentiation of cells. B-Raf is a protein encoded by the BRAF gene and is a downstream effector component of EGFR signaling pathway. EGFR has been shown to be over-activated in various human cancers, including colorectal, lung, head and neck, urinary bladder, pancreatic and breast cancers, eliciting downstream phosphorylation and activation of the MAP Kinase pathway.

Drugs called EGFR inhibitors can block the EGFR signal responsible for cell growth. Among the various types of pharmacological therapies for cancer, EGFR inhibitors are increasingly being used both as primary therapy as well as in patients who have failed prior chemotherapy. Although effective as anti-cancer therapy leading to tumor shrinkage, EGFR inhibitors have many adverse reactions associated with their use. The majority of patients treated with EGFR inhibitors will experience adverse dermatological side effects typically manifested as a papulopustular skin rash, also known as acneiform lesions, which can impact quality of life and affect adherence to therapy. Accordingly, LUT014 has the potential to impact not only on quality of life but also on oncologic outcome.

About LUT014
LUT014 is a novel B-Raf inhibitor which is applied topically on the skin. When the B-Raf protein is mutated, as is the case in some human cancers such as melanoma, blocking this pathway leads to apoptosis of the cells and tumor shrinkage. However, when the same pathway is blocked in normal, non-mutated cells, the opposite happens: the MAPK pathway is activated, and cells start growing. This phenomenon is recognized as the paradoxical effect of B-Raf Inhibitors. LUT014 harnesses the paradoxical effect of B-Raf Inhibitors in order to reactivate the MAPK pathway and reverse the rash induced by the inhibition of this signaling pathway.

About Lutris Pharma
Lutris Pharma is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on improving anti-cancer therapy effectiveness and quality of life for patients who are being treated with EGFR (Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor) inhibitors or with radiation, where dermal toxicity often leads to a reduction of anti-cancer therapy compliance. The company aims to provide novel topical therapies in order to mitigate these side effects. Lutris Pharma’s lead asset, LUT014, a topical B-Raf Inhibitor, is a proprietary, first-in-class, small molecule currently completed a phase 2 clinical trial in metastatic colorectal cancer patients with EGFR inhibitor induced acneiform lesions and has successfully completed a phase 1/2 study for the treatment of radiation-induced dermatitis in breast cancer patients.

For more information, please visit www.lutris-pharma.com.

Contacts:

Lutris Pharma
Noa Shelach, Ph.D. 
Chief Executive Officer [email protected]

Rx Communications Group
Michael Miller
+1-917-633-6086
[email protected]

SOURCE Lutris Pharma

BOZEMAN, Mont., Jan. 28, 2025 — Tradeverifyd announced that it has raised an $8m Series A round led by Silicon Road VC and Bread & Butter Ventures, with participation from Acronym, Techstars, and a100x.

Tradeverifyd is redefining the intelligence standard for global enterprise supply chain risk management. The solution evolved over the prior year at mesur.io as a way to bring advanced capabilities developed for government customers to the enterprise. Tradeverifyd provides an advanced AI-driven platform designed to automatically identify and help teams mitigate supply chain risks. The solution is tailored for senior leaders in compliance and procurement aiming to protect their operations from supply chain disruptions and regulatory non-compliance.

“The challenges faced by global companies today are increasing faster than anyone thought possible. Climate change, geopolitics, and uncertainty in the markets is forcing companies to dive into the details of how their supply chains work, and where risks might arise at a level of detail that was not previously required. By partnering with our investors, we are positioning Tradeverifyd to scale to meet the demand we are seeing from the market.” said Michael Prorock, Founder and CEO.

Tradeverifyd’s exponential growth comes at a critical time when supply chain risks and compliance concerns are increasingly in the spotlight. Recent developments, such as the enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) in the United States and the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG) in Germany, as well as talks around changing tariffs and export restrictions, have heightened the need for comprehensive supply chain risk management solutions. The average annual cost of major supply interruptions to an enterprise is $228m, a number that since Covid has forced enterprises to take notice and look for solutions.

“There are more environmental and regulatory supply chain risks for anyone engaged in international trade today than ever before,” said Bread and Butter Ventures Managing Partner Brett Brohl. “It has become more costly for large companies to manage these challenges, and the consequences of failing to do so are significant. Tradeverifyd partners with corporations that need help solving these challenges, leveraging AI and a deep understanding of global supply chains.”

“Mesur.io’s Tradeverifyd addresses ‘Surety of Supply,’ one of the most important topics for manufacturers and retailers of all varieties in the United States,” added Sid Mookerji, Managing Partner at Silicon Road Ventures. “Particularly given the changing geopolitical alignments today, using mesur.io’s tech could be the difference between getting merchandise on the shelf in time for significant holidays (e.g., Christmas) and missing out on the opportunity to maximize sales. We at Silicon Road believe that Tradeverifyd will transform supply chains worldwide in the months and years to come.”

The company’s Tradeverifyd Score provides a consistent way to measure each supplier’s ability to deliver the particular products and volumes they have committed to. This includes their compliance and financial posture, as well as examining their suppliers all the way back to raw materials for both long- and short-term risks.

“Without a solid foundation in machine learning, Tradeverifyd would not be able to deliver accurate quantitative analysis,” Prorock added. “AI, enabled by LLMs, provides us the ability to effectively scale sourcing and compliance teams exponentially. Our AI agents are able to make decisions about information gathering, analysis, and recommendations on their own -and to make those decisions in a way that is informed by actual subject matter experts both in the field and within a particular organization. This means that our AI is effectively ‘personalized’ in its decision making for the needs of our customers. This is a huge breakthrough and advantage, and lets Tradeverifyd scale our data processing and analysis delivery at a level that would typically require an order of magnitude more resources. As a result, we can pass this value onto our customers.”

Tradeverifyd will use the new funding to accelerate go to market efforts across the enterprise and to improve support for supply chain leaders responding to changing regulations and compliance needs.

Tradeverifyd, with headquarters in Bozeman, MT, and strategic locations globally will serve as the go-to partner for enterprises to achieve excellence in digital supply chain transformation as they move from reactive to proactive modes of reducing supply chain risk.

For more information, visit https://tradeverifyd.com/

Media Contact: Chris Marley, [email protected]

SOURCE Mesur.io

NEW YORK, Jan. 28, 2025 – Darwin CX, a rapidly growing SaaS provider focused on transforming customer experience (CX) for publishers and subscription-based businesses, has announced a significant expansion in both funding and leadership. The company is a global leader in subscription lifecycle management solutions, helping publishers, membership organizations, and media companies seamlessly transition from print to digital. With nearly 200 clients spanning across the world, and over 7 years’ of migration expertise off various legacy platforms, Darwin CX is revolutionizing the subscription landscape.

Darwin CX recently closed $12 million in additional funding with the continued support from existing investors, First Ascent Ventures, New Era Capital Partners, and TTA Investments, who were joined by Teralys Capital, a large Canadian private fund manager. These investments are propelling the company’s expansion, enhancing its CX platform, and accelerating the development of innovative tools to support the evolving needs of subscription-based businesses.

In addition to the funding, Darwin CX is proud to announce the appointment of Tom Jenkins as Chairman of the Board. A seasoned leader and technology innovator, Jenkins is best known for his role as the former CEO and current Chairman of OpenText, a company that experienced remarkable growth under his leadership. His extensive experience in scaling tech companies and driving strategic vision makes him a perfect fit for guiding Darwin CX through its next phase of global expansion.

Tom is the former Chair of the World Wide Web Foundation, former Co-Chair of the Atlantik Bruecke, the tenth Chancellor of the University of Waterloo, as well as a former board member of Manulife, TransAlta, and Thomson Reuters Inc. Mr. Jenkins has also been appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Canadian Forces Decoration (CD), the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal (QJDM) and the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Tom’s appointment as Chairman of Darwin CX came about after CEO Liam Lynch personally reached out to Jenkins, recognizing the value that his expertise could bring to the company. “I’ve followed Tom’s work for many years and have seen first hand how his leadership can help businesses unlock their full potential,” said Lynch. “I asked Tom to join as Chairman because of his proven track record in scaling organizations and his deep understanding of the technology sector. I’m thrilled that he said yes, and I’m confident his strategic guidance will be invaluable as we continue to expand.”

Jenkins, for his part, expressed enthusiasm about his new role, highlighting the company’s strong position in the market. “Darwin CX is building something truly special by bridging the gap between the trusted offline services that publishers and member-based organisations rely on and the innovative digital solutions that are crucial for success today,” Jenkins said. “I’m excited to join the team as Chair and help steer the company toward even greater growth and innovation. The media and membership markets are ready for solutions that handle both their offline and online needs, and Darwin CX is ideally positioned to meet that demand.”

The new capital and leadership expansion come at a pivotal moment in Darwin CX’s growth journey. The funding will be used to further develop its customer experience platform, scale the Company, and enhance its product offerings, ensuring that the company remains at the forefront of the subscription economy. With a growing customer base of nearly 200 clients, Darwin CX continues to innovate in ways that support the changing needs of businesses in the subscription space.

Current investment rounds were supported by Darwin CX’s dedicated team, including Toby McCoy (Chief of Staff), Jon Soucy (CFO), TJ Cole (Senior VP – Strategy & Corporate Finance), and Chris Bedor (General Counsel).

For more information on how Darwin CX can help deliver gold-standard customer experiences for your business, please contact Cary Zel at [email protected] or Scott O’Neill at [email protected].

TAGGED WITH: Darwin CX, First Ascent Ventures, New Era Capital Partners, Teralys Capital,  Liam Lynch, Tom Jenkins

About Darwin CX
Darwin CX is a transformative SaaS platform at the leading edge of the subscription and membership economies. It helps brands accelerate acquisition and retention—and increase loyalty—through innovative and customized check-out pages, targeted audience offerings, real-time A/B testing, and best-in-class analytics. The Darwin CX platform enables clients to have complete freedom and control over customer data in order to tailor the best possible customer experiences.

About First Ascent Ventures
First Ascent Ventures is a venture capital firm that partners with high-growth, innovative companies across the SaaS and technology sectors. With a focus on scaling transformative businesses, the firm provides strategic guidance and financial support to drive success.

About New Era Capital Partners
Headquartered in Tel Aviv and Boston, New Era Capital Partners is led by industry veterans Gideon Argov, Ran Simha, and Ziv Conen. With extensive experience across North America, Europe, and Asia, New Era specializes in identifying high-potential companies at the pivotal moment when they are ready to scale. The firm focuses on supporting businesses as they expand their operations and accelerate growth.

About Teralys Capital
With $2B in assets under management, Teralys Capital is a leading private fund manager and largest innovation-focused investor in Canada. The firm supports entrepreneurs and leading technology funds who are investing in companies at every stage of growth, from early-stage start-ups to expansion and technology buy-outs. Teralys also invests internationally, helping Canadian businesses scale globally and bringing back best practices to strengthen the local ecosystem.

SOURCE Darwin CX LLC

Recent cyberattacks reveal a dangerous new trend: hackers are bypassing traditional security by targeting the automated systems that keep modern enterprises running. When state-sponsored attackers breached Microsoft and Cloudflare in early 2024, rather than going after employee passwords and accounts, the attackers compromised machine credentials instead. These machine identities — from cloud service credentials to automated system accounts — are multiplying rapidly as organizations embrace modern cloud architectures and as AI agents become a part of the daily workforce. A typical enterprise now has orders of magnitude more machine identities than human users, creating countless potential entry points for attackers.

“Hackers don’t break in; they log in,” said Itamar Apelblat, Co-Founder and CEO of Token Security. “Enterprises have done a good job securing human identities with things like multi-factor authentication, but automated systems are different. Any enterprise can pull up a list of their employees in seconds and track who has access to what. But ask them about their machine identities, and most can’t even tell you how many they have, let alone what they’re doing. When security teams identify a potential risk, figuring out who’s the human owner behind the automated process and what it’s supposed to be doing turns into a lengthy investigation that delays critical fixes and leaves systems exposed.”

Token Security solves this challenge by helping organizations discover, manage, and secure every non-human identity across their infrastructure. The platform integrates with a company’s entire technology stack, including existing identity providers, to map all machine credentials, whether they are cloud-based, SaaS solutions, or on-prem. It then automatically pinpoints who in the organization is responsible for each, and how the identity is being used. This direct connection between non-human identities and their human owners ensures swift remediation of security issues while maintaining the rapid pace of development and innovation.

“The explosion of machine identities, accelerated by agentic AI adoption and cloud-native architectures, has created an urgent need for a new approach to manage and secure non-human identities,” said Oren Yunger, Managing Partner at Notable Capital. “Token Security has emerged as the clear leader in this emerging space with the most robust and holistic product approach. Having invested in category-defining companies like HashiCorp, we recognized immediately that Token’s machine-first approach and exceptional team were building exactly what the market needed. This is evident in how quickly leading CISOs have embraced Token. The company’s remarkable traction and exceptional execution position it to reshape how enterprises secure the rapidly expanding machine identity landscape.”

About Token Security 

Token Security is a leading provider of non-human identity security solutions, specializing in automatically securing any type of non-human identity across any system and environment at scale. Token Security’s solution empowers teams to manage lifecycles, maintain secure postures, gain comprehensive visibility, and enforce least privilege — all through a centralized dashboard. Token Security was founded by 8200 security experts Itamar Apelblat and Ido Shlomo and is backed by Notable Capital, TLV Partners, SNR, and industry veterans like Kevin Patrick Mahaffey, founder of Lookout, and Shlomo Kremer, co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks.

Media Contact
Lazer Cohen
[email protected] 

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2606777/Token_Security.jpg

SOURCE Token Security

• Funding expands manufacturing readiness for Valley fever vaccine
• This follows Anivive’s $33MM NIAID contract for fungal vaccines
• In total, Anivive has secured over $80MM in contracts and preorders

LONG BEACH, Calif., Jan. 27, 2025 — Anivive Lifesciences, a software-driven pet health company, is pleased to announce it has secured $20MM in funding from Leonid Capital Partners (“Leonid”). Leonid is a leading investment firm focused on high-growth technology companies working in the national security industry.

“Anivive’s vision to improve and extend the lives of pets aligns perfectly with our mission to empower companies driving meaningful innovation,” said Chris Lay, Co-Founder of Leonid Capital Partners. “We’re excited to support their groundbreaking work, which has the potential to transform veterinary care for millions of pets and their families.”

The $20MM investment will help Anivive bolster its research programs, expand its manufacturing capabilities, and drive commercialization of its canine vaccine for Valley fever, the first-ever antifungal vaccine. Anivive’s direct-to-veterinarian sales platform Engage launched in early 2024 and has already processed over 9,000 orders.

This investment comes on the heels of Anivive’s recent $33M contract with the National Institutes of Health to support the development of a human vaccine against the fungus Coccidioides, which causes Valley fever. Across its pipeline, Anivive now has $80MM in preorders and commitments from industry partners.

“This partnership with Leonid is a significant milestone for Anivive,” said Dylan Balsz, CEO of Anivive. “Their capital allows us to focus on what we do best – developing cutting-edge treatments that will change the way we care for our pets.”

Anivive uses technology driven strategies to create novel, affordable healthcare solutions for pets. Through a proprietary AI platform, Anivive accelerates drug discovery and development by repurposing human treatments for veterinary use. It focuses on tackling life-threatening diseases like pet cancer, feline infectious peritonitis, systemic fungal diseases, and other emerging illnesses.

About Anivive Lifesciences

Anivive Lifesciences is a pet pharmaceutical company at the forefront of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and veterinary medicine. Our mission is to transform veterinary healthcare by accelerating the development of novel, affordable treatments for life-threatening diseases in pets. Through our proprietary AI platform, we are pioneering first-in-class therapeutics in Oncology, Antivirals, and Antifungal Vaccines, setting new standards for innovation and excellence in the industry. To learn more, visit anivive.com.

About Leonid Capital Partners

Leonid Capital Partners invests capital into critical national security initiatives. The firm leverages its deep government and technical expertise to provide its portfolio companies with the flexible resources they need to grow their business. Learn more at leonidfinance.io.

SOURCE Anivive Lifesciences Inc.

The national advanced primary care marketplace for employers provides access in all 50 states, with 3,000 clinics located within driving distance of >80% of the U.S. population

NEW YORK, Jan. 27, 2025 — Aligned Marketplace, an advanced primary care marketplace for self-insured employers, today announced it has secured an additional $3M in seed funding from existing lead investors A* and Maverick Ventures to drive growth by taking advantage of Advanced Primary Care (APC) as a rapidly growing trend with clear employer demand. In addition, the company added numerous Fortune 500 customers in 2024 and will be presenting on its partnership with 7-Eleven to provide 7-Eleven members with nationwide access to its network of APC providers at the 2025 Conference Board Health Conference. The announcement follows recent success from Aligned Marketplace, including its initial $8 million seed funding round and official company launch, where it introduced its mission to help people find long-lasting, high quality primary care at a lower cost.

Advanced primary care focuses on delivering holistic, patient-centered care that emphasizes prevention, early intervention, and the management of chronic conditions. Unlike traditional fee-for-service models, APC integrates value-based care payment models, aligning provider incentives with improved health outcomes and cost efficiency. As cost containment continues to be a top concern for employers’ healthcare benefits strategies – employers project their healthcare costs will increase by 7.7 percent in 2025 – organizations are looking for innovative approaches to reduce costs. APC is a viable alternative to traditional primary care, and has been proven to significantly increase the quality of care, enhance patient experience, and reduce employer total medical costs by 15 percent.

“As employers grapple with rising healthcare costs, they are motivated to find innovative, value-based solutions. Advanced primary care is a win-win for employers who are looking to cut down on costs and provide access to healthcare their employees will actually use and love,” said Patrick Nelli, CEO of Aligned Marketplace. “We are excited to present the partnership with 7-Eleven and other employers this spring at multiple employer benefit conferences.”

Over the past year, Aligned Marketplace has made remarkable progress in its mission to provide high-quality, accessible primary care. The marketplace now provides access in all 50 states, with 3,000 clinics located within driving distance of greater than 80 percent of the U.S. population. Contracts with leading advanced primary care providers, including CirrusMD, Galileo, Summer Health, and more, have strengthened the ecosystem and improved member coverage. The company continues to meet diverse needs of employers nationwide by providing tools such as Population Health Analytics and Personal Health Assistants to engage members, manage high-risk populations, and reduce healthcare costs.

“As healthcare needs continue to evolve, we’re proud to partner with Aligned Marketplace to support the health and well-being of our employees,” said Dr. Scott Conard, Physician Advisor to 7-Eleven. “With access to a strong network of advanced primary care providers, we’re making it easier for our team to get the care they need when they need it.”

“This additional investment underscores our commitment to Aligned Marketplace’s industry-leading nationwide advanced primary care marketplace. We believe that advanced primary care will play a vital role in shaping the future of a healthy workforce, and we look forward to Aligned Marketplace’s continued growth and success,” said Ambar Bhattacharyya, Managing Director, Maverick Ventures.

“We are proud to invest in a company that is committed to expanding access to high quality primary care. With their recent expansions and partnerships, Aligned Marketplace is well-positioned to help improve outcomes for members and lower employers’ healthcare costs,” said Gautam Gupta, Co-Founder and General Partner, A*. 

About Aligned Marketplace
Aligned Marketplace is an advanced primary care marketplace for self-insured employers. Aligned is an easy and effective way to give employees access to advanced primary care – care that is designed to keep them healthy and proven to reduce health care costs by as much as 15 percent. With a single value-based, shared savings contract, employers see a return on investing in their employees’ improved health. By integrating seamlessly into existing health plans, Aligned Marketplace takes the pain and complexity out of offering advanced primary care. Founded in 2023 by an experienced team of health care veterans, Aligned Marketplace’s network includes more than 3,000 advanced primary care clinics in all 50 states. For more information, go to alignedmarketplace.com.

SOURCE Aligned Marketplace

Funding to Accelerate New Discovery and Development and Increase Drilling Capacity to More Than 100,000 Meters Annually

SYDNEY and LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27, 2025 — Earth AI, a predictive explorer for clean energy metals using artificial intelligence (AI), has announced $20M in Series B funding. The oversubscribed round was led by Tamarack Global and Cantos Ventures. Participating investors include Overmatch, Alpaca, Sparkwave Capital, and significant support from existing investors including Y Combinator and Scrum Ventures. New funding will drive AI and drilling technology development and accelerate project value discovery. The company plans to increase the project pipeline to over 50 sites and increase drilling capacity to 100,000 meters at an industry beating ~$100/meter cost.

Founded in 2017, Earth AI is disrupting the mining industry through its AI-powered Mineral Targeting Platform (MTP) that is capable of rapidly identifying mineral resources in previously untapped areas at a fraction of the cost. Combined with proprietary mobile low disturbance, drilling technology (MLD), the company’s approach has achieved an industry-leading discovery success rate of 75% (compared to an estimated industry average of 0.5%¹), while reducing exploration costs by up to 80%.

“Despite the tremendous global need for mineral resources for everything from the energy transition to day-to-day life, new mineral deposit discoveries are notorious for being expensive and time consuming,” said Roman Teslyuk, founder and CEO of Earth AI. “Earth AI is changing this paradigm using its proprietary AI and drilling technology that has already made verified discoveries in greenfield regions. This new round of funding will be critical to expanding our operations and establishing a pipeline of attractive new mining projects for the industry.”

Earth AI’s model is focused on identifying mineral deposits using AI, validating them through drilling and then selling the multi-billion-dollar mining rights to large cap mining companies. The company’s predictive technology has been extensively trained using continental scale data sets that combine and contextualize 400 million pieces of disparate information along with satellite remote sensing to identify greenfield prospects–a key differentiator to other exploration technologies that focus on identifying resources near existing mines. This ability makes Earth AI an integral partner for the mining industry as it seeks to meet the exponential growth in demand for critical minerals resulting from the global energy transition.

“We are always attracted to companies operating in large addressable markets like critical minerals that have found unique ways to create superior cost structures and defensibility in their approach. Earth AI fits squarely within this target and has already proven industry leading success rates using their AI engine, the Mineral Targeting Platform, which we believe to be the best trained model amongst any other players in the space.  We are very excited to lead this round and believe the future is very bright for this incredible company,” said Jamie Lee, managing partner at Tamarack Global 

Global demand for critical minerals is expected to reach $10tn by 2050 and current production will need to increase ~30x to meet that threshold. Many mining companies are focused on extraction, while discovery and exploration is outsourced to a fragmented market of micro-cap companies whose efficiency has declined by ~70% over the last decade. Leveraging the latest technology, Earth AI is poised to become the origination engine of the mining industry, providing organic growth of new mining assets to an industry that desperately needs it to meet the coming tidal wave of demand.

To date, Earth AI has announced the following discoveries during the fourth quarter of 2024:

About Earth AI
Earth AI, founded in 2017, is a predictive explorer and driller for clean energy metals that is disrupting the mineral industry through a novel approach using AI-powered mineral deposit discovery software and proprietary low disturbance drilling technology. The company’s technology has achieved an industry-best 75% discovery success rate, while at the same time speeding up the mineral exploration process by 4x and reducing costs by up to 80%. The company operates in Sydney, Australia, and  Los Angeles, CA.

Earth AI Contact:
Monte Hackett
CFO
[email protected]

Earth AI Media Contact:
Chris Allieri
[email protected]

SOURCE Earth AI

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 27, 2025 — Meaningful Partners LLC (“Meaningful Partners”), a private equity firm based in Los Angeles, California exclusively focused on the consumer sector, is proud to announce the final closing of its 2nd fund, Meaningful Partners Dedicated Capital Vehicle ii LP with over $150mm of capital commitments. With this recent closing Meaningful Partners now has approximately $500mm of Assets under Management.

Meaningful Partners secured commitments from both existing and new investors comprising a diversified investor group including leading endowments, foundations, consultants, fund of funds and family offices. 

“We are excited to have closed our second fund and are proud to partner with an extremely high quality group of investors. This support is testament to the confidence our investors have in our investment approach and growing team,” commented Jake Capps, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Meaningful Partners.

“This closing allows us to continue to execute on our strategy and deepen firm operating capabilities for the benefit of accelerating growth and performance at partner companies. With an exceptional team and our Expert Community we are well positioned to partner with beloved consumer companies through control and significant minority transactions in the food & beverage, multi-unit services, VMS/Beauty and home and commercial services sectors,” added Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Amin Maredia.

About Meaningful Partners

Meaningful Partners, with offices in Los Angeles, CA, and Austin, TX, invests in consumer businesses that have earned customer trust, foster loyalty, demonstrate a commitment to all stakeholders, and are led by management teams driving positive purpose and performance.  We make control and minority equity investments ranging from $15 million to $100+ million in lower-middle-market and growth companies poised for rapid scaling. Our experienced team of investors and operators is complemented by an Expert Community of 45+ CEOs, founders, and category specialists, with over 850 years of domain expertise. Together, we work to accelerate growth and create meaningful impact from day one.  For more information, visit www.meaningfulpartners.com

Buchalter served as legal counsel to the fund

SOURCE Meaningful Partners

The new fund will partner with visionary entrepreneurs, support transformative technologies, and make automation accessible for the industries that need it most.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Jan. 27, 2025 — 2,750 miles away from Silicon Valley, Matthew Chang, founder of Chang Robotics, announces his next business venture: The Chang Robotics Fund. The Fund aims to address the numerous needs and market opportunities the Chang Robotics engineering team identified in their daily operations by investing in disruptive technologies designed to confront the industry’s most urgent challenges—from labor shortages to energy efficiency to environmental remediation. By utilizing innovative intellectual property and the engineering and management expertise of Chang Robotics, the Fund seeks to scale its targeted innovations into impactful, transformative, and profitable businesses.

Global industries, from manufacturing to healthcare, face mounting pressures such as intensifying global competition, workforce constraints, escalating expenses, and the urgent need for environmental restoration. Tackling these issues demands a new paradigm of intelligent automation, energy efficiency, and sustainable innovation.

The Fund’s investments target early-stage innovators in smart manufacturing, robotics, industrial AI, and energy transformation, developing localized solutions with global applications.

We don’t just fund innovation—we build the industry leaders of tomorrow.

The idea for the Fund was inspired by Matthew Chang’s track record of collaborating with talented startups and investing in them using Chang Robotics engineering expertise. “Our company has a strong ability to spot ideas with real potential,” said Chang. “Through The Chang Robotics Fund, we’re investing in startups that will shape the future of their industries. I’m confident the companies we support will achieve great success in the years ahead.”

The Fund team is a conglomerate of experts from various fields, bringing an unparalleled diversity of wisdom to this project. Matthew Chang, the General Partner, is joined by Dr. Don Capener, Fund Strategist, Forrest Hayes Jr., Fund Director, Robert Sterling, Chief Financial Officer, and Phil Hudgens, Fund Controller. Their fields of experience include asset management, serial entrepreneurship, engineering, venture capital, academia, corporate M&A, and investment banking, amongst others. Their ventures have reached across global markets—spanning the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific—demonstrating a deep understanding of diverse markets and economies.

The key to the success of this fund lies in the unique relationship that Chang Robotics has with each potential portfolio company. Whether it is engineering, robotics automation, or consulting, Chang Robotics will work with each portfolio company to ensure their innovations come to life. When asked about this concept, Forrest Hayes, Fund Director, said, “Those relationships with our investment companies, along with the insider knowledge we gain, are critical. Matthew has the vision to harness the intellectual property and capital to conceive a product that fits into the market and will lead to substantial returns for our stakeholders.”

On January 29^th at 2:00 pm EST. Matthew Chang will join Robert Sterling, CFO and friend of the Fund, to share more of the story behind the Chang Robotics Fund and dive into the trends reshaping automation and investment. If you are interested in investing or simply hearing more about the Fund’s vision, you can register here.

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About Chang Robotics
Chang Robotics is a DBE-certified engineering firm at the forefront of advanced manufacturing, collaborative robotics, and disruptive automation. Founded in 2017, Chang Robotics has rapidly grown, delivering innovative, data-driven solutions, including some of the world’s largest autonomous systems. Recognized as one of Fast Company’s 2024 Best Workplaces for Innovators, the company revolutionizes supply chain automation and enhances workforce productivity through human-focused robotics. With a commitment to sustainability and cutting-edge technology, Chang Robotics empowers businesses across manufacturing, government, healthcare, and beyond. More information is available at ChangRobotics.ai and on LinkedIn.

SOURCE Chang Robotics