BEIJING, Dec. 6, 2024 — Qi Biodesign, a biotechnology company pioneering next-generation genome editing technologies, announced the completion of its Series A funding round. The company has now raised a total of $75 million across its Seed, Series Pre-A, and Series A stages. The Series A round was led by the Beijing Medical and Health Care Industry Investment Fund (Limited Partnership), with additional investments from Beijing Changping Technology Innodevelop Group, Mingzhe Capital, and returning investor CD Capital. Previous investors also include Apricot Capital, Source Code Capital, Gaorong Ventures, CSSD Capital, Shang Capital, and CASSTAR.
Qi Biodesign was founded in 2021 by leading genome editing scientists Dr. Caixia Gao and Dr. Kevin Zhao (Chief Technology Officer), and industry experts Dr. Bei Zhang (Chief Executive Officer), and Haiquan Yang (Chief Business Officer). Qi Biodesign has established itself as a leader in genomic innovation with its proprietary SEEDIT™ research platform, featuring advanced genome editing tools such as novel RNA-guided nucleases, base editors, plant prime editors, and PrimeRoot™ editors for precise large DNA insertions and manipulations. These technologies enable multiplex gene editing, fine-tuning of gene expression, and high-throughput trait discovery, driving the development of superior biological traits to address global challenges in crop breeding and synthetic biology.
Qi Biodesign has already achieved significant milestones in product development, including receiving two biosafety certificates for gene-edited plants (high oleic acid soybean and powdery mildew disease-resistant wheat) by the China Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and securing an exemption for a gene-edited product (high oleic acid soybean) from the US Department of Agriculture. More gene-edited traits including yield enhancements, herbicide tolerance and quality improvements are advancing through regulatory pipelines. Qi Biodesign’s plant breeding innovations advance the application of gene editing in agriculture, contributing to food security and sustainable developments.
The newly secured funding will be used to enhance Qi Biodesign’s R&D capabilities, advance its proprietary SEEDIT™ platform, support its product development and build commercialization platforms to streamline and speed up the transition from research to market.
Irish maternal health company Nua Surgical secures €6.5M in Series A funding led by EQT Life Sciences
SteriCISION is the first self-retaining retractor designed specifically for Caesarean section (C-section) surgeries
Proceeds will be used for regulatory approval and commercialization of the SteriCISION C-section retractor
STOCKHOLM, Dec. 6, 2024 — EQT Life Sciences is pleased to announce that the EQT Health Economics strategy has invested in Nua Surgical, an Irish medical device company innovating in maternal health. The €6.5 million Series A financing was led by EQT Life Sciences. The round was also supported by new investors Kidron Capital and the Texas Medical Center (TMC) Venture Fund and existing investors including Enterprise Ireland and business veterans from Ireland and the US. The proceeds will be used to drive the regulatory clearance and early commercialization of the company product, the SteriCISION C-Section Retractor. This innovative device is specifically designed to address the unique challenges of Caesarean-section (C-section) surgery.
C-sections are the most common major surgical procedure globally, with over 30 million performed each year. The SteriCISION C-Section Retractor is the only self-retaining surgical retractor specifically designed for the unique dynamics of C-section surgery. This ergonomically designed and patented device provides fast, adjustable, and safe retraction, enabling clinicians to deliver the baby, repair tissue, and, crucially, identify bleeds. As a single-use sterile device, it aims to reduce the risk factors that lead to surgical complications, benefiting the patient, the clinician, and the healthcare system. The new investment will support Nua Surgical’s next phase of development and the early commercialization of SteriCISION. This includes expanding the team, establishing manufacturing in Ireland, and meeting the regulatory requirements necessary to gain FDA clearance.
Barry McCann, CEO of Nua Surgical, commented, “Securing this Series A financing is a crucial milestone for Nua Surgical. It not only provides the capital needed to advance our product but also brings on board a group of experienced investors who share our vision for transforming maternal health. We are eager to leverage their expertise as we move towards commercializing SteriCISION.”
“Nua Surgical’s SteriCISION C-Section Retractor has the potential to significantly enhance outcomes for mothers undergoing C-section procedures,” said Anne Portwich, Partner at EQT. “We are excited to support the company’s journey towards market entry. This innovative device has the potential to improve the quality of care and reduce healthcare costs, making it a perfect fit for our EQT Health Economics strategy.”
With the closure of this round, Anne Portwich, Partner at EQT, and Anula Jayasuriya, Co-Founder of Kidron Capital, will join the Nua Surgical Board of Directors, while Gabrielle Guttman of TMC Venture Fund and Prashanthi Ramesh of EQT will serve as Board Observers.
PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 5, 2024 — Sightglass, a new AI-powered investor relations platform for the private markets, announced today that it has raised a $3 million Seed funding round led by Base10 Partners. Sightglass was founded by Thomas Buley, who has spent his career in finance and fintech, most recently as the VP of Product at Guideline. The company will use the funding to accelerate product development and expand its market presence.
“Sightglass was founded to bring greater transparency, trust, and efficiency to the private markets,” said Thomas Buley, the Founder and CEO of Sightglass. “As institutional investors are committing record amounts of capital to alternatives, they’re demanding greater transparency from their investment managers. Sightglass facilitates that information flow, from our AI-powered data rooms during fundraising through automating responses to ongoing due diligence questionnaires.”
Sightglass launched in March 2024, and customers quickly saw more than 90% time savings when responding to investor information requests during fundraising. Sightglass has since expanded its product offerings to help venture capital firms collect diversity metrics from their portfolio companies to share with their limited partners and to meet new reporting requirements from the state of California.
With Sightglass, investor relations teams save hundreds of hours per year that they can spend deepening investor relationships while limited partners get higher quality, timely, and actionable data.
“Sightglass is revolutionizing GP-LP workflows by automating processes, starting with DDQs and expanding across the full spectrum of interactions. This enables faster closings, fosters deeper transparency, and drives significant efficiency gains, transforming how GPs and LPs engage and build lasting partnerships,” noted Adeyemi Ajao, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Base10 Partners.
“Thomas and the Sightglass team are addressing a critical pain point in private markets. GPs are under pressure to deliver greater transparency, while LPs demand accountability, so much so that the Base10 team now uses Sightglass to deliver our own higher standard of transparency, trust, and meaningful collaboration between Base10 and our LPs,” continued Ajao.
Founded in 2022, Sightglass was originally incubated inside of Base10 Partners, with the founding team working closely with the firm to develop the initial versions of the product. Base10 is a customer of Sightglass.
To connect with the Sightglass team, reach out at [email protected].
About Sightglass Sightglass is an AI-powered investor relations platform serving both investment managers and capital allocators. With a mission to bring greater transparency, trust, and efficiency to the private markets, Sightglass helps IR professionals focus on building long-term relationships with their limited partners. Customers using Sightglass see faster fundraising closes and 90% time savings in responding to investor requests. To learn more, visit www.usesightglass.com.
About Base10 Partners Founded by Adeyemi Ajao and TJ Nahigian, Base10 is a San Francisco-based venture capital fund investing in founders who believe purpose is key to profits and in companies that are automating sectors of the Real Economy. Through its program the Advancement Initiative, Base10 donates 50% of profits to underfunded colleges and universities to support financial aid and other key initiatives. Portfolio companies include Notion, Figma, Nubank, Stripe, Popmenu, Aurora Solar, and Chili Piper.
Awarded to less than 5% of applicants, the grant accelerates Rubi’s mission to decarbonize materials manufacturing.
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 5, 2024 — Rubi, the company re-inventing manufacturing to be symbiotic with the planet, has been awarded a $969,961 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop and scale its carbon-to-cellulose platform. This prestigious grant, awarded to less than 5% of SBIR applicants over the last decade, recognizes Rubi’s groundbreaking advancements in CO2-to-materials technology and will support the company’s path to commercialization.
Rubi has pioneered a first-of-its-kind cell-free biocatalysis technology to make CO2-derived materials and chemicals. The company’s initial focus is on CO2-derived cellulose to replace traditional wood pulp, aiming to decarbonize textile production by eliminating deforestation and significantly reducing the environmental impact of raw material manufacturing. With proven technology and strong customer partnerships, the nearly $1 million grant accelerates Rubi’s mission to meet the urgent global demand for low-carbon materials.
The NSF Phase II award builds on Rubi’s successful Phase I grant completion in 2023, which advanced multi-enzyme cascade design and enzyme stabilization for carbon-to-cellulose production. Since then, Rubi’s milestones include:
Debuting the world’s first yarn made from CO2 through a fully enzymatic process with Ganni.
Recognition from Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, TIME’s Top Greentech Companies, Business of Fashion 500, Vogue Business 100, and Forbes 30 Under 30 lists.
“This award is a testament to Rubi’s vision for a symbiotic manufacturing future and our ambition to lead the next era of sustainable industry,” said Neeka Mashouf, Co-Founder and CEO of Rubi. “As we move into 2025, this grant will accelerate our efforts to scale CO2-derived, low-carbon cellulose for the textile industry, ultimately allowing us to transform environmental challenges into opportunities, bridge our proven science with existing supply chains, and set a new standard for decoupling industrial growth from environmental degradation.”
“NSF accelerates the translation of emerging technologies into transformative new products and services,” said Erwin Gianchandani, NSF Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships. “We take great pride in funding deep-technology startups and small businesses that will shape science and engineering results into meaningful solutions for today and tomorrow.”
Rubi’s proprietary technology uses a cascade of specialized enzymes to transform simple 1-carbon molecules into complex carbohydrate polymers like cellulose under mild conditions. Compared to traditional methods such as fermentation or chemical catalysis, which are constrained by cost, efficiency, or product range, Rubi’s cell-free enzymatic platform can achieve a 10x reduction in capital costs and 3x higher yields than fermentation and significantly lower energy use than chemical catalysis while expanding the range of attainable products.
Unlike cell-based fermentation—which requires energy-intensive conditions to sustain living organisms and typically generates over 70% byproduct waste—Rubi’s cell-free biocatalysis process can convert nearly all carbon inputs into the desired product. This maximized efficiency eliminates the significant resource demands of conventional biological methods.
“Rubi’s cell-free biocatalysis approach is a paradigm shift in manufacturing, providing a sustainable and efficient solution to produce CO2-derived materials without exploiting natural resources. By producing forest-free cellulose in hours rather than decades and with drastically reduced carbon emissions, water usage, and land impact, Rubi offers a faster, more sustainable alternative to traditional wood pulp,” said Dr. Leila Mashouf, M.D., Co-Founder and CTO of Rubi. “We’re thrilled to have the continued support of the NSF with this Phase II award and look forward to scaling our technology to meet the growing global demand for ultra-low-carbon, bio-based materials.”
About Rubi Rubi is pioneering the next era of manufacturing with a technology that transforms waste carbon into essential materials. By replacing resource-intensive processes with its innovative carbon-to-materials platform, Rubi is creating a manufacturing system that works in harmony with the planet. Inspired by how trees grow, the company uses biochemical processes powered by enzymes to create planet-positive materials, like textiles, derived from CO2. Rubi was founded in 2021 by two twin sisters, Neeka Mashouf and Dr. Leila Mashouf, who started their scientific research careers at age 15 and have focused on developing technologies that foster human and environmental prosperity over 10+ years. They teamed up in 2021 to re-invent manufacturing with Rubi’s proprietary biomanufacturing technology and create a world where human prosperity and industry are planet-positive. To learn more, visit http://www.rubi.earth.
About the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Small Business Programs America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards more than $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development, helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $9.5 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.
Initiative will fund renovation of facilities for basketball, baseball, softball, soccer, football, tennis, lacrosse, and volleyball
NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2024 — Community organizations, schools, and parks in 20 cities and towns across the country are using $1.7 million in new grants from The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation to improve sports facilities in under-resourced neighborhoods.
The awards represent the second round of funding through the Game On-Community Places to Play Initiative, a partnership of The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). The program has awarded grants ranging between $50,000 and $100,000 to 20 non-profit community-based organizations that are leading sports renovation projects and youth programming in low-moderate-income communities.
“We are thrilled these communities will be able to offer revitalized sports spaces to deserving athletes across the country,” said Rick Jordan, vice president of The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation. “We are proud of this partnership and believe that the rejuvenation of sports facilities is not just an investment in infrastructure, but an investment in the future of youth athletes.”
“So much about the work of community development is connecting all the things that residents need to build a good quality of life, from housing to jobs to schools to health,” said Michael T. Pugh, president and CEO of LISC, one of the country’s largest community development organizations. “That’s why supporting recreational space is a key LISC priority and why partners like The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation are so important. Together, we have the chance to influence the quality of life in our communities, not just for today but long into the future.”
Grantees were selected through a competitive application process administered by LISC earlier this year, which required applicants to secure 1:1 match funding. In addition to managing the grant program, LISC will provide technical assistance to grantees to help them move projects forward.
“Sports and recreation teach young people about teamwork and community, all while nurturing healthy bodies and minds,” said Beverly Smith, LISC vice president. “We are so glad for yet another opportunity to partner with The DICK’s Sporting Goods Foundation and their commitment to create safe, quality sports facilities where youth and their families can play, exercise and spend time together.”
Grants will be used to meet a range of renovation needs. The 20 organizations funded by the Game On-Community Places to Play Initiative include:
Fort Smith Boys & Girls Clubs (Fort Smith, AR): Installing HVAC units and new basketball goals in multiple gym locations.
East Oakland Youth Development Center (Oakland, CA): Renovating the wellness wing with upgrades to the basketball court, dance studio, and gym amenities.
San Diego Parks Foundation (San Diego, CA): Resurfacing the outdoor sports court and upgrading lighting at the Southcrest Recreation Center.
United States Association of Blind Athletes (Colorado Springs, CO): Transforming an unused football field into a facility for visually impaired athletes.
Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School (Washington, DC): Replacing damaged bleachers and renovating the gymnasium floor at school facility.
Soccer in the Streets (Atlanta, GA): Building two mini soccer fields with fencing, lighting, and netting at the HE Holmes MARTA station in Atlanta.
It Takes a Village Family of Schools (Chicago, IL): Renovating a gymnasium to create a safe, multi-use sports facility in Chicago.
Burmese American Community Institute (Indianapolis, IN): Renovating the tennis court at the International Community Center in Indianapolis.
Thrive Allen County, Inc. (Iola, KS): Installing lights, restrooms, and leveling the field for improved use.
But God Ministries (Madison, MS): Building a baseball and softball field complex in rural Mississippi.
University Prep Schools K-12 Network-Detroit 90/90/Public Schools Academies (Detroit, MI): Transforming an athletic field in Detroit into a multipurpose space for youth activities.
Delta Compass (Greenville, MS): Redeveloping sports facilities at the Boys & Girls Club in Greenville.
Paul Robeson Charter School (Trenton, NJ): Renovating a gymnasium at the school’s new campus in Trenton.
Madison Square Boys & Girls Club Foundation, Inc. (New York, NY): Upgrading the gym at a Brooklyn clubhouse for various sports and activities.
Akron Public Schools (Akron, OH): Resurfacing a running track at East Community Learning Center.
Cincinnati Public Schools (Cincinnati, OH): Renovating and resurfacing tennis courts with pickleball markings in the Mt. Airy neighborhood.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA): Expanding gym space and adding security and fitness features at the Northeast Frankford Club.
YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA): Renovating the sports court and gym at a historic YMCA on Pittsburgh’s North Side.
Texans for Safe and Drug-Free Youth (Austin, TX): Completing an indoor basketball and tennis court in Austin.
The Ability Center (Milwaukee, WI): Building Milwaukee’s first Universal Field for inclusive sports.
About LISC LISC is one the country’s largest community development organizations, helping forge vibrant, resilient communities across America. We work with residents and partners to close systemic gaps in health, wealth and opportunity and advance racial equity so that people and places can thrive. Since our founding in 1979, LISC has invested $32 billion to create more than 506,000 affordable homes and apartments, develop 82.5 million square feet of retail, community and educational space, and help tens of thousands of people find employment and improve their finances. For more information, visit www.lisc.org.
About The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation The DICK’S Sporting Goods Foundation is a tax exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation with a mission to inspire and enable sports participation. It was created by DICK’S Sporting Goods as a private corporate foundation to support DICK’S charitable and philanthropic activities. Driven by its belief that sports have the power to change lives, The DICK’S Foundation champions youth sports and provides grants and support to under-resourced teams and athletes through its Sports Matter program and other community-based initiatives. Additional information about The DICK’S Foundation can be found on www.sportsmatter.org.
SOURCE Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
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NEW YORK, Dec. 5, 2024 — Scalestack, the go-to-market (GTM) orchestration and agentic platform that empowers enterprise teams to scale faster, announces it has raised $3 million in funding from investors including Criteria Venture Tech, Sentiero VC, Exor Ventures, Geek Ventures and more. The funding will accelerate Scalestack’s mission to help companies like Harness, Redis, and MongoDB revolutionize their GTM Ops at scale.
Driving GTM Excellence at Scale for the Enterprise
Scalestack has spent over two years crafting a compelling platform already trusted by high-profile customers. With enterprise-grade workflows and AI-powered insights, Scalestack is enabling scaled GTM operations. “Our platform isn’t about handling a few thousand leads or accounts,” said Elio Narciso, co-founder and CEO at Scalestack. “We’re talking about enriching 450,000 accounts in hours across dozens of data sources, or de-anonymizing 200,000 signups with unmatched precision, and delivering actionable insights at scale—all while enabling seamless integration with enterprise systems.”
Cofounders Elio Narciso and Alessandro Prioni describe Scalestack as the “Clay for the enterprise,” but its real strength lies in its dual-layered approach. First, an Enterprise-Grade Data Orchestration and Enrichment Hub connecting customer data sources while cleaning, normalizing, deduping, and categorizing insights into actionable data points. Second, an Agentic Infrastructure, with swarms of AI agents delivering customizable, multimodal data points by reasoning through sources across the public web.
Powering GTM Innovation with Industry Leaders
Scalestack works closely with cutting-edge companies like MongoDB, Remote, and Typeform, driving GTM efficiency through dynamic account profiling, lead prioritization, and enriched insights. “Our partnership with Scalestack exemplifies what they can do for modern GTM Ops teams,” said Meghan Gill, SVP of SalesOps at MongoDB. “From dynamically calculating TAMM per account, to detecting smoke signals in a territory, to providing enriched data on the developer community, their AI-powered workflows make the impossible possible at scale.”
Scalestack’s new funding round includes participation from Exor Ventures, Geek Ventures, FN Fund, Red Bridge, Launch Factory, BackfutureVC, SentieroVC, Team Ignite and Criteria Venture Tech, along with prior investors Ripple Ventures, FlyerOne Ventures and Forum Ventures.
3M New Reasons to Try Scalestack
To celebrate its latest fundraising, Scalestack is offering 3 million enrichment credits ($150K in value) FREE to the first 30 new customers that wish to try its platform. Ends 01/31/2025, terms apply. For more, visit www.scalestack.ai/free-enrichment, or contact [email protected].
SOURCE Scalestack
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Seed RoundFunding Co-Led by Village Global and Cota Capital
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 5, 2024 — Across AI, a new startup pioneering Agentic AI for enterprise workflows, today announced it has raised an oversubscribed seed round to bring to market the industry’s first enterprise sales AI supported by next generation agentic memory. Across AI’s groundbreaking technology, based on years of academic research, reasons over internal and external enterprise data to provide accurate, verifiable insights and actionable recommendations for entire business workflows, starting with enterprise sales. The funding was co-led by Village Global, a venture firm backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and chaired by Reid Hoffman, and also co-led by early Dropbox investor Bobby Yazdani at Cota Capital.
Across AI Co-Founders: Steven Mih, Nilou Salehi, and Afshin Nikzad
The Next Generation of Agentic Memory
Despite advances in AI, supporting complex enterprise workflows remains a challenge. Current approaches struggle to understand the nuanced context and relationships within enterprise data. Techniques like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) are useful for answering factual questions, but they treat all data equally and lack the ability to prioritize, reason over, or adapt to new and changing information. These limitations prevent existing solutions from reliably performing the high-level reasoning needed to transform enterprise workflows.
Across AI’s technology overcomes these challenges with a dynamic memory system purpose-built to support complex workflows. Unlike first-generation knowledge retrieval systems, Across AI’s memory continuously adapts, retaining only relevant information, discarding outdated data, and surfacing key insights based on contextual importance. This enables Across AI’s agentic AI apps to reason deeply over unstructured enterprise data within each step of a workflow by using a proprietary combination of large language models (LLMs) and workflow-specific algorithms.
Existing sales AI solutions may handle simpler tasks but often fall short due to their “AI-wrapped” nature—superficial layers over traditional systems that lack deep integration and contextual understanding. Enterprise sales teams have to execute complex and interconnected sales workflows. Across AI addresses this challenge with Agentic apps that support sales teams across each sales stage and are built for multi-step workflows. They synthesize data into higher-level reasonings, which are used to perform accurate actions such as generating a document.
“Having carried a quota for 18 years, I’ve lived the daily challenges salespeople face,” said Steven Mih, CEO and Co-founder of Across AI. “Throughout my career, deep product and account knowledge gave me an edge in prospect conversations but took an enormous amount of time. As a sales manager, I depended on each team member to build a pipeline and execute processes at the highest level. We started Across AI to build the solution I always wished I had—that understands the context of my deals and has the collective knowledge of my sales team to assist me with expert-level strategy and tactics.”
Meet the Founding Team
Steven Mih, CEO and co-founder, is a repeat entrepreneur with decades of enterprise sales experience. He was previously the co-founder and CEO of Ahana Cloud, which was acquired by IBM in 2023. Steven has led successful startups as the former CEO of Aviatrix and has led sales teams at Couchbase, Transitive, and Cadence.
Dr. Niloufar Salehi, CPO and co-founder, is an AI industry-known researcher in human-centered AI. She has led groundbreaking research on AI system design as a professor at UC Berkeley, shaping how AI can be integrated into complex workflows to boost reliability and augment human capabilities.
Dr. Afshin Nikzad, CTO and co-founder, is a specialist in advanced algorithms and machine learning models. He is a dual PhD recipient from Stanford University, a competitive programming gold medalist, and is on leave from his professorship at the University of Southern California (USC). His expertise enables Across AI’s agents to process and understand nuanced contexts and provide actionable insights that adapt to new information in real-time.
Based on UC Berkeley research and NSF grants, the team is uniquely positioned to tackle the critical challenges in today’s sales technology landscape.
Investor Support
“At Village Global, we are dedicated to supporting innovative AI startups that address significant industry challenges to AI adoption,” said Anne Dwane, Partner and Co-founder of Village Global, which co-led the seed round. “Across AI’s “enterprise-grade AI” can meaningfully reduce the hours sales professionals and sales managers spend updating pipelines, customizing pitches, benchmarking competitors, and manually advancing deals to closure.”
“Having been an early investor in Google, Dropbox, and many leading-edge enterprise technology startups, I closely follow the evolution of the enterprise technology landscape,” commented Bobby Yazdani, Founder and Managing Partner of Cota Capital, which co-led the seed round. “Across AI’s innovative agentic AI technology understands and leverages business-critical enterprise data and has the potential to transform how businesses work across the entire sales cycle. Cota is excited to support Across AI’s visionary team on this groundbreaking journey.”
Actively Hiring Top Talent
As Across AI accelerates its mission, the company is actively recruiting passionate professionals at their San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada locations for roles in Full Stack, Platform, Backend, and ML engineering, and more.
About Across AI
Across AI is an Agentic AI startup developing technology to reason and leverage enterprise data to generate contextually accurate and verifiable output for enterprise workflows, starting with B2B sales. The company’s technology is rooted in research from UC Berkeley and supported by NSF grants and backed by Village Global & Cota Capital.
For more information and career opportunities, visitwww.across.ai.
SOURCE Across AI, Inc.
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ATLANTA, Dec. 5, 2024 — Sola, a cutting-edge insurtech company, today announced the successful close of its seed round. Led by FINTOP Capital, with participation from Overline, 10vc, Karuna VC, and prominent insurance executives—bringing total funding to $3.7M. The investment bolsters Sola’s mission to provide homeowners and businesses with reliable and affordable natural disaster insurance.
Sola is bringing unprecedented reliability to a historically chaotic home insurance market. Facing constant premium increases and coverage denials, homeowners are fed up with the status quo. Equipped with a brand new approach to insurance, Sola guarantees consistent and affordable premiums every year.
“At Sola, we are building a lifeline for homeowners who have incredibly high premiums and deductibles,” said Wesley Pergament, Co-Founder and CEO of Sola. “With our new wind and hail product, we’re tackling these challenges head-on and delivering much needed relief to more homeowners.”
The funding will enable Sola to expand its wind and hail product, which addresses high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs for wind, hail, and tornado damage. The company will also enhance its agent platform, enabling agents to quote and bind policies in seconds and expand its state footprint to serve more high-risk states. Sola aims to extend its innovative approach to cover all types of natural disasters in the future.
Sola’s platform uses advanced weather data and automated claims processing to deliver fast payouts within days. With a growing network of partnerships, including collaborations with mortgage companies and hundreds of independent agencies, Sola is paving the way for more Americans to access affordable and reliable homeownership.
About Sola Sola Insurance offers innovative, data-driven policies that keep premiums affordable and consistent, even after a claim or a bad storm. Backed by decades of weather insights and advanced technology, Sola reduces financial uncertainty. Learn more atsolainsurance.com.
About FINTOP Capital FINTOP Capital is a venture firm focused on early-stage, B2B fintech companies. With $700+ MM in committed capital across five funds, the team has decades of industry experience as entrepreneurs, operators, & investors. FINTOP partners invest in experienced founders and products changing the way financial institutions, businesses, and their customers interact with money. Learn more atfintopcapital.com.
Celleste was founded in 2022 to meet the world’s rising demand for chocolate in the face of supply chain challenges created by climate change and outdated, conventional farming practices. Celleste uses a combination of AgTech, BioTech and AI computational models to grow 100% natural cocoa from one or two beans in optimal, controlled conditions, year-round.
“Climate change and conventional farming practices are depleting our rainforests – resulting in unprecedented environmental and financial challenges to grow enough cocoa to meet the needs of a $100B – and growing – chocolate industry,” said Michal Beressi Golomb, CEO of Celleste Bio. “This round provides us with the financial and strategic support we need to accelerate product development, scalability and commercial readiness.”
Supply Change Capital, an early-stage firm investing in technology to transform the food system, led the round.
“Climate change is significantly impacting cocoa supplies, with prices reaching four times their historic highs this year, underscoring the urgent need for sustainable solutions,” said Shayna Harris, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Supply Change Capital. “As the chocolate industry grows over 10% annually, the supply-demand gap is widening. We see this as a pivotal moment for advancements in cellular agriculture and are proud to support Celleste as it leads the way in pioneering innovative, sustainable cocoa solutions.”
Mondelēz International’s SnackFutures Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of global snack leader Mondelēz International, also invested in the round.
“As one of the world’s largest chocolate producers, we are acutely aware of cocoa supply chain challenges,” says Richie Gray, VP, Global Head of Mondelēz International’s SnackFutures Ventures. “While still in its early stages, Celleste has great promise as a complementary technology to traditional farming practices. Combining Celleste’s technology with our unmatched capability and expertise will push the boundaries of what’s possible in building the cocoa supply chain of the future.”
In addition to being a pivotal innovation for the cocoa industry, Dr. Nitza Kardish, CEO of The Trendlines Agrifood fund, sees Celleste as an example of how to re-build the world’s agricultural system.
“We have yet to feel the full scope and impact of climate change on how we grow and produce the world’s food supply,” says Dr. Kardish. “That is why Trendlines is focused on finding and growing companies like Celleste that are pioneering technologies that can be applied and scaled to many critical crops in the future.”
To learn more about Celleste’s technology, ingredients and impact visit www.celleste-bio.com
About Celleste Bio
Celleste Bio is a cocoa tech company established in 2022 by Co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Hanne Volpin, PhD, Orna Harel, Avishay Levy and Daphna Michaeli, PhD with support from The Trendlines Group. Its mission is to create an economically and environmentally sustainable cocoa supply. Celleste uses a proprietary combination of BioTech, AgTech, and computational AI to produce 100 percent natural cocoa ingredients. For more information visit www.celleste-bio.com.
SOURCE Celleste Bio
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