Darwin CX Expands with New Investment, Focus on Growth and Innovation; Welcomes Tom Jenkins as Chairman of the Board

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

Token Security raises $20M to secure enterprises’ machine identities — from legacy applications to AI agents

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

Anivive Secures $20 Million Investment from Leonid Capital Partners to Develop the Next Generation of Pet Health

  • 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.

Aligned Marketplace Increases Total Seed Funding to $11M, Expands Advanced Primary Care and Employer Partnerships, Including with 7-Eleven

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

Earth AI Closes Oversubscribed Round; Raising $20M for AI Driven Mineral Exploration

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

Meaningful Partners Completes Successful Fundraise

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

Chang Robotics launches ‘The Chang Robotics Fund’ – A Seed Stage Venture Capital Fund Specializing in Disruptive Technology

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 29th 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.

For more information, visit CR.Fund or contact [email protected] and follow us on LinkedIn for weekly updates.

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

MarkeTeam.ai Raises $3 Million in Seed Funding to Accelerate Transition to AI-Native Autonomous Agents in the Workplace

Led by Ocean Azul Partners and marketing & advertising industry executives to redefine how AI agents and human marketers collaborate

NEW YORK, Jan. 27, 2025 — MarkeTeam.ai, (“MarkeTeam”) developer of advanced artificial intelligence technology for the marketing industry, today announced the completion of a $3 million seed funding round. Having recently launched its next-generation autonomous marketing agents, the company already operates a team of virtual experts across core marketing disciplines, including brand marketing, strategic planning, paid media, social media management, content marketing, and SEO.

MarkeTeam’s AI agents are trained for multi-human / multi-agent collaboration and on real marketing operations & campaign data, enabling them to integrate seamlessly into organizational platforms and collaborate naturally with human teams. Unlike traditional AI tools that assist with isolated tasks as “co-pilots”, each of MarkeTeam’s agents functions as full-fledged team member, capable of undertaking comprehensive marketing “work units” spanning research & ideation, planning, creation, publishing & optimization in a collaborative manner. This AI-native approach allows organizations to redirect budgets from operational costs to growth initiatives & working media, improving overall performance and ROI.

Ocean Azul Partners led the funding round with participation from marketing and advertising industry veterans including Clive Sirkin (former CMO of Kellogg’s and Kimberly-Clark), Dion Joannou (former CEO of Accedian), Mitch Mayers (Founder and Partner at Zipatoni, later acquired by IPG), Tony Weisman (former CMO of Dunkin’ Brands) and additional industry leaders. To date, the company has raised $5 million.

“MarkeTeam represents a fundamental shift in how we imagine the future of work,” said Alex Tellez, Managing Director at Ocean Azul Partners. “MarkeTeam leverages decades of marketing experience to train, validate, and deploy one of the most innovative solutions we’ve seen in this space. MarkeTeam is creating a new paradigm where AI agents and human talent collaborate smoothly, driving efficiency and innovation across the entire business function.”

As companies increase their marketing KPIs and goals, budgets are under pressure. A recent Gartner survey reveals that the average marketing budgets have fallen by 15% over the past year, forcing CMOs and marketing leaders to ‘do more with less’.

“Marketing teams are under constant pressure to deliver exceptional results despite shrinking budgets and resources,” said Naama Manova-Twito, Co-Founder & CEO. “At MarkeTeam, we’re challenging the status quo by introducing AI agents that are not ‘tools’ but true ‘team members’. We are building the technology that will enable you to move from using Generative AI on a “fractional task” basis to having the ability to export entire “work units” to virtual employees. With the support of Ocean Azul, our visionary investors, and our incredible team, we’re redefining the future of marketing and the workplace itself.”

These AI team members operate autonomously across the entire marketing spectrum. They learn brand voice and strategy, track market dynamics, conduct independent research, proactively plan, execute in real-time, and continuously optimize performance. This collaboration transforms teams’ operations, delivering measurable results while significantly cutting costs.

The funding will accelerate MarkeTeam’s expansion in the U.S. market while driving the development of new AI models, marketing agents and capabilities across multiple channels.

“Unlike most LLMs trained with standard instructional tuning, our models are designed for collaboration and optimized for marketing-specific metrics,” said Sahar Millis, Co-Founder & CTO of MarkeTeam. “This enables us to build Agents as Virtual Workers, already designed for the next evolutionary step in the workspace – hybrid teams.”

About MarkeTeam.ai

MarkeTeam.ai is transforming the marketing industry with its proprietary autonomous AI agents and models for marketing. MarkeTeam.ai empowers businesses to exceed their KPIs without increasing budgets or headcount. The company’s AI-native approach allows organizations to allocate more of their budget towards substantial growth initiatives rather than operational overhead, effectively addressing the common challenge of achieving growing objectives with limited resources.

For more information, visit: MarkeTeam.ai

Contact: Sivan Ron, [email protected] 

SOURCE MarkeTeam.ai

“Agent Fund” Launches on AngelList to Fund AI Autonomous Agent Startups

Semi-Autonomous Venture Capital Fund Identifies and Supports Innovation in AI Tools that Execute Complex Business Tasks, a Multi-Trillion Dollar Opportunity in 2025

SEATTLE, Jan. 27, 2025 — Agent Fund, a semi-autonomous venture capital fund investing in AI autonomous agent startups, launched today on AngelList led by Yohei Nakajima (GP at Untapped Capital and creator of BabyAGI), Adam Silverman, and Alex Reibman (co-founders of Agen.cy AI and creators of AgentOps.ai,). Agent Fund focuses on identifying and supporting innovative startups within the burgeoning autonomous agent ecosystem, and will operate semi-autonomously itself by leveraging AI for deal sourcing, due diligence, portfolio management and community-building.

Autonomous agents represent the next evolution of AI tools, transcending simple prompts and API calls to dynamically decide what to do based on objectives, and utilizing tools, memory, and reasoning to execute complex tasks. 

Nakajima created Baby AGI in April 2022, a fully autonomous task manager that can create, track, prioritize and execute a company’s projects using artificial intelligence. Since then, hundreds of founders have reached out to him for funding, inspiring a separate investment strategy. He teamed up with Silvernam and Reibman who help businesses build AI agents and were also seeking an investment strategy.

“Agent Fund is the perfect playground for startups who are pushing the boundaries of what we can automate with AI,” said Nakajima. “Our goal is to build a large, collaborative community of autonomous agent startups and for the Fund to be semi-autonomous itself. We will still have people making key decisions, but leverage AI across all aspects of the business from sourcing deals to selecting the people to invest in and managing the portfolio.”

AI agents are a multi-trillion dollar opportunity1 and Agent Fund is well positioned to fuel innovation in this space with its extensive network, bolstered by the global recognition of BabyAGI. Agent Fund supports startups at scale, covering diverse use cases from infrastructure to AI employees, enterprise tools, and no-code solutions, making it a preferred partner for top-tier startups.

Agent Fund is structured as a rolling fund on AngelList, with individual investments ranging from $50,000 – $200,000 each. For additional information or to become an investor, visit https://venture.angellist.com/v/back/agent-fund.

About the Agent Fund Team
Yohei Nakajima is a GP at Untapped Capital, which will serve as operator of the fund. He has experience investing in autonomous agent startups, including Cognosys, E2B, Azara, Open Souls, and Wokelo. Agen.cy AI co-founders Alex Reibman (CEO) and Adam Silverman (COO) built AI agents for data entry automation and developed one of the top ChatGPT plugins before starting Agen.cy. Alex has led machine learning engineering teams at Ernst & Young and developed ML solutions for Goldman Sachs, American Express, and Westpac. Adam is known in the “agent” world for his weekly recap threads and running one of the largest communities of agent developers.

PR Contact:
Karen Blondell for Untapped Capital
424-263-7371
[email protected]

1 https://yhoo.it/3EbuuMk 

SOURCE Untapped Capital