• Financing led by Piper Sandler Merchant Banking, with participation from new investors Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s corporate venture capital arm, and Medtronic
• Participation by existing investors, including Bain Capital Life Sciences and Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Funds
• Proceeds will support the conclusion of the STRIDE pivotal trial, continued operational scale-up, advancement of regulatory work toward a future Premarket Approval (PMA) submission to the FDA, and preparations for US commercialization
• Board strengthened with addition of Kevin Conroy as Lead Independent Director, Christopher Geyen as Chair of the Audit Committee, and Tom Schnettler representing Series C investors

BOSTON, June 4, 2026 — CereVasc, Inc., a clinical-stage medical device company developing novel, minimally invasive treatments for neurological diseases, today announced it has successfully completed the initial closing of an $85 million Series C financing. Piper Sandler Merchant Banking led the financing with participation from Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s corporate venture capital arm, and Medtronic, along with existing investors Bain Capital Life Sciences and Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Funds.

Proceeds from the financing will fund continued clinical and regulatory development of CereVasc’s eShunt System, including the ongoing STRIDE pivotal trial in patients with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH). STRIDE is a prospective, multi-center, randomized, controlled trial designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the eShunt System compared to the current standard of care, the ventriculo-peritoneal (VP) shunt, and is intended to support a future Premarket Approval (PMA) submission to the FDA. The company will also advance organizational growth and operational scale-up as it moves toward commercialization.

In conjunction with the closing, the company strengthened the Board of Directors with the addition of Kevin Conroy as Lead Independent Director, Christopher Geyen as an independent director and Chair of the Audit Committee, and Tom Schnettler of Piper Sandler Merchant Banking representing the new Series C investors.

“This Series C financing is a meaningful milestone for CereVasc, and more importantly, for the patients who are living with conditions for which current treatment options remain inadequate,” said Dan Levangie, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CereVasc. “This funding supports the next critical phase for the eShunt System, including PMA submission and preparation for commercial launch — accelerating our path toward a minimally invasive surgery that we believe has the potential to meaningfully improve patient outcomes and quality of life. We are delighted to welcome a slate of new investors and directors whose experience and conviction will help guide CereVasc through this next phase of growth, and we remain deeply grateful for the continued support of our existing partners.”

About CereVasc, Inc.
Located in Massachusetts’ healthcare hub, CereVasc, Inc. is a clinical-stage medical device company focused on developing novel, minimally invasive treatments for patients with neurological diseases. Its initial product, the eShunt System, employs an innovative percutaneous transvenous-transdural approach to the central nervous system and is intended to enable the first minimally invasive treatment for communicating hydrocephalus (CH). The patented eShunt System includes an endovascularly implantable cerebrospinal fluid shunt and delivery components designed to treat CH without invasive surgery. For additional information, please visit our website at www.cerevasc.com.

About Piper Sandler Merchant Banking
Piper Sandler Merchant Banking (PSMB) is the growth equity investment arm of Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE: PIPR). The PSMB team strives to partner with founders and management teams of high potential businesses that can benefit by leveraging Piper Sandler’s knowledge, experience, capital and relationships to build market leading enterprises. PSMB provides investment advisory services through the affiliated registered investment adviser, PSC Capital Partners LLC. Learn more about Piper Sandler Merchant Banking.

The eShunt System is an investigational device and has not been approved by FDA or any other regulatory agency for commercial sale. Its safety and effectiveness have not yet been fully established.

Contacts

Media Contact:
Tiffany Weil
CereVasc, Inc.
[email protected]

SOURCE CereVasc, Inc.

Already used by 100+ labs, the Kitchener-Waterloo company helps life sciences teams automate digital lab work, manage millions of samples, and keep lab operations traceable.

KITCHENER-WATERLOO, ON, June 4, 2026 – Scispot, the Canadian company behind the AI-native operating layer for modern labs, today announced an $8 million USD Series A led by Avenue Growth Partners, a Washington, DC-based investment firm.

Scispot is already used by 100+ labs across biotech, pharma, diagnostics, genomics, CRO/CDMO, bioproduction, biobanking, and testing workflows. The company supports 250+ instrument types, 1000+ experiments per month, and millions of samples across high-throughput labs.

Modern labs are under pressure to move faster, but much of their work is still split across disconnected instruments, spreadsheets, electronic lab notebooks, lab information management systems, scientific data systems, reports, dashboards, and manual handoffs. That creates a coordination gap. Teams spend time moving data, checking context, reconciling results, building reports, and making sure work can be traced. This slows experiments, decisions, and the path from lab work to real-world use.

Scispot gives labs one operating layer for that work. Permissions, audit trails, sample lineage, approvals, and human review are built in. The platform captures context as work happens, traces each step, automates routine digital work, and turns lab activity into structured, traceable data that teams and AI agents can use.

The same operating layer also matters as AI moves deeper into life sciences. For model builders, hyperscalers, and AI infrastructure providers, the hard problem in life sciences is not only compute or model access. It is access to a real-world lab context with built-in controls: sample lineage, instrument runs, protocol state, approvals, data provenance, exceptions, and human review. Scispot provides a model-agnostic context layer for labs, without forcing teams to lose control of their data or workflows.

“Future labs will not run on people stitching together instruments, spreadsheets, reports, and approval steps,” said Guru Singh, founder and CEO of Scispot.  “They will run on an operating layer that connects every sample, instrument run, workflow, result, approval, and decision as the work happens. Scispot has built that layer, so scientists stay in control while routine digital work runs in the background.”

For regulated and sample-heavy labs, speed cannot come at the expense of traceability or control. Teams need permissions, audit trails, sample lineage, instrument context, and human review built into the workflow. Scispot helps those pieces work together, so labs can automate more digital work while keeping scientists and lab operators in control.

“The life sciences AI stack needs more than compute and models,” said Brian Goldsmith, Founding Partner at Avenue Growth Partners. “It needs an execution layer that turns physical lab work into structured, traceable context. Scispot gives labs that layer, so AI agents can support real lab work with traceability and control.”

Scispot’s long-term vision is the self-driving lab: a lab where routine coordination, data capture, analysis, and reporting run automatically on an operating layer built for traceability, human review, and control. Scientists and lab operators retain control over judgment, review, validation, and sign-off.

Scispot is headquartered in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, and is building global life sciences infrastructure from Canada. The company will use the round to grow its product, engineering, AI, implementation, and customer success teams, with a focus on adding high-skill roles in Canada while supporting life sciences customers across North America and globally.

“We are proud to build Scispot in Canada, with our roots in Kitchener-Waterloo,” Singh added. “This is Canadian-developed life sciences software for labs around the world. This round helps us add high-skill jobs across Canada while supporting teams working on medicines, diagnostics, genomics, biomanufacturing, and scientific testing.”

Scispot’s media kit, including the announcement video, logo, and founder photos, is available here.

About Scispot

Scispot is the AI-native operating layer for self-driving labs. The Canadian-headquartered company helps biotech, diagnostics, pharma, CRO/CDMO, bioproduction, biobanking, and testing teams coordinate lab execution as work happens across instruments, samples, workflows, approvals, data, and AI agents. Life sciences teams use Scispot to replace manual handoffs with connected, traceable operations, so they can run experiments, manage samples, review results, and generate reports with less manual coordination. For more information, visit www.scispot.com.

About Avenue Growth Partners

Avenue Growth Partners is an early growth equity firm backing exceptional founders building category-defining vertical technology companies. The firm partners closely with management teams to help scale durable, category-winning businesses.
Learn more at www.avenuegp.com.

SOURCE Scispot

De financieringsronde werd geleid door Pender Ventures, met deelname van Climate Investment, Evok Innovations en Occidental. Het nieuwe kapitaal zal de implementatie versnellen van het AI-platform dat al in gebruik is bij vijf OGCI-leden en regionale exploitanten, terwijl de uitbreiding naar aanverwante industriële sectoren al in gang is gezet.

CALGARY, AB, 4 juni 2026 — SensorUp Inc., het operationele informatieplatform dat geïntegreerde bedrijfsvoering mogelijk maakt in kapitaalintensieve sectoren, heeft vandaag bekendgemaakt dat een groeifinancieringsronde onder leiding van Pender Ventures is afgerond. Aan deze ronde hebben ook Climate Investment, Evok Innovations en Occidental, een strategische investeerder en klant, deelgenomen.

SensorUp is de operationele informatielaag voor kapitaalintensieve sectoren: het zet gefragmenteerde veldgegevens, technische documentatie en sensorstromen om in controleerbare, agent-ready workflows. Exploitanten gebruiken het platform vandaag de dag om slecht presterende putten op te sporen voordat de productie verloren gaat, om affakkel- en ontluchtingsincidenten te beoordelen aan de hand van wettelijke grenswaarden, om de gereedheid voor onderhoudsbeurten te coördineren voor duizenden componenten, om methaanlekken op te sporen en op te lossen, en om emissie-inventarissen samen te stellen die de toetsing door toezichthouders en kapitaalmarkten doorstaan, en dit alles op basis van één activamodel in plaats van vijf losstaande tools.

De robuuste onderdelen van het platform – de hiërarchie van bedrijfsmiddelen, berekeningen, beoordeling en goedkeuring, rapportage en workflowbeheer – bieden klanten, consultants en AI-agents een gemeenschappelijke basis om op voort te bouwen, met de controleerbaarheid, beveiliging en schaalbaarheid die de zware industrie vereist. Het toevoegen van een nieuw gebruiksscenario is een kwestie van configuratie, niet van het bouwen van een nieuw product. Juist dankzij diezelfde architectuur is het platform uitbreidbaar tot buiten de olie- en gassector, naar energieopwekking, nutsbedrijven, mijnbouw en de chemische industrie – overal waar gedistribueerde activa, multimodale gegevens en gereguleerde activiteiten samenkomen.

Deze financieringsronde werd geleid door Pender Ventures, een durfkapitaalbedrijf dat zich richt op bedrijven die de innovatie-economie aansturen nu verouderde systemen worden vervangen door moderne tools. Als investeerders richten zij zich op het vinden van bedrijven met oplossingen die hebben bewezen dat ze de omzet kunnen verhogen, de kosten kunnen verlagen en de resultaten kunnen verbeteren.

“De industriële softwaresector wachtte al lang op een platform dat zowel een echt onderscheidend architectonisch ontwerp biedt alsook de geloofwaardigheid in de praktijk om het op grote schaal te implementeren. SensorUp heeft beide”, aldus Cheri Corbett, partner bij Pender Ventures. “Hun op ontologie gebaseerde datafabric, hun positie bij ‘s werelds meest veeleisende industriële exploitanten en de manier waarop klanten hen inzetten voor agentische workloads, maken dit precies het soort bedrijf op een keerpunt dat ons fonds is opgezet om te ondersteunen. Uiteindelijk steunen we teams, en dit team heeft een niveau van vertrouwen bij exploitanten opgebouwd dat jaren heeft gekost en dat concurrenten jaren zou kosten om te evenaren.”

Het kapitaal zal worden ingezet voor drie prioriteiten die aansluiten bij de volgende groeifase van SensorUp:

Versnelling van de implementatie bij klanten: Uitbreiding van het API-raamwerk van SensorUp, verdere ontwikkeling van ‘zero-touch’-implementatie en schaalvergroting door middel van gestructureerde prototyping-workshops die de tijdsduur tot het behalen van rendement terugbrengen van kwartalen tot weken.

Het agentische platform verder uitbouwen: Investeren in geavanceerde AI, modellering en branchespecifieke mogelijkheden, waaronder de Operations AI Agents van SensorUp — de agents van productiekwaliteit die klanten bovenop het platform implementeren.

De uitbreiding naar meerdere sectoren stimuleren: Het opzetten van de data-infrastructuur, de marktintroductie en de capaciteit voor klantensucces om een groeiend klantenbestand en de steeds uitgebreidere reeks workflows op SensorUp te ondersteunen.

“Omdat onze klanten graag AI-strategieën willen implementeren, hebben ze een betrouwbaar platform en een betrouwbare partner nodig om samen met hen oplossingen te ontwerpen en te bouwen”, aldus Julia Hole, Chief Financial Officer van SensorUp. “SensorUp is ontstaan in de uiterst complexe wereld van het op wereldwijde schaal detecteren, opsporen en meten van methaan. “Die basis stelt ons van nature in staat om de volgende, meest urgente data-uitdaging van onze klanten aan te gaan: AI in de praktijk brengen voor een tastbaar investeringsrendement. Dankzij deze financiering kunnen we vaart zetten achter een routekaart die onze klanten actief aansturen.”

Over SensorUp

SensorUp is het actieve systeem voor de zware industrie — het AI-platform dat operationele chaos omzet in gecoördineerde uitvoering over verspreide activa, multimodale data en complexe workflows. SensorUp is ontstaan uit een samenwerking met ‘s werelds grootste olie- en gasbedrijven en is beproefd in duizenden verspreide activa. Het systeem is momenteel in gebruik bij vijf bedrijven die OGCI-lid zijn en een groeiend aantal regionale exploitanten, en de uitbreiding naar aanverwante industriële sectoren is in volle gang. Het bedrijf heeft zijn hoofdkantoor in Calgary, Alberta. Ga voor meer informatie naar sensorup.com .

Over Pender Ventures

Pender Ventures is een durfkapitaalfonds dat zich richt op bedrijven in de gezondheidstechnologie en B2B-technologie die zich op een keerpunt bevinden tussen commercialisering en schaalvergroting. Als hands-on investeerder met een sterke overtuiging werkt Pender Ventures nauw samen met oprichters om de groei te versnellen en toonaangevende bedrijven op te bouwen.

Het team is diep geworteld in het Canadese innovatie-ecosysteem en beschikt over de flexibiliteit om in heel Noord-Amerika te investeren. Het team is actief vanuit kantoren in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal en Calgary. Ga voor meer informatie naar penderventures.com.

Over Climate Investment

Climate Investment (CI) is een onafhankelijk beheerde gespecialiseerde investeerder die zich richt op het stimuleren van de decarbonisatie van de industrie. Het investeert in bedrijven die streven naar een grote impact op de uitstoot van broeikasgassen in energie-intensieve sectoren, waarbij de nadruk ligt op kansen die naast aantrekkelijke, voor risico gecorrigeerde rendementen ook een grootschalige, meetbare CO₂-reductie kunnen opleveren. Het bedrijf streeft ernaar de impact te versnellen door op grote schaal te investeren en samen te werken. Het verstrekt venture- tot groeikapitaal aan bedrijven en ondersteunt hen gedurende hun gehele bedrijfscyclus, met als doel zowel meetbare broeikasgasimpact als financieel succes te realiseren.

Het bedrijf heeft meer dan 40 investeringen gedaan in de sectoren energie, industrie, gebouwen en transport. De portefeuillebedrijven van CI bieden oplossingen die de uitstoot van methaan of kooldioxide voorkomen, verminderen, recyclen of opslaan. Het bedrijf rapporteert jaarlijks de gekwantificeerde broeikasgasimpact van zijn portefeuille aan de hand van een methodologie die het samen met andere investeerders heeft ontwikkeld om het gebruik van gemeenschappelijke maatstaven te stimuleren. In de periode 2019-2024 hebben de bedrijven in zijn portefeuille gezamenlijk een broeikasgasreductie van 133 miljoen ton CO₂e1 gerealiseerd.

Climate Investment is opgericht door leden van het Oil & Gas Climate Initiative. Zij hebben geïnvesteerd in fondsen van Climate Investment en veel van de innovaties uit de portefeuille geïmplementeerd, waarmee ze de vroege commerciële ontwikkeling ervan hebben ondersteund. Ga voor meer informatie naar www.climateinvestment.com.

Over Evok Innovations

Evok Innovations is een toonaangevende, op het klimaat gerichte durfkapitaalonderneming die investeert in geavanceerde technologische oplossingen voor de zware industrie. We werken samen met uitzonderlijke ondernemers om baanbrekende technologieën op te schalen binnen onze aandachtsgebieden: energie, mijnbouw en delfstoffen, industriële optimalisatie, en aanpassing en veerkracht. 

Naast kapitaal biedt Evok diepgaande technische expertise, praktische ervaring en ongeëvenaarde toegang tot de sector via ons netwerk van wereldwijde strategische partners. We werken nauw samen met de bedrijven in onze portefeuille om innovatie te koppelen aan marktacceptatie, commercialisering te versnellen en duidelijke trajecten te creëren voor schaalvergroting en exit.

Ga voor meer informatie naar evokinnovations.com.

Over Occidental

Occidental is een internationaal energiebedrijf dat olie en aardgas produceert, op de markt brengt en transporteert om de waarde te maximaliseren en grondstoffen te leveren die essentieel zijn voor het leven. Het bedrijf maakt gebruik van zijn wereldwijde toonaangevende positie op het gebied van koolstofbeheer om koolstofarme technologieën en producten te stimuleren. Occidental, met zijn hoofdkantoor in Houston, is voornamelijk actief in de Verenigde Staten, in het Midden-Oosten en in Noord-Afrika. Ga voor meer informatie naar oxy.com .

Contactpersoon voor de media: Trevor Cross, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SensorUp Inc., [email protected]

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2993585/SensorUp_Inc_SensorUp_Closes_Growth_Financing_to_Scale_its_Agent.jpg

The fundraiser included a Series A investment led by Khosla Ventures and strategic investment from BHP Ventures

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 3, 2026 — Terra AI, the artificial intelligence platform helping solve subsurface uncertainty for mineral and energy development, today announced it raised $20 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures and strategic investment from BHP Ventures.

Terra AI’s patented technology integrates nearly every type of exploration data to generate millions of geological models, enabling teams to evaluate a comprehensive range of potential subsurface scenarios. This allows project teams to identify the best drilling and geophysical approaches to reduce key uncertainty and rigorously assess project economics earlier than ever before. By going beyond geological visualization and delivering risk-quantified decision insights, Terra AI helps explorers on virtually every important decision across their portfolio from determining which assets to acquire in a portfolio to accelerating and de-risking resource development efforts. The outcome: resource pipelines are developed faster and more efficiently to help the world meet its resource needs.

“Explorers today face increasing complexities like rising project uncertainty and immense pressure to bring new resources online faster,” said John Mern, CEO Terra AI. “This investment enables us to move to the next phase of Terra AI’s growth by scaling our generative modeling engine, accelerating enterprise-grade deployments, and advancing the subsurface inference technology the industry needs to meet critical mineral demand.”

Typically, new discoveries require an average of 17 years to advance to production. Terra AI’s platform integrates explorers’ full dataset to produce geologically realistic 3D models that map assets and uncertainty in minutes, allowing developers to make more informed decisions faster. Its geology reasoning agent works with operators to create precise and optimized exploration plans, enabling teams to develop critical assets with minimal time, cost, and environmental disruption. The same platform is now being applied to carbon storage sites where understanding subsurface uncertainty is equally critical to selecting safe, permanent storage locations.

“The world’s ability to discover and develop critical resources is fundamentally constrained by outdated, fragmented exploration,” said Rajesh Swaminathan, Partner at Khosla Ventures. “Terra AI is defining a new, AI-native exploration approach with their continuously improving 3D Earth model. We believe their technology will dramatically accelerate the development of the critical minerals the world needs, and we’re excited to help them scale this vision globally.”

Over the past year, Terra AI has demonstrated modeling capabilities on mining and reservoir projects from early exploration through production and has built strong early momentum with a growing roster of commercial customers across copper, gold, REE, and reservoir projects.

Its technology addresses the longest, most capital-intensive, and uncertain phase of subsurface resource development. Terra AI’s modeling will dramatically compress the time and capital required to define deposits and reservoirs, opening ways to assess and develop resources at higher fidelity.

“Successful exploration depends on reducing geological uncertainty and progressing opportunities efficiently,” said Laurel Buckner, VP of Ventures at BHP. “Terra AI’s technology has the potential to improve drill targeting, support faster prospect evaluation, and help explorers focus capital on the highest-value opportunities.”

The capital will accelerate deployment of Terra AI’s generative geological modeling platform across mining, enhanced geothermal, and carbon storage.

To learn more, read Terra AI’s Series A Announcement.

About Terra AI:
Terra AI solves the world’s most critical subsurface problems with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. The company’s patented platform fuses geophysics, geochemistry, and drilling data to generate probabilistic models of the underground—driving faster, more accurate, and lower-cost resource exploration. Backed by Khosla Ventures, BHP Ventures, Rio Tinto, and others, Terra AI is already being adopted in the field and creating value for priority projects with the world’s leading resource companies. Learn more at www.terraai.com.

About Khosla Ventures:
Khosla Ventures is a venture capital firm focused on investments in artificial intelligence, financial services, healthcare, consumer, enterprise, and sustainability sectors. It is known for making early capital investments in startups such as OpenAI, Instacart, Affirm, DoorDash, and Block. https://www.khoslaventures.com/

About BHP Ventures:
BHP Ventures is the in-house venture capital arm of BHP Group Limited. The fund invests in breakthrough technologies, shaping the future of BHP and the global resources industry. BHP Ventures complements the innovation already underway within BHP by enabling new partnerships and creating opportunities to strengthen the company’s portfolio and lower emissions. BHP is a global resources company that produces essential commodities the world needs, including iron ore, copper, steelmaking coal – and soon potash. With operations and projects in over 90 countries around the world, BHP is the world’s largest copper producer.

SOURCE Terra AI, Inc

Focused investment platform partners with founders to scale breakthrough technologies across AI, deep tech, and life sciences

COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 3, 2026 — R1 Capital today announced its launch as a venture firm focused on backing founders across enterprise AI/software, deep tech, and life sciences that are solving complex, real-world problems in large and undercapitalized markets.

Originally part of the investment activities within Rev1 Ventures, R1 Capital is a dedicated venture firm operating with its own brand, funds, and investment strategy to support founders from company creation through growth and scale.

“R1 Capital was built to back founders who are reshaping industries through technical innovation,” said Tom Walker, CEO of R1 Capital. “Our focus has always been helping exceptional teams turn early momentum into enduring, category-defining businesses, and that commitment remains unchanged as R1 Capital begins this next chapter. We continue to support founders with the capital, expertise, and network needed to scale from product-market fit into durable market leadership.”

The launch comes amid continued concentration in venture funding markets. In 2025, 33% of all US VC dollars went to the top 1% of companies, and according to 2026 NVCA Yearbook, that concentration is expected to continue, creating a difficult fundraising environment for emerging founders.

R1 Capital is led by a team that has invested together across multiple fund cycles for more than a decade, and takes a hands-on partnership approach across stages. R1 supports founders with capital, strategic insight, and access to a deep network of operators, customers, and investors.

“When you’re building a healthcare company, you need partners who understand both the mission and the complexity behind the work,” said Joe Bagan, Co-founder and CEO of STAQ Pharma. “The R1 team understands that building a life sciences company is about more than financial models – having advisors who had navigated difficult operational decisions themselves made a real difference for us as we’ve scaled.”

Over the past decade, the R1 Capital team has supported more than 150 startups, helping founders build, validate, and scale companies across multiple technology cycles. R1 will continue collaborating with Rev1 Ventures and a broader ecosystem of operators, advisors, and strategic partners to provide support beyond capital, including venture studio resources, early customer access, and commercialization support.

“This launch reflects continued momentum in the Midwest innovation ecosystem and growing demand for investors who combine a disciplined and capital efficient investment approach to company building with a strong partnership mentality,” added Ryan Helon, Chief Investment Officer at R1 Capital.

R1 Capital operates from Rev1 at The Peninsula, a founder-focused innovation hub designed to help software and advanced technology startups grow faster and more effectively.

For more information, visit r1funds.com.

About R1 Capital
R1 Capital is a venture firm built for visionary founders across enterprise AI/software, deep tech, and life sciences who focus on solving complex, real world problems in undercapitalized markets. Led by a team that has invested together for over a decade across multiple fund cycles, R1 invests across stages, partnering with founders to support creation, validation, and growth by providing the network and resources needed to build enduring businesses. With Midwest roots and national reach, R1 works alongside Rev1 Ventures’ studio and a deep venture partner network to deliver hands-on support and a platform that extends well beyond capital. R1 backs founders at defining moments – where potential becomes progress and momentum drives growth.

SOURCE R1 Capital

Round co-led by Concentric, Passion Capital, and Araya Ventures brings total funding to EUR 7M, accelerating market expansion, new product development, and the company’s EMI license application with the Central Bank of Ireland

SOFIA, Bulgaria, June 3, 2026 — Paypercut, a European fintech payments platform enabling online merchants to accept payments across Central and Eastern Europe through a single integration, today announced a EUR 5M seed round co-led by Concentric, Passion Capital, and Araya Ventures. The round also saw participation from SMOK Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, BrightCap Ventures, BlackWood, SABAH.fund, MFG Invest, Main Set and payments entrepreneur Matt Doka, bringing Paypercut’s total funding to EUR 7M.

The new capital will be used to accelerate expansion across CEE, deepen Paypercut’s presence in existing markets, advance the next phase of product and infrastructure development, and meet the capital requirements for our Irish EMI licence.

Paypercut is not starting from zero. Since its EUR 2M pre-seed round in July 2025, the company has grown from a BNPL aggregator to a full payments platform, with over 200 merchants already active across eight markets in CEE. The round is fuel for what is already working — and for what comes next.

“CEE has always been treated as an afterthought by the payments industry, seen as too fragmented, too many local specifics, too complicated. We built Paypercut to fix that. This round gives us the resources to go further and faster: more markets, more payment options for merchants, and the infrastructure to move money across the way it should have always worked, instantly and at a fraction of the cost,” said Stoil Vasilev, Co-Founder and CEO, Paypercut.

What Paypercut does today

Paypercut gives online merchants across Central and Eastern Europe access to a full payments stack through a single integration — no separate contracts per market, no fragmented providers, no localisation headache. Merchants can accept card payments and local payment methods, offer multiple Buy Now Pay Later options at checkout, send payment links and QR codes without a website, and manage billing, payouts, and settlements across currencies from a single dashboard.

The platform is built around the specific realities of CEE commerce: local payment methods, multi-currency settlement, and onboarding that compresses what is typically weeks of paperwork into a matter of days, fully online. For merchants expanding across the region, it eliminates the single biggest operational barrier — having to start from scratch in every new market.

The latest addition to the platform is Express Checkout, launching this quarter, which moves the payment moment to the product page, before the customer ever reaches a basket. By enabling one-tap payments via Apple Pay and Google Pay with biometric authentication, Express Checkout eliminates the most significant source of mobile checkout abandonment: typing card details on a small screen. Card data never touches the merchant’s servers, chargeback rates drop, and customers complete payment in two taps. For CEE merchants competing for mobile-first consumers, it is a meaningful shift in how checkout works, not an incremental update.

Paypercut operates through licensed and regulated partners across the EEA, ensuring full compliance in every market it serves. The company has also submitted its own EMI application under the Central Bank of Ireland, with authorisation expected in Q4 2026 — a milestone that will enable Paypercut to hold customer balances directly and further expand its product capabilities.

“We backed Paypercut at pre-seed because we believed in the team and the opportunity. A year later, the execution has matched the ambition. CEE is one of the most underserved payments markets in Europe, and Paypercut is building the infrastructure layer the region has been missing. We are proud to continue leading this journey,” said Will Orde, Partner, Passion Capital.

“We have known the Paypercut team for over a year and loved the ambition from the start. When you see a team execute the way they have, building a working product across multiple markets in under a year, the decision to co-lead becomes easy,” said Rupa Popat, Founder & Managing Partner, Araya Ventures.

“Paypercut sits exactly at the intersection of what we love to invest in: deep fintech expertise, a regulated infrastructure play, and a team that knows what world class execution looks like. We backed them at pre-seed and witnessing the developments since, we had the confidence to double down,” said Alex Stroud, Concentric, General Partner.

Cross-border payments for CEE

For decades, moving money across Central and Eastern Europe has meant navigating a fragmented web of legacy rails – slow, expensive, and built for a financial system that no longer reflects how businesses actually operate. According to Paypercut’s analysis, businesses across CEE’s non-euro markets pay an estimated more than EUR 4 billion annually in cross-border transaction fees and FX costs alone, with cross-currency SWIFT transfers between two CEE markets (such as PLN to HUF or CZK to RON) averaging 3–5 business days when intermediary currency conversion is required.

Building on a payments infrastructure already trusted by merchants across multiple European markets, Paypercut is developing rails for stablecoins targeting the region’s highest-volume and most underserved corridors, starting with the likes of EUR-to-PLN and EUR-to-RON, and expanding as its regulatory footprint grows.

What began as a merchant payments platform is now becoming the full financial infrastructure layer designed for CEE: the stablecoin rails are not a new direction, they are the natural next element of the same infrastructure already working for merchants across the region. The same platform that today helps merchants accept payments will tomorrow enable them to move money across borders instantly, without switching providers, without new integrations, and without the friction that has defined cross-border payments in CEE for too long.

“Our merchants don’t care which rails their money travels on — they care that it arrives instantly, cheaply, and securely. Stablecoins are the first technology that lets us deliver all three across CEE’s non-euro corridors, and that’s why we’re building on them,” said Martin Palazov, Head of Expansion, Paypercut.

About Paypercut

Paypercut is a European fintech payments platform enabling online merchants to accept payments across Central and Eastern Europe through a single integration. By bringing together card payments, local payment methods, and Buy Now, Pay Later providers, Paypercut eliminates the need for separate contracts and integrations in every new market, while optimising transaction approvals, conversion, and costs, and simplifying settlement and cross-border operations.

Founded by a team with deep experience scaling payments across the region, including former senior leaders from SumUp and Payhawk, Paypercut has raised a total of EUR 7M to date, backed by Concentric, Passion Capital, Araya Ventures, among others. The company is building toward becoming the default financial infrastructure layer for businesses across CEE, with a roadmap extending into treasury, FX, payouts, and embedded financial services.

Press Contact:
Rick Medeiros
[email protected]
510-556-8517

SOURCE Paypercut

New capital supports growth of platform connecting landowners and hunters nationwide

MINNEAPOLIS, June 3, 2026 — HLRBO, a marketplace connecting landowners with hunters seeking private-land access, has closed a $2.5 million funding round led by Mairs & Power Venture Capital of St. Paul.

The funding, which includes support from individual and angel investors, will accelerate HLRBO’s expansion as a national platform for hunting leases, landowner income, and responsible private-land access.

Founded in 2015 in northern Minnesota, HLRBO has grown from a regional startup into a national platform with leases in all 50 states. The company has 14,000 paying subscribers, 225,000 total users, and 1.7 million acres of land leases on its platform.

“This funding helps us keep building the marketplace for landowners and hunters,” said Heath Schubert, founder and CEO of HLRBO. “Private-land access has always been fragmented. We are building the infrastructure to make it easier to navigate.”

The 2026 round follows earlier funding by Great North Ventures, Gopher Angels, and other investors. HLRBO raised $1 million in February 2024 and $600,000 in August 2024 before closing the latest $2.5 million round.

“We were impressed by HLRBO’s incredibly vibrant marketplace,” said Scott Burns, General Partner at Mairs & Power Venture Capital. “It caters to hundreds-of-thousands of hunters looking to gain access to the best hunting land across America.”

With its latest funding round, HLRBO will grow lease inventory, improve its web- and app-based platforms, and invest in marketing, partnerships, mapping, and AI-driven land intelligence.

HLRBO is investing in new technology, including parcel-level mapping, AI-powered land scoring, and a proprietary HLRBO “cinematic” view, which uses AI to transform a 2D property map into a realistic 3D drone flyover.

The company is also expanding its media and education efforts and publishing content for landowners and hunters, including a news blog, feature stories, and a printed newspaper mailed to landowners and field reps. 

HLRBO is attending trade shows and industry events throughout 2026, building partnerships with outdoor product and hunting media companies, and investing in social media, creators, and video initiatives to drive engagement and grow its user base. 

Together, these efforts position HLRBO to become the leading technology, media, and marketplace platform for private hunting access in North America.

ABOUT HLRBO:
HLRBO (Hunting Land Rentals By Owner) is the premier online marketplace for hunting leases, connecting private landowners with vetted hunters across the U.S. and Canada. Founded in 2015 in Brainerd MN, HLRBO serves a community of more than 225,000 users with tools for listing, discovery, secure payments, legal agreements, and integrated insurance — making it easier than ever to find the right land, or the right hunter, for any season. More at HLRBO’s blog: https://www.hlrbo.com/news.

Media Contact:
Graeme Thickins
For HLRBO
612-867-4055
[email protected]

SOURCE HLRBO

“The cost of groceries is the number-one financial stressor in America,” said Ofek Lavian, co-founder and CEO of Forage. “At Forage, we’re building a network for affordability, making it easy for low-income Americans to save on groceries. At the same time, we’re helping retailers grow by better serving the affordability needs of today’s price-conscious shoppers.”

Forage has made it easy for retailers and platforms to accept government benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Health Savings Accounts (HSA); and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA). Its payments technology is used at over 100,000 stores across all 50 states, including national retailers like Dollar General, Gopuff, and Save A Lot, as well as online platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. To date, Forage has facilitated tens of millions of grocery orders to millions of American families and grown payments volume by 13x over the last year.

Christopher Gottschalk, General Partner at Mouro Capital, said: “SNAP is one of the largest and most underserved payment ecosystems in the country. Forage has built the only modern infrastructure to serve it at scale. We’ve watched this team earn the trust of consumers, retailers, platforms, community groups, and government stakeholders. We believe Forage is defining this category, and we see even greater opportunities ahead.”

The Forage app was built to address an urgent need: for too many low-income families, accessing affordable food is a daily struggle.

In a recent survey, 53% of American adults identified high grocery prices as a major source of financial stress, ahead of housing, healthcare, and childcare. The Forage app helps address this affordability crisis by offering low-income Americans a free, simple way to:

• Securely check their electronic benefits transfer (EBT) balances
• Discover savings and earn rewards on everyday purchases
• Find nearby stores and online retailers that accept SNAP
• Learn which items are SNAP-eligible by state
• Access tools to improve financial health

Since launch in late 2025, the app has been downloaded over 100,000 times. By the end of 2026, Forage aims to reach one million low-income families via the app.

“I started using the Forage app, and so far I am really happy and honestly super impressed,” said one app user in a Google Play review. “Sign up is a breeze, and uploading receipts is simple and straightforward. I truly cannot say enough good things about this app!!”

Nearly one in eight Americans, approximately 40 million people, rely on SNAP to meet their nutritional needs. Yet the infrastructure powering SNAP wasn’t built for the digital era. As a result, millions of SNAP families can’t securely check their balances in real time, shop at many online retailers, or access the same convenience available to other consumers.

Forage’s technology reduces friction and fraud across the SNAP ecosystem. By modernizing SNAP infrastructure, Forage makes it easier for families to access benefits, simpler for retailers and platforms to participate, and more efficient for government agencies to ensure compliance and reduce waste.

“Dollar General’s mission of Serving Others starts with showing up in the communities we call home, including the rural and underserved markets where other retailers either cannot or have chosen not to go,” said Tony Rogers, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Dollar General. “Partnering with Forage to bring SNAP EBT acceptance online through our partnership with DoorDash extends that mission to our customers’ doorsteps, ensuring the families who count on us for affordable essentials can enjoy the same accessibility and convenience, however they choose to shop.”

About Forage

Forage expands financial access for low-income families. A mission-driven financial infrastructure platform, Forage makes it easy for retailers to accept benefits like SNAP, WIC, and HSA/FSA. Forage is the only USDA-approved, third-party payment processor (TPP) that combines modern software with dedicated service to guide retailers through authorization and launch. For more information, visit www.joinforage.com.

SOURCE Forage Technology Corporation

Round led by Pender Ventures, with participation from Climate Investment, Evok Innovations, and Occidental. New capital will accelerate deployment of the AI-enablement platform already running inside five OGCI member companies and regional operators, with expansion into adjacent industrial verticals underway.

CALGARY, AB, June 3, 2026 — SensorUp Inc., the operational intelligence platform powering integrated operations across asset-heavy industries, announced today the close of a growth financing round led by Pender Ventures. The round includes participation from Climate Investment, Evok Innovations, and Occidental, a strategic investor and client.

SensorUp is the operational intelligence layer for asset-heavy industries: turning fragmented field data, engineering records, and sensor streams into auditable, agent-ready workflows. Operators use the platform today to surface underperforming wells before production is lost, to triage flare and vent events against regulatory thresholds, to coordinate turnaround readiness across thousands of components, to detect and resolve methane leaks, and to assemble emissions inventories that withstand regulator and capital-markets scrutiny, all on a single asset model rather than five disconnected tools.

The platform’s hardened components: asset hierarchy, calculations, review and approval, reporting, and workflow orchestration give customers, consultants, and AI agents a shared foundation to build on, with the auditability, security, and scalability that heavy industry requires. Adding a new use case is configuration, not a new product build. That same architecture is what makes the platform extensible beyond oil and gas, into power generation, utilities, mining, and chemicals, wherever distributed assets, multimodal data, and regulated operations meet.

The round was led by Pender Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on companies that drive the innovation economy as legacy systems are replaced with modern tools. As investors, they focus on finding companies with solutions that have proven their ability to increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve outcomes.

“Industrial software has been waiting for a platform with both genuine architectural differentiation and the field credibility to deploy it at scale. SensorUp has both,” said Cheri Corbett, Partner at Pender Ventures. “Their ontology-based data fabric, their position inside the world’s most demanding industrial operators, and the way customers are pulling them into agentic workloads make this exactly the kind of inflection-point company our fund was built to back. Ultimately, we back teams, and this one has earned a level of operator trust that took years to build and would take competitors years to replicate.”

The capital will be deployed across three priorities aligned with SensorUp’s next phase of growth:

Accelerating customer deployment: Expanding SensorUp’s API framework, advancing zero-touch deployment, and scaling expansion through structured prototyping workshops that compress time-to-value from quarters to weeks.

Enhancing the agentic platform: Investing in advanced AI, modeling, and vertical-specific capabilities, including SensorUp’s Operations AI Agents — the production-grade agents that customers are deploying on top of the platform.

Fueling multi-vertical expansion: Building the data infrastructure, go-to-market, and customer success capacity to support a growing base of customers and the expanding scope of workflows running on SensorUp.

“Our customers are eager to deploy AI strategies, but they need a trusted platform and partner to design and build solutions with them,” said Julia Hole, Chief Financial Officer of SensorUp. “SensorUp was forged in the highly complex environment of methane detection, resolution, and measurement at global scale. That foundation naturally positions us to take on our customers’ next most pressing data challenge: operationalizing AI for tangible ROI. This financing allows us to accelerate a roadmap our customers are actively driving.”

About SensorUp

SensorUp is the agentic system of action for heavy industry — the AI-enablement platform that turns operational chaos into orchestrated execution across distributed assets, multimodal data, and complex workflows. Forged in partnership with the world’s largest oil and gas operators and hardened across thousands of distributed assets, SensorUp is in production today with five OGCI member companies and a growing roster of regional operators, with expansion into adjacent industrial verticals underway. The company is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Learn more at sensorup.com.

About Pender Ventures

Pender Ventures is a venture capital investor focused on health tech and B2B technology companies at the inflection point between commercialization and scale. As a hands-on, high-conviction investor, Pender Ventures partners closely with founders to accelerate growth and build category-leading businesses.

With deep roots in the Canadian innovation ecosystem and the flexibility to invest across North America, the team operates from offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary. Learn more at penderventures.com.

About Climate Investment

Climate Investment (CI) is an independently managed specialist investor focused on driving industrial decarbonization. It invests in companies aiming to drive high GHG impact in energy-intensive sectors, targeting opportunities that may deliver scaled, quantified carbon reduction alongside attractive risk-adjusted returns. The firm seeks to accelerate impact by investing and collaborating widely. It provides venture to growth capital to companies, and supports them across their business lifecycle, with the objective of delivering both measurable GHG impact and financial success

The firm has made over 40 investments across energy, industry, buildings, and transportation. CI’s portfolio companies offer solutions that avoid, reduce, recycle or store emitted methane or carbon dioxide. The firm reports its portfolio’s quantified GHG impact annually against a methodology it has co-developed with other investors to encourage adoption of common metrics. In the period 2019-2024 its portfolio companies collectively realized 133 million tonnes of CO2e1 of GHG reduction.

Climate Investment was founded by members of the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative. They have invested in Climate Investment funds and deployed many of its portfolio innovations, supporting their early commercial development. Visit www.climateinvestment.com.

About Evok Innovations

Evok Innovations is a leading climate-focused venture capital firm investing in hard tech solutions for heavy industry. We partner with exceptional entrepreneurs to scale transformative technologies in our focus areas of energy, mining & minerals, industrial optimization, and adaptation & resilience. 

Beyond capital, Evok delivers deep technical expertise, real-world operating experience, and unparalleled industry access through our network of global strategic partners. We work closely with our portfolio companies to bridge innovation to market adoption, accelerate commercialization, and create clear pathways to scale and exit.

For more information, please visit: evokinnovations.com.

About Occidental

Occidental is an international energy company that produces, markets and transports oil and natural gas to maximize value and provide resources fundamental to life. The company leverages its global leadership in carbon management to advance lower-carbon technologies and products. Headquartered in Houston, Occidental primarily operates in the United States, the Middle East and North Africa. To learn more, visit oxy.com.

Media Contact: Trevor Cross, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SensorUp Inc., [email protected]

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