AMHERST, Mass., Feb. 24, 2026 — Myrias Optics, a world leader in wafer-level metaoptics and diffractive optical technologies, today announced the closing of a $2.1 million Seed 1 financing round in January 2026. The round was led by MassVentures, with participation from existing investors Hoss Investment Inc., Maroon Venture Partners, and Tenon Venture Partners, as well as new investors Mill Town Capital, TiE Boston Angels, and Doug Crane.
This financing builds on the company’s previously announced $3.3 million seed round completed in December 2023, led by Asia Optical, and complements a $1.5 million National Science Foundation Direct-to-Phase II award. With $6.9 million secured to date, Myrias is advancing commercialization of its proprietary all-inorganic additive nanoimprint platform and expanding production capacity to meet growing customer demand. The company serves customers in augmented reality, AI data centers, consumer electronics, industrial, and medical markets—applications that require durable, high-performance optical components manufactured with precision, repeatability, and cost efficiency.
Across these markets, system designers face a common bottleneck: producing advanced optical components that combine high optical performance, environmental stability, and scalable manufacturing economics. Myrias addresses this challenge through a wafer-level additive nanoimprinting approach that enables thermally stable, all-inorganic optical components produced with high repeatability and significantly lower cost than conventional semiconductor-based processing. In augmented reality systems, for example, the company’s industry-leading refractive index for imprinted waveguides enables higher view angles while maintaining manufacturability at scale. In AI data center environments, similar material and manufacturing advantages support improved optical coupling efficiency, alignment tolerance, and thermal robustness for high-speed optical interconnects. These performance and scalability benefits extend across consumer, industrial, and medical imaging platforms, positioning Myrias as a foundational infrastructure supplier for next-generation optical systems.
Proceeds from the Seed 1 round will support manufacturing scale-up, expansion of pilot production lines, and continued execution of active customer programs. Myrias is currently engaged with strategic partners and Tier 1 supply chain participants to integrate its waveguide and metaoptic solutions into commercial AR, AI photonics, and advanced imaging platforms.
“This round reflects validation of both our technology and our execution roadmap,” said John Fijol, CEO of Myrias Optics. “Our focus is on delivering production-ready inorganic metaoptics that solve real manufacturing bottlenecks across multiple optical markets. We are seeing strong engagement from customers seeking scalable, cost-effective solutions capable of meeting next-generation performance requirements.”
“Traditional polymer-based optical manufacturing presents limitations in durability, thermal stability, and long-term reliability,” added Myrias Optics Founder Jim Watkins, professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at University of Massachusetts Amherst. “By combining advanced metasurface design with robust inorganic materials and additive wafer-level processing, we are enabling optical components that meet the performance and supply chain demands of emerging AR, AI, and advanced imaging markets.”
“Myrias Optics has the potential to become a category-defining technology platform for the next generation of optical devices. Its ability to manufacture high-performance, high-value components through an exceptionally efficient and cost-effective process — rooted in discoveries from Dr. Watkins’ lab at UMass — strongly aligns with MassVentures’ mission to support high-potential academic spinouts throughout the Commonwealth,” said Myron Kassaraba, Vice President at MassVentures, who led the investment and will join the company’s Board of Directors.
Myrias Optics focuses on metaoptics, diffractive optics, and AR waveguides, delivering wafer-level optical solutions that integrate advanced nanostructures with cost-efficient, high-throughput manufacturing. The company’s proprietary all-inorganic nanoimprinting technology enables precision optical components with industry-leading material performance, strong yield characteristics, and a clear path to production-scale deployment.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2026 — Updata Partners (“Updata”), a Washington, D.C.–based growth equity investment firm focused on capital-efficient B2B software companies, today announced the final close of Updata Partners VIII, L.P. (“Updata VIII”), with aggregate capital commitments of $875 million. The fund exceeded the target and was meaningfully oversubscribed, reaching the hard cap in just six months and reflecting strong demand from both longstanding and new limited partners. Updata VIII represents the largest fund raised by the firm to date, and together with prior funds and co-investments, Updata has raised more than $3.0 billion in capital commitments.
Founded by operators from the software industry, Updata brings decades of operating and investment experience to portfolio companies. The firm’s hands-on approach will continue with Updata VIII as the team partners with high-performing, capital-efficient software businesses. Updata’s growing Value Creation team works shoulder-to-shoulder with founders and leadership teams, focusing on repeatable portfolio services such as team buildout, product and technology leadership, and go-to-market execution.
“We are incredibly grateful for the strong support from our limited partners,” said Carter Griffin, General Partner. “The pace and outcome of this fundraise reflect the trust built over many years. We look forward to partnering with both longstanding investors and new LPs in Updata VIII.”
“With Updata VIII, we remain focused on backing software companies with strong fundamentals and dynamic growth profiles,” said Jon Seeber, General Partner. “AI is accelerating the formation of high-growth, lightly capitalized businesses, and we are excited to support the entrepreneurs building the next generation of market leaders.”
Updata makes both majority and minority investments, committing between $20 and $200 million per company. The firm seeks to serve as the first institutional capital investor and focuses on high-growth opportunities outside Silicon Valley.
Gunderson Dettmer served as legal counsel, and UBS Private Funds Group acted as placement agent.
About Updata Partners
Updata Partners is a leading technology-focused growth equity firm in Washington D.C. with over $3.0 billion in committed capital. Led by an investment team averaging more than 25 years of technology experience, Updata invests in high-growth B2B software and software-driven businesses where the combination of capital and operating experience will help accelerate success. For more information, visit www.updata.com.
BOSTON, Feb. 24, 2026 — Most startups raise capital to hire. Swan just raised $6 million to prove it doesn’t need to.
The round, led by Link Ventures with participation from Fresh Fund, Collider and Gandel Invest, backs a simple thesis: modern companies don’t need more headcount, they need to redesign where execution lives.
Just as Lovable and Base44 democratized software engineering for non-developers, Swan is democratizing GTM engineering for revenue teams. The approach: apply coding agent technology to go-to-market systems, removing the technical burden that has quietly turned revenue leaders into accidental engineers.
“We don’t think the next competitive edge is hiring faster,” said Amos Bar-Joseph, Swan’s co-founder and CEO. “It’s relocating engineering burden into systems. Swan is built to scale with intelligence, not headcount.”
Boaz Fachler, Partner at Link Ventures: “Swan isn’t layering automation on top of traditional structures, they’re rethinking company architecture itself.”
0 to 200 Customers with Three Employees
Swan grew from zero to more than 200 customers in 2025 with a three-person team. While most AI companies expand rapidly post-funding, Swan is deliberately constraining hiring.
The company believes revenue per employee, not valuation, will define AI-era companies.
The AI GTM Engineer
Most AI tools try to replace human sellers. Swan focuses on something else: the engineering work that’s turned revenue teams into engineers.
Swan separates human execution (judgment, prioritization, accountability) from engineering burden (maintenance, orchestration, technical upkeep). Its AI GTM Engineer carries the latter.
The Bigger Bet
Swan sees go-to-market as the first proving ground. If systems can carry execution reliably, hiring becomes a strategic choice, not a structural necessity.
“The question isn’t whether AI can do more,” Bar-Joseph said. “It’s whether you’re building a company that needs less.”
About Swan
Swan is building the first autonomous business. Its AI GTM Engineer absorbs technical complexity so revenue teams can focus on strategy and decisions.
Already processing over $500M in annualized wholesale volume, Jampack AI uses agentic workflows to eliminate the operational complexity of wholesale distribution
BROOKLYN, N.Y., Feb. 24, 2026 — Jampack AI, the agentic platform automating wholesale operations for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands, today announced it has raised $3.2 million in seed funding. The round was led by Maveron, with participation from Timber Grove Ventures and a group of notable industry angels.
The funding will be used to advance Jampack AI’s suite of agentic workflows designed to run complex supply chain processes end-to-end for CPG brands distributing into wholesale channels – from purchase order processing and truckload scheduling to invoicing and everything in between.
Since publicly launching just five months ago, Jampack AI is already processing more than $500 million in annualized wholesale volume. The platform is trusted by some of the fastest-growing brands in CPG, including Fishwife, Immi, and Path Water.
For most CPG brands, wholesale operations remain painstakingly manual. A single purchase order can require toggling between ten or more disconnected tools – from EDI platforms and freight brokers to invoicing software and distributor portals. The result is wasted time, costly errors, and an operational burden that scales with every new retail door.
Jampack AI Co-founder and CEO Matteo Rossant experienced these pain points firsthand while running logistics and sales operations at N!CK’S, one of the fastest-growing CPG brands at the time, where he helped scale the business from zero to $40 million in sales in under 18 months. That front-row seat to the operational chaos of rapid growth – messy spreadsheets, endless email threads, and legacy systems that don’t talk to each other – became the catalyst for Jampack AI.
“I watched brands lose entire days to work that should take minutes – copying data between systems, chasing carriers, reconciling invoices by hand,” said Matteo Rossant. “Our agents handle all of that – without ripping and replacing the systems brands already rely on. Whether it’s an early-stage brand running on spreadsheets or a Fortune 500 company with a robust ERP, our platform meets them where they are.”
Early results reflect the scale of the opportunity: brands using Jampack AI save at least 20 hours per week on manual operational work, reduce freight costs by 15%, and experience 50X faster order-to-invoice cycles – all while cutting down on fees, chargebacks, and costly errors that eat into margins.
“Jampack didn’t just save us time – it fundamentally changed how we operate. We scaled from 50 to 3,500 retail store doors, and our fulfillment efficiency and accuracy improved along the way,” said Tony Davis, Founder and CEO of Bakeful. “In 10 years in this industry, I haven’t seen a tool or platform deliver this kind of impact. It’s the best investment we’ve made to help manage our supply chain operations.”
Maveron, the venture capital firm co-founded by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and known for its deep expertise in consumer-facing businesses, led the round.
“What sets Jampack apart is the rare combination of deep operational expertise and an elegant technical approach,” said Natalie Dillon, Partner at Maveron. “Wholesale is one of the most complex parts of operating a consumer brand, and I’ve seen how much it can shape a brand’s trajectory throughout my career. Jampack AI’s deep customer love in such a challenging category, combined with the product’s transformational impact, makes it clear that this team will quietly power breakout brands of the next generation.”
With this new funding, Jampack AI plans to expand its engineering team, deepen integrations across the CPG ecosystem, and accelerate its mission to make wholesale operations effortless for every consumer brand.
About Jampack AI
Jampack AI is an agentic platform that automates wholesale operations for CPG brands distributing into wholesale channels. By replacing fragmented, manual workflows with intelligent end-to-end automation, Jampack AI enables brands to process purchase orders, coordinate logistics, and manage invoicing without the operational overhead. Co-founded by Matteo Rossant and Rezi Tsulukidze, the company serves some of the most exciting emerging consumer brands in the country.
Funding to Advance Product Innovation and Organizational Scale
NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2026 — Today, EMED Technologies, a global leader in drug delivery and innovative infusion therapy devices announced that its subsidiary closed a successful $8 million equity investment funding round led by a multibillion dollar healthcare company.
The raise strengthens the Subsidiary’s balance sheet and supports the next phase of its strategic expansion. The financing reflects strong investor confidence in the Company’s technological and operating platform, execution track record, and long-term growth potential. Proceeds from the raise will be used to support organizational scale, product expansion, and broader strategic initiatives aligned with EMED’s long-term objectives in the drug delivery space.
“This capital raise represents an important milestone and reinforces the strategic value of this platform within EMED’s broader portfolio,” said Paul Lambert, Chief Executive Officer of EMED Technologies. “It positions the organization to execute its growth strategy with discipline while maintaining operational flexibility.”
As a subsidiary of EMED Technologies, the company benefits from EMED’s global leadership, institutional governance, and operational infrastructure, while continuing to operate with a focused mandate and independent execution. The subsidiary will remain closely aligned with EMED’s long-term strategy while advancing initiatives that support sustainable growth to service hundreds of thousands of patients who will benefit from EMED’s existing devices and pipeline technologies with significantly improved healthcare outcomes.
EMED’s subsidiary structure preserves focus within its core drug delivery business while siloing the ability to responsibly pursue growth opportunities that are complementary to EMED’s core drug delivery business. This approach maintains governance and operating discipline at the parent level, while allowing adjacent initiatives to develop independently without introducing risk or distraction to EMED’s established platform.
About EMED Technologies EMED Technologies is an industry leader in the design, manufacture, and distribution of cutting-edge medical devices. Our core mission is to empower patient independence by developing patient-centric systems that improve quality of life and are designed for mid to large volume subcutaneous infusions. Since 1991 EMED Technologies has worked with patients, clinicians, and pharmaceutical companies to design, manufacture, distribute, and commercialize innovative drug delivery systems. EMED has consistently pushed the boundaries of medical technology, providing solutions that enhance patient safety, improve clinical outcomes, and simplify drug administration for both patients and healthcare professionals.
EMED Technologies focuses on medical devices for subcutaneous infusion systems. Their products are designed to deliver medications and fluids efficiently and safely to patients, particularly those requiring home care or chronic disease management. They offer several devices such as the SCIg60, Infuset, VersaRate, and others for delivering treatments like immune globulin therapy and other injectable treatments. The company’s emphasis is on patient safety, ease of use, and supporting home-based treatments. The technology developed by EMED is designed to help people who need medicine over long periods of time, especially for treatments like immune globulin therapy or other medications that need to be given slowly and consistently.
LONDON and BUDAPEST, Hungary, Feb. 24, 2026 — Turbine, a leading virtual biology company, today announced a $25 million Series B financing, an expansion of its virtual cell platform across industries and a new immunology-focused partnership with a top 10 pharma company.
The Series B round is led by Interactive Venture Partners, with participation from Beiersdorf AG and existing investors, including MSD Global Health Innovation, Accel and Mercia.
“Central and Eastern Europe has produced exceptional innovation, and Turbine stands out as one of the region’s most compelling virtual biology platforms. Our team assessed the opportunity from both a technology and life sciences perspective, and we believe the ambitious team’s unique capability to virtualize biological experiments with AI positions them to be among the global leaders embedding such technology into biopharma R&D,” said Laszlo Czirjak, Managing Partner at Interactive VP, a fund backed by the family office of Thomas Peterffy, Founder and Chairman of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.
With the new funding, Turbine will expand its platform to virtualize new assays across discovery and translational medicine. Turbine’s lab-in-the-loop will generate additional proprietary perturbation datasets, allowing the company to fine-tune its foundational virtual cell model to novel assay and tissue types. These virtual assays are deployed through the company’s Virtual Lab, a no-code platform that integrates with pharma workflows and systems.
“At Beiersdorf Venture Capital we see clear potential in AI-driven technologies such as virtual cell models that help researchers assess how active ingredients interact with skin biology, skin conditions, and safety. Our investment in Turbine reflects our interest in deep‑tech approaches that could shape the future of skin research.” – Ascan Voswinckel (Head of Beiersdorf Venture Capital)
With the new momentum from the investment round, Turbine is expanding its oncology-focused offering in biopharma to include immunology through a newly announced collaboration with a top 10 pharma company. Per the agreement, Turbine’s virtual assays will be trained to model immune cell behavior using proprietary datasets provided by the partner. The companies aim to provide deep mechanistic insights into immune pathways to inform the identification and prioritization of novel therapeutic combinations. The collaboration will enable scientists to run virtual experiments at a massive scale and interpret in silico results in the Virtual Lab so that only high conviction hypotheses proceed to wet lab validation.
“Combination therapies have been proven to offer patient benefit. However, given the complexity of immunological diseases and the sheer number of potential combinations, virtualization is the only way scientists can rationally explore and identify the right drug combinations, as well as which patient cohorts may benefit from them.” said Szabolcs Nagy, Co-Founder & CEO at Turbine. “We are excited to expand into immunology, as a new therapeutic area, to build an active learning loop where simulations inform the right wet lab experiments, which in turn generate data that improves the next round of predictions to ultimately identify a number of potentially successful immunology drug combinations.”
About Turbine Turbine is virtualizing biological experiments with AI to accelerate drug discovery and improve clinical translatability. Using its foundational virtual cell model powered by its lab-in-the-loop, Turbine creates virtual copies of experimental assays. Running experiments at computational speed and scale allows researchers to test millions of ideas, beyond physical lab constraints, to understand biological drivers of disease. Working with scientists at leading biopharma like MSD (Merck & Co.), AstraZeneca and Bayer, Turbine’s virtual assays have rationalized experiments across more than 30 discovery programs. Backed by leading tech and industry investors like Accel, MSD Global Health Innovation Fund, Interactive Venture Partners and Beiersdorf, Turbine is turning biology into an engineering discipline.
About Beiersdorf Beiersdorf has stood for innovative skin care and pioneering skin research for over 140 years. The company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, employs more than 22,000 people worldwide. In the fiscal year 2024 Beiersdorf generated sales of €9.9 billion and an operating result (EBIT excluding special factors) of €1.4 billion. Leading international brands such as NIVEA (the world’s no. 1 skin care brand*), Eucerin, La Prairie, and Hansaplast are cherished by millions of people around the world every day. Renowned brands such as Aquaphor, Coppertone, and Chantecaille complement the extensive portfolio in the Consumer Business Segment. Through its wholly owned subsidiary tesa SE, Beiersdorf is a globally leading manufacturer of technical adhesive tapes and provides self-adhesive solutions to industry, craft businesses, and consumers. Guided by the purpose ‘Care Beyond Skin’, Beiersdorf pursues an ambitious sustainability agenda with the target to achieve Net Zero emissions by 2045 and aims to champion a more inclusive society.
* Source: Euromonitor International Limited; NIVEA by umbrella brand name in the categories Body Care, Face Care, and Hand Care; in retail value terms, 2024.
About Interactive Venture Partners Interactive Venture Partners, a US investment fund, provides capital to ambitious innovators, entrepreneurs, and founders of startups in Central Eastern Europe. With early-stage investments in companies across industries, preferring some technology-based differentiation, Interactive Venture Partners supports startups seeking to grow by gaining access to larger markets and to a broader network. Interactive Venture Partners is an affiliate of the Interactive Brokers Group of Companies, and its managed fund is supported by the Thomas Peterffy family office.
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 24, 2026 — Handl Health, a technology platform powering the design of employer-sponsored health insurance that reduces costs while improving patient care, has secured $14.2 million in Series A funding to accelerate structural change in American healthcare.
Arthur Ventures led the funding round, which included follow-on investment from Syndra Capital Partners and another strategic investor from the ecosystem. Initial Handl investors Mucker Capital, Riverfront Ventures, Digital Health Venture Partners (DHVP) and Boutique Venture Partners increased their involvement.
Around 60% of U.S. citizens under retirement age are covered by employer-sponsored plans. The cost of these plans, for both consumers and employees, is climbing at an unprecedented rate. Accessibility has also declined. Handl Health aims to address both trends, transforming U.S. healthcare by supporting the insurance brokers, carriers and third-party administrators that are the main point of decision making for employer-sponsored health plans.
Over the past two years, Handl has partnered with employers to reevaluate their network strategy and benefits design, identifying a reported $113 million in savings across nearly $1 billion in healthcare spend. The company also powers alternative health plans that have reportedly reduced consumer costs by 22% on shoppable procedures.
“We’re seeing a once-in-a-lifetime shift in how employers purchase healthcare,” said Ahmed Marmoush, co-founder and CEO of Handl Health. “The building blocks for better health plans already exist across the ecosystem. What’s been missing is the platform that connects insight to action, a place where users can design a plan to optimize care pathways, deploy them through an intuitive member experience and then continuously refine that plan based on real-world performance. That’s exactly what we’ve built.”
The Series A funding will advance Handl’s platform expansion and help the company provide deeper plan analytics. This will lead to improved benefit design with predictable pricing and a higher quality of care for consumers.
“AI and price transparency data are redefining how health plans are designed and managed,” said Nick Goblisch, vice president at Arthur Ventures. “We’re thrilled to partner with Handl Health as its platform leads the next generation of network analytics and alternative health plan design.”
With the Handl platform, insurance brokers, carriers and third-party administrators can easily transform the rigid insurance of yesterday into dynamic, customizable and optimized health plans. These plans are built with the patient front and center, tailored to their unique needs and preferences.
“When building a cost-effective healthcare plan, you can no longer simply choose a carrier or network. You need to understand provider performance on both cost and quality, model different configurations, then evaluate what care pathways actually cost. We give users the infrastructure to design around those realities, deploy the plan and continuously track whether it’s delivering better outcomes at lower cost,” said Ria Shah, Handl’s co-founder and chief product officer.
“That’s how we’re forging the future of healthcare in the U.S.,” Marmoush added. “We’re killing one-size-fits-all, mass marketed health plans. Patients are demanding better health insurance options and employers are listening. It’s time for patients to start loving their health insurance.”
About Handl Health
Handl Health is a technology platform transforming how health plans are evaluated, designed and managed. By unifying healthcare pricing, utilization, benefit and quality data into a single analytical and operational layer, Handl empowers brokers, carriers and third-party administrators to build flexible, cost-effective health benefits. Handl’s technology delivers the infrastructure, analytics and insights needed to power the next generation of alternative health plans.
About Arthur Ventures
Arthur Ventures is an early growth capital firm that leads investments in B2B software companies located outside Silicon Valley. Since 2013, they have partnered with 80+ companies in different cities across all regions of the United States and Canada. Arthur Ventures manages ~$2 billion and is actively investing out of its $800 million in capital committed to its 2025 fund vintages.
Purpose-built “Superhost” platform for hospitality has raised $68M to date, serving 2,000+ restaurant locations with 95%+ guest satisfaction
NEW YORK, Feb. 24, 2026 — Slang AI, the first and leading AI platform purpose-built for hospitality, announced today that it has secured $36 million in Series B funding led by US Venture Partners (USVP), bringing the company’s total funding to $68 million. The round includes $28M of equity and $8M of debt. Thayer Investment Partners and former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson also participated, along with existing investors Homebrew, Stage 2 Capital, Active Capital, Wing VC, Collide Capital, and Underscore VC. Slang AI will use the investment to further expand and deepen its agentic voice AI platform for guest communications in hospitality settings, empowering restaurants, hotels and venues to eliminate missed calls, improve revenue capture, enhance the service capabilities of existing staff members and derive data-driven insights into their operations and customer relationships.
Slang AI’s sophisticated, custom-trained voice AI platform answers every inbound guest call with precision, warmth and professionalism, acting as a “Superhost” and setting the stage for a white-glove customer experience from the guest’s initial interaction. Available 24/7, the platform goes far beyond other hospitality AI systems that simply answer questions, handling more complex interactions such as booking reservations, intelligently routing high-value requests to the right staff, instantly handling guest inquiries, and recognizing returning guests and VIPs. In total, the company’s Superhost platform is designed to help restaurants further elevate the personalized hospitality that keeps loyal customers coming back.
Demand for AI-driven solutions that enhance restaurants’ operations and drive real ROI is surging, with recent industry data demonstrating that 8 out of 10 restaurant executives plan to increase AI spend this year and 94% of operators saying that AI is critical for remaining competitive. Slang AI was an early mover in identifying this trend, and has established itself as an indispensable partner to restaurants and restaurant groups including Texas de Brazil, Carmines, Riot Hospitality Group, Dineamic Hospitality and more by delivering up to 20x ROI for operators along with a 2x increase in phone reservations and 95%+ guest satisfaction.
Moreover, as high-quality data emerges as the key driver of success for enterprise AI deployments, Slang AI has developed a powerful competitive advantage with its dataset of over 25 million customer calls from 10 million unique guests. The company also offers seamless integration with leading online reservation and events platforms including OpenTable, SevenRooms, Tripleseat and Yelp.
Slang AI Co-Founder and CEO Alex Sambvani said, “The best restaurants in the world succeed because they make every guest feel known. Hospitality is about remembering people, anticipating their needs, and never missing an opportunity to serve. Slang AI makes that level of personalization possible at every restaurant, not just a handful of elite establishments. We’re building technology that unlocks a new level of personalization and human connection to every interaction, at any scale, and we deeply appreciate our restaurant partners’ and investors’ shared belief in our vision.”
Slang AI’s “Superhost” Solves Longstanding Pain Points for Hospitality Operators
Restaurants, hotels and venues rely on inbound demand to drive revenue, but they consistently struggle to respond to all the phone calls, voicemails, emails and forms that arrive every day. According to Slang’s own data, up to 50% of inbound opportunities to restaurants go unanswered daily, with roughly 20% arriving after hours. In addition, 10-20% of calls fail during handoff or follow-up, and many private dining and catering requests stall over days of back-and-forth.
At a time when restaurants face intense margin pressure and growing labor challenges, operators are often forced to choose between answering the phone and being fully present with the guests in front of them, leading to degraded service levels and potential brand damage.
Slang AI’s solution is a custom-built agentic voice platform that instantly and consistently captures demand, converts it into bookings and drastically expands the capabilities of existing staff by freeing them to focus on service.
Slang’s hospitality Superhost:
Answers calls instantly, including at night and on weekends;
Handles reservations, private dining, catering, and common guest questions;
Qualifies high-value inquiries and routes them to the right team;
Syncs directly with reservations, events, and CRM systems; and
Works across the channels guests already use, including voice and text.
The platform logs and tracks every guest interaction, giving operators full visibility into inbound demand, with faster booking and more consistent guest response quality. Just as importantly, it helps restaurants manage costs by enhancing revenue capture without adding headcount.
Founding Farmers Restaurant Group Co-Founder Dan Simons said, “Slang AI has fundamentally impacted our business. Before Slang, we were missing calls, reservations, and private event leads that our team couldn’t get to in time. Now those opportunities are captured automatically, and guests who might have booked elsewhere are booking with us. It has delivered meaningful, measurable results, while removing constant interruptions so our staff can stay focused on delivering the highest value human interactions.”
Slang AI’s Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Hospitality AI Race
Slang AI’s Superhost platform is designed to handle complex and delicate guest conversations that can determine that guest’s choice of one restaurant over another. This level of sophistication is made possible by the company’s proprietary dataset of 25 million calls from over 10 million unique guests across more than 2,000 restaurant locations, built up since the company’s launch in 2019.
Slang AI recognized early in the AI era that this dataset would be crucial in teaching its platform how to respond to nuanced caller behavior: how guests phrase requests, when they hesitate, where confusion tends to occur, and what makes an interaction feel smooth and reliable.
Today, Slang AI uses these insights to create sustainable competitive advantage by continuously improving its platform’s accuracy, timing, tone and clarity. The result is a voice AI that sounds natural and understands intent quickly.
US Venture Partners General Partner Rick Lewis said, “Slang AI has built something incredibly rare: a proprietary dataset from 25 million real guest interactions that gives them an insurmountable advantage in understanding how people actually communicate with restaurants. Customer satisfaction at 95%+ is almost unheard of in enterprise software – these operators genuinely love the product. When you combine that kind of data moat with deeply delighted customers, you’re looking at a category-defining company.”
What’s Next
Slang AI will use its Series B funding to deepen its AI capabilities, build multi-modal experiences that extend beyond voice, and expand into new areas of the guest journey – from personalized recommendations to post-visit follow-up and reviews – that drive measurable revenue and engagement for hospitality operators.
The company also intends to expand its engineering, product, and go-to-market teams to meet surging demand while scaling its partnership ecosystem to create an even more seamless experience for operators.
Sambvani concluded, “This funding round will empower us to make the Slang platform even more personal, more proactive, and more intelligent. It will remember even more about guests’ history and preferences, and bring them back through thoughtful, one-to-one outreach. And it will give operators real-time insight into both guest experience and team performance, so issues surface early and service keeps getting better. We’re thrilled to accelerate the expansion of our platform, and look forward to driving even greater value for our customers and investors.”
About Slang AI
Founded in 2019 by Alex Sambvani and Gabe Duncan, Slang AI is the first and leading AI platform purpose-built for the hospitality industry. Slang AI’s superhost answers every call with precision, warmth, and professionalism, booking reservations, handling inquiries, routing high-value requests, and recognizing returning guests, so restaurant staff can stay fully present with the guests in front of them. Serving 2,000+ restaurant locations globally with 95%+ guest satisfaction, Slang AI integrates with leading platforms including OpenTable, SevenRooms, Tripleseat, and Yelp. For more information, visit slang.ai.
About USVP
U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) is a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, partnering with entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into world-changing companies. USVP has invested in over 500 companies spanning four decades, including: Arkose Labs, Box, Carlsmed, Carrot, Cato Networks, Edgewise, Epsagon, Happy Returns, Heartflow, HotelTonight, Human Interest, Inari Medical, Inspire Medical Systems, Intersect ENT, Kenna, Medigate, Omada Health, Pluto TV, Primary, Supplyframe, Standard Bariatrics, ThreatMetrix, Trunk Club, Trusteer and Yammer. USVP focuses on early-stage start-ups that transform cybersecurity, enterprise software, consumer and healthcare. The USVP team consists of former entrepreneurs, technologists, corporate executives, and financial professionals who assist with strategy, scaling, team building, product development, and business development. USVP is based in Menlo Park, California.
Funding will support expanded real-time risk assessment and visibility across complex enterprise environments
ANN ARBOR, Mich., Feb. 24, 2026 — Circadian Risk, a pioneer in enterprise risk analysis SaaS and scenario-based assessment products, has closed a $6 million Series A funding round led by Arthur Ventures, with participation by Roll Tack Ventures and existing investors 11 Tribes and Tamiami Angel Funds. The Series A round was meaningfully oversubscribed, and strong investor demand allowed Circadian Risk to assemble a focused group of partners aligned with its growth strategy.
“We work closely with some of the world’s most sophisticated organizations—early adopters who understand the complexity of modern risk and the challenge of effective management,” said Michael Martin, CEO of Circadian Risk. “This investment affirms that we’re on the right path and gives us the resources to expand our reach, refine our platform, and bring our approach to a broader market.”
A Minneapolis-based early growth equity firm specializing in B2B software companies, Arthur Ventures has invested in more than 70 software companies across North America, including several in the security and risk management space.
“We are excited to partner with Circadian Risk, a company that has earned the confidence of its customers by providing a holistic platform that strengthens physical security and limits risk,” said Jake Olson, Principal at Arthur Ventures. “We believe their solution addresses the unique challenges faced by security teams today and are thrilled to provide growth capital to support their continued success.”
The Circadian Risk platform helps organizations identify and manage physical security risks, compliance gaps, and threat exposure. With this funding, the company will accelerate its next phase of growth, refining its go-to-market strategy and expanding its development team to integrate generative AI into the real-time, scored platform. Circadian Risk will also scale its client success team, deepening industry-specific expertise to support broader enterprise adoption across vertical markets.
Early and continuing investor 11 Tribes has supported Circadian Risk since its initial institutional funding and elected to participate again in the Series A round, citing continued conviction in the company’s leadership, execution, and market opportunity.
“From our earliest conversations, what stood out was the strength of the team and their understanding of the market,” said Mark Phillips, Founder & Managing Partner at 11 Tribes. “Circadian Risk wasn’t just building an interesting product. They had already demonstrated the ability to win customers and execute. That founder-market fit, combined with real traction, gave us confidence early on, and the company’s continued progress has reinforced that conviction.”
Investing in B2B technologies that strengthen the mid-market corporate tech stack and enable scalable growth and resilience across the Midwest’s core industries, Roll Tack is a new investor in Circadian Risk.
“Circadian Risk addresses a critical need that many organizations have historically managed through manual, fragmented processes,” said Sarah Lerner-Mantel, Partner at Roll Tack Ventures. “Customers adopt the platform because it brings real-time visibility across distributed locations, allowing teams to anticipate issues and respond quickly. As adoption grows, the platform benefits from increasing returns to scale, and leaders gain better insight into risk and more confidence in their decisions.”
Before the Series A round, Miami-based Tamiami Angel Funds supported Circadian Risk across two successive funds, both backed by strong member co-investment alongside fund capital—an internal signal of broad confidence in the company’s leadership, execution, and platform.
“Each time Circadian Risk came back and asked us to invest, they had earned it,” said Timothy Cartwright, Founder and Chairman of Tamiami Angel Funds. “They continue to hit milestone after milestone, which made it an easy decision. Their meaningful progress, strong execution, and a willingness to listen give investors increased confidence to support the company over time.”
About Circadian Risk Circadian Risk is a pioneering developer of dynamic risk analysis SaaS that empowers organizations to control risk through awareness and action. The Circadian Risk platform allows customers to monitor organizational risk; manage multiple threat, hazard, and compliance scenarios; and communicate risk throughout their organizations. Offering both online and offline assessments, the software uses a logical, score-based approach to generate interactive dashboards and visualizations—updated in near-real time—and optimize the decision-making process. To learn more, visitwww.circadianrisk.com.
