From Knowing to Doing
Your Friday VC Breakfast Rundown
Learning is easy. Applying what you’ve learned, that’s the real work. Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson offers a framework for understanding communication styles. But the value isn’t in knowing the colors. It’s in using that knowledge to adapt how you listen, speak, and lead.
The founders we’re highlighting today don’t just stack information for the sake of it. They translate it into action. They use what they’ve learned to close gaps, solve problems faster, and build teams that actually function under pressure.
It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about letting what you’ve learned change the way you operate. That’s how you turn education into execution, and execution into results.
FluidCloud pulls in $8.1M Seed (Unusual Ventures, U First Capital) to break cloud lock-in with AI-powered workload portability across AWS, Azure, GCP, and VMware. Sharad Kumar’s patented Cloud Cloning™ turns migrations into hours-long affairs, not multi-quarter death marches. Already live with enterprise names like Atlassian and Vultr, they’re arming DevOps teams with true infrastructure freedom.
Keye scores $5M Seed (Sorenson Capital, General Catalyst, Y Combinator) to automate private equity diligence. Rohan Parikh, Conor Brown, and Lalit Lal replace spreadsheet armies with machine-auditable analysis, already in use at 40% of top 25 PE firms. Their platform’s precision transforms diligence from a grind into a competitive advantage.
Arbital Health lands $31M Series B (Valtruis, Transformation Capital) to power the shift to value-based care. Brian Overstreet and Travis May are building the adjudication engine reconciling multi-party risk contracts for 600K+ patient lives. Their neutral platform is quietly becoming the industry standard for risk-based payment alignment.
Planted Solar raises $12M Series B (Piva Capital, Breakthrough Energy Ventures) to deploy utility-grade solar on slopes up to 27%. Eric Brown and Nate Beckett’s terrain-following robotics triple install speed while cutting costs by 30%. This is solar deployment redefined, no flat land required.
Caspian nets $5.4M Seed (Primary Venture Partners, Blank Ventures) to automate customs duty recovery. Flexport alums Justin Sherlock and Matt Ebeweber reduce refund timelines from months to days for exporters and manufacturers. They’re turning forgotten refunds into a new revenue stream.
lakeFS secures $20M Growth (Maor Investments, Dell Technologies Capital) to bring Git-style version control to petabyte-scale enterprise data. Dr. Einat Orr and Oz Katz make AI pipelines reproducible, compliant, and collaborative. In the age of AI audits, they’re building the foundation for explainable outcomes.
MAUI Imaging takes $14M Series A (Acertara Acoustic Laboratories) to deliver battlefield-grade volumetric imaging that sees through bone, gas, and implants. David J. Specht leads a patented platform already deployed in trauma centers and military units. This is diagnostic clarity in seconds where every second counts.
Kinvard Bio picks up $2.7M Non-Dilutive (CARB-X) to develop synthetic, broad-spectrum antibiotics. Dr. Lloyd Payne and team are targeting AMR-resistant respiratory and urinary infections with next-gen oxepanoprolinamides. It’s one of the few truly novel antibiotic classes in active development.
Ambercycle gets Strategic Investment (Goldwin Play Earth Fund) to scale molecular regeneration of polyester waste. Shay Sethi and Moby Ahmed’s Cycora® fiber is already in luxury apparel and global retail pipelines. They’re engineering circular fashion at industrial scale.
Tzafon claims $9.7M Pre-Seed (Streamlined Ventures, HV Capital) to build action-driven multi-agent AI systems. Noah Löfquist and Simon Mattias Koser’s orchestration engine launches thousands of concurrent agents with zero errors. This is AI that executes, not just answers.
Matrice.ai expands Seed (Voltage Park, Ax3.ai) to scale Vision AI Factories for industrial and city-scale deployments. Amar Krishna’s GPU-optimized pipelines cut camera AI deployment times by 40%. They’re proving computer vision belongs in the field, not the lab.
Motive hauls in $150M Series F (Insight Partners, Kleiner Perkins, Greenoaks Capital Partners) to power AI-driven ops for trucking, logistics, and construction. Shoaib Makani’s platform runs 120K+ businesses with predictive safety, spend control, and full-stack orchestration. Their reach makes them the operating system for the physical economy.
Let’s connect and keep the momentum going across the tech ecosystem. Whether you’re a founder shaping the future, a leader driving change, a VC backing bold ideas, or an investor spotting the next big thing—together, we’re pushing boundaries. Proud to be building the future with you.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn and Twitter (X), and keep the conversation going.
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