The Challenge of Staying In
Your Tuesday VC Breakfast Rundown
Engagement is the hardest discipline to fake. Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., in The Mastery of Self, calls out the challenge: to remain fully present when distraction, doubt, and fatigue would be easier. That tension defines founders more than vision does. Anyone can dream. Fewer can stay engaged when the dream feels far away.
The companies in today’s list embody that truth. They aren’t here because they coasted on inspiration. They’re here because their teams chose to stay in the work, through broken prototypes, skeptical markets, and long stretches where the reward was invisible. Engagement, not excitement, kept them moving.
That’s the quiet filter of mastery. The willingness to commit not only when it shines, but especially when it drags. These companies prove that belief without engagement is just a story. And stories without presence never build anything that lasts.
Rivanna secures an $800K grant from the Virginia Catalyst Program (matched with $1.6M), adding to its $90M+ arsenal. Co-founders Will Mauldin and Kevin Owen turned attic hacks into FDA-cleared AI ultrasound platforms guiding spinal procedures with surgical precision. With Accuro 3S FDA-cleared and clinical studies in motion, they’re shaping a new standard for anesthesia and pain management worldwide.
Cognition rockets with a $500M Series C (Founders Fund, 8VC, Khosla Ventures), valuing the AI software engineer builder at $9.8B. Scott Wu, Steven Hao, and Walden Yan aren’t writing tools for developers, they’re coding the future with Devin, the first autonomous AI engineer. With enterprise adoption already stretching from Microsoft to Goldman Sachs, this isn’t hype, it’s a market reset in motion.
Redi Health raises $6M, bringing total funding to $18M. Founders Jeff Grandia and John Wadsworth are giving rural healthcare the analytics muscle it’s lacked for decades, targeting outcomes over hype in an underserved, high-need market. Eighteen million may look modest next to unicorn rounds, but it’s capital aimed with deadly accuracy at a market others ignore.
Peerbridge Health pulls in $7.18M toward an $8M raise. Founder Dr. Angelo Acquista and CEO Chris Darland are scaling FDA-cleared wireless cardiac monitoring with AI precision that delivers hospital-grade diagnostics in under 30 minutes. With six million Americans living with heart failure, their device is pushing critical care out of hospitals and into homes.
Coral Innovations (formerly MFNS Tech) closes $1.4M seed (Good Growth Capital) plus NSF SBIR support. Founders Vinayak P. Dravid and Vikas Nandwana are scaling Northwestern-born nanotech sponges that strip oil and toxins from water at industrial scale. Their OHM Sponge has already proven itself in U.S. spill trials, making clean water not a promise but a product.
Polestar Analytics locks down $12.5M Series A from family offices and institutions. Co-founders Chetan Alsisaria, Amit Alsisaria, and Ajay Goenka run a 600-person AI analytics machine serving giants like Samsung and Bayer, now pushing agentic AI deeper into enterprise workflows. With 80%+ growth year after year, they’re building an enterprise compass that Fortune 500s can’t afford to ignore.
Courserev.ai receives strategic seed backing from The Walden Golf Group. Founders Manna Justin and Del Ratcliffe are automating golf course operations with AI booking, pricing, and staffing tools, already running live across 30+ U.S. courses. In a sport crushed by labor shortages, their platform is already converting missed calls into revenue streams.
IVIX raises $60M Series B (OG Venture Partners, Insight, Citi Ventures). Founders Mattan Fattal and Doron Passov built an AI platform uncovering billions in hidden tax revenue, now scaling globally to combat the $20T shadow economy. With governments from the IRS to HMRC already on board, they’re turning financial crime into a solvable equation.
Medallion scores $43M (Acrew Capital, Sequoia, GV). Founder Derek Lo leads a team reinventing healthcare credentialing, already touching 10% of the U.S. provider workforce and scaling AI infrastructure across 250+ health systems. Credentialing that once dragged for days now takes hours, freeing healthcare to run at the speed of care itself.
Tote.ai hauls in $22.6M Series A (Cota Capital, Storm Ventures, Cervin Ventures). Founder Shyam Rao is reinventing convenience retail with an AI-native POS that unifies pump-to-shelf transactions in real time, turning gas stations into true convenience hubs. With $837B in U.S. c-store spend up for grabs, Tote.ai is quietly rewriting the future of checkout.
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.
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