The Frequency That Found Us

Your Monday VC Breakfast Rundown

Montreal was almost a waste. And then it broke us open.

Old Montreal at dusk. Stereo at full tilt. Cristoph spinning like he knew our names. A guy on the sidewalk pulling symphonies out of six strings. Family. Friends. Vinyl whispering truths at 3am. Montreal was chaos with clarity buried inside it. The kind of clarity you have to earn through noise.

We almost missed it. Almost packed up too soon. And then it caught, like a fuse finally reaching flame.

That’s what this work is, isn’t it? You chase signals in static. You go where it might click. And when it does, everything changes. Montreal became a bond. Not in theory. In blood. In rhythm. In the vow to build something that outlasts the music.

The ride back to Long Island didn’t need words. That’s how you know it was real. Here’s who’s building from that kind of ignition…

Chalk lands $50M Series A at a $500M valuation (Felicis, Triatomic, General Catalyst) to build the data stack for real-time AI. Marc Freed-Finnegan, Elliot Marx, and Andrew Moreland are delivering C++/Rust-level inference speeds in Python, powering infra for fintech, healthcare, and cybersecurity with 100K+ QPS. Their edge is a platform that compiles Python into blazing-fast pipelines and integrates native LLM tooling. With Felicis’ Aydin Senkut joining the board, Chalk’s not experimenting, they’re executing.

Conduit raises $36M Series A (Dragonfly, Altos Ventures, Sound) to reinvent cross-border B2B payments with stablecoin rails. Kirill Gertman and Michael Gregson stitched together SWIFT, ACH, and local currency flows to slash costs 75%, settle in 37 seconds, and process $10B in annualized volume. Already live in 9 countries and licensed by FINTRAC and FinCEN, Conduit’s built the payments stack banks wish they had. Their compliance-led infrastructure is moving money faster than most incumbents can file a memo.

RevisionDojo brings in $3.4M Seed (468 Capital, Y Combinator, Goodwater) to personalize learning at scale. Bowen Liu, Janet Liu, and Michael Tong launched Jojo, an AI tutor trained on rigorous academic data that’s replacing EdTech stacks in 2,400+ schools and supporting 310K+ learners across 180 countries. With real-time grading, multilingual support, and ISO compliance underway, they’re building the ultimate exam companion. It’s not a tool, it’s a global discipline engine reshaping how students learn.

Radiant fuels up with $165M Series C (DCVC, a16z, USV) to bring mobile nuclear energy mainstream. Doug Bernauer, Bob Urberger, and Tori Shivanandan are packaging 1MW Kaleidos reactors into shipping containers with TRISO fuel, no water, and helium-cooled passive safety for decentralized, clean, portable power. They’ve cleared tests at Idaho National Lab and locked in graphite and HALEU fuel supply. The next step? Commercialization at 50 units/year starting 2028, no grid, no diesel, no delay.

AssistIQ pulls in $11.5M Series A (Battery Ventures, Tamarind Hill) to eliminate surgical supply waste in hospitals. Lisa Israelovitch, alongside Mundeep Minhas, Thierry Wong, and Dr. Moishe Liberman, is scaling a computer vision platform already deployed in 29 hospitals, cutting supply waste by 30% and digitizing ORs in seconds. Their platform processes 12TB of surgical video daily, capturing 98%+ of chargeable items. With HIPAA, HITRUST, and Epic integrations live, they’re not pitching pilots, they’re scaling real results.

Heron Power locks in $38M Series A (Capricorn Investment Group, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Energy Impact Partners). Drew Baglino, the ex-Tesla heavyweight, is leading a team that’s swapped oil and copper for silicon carbide and speed. Their solid-state transformer shrinks the footprint, flips flow bidirectional, and operates with 99%+ efficiency, built for hyperscale, not heritage. UL cert hits Q3, field demos land in 2026, and a 100 MW line opens in Scotts Valley. The grid just got a new nerve center.

Terminus Capital Partners raises $250M debut fund, oversubscribed in under 90 days. Alex Western isn’t here for unicorn fantasies, he’s building vertical SaaS juggernauts with real revenue and ruthless precision. Backed by endowments and institutional LPs, TCP’s team, John Ale, Garret Flynn, Kerry Edwards, Bobbi Kommineni, Claudia Williams, executes a tight buy-and-build model that turned Voxco, Delta Data, and Ascribe into high-performance machines. Dual HQs in ATL and ATX, but this firm hunts everywhere.

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.

If engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.