The Last Note Never Ends

Your Sunday VC Breakfast Rundown:

You thought the city would slow down? You must be new. Sunday in New Orleans isn’t a wind-down, it’s the encore. The gospel tent is breaking hearts, the brass is bruising skies, and someone just passed you a plate so rich in flavor it feels like a holy vision. From Frenchmen to the Fairgrounds, it’s all fusion: funk laced with fire, jazz cooked in acid and sweat.

Founders still dancing, still building, still pushing ideas that hit like a last solo at sunrise. The weekend’s not over, it’s peaking.

Astronomer just launched a $93M Series D (Bain Capital Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Insight Partners, Meritech Capital, Venrock, Bosch Ventures) to scale Astro, their unified DataOps platform built on Apache Airflow. Founders Greg Neiheisel, Ry Walker, and Tim Brunk lit the fuse, now with CEO Andy Byron and CTO Viraj Parekh at the helm, they’re running AI/ML ops for Ford and powering 700+ global enterprises. This isn’t traction. It’s gravity.

CND Life Sciences raised $13.5M Series A (Cambrian Capital, Labcorp, Tanis Ventures, Lupo Labs) to scale the Syn-One Test®, the first skin-based diagnostic for Parkinson’s. Built by neuro legends Dr. Todd Levine, Dr. Christopher Gibbons, and Dr. Roy Freeman, and led by CEO Richard J. Morello, this team is turning skin biopsies into neurological clarity and Scottsdale into a neurodiagnostics powerhouse.

Phoenix Tailings adds $33M to close out a $76M Series B (Envisioning Partners, Escape Velocity, Builders Vision, Yamaha Motor Ventures, Presidio, BMW i Ventures, In-Q-Tel). Founded by Nicholas Myers, Anthony Balladon, Dr. Tomás Villalón Jr., and Michelle Chao, they’re the only U.S. outfit refining rare earth metals cleanly. From 40-ton output to a 500-ton future, they’re rewriting the rules of sustainability and sovereignty.

Stately Bio raised $12M seed (AIX Ventures, Dimension, Village Global, BoxOne, Mitsui, plus angels like Jeff Dean and Jeremy Wertheimer) to industrialize regenerative cell therapy. Founder Frank Li spent three years in stealth after leaving Calico Life Sciences, now he’s using machine vision to see what microscopes can’t, and turning cell behavior into programmable insight.

Trek Health locked in $11M Series A (Madrona, Correlation Ventures, LifeX, Accrete, SNR, Founder Collective) to automate the broken backend of mental health payments. Co-founders Dilpreet Sahota and Gopal Narayan are driving real-time analytics across 900+ payer networks and 15,000+ providers. With a 550% revenue spike, Trek isn’t iterating. It’s outflanking the system.

Kintsugi raised $18M (Vertex Inc., strategic + minority investment) to untangle global sales tax with AI-fueled precision. Pujun Bhatnagar, Jeff Gibson, and Barkin Doganay built a lean, SMB-focused engine that’s now powering $7.7B in transactions with just 0.1% churn. No spreadsheets, no headaches, just real infrastructure at 93% gross margins.

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.