The Strength to Bend Without Breaking
Your Friday VC Breakfast Rundown
Storms don’t last, but founders do. The Stoics remind us that pain is temporary, while the lessons forged in it last a lifetime. Every rejection, every delay, every market shift carries a hidden seed. Resilience is the skill of finding it, planting it, and letting it grow into strength.
The companies in today’s list are proof. They’ve endured the same pressure every builder faces, the failed launches, the broken prototypes, the missed funding rounds. What sets them apart isn’t that they avoided hardship. It’s that they refused to let it break them. They controlled what they could, released what they couldn’t, and used every setback as raw material for progress.
That’s the Stoic advantage in venture: to bend without breaking. To see storms not as punishment, but as process. To recognize that even small steps forward compound when taken in the face of adversity. These founders didn’t escape the storm. They rose inside it, and came out stronger on the other side.
Vanara Capital launches its inaugural fund ($50M, $100M, anchor TPG NEXT). Founded by Neil Kamath and Hayden Lekacz, the ex-TPG investors are delivering flexible capital solutions for growth-stage software, internet, and tech-enabled services companies. Their approach is a “solutions-first” model, adapting capital structures around founder needs instead of forcing fit.
Convoke raises $8.6M seed (Kleiner Perkins, Dimension, ACME). Alex Telford, Maged Ahmed and Vikas Velagapudi are building an AI-native OS for biopharma, slashing paperwork timelines and saving half a million dollars per stalled drug day. Already cutting regulatory prep time by weeks, they’re showing that “self-driving biopharma” is more than a slogan.
HexaVentures secures a $100M valuation (internal). Joss Cardozs is scaling HexaTrades, an AI-powered quant trading platform, while piloting real-world asset tokenization aimed at unlocking a $30T market. With 300% YoY growth and no outside dilution, the company is proving traction can finance itself.
Astro Mechanica lands new funding (United Airlines Ventures). Ian Brooke and team are developing the Duality turboelectric adaptive engine, already tested and backed by defense partners, now pulling commercial airlines into the supersonic race. The play is clear, flexible Mach 2+ flight across defense, commercial, and eventually space applications.
Garage raises $13.5M Series A (Infinity Ventures, Initialized Capital, FJ Labs). Martin Hunt and Alaz Sengul are modernizing procurement for public safety, turning six-figure fire truck transactions into secure, AI-powered marketplace flows. Already live in all 50 states, the platform is saving municipalities time, money, and taxpayer trust.
Upstage raises $45M Series B bridge (Korea Development Bank, Amazon Web Services, AMD). Sung Kim, Eunjeong Lucy Park, and Hwalsuk Lee are pushing enterprise-grade generative AI into Fortune 500 workflows, driving 95% accuracy in insurance claims processing. With $157M raised to date, the company is positioned to expand its Solar LLMs and multimodal stack globally.
Zed Industries raises $32M Series B (Sequoia Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Root Ventures). GitHub veterans Nathan Sobo, Antonio Scandurra, and Max Brunsfeld are reimagining the code editor in Rust with multiplayer collaboration and AI-native development. With 150K+ MAUs and adoption across Anthropic, Ramp, and Shopify, Zed is becoming the IDE of choice for the next generation of engineers.
Overhaul raises $105M Series C (Springcoast Partners, Edison Partners, Morgan Stanley Investment Management). Barry Conlon and David Warrick are scaling active defense for supply chains, protecting $1.4T in trade with predictive AI. Their acquisitions and insurance integrations prove this is more than software, it’s a risk and cost reduction engine.
Group14 Technologies raises $463M Series D (SK Inc., Porsche Investments, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund). Rick Luebbe, Rick Costantino, and Aaron Feaver are delivering silicon-carbon anodes with 50% more energy density, already in use across 95% of global lithium-ion production. With $1B+ raised and plants across three continents, they’ve positioned silicon as the new backbone of electrification.
Bluefish raises $20M Series A (New Enterprise Associates, Salesforce Ventures, Crane Venture Partners). Alex Sherman, Andrei Dunca, and Jing Feng are building an AI-driven marketing OS for the Fortune 500, with Adidas, Omnicom, and Tishman Speyer already onboard. With 10x revenue growth in six months, they’re proving enterprise adoption is moving faster than the hype cycle.
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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