Trust Is the Strategy
Your Friday VC Breakfast Rundown
Control feels safe. But in a fast-moving startup, control is a bottleneck. The real unlock, the one that scales, is trust, sharpened by clarity. Extreme Ownership teaches this through the principle of decentralized command: when people know the mission, they don’t need constant direction. They need space to execute.
The founders we’re spotlighting today understand that leadership isn’t about doing more, it’s about enabling more. They build teams that think for themselves. They communicate with precision, not volume. And they make sure everyone, from interns to investors, knows what winning looks like.
This isn’t abdication. It’s alignment. The companies that last are led by people who lead through others, not around them. They don’t confuse presence with leadership. They push decisions to the edge, because that’s where speed lives. Like geese in a V, they move faster because they move together.
Today’s featured companies weren’t just founded, they were entrusted. That’s why they’re moving differently. And why they’re built to last.
Swift Navigation clocks $50M Series E (Crosslink Capital, NEA, Eclipse Ventures) to take centimeter-accurate positioning global. Timothy Harris, Colin Beighley, and Fergus Noble turned a hacked-together RTK prototype into Skylark and Starling, ISO 26262-certified, cloud-native, and live on 10M+ vehicles and robots. They’re not chasing precision, they’re setting the standard.
5C Group drops an $835M infrastructure war chest (Brookfield, Deutsche Bank) to redefine AI data centers from scratch. Jonathan Ahdoot (CEO), Robert Ahdoot (Chairman), and Simon Ahdoot (Hypertec CEO) are fusing cloud velocity with operator DNA, building 100kW+ racks, CIARA immersion tech, and GPU clusters faster than you can say “deployment.” This is hyperscale with horsepower, and no legacy drag.
Estes Energy slams $11M seed (BMW i Ventures, Fortescue, DCVC) to rip fossil fuels out of heavy-duty transport. Dustin Grace, Çağkan Yildiz, and David Lai are shipping battery packs with 220 Wh/kg, magnesium-rich armor, and Rust-coded brains. When diesel dies, it’ll be Estes swinging the hammer.
April raises $38M Series B (QED Investors, Nyca, Team8) to make taxes frictionless, embedded, and intelligent. Ben Borodach and Daniel Marcous built an AI-native tax platform now filed in all 50 states. 22-minute average filing time. It’s not just filing faster, it’s rethinking the fabric of fintech.
Olto lands $5.1M pre-seed (Nexus Venture Partners, The General Partnership) to kill the demo grind. Kintan Brahmbhatt, Jean-Baptiste Chaput, and Pranav Midha built AI demos personalized to the prospect, live, secure, and scaling. Demandbase and Eightfold are already onboard. This is demo engineering with an API and an attitude.
Vanta hauls in $150M Series D (Wellington, Goldman Sachs, Sequoia) at a $4.15B valuation to keep scaling trust as infrastructure. Christina Cacioppo’s team is pushing AI-driven compliance that turns audits into assets. 200M+ resources monitored, 12K+ customers, and GRC with real-time teeth. They didn’t just automate trust, they productized it.
Hypernatural tops up to $9.2M (Underscore VC, AIX Ventures) for its lightning-fast AI Video engine. Rebecca Kossnick and Taylor Hughes built an editor that converts text, scripts, and podcasts into production-ready videos in under 2 minutes. From raw idea to polished media, this is what creative velocity looks like.
Starseer raises $2M seed (Gula Tech Adventures) to light up the dark corners of AI risk. Red Teamer Tim Schulz and threat-hunting machine Carl Hurd give compliance teams black-box visibility and model defense playbooks. They’re not just scanning models, they’re disarming the blackbox unknown.
Volca pulls $5.5M seed (Pathlight Ventures, MetaProp) to automate and weaponize homeservices referrals. Brendan Kazanjian, Brandon Rabovsky, and Jack Morton built an AI-native SMS platform that books leads, routes jobs, and sends payouts, all via text. It’s referral tech for an industry built on relationships, not dashboards.
Dispatch Bio closes a stealthy $201M Series A (ARCH, Parker Institute, BMS) to scale its Flare platform, immunotherapy that tags tumors, calls in custom CARTs, and leaves no survivors. Led by Dr. Sabah Oney with biotech legends Carl June and Kole Roybal backing. They’re not treating cancer, they’re engineering its extinction.
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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