You Can’t Fake the Fire
Your Monday VC Breakfast Rundown
Some work you can fake. But not the kind that changes things. Not the kind that scales with soul. That kind of work, the kind that matters, only comes when passion’s baked in. And the founders on this week’s rundown didn’t choose safe. They chose real. They walked away from the paths that made sense on paper to chase something they could feel.
That shows up in their companies. In the product details. In the culture. In the decisions they made when no one was watching. You can tell they’re not here just to hit KPIs, they’re here because the work called them. Because it kept them up at night. Because it refused to leave them alone.
There’s a difference between building from duty and building from fire. These teams? They’re lit from within. You won’t see it in the headlines. But you’ll feel it in how they show up. Again and again. Clear-eyed. Battle-tested. Deeply aligned.
So if you’re out there forcing something that no longer feeds you, this is your sign. Don’t just finish what you started. Start what you believe in. Because your company won’t survive on credentials. It’ll survive on conviction.
And that kind of clarity? It always starts before breakfast.
And stays long after the deck’s been closed.
Brightspeed secured $575M growth financing (existing: Apollo Global Management, Inc., Mubadala). CEO Tom Maguire, Robert Mudge, and Chris Creager are scaling fiber to 5M+ homes across 20 underserved states with Wi-Fi 6, XGS-PON, and 103,000 miles of line. With a 290 Mbps average download and fastest-ISP nods from HighSpeedInternet.com, Brightspeed isn’t catching up, it’s rearchitecting access. Rural broadband just got a new blueprint.
NovaSpark Energy Corporation locked in fresh funding (undisclosed, led by Boot64 Ventures). Co-founders Rick Harlow, Kevin White, Lanson Burrows Jones Jr., and Tom Barnett are delivering mobile hydrogen systems that generate clean fuel from thin air. With United States Department of Defense contracts and drones flying 1,000 miles on NovaSpark hydrogen, this is energy resilience for blackouts, battlefields, and climate zones. No water? No grid? No problem.
Paradigm Therapeutics, Inc. raised $12.6M additional funding (Eshelman Ventures, LLC). Founder Dr. Robert Ryan (ex-Scioderm, $957M exit) is bringing SD-101 (Zorblisa™) to market for Epidermolysis Bullosa, with FDA Breakthrough status and completed Phase III trials. This isn’t a new molecule, it’s a redemption arc for rare disease families failed by biotech inertia. And now, the NDA clock is ticking.
Commure raised $200M non-dilutive capital (General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund). CEO Tanay Tandon and CTO Eugene Kuznetsov built a FHIR-native, EHR-agnostic OS powering ambient AI and autonomous coding across 130+ health systems. With @HCA Healthcare rolling out the largest AI deployment in U.S. history, Commure isn’t pitching promises, it’s reclaiming clinical time at scale.
All In Food raised $4M seed (Obvious Ventures). Founders Ryan Devlin, Todd Grinnell, Kristen Bell, and CEO James McGinnis turned a humanitarian mission into a bar brand with a cause, and a shelf spot at Starbucks. With 30M+ food packets delivered and a rebrand that dropped the savior complex, All In is betting USDA Organic with impact is more than mission, it’s market share.
Amaros AI closed its Series A (undisclosed). Vartan Ghazarossian and Ben Toker built EvidenceEngine™, a platform decoding 300M+ images across 12 imaging modalities to accelerate trials and drive retinal diagnostics. With FDA advisors, retina legends, and a product already 5x faster in recruiting patients, Amaros isn’t chasing disruption, it’s organizing clinical vision at the source.
typedef launched with $5.5M seed (Pear VC, Verissimo Ventures, Tokyo Black). Founders Yoni Michael and Kostas Pardalis built a serverless, inference-first data engine tuned for AI-native workloads. With early traction at Matic and an open-source framework that outperforms Spark on LLMs, Typedef isn’t refactoring old infra, it’s building the backbone for AI pipelines that don’t break.
Arima Genomics raised $22M Series C (Illumina Ventures, Berkeley Catalyst Fund). New CEO Tom Willis (ex-Sequenta) joins co-founder Dr. Sid Selvaraj to scale Arima’s 3D genomic assays for oncology. With 700+ customers, a CLIA lab, and Hi-C chemistry detecting gene fusions and structural variants missed by linear methods, Arima is the diagnostics shift biotech’s been waiting for.
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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