The Long Game of Trust

Kapitus, InterVest Capital Partners

Kapitus has been acquired by an affiliate of InterVest Capital Partners. The signal is the fit between a 20-year small-business financing platform and an investor built around specialty finance.

Kapitus says it has connected more than $10B in growth capital to over 65,000 small businesses since 2006. Its products include term loans, revenue-based financing, equipment financing, SBA loans, and revolving lines of credit. This is not a shiny demo looking for a business model. It is a financing engine with operating history, distribution, underwriting infrastructure, and customers who need capital.

InterVest brings a different kind of fuel. The New York alternative investment manager focuses on asset-based lending, leasing, structured finance, and real estate. It reports more than 160 investment vehicles and over $25B in committed capital since 1999. InterVest understands how balance sheets become products, and how products become platforms.

Andrew Reiser, CEO, said the partnership adds capital and strategic support while helping the company expand its product portfolio. Steven Tenenbayev, CIO, described Kapitus as a premier U.S. small-business lending platform. According to the announcement, Kapitus will continue operating independently.

That independence matters. Small-business finance is not won by stapling a bigger logo onto an application form. It is won through disciplined underwriting, reliable funding capacity, fast decisions, and a product portfolio broad enough to serve companies that fall outside a bank's traditional credit parameters.

Kapitus has spent years expanding that portfolio. In 2024, it acquired Ten Oaks Commercial Capital to launch an equipment financing business. Later that year, a $45M corporate note financing increased its total debt facilities to $585M. InterVest now sits behind a lender with proven experience originating, matching, and deploying capital.

The purchase price, seller, and transaction structure were not disclosed, limiting any meaningful valuation analysis. What is clear is the strategic direction: more capital behind an established SMB lending platform, greater capacity to expand its product portfolio, and an owner with experience scaling non-bank finance businesses.

For founders and operators, durable distribution, disciplined underwriting, and customer trust become strategic assets long after novelty stops attracting attention. This acquisition reflects the value of those fundamentals. The next proof point is whether new ownership expands access to capital without diminishing the operational independence that made the platform valuable in the first place.

Bridgepoint, Lansweeper

Bridgepoint has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Lansweeper, a deal where the product sounds ordinary until an enterprise depends on it.

Lansweeper maps the technology inside an organization: laptops, servers, cloud resources, operational technology, connected devices, and the software running across them. It turns that sprawl into a normalized inventory that IT and security teams can actually use. Bridgepoint says the platform supports more than 2 billion recognized technology assets across thousands of organizations.

Cybersecurity teams cannot protect assets they cannot identify. Operations teams cannot automate infrastructure they cannot trust. AI agents cannot make reliable decisions when the context beneath them is incomplete, duplicated, or outdated. Lansweeper sits upstream, supplying the asset intelligence that makes the rest of the technology stack less likely to confidently make the wrong decision.

Bridgepoint is not acquiring another dashboard. It is investing in a control layer for a world where IT, OT, IoT, cloud, security, compliance, and AI workflows increasingly converge inside the same enterprise environment.

The transaction was announced on July 27, 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to customary conditions, including regulatory approvals. Dave Goossens, CEO, and the management team will remain significant shareholders. Dovesco will retain a minority investment, while Insight Partners and Imker Group will exit.

That ownership structure is notable. Management is remaining invested, an existing shareholder is continuing alongside the business, and Bridgepoint brings a reported $97.3B in assets under management, along with experience across DataExpert, Infinigate, and iC Consult.

The strategy is straightforward: accelerate product innovation, expand AI and cybersecurity capabilities, support international growth, strengthen technology partnerships, and pursue selective acquisitions. Lansweeper most recently acquired Redjack in 2025. Bridgepoint adds the capital to continue executing that strategy.

The broader lesson extends beyond this transaction. Asset intelligence is becoming foundational infrastructure. Every security platform, service management workflow, compliance program, and AI system is only as effective as the inventory beneath it. If the map is wrong, automation simply reaches the wrong answer faster.

More than two decades of building trusted asset intelligence positioned Lansweeper for this next stage of growth. Bridgepoint is investing in that foundation, not replacing it. The next measure of success will be whether additional capital helps transform trusted asset data into a default operating layer for enterprise cybersecurity and AI.

Bowe & Gant Electrical Services

Bowe & Gant Electrical Services just gave private equity a useful reminder: infrastructure value can live in skilled crews, high voltage, and the cost of getting critical power work wrong.

Greenbelt Capital Partners has made a majority investment in the southern New Jersey electrical and energy infrastructure provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. Vincent Bowe, CEO, and Gabriel Gant, President, will retain significant equity and continue leading the business.

That continuity matters. Founded in 2014, Bowe & Gant built a full-lifecycle operation spanning electrical construction, power distribution, substations, testing, commissioning, maintenance, repair, and renewable energy interconnection. The company now employs approximately 200 people and works with IBEW locals across New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Those capabilities serve markets where power failures are not minor inconveniences. Data centers, utilities, renewable energy, healthcare, and industrial operators all depend on skilled labor, disciplined execution, and teams capable of managing high-voltage distribution and providing 24/7 emergency service.

The timing is difficult to overlook. The International Energy Agency expects data centers to account for roughly half of U.S. electricity demand growth through 2030. More demand means more generation, more interconnection, more substations, more testing, and greater pressure on the physical infrastructure supporting every digital promise.

Greenbelt is not investing in a theory about electrification. It is backing a company already operating inside the infrastructure layer that makes electrification possible. Samuel Graham, Managing Director, highlighted Bowe & Gant's workforce, customer focus, and track record in mission-critical markets.

For Vincent Bowe and Gabriel Gant, the investment adds institutional capital while preserving meaningful ownership and operational control. Greenbelt says its strategy is to invest in the team, expand capabilities, strengthen customer relationships, and scale across the Northeast. That is a disciplined version of growth: increasing capacity without disconnecting the business from the people who built its reputation.

The broader takeaway extends beyond this transaction. In an economy increasingly focused on intelligence at the software layer, durable value continues to be created by companies that install, test, maintain, and repair the physical infrastructure beneath it. This investment reflects the importance of those capabilities. The next chapter will be measured by how successfully additional capital helps expand capacity while preserving the execution standards that earned Bowe & Gant its position in the market.

KGK Science

KGK Science has spent nearly three decades doing the unglamorous work the consumer health market eventually has to answer for: proving whether a product claim can survive contact with evidence.

Now the London, Ontario-based contract research organization has received a growth investment led by Maxim Partners. The transaction closed on June 30, and financial terms were not disclosed. No valuation, investment amount, or ownership percentage was announced.

Founded in 1997, KGK designs and conducts human clinical trials, provides regulatory consulting and claim substantiation, and supports preclinical development for dietary supplement, nutraceutical, and consumer health companies. The company says it has completed more than 400 trials across more than 40 health indications and contributed to over 150 peer-reviewed publications.

Those figures are more than credentials. The FTC expects health product claims to be supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence, while the FDA requires dietary supplement structure/function claims to be truthful and not misleading. In an industry where marketing often moves faster than proof, research is what keeps a promising product from becoming a very expensive lesson.

Najla Guthrie, CEO, will continue leading KGK alongside the existing management team. The investment will support expanded clinical trial capacity, decentralized and virtual trials, enhanced regulatory services, and broader commercial growth.

The fit with Maxim Partners is straightforward. The Chicago-based investor focuses on founder-led businesses across nutrition, wellness, and adjacent sectors. Gregg Wilson, Founder and Managing Partner, brings more than 30 years of private equity experience and leads the firm's education and wellness investment strategy.

The real signal is where the capital is going. Not into another consumer brand competing for shelf space, but into the scientific and regulatory infrastructure supporting those brands. Product concepts, creator campaigns, and distribution can move quickly. Credible study design, participant recruitment, data management, and defensible claims cannot. KGK operates in the space between innovation and proof.

The transaction also keeps the founder at the helm. Najla Guthrie built KGK from its research roots at Western University into a specialized contract research organization. Maxim is backing that operating expertise with capital and sector experience rather than replacing it.

Scientific credibility is becoming an increasingly valuable competitive advantage in consumer health. This investment reflects that shift. The next chapter for KGK will be measured by how effectively additional capital expands research capacity while preserving the scientific rigor that made the company valuable in the first place.

SwiftConnect, HID SAFE

The front door just became an identity system. SwiftConnect has agreed to acquire HID's Workforce Business Unit, including HID SAFE, HID Visitor Manager, EasyLobby, and related integration services. Announced on July 22, the transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026, subject to customary conditions.

This is not a startup acquiring a shiny feature and calling it a platform. SwiftConnect built AccessCloud to connect identity providers, mobile credentials, and access systems across buildings and portfolios. HID SAFE adds the governance layer: access requests, approvals, policy enforcement, audit trails, and credential revocation as employees join, change roles, or leave.

One system helps the right person carry the right credential. The other determines whether that person should still have access when they reach the door. Enterprises have spent years treating those as separate problems, then acting surprised when a former employee's badge and a current HR record no longer match.

Chip Kruger and Matt Kopel, co-CEOs, are making a significant product bet. They are not trying to replace every reader, lock, or access control system. They are bringing identity, authorization, credentials, and governance onto a connected platform designed to work with the infrastructure customers already own.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but HID will receive additional SwiftConnect equity and retain a minority, non-controlling ownership stake following the transaction. HID also participated in SwiftConnect's $37M Series B in 2024, making this less a cold handoff than a deeper strategic relationship between companies that already understand each other's technology.

Shane Butler, EVP of Identity, will lead the SAFE business inside SwiftConnect. Existing HID Workforce customers have been told to expect continuity across deployments, support, and product investment. That commitment matters because security buyers value reliable integration and governance far more than product launch messaging.

For security, IT, facilities, and real estate teams, the market signal extends beyond a single acquisition. Physical access is moving toward the same zero-trust and lifecycle discipline enterprises already expect from digital identity systems. The winning platform will not simply issue a badge. It will understand why access exists, who approved it, when permissions should change, and when they should be revoked.

This acquisition places governance at the center of SwiftConnect's platform strategy while preserving continuity for existing HID SAFE customers. The next test is execution: integrating the products without compromising the trust and operational reliability that made HID SAFE valuable in the first place.

Boomi, Lunar.dev

Boomi has closed its acquisition of Lunar.dev. The interesting part is where Boomi placed its bet: the control point between AI agents and the systems they are being trusted to access.

Boomi announced its intent to acquire Lunar.dev on May 13, then confirmed the completed acquisition on July 27. The purchase price and transaction structure were not disclosed. The product strategy cuts through the usual acquisition-synergy fog.

Lunar.dev built an AI and MCP gateway that sits between agents, models, APIs, tools, and enterprise resources. It gives security and IT teams policy enforcement, access control, observability, cost monitoring, audit trails, rate limiting, and intelligent routing without slowing every AI initiative.

Connectivity without governance is a faster way to create an expensive incident report. An agent that can reach Salesforce, SAP, Workday, or ServiceNow is useful. One that can do so without clear identity, permissions, guardrails, and audit logs is a future meeting nobody wants.

Boomi already owns the integration layer. The company says it serves more than 30,000 customers, works with more than 800 partners, and offers more than 1,000 managed MCP-enabled tools through Boomi Connect. Lunar.dev adds the governance layer where model ambition meets enterprise reality.

For Boomi customers, the value proposition is straightforward: keep model choice flexible while centralizing governance. Claude, Copilot, Gemini, or whichever model earns the next production workload can operate through the same governed layer, with usage, cost, latency, errors, and access visible in one place.

Eyal Solomon and Roy Gabbay founded Lunar.dev in 2022, applying their cybersecurity experience with third-party API consumption to AI governance. The company raised a $6M seed round in 2023 led by Uncork Capital, with participation from Angular Ventures. The acquisition brings that capability into Boomi's broader enterprise integration platform.

Steve Lucas, Chairman and CEO, is not acquiring another agent builder. He is investing in the governance layer that makes enterprise AI connections trustworthy, a more durable strategic position than chasing whichever model happens to lead the rankings this month.

The market is consolidating what were once separate categories into a single operating layer: integration, API management, MCP connectivity, identity, observability, cost control, and AI governance. Boomi and Lunar.dev are testing whether that layer can become enterprise infrastructure before production AI outpaces the controls designed to govern it. The next measure of success is not another model benchmark. It is whether customers experience governance as infrastructure they can trust rather than another console they have to manage.

Framework Ventures

Framework Ventures has closed FVIV, its fourth fund, at $400M. It carries the same headline size as the firm's 2022 vehicle, but with a much broader investment mandate.

Framework did not build its reputation by chasing consensus. Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer founded the firm in 2019, when going deep on decentralized finance still looked like a career-limiting hobby. Early conviction in Aave and Chainlink established its identity: technical, concentrated, and close to the underlying infrastructure.

FVIV keeps that blockchain foundation, including stablecoins, tokenization, and digital assets, while expanding into AI, robotics, energy, and fintech. The thesis is that the boundaries separating capital, software, computation, and physical infrastructure are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.

The fund can invest across early-stage private companies, liquid digital assets, and select public securities. Framework is targeting pre-seed through Series A investments, with check sizes ranging from $1M to $50M. That gives the firm flexibility to lead early rounds while continuing to capture value beyond a conventional venture portfolio.

The strategy is already in motion. Roughly half of FVIV had been deployed by the June 26 announcement, according to Michael Anderson. Framework has led Mecka AI's $60M Series A and backed distributed energy network Daylight, while maintaining exposure to digital asset businesses including Hyperliquid, Sky, and Plasma.

There is discipline in holding the fund at $400M while expanding its mandate. Raising a larger vehicle is an easy story to tell in venture capital. Expanding the investment toolkit without increasing the headline fund size is the more interesting signal. It suggests the firm is prioritizing flexibility over fundraising optics.

The LP base remains undisclosed, but Framework described an institutional investor roster that includes an Ivy League endowment, sovereign wealth funds, nonprofits, funds of funds, and returning investors. Fortune reported the firm managed $1.28B in assets under management as of December 2025. That reflects a historical regulatory snapshot rather than a simple addition of the newly raised capital.

The leadership team is evolving as well. Rajiv Patel-O'Connor has been promoted to General Partner, while Ryan Barney and Nick Trileski have joined as Partners. Those additions align with a firm operating across both private venture investments and liquid markets.

The next test is not whether a crypto-native investment firm can expand into AI, robotics, and energy. Declaring interest in adjacent markets is easy. The real question is whether Framework's ability to recognize new financial infrastructure before it becomes obvious can translate to the companies now connecting intelligence, settlement, energy, and the physical world.

Array Labs

Array Labs just added $21M to the balance sheet, but the more interesting asset may be the partner behind the investment.

The Silicon Valley radar company raised an oversubscribed strategic round anchored by Mitsubishi Electric, with continued participation from Catapult Ventures, Kompas VC, and Y Combinator. Mitsubishi separately disclosed a $10M investment made on July 24. Array Labs started with a difficult idea: build clusters of radar satellites that work together to create high-resolution 3D maps of Earth.

Now the ambition is broader. Array Labs and Mitsubishi Electric plan to develop satellite-based aircraft and maritime tracking services for defense and security customers across the Asia-Pacific region. That expands the company's focus beyond static terrain imagery toward persistent awareness of what is moving, where it is moving, and how quickly the operational picture is changing. That distinction matters. Traditional Earth observation provides snapshots. Airborne Moving Target Indication (AMTI) is built around continuity.

Array Labs is tackling the problem with modular radar hardware, formation-flying satellites, and multistatic sensing. Instead of relying on a single large satellite to do everything, multiple satellites observe from different positions and combine their data.

Mitsubishi Electric brings something a typical investor cannot: decades of satellite engineering, manufacturing infrastructure, radar expertise, and established relationships across Japan's defense ecosystem. Array Labs brings a rapidly advancing technical platform and U.S. government validation through work with DARPA, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, and other national security customers.

This looks less like a traditional funding round and more like a commercialization partnership backed by capital. The $21M provides additional resources to expand the team and pursue more radar and satellite bus applications. The relationship also gives Andrew Peterson, CEO, Isaac Robledo, CTO, and the company a credible path into a market where trust, integration, and mission expertise matter as much as technical performance.

The operator takeaway is straightforward: strategic capital earns the label only when it removes a meaningful constraint. Money extends runway. The right partner can shorten the distance between a working system and a customer that is willing, able, and authorized to deploy it.

This investment is about more than another vote of confidence in defense technology. It reflects a belief that persistent radar from orbit is moving beyond technical demonstration toward operational infrastructure. The next milestone is whether Array Labs and Mitsubishi Electric can translate that capability into long-term deployment at scale.

ProphetX

ProphetX just raised $35M, and the interesting part is not another sports app buying a louder megaphone. It is a federally regulated exchange positioning itself as the infrastructure behind the next wave of sports prediction products.

Parlay Capital and Data Point Capital led the round, joined by FDJ Ventures, Greenwave Ventures, Connexa Capital, Impellent Ventures, The Operating Group, and Sharp Alpha Advisors. Chicago Trading Company Ventures, Belvedere Trading, Ematiq, along with principals from White Swan Data and Consolidated Trading, also participated. That is a cap table with deep market-structure experience.

The timing tells the story. On June 10, the CFTC registered ProphetX as a derivatives clearing organization; on June 11, it designated ProphetX as a contract market. The company then launched nationwide and accelerated its B2B distribution strategy. The $35M will support product development, liquidity, and strategic partnerships.

ProphetX is not built like a traditional sportsbook. Buyers and sellers set prices against one another, orders meet in a central market, and the exchange earns a transparent commission instead of relying on customer losses. Its infrastructure includes a central limit order book and request-for-quote trading.

Consumer platforms can now integrate ProphetX contracts, route orders into shared liquidity, and add prediction products without building an exchange and clearing infrastructure from scratch. Players' Lounge is the first announced live partner, with additional integrations expected around the NFL season.

ProphetX says active users and assets on the platform each increased 50% during its first 30 days as a federally regulated market. It is targeting a threefold increase in trading volume during 2026. Those are company-reported figures and a forward-looking target, but the underlying thesis is straightforward: distribution drives order flow, and order flow strengthens liquidity.

Those CFTC registrations do not eliminate the broader regulatory debate. New York's attorney general and 37 other state and district attorneys general filed an amicus brief supporting Massachusetts in litigation against Kalshi. That case does not involve ProphetX or determine its regulatory status. ProphetX now has capital and two specific federal registrations, but long-term success will still be measured by partner adoption, market depth, and regulatory durability.

Dean Sisun, CEO, and Jake Benzaquen, President, founded ProphetX in 2018 and guided the company through operations in the UK, New Jersey, a sweepstakes phase, and now a federally regulated exchange structure. The question is no longer whether prediction markets will attract attention. It is whether ProphetX can turn regulated sports market infrastructure into durable distribution.

Credible

Credible just raised a $10M Seed round to solve one of enterprise AI's least glamorous and most expensive problems: database access does not teach a model what the business actually means.

That distinction matters. A revenue field is not a definition of revenue. A customer table does not explain which accounts are active, which rules govern access, or why two teams can query the same warehouse and arrive at different answers.

The Boulder company is building a context engine that captures an organization's metrics, definitions, entities, relationships, and business rules, then delivers that meaning to AI agents, analytics tools, APIs, dashboards, and embedded products. The objective is not to give AI more data. It is to provide enough governed context to stop models from improvising with the data they already have.

Kyle Nesbit, CEO, spent 17 years at Google helping build infrastructure behind BigQuery, AI-powered analytics, and Looker's integration into Google Cloud. In 2025, he left Google to build Credible around Malloy, the open-source semantic modeling language created by Looker founder Lloyd Tabb.

Gradient, SignalFire, and K5 Global participated in the round alongside Godard Abel, CEO of G2, Wes McKinney, creator of pandas, Alex Dean, CEO of Snowplow, SV Angel, and others. No lead investor or valuation was disclosed, so the signal rests on the thesis and the investors backing it.

Credible says its platform turns governed business meaning into executable context that travels across the technology stack without locking customers into a single vendor interface. It adds access controls, governance, reliability, and auditability around Malloy, then serves relevant context at runtime. For operators, that is the difference between an AI agent that can generate a query and one that understands what that query is permitted to mean.

Credible identifies VideoAmp as a customer using governed metric definitions to support AI-assisted reporting. That matters because enterprise AI rarely fails for lack of impressive demonstrations. It fails when the first confident answer cannot withstand the second question.

James Swirhun, Head of Product, brings eight years at Google working on AI and machine learning products, including Gemini, following his time at Bain & Company. The founder-led team is now funded to scale at the intersection of enterprise data and enterprise AI.

The broader business lesson extends beyond one funding round. Access is becoming inexpensive, intelligence is becoming abundant, and organizational meaning remains difficult to encode. If the next generation of enterprise AI winners will be defined by trust, the context layer may be where that trust is ultimately built.

Aurenar

Aurenar, Inc. has closed an oversubscribed $5.7M Seed round, and the capital is aimed at a problem that does not care how impressive a hospital's technology stack looks: the dangerous secondary complications that can follow a stroke.

The round was co-led by the Go Red for Women Venture Fund, part of American Heart Association Ventures, and Solas BioVentures, with BJC Health and Kaleida Capital participating. That is a well-aligned syndicate for a company advancing through clinical, hospital, and regulatory milestones.

Aurenar is developing V-Link, a non-invasive, single-use neuromodulation platform designed for intensive care. The system stimulates a branch of the vagus nerve through the outer ear, targeting the inflammatory response that can worsen secondary brain injury following stroke and other critical illnesses.

This is not a consumer wellness device wrapped in clinical language. V-Link recently received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation as an adjunct to clinical management to reduce cerebral vasospasm in adults with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. The designation provides a more collaborative FDA review pathway, but it is not marketing approval. V-Link remains investigational.

That distinction explains why this funding matters. In medical devices, capital does not transform promising science into a commercial product. It funds final device development, verification and validation testing, pivotal trial preparation, and regulatory submissions that convert encouraging signals into evidence hospitals can trust.

The early clinical data gives Aurenar a meaningful foundation. A 27-patient randomized trial found reduced radiographic vasospasm and inflammatory markers, with no adverse events reported. A separate 35-patient stroke pilot identified significant biomarker changes and no significant differences in safety endpoints. Larger clinical studies are still required.

Eric Leuthardt, CEO, Jenna Gorlewicz, CTO, and Anna Huguenard, CMO, now have a clearly defined objective: make a non-invasive therapy practical enough for acute ICU care while generating the evidence required for pivotal clinical trials.

The broader lesson extends beyond one funding round. Specialized healthcare investors become increasingly valuable as companies move closer to the clinic because they understand how easily promising technologies can stall between scientific validation and regulatory approval.

Aurenar now has $5.7M, an FDA Breakthrough Device pathway, and a demanding series of technical, clinical, and regulatory milestones ahead. That is not the easiest part of the story. It is the part worth watching because neurotechnology ultimately earns its place through verified clinical outcomes.

Alpen High Performance Products

Alpen High Performance Products closed the initial $6M of a targeted $10M Series B, and the distinction matters. The company has $6M of newly disclosed capital today. The larger figure is the stated target for the full round.

Inherent Capital and Arborview Capital led the financing. Alpen did not disclose a valuation, individual investor check sizes, or additional participants. The company says the capital will help scale manufacturing operations and meet demand for its high-efficiency windows, doors, secondary glazing, and thin-glass insulated glass units.

This is not a laboratory concept looking for a factory. Alpen reports more than 50% growth over the past two and a half years, along with more than fourfold growth in sales of its Winsert and commercial window products.

The operating work is increasingly visible. Alpen says it has installed automated manufacturing capabilities for thin-glass insulated glass units with insulating performance up to R15, standardized its product suite, professionalized its sales organization, and begun supplying thin-glass units to other North American window and door manufacturers.

Andrew Zech, CEO, described the financing as operating capital for a company that has moved from bespoke manufacturing toward a national brand. That framing is useful. Climate hardware does not scale because the science is impressive. It scales when manufacturing, quality, working capital, distribution, installation, and customer support advance together.

Arborview has backed Alpen since 2019. Its return alongside Inherent Capital gives the Series B a mix of existing operating context and new capital. The announcement does not disclose how the round changes ownership or board composition, so the record should end where the facts do.

The financing reflects a broader shift from climate invention toward industrial execution. Investors are not only underwriting better thermal performance. They are underwriting the ability to produce advanced building materials consistently enough that architects, builders, manufacturers, and building owners can rely on them.

The next proof points are concrete: completion of the targeted Series B, expanded manufacturing capacity, shorter lead times, reliable delivery, and continued customer adoption. Alpen has secured the first $6M. Execution will determine what that capital makes possible.

COR

COR just raised $30M from FTV Capital, and the interesting part is not another software company adding AI to the homepage. It is where COR chose to put the meter: on profitability. Professional services firms buy tools to assign and track work. Then finance closes the month, and everyone discovers whether the project made money. That is a strange way to run a business built on billable time.

COR addresses that gap with project management, automatic time tracking, resource planning, AI agent governance, and real-time profitability analytics. The goal is not a prettier task board. It is showing what the work costs while there is still time to act. That matters because services teams are now coordinating people, models, agents, and pricing systems that were designed before software could perform part of the delivery. If an AI agent cuts production time but nobody can trace cost, scope, and margin, the gain can disappear inside the accounting.

COR says it closed 2025 with 51% year-over-year revenue growth, positive profitability, and customers in more than 38 countries. The company also says more than 1,000 agencies and consulting firms use the platform. Those are company-reported figures, but they point to a business with operating traction rather than simply another feature release.

The investment will support accelerated AI development, expansion into additional professional services verticals, and international growth. COR did not disclose a funding round designation, valuation, or financing structure, so this is best understood as $30M backing a vertical software company that says it has already reached profitable scale.

Santi Bibiloni and Jose Gettas discovered the problem while building Balloon Group, the agency they later sold. They founded COR in 2017 with Gabriel Marin, CTO, to give firms a live view of project economics. Santi Bibiloni continues to lead the company as CEO. The problem has not changed. The labor mix now includes machines.

FTV Capital brings more than capital. Alex Malvone, Partner, and Tommy Tighe, Principal, are joining COR's board. FTV has raised $10.2B across its growth equity funds, making it a natural partner for the transition from product traction to global scale. Scaling vertical SaaS requires product execution, distribution, and operating discipline long after the investment closes.

The broader takeaway extends beyond one funding round. AI adoption without visibility into project economics simply accelerates uncertainty. The firms that outperform will understand not only what their agents can do, but also what every unit of work costs before the month closes. The signal is clear: the next operating system for professional services must manage intelligence and margin together. COR now has $30M to demonstrate how valuable that visibility can become.

Liquid Interactive

Liquid Interactive just emerged from stealth with C$700K in pre-seed funding from AXL and a sharp question for the AI market: why do we keep pouring intelligence into machines, then squeezing the experience back through a text box?

The Toronto startup is building visual-first AI interfaces that people can explore, manipulate, and share. Its first consumer product, Liquid Photos, transforms ordinary camera-roll images into interactive experiences instead of leaving them as static files.

Upload a set of hiking photos and the system can reconstruct the journey between them. Point it at an object, and it can generate an exploded view, turning a watch, room, or product image into something people can navigate and better understand.

That is a more interesting product thesis than simply "chat, but somewhere else." Liquid Interactive is betting the next interface shift will come from generative visual experiences, not another blinking cursor waiting for a prompt.

Sasha Ivanov, CEO, and Ben Pearman, CTO, built the first version inside AXL. They previously worked together on Maple Scan, the Canadian shopping app associated with more than 130,000 downloads.

Liquid Photos is available for free from the company's website. Liquid says App Store and Google Play distribution is coming soon. That puts the product in the hands of early users without overstating its current mobile-store availability; adoption and retention remain undisclosed.

The consumer application is only the opening move. Liquid Studio is being developed for brands and creative teams that want to transform existing product photography and campaign assets into interactive experiences without commissioning a traditional 3D production pipeline.

AXL is providing more than capital. Incubation within the Toronto venture studio gave Liquid Interactive access to applied AI research, product prototyping support, and a path from technical possibility to commercial product.

The difficult part begins now. Beautiful demonstrations can capture attention, but enduring companies are built on repeat usage, reliable output, and products that creators and brands continue choosing long after the novelty fades.

That is what makes this C$700K pre-seed round worth watching. It gives Liquid Interactive enough capital to test whether visual-first AI can become a meaningful interface layer while keeping the financing small enough that product evidence, not funding size, must carry the story.

The broader question extends beyond one startup. The market already has plenty of AI that can answer questions. Liquid Interactive is testing whether people ultimately want AI they can reach into, manipulate, and experience. That is a much more demanding product challenge.