Nothing to Prove

Dwelly

Dwelly just put $170M behind a very specific idea: the next great AI company may not sell software to an industry. It may buy the work, own the customer relationship, and rebuild the service from the inside. The Series B combines $95M in equity with a $75M debt facility led by Trinity Capital. EQT Growth led the round alongside General Catalyst, with s16vc, Begin Capital, DVC, AI company CEOs, and Philipp Freise of KKR participating.

That structure explains the model. Equity can deepen the AI operating system. Debt can fund acquisitions of independent UK lettings agencies, preserving local brands and teams while moving repetitive operational work onto a shared platform. Dwelly is not selling agencies another dashboard. It is acquiring customer relationships, workflow history, and responsibility for results. Its software manages inquiries, onboarding, rent collection, maintenance, compliance, and coordination, while people remain focused on the decisions where trust and judgment matter.

Dwelly says it now manages more than 15,000 properties and a £350M rent roll. The company also says one property manager can oversee more than 300 units using the platform, compared with roughly 100 before automation. Those are company-reported figures, but they make the investment thesis clear: AI has to expand service capacity, not simply layer a chatbot onto the existing operating model.

Ilia Drozdov, CEO, Dan Lifshits, CPO, and Dmitry Khanukov, CTO, founded Dwelly in 2023 after building and selling a technology-enabled lettings business. They have combined operating experience with a market that remains highly fragmented. Dwelly estimates roughly 20,000 UK lettings firms manage about 5.5 million rental properties and more than £100B in annual rent.

This round follows a $93M equity-and-debt financing package announced in February. In five months, Dwelly has announced more than $260M in financing. The capital will support additional agency acquisitions, deeper automation, and new products for landlords and tenants.

The lesson for operators is sharper than "AI is coming for real estate." Distribution still matters. Proprietary workflow data still matters. Owning implementation still matters. AI becomes more valuable when it is paired with the authority and accountability required to complete the work. That is the difference between owning a tool and owning an outcome.

The financing reflects confidence in a model that combines software, acquisitions, and operational ownership rather than treating them as separate strategies. The next measure of success is whether Dwelly can integrate agencies at scale, preserve the local trust those businesses earned, and turn operational leverage into demonstrably better service for landlords and tenants.

Claros Technologies

Claros Technologies closed a $55M Series B, and the interesting part is what the capital is being asked to prove: whether PFAS destruction can move from successful field deployments into repeatable global infrastructure. Treehouse Family Capital led the financing, with Daikin America, Veralto, Bush Foundation, Nord Asset Management, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, and existing investors participating. The $55M includes Claros' previously announced $10M convertible note because headline math should not get to freelance.

Claros is addressing an inconvenient truth: capturing "forever chemicals" is not the same as eliminating them. Some treatment methods simply transfer PFAS into another waste stream. ClarosTechUV uses an enhanced UV photochemical process to destroy targeted long-, short-, and ultra-short-chain PFAS, while ClarosLabs measures what remains.

Claros and Daikin reported a commercial deployment in December 2025 that treated more than 170,000 gallons of industrial process water and achieved greater than 99.99% destruction of targeted PFAS. In April 2026, Claros reported the same threshold during remediation work using concentrate derived from roughly one million gallons of groundwater. Those are company- and partner-reported results, but they place the financing on stronger footing than a laboratory demonstration alone.

The capital will support expanded manufacturing, deployments across North America, Europe, and Asia, continued product development, ClarosLabs, hiring, customer support, and application development. The next challenge is consistent execution across different sites and water chemistries, delivering results that customers and regulators can trust.

Michelle Bellanca, CEO, has led the company's transition from a University of Minnesota spinout to a commercial environmental technology platform. Co-founders Abdennour Abbas and John Brockgreitens established the technical foundation, with John Brockgreitens now serving as VP of Product Development. This financing reflects growing confidence in technology backed by operational evidence rather than laboratory promise alone.

The investor mix deserves attention. Daikin is both a commercialization partner and a PFAS manufacturer. Veralto operates across water quality technologies. When industrial operators and financial investors align behind the same platform, the conversation shifts from interesting science to scalable deployment.

PFAS remains embedded across semiconductors, aerospace, healthcare, and other critical industries, while contamination continues to drive legal, regulatory, and environmental pressure. Claros now has $55M to answer the question that ultimately matters in industrial technology: can the system deliver the same results at the next site, under different operating conditions, with evidence strong enough to satisfy procurement, regulators, and customers alike?

Antares Labs

Antares Labs just raised a $7.25M Seed round to build something real estate has talked around for years: AI that works inside the business instead of hovering above it in another dashboard. That is not a feature pitch. It is an operating model. Fifth Wall led the round, with Base10 Partners, Bloomberg Beta, and Sandwith Ventures participating. The syndicate reflects a combination of built-world expertise and automation for the real economy.

The more interesting starting point is how Antares Labs works. Its forward-deployed teams embed with customers, learn how decisions are made, and build company-specific AI around proprietary data, institutional knowledge, relationships, and operating logic. Real estate is not short on data. It is short on systems that turn operating judgment into action without forcing organizations to abandon the tools, permissions, and processes that hold the business together. Another SaaS login was never going to solve that problem.

Noaman Ahmad, CEO, knows the market from both the finance and operating sides. Before Antares Labs, he served as CFO of Doma and Keystone. That background gives the company a useful perspective: technology becomes strategy only when it changes an investment, operating, or capital allocation decision.

Quarterra is already using Antares Labs to identify and target new submarkets and land parcels. Other use cases include lease-up, industrial inventory management, and predicting tenant churn. Antares Labs says its platform operates across AWS Bedrock, OpenAI, Gemini, and Anthropic while routing workloads based on cost, performance, and quality.

The company also says its intelligence remains inside the customer's environment, every recommendation is traceable, and customers can see ROI in 30 days rather than 30 months. Those are ambitious claims, and enterprise real estate will ultimately test them against legacy systems, fragmented data, governance requirements, and the operational complexity that rarely appears in a product demonstration. That is what makes this financing notable. Antares Labs is betting that a durable real estate AI company will own the difficult middle ground between models and decisions, where context has to survive people, permissions, and property-level reality.

Antares Labs was incubated within Fifth Wall, where Brendan Wallace heard owner-operators describe knowledge that never becomes fully operational. The company now has $7.25M to turn that institutional knowledge into working infrastructure. The next milestone is demonstrating that the model can scale across customers without losing the context that gives it value.

Frenos

Frenos just raised a $1.52M seed extension to make operational technology security less dependent on guesswork and more accountable to evidence. Momenta Ventures and Exposition Ventures co-led the round, with Riptide Ventures participating. Frenos says the financing brings total funding to $6.4M. The capital will support customer success and AI R&D. Critical infrastructure operators do not need another dashboard listing thousands of vulnerabilities. They need to know which attack paths can actually reach critical assets without disrupting a plant, utility, or defense environment.

Frenos models a customer's OT network as a digital twin, then uses SAIRA, its AI reasoning agent, to simulate adversary movement. It chains vulnerabilities, tactics, and controls away from production, showing what is exploitable and what should be addressed first. In operational technology, the security assessment cannot become the operational incident. SAIRA Co-Work is the company's next step: a persistent OT security co-worker designed to reason over live digital twin data and guide investigations. That expands Frenos beyond periodic assessments into a continuous decision-support layer.

Frenos reports ARR has grown more than 10x since the beginning of 2025, including 215% growth during the first half of 2026. The company also reports pipeline growth of 2.7x year over year, a 5x increase in average deal size, and 2026 bookings that have already reached four times its full-year 2025 bookings, with five months remaining. Those figures are company-reported.

The product story is sharper than "AI finds more things." In one customer environment, Frenos says SAIRA analyzed more than 12,000 vulnerability findings and identified just eight that were exploitable in context, reducing remediation noise by 99.9%. Better evidence leads to better decisions.

Brian Proctor, CEO, built Frenos around lessons learned from more than a decade defending OT environments. Harry Thomas, CTO, leads the technical strategy, while Eric Profittlich serves as Co-founder and Board Member. Their objective is to help defenders test aggressively without disrupting the environments they are protecting.

The investor mix reinforces that strategy. Momenta Ventures and Exposition Ventures both understand industrial systems, while Riptide Ventures focuses on early-stage companies operating in regulated markets. DataTribe led Frenos' previous $3.88M seed financing in January 2025, giving this extension a clear progression from cyber incubation to industrial growth.

The broader lesson extends beyond operational technology. AI does not create value simply by identifying more issues. It creates value by producing evidence that improves decisions inside environments where uptime is non-negotiable. This financing reflects confidence in that approach. The next test is whether Frenos can continue turning complex risk into clear operational priorities as deployments expand.

Flourish Health

Flourish Health raised a $26M Series A to expand intensive mental healthcare for young people ages 8–26. B Capital, F-Prime, and Cherryrock Capital led the round. With $20M in previously undisclosed financing, the Richmond-based company reports $46M raised since inception. The funding matters. The operating model matters more.

Flourish Health serves young people with complex mental health needs that traditional outpatient care often cannot support. Each patient receives a four-person Care Pod consisting of a child and adolescent psychiatrist, a licensed therapist, a patient guide, and a family guide. The team delivers care through a combination of in-home and virtual services. The goal is not simply more digital care. It is intensive care without removing a young person from home, school, and community when stability matters most.

This is where the round becomes interesting. Flourish Health is not selling a software license and calling it healthcare innovation. It combines clinical expertise, family support, payer relationships, and technology into a single care-delivery model. That is harder to scale than an app, and harder to replicate if the outcomes and economics continue to hold.

Flourish Health says an independent analysis conducted by a major Medicaid health plan found 70% lower hospitalizations, 69% lower residential treatment utilization, and 87% lower partial hospitalization utilization six months after program completion compared with matched controls. The payer and full study have not been disclosed, so those remain company-reported results. They also help explain investor interest.

Technology is playing a supporting role. Flourish Health built an EMR and operating platform for its Care Pods, supporting workflows, risk alerts, engagement, and care coordination. AI assists with administrative work. Human clinicians make decisions and deliver care. Healthcare continues to remind us that distinction matters.

Natalia Birgisson, MD, CEO, trained at Stanford in pediatrics and psychiatry. John Haskell, President, leads growth and health plan partnerships. Josh Gachnang, CTO, built the technology platform.

The capital will support national expansion, additional health plan partnerships, hiring more clinicians and guides, and continued platform development. B Capital, F-Prime, and Cherryrock Capital are investing in technology that strengthens the care team rather than attempting to replace it.

The opportunity extends beyond another mental health platform. Flourish Health is testing whether technology, clinical care, and family support can operate as one integrated system for patients with the most complex needs. The next measure of success will be whether that model continues delivering outcomes at scale while preserving the quality of care that made it investable.

PawPay

PawPay just became VANE's newest portfolio company, and the most interesting part of the deal is not the undisclosed investment. It is the plumbing. Pet insurance has long asked pet owners to do something absurd: pay premiums, reach the clinic, cover the full bill anyway, and then wait for reimbursement. PawPay is designed to eliminate that gap at checkout.

The Los Angeles company acts as an authorized collection agent. A pet parent pays the deductible, coinsurance, and uncovered expenses. PawPay advances the insurance-covered portion to the veterinary clinic, then manages the claim and collects reimbursement from the carrier. The clinic gets paid promptly, the owner avoids fronting the full invoice, and the insurer retains claims authority. This is not another credit product dressed up as compassion. It is insurance activation.

That distinction matters. North America's pet insurance market reached 7.6 million insured pets and $6.2B in gross written premium at the end of 2025, according to NAPHIA. Gross written premium grew 19.4% year over year. Yet the checkout experience still behaves as though the software never got the memo.

David Franklin, CEO, and Dennis Gucker founded PawPay to solve the awkward moment where insurance coverage, clinic cash flow, and patient care intersect. PawPay says its patent-pending platform requests an invoice and medical record upload or email from the practice information management system (PIMS), then manages coverage assessment, claim submission, payment processing, and reimbursement. According to the company, veterinary practices can join the platform at no cost.

The backing comes from members of VANE, the Veterinary Angel Network for Entrepreneurs. Its veterinarians, operators, entrepreneurs, and industry experts invest individually in early-stage companies while providing the domain expertise and industry access that can shorten a startup's path to adoption.

Financial terms and a formal financing round were not disclosed. That restraint is useful. The story is not a headline valuation looking for applause. It is a specialized investor network backing infrastructure that could make pet insurance more practical without asking clinics to become lenders or pet owners to carry another balance.

PawPay is onboarding veterinary practices and building deeper integrations with insurance partners. That is where the thesis will be tested: claim accuracy, clinic workflow, carrier cooperation, and whether being insured finally feels different at the front desk.

The lesson for operators is straightforward. Large markets do not always need more products. They often need better handoffs between the products people already use. PawPay identified one of those handoffs, and VANE decided it was worth backing.

Conversica

Conversica just changed the capitalization table and the product roadmap in the same announcement. A fund managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital has acquired a majority stake in the San Francisco AI company through a recapitalization. Financial terms were not disclosed. Conversica's management team will continue leading the business while retaining a significant ownership position, making this a control transaction with operational continuity.

The timing coincides with Ignite, Conversica's new AI-native Revenue Activation Engine for dealers and dealer groups. It connects customer, vehicle, sales, service, and conversation data across the systems dealerships already use, then identifies revenue opportunities without requiring dealers to replace their existing technology stack.

That includes identifying owners approaching equity or lease milestones, recovering declined service work, surfacing F&I opportunities, and recognizing customers who are likely to purchase again. The platform can activate those signals across email, SMS, voice, web, and advertising while giving dealer groups visibility across multiple rooftops. Customer context follows drivers across stores, while leadership can compare performance from a single view.

The interesting part is what Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital is acquiring control of: a business attempting to transform fragmented operational data into attributable revenue. Enterprise AI has spent years selling possibility. Automotive retail asks a more practical question: did the software generate another repair order, appointment, trade-in, or vehicle sale?

Founder Ben Brigham launched Conversica in 2007 after discovering that automotive leads sold to dealers often received little or no follow-up. The business later expanded beyond dealerships, but Ignite brings the strategy back to its origins with a broader data foundation and a more ambitious operating model.

Mike Gilson, CEO, now leads the company with a majority owner, retained management equity, and a product designed around measurable dealership outcomes. Managing Director Nick Nocito described the opportunity as activating customer data across the entire ownership lifecycle. Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital also provided Conversica with a $25M financing in 2022, making this recapitalization a deeper commitment backed by control.

The transaction reflects a specific investment thesis rather than another broad AI bet. If Ignite can consistently turn dealership data into measurable operating results across every rooftop, Conversica will have demonstrated something far more durable than another AI feature set. It will have shown that enterprise AI creates the most value when it becomes part of the operating system rather than another application sitting beside it.

GracoRoberts

GracoRoberts just received a strategic investment from Tinicum Incorporated, and the headline is quieter than the business underneath it. Financial terms were not disclosed. Management will retain a significant ownership interest and continue leading the company, making this an investment behind an operating platform already built for aerospace and defense.

That platform sits in a part of the economy most people notice only when it fails. Aerospace programs do not run on aluminum and ambition alone. They depend on adhesives, sealants, coatings, composites, and specialty materials that arrive on specification with the required compliance documentation intact. GracoRoberts has built capabilities across ecommerce, custom formulation, kitting, cold storage, laboratory testing, and defense logistics to support that reality.

Graco Supply dates to 1959, E.V. Roberts to 1938, and their 2019 combination became the foundation for acquisitions including Silmid, SkyGeek, Pacific Coast Composites, and Sky Mart. GracoRoberts reports 10 global fulfillment centers, customers in more than 100 countries, and authorization to distribute more than 50 specialty chemical brands. Its AS, ISO, and CMMC Level II certifications matter because speed without compliance is an expensive way to miss the mission.

Tinicum is a logical partner for the next phase. The firm manages $5.2B in assets and describes an investment horizon measured in decades rather than traditional exit cycles. Partners Erik Blumenkranz and Roddy Cruz said the focus will be on investing in GracoRoberts' people, capabilities, and platform. That aligns with the company's real advantage: combining technical expertise with specialized distribution infrastructure.

Jason Caldwell, President & CEO, led an acquisition strategy that expanded the business across MRO, composites, ecommerce, Europe, and Latin America. CM Equity Partners spent 11 years helping build that foundation through acquisitions and operational expansion. Tinicum is investing behind demonstrated execution rather than a presentation built on future possibilities.

Boeing expects nearly 44,000 new commercial aircraft deliveries through 2045, while defense budgets continue directing more capital toward industrial-base resilience. Every additional aircraft, maintenance cycle, and defense program increases the cost of critical materials arriving late, out of specification, or trapped in procurement friction.

This investment is ultimately a bet on industrial infrastructure rather than manufacturing capacity alone. As aerospace and defense supply chains become more complex, distributors that combine technical expertise, regulatory compliance, and dependable execution become increasingly strategic. The next chapter will be defined by where Tinicum's long-term capital strengthens that platform first.

Notabene

Notabene just picked up a strategic investment from Ripple. The more important number is the 2,300-plus institutions connected to Notabene's network. Ripple is investing in the infrastructure of trust before money moves.

The companies plan to integrate Ripple USD (RLUSD) into Notabene Flow while exploring how Notabene's payment authorization capabilities can complement Ripple Payments. Settlement may happen in seconds, but institutions still need counterparty identity, transaction context, and authorization before value leaves an account. Fast payments without context are simply a faster route to the risk committee.

The New York company began by building Travel Rule infrastructure and has since expanded into a network that, according to Notabene, spans more than 100 jurisdictions, serves more than 280 customers, and facilitates over $2T in annualized transaction volume. That figure reflects the broader authorization network rather than stablecoin payments through Flow alone.

Pelle Brændgaard, CEO, co-founded Notabene alongside Alice Nawfal, Ania Lipińska, and Andrés Junge after working together on uPort at ConsenSys. The team's early crypto experience has been translated into infrastructure designed for institutional adoption. Financial institutions do not scale on enthusiasm alone, even when the settlement rail is exceptional.

Ripple contributes RLUSD, enterprise payments reach, and a stablecoin designed for one-to-one U.S. dollar redemption with segregated reserves. Notabene brings counterparty verification, transaction context, and payment authorization across an open institutional network. Together, the companies are working toward giving banks, custodians, exchanges, and fintechs a way to coordinate compliant B2B payments before settlement rather than resolving uncertainty afterward.

The investment builds on a financing history centered on infrastructure. Notabene raised a $1.765M Seed round in 2020, a $10.2M Series A in 2021, and a $14.5M Series B in 2024. Ripple's strategic investment amount was not disclosed, but its intended purpose is clear: accelerate Notabene Flow, expand compliant stablecoin payments globally, and bring more institutions onto the network.

The timing is significant. The GENIUS Act established a U.S. framework for payment stablecoins, MiCA continues reshaping Europe's regulatory landscape, and FATF continues raising expectations around payment transparency. Regulation does not guarantee adoption. It raises the importance of identity, authorization, and interoperability as foundational requirements rather than optional features.

The broader opportunity extends beyond stablecoins. As digital payments become faster and settlement becomes increasingly commoditized, the competitive advantage shifts toward the infrastructure that establishes trust before funds move. Networks that can verify counterparties, provide transaction context, and support institutional decision-making will become just as important as the rails carrying the payment itself.

KMM Group

KMM Group just completed an investment from RS2 Healthcare Partners, and the interesting part is not the number. The parties did not disclose the investment amount. The more useful signal is what they paired with the capital: a leadership structure designed to scale precision without diluting the judgment that made the company valuable.

KMM is a Hatboro, Pennsylvania-based precision contract manufacturer formed in 2020 through the combination of KVI Inc., M&S Centerless Grinding, and Meron Medical. Together, those businesses represent more than 100 years of experience across machining, grinding, EDM, engineering, and assembly. In MedTech, integrated capability is a form of risk management.

The company operates from a 100,000-square-foot facility built to bring those manufacturing disciplines under one roof. KMM reports on-time delivery above 99% and quality above 99.7%, while highlighting its ISO 13485:2016 certification, FDA registration, and ISO Class 8 cleanroom. RS2 is investing in a manufacturer built for environments where failure is not an acceptable learning exercise.

The leadership transition makes the investment thesis clearer. J. Mark King becomes President & CEO after more than 30 years in the medical device industry, including CEO roles at Tegra Medical and Clinical Innovations. Co-founder John Shegda assumes the role of CTO, leading engineering and technology strategy. Co-founder Eric Wilhelm becomes EVP of Business Transformation and Organizational Capability, focusing on operational excellence and scalable growth.

That is more thoughtful than the typical private equity leadership reshuffle. J. Mark King is positioned to scale the business. John Shegda remains focused on manufacturing expertise and technical innovation. Eric Wilhelm is responsible for building repeatable operating systems for growth. Capital can fund equipment and capacity, but it cannot easily replace decades of shop-floor knowledge once it has been pushed to the margins.

RS2 Healthcare Partners, formerly Riverside Partners, focuses on lower-middle-market healthcare companies. The firm reports $1.6B in total capital commitments since 1989 and brings contract manufacturing experience through its investment in Tegra Medical. Those figures describe RS2's history rather than the KMM transaction, whose investment amount, ownership stake, and structure remain undisclosed.

The FDA's Quality Management System Regulation took effect in February 2026, incorporating ISO 13485:2016 into the regulatory framework. OEMs increasingly need manufacturing partners that can document, repeat, and scale highly regulated production. KMM operates where those demands converge: precision engineering, regulated manufacturing, and production capacity.

The investment is ultimately a vote of confidence in an operating system rather than a factory alone. As MedTech supply chains face growing regulatory and manufacturing complexity, competitive advantage will belong to organizations that preserve technical expertise while building the processes required to scale. That balance, more than the undisclosed investment amount, will determine the long-term outcome.

CORE Biomedicine

CORE Biomedicine, Inc. closed a $21M Series A, and the interesting part is not the number. It is the bet behind it: mutations matter, but they are not the entire operating system of a tumor.

CORE is building therapies around lineage dependencies, the biological programs that help cancer cells maintain their identity, survive, and resist treatment. The objective is to identify pathways a tumor cannot easily abandon, then design medicines that disrupt them.

That is a more demanding proposition than adding "AI" to a slide and waiting for the room to nod. CORE remains a preclinical company. Its pipeline includes programs targeting urothelial cancer, acute myeloid leukemia, prostate cancer, and other oncology indications, but it has not yet reported human safety or efficacy data. The Series A provides the resources to move from a compelling biological hypothesis toward clinical evidence.

UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd. and Elikon Venture co-led the round. InnoPinnacle Fund, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital Co., Ltd., Suzhou Capital Group Co., Ltd., CD Capital, YuanBio Venture Capital, Vision Incubate Co., Ltd., and Root Venture Partners also participated.

The financing builds on earlier public support. CORE Biomedicine Japan previously received an award through the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development for a project focused on developing a first-in-class oral small-molecule therapy for luminal cancers, including bladder, pancreatic, gastric, and colorectal cancers. The grant amount was not disclosed and is separate from the $21M Series A.

CORE says the new capital will advance lead programs through discovery and early clinical development while strengthening collaborations with Japanese universities, hospitals, and the broader biopharmaceutical community.

Ping Zhu, CEO, previously served as President and CSO of H3 Biomedicine following drug discovery leadership roles at Novartis. Guozhu Zheng serves as President and CSO, while Douglas McMillin leads business development and operations. The founding team brings deep experience in oncology drug discovery rather than building a company around a single platform narrative.

CORE also announced an exclusive global licensing agreement with Eisai to develop and commercialize multiple preclinical oncology programs. The financial terms, individual targets, and specific candidates remain undisclosed. Announcing both the financing and the licensing agreement together presents a clearer picture of the company's strategy: assemble the scientific assets and financial runway needed to determine whether lineage biology can meaningfully expand precision oncology.

The financing is ultimately a vote of confidence in a scientific framework rather than a clinical result. The real milestone will come when lineage dependencies translate from biological theory into patient outcomes. If that happens, precision oncology may gain another durable lens alongside genomics for understanding, and treating, cancer.

Epitel

Epitel just closed a $26M Series B to expand REMI, its wireless remote EEG monitoring system. Catalyst Health Ventures and Genoa Ventures co-led the round, backing a company that is trying to move brain monitoring beyond a narrow clinical window and into the messy reality where seizures actually happen.

That distinction matters. Seizures can be rare, unpredictable, and invisible except in the brain's electrical activity. Yet a 2023 peer-reviewed study found that only 27.3% of 4,550 U.S. hospitals were EEG capable in 2018. When the event does not cooperate with the appointment, diagnosis becomes a waiting game.

REMI changes that operating model. Its wearable sensors can transmit EEG data for up to 30 days across healthcare and ambulatory settings, while REMI Vigilenz AI flags potential events for qualified clinicians to review. The system does not diagnose conditions or replace neurologists. It helps them identify meaningful signals within a much longer recording.

Epitel says REMI now has five FDA 510(k) clearances, including monitoring for patients as young as one year old and AI event detection for patients aged six and older. This financing is focused on getting the platform through hospital procurement, clinical workflows, and routine use. That is where regulatory progress either becomes clinical adoption or stalls during implementation.

The capital will support expanded sales, marketing, and customer experience, streamline deployment, and broaden access to ambulatory monitoring. That less glamorous side of MedTech often determines whether an elegant device becomes essential infrastructure or remains an impressive conference demonstration.

Steve Pacelli, CEO, joined the company in 2025 after nearly two decades at Dexcom and is leading the commercial expansion. Founder and CTO Mark Lehmkuhle, PhD, continues driving the company's technical vision. The leadership structure fits the stage of the business: one executive focused on scaling commercialization, one founder focused on advancing the technology.

Catalyst Health Ventures and Genoa Ventures also co-led Epitel's $12.5M Series A in 2022. Together, the two disclosed venture rounds total $38.5M, following more than $7.5M in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Epilepsy Foundation before the Series A. Those investors are continuing to finance the more difficult phase that comes after regulatory clearance.

The next challenge is adoption. Can Epitel make extended EEG monitoring easier to deploy, easier for patients to live with, and easier for clinicians to interpret without simply creating more data to review? If REMI succeeds, the value extends well beyond a better monitoring device. It becomes access to clinical evidence that short monitoring windows often fail to capture.

Align Ventures

Align Ventures just closed an oversubscribed $125M Early-Stage Fund II, surpassing its $100M target and increasing the firm's reported platform assets under management to more than $2.5B as of June 2026.

Fund II will make initial investments of $2M to $10M across 15 to 20 consumer brands spanning beauty, personal care, health, wellness, pet, and home. This is not a strategy built around collecting logos. It is a concentrated conviction that a small group of brands can earn cultural relevance, retail distribution, and lasting customer loyalty at the same time.

The strategy sounds straightforward until you remember how consumer investing actually works. A brand can generate plenty of attention and still struggle to earn repeat purchases. Align is betting that capital delivers better outcomes when paired with operating judgment. The firm says it often writes the first venture check, then supports portfolio companies with follow-on capital, secondary liquidity, board participation, and access to a network of operators and advisers. Fund II expands that model without turning it into an index.

The track record behind the raise matters. Align points to exits including Coterie, Touchland, Hims, and Billie, and says its 2019-vintage Fund I ranks in the top decile for TVPI, net IRR, and DPI among comparable U.S. venture funds, citing Carta. That performance claim comes from Align, but the new LP commitments suggest both existing and new investors were willing to back the firm's next chapter.

The firm has already warehoused an early-stage investment in California Naturals for Fund II and recently participated in the company's Series B. The approach is consistent: invest early, reserve capital to keep supporting the strongest performers, and avoid treating every promising consumer brand as if it deserves the same allocation.

Ben Bryce, Founder and Managing Partner, and Grant Hosking, Managing Partner, are leading the new fund. The investment team named in the announcement also includes Andrew Ferrero, Peyton Raun, and Melanie Singh, bringing experience across consumer investing, brand strategy, banking, and company building.

The most useful signal for founders is not the oversubscribed headline. It is the portfolio construction. A $125M fund deployed across 15 to 20 brands creates room for meaningful initial investments and selective follow-on support while still requiring disciplined decision-making. Scarcity is uncomfortable, but it is also how an investment thesis proves it has standards.

Fund II adds fresh capital to the market, but the stronger signal is discipline: fewer investments, deeper partnerships, and enough patience to help consumer companies become lasting habits rather than passing attention.

Curant.ai

Curant.ai just raised a $3.1M Seed round to bring a very specific kind of intelligence into insurance: the kind that can survive a claim file, a compliance review, and a human asking where the answer came from.

Diagram led the round, with Humania Assurance, Element Ventures, Blue Plains Capital, and angel investors participating. The capital will expand Curant.ai's platform and deepen insurer partnerships as the company moves beyond isolated automation projects toward broader operational workflows.

Insurance has never suffered from a shortage of documents, systems, policies, exceptions, and people paid to reconcile them. The real shortage is usable context at the precise moment a claims professional needs to make a decision.

Curant.ai is starting with disability claims. Its platform extracts information from unstructured files, builds timelines, reconciles records, supports recommendations, and helps manage communications while leaving the final decision with experienced insurance professionals. It is a practical response to a market where context often arrives late, but accountability never leaves.

John Haller Jr., CEO, brings more than 15 years of insurance technology experience, according to the company. Curant.ai says its platform sits above existing systems, adapts to carrier-specific policies and workflows, and preserves source-backed review with human oversight.

Humania Assurance may be the most interesting participant because it is also a commercial partner. Luc Thibault said the platform improved efficiency, consistency, and job satisfaction while keeping final claims decisions in the hands of Humania's experts.

Curant.ai reports that early testing saved four hours per claim per associate, reduced manual analysis by 35% to 50%, and captured twice as many data fields. A formal partner case study is still in development, so those company-reported figures belong on the watchlist rather than in the victory column.

Diagram's lead investment adds another signal. Vertical AI will be won by systems that understand a market's language, risk, exceptions, and accountability well enough to become useful inside the workflow.

The broader business lesson is straightforward: regulated industries do not need more AI theater. They need software that earns trust one workflow at a time while making experienced professionals more effective at work that still depends on human judgment.

The funding provides Curant.ai with the opportunity to prove that those early gains can be repeated across additional carriers and insurance lines without weakening the human oversight that made the first commercial partnership successful.