• HUG

  Participated · Seed · Apr 2023

  Hug is a New York-based social marketplace connecting digital art and NFT creators with current and prospective collectors. The platform enables artists to sell digital and physical goods and uses a community-driven, decentralized curation process to spotlight diverse and underrepresented creators. Hug combines social curation and discovery tools with Hug Studios, which offers educational and advisory programs for Web3 startup founders and creative entrepreneurs. The company raised $5M in Seed funding to accelerate product growth and integrate creator-first commerce features with its existing tools. The team is led by founder and CEO Randi Zuckerberg and was later joined by co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Debbie Soon. In November 2022 Hug consolidated the Meta Angels NFT community under its parent company Assemble.

• AELER

  Participated · Series A · Mar 2022

  AELER is an EPFL spinoff that modernises shipping containers to reduce logistics costs and CO₂ emissions. The company reports doubled shipment volumes year-on-year and has transported over CHF 100 million worth of goods for customers. AELER says its solution delivers 10–20% logistics cost reductions and over 20% CO₂ reductions for clients including Procter & Gamble. It plans to commercialise its fleet and deploy several thousand shipping units annually through strategic partnerships with logistics firms such as Rhenus. To support this expansion the company has raised over CHF 22 million in equity since 2022 plus €4 million in asset-backed financing and added SipChem InnoVent as a shareholder in its latest CHF 8.4 million round. The startup recently appointed Benoit Dumont, former regional CEO at DHL, as CEO ahead of planned large-scale industrial deployment.

No current team members are available.