Participated · Seed · Aug 2026

Mafix develops a mineral conversion process that transforms abundant silicate rocks into silicon-based fertilizers that weather within a single growing season, releasing nutrients and removing CO2 as stable bicarbonate. The company is commercializing a first-generation climate-smart fertilizer and plans a commercial demonstration to produce 1,000 tons of product. Mafix’s manufacturing approach repurposes spare capacity in existing cement kilns to avoid building new facilities and to access established logistics hubs. The technology was developed at Stanford University and the company was co-founded by Jade Marcus and Dr. Matthew Kanan. Mafix raised $5.4 million in a pre-seed round to fund the demonstration, further R&D across additional feedstocks, and development of next-generation mineral products and applications.

Led · Series C · Dec 2025

Last Energy is a nuclear technology startup building factory-manufactured small modular reactors that are permanently sealed within 1,000 tons of steel. Its commercial unit is a 20 MW pressurized water reactor derived from a decades-old government design once used on the NS Savannah, and each unit can power roughly 15,000 homes. The reactors are delivered pre-fuelled with six years of uranium, contain no penetrations beyond electrical and control lines, and the steel vessel doubles as a waste cask at end-of-life, eliminating separate disposal. The company is first constructing a 5 MW pilot reactor on a leased site at Texas A&M, targeting startup next year, and plans to bring its 20 MW commercial reactors into production in 2028. By mass-manufacturing at scale, management expects significant cost reductions similar to learning-curve effects seen in other industries. Proceeds from the latest funding will fully finance the pilot and support initial commercial deployments.

Participated · Series B · Sep 2023

Imbue develops foundation models aimed at enabling autonomous agents — AI systems that can perform sophisticated personal and work tasks such as meeting scheduling and complex data analysis without close supervision. CEO Kanjun Qiu says the key to large-scale, real-world AI is better reasoning capabilities. Imbue aims to build agents that people can actually use reliably and ultimately to "reinvent the personal computer so that it's actually truly personal." The company is part of a small group with sufficient capital to develop foundation models amid the generative AI surge. In September Imbue announced a $200 million Series B at a valuation of over $1 billion. The company will use new funding to buy compute resources and hire more employees, with a current focus on hiring a data executive and more product-focused engineers. Imbue, formerly Generally Intelligent, is an AI research lab focused on building models that can robustly reason and perform coding tasks. The company launched out of stealth last October and is researching the fundamentals of human intelligence to inform practical AI agents. It trains very large models (over 100 billion parameters) optimized on internal reasoning benchmarks and uses techniques that spend more compute during inference to arrive at robust conclusions. Training is conducted on a compute cluster co-designed with Nvidia containing 10,000 H100 GPUs. Imbue is also building internal ML tooling, debugging prototypes, and visual interfaces to support model development. The firm does not intend to productionize much of its current work immediately, instead using these efforts to improve future general-purpose systems and a platform for custom models. Financially, Imbue has raised $220 million to date following the new $200M Series B and says the funding will accelerate development of reasoning-and-code models. Generally Intelligent develops richly featured 3D research worlds (referred to as Avalon) and a structured battery of tasks to study how agents learn and generalize in physically grounded, open-ended settings. The lab trains many different agents powered by differing AI technologies to isolate which components produce human-relevant abilities, focusing on problems like object occlusion, persistence, scene understanding and internalizing physics. Its approach draws on developmental and evolutionary-inspired milestones to create increasingly complex challenges for agents. The company intends to scale Avalon into hundreds or thousands of tasks to evaluate and advance capabilities and safety. The team is roughly a dozen people and the board includes Neuralink founding-team member Tim Hanson. Financially, the company has secured an initial $20 million in funding, over $100 million in options, and an agreement guaranteeing $100 million via a drawdown setup to support long-term, capital-intensive research.

Led · Equity · May 2021

Terviva develops pongamia-based products—oil and processed meal—for food, animal feed and renewable-fuel feedstock markets. The company has built an IP platform and patented processing that removes anti-nutritional components from pongamia meal, enabling feed and higher-margin human food applications; it expects to announce a manufacturing partnership soon. Terviva says its cultivars yield 35–40% oil and that crude pongamia oil can be converted into biodiesel, renewable diesel, or sustainable aviation fuel; it also sells pongamia oil through an ISCC-certified supply chain in India. The firm sources beans from India while building a domestic grower network and already has a few thousand acres planted between the US and Australia with plans to expand in other regions. Terviva positions pongamia as a low-input, drought-tolerant "second generation" feedstock that can grow on tier-two agricultural land and lower greenhouse-gas intensity per unit of oil. Founded in 2010, the company was started by Naveen Sikka, Maggie Kavalaris, Anne Slaughter and Joe Andrew. Terviva leverages natural, proprietary food-processing methods to create a golden-colored, buttery cooking oil and a highly soluble plant protein from pongamia tree beans. The company works with farmers to plant pongamia on idle or marginal agricultural land and emphasizes the tree’s sustainability, citing roughly 115 metric tons of carbon captured per acre over 30 years. Terviva plans to expand operations and commercial reach and will open a U.S. production facility in 2022. It is launching a collaboration with Danone to develop new food products that utilize pongamia oil and protein. Financially, the company has secured $78M in funding and expects to close an additional $24M in equity and debt capital this quarter toward that total. As part of the financing, Brace Young joined Terviva’s board. TerViva develops and sells patented, non-GMO high-yielding pongamia tree cultivars to farmers and commercializes the resulting beans for plant protein, high-oleic oil and livestock feed. Its pongamia varieties can produce as much as ten times the beans per acre as soy and are selected for high yields and hardy growth. Farmers partner with TerViva to plant pongamia on abandoned agricultural lands with little to no fertilizers or pesticides, and TerViva buys back the crop for processing. The company is planting its patented trees in Florida and Hawaii, including former sugar cane lands on Oahu, Kauai and Maui. TerViva intends to use new funding to accelerate research connecting pongamia bean functional properties to processing and product-development partnerships to demonstrate commercial viability. It also plans to grow infrastructure to supply farmers with its patented trees and support commercial-scale processing. TerViva grows pongamia, a perennial legume tree, and processes its output into vegetable oil and protein-rich animal feed. The company targets degraded or unproductive land as planting sites, positioning pongamia as a sustainable soybean alternative. TerViva reports pongamia can produce eight times more vegetable oil per acre, twice the protein animal feed per acre, and use one-tenth the water and chemicals versus soybean. It supplies growers with trees and planting support, leverages "drop-in infrastructure" so landowners can use existing equipment, and processes and distributes offtake to end users and distributors. The business develops proprietary technology including high-yielding cultivars, true-to-type tree production, and downstream product IP. TerViva operates projects across 150 acres in Florida and plans to expand to 250 acres in Hawaii within 12 months; it raised $2M in Series B to scale propagation, planting, and animal feed development.

Participated · Series A · May 2021

Firefly Aerospace builds small- and medium-class rockets (Alpha), a lunar lander, and the Elytra spacecraft. The company plans a lunar lander launch later this year and the Elytra's first mission next year. It intends to move Alpha to full-rate production and accelerate development of a Medium Launch Vehicle co-developed with Northrop Grumman. Operationally, Firefly has launched Alpha five times since September 2021, with three missions successfully placing payloads into orbit and a record rapid-response launch (27 hours from green light). The company has agreements with L3Harris for up to 20 launches from 2027 and with Lockheed Martin for 15 committed launches through 2029. A recent large financing round positions the company to meet its near-term mission manifest and production goals. Firefly Aerospace develops end-to-end space transportation systems, including the Alpha small launch vehicle, the Elytra on-orbit vehicle, and the Blue Ghost lunar lander product line. The company has secured multiple U.S. government and commercial contracts, including three NASA CLPS task orders and a NASA Alpha mission. Firefly has also concluded a launch agreement with Lockheed Martin, signed a multi-launch agreement with L3Harris, and has Elytra contracted for a National Reconnaissance Office mission scheduled to fly on Alpha next year. The Medium Launch Vehicle, co-developed with Northrop Grumman, has major milestones planned before year-end. Firefly has reported recent responsive launch success, including the VICTUS NOX mission referenced by company leadership. Financially, the company has been raising capital throughout 2023–2024 to support production and mission execution. Firefly Aerospace, founded in 2014, develops the Alpha orbital rocket and other space systems including a proposed lunar lander called Blue Ghost. It has won multiple satellite launch orders and a $93 million NASA contract for Blue Ghost. The company raised $75 million in a Series A in May 2021 and later received a $75 million direct Series B preferred equity investment from AE Industrial Partners as part of a deal that transferred Noosphere's stake. Noosphere reportedly sold about $100 million of its holdings to Series A participants earlier, and its remaining equity would have been valued at around $500 million before the AEI transaction. Firefly's maiden Alpha launch failed to reach orbit and its ability to reach orbit will affect timing of any public listing. AE Industrial Partners' recent purchase gives it over 50% of Firefly's equity and the right to appoint a majority of the board, after Noosphere sold its holdings amid CFIUS concerns. The FAA has yet to issue a launch license for the company's second Alpha flight, though the FCC approved a communications authorization transfer tied to that launch. Firefly develops a family of launch vehicles and in-space vehicles and services that aim to provide affordable, convenient, and reliable access from LEO to the surface of the Moon. Its product line includes the Alpha small launch vehicle, the Space Utility Vehicle, and the Blue Ghost lunar lander, and it touts LEO solutions up to ten metric tons of payload at the lowest cost per kg in the small-lift class. Firefly is completing preparations for the inaugural launch of Alpha from Vandenberg Space Force Base and has announced multiple commercial and civil Alpha launch contracts with customers including NASA and General Atomics. The company was awarded a $93.3 million NASA CLPS contract to deliver 10 science payloads to the lunar surface in 2023 using Blue Ghost. Firefly completed an oversubscribed $75 million Series A that valued the company at greater than $1 billion and executed approximately $100 million in secondary transactions of Noosphere Ventures’ holdings. The company intends to raise an additional $300 million later in 2021 to fund its growth plans through 2025. Firefly Aerospace, led by founder and CEO Tom Markusic, designs and builds small-to-medium launch vehicles and spacecraft from its Austin/Cedar Park facilities. The company emphasizes rapid iteration—designing, building, testing and rebuilding quickly—to lower costs and increase access to space. Its long-term vision includes reusable, runway-launched rockets operating with airline-like cadence. Firefly reports it and its predecessor have spent about $110 million to date and that it has raised roughly $70 million in the past two years. The company has not yet completed a Series A round of venture capital funding. Firefly won a NASA lunar payload services contract in November 2018, conducted a successful engine test on May 17, 2018, and plans a new launch facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida, while aiming to fly its first rocket in the next six months.