Participated · Seed · May 2024

Maia Farms is a Vancouver-based food-tech company that engineers mushroom and mycelium ingredients through liquid-state fermentation, extrusion processing, and a proprietary "fungal intelligence" platform. Its products target food manufacturers that want sustainable, nutrient-dense alternatives to conventional animal or plant proteins. The startup already collaborates with more than 70 global service companies and maintains an impact partnership with The Greater Vancouver Food Bank. With a focus on scaling, Maia plans to accelerate commercial production, broaden its ingredient portfolio, and deepen partnerships across the food industry. The firm will also expand its fermentation and extrusion capacity to meet anticipated demand. Including non-dilutive capital, the company has secured more than $6.5 million in funding to date, underscoring strong early investor and grant support for its technology and mission.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2018

Ad Astra Rocket Company, led by Costa Rican physicist, mechanical engineer and former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang, develops the VASIMR high-power electric propulsion engine. The company signed an agreement with Aethera Technologies Limited and the Canadian Space Agency to advance VASIMR development. The Canadian Space Agency provided $1.5 million in funding to support the program. Aethera is supplying RF-PPUs to enable a planned 100-hour continuous high-power firing test of the VASIMR VX-200SSTM engine scheduled for the fourth trimester of 2018 under NASA's NextStep association with Ad Astra. Completion of that test is expected to raise the systems to Technology Readiness Level 5, the step just prior to a space flight test. The article does not disclose other financial metrics or past financing rounds.