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Cantos

25 Taylor Street Suite 300, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States

Overview

Cantos is a pre-seed venture capital firm with $90M under management that invests in founders audacious enough to believe they can change the world.

Total investments
41
Lead investments
4
Investments · 12mo
7
Active investors
3

Sector focus

  • Financial Services
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • Heaviside Industries

    Participated · Series B · Aug 2026

    Heaviside Industries develops multi-domain autonomous precision munitions for air, land and sea platforms. Founded in 2024, the company operated in stealth for more than two years before emerging with its Series A. Heaviside has a team of over 50 engineers and operators and maintains offices in Los Angeles and Oslo. It has a roster of U.S. and allied customers and is led by CEO Phillip Walker. The company plans initial deployments of aerial and underwater munitions platforms. Financially, Heaviside announced a $28M Series A led by Interlagos to accelerate development, production and delivery of its systems.

  • Vital Lyfe

    Participated · Seed · Dec 2025

    Vital Lyfe is building a new category of decentralized, personal water-making technology that lets users produce filtered, drinkable water anywhere on Earth. Founded by former SpaceX engineers Jon Criss and Andrew Harner, the company applies aerospace precision and systems thinking to water production, enabling operation across varied and rugged environments where conventional infrastructure fails. Its current prototypes serve maritime groups, NGOs, and other off-grid customers, validating durability and performance in high-stakes field conditions. The company plans to accelerate manufacturing and broaden deployments ahead of its first consumer-ready product launch in 2026. Fresh capital will fund scaled production, expand field pilots, and refine the product roadmap. To date, Vital Lyfe has secured more than $18 million in seed equity and additional committed debt financing, totaling $24 million of fresh funding.

  • Castelion

    Participated · Series B · Dec 2025

    Castelion's flagship product is Blackbeard, described as a low-cost, mass-producible hypersonic strike missile engineered for industrial-rate output and continuous flight-test iteration. The company has progressed from early development to repeated flight testing, operational integration, and construction of a dedicated high-rate production capability, including the 1,000-acre Project Ranger manufacturing campus in New Mexico. Castelion has secured over $500 million in U.S. military contracts in the past 18 months and achieved program-of-record status for Blackbeard in under four years, with fielding targeted for 2027. Management and investors say the company is already producing hardware, mixing propellant in New Mexico, and shipping to the services. Castelion plans to use new capital to scale Blackbeard production, accelerate a longer-range precision strike weapon that leverages Blackbeard technologies, and develop lower-cost defensive systems. The company is headquartered in Torrance, California, with manufacturing operations in New Mexico, Texas, and California and offices in Washington, D.C. The Series C values the company at $13 billion following the $1 billion raise (comprised of $800 million equity and a $250 million revolving credit facility).

  • Faeth Therapeutics

    Participated · Equity · Oct 2025

    Faeth Therapeutics, headquartered in Austin, Texas, is advancing multi-node therapies that block cancer growth signals while controlling tumor fuel supply. Its proprietary, AI-driven MetabOS platform uncovers metabolic dependencies in tumors and other diseases, guiding the development of therapeutic and nutritional interventions. The company’s lead program is a Phase 2 study in endometrial cancer that is expected to deliver a full data readout in Q3 2026. Additional plans include a Phase 1 trial in locally advanced rectal cancer using a non-essential amino acid-restricted regimen and an investigational program for Hereditary Tyrosinemia Type 1, the first application of MetabOS beyond oncology. Founded in 2019 by noted scientists Lewis Cantley, Siddhartha Mukherjee, Karen Vousden, Scott Lowe, and Greg Hannon, the company is led by CEO Anand Parikh. To date, Faeth has raised $92 million in capital to fund its pipeline and expand the MetabOS platform.

  • Adaptyx

    Participated · Seed · Oct 2025

    Adaptyx Biosciences is building a wearable sensing platform that extends continuous monitoring beyond glucose, capturing small molecules, electrolytes, hormones, drugs, and proteins in real time. The system pairs its molecular data streams with AI-driven analytics to detect health trends early and prompt timely interventions. Initial application areas include heart-failure management, endocrine and fertility care, critical-care drug dosing, and personalized wellness. The company holds an exclusive license to IP generated over more than a decade of research at Stanford University and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub. Current efforts focus on expanding the molecular switch pipeline, progressing clinical trials for the first indication, and scaling engineering, data-science, and clinical teams. Founded in 2022 and based in Menlo Park, California, Adaptyx’s technology remains investigational and has not yet entered commercial sales. To date, the company has secured $23 million in total funding, including the latest seed round.

Team