Led · Seed · Apr 2024

Aropha operates a laboratory that provides rapid biodegradation testing and integrates AI screening into product development processes. The company offers both in-lab and in-silico testing and has published a free version of its predictive model, ArophaAI-2. Led by co-founders Kuan Huang (CEO/CTO) and Travis Johnston (Co-Founder, COO, CRO), Aropha works directly with companies to accelerate biodegradable material discovery. To date it has helped more than 80 customers with biodegradation testing. At the end of Q4 the company reported 190% year-over-year booked revenue growth. Aropha plans to expand laboratory operations, increase industry awareness, and further develop its biodegradation prediction model, ArophaAI.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2024

ScaleIP offers an IP business intelligence solution built on proprietary IP transaction data to help IP teams identify high-intent target companies for patent monetization. The product aims to reveal viable commercial partnerships that conventional patent analytics tools miss. Customers include over 130 IP dealmakers across enterprises, universities, labs, and hospitals who use the platform to license, sell, or decide whether to keep or abandon patents, seek collaborators, and determine patent market value. The company plans to use recent funding to accelerate its ability to help more IP teams monetize undervalued patents. ScaleIP emphasizes saving labor time, generating new revenue streams, and improving patent decision-making through transaction-data-driven intelligence. The company was formerly known as LicenseLead.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2023

GroGuru supplies precision soil and irrigation monitoring and management systems to the commercial agriculture industry. Its solutions enable farmers to increase crop yields while using water, energy, fertilizer and labor more efficiently and sustainably. The product combines a patented wireless underground system (WUGS) for soil monitoring, an AI-based recommendation engine in the cloud, and an intuitive farmer-friendly interface accessible on tablet, computer or mobile device. The company is led by president and CEO Patrick Henry and has participated in accelerator programs including OCTANE LaunchPad, EvoNexus, AgLaunch, the Yield Lab, SVG-Thrive and Plug & Play AgTech. GroGuru closed a $2.3M Seed A financing to support expansion and commercialization. The company intends to use the funds to expand sales, continue development and commercialization of its AI-enabled continuous farm monitoring and management solutions, and grow strategic partnerships. GroGuru develops a patented wireless underground system (WUGS) that enables permanent installation of soil sensors in annual field crops, removing the need for annual installation and removal. The sensors feed data to the cloud, where GroGuru uses machine learning and other data to deliver recommendations on when and how much to irrigate. Its technology targets crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and sorghum. The company says it will use the new capital to grow its team, scale operations and deploy critical sensor technologies connected to the cloud. Leadership includes president and CEO Patrick Henry and co‑founders CTO/VP engineering Farooq Anjum, PhD, and Chief Scientific Officer Jeff Campbell, PhD. GroGuru is a portfolio company at the EvoNexus technology incubator in Southern California. GroGuru develops irrigation automation technology and a precision soil and irrigation monitoring system for the agriculture industry. The company aims to improve on-farm efficiencies amid a severe labor shortage. It plans to advance its automation technology using proceeds from new funding. GroGuru secured $250,000 in seed funding from Western Growers and Radicle Growth. The financing was awarded as part of the Radicle Automation Challenge. GroGuru is part of the EvoNexus startup incubator, which operates locations in San Diego and Irvine, and is led by CEO Patrick Henry.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2023

benefitbay operates an ICHRA platform that partners with brokers, employers, and carriers to deliver personalized benefits solutions including enrollment, payments, compliance, and administration. The company positions itself to help employers transition from traditional group health plans to defined-contribution healthcare models. Led by CEO Brandy Thompson and headquartered in Kansas City, MO, benefitbay focuses on broker enablement and integrations with carriers and payroll providers. With the newly raised Series A, the company plans to expand its payments infrastructure and deepen direct carrier and payroll integrations to support growth. The funding is intended to accelerate product and go-to-market capabilities rather than disclose operating metrics; no revenue, user, or prior round figures were provided in the announcement.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2023

Mavvrik is the financial control center for modern IT, delivering complete visibility, automation, and governance across cloud, AI, SaaS, and on‑prem infrastructure. Its platform gives CFOs, FinOps, and IT teams real‑time control over spend, with features for full cost visibility, automated cost allocation and chargebacks, budget guardrails, anomaly detection, and per‑model AI/GPU spend tracking. Mavvrik integrates with public clouds (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud), private environments (VMware, Kubernetes), AI providers (Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, Amazon Bedrock, Gemini) and SaaS such as Databricks and MongoDB to enable Cost‑to‑Serve and unit‑level economics. The company says it helps enterprises reduce waste, enforce financial accountability, and optimize AI and hybrid cloud spend. The announced $6.2MM seed will fund go‑to‑market expansion and product innovation. As part of its growth plan Mavvrik is expanding its leadership team, adding Paul Franz as VP of Sales, Chris Paap as VP of Product Management, and Lindsey Tishgart as VP of Marketing. DigitalEx develops CloudCompare™, an AI-driven platform for monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing cloud costs across public and private clouds. The product provides real-time visibility and control over cloud spend and integrates data from diverse cloud platforms to enable intelligent cost optimizations. The company plans to use proceeds from a $2M pre-seed round to accelerate CloudCompare development and expand market reach. DigitalEx was established by Safi Siddiqui and Darmawan Suwirya, who have a combined 20 years of cloud experience, and is led by CEO Sundeep Goel. An early customer, XpressDocs, reported improved cloud cost management and more collaborative workflows after adopting DigitalEx. The article positions the funding as enabling execution on the CloudCompare roadmap amid recent AI developments.