Participated · Series B · Apr 2023

Unchained offers a collaborative custody platform that leverages bitcoin’s native multisignature capabilities to combine self‑custody benefits with mitigated custodial risk. Its platform secures over $2 billion in bitcoin across thousands of keys and the company has originated more than $500 million in bitcoin‑collateralized loans since 2017 with zero loan losses. Product offerings include a trading desk that allows clients to buy bitcoin directly to cold storage and an IRA product that lets clients hold keys within tax‑advantaged retirement accounts. Unchained emphasizes risk management, regulatory compliance, and client service and positions its model as resilient to rehypothecation risks that affected other firms. The company is known for bitcoin education and thought leadership and plans to expand its client base and product suite to bridge into traditional dollar ecosystems around credit, trading, and investment. Management says it will use the new capital to grow distribution and enhance its core financial services delivered through collaborative custody. Unchained Capital builds a full-suite financial services platform focused on customers who hold long-term wealth in bitcoin and insist on private key ownership. Its core product offering includes a bitcoin-backed multisig lending platform supported by third-party funding partners. The company says the partnership with NYDIG accelerated development of its technology and services and contributed to a five-fold increase in its bitcoin-collateralized lending business over the past six months. In February NYDIG took a minority equity stake and agreed to provide $50M of lending capital to Unchained; NYDIG has since expanded that support. The company was founded in 2016 by Joe Kelly and is based in Austin, TX. Unchained Capital operates a bitcoin-backed multisignature lending platform and custody solution that lets clients retain unilateral control of their bitcoin while accessing financial services. The company develops proprietary services and open-source applications to advance multisig for individuals and businesses. Unchained has reached over $1 billion of bitcoin secured and has originated over $80 million in loans. Proceeds from the new financing will be used to grow its 25-person team, deepen its partnership with NYDIG, and expand lending and trade-execution capabilities. The firm plans to grow its suite of services to include bitcoin lending and bitcoin payments infrastructure. Unchained is based in Austin, Texas and was founded in 2016. Unchained Capital provides USD loans secured by customers' long-term cryptocurrency holdings, allowing borrowers to access fiat without selling assets. The company offers Bitcoin- and Ethereum-collateralized loans with terms up to five years and competitive interest rates. It emphasizes custody security using an open-source smart contract, multi-signature cold storage, and hardware wallets, supported by a $150,000 bug bounty and a security audit by Hosho. Unchained recently expanded its lending capabilities to accept ETH in addition to BTC. The firm positions itself as infrastructure for crypto-wealth management and aims to innovate proprietary financial services and wealth management offerings. Funds from the recent raise will be used to expand the team and develop its product suite.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2023

Strangeworks, based in Austin, TX, builds and delivers tools to make quantum computing accessible for software developers and researchers. It also provides systems management solutions targeted at IT administrators and CIOs. The company was founded by William Hurley. Strangeworks raised $24M in a Series A funding round. The company intends to use the funds to expand its core team and to broaden its technology offerings beyond quantum computing into quantum-inspired, performance computing, and artificial intelligence. Investors in the round include Hitachi Ventures, IBM and Raytheon Technologies, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Great Point Ventures, and Ecliptic Capital. Strangeworks, based in Austin, Texas, builds quantum computing software and tools targeted at four industry verticals: aerospace, energy, finance and pharmaceuticals. The company has established partnerships within the quantum ecosystem, including a role in the IBM Q Network. It partnered with Stack Overflow to help build a quantum community and launched the Quantum Computing Stack Exchange. Strangeworks also collaborated with CERN to create the CERN Entrepreneurship Student Programme (CESP). Led by William Hurley, Justin Youens and David Cardona, the company is positioning its platform around developer and enterprise engagement. The recent seed funding will support continued product and community development.

Led · Series A · Aug 2021

EarBuds is a real-time social music platform that enables users to stream the same songs and playlists as friends, favorite musicians and celebrities in real time. The app creates group audio experiences both live and on-demand, and supports chat and live-voice functions to bring people closer through shared musical interests. It offers artists, labels, celebrities and brands tools to build and engage fan communities and to connect through voice, premium content, social and mobile features. EarBuds is available for Spotify and Apple Music users, with Pandora and Amazon Music coming soon. The company plans to use the funds to build new tools to help EarBuds hosts better connect with listeners and monetize their streams. The team has added David Ransom as Head of Product and Sean Moubry as Head of Engineering, and veteran executive Drew Larner has joined as an investor and senior advisor; the company is led by Founder and CEO Jason Fox. Earbuds is a social music app founded by former NFL lineman Jason Fox that lets users stream and share playlists from athletes, entertainers and peers by linking Spotify or Apple Music accounts. The app has been in beta since February and emphasizes influencer-driven content, courting athletes, musicians and entertainers to act as on-platform broadcasters. Core features include account linking via Google/Facebook, a one-month free premium offer for Spotify or Apple Music, leaderboards for top streamers, and the ability for users to build in-app playlists. Early partnerships, including an activation with Burton that streamed snowboarders’ music, have informed plans to expand integrations across sports and esports and with services like Twitch. The company moved development from Los Angeles to Austin, rebuilt the product for better UX, and currently has seven employees. Financially, Earbuds completed a $630,000 friends-and-family round and a $1.5 million seed to launch and is now seeking $3 million to scale.

Led · Seed · Aug 2021

Pluralytics AI develops ValuesFinder, a SaaS platform that powers values-driven communications by identifying language patterns and matching them with people's values. The platform analyzes content across channels to define which values-driven consumer segments a brand most aligns with and why. ValuesFinder recommends language to appeal to more people with scaled scientific precision and aims to measurably improve engagement and conversion. The company has launched ValuesFinder and lists enterprise customers including Speedway Motors, Nelnet Renewable Energy and two Fortune 500 companies. Financially, Pluralytics AI has raised over $1M in seed financing led by Ecliptic Capital. The company is based in Minneapolis, MN.

Led · Series A · Jul 2021

ThreatWarrior is an Austin, TX–based cloud-native network threat intelligence company that provides an AI-powered threat intelligence platform. Led by CEO Bruce Coughlin, the platform combines unsupervised neural networks, continuous deep packet inspection, behavior monitoring, and response capabilities in a single system. The product delivers detailed and actionable context across the enterprise, reducing false positives and alert fatigue and helping analysts prioritize and triage alerts. The solution enables users to see activity across their organization while accelerating analysis, investigation, and response to threat activity. The company raised $10M in a Series A and said it will use the funds to accelerate growth, fuel product development, and advance go-to-market strategies.