• Glacier

  Participated · Series A · Apr 2025

  Glacier develops low-cost robotic arms guided by computer vision to identify over 30 material types and automate sorting at materials recovery facilities (MRFs). Its robots have been deployed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix and Seattle. The company offers robots as outright purchases or via lease-to-own, and provides training, spare parts and maintenance packages to customers. Glacier also sells a data product that gives MRFs, consumer-products companies, and government agencies insights into the waste stream and recycling performance. The startup, described in the article as six years old, plans to expand its robot fleet to more municipalities to address labor shortages and improve recycling rates. Financially, Glacier recently closed a $16 million Series A to support that expansion. Glacier is a Bay Area recycling robotics startup whose core products are a sorting robot deployed in recycling facilities and an AI scanner that tracks materials and packaging fate. Amazon is piloting the AI scanner to understand what happens to packaging after it reaches consumers. The company says it works with customers in 10 states and is forming partnerships with brands, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies. Glacier has collaborated with the City of Phoenix and received a grant from the Michigan Department of Environment to support further deployments. Co-founders include CEO Rebecca Hu and Areeb Malik. The startup recently closed a new $7.7M funding round co-led by Amazon and NEA. Glacier builds compact, low-cost recycling robotics and automation systems designed for space-constrained sorting facilities. The company emphasizes three advantages—low cost, small size and easy install—and has conducted pilots and deployed its first commercial system at a facility in Los Angeles. Founded in 2019 and operating in stealth until the announcement, Glacier’s team combines AI and robotics engineers with founders Areeb Malik (formerly a software engineer at Facebook) and Rebecca Hu (formerly at Bain & Company). The team’s experience includes self-driving excavators and forklifts, extraterrestrial mining robots, humanoid disaster-response robots and AI models for medical detection. Glacier has opened preorders for its first commercial system and plans to use new funding to increase headcount and accelerate commercial deployment. The company positions its product as an alternative to larger, more expensive systems in the recycling space.

• Impulse Space

  Participated · Series B · Oct 2024

  Impulse Space, founded by SpaceX engine guru Tom Mueller, develops highly maneuverable spacecraft and propulsion systems for in-space mobility. Its product portfolio includes Mira, a maneuverable platform that has flown at least three missions, and Helios, a vehicle designed to move satellites rapidly to higher orbits. The company is targeting U.S. Space Force customers and is preparing another Mira launch expected before the end of the year after a prior flight encountered a navigation-related propellant issue. Impulse recently opened an office in Colorado as it expands its engineering team and plans to hire up to 200 new employees with proceeds from its Series D. The company’s software teams use AI coding tools, though leadership has expressed skepticism about applying current deep learning models to hardware design.

• EWA

  Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

  EWA is a language-learning app that teaches users through clips, memes and passages from movies, TV shows, books and games rather than traditional classroom methods. Users sign up and interact with a chatbot to describe their learning style and preferred content, which directs them to lessons based on real-world material. The product emphasizes pronunciation, idioms and conversational usage by immersing learners in familiar context. Launched in 2018 by Max Korneev, Stepan Nikitin, Anton Aleshkevich and Stas Morozov, EWA offers courses in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. The app has amassed more than 51 million downloads and 3.5 million monthly active users. It reports an annual run rate of $32.4 million and was fully bootstrapped prior to this raise. The new capital will be used to expand its product offerings.

• Benepass

  Participated · Seed · May 2020

  Founded in 2019, Benepass offers a proprietary ledger-based platform that consolidates and administers employer benefits programs across multiple currencies and tax treatments. The system enables companies to configure Health Savings Accounts, Flexible Spending Accounts, and a variety of reimbursement wallets while tightly controlling eligible spend categories. To date the platform has processed more than 4.5 million card transactions and is used by over 250 employers worldwide. Internal data show the company’s revenue more than doubled between January 2025 and January 2026, reflecting strong customer adoption. Looking ahead, Benepass plans to deepen its Health Savings Account capabilities and roll out Specialty Health Reimbursement Accounts that target high-cost therapies such as GLP-1 medications. It will also invest in employee outreach features to boost participation in pre-tax programs, lowering taxable income for employees and payroll taxes for employers. The company is a Workday Wellness strategic partner, underscoring growing enterprise demand for its flexible, compliant infrastructure.

• GoodWork

  Participated · Seed · May 2020

  GoodWork is a booking app for home services operating in the Metro Manila region, letting customers book cleaning, laundry pickup, air-conditioner cleaning, home repairs and spa services like manicures. Service providers set their own prices and the platform reports providers typically get more than 10,000 jobs each month, with 70% of daily bookings from repeat customers. Founded in 2018, the company suspended operations in March and April due to COVID-19 quarantine rules and added online medical consultations to adapt. It has raised a $1.6 million seed round to fund regional expansion. GoodWork plans to launch in Vietnam and Thailand at the end of this year or early 2021 and will focus on entering more major cities. As lockdowns lift the company is adding disinfection cleaning services, a body-temperature monitoring feature, additional safety training and protective equipment for providers, and has already seen a strong recovery with some categories returning to pre-COVID levels.

No current team members are available.