Led · Series A · Jun 2025

LIDROTEC builds proprietary laser systems that combine high-precision cutting with fluid-based cooling and cleaning to enable low-damage chip singulation. Its liquid-mediated laser dicing reduces material damage, narrows heat-affected zones, and cuts particle defects, which lowers breakage rates and increases yields—particularly for hard-to-dice materials and thin semiconductors. The company targets compound semiconductor, power device, photonics, and leading-edge semiconductor markets. LIDROTEC plans to use the funding to accelerate product development and commercialization, expand its team, and scale global delivery of its solutions. Financially, it has closed a $13.5 million Series A-2 financing co-led by Lam Capital and Goose Capital, with participation from ZEISS Ventures, NRW.BANK, Gründerfonds Ruhr and other investors. Company leadership and investors described the round as validation of the technology and a step toward broader commercial deployment. Lidrotec is a Bochum, Germany–based company that has developed a patent-pending wafer-dicing laser technology for the semiconductor industry. Its innovation uses liquids in the laser processing zone to cool and rinse wafers during cutting, producing thinner cuts, higher precision, clean surfaces, virtually no damage, and higher processing speeds without adapting production lines. Lidrotec won Round 5 of the Luminate NY accelerator and will receive a $1 million investment from New York State through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative. As part of the award, the company must establish operations in the Finger Lakes region for at least 18 months. Through Luminate NY Lidrotec was introduced to AIM Photonics, which is helping the company build infrastructure to develop the next iteration of its technology. CEO Alexander Igelmann said the program provided U.S. network, supplier, and client contacts that will help meet development milestones over the next two years, including market validation.

Participated · Seed · May 2025

Persona AI develops bipedal humanoid robots designed to perform welding and other skilled trades in heavy manufacturing, with an initial focus on shipbuilding. The company has iterated three hardware generations in 24 months, performed its first untethered weld in a Houston shop, and demonstrated outdoor walking in protective materials. Persona AI has units already at HD Hyundai and plans prototype delivery by the end of 2026 with commercialization in 2027. It plans to offer robots via a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) model to reduce customer capital expenditure and enable large-scale fleet deployments. The founding team includes veterans from NASA and prior humanoid efforts, and the company targets markets with acute labor shortages and repetitive, high-value welding work.

Led · Series B · Dec 2024

FibreCoat is a German-founded materials company that coats metals and plastics onto fibers during the fiber spinning process to combine the properties of the fibers and the coating material. Its coated fibers are engineered for strength, conductivity and recyclability and protect against radiation, heat and electromagnetic interference (EMI). The company’s products are targeted at space and defense customers—applications cited include launchers, satellites, sensors, circuits, shielding and chaff material—and it also sees demand in automotive use cases such as electric vehicles. FibreCoat has raised over €20M in a Series B to scale production and meet rising demand. The company says it has grown rapidly since its founding and intends to use the fundraise to increase production and accelerate scaling. Through a strategic partnership with NewSpace Capital, FibreCoat expects to leverage investor network and market knowledge to bring its low-cost, high-performance materials to customers.

Participated · Series D · Oct 2024

Outrider builds autonomous yard operations systems and offers autonomous yard operations as a service to logistics-dependent enterprises, aiming to improve safety and increase efficiency by eliminating hazardous, repetitive manual tasks. The company works with customers across package shipping, retail and eCommerce, consumer packaged goods, and automotive to launch and scale those operations. Product scaling in 2025 is focused on distribution center applications, while the technology is also suited for intermodal rail and port terminals for future freight-transportation use cases. Outrider is led by founder and CEO Andrew Smith and is based in Brighton, CO. The company has raised over $250M in equity capital to date. With the new funding, Outrider plans to scale to hundreds of systems with key customers and address additional use cases while extending its market leadership and protecting its patented innovations. Outrider develops an autonomous system that combines electric yard trucks, operational software, and site infrastructure to move and manage trailers in distribution yards. The system handles hitching and unhitching, connecting and disconnecting trailer brake lines, and monitoring trailer locations; its latest hardware includes robotic arms designed for harsh environments. Outrider has 20 autonomous systems deployed at customer sites and its test facility as it finishes final capabilities and proprietary safety mechanisms. Customers include Georgia Pacific and other partners that have participated in joint testing since 2019, and the company says its customers represent more than 20% of all yard trucks operating in North America. Outrider employs about 175 people and plans to use the new funding to hire in the U.S. and internationally and to transition from testing and validation to commercial operations at scale. Founded in 2017 as Azevtec, the company aims to productize the system and scale to thousands of systems operating on Outrider software over the next few years. Outrider develops a three-part system comprised of an autonomous electric yard truck, site infrastructure, and software to manage yard operations. The system automates trailer movements, hitching/unhitching, connecting/disconnecting brake lines, and trailer location tracking. The company emphasizes dual benefits of electrification and autonomy—reduced maintenance, lower operating costs, and cleaner power. Outrider targets distribution yards, citing about 400,000 such yards in the U.S. as a sizable opportunity. The Golden, Colorado startup has completed multiple pilot programs (including with Georgia‑Pacific) and now employs 110 people. Financially, the company recently raised a $65M Series B, bringing total funding to $118M. Outrider develops an integrated, three-part system for automating distribution yard operations: management software, autonomous zero-emission yard trucks with vision-based robotics, and site infrastructure. The system handles tasks such as moving trailers, hitching/unhitching, connecting/disconnecting brake lines, and monitoring trailer locations, and integrates with existing supply chain software used by large enterprises. Outrider is demonstrating its solution through pilot programs with Georgia-Pacific and four Fortune 200 companies in designated sections of their distribution yards. The company is led by founder and CEO Andrew Smith and is based in Golden, Colo. It has more than 75 employees, including 50 engineers focused solely on distribution yard automation. The article reports the company raised $53M in funding (seed and Series A rounds).

Led · Seed · Aug 2023

P6 Technologies builds a SaaS enterprise Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) platform that measures product-level carbon intensity and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Its software targets products in the energy sector, transportation fuel, and petrochemical industries. Led by CEO Joe Berti and based in Austin, Texas, the company positions its platform to help businesses achieve sustainability goals and attain market leadership. P6 intends to use new funding to accelerate development and go-to-market activities for its LCA enterprise software. The company raised $3.25M in Seed funding to support those efforts.