Participated · Series A · Oct 2021

Launched in 2020, Open offers in-person and virtual mindfulness experiences that combine breathwork, meditation, yoga, Pilates and curated music to help participants regulate the nervous system and reach meditative states. Classes weave breathwork techniques into each practice to strengthen the mind–body connection through mental and physical training. The company curates and creates music for sessions by partnering with record labels, cultural curators, and artists such as Moses Sumney, UMI, Ólafur Arnalds and Perfume Genius. Open offers free guest passes and lets subscribers bring friends to virtual classes via shared links, while maintaining an in-person studio in Venice. The studio’s product focuses on sensory engagement and accessible practices to lower barriers to meditation. Management intends to use the new funding to continue expanding operations and its business reach.

Participated · Equity · Sep 2020

Pachama develops technology that harnesses satellite data and AI to deliver insights on how forests sequester carbon, protect wildlife, and support local livelihoods. The company provides tools that help companies identify and invest in high-quality reforestation and conservation projects and helps land stewards estimate carbon, start projects, and secure funding. Pachama has evaluated projects worldwide and developed Pachama Original projects in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, and has served clients such as Salesforce, Nespresso, Shopify, and Boston Consulting Group. In Q3 2023 the company reported 57% year‑over‑year growth in credits retired, underscoring increased demand for its rigorously vetted projects. The additional capital announced in the extension will fund R&D in AI applied to geospatial data and expand products and services for companies and project developers. Pachama also announced board appointment of Ebony Beckwith as an independent board member as it scales its nature-based climate solutions. Pachama is a San Francisco-based technology company that leverages satellite imagery, remote sensing and machine learning to measure the carbon stored in forests and monitor forest growth over time. Through its platform, responsible companies can confidently invest in high-quality forest conservation projects verified by Pachama’s evaluation process. The company says it has worked with 46 forest project developers in 14 countries, reviewed over 150 forest projects globally and counts more than 800 sustainably-minded organizations as customers, including Salesforce, Microsoft, Nespresso, Airbnb, Netflix, Softbank, Vuori, and Flexport. Pachama intends to use the Series B proceeds to continue building a scientifically rigorous, technology-based approach to forest carbon credit verification, acquire talent, expand efforts to reach corporate and forest developers, accelerate R&D, and scale the technology needed to transform carbon markets. Diego Saez Gil is CEO and co-founder and the company is based in San Francisco, CA. The new round brings Pachama’s total investment secured to $79M. Pachama operates a verified marketplace for forest carbon credits that combines satellite imagery and machine learning to improve transparency and verifiability. The company says its technology enables validation, monitoring and measurement of forest projects to support corporate carbon-offset purchases. Pachama launched in 2020 and has attracted paying customers including Mercado Libre, Microsoft, Shopify and SoftBank, and received a public shout-out from Jeff Bezos. The startup has recruited talent from companies such as Google, Facebook, SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI, Microsoft, Impossible Foods and Orbital Insights. Pachama plans to use new funding for product development and continued expansion of its marketplace. Financially, the company raised $15 million in its latest financing and has amassed nearly $24 million in capital since its 2020 launch. Pachama provides remote verification and monitoring of forestry offset projects using satellite imagery and AI to measure carbon captured by forests. The company offers enterprise tools to onboard and monitor carbon removal projects, creating new levels of measurement, monitoring, and verification. Pachama said it will scale its forest restoration and conservation emissions‑reduction monitoring service. To support that effort it raised $5 million in fresh funding, bringing total capital raised to $9 million. The product is positioned as timely amid Western US wildfires and ongoing deforestation globally. Founder Diego Saez‑Gil lost his home in the California wildfires earlier this year, and investors cited growing corporate demand from businesses with ESG commitments. Pachama builds a marketplace to connect verified reforestation projects with buyers of carbon offsets and provides monitoring and management services using satellite imagery and sensors. The company verifies projects approved by existing certification bodies and seeks to bring trust and independent validation to carbon markets. Founder Diego Saez-Gil launched the effort after observing deforestation impacts firsthand and the company currently lists 23 forest projects in Brazil, Peru and multiple U.S. states (California, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maine). Pachama raised $4.1 million from a consortium of investors to create the marketplace and its monitoring software. Its business becomes profitable only if carbon prices exceed about $15 per ton; today only California and European markets have reached that level. The team sees regulatory demand (for example CORSIA for airlines) as a potential driver of future offset demand and plans to scale listings and verification to meet that demand.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2018

Carthera, founded in 2010 as a spin-off from AP-HP Paris and Sorbonne University, develops ultrasound-based medical devices to treat a range of brain disorders. Its lead product, SonoCloud®, is an intracranial implant designed to temporarily open the blood-brain barrier and is currently in clinical trials in Europe and the United States. The company is preparing a registrational international, multicenter, randomized 1:1 open-label pivotal trial to evaluate overall survival in recurrent glioblastoma patients treated with carboplatin plus the SonoCloud-9® system versus standard of care (lomustine and temozolomide). Carthera raised an additional €4.5M, bringing its Series B to €42M; those funds will support launching the pivotal rGBM study. In parallel the company plans to advance its clinical and preclinical pipeline in neurodegenerative diseases and is actively seeking research and clinical collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech partners to use SonoCloud for brain delivery. The company was founded by Pr. Alexandre Carpentier, is led by CEO Frederic Sottilini and chaired by Oern Stuge MD, and has offices in Lyon and Paris plus a subsidiary in Boston, Massachusetts. CarThera is a French medtech company and spin‑off from AP‑HP and Sorbonne University that developed SonoCloud, an implantable ultrasound device that temporarily increases blood‑brain barrier permeability to boost drug delivery. The company is gathering data from an international (American/French), multicenter pilot clinical study using a larger version, the SonoCloud‑9, and is completing investigator‑sponsored trials in Alzheimer’s disease. With the EIC‑backed DOMEUS project, CarThera plans to scale up processes and organizational structure, extend SonoCloud functionalities, and increase patient access worldwide. Financially, CarThera was selected by the EIC Accelerator to receive a €2.0M grant and €10.5M in equity, building on a €10M Series B raised in December 2018. Management intends to use upcoming financing (a planned Series C in early 2021) to fund development through market authorizations in Europe and the U.S. The company works closely with academic partners and research laboratories in Paris and Lyon as it transitions from clinical to commercial stage. CarThera develops therapeutic ultrasound-based medical devices to treat brain disorders, with its core product being SonoCloud, an intracranial ultrasound implant that temporarily opens the blood–brain barrier (BBB). The company was founded in 2010 by Professor Alexandre Carpentier as a spin-off from AP-HP, Greater Paris University Hospitals, and Sorbonne University, and is led by CEO Frederic Sottilini. CarThera is based at the Brain and Spine Institute (ICM) in Paris and maintains laboratories at the Bioparc Laënnec incubator in Lyon. It has an active clinical program: a multi-center study of the SonoCloud-9 device in recurrent glioblastoma has been launched in France and the US, there is an ongoing study with the SonoCloud-1 device in Alzheimer’s disease, and a study is planned for patients with brain metastases. The company intends to use the funds from its recent Series B to further advance the SonoCloud technology and develop its clinical pipeline. Following the fundraise the company became a public limited company (SA) and established a new board including a founders’ representative and investor representatives. CarThera develops the SonoCloud, an implantable ultrasound device designed to temporarily increase blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability to improve delivery of therapeutic molecules to the brain. The device is implanted in the skull and activated prior to chemotherapy; two minutes of low‑intensity ultrasound opens the BBB for about six hours and increases drug concentration in the brain five to seven times, with good tolerance. The company is advancing the DOME project to support development and market launch of these implantable devices and to broaden clinical indications. The recent grant will finance a Phase 2b/3 glioblastoma trial involving roughly 200 patients at centers in Europe and the United States and will sponsor exploratory studies including one in Alzheimer’s disease. CarThera was founded in 2010 by Professor Alexandre Carpentier and is led by CEO Frederic Sottilini. It is based at the Brain and Spine Institute in Paris and maintains laboratories at the Bioparc Laënnec incubator in Lyon.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2018

Back Market operates an online marketplace focused on professionally refurbished smartphones and electronic devices, offering like-new products with a one-year warranty and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The company emphasizes quality control and aims to improve product reliability to increase consumer confidence in the refurbished sector. It serves more than 6 million customers worldwide and hosts over 1,500 sellers on its platform. Back Market employs about 650 people across four offices in New York, Berlin, Paris, and Bordeaux. The company plans to invest in product quality and a world-class customer experience while expanding its global customer base, with a particular push into the U.S. market. Back Market operates an online marketplace for refurbished smartphones, laptops, tablets, headphones, gaming consoles and other consumer electronics. The company does not refurbish devices itself; instead roughly 1,500 third-party companies list inventory on the platform. Back Market reports about 5 million customers globally and says its overall defective rate sits at roughly 5%, with a defect warranty included on purchases. The startup invests heavily in merchant services, parts sourcing and quality control to improve reliability and consumer trust. It positions itself within the circular economy and emphasizes sustainability as part of its value proposition. Back Market is active in 13 markets including the U.S. and Japan and plans launches in Canada, Greece, Sweden and Slovakia. Back Market runs a marketplace for refurbished smartphones and other electronic devices by partnering with certified third-party sellers rather than refurbishing devices in-house. The platform requires a 12-month warranty for listed products to reassure buyers. It currently works with about 1,000 certified sellers and is live in the U.S., France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the U.K. and Austria. With fresh capital, the company plans to expand its quality-control team and introduce new services around refurbishments, such as sourcing spare parts and implementing test protocols. Management intends to concentrate on core markets rather than rapid country expansion, starting with the U.S., U.K. and Germany. The recent funding will support efforts to capture more of the refurbishment value chain and scale operations. Back Market operates an online marketplace that aggregates over 270 refurbishment factories to sell refurbished smartphones, laptops, game consoles, TVs, headphones, coffee machines and more. The company aims to make refurbishment a mainstream alternative to buying new devices by building a trusted brand and quality assurance across partners. Back Market claims it can manage pricing, fail rates and partner performance by choosing which factories to work with. Over the past three years the platform has generated over $110 million in gross merchandise volume. Its service is live in France, Germany, Spain, Belgium and Italy and the company has recently expanded to the U.S. Executives emphasize that many customers are satisfied with devices one or two years old, creating growth opportunity for the refurbishment market. Back Market is a French greentech platform that sells refurbished smartphones, tablets, televisions and other household appliances. It works with more than 130 factories and refurbishing workshops to offer secondhand electronics at a discount. The company says it saves customers 30–50% compared with the price of new products and helps remove over 100 tonnes of electronic waste each year. Launched in 2014 by Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Quentin Le Brouster and Vianney Vaute, Back Market is positioning itself as a trusted third party between refurbishers, manufacturers and distributors. The startup plans to accelerate international expansion, aiming to open in new countries by the end of 2017, and says Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium already account for more than 30% of its business. To support growth and partnerships it intends to double its workforce from 32 by the end of 2017.

Participated · Series C · Jul 2017

Riskified provides AI-powered fraud-prevention and payments solutions that operate at the intersection of merchants, banks and consumers to optimize online and omnichannel paths-to-purchase. Its machine-learning models and chargeback-guarantee approach distinguish legitimate customers from fraudsters, boost conversion rates, increase bank authorization rates, protect customer accounts, and enable alternate payment methods. The company positions its model as an alternative to scoring-based solutions by aligning incentives with merchants through guaranteed chargebacks. Customers typically see order approval rate increases up to 20% and reductions in fraud-related costs up to 50%; Riskified analyzes transactions from 235 countries and territories. The company has experienced hyper growth (250% CAGR over the past five years), with ARR surpassing $100M in 2018 and projected high double-digit growth in 2019. Riskified employs 420+ people in New York and Tel Aviv and plans to open a Shanghai office before the end of 2019; the new funding is intended to accelerate domestic and international scaling and expand its product footprint. Riskified provides an e-commerce fraud prevention solution that leverages machine learning, behavioral analytics and its broad merchant network to detect fraudulent transactions while preserving customer experience. Its platform reviews transactions for signs of fraud and has processed hundreds of millions of transactions, approving billions of dollars of merchant revenue. Customers include retailers such as Foot Locker, Simplehuman and Macy’s. The company plans to use new funding to continue technology development, grow its teams in Tel Aviv and New York, and expand into new markets. Riskified emphasizes network-driven fraud insights to give merchants a fuller picture than in-house solutions can provide. The company opened a New York office last fall and says it will accelerate market penetration and international expansion with the new capital. Riskified provides an e-commerce fraud prevention solution that leverages proprietary behavioral analytics technology and machine learning. The platform guarantees the business of hundreds of global brands across sectors including luxury fashion, retail chains, gift card and ticket marketplaces. Led by cofounder and CEO Eido Gal, the company was founded in 2013 and is based in Tel Aviv, with U.S. offices in Boston. Riskified secured $25M in a funding round that increased its total capital raised to $31M. The company intends to use the funds to further accelerate growth and customer success. Riskified provides e-commerce companies with a proprietary risk enablement platform designed to increase sales by verifying, approving and guaranteeing high-risk transactions. Retailers determine which transactions to review and pay only when a transaction is approved. All approved transactions carry a 100% money-back guarantee. Co-founded in 2012 by Eido Gal and Assaf Feldman and based in Tel Aviv, the company intends to use its newly raised capital to grow and develop its platform. Riskified raised $1.65M in seed funding from a syndicate of investors.