Participated · Series A · Oct 2025

Founded in 2022, Knapsack offers a unified workspace that eliminates miscommunication between UI designers, product managers, and engineers by automatically propagating design-system updates from Figma into code repositories. Its platform ensures consistent branding—e.g., a button specified at 60 px is enforced everywhere—and is already used by dozens of Fortune 1000 customers. The company is layering on new AI features, including an MCP-based server (using Anthropic’s open-source standard) that lets enterprises build brand-safe AI agents, as well as an upcoming ingestion engine that can create a design system of record in days rather than months. Later this year Knapsack will introduce guided UI exploration tools powered by generative AI. A large pharmaceutical client has cut site-launch times from roughly 15 months to 2–3 months using the product. Knapsack sells on an enterprise-pricing model, currently employs nearly 30 people, and plans to hire 14 more with its new capital. Management ultimately envisions the platform as the backbone for brand-consistent, agentic digital experiences across channels.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2025

Tyba provides a unified simulation and operations platform for energy storage that combines AI-enabled forecasting, automated dispatch and bidding strategies with project simulation tools. Its Asset Operations product automates execution while letting operators make quick strategic adjustments, and its Project Simulation product has been used to model over 100GW of projects under development. Tyba supports operations of more than 1 GWh of storage assets in Texas and California, has tripled its customer base in the past year, and delivers revenue outcomes in the top 5% of assets. Since founding, Tyba’s simulation work has helped secure over $1 billion in project funding. The company is hiring across engineering, modeling, and commercial functions and plans to expand its forecasting and optimization capabilities into new markets and across asset classes. Tyba is headquartered in San Francisco. Tyba provides an accessible modeling platform that simplifies and unifies project modeling applications for solar and storage development, financing, and operations. The platform is used by leading community and utility-scale solar and storage firms to determine solar production, inform energy storage dispatch, leverage historical and forecasted wholesale price data, and generate risk-adjusted bids for physical power delivery. Tyba combines AI/ML for price forecasting, cutting-edge physical models for energy production, and linear optimizers to drive valuation and dispatch decisions. The company is led by Michael Baker (CEO), Tyler Nisonoff (CTO), and Tom Thunell (COO). Tyba raised $2.25M in seed funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand operations and accelerate development efforts. The platform’s focus is on improving modeling accuracy and usability across development and operations workflows.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2024

Airship is building a point-of-sale software for HVAC contractors that surfaces information on incentive programs, energy-efficient heat pump rebates, and other data to help close larger sales. The product is designed to be intuitive and easy to adopt for contractors who still rely on pen and paper. Airship is positioning an enterprise-grade solution to sell to the growing number of private equity-backed HVAC rollups. The company is currently in beta with 10 design partners and plans an initial launch in November followed by a wider rollout early next year. Airship emerged from stealth alongside a partnership with ServiceTitan and has raised a $4 million pre-seed round. The startup plans to use the capital to hire and continue building the product and to expand the platform into payments, warranty management, and subscriptions; average users have increased ticket size by 20%.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2024

Formic Technologies designs, develops and maintains industrial robots and automation systems, focusing on tasks such as palletizing and packaging. The company combines proprietary software with hardware deployments to provide optimized automation solutions tailored to individual client needs, primarily serving small and medium-sized businesses. It bundles these solutions with a financing model and subscription-based service to lower the upfront and ongoing burden of robot deployment and maintenance. Formic offers deployment, installation and maintenance services to accelerate automation adoption in manufacturing. The company says it will use the investment to develop a new business model that makes its automation solutions more accessible to customers. Formic is based in Chicago, Illinois; the amount of the recent investment was not disclosed. Formic delivers fully supported Robots-as-a-Service automation to U.S. manufacturers, handling deployment, continuous monitoring, maintenance and guaranteed performance rates. Founded in 2020 and based in Chicago, the company charges customers a low hourly rate that removes capital and operational barriers to automation adoption. In 2.5 years Formic’s fleet completed 100,000 production hours at more than 99% uptime and expects another 100,000 hours in the next 170 days; it reports rapid growth in deployed systems, customers and repeat business. Formic highlights a 97% renewal rate and says 75% of its customers are automating material handling for the first time. The company plans to expand its standardized equipment fleet, increase its U.S. support network to shorten response times, and enhance its equipment-agnostic AI-driven motion-planning, predictive maintenance and customer-facing software. These moves are intended to accelerate deployment timelines and broaden access to automation for small- and mid-size manufacturers. Formic Technologies provides turnkey robotic solutions to American manufacturers via a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, delivering, installing, and maintaining robots billed by the hour. It sources equipment from partners such as Universal Robots, FANUC, KUKA and ABB and owns the programming, installation, and servicing so customers avoid upfront investment. The company emphasizes systematized deployment and in-house equipment financing to reduce complexity and cost for factories. Early customers include Polar Manufacturing and Georgia Nut, and Formic positions its offering to address labor shortages and supply-chain pressures. Financially, Formic raised a $26.5 million Series A, has secured access to more than $100 million of debt capital, and is valued at over $100 million. The company has expanded its board and management team to scale rapid deployments.

Participated · Series A · Jun 2024

Formic delivers Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) automation to U.S. manufacturers, bundling hardware, deployment, continuous monitoring and maintenance under a low hourly fee. Its equipment-agnostic software uses AI for motion planning, predictive maintenance and system design, with customer dashboards and intuitive interfaces. In 2.5 years Formic’s fleet has completed 100,000 production hours at more than 99% uptime and expects another 100,000 hours in the next 170 days. The company plans to expand its standardized equipment fleet to shorten lead times, increase its U.S. support network to improve response times and enhance its AI-driven software. Formic reports fast growth across key operational metrics—7x robot production hours, 3x deployed systems, 2x customer base, 80% increase in repeat business, 4x faster deployment time, and a 97% renewal rate. Founded in 2020 and operating from Chicago, Formic positions its RaaS model as a way to remove capital and operational barriers to automation adoption.