Participated · Series B · Mar 2025

MemryX is a fabless semiconductor company that designs edge AI processing solutions using a proprietary compute-at-memory technology and dataflow architecture. Its MX3 accelerator has reached production quality and the company says more than a dozen companies were competitively selected to enter production with MemryX. The MX3 is being designed into solutions such as AI-powered video management systems, industrial PCs, and edge servers. MemryX reports the MX3 delivers higher system performance while using less than 10% of the power of mainstream GPU solutions for vision-based AI inference. The company emphasizes a software-first core architecture and provides a public MemryX Developer Hub with tools and benchmarks across hundreds of models, which it credits with capital-efficient development and support for dozens of customers. MemryX plans to ramp MX3 production and complete the design of its next-generation MX4 accelerator and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices in Bangalore, Taipei, and Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2024

California Catalysts (Calicat) develops advanced materials and stack components to lower the cost of hydrogen production, focusing on non-iridium electrocatalysts and porous transport layer coatings for PEM electrolysis cells. The company combines proprietary cascading AI models with high-throughput physical testing to accelerate electrocatalyst discovery and evaluation, achieving progress on a weekly cadence. Calicat was spun out of Caltech four years ago to commercialize $120M of DOE-funded JCAP research and has established partnerships with SoCal Gas, Tokyo Gas (via Acario), and DeNora. Leadership changed in January when early investor and board member Jourdan Urbach became CEO to speed translation of R&D into products. The company says its products immediately lower levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) by reducing OpEx and enabling greater CapEx amortization. Calicat is deploying recent funds toward productization of its non-iridium catalysts and coatings for electrolyzer OEMs, producers, and operators, and is based in Chatsworth, Calif. H2U develops catalysts to initiate and accelerate the electrolysis of water and produces a grid-scale PEM electrolyzer called the Gramme 50. Its technology is rooted in ten years of R&D funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through Caltech’s Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. Led by CEO Mark McGough and based in Chatsworth, CA, the company is advancing commercial electrolyzer designs. H2U intends to use the new funding to advance its electrolyzer designs and to commission buildout of its proprietary Catalyst Discovery Engine (CDE). It has a strategic partnership with SoCalGas to pilot the Gramme 50 as SoCalGas plans to replace up to 25% of natural gas with clean hydrogen, a shift that could require 10–20 GW of electrolysis capacity.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2022

Qunnect develops the Carina product suite—entanglement sources and stabilization tools—that create, buffer, and preserve entangled photons for quantum communications and sensing. Its hardware is designed in a standard server‑rack form factor and operates at room temperature to enable deployment on commercial fiber. The company has delivered Carina products to customers in financial services, telecommunications, energy infrastructure, and defense/intelligence sectors. Qunnect has deployed two metropolitan quantum testbeds in New York City and Berlin and commercialized the first room‑temperature quantum memory in 2021. New funding will be used to develop turnkey variants of Carina with strategic industry partners to demonstrate next‑generation real‑world use cases. Qunnect is based in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Qunnect builds core technologies for scalable quantum-secure communication, including a high-fidelity quantum memory, entangled photon sources, and quantum network support hardware for timing and qubit stabilization. Its products are engineered for room-temperature operation and compatibility with telecom fiber and atomic-based devices, targeting real-world deployment rather than lab-only systems. The company packages these components into a Quantum Repeater product suite to enable long-distance entanglement distribution across existing telecommunications infrastructure. Qunnect commercialized the world’s first quantum memory in September 2021 and aims to complete its first-generation product suite in mid-2023. With the new funding, it plans to scale manufacturing and launch a multi-node R&D quantum network testbed connected to existing New York City fiber, the first of its kind in the U.S. The company is headquartered in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City and has received research support from the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Air Force, and the National Science Foundation. Qunnect, Inc., a Quantonation portfolio company, is developing a device suite to enable ultra-secure, long-distance quantum communications. All products are engineered to operate at room temperature, a critical design requirement for real-world deployment. Its first product, a Quantum Memory device, can store, coherently manipulate, temporally synchronize, and retrieve quantum states on demand. The company received a $1.5M Phase-II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award from the U.S. Department of Energy. The Phase-II award supports development of features to integrate and use these devices on standard telecom fiber infrastructure. Qunnect will field-test products through collaborations with Brookhaven National Laboratory and ESnet on fiber networks connecting Brookhaven National Lab to New York City. The company aims to globalize quantum communications.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2020

RIOS develops AI- and vision-driven robotics focused on automating manufacturing processes, quality assurance, process improvement and digital twinning. The company emphasizes partnering with customers to provide reliable, flexible automation and real-time insights and control that exceed traditional automation systems. RIOS plans to expand its deployments across wood products, beverage distribution and packaged food products. It is beginning a product rollout in the lumber and plywood handling sector. The company recently completed a $13 million Series B financing. Existing investor participation and strategic partnerships underpin its near-term growth plans. Rios Intelligent Machines builds AI-powered, end-to-end robotic workcells that integrate within existing factory, warehouse, and supply chain workflows. The company offers its robotic workforce through a factory automation-as-a-service model with no upfront capital commitments. Its workcells are deployed in the United States across manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, and food & beverage sectors. Rios has signed agreements with over a dozen customers in the U.S. and Japan, ranging from mid-size businesses to large enterprises. The company is led by CEO Dr. Bernard Casse, is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA, has a distributed U.S. workforce and a subsidiary in Australia. In February 2022 it raised $28M in Series A equity and debt financing and intends to use the funds to deploy its robotic fleet at scale to new and existing customers. RIOS is a Bay Area robotics startup founded in 2018 as a Stanford spin-out with contributions from Xerox PARC engineers. Its first product, the DX-1, is a robot designed for a variety of industrial tasks including static bin picking and conveyor belt operations. The system is powered by the company’s AI stack, which includes a perception system and tactile sensors mounted on the robotic hand. RIOS operated in stealth for roughly a year and a half while testing its technologies with a select group of partners. The company plans to charge a monthly fee for the robotic system that bundles programming, maintenance, monitoring, and regular updates. RIOS announced $5 million in funding as it came out of stealth to support development and commercialization amid increased interest in factory automation.

Participated · Equity · May 2018

Metawave builds millimeter-wave imaging radar hardware and software stacks (including SPEKTRA radar modules and the AWARE™ AI object classification platform) for long-range, all-weather sensing in automotive, aerial, and other mobility markets. The company produces chip and antenna module product lines—MARCONI™ 77GHz and POLARIS™ 24GHz—and offers compatibility with Carson and Triton radar system platforms to accelerate customer testing and deployment. Metawave also markets TURBO™ active repeaters and KLONE™ passive reflectors for 5G deployment use cases. The firm emphasizes high-resolution imaging and ML/AI-based perception to detect vehicles, motorcycles, pedestrians, and other objects at longer ranges and in difficult scenarios. Management says the company will use the new financing to accelerate deliveries of its MARCONI and POLARIS product lines and speed market adoption. Metawave was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Carlsbad, California. To date the company has raised over $60M from financial and strategic investors. Metawave develops SPEKTRA™, an analog beamsteering automotive radar integrated with AWARE™ AI for object detection and classification, and also builds TURBO™ active repeaters and ECHO™ passive reflectors to boost 5G coverage. The company has delivered proofs of concept to leading automakers and demonstrated 5G ECHO results with NTT DOCOMO, targeting longer range, higher-resolution radar for ADAS and network-planning tools for telecom deployments. Metawave integrates deep learning with electromagnetic simulation in its AWARE platform to optimize radar object classification and the placement and arrangement of ECHO/TURBO devices. On the financing side, Metawave completed multiple seed financings totaling $17M and has closed an initial Series A led by DENSO. The firm emphasizes commercial work with OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers and global telecoms as it moves toward broader deployments. Metawave develops long-range, high-resolution WARLORD radar platforms and SABER hybrid analog/digital smart antenna systems using engineered metamaterials and AI. Its WARLORD radar targets ADAS and autonomous driving with imaging and object classification, including demonstrated 77GHz high-resolution radar and object classification capabilities. The SABER platforms are aimed at Fixed Wireless and 5G cellular infrastructure to enable longer-range backhaul and access with narrow analog beam steering. Metawave says its technology supports 4D point-cloud imaging, non-line-of-sight detection, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication to make vehicles safer and more connected. The company plans to integrate its radar front-end with Infineon’s 77GHz radar transceivers to scale for long ranges and wider fields of view. Metawave was founded in 2017 and is located in Palo Alto and Carlsbad, CA. Metawave develops wireless technology platforms that leverage engineered metamaterials and AI to build intelligent beam‑steering radar for autonomous driving and smart antenna platforms for wireless networks. The company is initially focused on smart radar platforms for ADAS and autonomous driving and is developing WARLORD, a 77GHz imaging radar that uses a single antenna and pushes complexity to the analog domain for high-resolution object classification. In parallel Metawave is developing SABRE, a 5G wireless communications antenna intended to enable long-range, narrow‑beam base station reach with reduced interference for fixed wireless and 5G infrastructure. Metawave says WARLORD can produce 4D point‑cloud imaging, non‑line‑of‑sight object detection, and vehicle‑to‑vehicle communication to improve safety and autonomy. The company raised an additional $10 million from strategic and financial investors, bringing total investor funding to $17 million. Named new investors include DENSO (the round lead), Toyota AI Ventures, Hyundai Motor Company, and Asahi Glass; earlier backers include Motus Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Autotech Ventures, Bold Capital, SAIC Capital, Western Technology Investment (WTI), and Alrai Capital. Metawave develops wireless technology platforms that combine engineered metamaterials and artificial intelligence to create intelligent beamsteering radars and antennas. The company’s initial commercial focus is smart radar platforms for autonomous vehicles and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), including its WARLORD radar powered by the WRATH AI system. In parallel Metawave is developing smart beamsteering antennas for 4G and 5G networks. Its flagship beamsteering technology was developed at PARC, and the company was spun out of PARC earlier in the year. Leadership includes CEO Dr. Maha Achour and CTO Dr. Bernard Casse, who highlight the product’s 3D imaging, speed, and AI-enabled capabilities. The company said incoming seed capital will be used to attract talent, grow the team, and commercialize its products.