The Venture Codex

Participated · Seed · Sep 2024

Havoc develops an all-domain collaborative autonomy stack and a software-defined hardware approach that enables heterogeneous autonomous assets to sense, decide, and act together across sea, air, and land. The company reports more than 25,000 hours of autonomous testing and deployments and has collected over 200 billion data points from operations to iterate its field-tested autonomy stack. Havoc has built and deployed 100+ autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) globally, with 40+ mission-ready today and 30+ vessels delivered to the U.S. Department of Defense. It has made strategic acquisitions (Mavrik and Teleo) to expand into air and land domains and maintains partnerships with defense primes such as Leidos, Lockheed Martin, and SAIC as well as shipbuilders and additive manufacturers. Havoc has grown to over 200 employees, opened new offices in Austin and San Diego, and expanded maritime production in Rhode Island. The company highlights award recognition, SBIR awards, and selection to industry challenges as validation while positioning itself to scale deployments and production to meet defense and commercial demand.

Led · Equity · Jun 2024

SensusQ provides an AI-powered on-premise system that fuses data from multiple sources and sensors — including UAVs, cyber events, open-source intelligence, and human intelligence — into a single multi-domain picture. The system is designed to accelerate information exchange on the battlefield, enabling faster targeting, time to action, and decision advantage over adversaries. SensusQ currently focuses on the defence industry and its technology has been deployed in Ukraine, which the company says has driven increased demand from allied countries. The recent €3.8M investment will enable SensusQ to expand its team and meet market demand while leveraging expertise, strategic support, and a global network from investors. The company plans to expand into non-defence sectors that deal with large volumes of data, such as compliance, fraud, risk management, and security, and is offering a new funding round to international dual-use investors. SensusQ also aims to become a leading global IMS provider and to participate in at least three major Estonian Defence League trainings annually. SensusQ develops a software product that synthesises large amounts of different data and sources into comprehensive information to accelerate information exchange and reduce failures in intelligence cycles. The product is currently focused mainly on the defence industry, with plans to extend the solution to civilian sectors that handle large volumes of data. The company says its technology has been proven in Ukraine and Estonia. SensusQ plans to use new funding to continue international growth and to accelerate product development, including AI-related research and development. Founded in 2020, the team has grown to nearly 40 experts and the company has raised more than €3 million to date. Existing investors include StartUp Wise Guys and Lemonade Stand.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2023

Efabless operates an open-source, community-driven platform for designing, sharing, prototyping and commercializing custom chips. The platform has executed approximately 1,000 designs and 500 tapeouts over the past two years and serves Fortune 100 companies, startups, universities and research institutions. Efabless aims to lower barriers in chip creation and to expand access for designers in markets such as IoT, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company’s model is extensible to advanced packaging, software and systems, and it is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The business plans described in the article include continued product development, business development and marketing to grow its community and commercial adoption. Efabless operates a creator community platform for designing, developing, and commercializing integrated circuits, aiming to democratize electronics product creation. The platform supports both open-source ICs via a Google-partnered design-to-prototype solution and proprietary designs through its chipIgnite program. Efabless positions itself to reduce cost and time to market for proof-of-concept chips and to broaden access for chip experts, software and hardware developers across Fortune 100 companies, startups, and academia. The company highlights opportunity in markets like IoT and machine learning where custom silicon can deliver large performance and efficiency gains. Efabless plans to continue expanding its product capabilities and business development efforts, and to extend its model to advanced packaging, software, and systems. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Led · Seed · May 2023

Holocron Technologies is a Washington, D.C.–based AI startup that organizes vast quantities of open-source data using machine learning and natural language processing. Its platform tracks information sources, locations, topics, ideas, sentiment, and stylistic and semantic differences between sources to provide a comprehensive view of the science and technology information landscape. The product enables users to monitor global technological developments and generate insights and reports for diverse intelligence needs. Holocron positions its platform to support government 'alphabet' agencies and the military in using non-sensitive intelligence to answer classified, unclassified, and proprietary requirements across many disciplines. The company was founded by Addam Jensen, Glenn Shell, Jared Edwards, and Tristan Yang. With investor support, Holocron plans to push to revolutionize knowledge security and domain awareness in the science and technology space. Financially, Holocron completed a $1.5M pre-seed raise in April 2023.

Led · Equity · Sep 2022

CYBERA was founded three years ago by former cybercrime prosecutor Nicola Staub and built its offering around early reporting of fraudulent bank accounts to banks. For the past two years the company has helped victims report accounts and forward them to partner banks. More recently CYBERA automated its approach with AI-powered "ethical scambaiting," a system that simulates victims to elicit bank accounts and crypto wallets from scammers and uncovers thousands of fraudulent accounts each month. Identified accounts are added to a regularly updated database that partner banks use to detect and block suspicious transactions. The startup reports strong commercial traction, with revenue growth of about 211% as of mid‑September compared with 2023. CYBERA closed a new financing round in summer 2024 to expand its technology and products, scale ethical scambaiting, and fund geographic growth. Cybera Global is a New York-based cybersecurity company that provides a rapid response mechanism for victims of cybercrime and a global watchlist for secure information sharing across the financial system. Its platform enables clients to quickly flag and address suspicious funds and accounts. The company has identified more than 2,000 problem accounts. Co-founded by Nicola Staub (CEO), Sudip Biswas (CTO), and Claudio Staub (CRO), Cybera intends to use new funding to scale its solutions addressing cybercrime. On 19 September 2022 the company raised $5M in equity funding led by Converge VC and New North Ventures, with participation from Founder Collective, Serpentine, and CV VC. The capital is earmarked to expand and scale deployment of its offerings across financial clients. Cybera offers two core services: an automated process for cross‑border criminal complaints for victims and law enforcement, and a confidential registry of accounts that have been flagged by victims for cybercrime‑related money‑laundering. The registry is designed so banks can use the information without breaching bank‑client secrecy, helping them mitigate compliance risks. The company completed Swiss market entry this summer, with the cantonal prosecutors of Schwyz, Jura and Graubünden using the system. On the banking side, Berner Kantonalbank, Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, digital bank Neon and Clientis banks have integrated Cybera’s platform in pilot phases to intercept suspicious payment orders. When banks receive payment orders to flagged accounts they contact customers and can prevent transactions before losses occur. Cybera currently employs five people. Financially, the startup closed a pre‑seed round last year that brought in roughly CHF1 million.