Led · Equity · Nov 2025

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Carbon offers an integrated platform of Digital Light Synthesis (DLS) 3D printers, proprietary resins, and design/automation software that lets customers manufacture end-use polymer components at scale. The company’s technology is deployed across multiple industries, evidenced by millions of 3D-printed adidas footwear components, football helmet pads that have topped NFL/NFLPA safety tests for six consecutive years, and hundreds of thousands of cycling saddles for brands such as Fizik and Trek. In the dental market, customers print millions of custom parts per week, and Carbon printers have been ranked the most reliable by the National Association of Dental Laboratories for the past six years. Carbon continues to launch new hardware, materials, and flexible software tools, including a recently released flexible partial denture material. Management reports rising production volumes and efficiency gains that have the business on the verge of cash-flow-positive operations. The fresh capital will be used to expand manufacturing capacity and accelerate its product roadmap, reinforcing its position as a leader in digital manufacturing.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2023

Covariant develops robotic picking and placing AI systems focused on logistics and e-commerce. Its core product is the Covariant Brain, a foundation-model approach that builds a large database of real-world package sizes, shapes and materials to generalize across picking tasks. The company demonstrated its technology at ProMat and says three of its four co-founders have direct connections to OpenAI, informing its approach and analogy to generative AI. Covariant reports progress with global retailers and logistics providers and plans to apply the Covariant Brain to additional use cases across multiple sectors. Financially, the Series C extension added $75 million and brings the company’s total funding to $222 million, following an $80 million Series C announced in July 2021. The new capital will be used to further develop the Covariant Brain as a more capable foundation model and to expand deployments with retailers and logistics firms. Covariant develops the Covariant Brain, a universal AI platform that enables industrial robots to manipulate novel objects across diverse pick-and-place tasks. The company has demonstrated deployments across North America, Europe and Asia in sectors from grocery to fashion to pharmaceuticals. Existing customers include Obeta, Knapp, ABB and Bastian. Covariant currently employs just under 80 people and plans to increase headcount substantially. Financially, the startup has been actively fundraising and recently added to its capital base to support global expansion. The firm emphasizes a platform approach intended to future-proof customers' long-term modernization strategies. Covariant builds autonomy for industrial robotics, developing a universal AI intended to make robots work autonomously in real-world environments. Co-founded by UC Berkeley professor Pieter Abbeel, the three-year-old Berkeley startup came out of stealth in January. It has already deployed its technology to facilities in Europe and North America and announced a partnership with ABB in March. The company’s core product is a universal AI for robotics that can be applied across customer environments and industries. Covariant plans to use the new funding to grow headcount and to explore additional categories for its technology. The funding position reflects growing interest in robotics and automation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Embodied Intelligence develops AI "robot brains" that can be loaded onto existing robots to enable teaching of new, complex skills. The company combines deep imitation learning, deep reinforcement learning and meta-learning to train deep neural nets from human VR demonstrations and further tune them with reinforcement learning. Users don a VR headset and guide a robot through a task; those demonstrations train the system which then continues learning until the robot can perform the task autonomously. Embodied Intelligence is targeting tasks where traditional automation breaks down, including manipulation of deformable objects (wires, fabrics, linens, apparel, fluid-bags, and food), picking parts from cluttered bins, and variable assembly work. The company plans to use the newly raised capital to develop its AI software and make robot programming accessible to non-experts. The founding team includes Pieter Abbeel, Peter Chen, Rocky Duan and Tianhao Zhang, and the company is headquartered in Emeryville, CA.

Participated · Series A · Jan 2023

Blues provides secure wireless connectivity and an integrated hardware, software, and cloud-services platform that enables physical products to be cloud-connected and deliver data-driven intelligent services. The company targets product makers across transportation, health care, energy, and logistics and reports customers in North America, Central America, and Europe. Blues says its stack simplifies secure provisioning and communication with devices at scale, reducing time-to-market for new revenue-generating services. The company plans to use new capital to support growth, accelerate product innovation, and expand go-to-market efforts. Leadership includes Founder and Executive Chair Ray Ozzie and CEO Ian Small. Blues reports $99M in funding to date and is based in Boston. Blues provides integrated hardware, software, and cloud IoT connectivity that lets companies securely cloud‑connect and manage physical products via a single plug‑and‑play API. The platform supports all major wireless standards (2G/3G/4G/5G cellular, Wi‑Fi, LoRa, and Satellite) and offers seamless fallback and future‑proofing against network sunsets. Customers across transportation, health care, energy, and logistics use Blues for use cases such as temperature‑compliant refrigeration, warehouse asset tracking, battery monitoring for long‑haul trucks, and remote control of power‑grid equipment. The company says thousands of organizations in North America, Central America, and Europe rely on its solutions to launch data‑driven services. Blues announced a $25 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital to accelerate growth and product innovation. The company previously raised $66 million and will use the new capital to expand offerings and support customers in transforming physical products into intelligent services. Blues Wireless is a Boston, MA-based embedded connectivity startup that provides cellular IoT solutions. Led by founder and CEO Ray Ozzie, the company offers the Blues Notecard hardware and the Notehub cloud service to connect physical products to the cloud via cellular. The Notecard is a low-code data pump embedded in customer products, and Notehub routes that data to the customer’s cloud while providing provisioning, security, and cloud device management as standard features. More than 800 companies, from startups to enterprises, use Blues to securely cloud-connect their products. The company raised $32M in a Series A1 round and intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand operations. Investors in the round include Positive Sum (lead), Four Rivers, Northgate, Qualcomm, Sequoia, Cascade, Lachy Groom and XYZ. Blues Wireless develops Notecard, a system-on-module (SoM) that provides embedded wireless connectivity with an embedded 10-year global connection. Notecard lets developers send data from remote assets using JSON and just two lines of code, routing data to customers’ cloud applications via JSON and REST. Customers span agriculture, automotive, construction, healthcare, industrial, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, cold chain, transportation, and logistics. Use cases range from simple tracking and remote monitoring to edge analytics and remote control. Founded in 2019 by Ray Ozzie (CEO), Blues Wireless is based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company said it will use new funding to expand global marketing, sales and operations and to invest in R&D for hardware and associated services to integrate data into cloud applications. Blues Wireless develops the Notecard system-on-module to embed cellular connectivity into hardware, running on AT&T's network and sold for a fixed upfront price with no ongoing usage charges. The product targets high-volume, low-cost use cases and emphasizes ease of installation for customers without professional software developers. The company came out of stealth in February 2019 and has been testing its technology with early customers for about eight months. Blues's business model eliminates the need for customers to manage cellular subscriptions, positioning assets to be managed in the cloud. The COVID-19 crisis has increased demand for remote tracking and monitoring, yielding new engagements. Blues is a distributed company with about a dozen employees; founder Ray Ozzie spends most of his time in Boston and makes frequent trips to Seattle. According to an SEC filing, Blues has raised $11 million from undisclosed investors.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2022

Founded in 2009, Zest AI develops machine-learning software that modernizes consumer lending for banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions. Its product suite spans automated underwriting, the Generative AI-driven LuLu lending intelligence platform, and Zest Protect for fraud detection. The company claims its 650 proprietary credit models allow lenders to increase approvals by roughly 25 % with no additional risk or reduce defaults by 20 % while keeping approval volume steady. More than 50 issued and pending patents support these capabilities, and nearly 300 lenders now use Zest AI’s technology. Demand is rising as institutions seek to replace legacy scoring systems with AI-native tools that expand access to credit and streamline operations. The newly raised capital will fund deeper automation across the borrower journey and broader deployment of LuLu. Zest AI’s market momentum has earned it spots on the Forbes 2024 Fintech 50 and CNBC’s 2025 World’s Top FinTech Companies lists.

Led · Equity · Nov 2022

Founded in 2020 by Juan and Santiago Gavito and Iker Garay, Quinio acquires, operates and builds consumer packaged e-commerce brands focused on home & kitchen, beauty and personal care, baby, health and household categories. The company owns and operates several brands with a presence in Mexico, Colombia, Chile and the U.S. Quinio has doubled down on business development and M&A, implemented tighter acquisition criteria filters, and shifted to be more product-centered and technology-driven. Management says tech tools have reduced non-strategic employee tasks, improved revenue and cost projections, aided catalog expansion and product development, and optimized marketing ROI. The company is profitable, has over 100 employees, and its brands report solid growth while gaining regional presence. Quinio expects to end 2022 with over $50 million in annual recurring revenue and plans to use the new capital to continue acquiring, operating and scaling brands across Latin America. Quinio acquires medium-sized marketplace brands and centralizes operations to increase sales, improve operational efficiency and optimize cost structures. The company targets sellers with $100,000 to $20 million in annual revenue and emphasizes locally sourced products, planning over 60% of its portfolio to be local. Quinio launched last year and will begin the new year with 10 brands representing a $10 million revenue run rate and has recorded double-digit monthly growth so far. The startup currently has 33 employees and plans to expand its headcount to over 100 by the end of next year. With over 80% of new capital earmarked for acquisitions, Quinio plans roughly three acquisitions per month and aims to add more than 30 brands to its portfolio. It is preparing geographic expansion beyond Mexico into Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina.