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The Venture Codex

Promus Ventures

30 S. Wacker Dr. Suite 1600, Chicago, Illinois, 60606, United States

Overview

Promus Ventures invests in early-stage deep-tech software and hardware companies run by visionary and tenacious founding teams.

Total investments
70
Lead investments
14
Investments · 12mo
4
Active investors
8

Sector focus

  • Finance
  • Financial Services
  • FinTech
  • Venture Capital
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Investment portfolio

  • WHOOP

    Participated · Series G · Mar 2026

    Whoop builds wearable fitness and health trackers paired with a subscription service that captures user biometric and performance data. The company ships millions of hardware units globally while operating a recurring-revenue subscription model, which management says makes bookings the most useful operating metric. Whoop exited last year at a $1.1 billion bookings run rate, representing 103% year-over-year growth. It has now raised roughly $900 million in total capital since founding. The company is investing raised capital in hiring and talent, marketing and brand awareness, continued R&D, and accelerating international expansion. Whoop is also pursuing deeper health and medical capabilities, underscored by strategic participation from Abbott and Mayo Clinic in the latest round.

  • Uplift360

    Participated · Seed · Feb 2026

    Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Bristol, Uplift360 is building proprietary chemical processes that regenerate, rather than down-cycle, hard-to-treat composites such as carbon fibre, aramid (e.g., Kevlar) and hybrid laminates. The technology delivers output that matches virgin-grade quality, enabling manufacturers to turn what is currently burned, buried or exported into reliable, high-quality feedstock. By doing so, the company tackles supply-chain bottlenecks caused by geopolitical pressure and limited virgin fibre availability while reducing carbon emissions associated with composite waste. Seed funding will allow Uplift360 to commission its first UK pilot-scale processing line in 2026, expand R&D into enhanced regenerated-fibre performance, and deepen partnerships with major aerospace, defence, automotive and energy OEMs. Existing collaborations already include projects with Babcock (Eurofighter Typhoon), Leonardo (Merlin helicopter blades) and Rolls-Royce. The team envisions a distributed, scalable model for composite circularity across Europe, positioning the company as a strategic dual-use innovator in advanced materials.

  • Mytra

    Participated · Series C · Jan 2026

    Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Brisbane, CA, Mytra develops an operating system that abstracts material flow into programmable primitives—move, store, pick, and route—enabling flexible, software-defined automation for warehouses and factories. The platform targets the 80% of industrial sites that currently have no automation by reducing cost and complexity while reclaiming aisle and clearance space; early deployments have cut material-handling labor by 32% and improved storage density by 34%. In 2025 the company secured contracts with a Fortune 100 food company and a Fortune 500 industrial-supply distributor, including one deployment 60× larger than any previous installation. Operational momentum included shipping two pilot systems, bringing a new facility seven times larger than its prior space online, and expanding headcount by 78% while adding senior executives such as a CFO, Chief Development Officer, and VP of Scaling. Former Tesla CFO Zach Kirkhorn also joined the board. Mytra is currently hiring for more than 20 roles to support rising demand. The company has raised more than $200 million to date to finance rapid scaling of its software-defined automation platform.

  • Encube

    Participated · Equity · Oct 2025

    Encube is a Stockholm-based startup developing a cloud platform that uses artificial intelligence to identify which design choices introduce manufacturing complexity and how to avoid them. Delivered through a browser interface, the software lets distributed hardware teams collaborate in real time, align on decisions, and explore a wider array of design options. Early pilots with large industrial firms and space-sector partners reportedly cut time-to-market by up to 50 %, lowered production costs by 20–30 %, and doubled engineering productivity. The system automates traditionally manual bottlenecks, embedding manufacturability and sustainability considerations at the earliest stages of product development. Encube was founded by former Sandvik executive Hugo Nordell (CEO) and Johnny Bigert, who previously held senior roles at Skype and Klarna. With fresh capital, the company plans to deepen its hardware-focused AI capabilities, expand partnerships, and scale commercial operations across Europe. The platform targets a market reshaped by onshoring, talent shortages, and stricter sustainability regulations, positioning Encube as a critical enabler of cost-efficient, low-carbon manufacturing.

  • Halter

    Participated · Series D · Jun 2025

    Halter makes solar-powered smart collars that let farmers herd cattle remotely using sounds and vibrations and that create virtual fences. Each collar monitors digestion, fertility cycles and health in real time, and the company’s machine-learning models are trained on data from hundreds of thousands of cows. Halter’s system, branded “Cowgorithm,” is used on more than 5,000 farms and has helped customers lay out over 11,000 miles of virtual fences, with reported savings of about $220 million on physical fencing. Farmers pay $5–$8 per animal per month for the service. The company was founded in 2016 in Auckland by Craig Piggott, a former Rocket Lab engineer, and has opened a Colorado office to support U.S. operations. Halter positions its scale and data advantage as a competitive moat versus rivals in virtual-fence technology.

Team

  • Matt Martorello

    Venture Partner

    LinkedIn
  • Estelle Godard

    Vice President

    LinkedIn
  • Bill Merchantz

    Venture Partner

  • Kateryna Lopatynska

    Administrative & Operations Associate

    LinkedIn