The Venture Codex

Participated · Series B · Jul 2026

Freehand builds autonomous AI agents that read contracts, negotiate rates, approve invoices, process payments and reconcile records directly inside enterprise systems using a Category Context Graph to combine structured data and unstructured documents. The company was founded in San Francisco in 2024 and has achieved full production deployments at large customers including Meta, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Dunkin’ and Cardinal Health. Early customer outcomes reported include recovering 5–10% of spend, completing workflows 5–7x faster, and reducing procure-to-pay cycles by more than 70%. Freehand positions its agents as decision-making and action-taking software rather than chat-based copilots. The company plans to use the $75 million raise to expand beyond invoice processing into direct materials and maintenance, repair and operations categories and to embed its agents deeper into enterprise supply chains. Investors in the round include Battery Ventures, NewRoad Capital Partners, PSP Growth and Nexus Venture Partners.

Participated · Series E · Jan 2026

Synthesia develops a generative-AI video platform that lets companies create customizable training and communication content using realistic virtual avatars. The London-based startup serves large enterprises such as Bosch, Merck and SAP, helping them replace traditional e-learning modules with more engaging video formats. The business model is subscription-based and has proven highly scalable, surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in April 2025. Now employing more than 500 people across offices in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich, New York and Zurich, Synthesia continues to invest heavily in product R&D. Its next major initiative is a suite of AI agents that will allow employees to query company knowledge, role-play scenarios and receive tailored explanations, driving deeper engagement and faster learning. Management believes the convergence of increasingly capable AI agents and board-level urgency around upskilling will further accelerate adoption of its platform.

Participated · Series C · Dec 2025

Zafran Security builds an AI-native Continuous Threat Exposure Management platform centered on its Exposure Graph, which maps relationships among assets, security weaknesses, controls and potential attacker movements. The platform identifies choke points where multiple attack paths converge and helps security teams prioritize mitigations that can disrupt several routes while minimizing business disruption. Zafran integrates with existing endpoint, firewall, cloud, identity and vulnerability scanning tools rather than requiring product replacements, and it can validate mitigations before deployment while coordinating discovery, prioritization, risk reduction and remediation. The company emphasizes that AI-enabled attackers increasingly chain lower-severity weaknesses into exploit paths and claims that 99% of vulnerabilities labeled critical in customer environments are not actually exploitable under existing conditions, so its platform focuses on the roughly 1% most likely to contribute to incidents. The recent strategic investment from Cisco Investments is intended to support expansion of the platform and closer technical and commercial alignment with Cisco.

Participated · Series C · Sep 2025

PassiveLogic is a Salt Lake City–based pioneer in “physical AI” that reimagines how buildings and infrastructure are designed, operated, and optimized. Its flagship product, Hive, is a real-time decision engine powered by an on-site GPU cluster that unifies control of HVAC, energy, logistics, and other building functions. By combining physics-informed digital twins with generative AI, the platform enables millisecond-level decisions for asset tracking, dynamic energy management, predictive maintenance, and adaptive environmental control. Complementary offerings include Sense Nano wireless sensors that capture real-time occupancy and environmental data, and Quantum Lens, a smartphone app for creating building digital twins. Acting as a “robot-of-robots,” PassiveLogic orchestrates sensors, IoT devices, and automation systems across environments ranging from data centers to hospitals. The company estimates a $1.3 trillion global market for Autonomous Buildings and targets the 40 % of global carbon emissions generated by buildings. Following its latest raise, PassiveLogic has secured more than $125 million in total funding to accelerate worldwide deployment of its platform.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2025

Lyric builds Lyric Studio, a composable platform that enables customers to design, test, and deploy supply chain models with seamless data integration, a library of algorithms, an intuitive workflow builder, and a built-in experience layer. The platform targets modeling, planning, logistics, inventory and frontier use cases, putting advanced science in the hands of business users. Lyric reports revenue growth of 500% since emerging from stealth 18 months ago and says enterprise adoption now spans Fortune 500 companies across industries. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and is led by Co‑Founder and CEO Ganesh Ramakrishna. Lyric plans to use new capital to accelerate its product roadmap, expand reusable supply chain logic, deepen AI-driven experimentation, simulation and automation capabilities, and invest in customer success, onboarding, and community programs. The company will showcase new capabilities and its roadmap at its Empower 2025 conference in Chicago on August 13–14, 2025.