The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Nov 2023

Retrocausal is a Seattle, WA–based platform provider for manufacturing process management led by CEO Zeeshan Zia. Its Kaizen Copilot software for Manufacturing Assembly Optimization simplifies manual assembly operations and the underlying processes to empower low-skilled workers to take on higher-skill manufacturing jobs. The company builds AI-powered augmentation systems to help manufacturing workers avoid assembly mistakes while assisting industrial engineers to continuously improve shop floor processes. Retrocausal has been developing multi-modal foundation models focused on manufacturing trained on proprietary datasets and has been granted three patents by the USPTO, with four patents pending. In April 2023 it opened a Dallas office to be closer to manufacturing customers in the Midwest and Mexico and has launched joint projects with Honda Innovations and Siemens Digital Industries. The company raised $5.3M and intends to use the funds to meet market demand for its proprietary generative AI technology. Retrocausal builds the Pathfinder platform, an AI-driven quality-assurance system that helps discrete manufacturers reduce manual assembly errors and improve first-time yield, quality, and efficiency. Its automation engine can produce a production-ready deep learning model in one day or less with minimal training data. Pathfinder can be deployed in days by manufacturing operations teams and runs on any GPU-enabled Windows computer paired with an off-the-shelf webcam. The platform provides real-time floor analysis, historical data, and build-process analytics while offering operator-privacy options such as narrow camera field of view, image blurring, and encryption. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Dr. Zeeshan Ziam and is based in Seattle, WA. Retrocausal says it will use the new funding to build out its team and extend global growth.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2023

UpdateAI offers a ChatGPT-powered Customer Success platform that generates Smart Summaries™ of customer meeting notes and automates post-call workflows. The software uses proprietary conversational AI integrated with ChatGPT to identify and analyze critical signals for post-sales teams. It automates tasks such as sending follow-up emails and sharing notes with systems like Salesforce. Led by co-founder and CEO Josh Schachter, the product focuses on improving CS productivity today. The company says its long-term vision is to elevate the role of Customer Success teams by enabling cross-functional use of conversational data. UpdateAI intends to use the new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach.

Led · Series A · Aug 2022

GrayMatter Robotics is a Los Angeles-based AI and advanced robotics company delivering autonomous robotic solutions for tedious and ergonomically challenging tasks such as sanding, polishing, grinding, coating, and finishing. It bundles proprietary AI technologies with robots, sensors, and tools and provides application-specific solutions in a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) format. Representative products include Scan&Sand™, Scan&Polish™, Scan&Buff™, and Scan&Grind™. The company serves manufacturers across aerospace & defense, specialty vehicles, maritime, metal fabrication, and consumer products such as sports equipment. Led by CEO Ariyan Kabir, GrayMatter aims to improve shop floor worker quality of life, enhance production capacity, and reduce scrap, repair, and rework costs. The company raised $45M in Series B funding to accelerate development and deployment of its AI-powered robotic solutions. GrayMatter Robotics delivers AI-driven robotic automation solutions aimed at tedious and ergonomically challenging manufacturing tasks. Its core products are smart robotic cells for high-mix surface finishing and surface treatment, sold to a range of manufacturing industries. The company says its systems help improve shop-floor worker quality of life, enhance production capacity, and reduce scrap, repair, and rework costs. Leadership is headed by CEO Ariyan Kabir and CTO Brual Shah. GrayMatter plans to use the new funding to expand its team across a wide range of roles and to accelerate development and deployment of its AI-robotic solutions. The article does not disclose revenue or user metrics. GrayMatter Robotics develops smart robotic assistants that help humans perform surface-treatment tasks like sanding and spraying on manufacturing lines. The company packages proprietary AI algorithms with commercially available robots, sensors, and tools so robots can program themselves and learn a new part in minutes. Its turnkey solutions aim to help manufacturers grow capacity, maintain consistent quality, and keep a digital trace for improving operations. GrayMatter is led by CEO Ariyan Kabir and is based in Los Angeles, CA. The company raised $4.1M in seed funding and will use the proceeds to scale hiring, accelerate development of its robots for sanding and finishing, and engage a wider customer base. Investors in the round include Stage Venture Partners, Calibrate Ventures, 3M Ventures, OCA Ventures, Pathbreaker Ventures, and B Capital Group.

Participated · Seed · May 2022

NotiSphere offers a digital platform that directly connects medical device suppliers and healthcare organizations to enable real-time communication and management of medical device recalls. The platform is designed to eliminate repeat and duplicate notifications and false positives. NotiSphere says this functionality significantly reduces patient risk. Led by CEO Guillermo Ramas, the company raised $3.6M in Seed funding. The company intends to use the funds to expand adoption across the industry and to enable scalability to support the number of users.

Participated · Seed · Jan 2022

Epsilon3 offers a web-based platform for managing complex operational procedures across projects that enable satellite deployment and operations, human spaceflight, launch operations, vehicle manufacturing, integration & test, robotics deployment, testing, and more. The platform is used by aerospace, defense, manufacturing, and enterprise customers. Since its founding in 2021, Epsilon3 has powered thousands of procedures and multiple types of operations. The company is led by CEO Laura Crabtree and is based in Los Angeles, CA. The article does not provide revenue or user counts. The article also does not describe specific future plans or use of proceeds. Epsilon3 offers an "OS" for launch and launch-related operations that replaces spreadsheets and Word docs with a collaborative work platform. Its product includes an API for live telemetry, multiple-operator sign-off, audit trails, and integrations to pull data from other tools. Customers use the platform for launch ops, satellite operations, hardware integration and testing, and other workflow-heavy processes where auditability and repeatability matter. The company reports a roughly 50x increase in ARR since last year and has more than tripled its customer count to a couple dozen paying customers, including Firefly, Astrobotic, OrbitFab, Venus, Gilmour Space and Stoke Space. The team has grown from the three founders to 21 employees and the founders include CEO Laura Crabtree and cofounder/engineer Aaron Sullivan; the company went through Y Combinator's Summer 2021 cohort. With the new funding the company plans to continue expanding the product and hiring to support larger customers and additional integrations. Epsilon3 has developed an operating system for launch operations—an electronic toolkit for controlling and editing workflows and procedures described in the article as “Asana project management meets GitHub version control.” The product targets integration of design, manufacturing, integration tests and operations to reduce errors and improve efficiency in high-stakes launch environments. The company is laser-focused on space customers, supporting live launches for early-stage rocket companies such as Stoke Space. Co-founders include Laura Crabtree, a former senior missions operations engineer at SpaceX, serial entrepreneur Max Mednik, and Aaron Sullivan, a former Google engineer. Epsilon3 positions itself amid a growing market as access to space expands, with the launch services industry cited as possibly exceeding $18 billion by 2026. Financial and operating metrics (revenue/users) are not disclosed in the article.