Participated · Equity · Jul 2024

Cartken develops sidewalk and indoor delivery robots using a camera-first, AI-driven autonomy stack that requires no lidar and can operate without GPS. The company was founded in 2019 by former Google engineers behind the Bookbot project and has a roughly 30-person team. Cartken runs sidewalk delivery services on college campuses in Miami, Fairfax, Virginia and Tokyo through partnerships with Uber Eats, Grubhub and Mitsubishi Electric; its robots average 36,000 deliveries per month. The startup says its sidewalk delivery business is profitable today and that newly raised capital will scale that business while unlocking indoor use cases. Cartken is deploying robots inside biotech, pharmaceutical, chemical and automotive campuses — including a ZF factory — and reported saving employees more than 10,000 hours in 2023 at labs and factories.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2023

Breathe develops a suite of software tools that predict and optimize battery performance for automakers and electronics companies. Its products—Charge, Model, Map and the forthcoming Design—optimize charging, simulate long‑term performance, and augment simulations with real‑world data. Charge, the first product, reduced charging time by 27% for phone maker Oppo and helps Volvo’s forthcoming ES90 sedan charge 10%–80% in about 20 minutes. The company operates a lab in London that runs tests on candidate cells and can deliver a Breathe Model to a customer in as little as four weeks while continuing to collect data for Map. Breathe aims to push its software earlier into the battery development process to reduce brute‑force lab testing and guide design tradeoffs. The startup recently raised a $21 million Series B to support those efforts. Breathe Battery Technologies develops algorithm-based battery software that provides cell-level visibility to enable faster charging and extend battery life. Its charging software uses algorithms to allow EVs to charge at full power while maintaining safety without altering battery chemistry. The company already has a battery-performance product installed on 27 Oppo smartphone models and is working to adapt that longevity and performance technology for electric-vehicle batteries. Breathe is working with a number of top-tier blue-chip brands, including Volvo, which has invested via its corporate venture arm. Volvo plans to deploy Breathe's charging software on new EVs within two to three years, targeting about 30% faster charging times. The size of Volvo's investment was not disclosed. Breathe Battery Technologies develops lightweight software products — Charge and Life — that can be integrated into existing lithium-ion battery management systems to improve charging times or extend lifetime. The company reports its code cut 0–80% charging time by 27% for a standard battery type used in warehouse robots, and that Oppo Reno8 phones using its software reach 80% capacity after four years instead of two. Its software runs on industry-standard microcontrollers and is designed to be complementary to advances in cell chemistry while touching a small portion of a typical battery-management system's code. The startup is engaging automotive customers — it is working with Rimac and Cosworth and says conversations with other car companies are "very far along" — targeting the large EV market (Allied Market Research estimates 60% of lithium-ion batteries go to EVs). Breathe recently closed a $10 million Series A led by Lowercarbon Capital with participation from Speedinvest. Co-founder and CEO Ian Campbell, who has spent much of the last decade studying battery charging and failure, positions the company as either an acquisition target for device makers or battery manufacturers or as an independent supplier to both tech and automotive customers. Breathe Battery Technologies is a London spinout from Imperial College London’s Electrochemical Science & Engineering group that develops battery-health and management software for electric vehicles and consumer electronics. Its core product, Lincc, is a health-adaptive charging system that runs battery physics and models on low-power microcontrollers, bringing workstation-grade modeling to embedded devices. The company says this enables faster charging, longer battery lifetime, reduced warranty costs, and cheaper vehicle development by replacing trial-and-error approaches. Breathe was founded by Dr. Yan Zhao, Dr. Ian Campbell and Professor Greg Offer, the latter of whom leads a £17.9 million Faraday Institution multi-scale modelling programme. The startup already has commercial contracts with smartphone maker Oppo and Rimac, a Porsche-backed EV company. The £1.5 million seed funding will be used to scale up operations and accelerate deployments.