Participated · Series A · Jun 2025

Tacta Systems is a Palo Alto-based robotics company developing Dextrous Intelligence, a smart nervous system that gives robots human-level tactile skills and spatial awareness. Its proprietary combination of software, hardware and AI enables robots to sense, adapt, and manipulate the physical world with human-like precision and speed. The company targets industrial and consumer applications, aiming to perform delicate, variable, human-like tasks with flexibility, efficiency and autonomy. Tacta says its technology will help automate factory work and physically grueling labor. Founded by serial entrepreneurs and led by co-founder and CEO Andreas Bibl, the company announced new funding to accelerate development of its robotic solutions.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2025

VEIR designs superconducting power-delivery products that provide up to 10× the power of traditional cables at the same voltage, enabling a smaller electrical footprint for AI-focused data centers and higher-capacity transmission corridors. Its solutions aim to improve data-center efficiency, reduce server latency, simplify campus electrical designs, and enable existing transmission lines to carry significantly more power within the same corridor. VEIR targets customers across data centers, utilities, and renewable energy developers to accelerate grid resilience and global decarbonization. The company positions superconductors as a way to relieve interconnection bottlenecks and integrate new generation onto the grid. VEIR is based in Woburn, Mass., and is pursuing commercialization of its product portfolio. The company recently closed a major financing to support those commercialization efforts. Veir develops next-generation superconducting electric transmission technology designed to carry much higher electrical currents with negligible losses by cooling lines with liquid nitrogen. The company’s proprietary system aims to increase transmission capacity relative to the current grid while using existing rights of way, which can ease siting and permitting for developers. Veir operates an outdoor demonstration of its technology and is focused on delivering full product specifications for each subsystem. Led by CEO Tim Heidel, the company plans to use new funding to advance product development across its subsystems. No revenue or user metrics were disclosed in the article. Veir is a Boston, MA–based company led by CEO Adam Wallen that develops an evaporative cryogenic cooling technology platform for high-temperature superconductor electricity transmission. Its platform is designed to increase the amount of power transmitted at lower voltages in smaller right-of-ways, connecting low-cost renewable resources to demand centers. The company raised a $10M Series A, bringing total funding to date to more than $12M. The round was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with participation from existing investor Congruent Ventures and new investor The Engine. Veir intends to use the capital to scale its team—hiring technical talent in cryogenics and the energy industry as well as operational and sales staff—and to begin developing and testing critical subsystems required for grid deployment. The company also plans to establish a physical development site in Massachusetts to support commercial development and testing.

Participated · Series C · Mar 2024

Celestial AI develops the Photonic Fabric, an optical interconnect technology platform that provides seamless chip-to-chip to server-to-server networking for AI computing systems. The Photonic Fabric is designed to deliver a generational leap in bandwidth, low latency and energy efficiency compared with copper-based interconnects. The company positions the technology as foundational for data center computing, networking and memory systems to enable next‑generation AI architectures. Celestial AI plans to accelerate commercial deployment, strengthen its volume manufacturing supply chain, scale production capabilities, and deepen strategic partnerships with foundries, including TSMC. Company leadership says the technology addresses the data‑movement limits of copper interconnects and enables system designs that can scale processors while reducing power consumption. Financially, Celestial AI has raised $520 million to date, including a final close of a $255 million Series C1 to support commercialization and supply‑chain scaling. Celestial AI is the creator of the Photonic Fabric, an optical interconnect technology platform for compute and memory. The Photonic Fabric enables disaggregation of compute and memory and, the company says, delivers over 25x greater bandwidth and memory capacity while reducing latency and power consumption by up to 10x versus existing optical interconnect alternatives and copper. The company reports successful validation of the technology in silicon and says this has driven tremendous demand from hyperscalers. Amid growing demand for generative AI and next‑generation data centers, Celestial AI positions the Photonic Fabric as a solution to constraints including utility power availability, memory capacity and high cost of operation. The company plans to use the Series C proceeds to execute multiple large‑scale customer collaborations focused on commercializing the Photonic Fabric platform. Celestial AI presents the Photonic Fabric as the foundational technology for optically scalable, disaggregated data center compute and memory to enable sustainable and profitable AI advancements. Celestial AI has developed a photonics-based optical interconnect architecture for compute-to-compute, compute-to-memory and on-chip data transmission aimed at addressing data-movement bottlenecks in AI workloads. The company says its photonic fabric scales across multiple-chip systems, is compatible with industry interconnect standards such as CXL and PCIe, and can enable memory disaggregation. Celestial claims its technology delivers 25x higher bandwidth and 10x lower latency and power consumption than optical alternatives and can reduce the electricity spent on data movement, indirectly boosting a chip's effective compute capacity. It offers the interconnect through a licensing program and reports engagement with several "tier-one" customers, including hyperscalers and processor and memory companies. Celestial also sells an AI accelerator chip, Orion, built on its photonics architecture, though the article notes engineering challenges remain for photonics-based chips at scale. Founded by David Lazovsky and Preet Virk with architect Phil Winterbottom, the company began as a portfolio company of The Engine. The company has around 100 employees and expects to grow to about 130 by the end of the year. Celestial AI builds ML/HPC accelerators based on its proprietary Photonic Fabric™ that uses integrated photonics for high-bandwidth, low-power data movement and optical access to memory and compute. Its core product line is the Orion AI accelerator family, which combines electronic compute with photonic data movement and accompanying system software for simpler, efficient mapping of data and compute. The company says this hybrid approach reduces power spent on data movement and enables redistribution of power to compute, improving performance, latency, and TCO versus electronic-only systems. Celestial AI positions its software and multi-chip scaling as competitive differentiators as AI model complexity grows and cites an Omida addressable market projection of over $70 billion in 2025. The company plans to use new capital to expand its global engineering team, advance product development, and pursue strategic supplier engagements, including Broadcom, to commercialize Orion products. No revenue or user metrics are reported in the article.

Participated · Series D · Aug 2023

LightForce develops the world’s first fully personalized 3D-printed braces system and specializes in 3D-printed dental brackets for orthodontists. The company offers a comprehensive braces solution intended to improve treatment efficiency and clinical aesthetics. LightForce uses AI to generate accurate digital representations of patient anatomy and optimal tooth positions. Its product aims to enable orthodontists to provide personalized solutions for individual patients. The company announced a $50 million growth-capital commitment to support continued expansion. Leadership says the financing will help drive growth and broaden access to personalized braces solutions. LightForce offers a comprehensive braces solution centered on fully personalized, 3D‑printed brackets manufactured to a digital treatment plan and supported by end-to-end software. Its platform spans intraoral and CBCT support through to final prescription and incorporates AI to generate accurate digital representations of patient anatomy and optimal tooth positions. A peer‑reviewed Journal of Clinical Orthodontics study cited in the articles found LightForce cases finished 45% faster with 41% fewer scheduled appointments than conventional bracket cases. The company plans to scale production with a new 36,000‑square‑foot manufacturing facility in Wilmington, Massachusetts, and to expand its engineering and scientific teams. LightForce will also invest the new capital to advance AI in its workflows and to build clinical education resources to help orthodontists adopt fully digital, personalized treatments. The company launched commercial operations in 2020 and is positioning its technology to shorten treatment times and improve patient outcomes while shifting the industry away from one‑size‑fits‑all braces.

Participated · Series C · May 2023

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, Ayar Labs builds co-packaged optics that move data between chips with light instead of copper, reducing power consumption while boosting bandwidth for AI infrastructure. Its flagship TeraPHY optical engine is manufactured in concert with leading semiconductor partners and is designed to slot directly into existing accelerator and switch designs. By replacing traditional electrical I/O with optical links, the technology delivers significant performance gains and cost savings in power-constrained environments. Following its latest financing, the company plans to ramp production and testing capacity, open and staff a new office in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and deepen ecosystem partnerships to speed customer deployments. Ayar Labs’ CPO solution is already qualified for industry-standard fab, manufacturing, and packaging flows, positioning it for broad adoption. The company has raised a cumulative $870 million to date, providing substantial capital to execute its global expansion and commercialization roadmap.