Participated · Series B · Jun 2025

Novoloop has developed a process that breaks down polyethylene waste into monomers and synthesizes higher-value thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) branded as Lifecycled TPU. The company completed a demonstration plant test run capable of producing up to 70 metric tons per year and reports strong demand — "literally every time we make something, we’re sold out," CEO Miranda Wang said. Its material has been used by running-shoe maker On for the tread of the Cloudprime sneaker. Novoloop says the upcycled material is more expensive than virgin TPU but "within range." The firm has also added a business line mechanically recycling TPU factory scraps and adding performance enhancers to make recycled TPU perform more like virgin material. On the heels of the demo run, Novoloop is preparing plans for a larger commercial facility and is evaluating building alongside existing chemical plants to leverage land and utilities. Novoloop develops proprietary ATOD (Accelerated Thermal Oxidative Decomposition) chemistry to upcycle polyethylene and other plastic waste into high-performance chemicals and materials, including its first product Oistre, a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The TPU targets durable applications such as shoes, apparel, sporting goods, electronics and automotive components and the company says its product can have up to a 46% smaller carbon footprint versus conventional TPUs. Founded in 2015 by Jeanny Yao and Miranda Wang, Novoloop plans to scale its chemical process above the 1 metric ton scale and to establish a feedstock pretreatment unit in California later this year to accelerate pilot customer deliveries. The startup has disclosed total funding of $24 million, including an $11 million Series A earlier in February and a $10 million Series A extension reported here. Strategic partners and investors are expected to support process development, feedstock sourcing and market access as the company moves toward commercialization. Novoloop emphasizes creating a circular economy for plastics by turning contaminated, low-grade post-consumer waste into commercially usable materials. Novoloop has developed a proprietary process called ATOD™ (Accelerated Thermal Oxidative Decomposition) to break down polyethylene into chemical building blocks that can be synthesized into high-performance products. Its first commercial product is Oistre™, a recycled thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) aimed at footwear, apparel, sporting goods, automotive and electronics markets. The company says Oistre can have a carbon footprint up to 46% smaller than conventional TPUs. Novoloop was founded and is led by two scientists, Jeanny Yao and Miranda Wang, who have worked on the technology for over five years. The company is partnering with Bemis Associates for product applications such as seam tapes in high-performance outerwear. Novoloop positions itself to compete with incumbent TPU producers like BASF, Covestro, Lubrizol and Huntsman and to disrupt an industry where roughly 99% of TPUs are made from virgin fossil feedstocks.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2024

Boston Materials is a materials-science company focused on solving thermal bottlenecks in advanced semiconductor packaging with its patented Z-axis Carbon Fiber™ architecture and proprietary liquid-metal alloys. Its flagship product line, Liquid Metal ZRT®, has already reached the market with the first-generation LMZ1100, which the company claims provides more than a 10 °C cooling improvement for kilowatt-scale, liquid-cooled accelerators while maintaining compatibility with high-volume manufacturing. The firm is now developing a second-generation Liquid Metal ZRT aimed at high-power ASICs and GPUs used in AI and HPC data centers. Through a new strategic partnership with Mitsubishi Chemical Group, Boston Materials will leverage MCG’s global electronic-materials supply chain and upcoming semiconductor-packaging labs in Asia to accelerate product qualification and scale deployment, particularly across APAC. Mitsubishi Chemical’s validation testing has reportedly confirmed the performance gains over incumbent and next-gen thermal interface materials, positioning Boston Materials as a key supplier for next-generation AI infrastructure. CEO Anvesh Gurijala highlights thermal management as a critical constraint on AI growth and sees this collaboration as a catalyst for revenue scale-up and expanded U.S. manufacturing.

Participated · Series C · Oct 2024

Simbe offers a Store Intelligence™ platform powered by AI and robotics that streamlines inventory management and store operations and includes the autonomous item‑scanning robot Tally, which detects product location, stock level, pricing and promotion information via computer vision. The platform extends to vendor and brand insights and supports store teams and shoppers through near real‑time data. In 2024 Simbe launched multiple products and capabilities including Simbe Brand Insights, Simbe Virtual Tour, Simbe Mobile and a Wholesale Club Solution to broaden its retail offerings. The company works with top worldwide retailers across the US, Europe and Asia and has multiple chain‑wide deployments and long‑standing customer successes, with new and expanded partnerships announced this year. Simbe is led by CEO Brad Bogolea and is headquartered in San Francisco. Financially, the company has raised over $100M in total capital following the most recent financing and will use proceeds to accelerate global deployments and pursue strategic growth opportunities. Simbe Robotics develops Tally, an autonomous robot focused on front-of-store shelf monitoring to detect missing items and price inconsistencies. Tally is designed to operate in customer-facing aisles and work alongside store associates to reduce time shelves remain bare. The company highlights deployments with major retailers including BJ’s Wholesale Club (rolling out Tally to all locations), Schnucks Markets, SpartanNash, Wakefern, Carrefour and more. Over the past year Simbe processed over 12 billion shelf photos, analyzed over 5 billion products, and completed over 1.7 million hours of fully autonomous data capture. Financially, Simbe announced a $28 million Series B led by Eclipse, following a $26 million Series A in late 2019 and bringing total funding to $54 million. The company says the new funding will enable expansion to additional retail partners around the world. Simbe Robotics builds Tally, a fully autonomous robot that audits store shelves using computer vision and RFID to deliver e-commerce–level inventory and pricing insights. The company plans to grow its team, expand its Tally fleet into new markets, and accelerate deployments with existing partners while continuing R&D. Simbe will use the Series A equity to scale sales, marketing, customer success and product development. It also secured inventory financing from SoftBank Robotics to accelerate manufacturing and deployment of additional units. Operational traction includes deployments in over 12 of the top 250 global retailers, 100,000+ hours of autonomous operation, more than 25,000 miles traveled in-store, 500M shelf photos captured, and analysis of over 1B products and shelf tags. These metrics underpin Simbe’s positioning as a data-driven inventory solution aimed at reducing out-of-stocks and improving shelf execution.

Participated · Series B · Oct 2024

Equilibrium Energy builds EQ Mission Control™, a flagship software platform that unifies fragmented data and systems for power companies, independent power producers, and corporations. The platform uses a unified enterprise data model and code frameworks to enable real-time insights, granular forecasting, and dynamic decision-making support. Agentic AI and embedded AI copilots are integral to the product, intended to multiply expert capacity, speed, and strategic synthesis. EQ Mission Control™ is already applied to use cases including battery energy storage and renewables optimization to maximize performance and profitability. The company plans to deepen the platform, expand commercial offerings, and scale its reach to serve more customers. Equilibrium positions itself as a market leader in managing large, diverse, and dynamic energy portfolios. Equilibrium Energy combines AI, power‑systems fundamentals, and modern software to manage grid‑scale batteries and orchestrate network‑wide optimization of flexible resources. The company operates battery tolls and has signed offtake tolls with Ormat for two 60 MW / 120 MWh ERCOT projects and a 40 MW / 40 MWh operating battery in California, giving it 260 MW / 380 MWh of contracted tolls across ERCOT and CAISO. Equilibrium reports a 6 GW and growing battery tolling pipeline and began operating its first grid‑scale battery in Texas in 2023. In 2024 it earned more revenue per MW than any other similarly sized grid‑scale 1‑hour battery in Texas, a performance the company attributes to its software, machine‑learning techniques, and grid modeling. The company is expanding into the California market and aims to support developer and corporate partners’ deployment and sustainability goals while growing its commercial businesses. Equilibrium was founded in 2021 and is based in San Francisco. Equilibrium Energy combines deep energy expertise and technology to build a Climate Generation power company focused on accelerating society’s transition to clean energy. Its core commercial product is tolling agreements for grid-scale battery developers, offered in partnership with Hatch Renewables, which provide contractual offtake to help projects secure financing. The company describes its tolling offering as a “PPA-for-batteries.” Equilibrium operates a power volatility‑centric technology platform that leverages AI and power‑grid fundamentals to optimize battery operation in increasingly volatile markets. It recently began operating a 100 MW West Texas battery under a tolling agreement with Jupiter Power. The firm emerged from stealth with $33M in venture funding to support commercialization and deployment efforts.

Led · Series A · May 2024

XGS Energy builds a proprietary solid-state, water-independent geothermal system that uses thermally conductive materials to produce round-the-clock baseload power anywhere there is hot rock. Its Thermal Reach Enhancement (TRE) technology completed a shallow field test in 2024, and the company is operating its first commercial-scale well in California, validating predictive performance models and accumulating operating history. XGS positions its modular approach to decouple geothermal from traditional water- and geology-dependent constraints, aiming to unlock geographic flexibility, easier permitting, and faster deployment. The firm says it has a multi-gigawatt commercial project pipeline across the Western United States and is ramping commercial operations ahead of a planned growth equity round later this year. XGS is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and plans to aggressively expand its team through year-end to support deployment and project development. The company’s approach targets improved financeability to attract venture and infrastructure capital for large-scale geothermal projects. XGS Energy has developed a proprietary slurry — a mix of water, surfactants and conductive minerals (patent filings mention graphite‑like materials and silica) — that is injected between a metal casing and surrounding rock to fill cracks and improve heat conduction. The slurry’s surfactant breaks at higher temperatures, releasing minerals that settle into fractures a few feet from the borehole, permitting the company to use a single cased borehole rather than multiple wells. By keeping working fluid isolated inside the metal casing, XGS can avoid contaminated surface water and use lower‑cost, higher‑efficiency heat exchangers, reducing operating costs. CEO Josh Prueher says the technique makes wells more productive and predictable — “we know within 30 days where we’re going to be in 30 years” in terms of power production. XGS’s technology can be applied to both new and existing geothermal wells, and the company plans to develop a version for suitably hot legacy oil and gas wells to avoid plugging and abandonment costs. To help commercialize the technology, XGS recently raised funding to build a commercial‑scale prototype at an existing geothermal field in California. XGS Energy is a geothermal company headquartered in Palo Alto, California that develops a proprietary Thermal Reach Enhancement™ (TRE) system and closed-loop well architecture. Its TRE system uses materials the company says are 50 times more conductive than native rock to deliver high-efficiency thermal energy without dependence on water or specific geology. XGS positions the technology for global deployment and says it enables terawatt-scale geothermal heat and power. The company completed more than 24 months of lab testing and is building a North American prototype to demonstrate TRE at full commercial scale. That prototype is intended to validate predictive performance models and support first commercial projects in the Western United States, Japan, and the Philippines. XGS emphasizes that its closed-loop, water-independent approach allows deployment anywhere in the world, unlike traditional geothermal solutions that require hot water reservoirs and specific geological formations. XGS Energy develops proprietary geothermal heat-harvesting technology and a closed-loop well architecture intended to unlock scalable, affordable, carbon-free baseload power. The technology is designed to eliminate reliance on rare geological formations and water availability, allowing broader deployment of geothermal energy. XGS says its approach enables global deployment and terawatt-scale geothermal heat and power. The company plans to use recent financing to accelerate technology development and commercial progress. XGS announced a $19M financing package, including a $14M Series A led by Anzu Partners, to support development efforts. Headquartered in Palo Alto, the company changed its name from Geothermic Solution LLC to XGS Energy, Inc.