Helix accurately detect bots and predict age using voice samples in under four seconds

Helix advisors include Dag Kittlaus, co-creator and CEO of Siri

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 11, 2026 — Helix, a voice-powered human verification platform, today announced it has raised $6.2 million in funding and is now live with its first partners. Helix offers biometric-based identity and age verification in under four seconds, with no data ever leaving the user’s phone.  The round was led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from BAM Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, Corazon Capital, Tusk Ventures, Yonder Ventures, Rule30, Press On Ventures, and Brown Angel Group.

“We built Helix to restore trust in every digital interaction. Right now, consumers are scared of having their personal information stolen online, while platforms fight a losing battle against AI to prove whether an account is a real adult or a synthetic agent,” said Alex Oberg, CEO and co-founder of Helix. “The traditional approach has been to collect reams of sensitive data, ranging from uploaded driver’s licenses to video selfies, which is both cumbersome for customers and puts their privacy at risk. Helix solves these problems by using voice to verify identity and doing so entirely on-device. As we confront a new era of AI fakes and agent proliferation, we are eager to introduce our patented solution and contribute to a safer, more human-powered internet.”

“We’ve spent years teaching machines to understand words. Helix is teaching them to understand the person speaking — and to do it in a way people can trust,” said Dag Kittlaus, cofounder and CEO of Siri, cofounder and CEO of Viv.

The Problem Helix is Built to Solve: According to Cloudflare, bots now make up more than 57% of all web traffic. As agents have increased, so too have stories of agents acting without human authorization, from hacking critical websites to accessing customer bank accounts. Generative AI has increased the frequency and sophistication of romance scams, identity theft, and underage access to age-restricted platforms, with generative AI-enabled fraud costing U.S. companies more than $40 billion by 2027. In response, companies have been forced to choose between lower friction, but lower effectiveness solutions like CAPTCHA and SMS or expensive and cumbersome solutions like video selfies — both of which still fall short of stopping today’s fraud capabilities.

Helix’s Cutting-Edge Solution: Helix verifies that users are human through a simple, four number voice challenge, providing biometric-level security with the low cost and friction of SMS multi-factor authentication. Helix offers their Biometric MFA and Age Assurance entirely on device, without storing any biometric data or other personally identifiable information (PII) on any server. The unique zero-PII architecture can be deployed across verticals ranging from ticketing, to dating, gaming, gambling and fintech. Platforms can integrate with Helix through either a software development kit (SDK) or via a single line in Claude Code or OpenAI Codex deployments.

The External Standards and Certifications Secured by Helix: Helix is also one of the only audio companies in the world that meets the stringent ISO/IEC 27566-1:2025, an international standard for age assurance systems, and is fully accredited by the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS), a rigorous, independent, third-party auditor. Helix is also one of the first companies certified under the IEEE Online Age Verification Certification Program, which is the framework used by New York’s SAFE for Kids Act, taking effect January 2027. This new law requires independently certified, highly effective age assurance and at least one option that does not require a government ID for all platforms with an algorithmically driven feed. Helix’s approach, voice, fits that exactly.

Helix’s Launch Partner: Helix is currently in beta with early partners, such as Zeel, a leading in-home health and wellness platform, as an additional measure for their verification processes.

“The Trust and Safety landscape is changing quickly, particularly as AI creates new challenges around identity and verification,” said Samer Hamadeh, founder and CEO of Zeel. “At Zeel, we believe it’s important to continually evaluate new approaches to strengthening trust. Helix is one of the technologies we’re exploring as we think about how Trust and Safety needs to evolve for the AI era.”

“Combatting bots has remained one of the biggest and toughest challenges facing the ticketing industry. In spite of the myriad of tools and defenses we employed at Ticketmaster, it remained a continuous arms race that will require new approaches in AI era. The voice-powered capabilities being employed by Helix are one of the most unique and effective approaches I’ve seen to make a real improvement for people and platforms in all sectors online,” said Jared Smith, former President and Global Chairman at Ticketmaster and Helix board member and investor. 

“AI has fundamentally changed the landscape of fraud and impersonation, exposing the limitations of legacy approaches to identity and human verification. Helix is redefining human verification through voice – seamless for consumers, privacy-first, and purpose-built for the AI era. Alex and the team bring deep expertise solving identity and trust challenges at scale, and we believe Helix is building critical infrastructure for digital trust,” said Eric Duboe, Partner at Chicago Ventures.

ABOUT HELIX

Helix is a voice-enabled human verification company created for the AI era. Through one SDK integration, Helix offers Bot Management, Biometric MFA, and Age Assurance, all built on the same privacy-by-architecture principles where zero data ever leaves a user’s device. Founded by engineers from Ticketmaster, Tinder, and Zillow, Helix’s mission is to restore trust in every digital interaction. Helix is backed by Chicago Ventures, BAM Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, Corazon Capital, Tusk Ventures, Yonder Ventures, Rule30, Press On Ventures and Brown Angel Group. For more information, visit https://helix.id/.

SOURCE Helix

Round co-led by Ferroglobe and Access Industries builds on $50M DOE grant to accelerate commercialization of batteries made with domestic critical materials

SAN LEANDRO, Calif., Nov. 11, 2026 — Coreshell Technologies, a battery technology company, today announced the close of a $30 million Series B financing round co-led by Ferroglobe PLC (NASDAQ: GSM) and Access Industries, with participation from ADS, Helios Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Mana Ventures, and Entrada Ventures. The funding will accelerate the commercialization and scale-up of Coreshell’s battery technology, support expansion of manufacturing and customer programs, and advance its goal of eliminating dependence on China for critical battery materials across both the anode and cathode supply chains.

This round builds on significant public-sector support for Coreshell’s domestic battery manufacturing efforts, including a $50 million grant from the Department of Energy in August.

The financing comes as U.S. manufacturers across defense, automotive, data centers, and other key industries look to strengthen supply-chain resilience and secure access to domestic sources of critical materials. Federal sourcing requirements, including those under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), along with new procurement policies and White House measures, are accelerating that shift, particularly in defense, where compliance alone may not protect manufacturers from supply-chain disruptions.

Graphite is a critical component of conventional lithium-ion batteries, and more than 90 percent of the world’s graphite is processed in China. This concentration leaves battery manufacturers and their customers vulnerable to disruptions beyond their control.

 In 2023, China tightened controls on graphite exports, underscoring the risks of relying on a concentrated source for a critical battery material. Coreshell eliminates that vulnerability by replacing graphite entirely with metallurgical silicon (MGS), a widely available, low-cost material produced in the US.

“Meeting sourcing requirements is an important step, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a battery supply chain is secure, no matter what industry you’re in,” said Jonathan Tan, CEO and Co-Founder of Coreshell Technologies. “This new financing gives us the resources to scale a battery supply chain that eliminates dependence on China for critical materials while delivering advantages in performance and cost.”

That effort is already underway. Coreshell is using its $50 million federal grant to build the first giga-scale factory for cells using MGS anodes, vastly expanding domestic production of this critical battery technology.

“As uncrewed systems become increasingly important to the future of American defense, the batteries powering those systems cannot be a geopolitical liability,” said Dave Bellis, Manager of Corporate Strategy and Development at ADS, the top supplier to the Defense Logistics Agency. “Coreshell has a differentiated technology and a supply chain designed around domestic critical minerals, giving the defense industry a path toward batteries that are both high-performing and genuinely secure.”

A Battery Technology Built Around Domestic Materials

Coreshell replaces conventional graphite with metallurgical silicon (MGS), a raw, commercially produced form of silicon that differs from the expensive, silane-based materials used in other silicon-anode cells. Coreshell’s MGS anode leverages silicon’s performance and cost advantages while using an abundant, domestically sourced material. On the cathode side, an agreement with L&F Co., Ltd provides long-term access to lithium, enabling Coreshell to produce batteries free of Chinese critical materials.

About Coreshell Technologies, Inc.

Coreshell Technologies develops high-performance batteries designed to eliminate dependence on Chinese critical minerals. Its proprietary battery technology replaces conventional graphite in lithium-ion batteries with American metallurgical silicon (MGS), delivering higher performance at lower cost while enabling a domestic supply chain. Headquartered in San Leandro, California, Coreshell works with battery manufacturers, automotive OEMs, defense customers and other organizations seeking more secure energy storage solutions. For more information, visit www.coreshell.com.

SOURCE Coreshell Technologies

Fund III is Vine’s largest fund to date and has surpassed its initial target, backed by new and returning limited partners

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 11, 2026 — Vine Ventures, a venture capital firm partnering with category-defining companies across the U.S.–Israel technology corridor, today announced the close of its $236 million Fund III. The fund surpassed its initial target and is Vine’s largest to date, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to over $500 million just five years after its founding.

Fund III is backed by a group of limited partners that includes global asset managers, family offices, and senior executives of global companies

Since the close of its previous fund, Vine has sharpened its focus on Israel, deepening its on-the-ground presence and sourcing while retaining the international mandate and U.S. footprint that have defined the firm since inception. Fund II, for example, holds positions from seed in Eon, Wonderful, and Ornn. Fund III will extend that approach, backing category-defining companies across the corridor.

“We’re not simply investing in Israel, we’re allocating capital across the strategic corridor between the two most important technology ecosystems in the world,” said Eric Reiner, Founder and Partner of Vine Ventures. “America brings capital, scale, and the frontier models. Israel builds the layer underneath that makes the technology actually work, in addition to the application, defense, and cyber layer, where we have invested heavily. Our approach is to reach deep into both and connect them in ways that set us apart.”

Alongside the new fund, Vine has formed a senior advisory group of business leaders in the U.S. Joining as senior advisors are Michael Lynton, Chairman of Snap Inc. and former CEO of Sony Entertainment, Gary Reiner, former Chief Information Officer at General Electric and most recently Operating Partner at General Atlantic, and Bob Mylod, Chairman of booking.com. Vine has also expanded its investment team with Adam Valkin, formerly of General Catalyst, who leads the firm’s investing from Boston, and Idan Tendler, formerly of Palo Alto Networks.

“At Vine, we have always believed in the power of focused, hands-on partnerships with founders to generate exceptional outcomes, and the investments from Fund III will continue to embody that philosophy,” added Reiner. “Our LPs believe that with the strength of our portfolio, alongside the additions of Adam, Michael, and Idan, who bring a wealth of experience, that Vine is just getting started, and intends to continue to pursue multi-billion-dollar opportunities at their earliest stages.”

About Vine Ventures

Vine Ventures is a global venture capital firm with a focus on early and growth-stage investments in transformative technology sectors. The firm aims to back bold founders and category-defining companies across the U.S., Israel, and Europe. With over $500 million across three funds, Vine is committed to fueling the next generation of innovators in enterprise software, AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and financial technology. For more information, please visit https://vineventures.com/

Media Contact
Raanan Loew
[email protected] 
US: +1 347 897 9276

SOURCE Vine Ventures L.P.

• Platform now available to all developers, after it cut design partners’ development cycles from months to hours, reduced costs by 97% and failures by 82%
• Round led by Team8, with backing from CyberArk founder Udi Mokady, and Google and Microsoft executives
• Joint work with NVIDIA and Nebius for a global enterprise customer outperformed OpenAI and Anthropic frontier models on accuracy at ~44x lower cost

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2026 — Plurai, the simulation infrastructure for trustworthy, self-improving AI agents, today announced $13M in seed funding and the general availability of its platform. The platform helps enterprises find and fix failures before their agents reach customers, then keeps them reliable, accurate and cost-efficient in production with small language models (SLMs) tailored to each agent’s tasks. Plurai has cut design partners’ agent development cycles from months to hours, reduced failures reaching real users by 82% and lowered the cost of running reliable agents by 97%. In joint work with NVIDIA and Nebius, models Plurai post-trained for a global enterprise customer outperformed OpenAI and Anthropic frontier models on accuracy at 40x and 44x lower cost, respectively.

The round was led by Team8, with participation from U&I, Velocity and Mercer, and backing from more than 20 angel investors and industry leaders, including CyberArk founder Udi Mokady. Microsoft 365 Copilot CTO Dr. Eyal Carmi has joined Plurai’s advisory board.

While AI agents are easier to create than ever, making them reliable and cost-effective with real customers is far harder. VentureBeat Pulse Research recently found that half of enterprises have deployed an AI agent or LLM feature that passed internal evaluations but still caused a customer-facing failure in production. Teams spend months manually checking their agents, but they can never anticipate every scenario agents will meet in production, and once agents are live, using frontier LLMs to run and to evaluate every interaction is too slow and too expensive to scale.

From simulation to production

Plurai builds a digital twin of an agent and its world based on the customer’s own knowledge base, tools and policies. It then runs thousands of realistic and adversarial users against the agent in a sandbox, covering the long tail of edge cases and exposing policy violations, hallucinations, incorrect actions, broken tool calls, failed tasks and sensitive data leaks.

The same simulation is then used to optimize the agent. Plurai generates fixes for the failures it finds and uses the simulation data to create small language models (SLMs) tailored to each agent. In production, these SLMs play two roles: they can replace frontier LLMs to run the agent, improving accuracy at a fraction of the cost, and they act as always-on evaluators and guardrails, checking every action and enforcing company policy. New failures they catch feed back into the simulation, so the agent keeps improving over time.

Previously limited to select partners and customers, Plurai is now open to every agent builder, with a free tier. Developers can start directly from the tools they already use, including Claude Code, Codex and GitHub Copilot, and teams can simulate and improve agents built on enterprise platforms such as Salesforce Agentforce.

Founders shaped by autonomous driving

Co-founders Dr. Ilan Kadar (CEO, PhD in computer science and machine learning) and Dr. Elad Levi (CTO, PhD in mathematics) have spent the past decade bringing reliable AI systems into production in mission-critical environments. At Nexar, where Kadar was VP of AI and Levi was an AI architect, they led efforts to build real-time, scalable and reliable systems for autonomous driving companies like Waymo, which rely on simulation to validate self-driving systems before they reach the road.

Their research and open-source projects are used by hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide and Plurai’s technology is grounded in the company’s own original research. This includes BARRED, a new method for generating synthetic training data for custom SLMs, which was accepted at ICML 2026, one of the world’s leading machine learning conferences. Other research has shown how to serve hundreds of tailored SLMs in real time on a single GPU, making them economically viable at scale.

“AI systems fail when they hit challenges down the road which no one predicted,” said Dr. Kadar. “Waymo built trust by testing and training across more than 20 billion simulated miles, roughly 100 times its real-world driving. Plurai brings that same approach to AI agents: continuously challenging them with the hardest situations and rarest events before they reach users, learning from failures, and improving before those failures happen in the real world.”

Validation and traction: NVIDIA, Nebius and Gartner

Plurai is already working with enterprises across AI-native and highly regulated industries, including Fortune 500 and major financial companies. In addition to the work with NVIDIA and Nebius, Plurai was named a Representative Vendor in Gartner’s 2026 Market Guide for AI Evaluation and Observability Platforms, a category Gartner projects 60% of software engineering teams will adopt by 2028, up from 18% in 2025. It was also featured in Gartner’s “8 Emerging Practices for Testing AI Agents.”

“As agents move into core enterprise workflows, the missing layer is infrastructure that builds trust in them before they reach customers and keeps them improving in production,” said Aviad Harell, Managing Partner at Team8. “Simulation will become as fundamental to the agent stack as CI/CD is to software. Ilan and Elad bring deep AI expertise and over a decade of bringing AI into high-stakes production systems, and they’re the team to build that layer.”

Additional Quotes

“AI is probabilistic. Enterprises are not,” said Udi Mokady, founder of CyberArk, chairman of CHEQ and an angel investor in Plurai. “The founders have spent more than a decade building AI for mission-critical environments like autonomous driving, where systems don’t get second chances. That experience shows in how they approach agents, and it’s what separates AI that can be deployed from AI that can be trusted.”

“For enterprises, evaluating AI agents on real customer data is often blocked by privacy, security and compliance constraints, which makes simulation mission-critical,” said Dr. Eyal Carmi, CTO of Microsoft 365 Copilot and a member of Plurai’s advisory board. “What sets Plurai apart is how faithfully it recreates each company’s world, from its tools and policies to the users its agents actually face. And it doesn’t stop at finding failures. It turns what it learns into fixes and production safeguards, so teams can deploy agents with confidence.”

“Frontier models are incredibly capable, but using them to continuously evaluate agent behavior in production can quickly become expensive and impractical,” said Reah Miyara, Senior Director of Google Models at Google Cloud, former model evaluation lead at OpenAI and an angel investor in Plurai. “What I find compelling about Plurai is the idea of using smaller, tailored models to make evaluation continuous, not just something you do on a small sample of traffic.”

For more information and to get started, visit: https://www.plurai.ai/

About Plurai

Plurai is the simulation infrastructure for trustworthy, self-improving AI agents. It simulates each agent’s real-world environment to find failures and fix them, then post-trains the agent’s underlying models on what it learns. With Plurai, agents get more reliable, more capable and cheaper to run with every cycle: simulate, fix, post-train, repeat. Founded by Dr. Ilan Kadar and Dr. Elad Levi, Plurai is backed by Team8, U&I, Velocity, Mercer, and leading industry investors. Learn more at plurai.ai.

Media Contact
[email protected]

SOURCE Plurai

Beni gives small to mid-sized employers an affordable, compliant alternative to traditional group health plans.

NEW YORK, Nov. 11, 2026 — Aquiline today announced that it has invested in Beni Solutions, a provider of affordable, ACA-compliant health benefits for small to mid-sized employers in the United States.

Founded in 2022 and headquartered in Wayne, N.J., Beni designs and administers straightforward, guaranteed-issue health plans that allow employers to meet their regulatory obligations while giving employees coverage they can actually use. Beni gives employers a compliant and affordable option for employees and fills a gap for brokers looking for alternatives to traditional plans. Beni manages enrollment, billing, commissions, and servicing and works with approximately 700 agencies and 1,600 agents nationally.

Rising healthcare costs have put traditional group health plans out of reach for a growing number of small to mid-sized employers, many of whom are left choosing between costly coverage and regulatory penalties. Closing this gap is among the more significant challenges facing the U.S. benefits market today.

Brianna Manente, Co-Founder and CEO of Beni, said: “We have built Beni into a leader in the alternative health plan space by giving employers and brokers a plan that is simple, compliant, and affordable. Aquiline shares our vision and brings deep experience in benefits and insurance to help us take Beni to the next level. We could not be more excited for this next chapter.”

Tim Varone, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer of Beni, said: “Brokers are under real pressure to find coverage their clients can afford, and Beni was built to give them a plan they can place. Our growth has come from earning the trust of brokers one at a time, and with Aquiline’s support we can reach many more of them across the country.”

Thomas Lynch, Principal at Aquiline, said: “We identified Beni as a leader in a fast-growing segment of the benefits market. With premiums still rising and no relief in sight, we believe demand for what Beni offers will only grow. We are excited to back Brianna and Tim, who have built a company that brokers trust and employers need, and to invest with them in sales and marketing to bring Beni’s plans to employers nationwide.”

About Aquiline

Aquiline is a global private investment firm with offices in New York, London, and Philadelphia that focuses on financial services and technology. As of June 30, 2026, Aquiline had approximately $11 billion of assets under management and deployed approximately $8.7 billion of capital across the firm’s strategies since inception. 

For more information about Aquiline, its investment professionals, and its portfolio companies, please visit www.aquiline.com.

About Beni Solutions

Beni Solutions is a technology-enabled provider of affordable, ACA-compliant health benefits for employers across the United States. Founded in 2022 and based in Wayne, N.J., Beni serves more than 1,500 employer groups and over 30,000 lives.

For more information, please visit www.beni.solutions.

Media Contacts:
Lawton King
(202) 713-0460
[email protected] 

SOURCE Aquiline Capital Partners LP

The crypto presale ROI tracker gives investors one place to compare token prices, track returns and assess the risks of new token sales.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 11, 2026 — TheHolyCoins (https://theholycoins.com) has launched a crypto presale ROI dashboard tracking 48 projects, with an initial dataset showing a fundraising-weighted average decline of 99.34% from final presale prices. The dashboard helps investors examine what happened to tokens after previous sales before committing money to new ones. TheHolyCoins plans to expand coverage beyond the initial 48 projects.

The crypto presale performance tracker lets users compare final presale prices with current market prices, alongside reported funds raised, all-time highs and listing dates. Investors can search individual projects, filter by category and sort the results to see which tokens have retained value and which have collapsed.

BlockDAG and Pepe Unchained illustrate the scale. The tracker records $440 million in reported fundraising for BlockDAG and $73.9 million for Pepe Unchained. As of November 10, their tokens show returns of −99.96% and −99.82%, respectively, against the final presale prices used by the dashboard.

Those two projects alone account for more than half a billion dollars in reported fundraising. Their performance gives investors researching new crypto presales a reason to look beyond fundraising milestones and projected listing prices.

The list includes apparent scams alongside stalled projects. Bitcoin Pepe’s team disappeared amid complaints of undelivered tokens, while Qubetics halted core development after reporting over $18 million raised. Others, including Pepe Unchained, continue developing products despite steep price declines and exchange delistings.

“Retail investors can face experienced developers and professional marketers who know how to sell the promise of getting in early,” said Shay Feldman, editor-in-chief of TheHolyCoins. “Influencer endorsements, countdowns and ambitious price predictions can make a speculative token sale look like an opportunity investors cannot afford to miss. We built this dashboard so people can check what happened after previous presales ended, before putting their money into another one.”

Coverage focuses on presales conducted from 2021 onward, primarily those raising approximately $1 million or more, with selected smaller projects included. Prices are sourced mainly from CoinGecko, while fundraising information comes from public materials and reporting.

Returns compare market prices with final presale prices; individual investor outcomes depend on entry prices and selling decisions. Calculations exclude vesting schedules, liquidity depth and OTC transactions. The dataset covers selected projects, rather than the entire crypto presale market.

The crypto presale ROI dashboard is available at:
https://theholycoins.com/crypto-presales-roi-performance-tracker

About TheHolyCoins

TheHolyCoins is a cryptocurrency publication covering crypto presales and early-stage token projects through news, investigations, reviews and educational guides. Its coverage examines project claims, tokenomics, transparency and investment risks to help readers research token sales and make better-informed decisions. Visit https://theholycoins.com.

Media Contact

Shay Feldman
Editor-in-Chief, TheHolyCoins
+972-52-8664937
[email protected] 

SOURCE TheHolyCoins

Investment through its corporate venture arm, BeVentures, establishes foundation for exploring opportunities across the natural gas and LNG value chain

MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 11, 2026 — Bapco Energies, the integrated energy Group dedicated to powering the next generation and securing Bahrain’s long-term energy, announced that it has made an investment in Kimmeridge Fund VII, the flagship fund of Kimmeridge, an asset manager focused on the energy sector. The investment was made through Bapco Energies’ corporate venture arm, BeVentures.

The transaction marks the first fund investment in BeVentures’ portfolio and establishes a strategic partnership between Bapco Energies and Kimmeridge Fund VII. The investment also establishes a framework for exploring opportunities across the natural gas and LNG value chain, while providing visibility into potential future co-investment opportunities that support the Kingdom of Bahrain’s long-term energy priorities.

Mark Thomas, Group Chief Executive Officer of Bapco Energies, said: “Engaging with leading organizations across the global energy sector is an important part of how we strengthen our capabilities and support our long-term objectives. Kimmeridge’s technical expertise and strong presence in North America provide valuable perspectives as we continue to advance the Group’s strategic priorities and support the Kingdom’s evolving energy needs.”

Areije Al Shakar, Chief Executive Officer of BeVentures, said: “This investment represents an important milestone for BeVentures and reflects our focus on partnering with highly specialized investors that bring deep sector expertise and differentiated market insight. We look forward to working with Kimmeridge and exploring opportunities that support long-term value creation while advancing our strategic objectives.”

Dr. Neil McMahon, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Kimmeridge, said: “Our partnership with Bapco Energies marks a further step in Kimmeridge’s commitment to the Middle East. We are proud to support the region’s energy ambitions, contributing to economic growth and transformation, while creating lasting value for our investors and partners.”

Fayçal Benjelloun, Managing Director and Head of Middle East at Kimmeridge, said: “We are delighted to welcome Bapco Energies as an investor and appreciate the trust placed in our team. We continue to build enduring relationships with regional institutions through close engagement and shared expertise, and look forward to working with the Bapco team to explore opportunities across the natural gas and LNG value chain.”

Through the partnership, Bapco Energies will gain access to Kimmeridge’s natural gas and LNG expertise, proprietary research, and sector specialists.

About Bapco Energies   
Bapco Energies is the integrated energy company dedicated to powering the next generation and securing Bahrain’s long-term energy supply. Under the chairmanship of His Highness Shaikh Nasser bin Hamad Al Khalifa, His Majesty’s Representative for Humanitarian Works and Youth Affairs, the company drives growth across the energy value chain, guided by the Blueprint Bahrain framework and a commitment to a sustainable energy future.

Bapco Energies operates through a diversified portfolio of wholly owned subsidiaries: Bapco Refining, Bapco Upstream, Bapco Gas, Bapco Tazweed, and BeVentures, as well as Bapco Air Fueling, in which Bapco Energies holds a majority shareholding. The company has also established BxT Trading, a joint venture with TotalEnergies focused on petroleum products trading.

For media inquiries please contact [email protected]  

About Kimmeridge:
Founded in 2012 by Ben Dell, Dr. Neil McMahon and Henry Makansi, Kimmeridge is an alternative asset manager focused on the energy sector. The firm is differentiated by its direct investment approach, deep technical knowledge, active portfolio management, proprietary research, and data gathering.

For media inquiries please contact [email protected]

SOURCE Kimmeridge Energy

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 11, 2026 — Rox, which researches and develops the world’s best revenue agent for the Global 2000, today announced a $100 million Series B financing at a $1.3 billion valuation.

The round is co-led by General Catalyst and March Capital, with existing investors Sequoia Capital and Factory doubling down on their investment, alongside new investors including Databricks Ventures and Prosperity7 Ventures.

In its first year in market, Rox has grown annual recurring revenue by more than 10x and is now deployed by leading public and private enterprises in non-tech industries including IT services, energy, commodities, medical technology, industrial manufacturing and automotive.

Rox is seeing more than 700% net revenue retention across enterprise customers, and some are seeing ~25x return on investment within 90 days.

The financing follows Rox’s $50 million seed and Series A announced in November 2024. Zach Frankel, an early investor in Ramp, Cognition and Applied Compute, is also an early backer of Rox. 

Built for the sellers who drive revenue

Enterprise sales follows a power law: the top 15% of reps bring in roughly 90% of revenue. However, the average rep spends 40% of their time on administrative work, according to Salesforce. Rox was built to raise the ceiling for those teams.

The Rox agent helps automate pipeline generation, deal execution, and upsells, so reps can better manage complex accounts and build relationships.

Agents doing real commercial work

Rox is a vertically integrated, enterprise-ready AI system built on each customer’s individual data warehouse. The results are already changing sales economics:

• For a global IT services firm, Rox delivered $330M in qualified pipeline in eight weeks. Reps also handed off pursuit prep to Rox and got 1,000 hours back for selling.
   
• For a global medical technology company, Rox has identified $200M+ of new funding opportunities at medical facilities that the team is actively pursuing. Despite multi-year sales cycles for some opportunities, Rox has already helped the team close $24M in revenue in just five months.
   
• For a leading global engineering and professional services firm, Rox identified over $310M in potential opportunities, spanning signal-qualified leads and estimated net-new pipeline from previously missed public-sector bids.
• For a market-leading DevSecOps platform, Rox doubled outbound volume. Rox has transformed them into an agent-driven org and delivered millions of dollars of pipeline.
   
• For a leading payroll provider, Rox opens up an entirely new source of growth: autonomously finding and engaging 4M prospects the sales team couldn’t economically reach, and turning them into meetings at just 20% of the cost of traditional outreach.
   
• For a global industrial software company, Rox doubled sales team capacity and delivered 50+ meetings in just six weeks.
   
• For a large German engineering and technology company, Rox delivered 24.3x ROI in 90 days by automating sales work the business had never been able to do before, from always-on pipeline tracking to personalized outreach at scale.

Revenue is the next frontier for AI agents and one of the hardest. Unlike code, where an agent can test its work immediately, sales outcomes take weeks or months to materialize. Rox is solving that with custom models and original research, including launching a revenue-agent benchmark to measure performance on real-world revenue tasks. Rox recently cut outbound prospecting pricing by 50%, driven by research-led improvements.

“Rox is the product I wish I had,” said Ishan Mukherjee, Co-founder and CEO of Rox. “We built Rox for the Global 2000 because that is where the problem is the hardest and the stakes are the highest. Our own go-to-market runs entirely on Rox, with no other tools, and our customers are already generating hundreds of millions of dollars of pipeline at a fraction of the traditional cost. This round lets us go further in our ultimate goal of growing the world’s revenue.”

Rox will use the capital to advance its AI research, custom models and evaluation infrastructure, and expand its work with large enterprises across healthcare, industrial, financial services, energy and technology. Rox was named a Visionary in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Revenue Action Orchestration and a Major Player in the 2026 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Unified Revenue Orchestration Platforms.

INVESTOR QUOTES

Konstantine Buhler, Partner, Sequoia Capital
“Rox is a clear example of the real ROI of AI, delivering measurable results for Global 2000 sales teams and CROs in under a quarter. We backed Ishan and his team early because of their deep expertise in enterprise sales and their proven ability to drive meaningful pipeline impact. Rox will become synonymous with revenue, and we are proud to be investors in their vision.”

Marc Bhargava, Managing Director, General Catalyst
“Ishan is as obsessed with revenue as other founders are with rockets, and that has pulled the strongest applied-AI team we have seen in this category. For the first time, boards are telling revenue leaders to try something new rather than renew the incumbent. There is a long graveyard of companies that said they’d take on Salesforce. The difference now is that the old systems were never built for agents, and boards are finally willing to start fresh. Rox is winning those conversations. That’s why we doubled down.”

Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, March Capital
“We’re thrilled to partner with Ishan and the Rox team as they build a generational platform for revenue teams. Their rare combination of deep technical talent and real domain expertise shows up in the product, and it came through clearly in our conversations with delighted Global 2000 customers across industries.”

Prosperity7 Ventures
“Rox is applying AI to address complex challenges in enterprise sales, helping teams work more efficiently and focus on higher-value activities. Its approach and early commercial traction highlight the potential for AI agents to support enterprise productivity. We look forward to supporting Ishan and the team as they continue to grow.”

CUSTOMER QUOTES

Manu Narayan, CIO, GitLab
“A core part of our internal AI strategy is freeing our teams from routine activities so they can spend more time on higher-value strategic work. Rox’s agents help the revenue team find and research prospects, and fit into the systems and governance standards we already run.”

Tanay Tiwary, Global Head of Digitization, Puma Energy
“Puma Energy serves a diverse customer base across Africa, Asia and Latin America, from fleet operators and mining companies to airlines and small businesses. Next-generation CRM is still nascent in our industry, but represents a significant opportunity. As digital leaders in these markets, we’d rather set the pace than wait. By partnering with innovative start-ups like Rox, we’re combining customer data and market intelligence to identify high-potential prospects, reduce manual work and equip our commercial teams with actionable insights. This will help us build stronger customer relationships and deliver better service, while unlocking the significant potential of digital innovation in traditionally underserved markets.”

About Rox

Rox researches and develops the world’s best revenue agent. Built for the Global 2000, the Rox agent generates pipeline, qualifies leads, books meetings, manages deals and expands accounts inside a company’s existing systems. Rox was founded in 2024 by Ishan Mukherjee, Shriram Sridharan and Diogo Ribeiro. Rox is headquartered in San Francisco and backed by Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, GV, March Capital, Databricks Ventures, Factory and Prosperity7 Ventures. Learn more at https://www.rox.com/ 

SOURCE Rox

HAMBURG, Germany, Nov. 11, 2026 — H.I.G. Capital (“H.I.G.”), a leading global private capital firm with $76 billion of capital under management, is pleased to announce that an affiliate has signed a definitive agreement to acquire a majority stake in go asia (“go asia” or the “Company”), Germany’s largest retail chain for Asian food. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Berlin, go asia operates over 70 stores in more than 30 cities across Germany. With a range of over 10,000 products from across Asia and more than 1,600 employees, the Company addresses the growing demand for authentic Asian cuisine from a well-diversified customer base.

H.I.G. and the founding family led by Wengui Ye have agreed to enter into a partnership to accelerate the Company’s next phase of growth. H.I.G. will contribute its retail and consumer expertise, international network, and capital resources to support go asia’s dynamic store network expansion in Germany and Europe. The founding family will reinvest and retain a significant ownership interest in the Company, and founder Wengui Ye and the Company’s management team will continue to play an active role in shaping go asia’s future.

Wengui Ye, founder of go asia, commented: “When I opened our first store in Berlin in 2009, my vision was to bring authentic Asian cuisine to German homes. Today, I am proud that go asia is Germany’s largest Asian food retailer – and we still see significant untapped growth potential both in Germany and especially across Europe. With its vast retail experience, strong international network, and partnership-oriented, operational approach, H.I.G. is the ideal partner for our next stage of growth. My family and I will remain significantly invested, and I look forward to continuing to shape the future of go asia together with H.I.G. and our outstanding team.”

Christian Kraul-von Renner, Managing Director at H.I.G., remarked: “go asia is an impressive founder-led success story. Wengui Ye and his team have built Germany’s largest Asian food retailer with an authentic product range and a distinctive, scalable store concept. We see significant potential to expand the store network in Germany as well as to enter other European markets. Together with the Ye family and the management team, we look forward to accelerating go asia’s next phase of growth.”

About go asia

Founded by Wengui Ye in Berlin in 2008, go asia opened its first store in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 2009. Today, with over 70 stores in more than 30 cities and over 1,600 employees, go asia is Germany’s largest retail chain for Asian food. Its stores are located predominantly in city-center locations, shopping centers, and transport hubs, complemented by an online shop. The Company’s assortment comprises over 10,000 products from across Asia, ranging from rice, noodles, sauces, and spices to frozen and fresh products, beverages, and kitchenware. For more information, please visit the go asia website at goasia.net.

About H.I.G. Capital

H.I.G. is a leading global private capital firm with $76 billion of capital under management.* Based in Miami, and with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Stamford in the United States, as well as international affiliate offices in Hamburg, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Bogotá, Rio de Janeiro, Dubai, and Hong Kong, H.I.G. specializes in providing both debt and equity capital to middle market companies, utilizing a flexible and operationally focused/value-added approach:

• H.I.G.’s equity funds invest in management buyouts, recapitalizations, and corporate carve-outs of both profitable as well as underperforming manufacturing and service businesses.
• H.I.G.’s debt funds invest in senior, unitranche, and junior debt financing to companies across the size spectrum, both on a primary (direct origination) basis, as well as in the secondary markets.
• H.I.G.’s real estate funds invest in value-added properties, which can benefit from improved asset management practices.
• H.I.G. Infrastructure focuses on making value-add and core plus investments in the infrastructure sector.

Since its founding in 1993, H.I.G. has invested in and managed more than 400 companies worldwide. The Firm’s current portfolio includes more than 100 companies with combined sales in excess of $53 billion. For more information, please refer to the H.I.G. website at hig.com.

*Based on total capital raised by H.I.G. Capital and its affiliates.

Contact:

Christian Kraul-von Renner
Managing Director
[email protected]

H.I.G. European Capital Partners GmbH
Warburgstrasse 50
20354 Hamburg
Germany
P: +49 40 41 33 06 100
hig.com