New investment will accelerate product innovation, deepen institutional partnerships, and help colleges deliver more transparent, student-centered enrollment experiences.

LOS ANGELES, July 8, 2026 — EdVisorly today announced the close of $13.3 million in a Series A financing round led by Breachway Capital, with participation from U.S. News & World Report, Lumina Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, Motley Fool Ventures, Juvo Ventures, Zeal Capital Partners, and others. This capital enables EdVisorly to support colleges and universities as they modernize admissions and enrollment operations to better serve the next generation of students.

Higher education institutions are under growing pressure to process more applications, evaluate more transfer credit, and deliver faster admissions decisions with fewer staff and tighter budgets. Yet many of these critical workflows still rely on decades-old technology or are even done by hand. At the same time, today’s learners expect a modern enrollment experience with transparency and personalized support.

EdVisorly was built to help colleges and universities meet these challenges. Its EddyAI platform automates time-intensive workflows like transcript processing and evaluation, transfer credit mapping, and GPA recalculations, allowing admissions and enrollment teams to spend less time on paperwork and more time supporting students. Institutions using the platform have reduced manual processing up to 85% while increasing admissions data processing productivity by more than 6x.

“What sets EdVisorly apart is that they show up like an actual partner and care deeply about the students. Their team has been in the weeds with ours through the EddyAI implementation, and the impact on our students and staff has been tangible and positive. We’re proud to be part of what they’re building.”

— Lawrence Walsh, Associate Director for Operations and Transfer Admissions, University of Connecticut

Today, EdVisorly partners with over 100 colleges, universities, and higher education systems across the full spectrum of American higher education, including the University of Connecticut, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, University of Massachusetts, and Carnegie Mellon University. By helping institutions reduce bottlenecks, improve staff capacity, support enrollment growth, and serve students with greater speed, accuracy, and care, EdVisorly enables enrollment teams to focus on the work that matters most.

EdVisorly was founded by Manny Smith, an Air Force veteran and officer who built technology systems for the Air Force and Space Force. As a first-generation graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Smith experienced firsthand the transformative power of higher education and recognized that too many students face unnecessary barriers navigating college and university admissions.

“From day one, EdVisorly has been built on the belief that college and university enrollment teams play a critical role in the lives of students. As the front door to social and economic opportunity for millions of students, our partner institutions are shaping the future of our communities, one decision at a time. They deserve an innovative and values-aligned partner dedicated to driving long-term success. This Series A is EdVisorly’s commitment to our institutional partners that we’re going to keep building to elevate access, outcomes, and opportunity for the next generation of students.”

— Manny Smith, Founder & CEO, EdVisorly

The new capital will be invested in three areas that directly support institutional success: advancing product and engineering initiatives, accelerating new feature development, and expanding the experienced leadership required to serve partner colleges and universities at scale. Since March, EdVisorly has more than doubled its engineering and product teams, while hiring a new CTO and COO who bring deep experience in education and building operationally excellent technology companies.

“Higher education institutions are being asked to deliver more support, more transparency, and better outcomes for students than ever before. What impressed us about EdVisorly is not just the technology, but the company’s deep understanding of the challenges enrollment leaders face every day and its commitment to helping institutions better serve students and families. We believe EdVisorly is building an essential platform for the future of admissions and enrollment, and we’re excited to support the company in its next chapter of growth, maturity, and impact.”

— Jason Krantz, Managing Partner and Founder, Breachway Capital

A major focus of the investment will be expanding support for EdVisorly’s institutional partners. The company will grow its partner success and implementation teams, invest in dedicated onboarding and adoption resources, and build new tools and services that help institutions realize value faster. These investments are designed to ensure colleges and universities have the expertise, guidance, and support required to modernize enrollment operations with confidence.

“We sought a partner to support a vision of automation, consistency, transparency, and equity in processes and decisions, helping students, faculty, and staff. EdVisorly committed to building a future state thoughtfully and intentionally alongside us by clarifying decision-making authority and translating institutional priorities into scalable workflows. They pushed us to think differently, and we challenged them to evolve their solutions. We are both benefiting from this collaboration.”

 — Keith Gehres, Associate Vice Provost for Enrollment Innovation and Student Experience, Carnegie Mellon University

Looking ahead, EdVisorly will continue investing in the infrastructure, expertise, and product innovation required to help colleges and universities meet the evolving expectations of students and families. As institutions navigate increasing complexity, the company remains focused on a simple objective: helping enrollment teams create more capacity for students, make better decisions, and deliver an enrollment experience that reflects the value and mission of their institution.

Institutions, strategic partners, and mission-aligned organizations interested in learning more about EdVisorly can visit www.edvisorly.com or connect with the team directly.

About EdVisorly

EdVisorly understands that enrollment and admissions teams are the front door to social and economic opportunity for millions of students. The company helps higher education institutions streamline admissions and enrollment operations, advance transfer pathways, and expand capacity for student engagement and improved decision-making. By combining modern technology with deep higher education expertise, EdVisorly enables colleges and universities to deliver a more transparent, responsive, and student-centered enrollment experience. Learn more at www.edvisorly.com.

Media Contact
Charlotte Ward
[email protected]

SOURCE EdVisorly

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8, 2026 — Hostie, the AI-powered virtual concierge for restaurants, today announced a $12 million Series A funding round led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from Gradient, Scribble Ventures, Burst Capital, and Behind Genius Ventures, bringing total funding to $16 million. The round also includes investments from leading restaurant operators Tim Stannard of Bacchus Management Group and Stuart Brioza, Nicole Krasinski, and Elizabeth DePalmer of Atomic Workshop, underscoring Hostie’s growing role in modern restaurant operations.

The funding follows a year of rapid growth in which Hostie increased revenue 10x, expanded to hundreds of restaurant partners nationwide, and helped operators manage more than 2 million guest conversations and 24 million messages, book over 400,000 covers, and support more than 50,000 private event inquiries. The company is advised by Thomas Layton, former CEO of OpenTable; Mike Dodson, former SVP of Sales at OpenTable and Resy board member; and Mike Stoppelman, former VP of Engineering at Yelp.

Since launching, Hostie has become a trusted virtual concierge for hundreds of restaurants and hospitality groups nationwide, including Flour + Water Hospitality Group, Riviera Dining Group, Bacchus Management Group, Cactus Club Cafe, Cunningham Restaurant Group, Merchants Hospitality, State Bird Provisions, Wayfare Tavern, Mirra, and The Progress. The platform helps operators manage calls, texts, reservations, takeout inquiries, private events, and guest questions while delivering a seamless guest experience and freeing teams to focus on in-person hospitality.

“At Back to Back, I saw firsthand how difficult it became for restaurant teams to keep up with the growing volume of guest communication while still delivering great hospitality,” said Randall Hom, co-founder and CEO of Hostie and co-owner of Back to Back in San Francisco. “Restaurants are being asked to manage more calls, texts, reservations, takeout, and guest questions than ever before. We built Hostie to help teams keep up with that demand while staying focused on the people in front of them.”

“Hospitality is one of the most operationally complex industries in the world, and Hostie understands that deeply,” said Kahini Shah, Partner at Obvious Ventures. “Randall and Brendan are building an essential platform for restaurants at a time when operators are being asked to do more with less. What stood out to us was the team’s deep hospitality expertise, the product’s quality, and the clear market demand. Hostie has built the most thoughtful and intuitive AI solution in the category, and we’re excited to support the company’s next phase of growth.”

“I first discovered Hostie when I called Flour + Water to say I was running late for a reservation, and the experience was so seamless I immediately wanted to know what was powering it,” said Andrew Brackin, Partner at Gradient. “What Randall and Brendan have built is best-in-class technology grounded in a deep understanding of hospitality. From the beginning, operators weren’t just using the product; they were helping shape it. That combination of exceptional product and customer obsession is incredibly rare. We believe AI will transform how restaurants engage with guests, and Hostie is leading that transformation.”

With the new funding, Hostie plans to accelerate product development and grow its leadership team, including recent additions Jeff Jones, a former OpenTable executive, as Head of Sales, and Hayley Foppiani, formerly of BentoBox, as Head of Marketing. The investment also accelerates Hostie’s broader vision of transforming how restaurants connect with their guests at every touchpoint, across every channel.

About Hostie
Hostie is the AI-powered Virtual Concierge for restaurants, helping operators manage calls, texts, reservations, takeout orders, private event inquiries, and guest communications while keeping hospitality at the center of the experience. Headquartered in San Francisco, Hostie partners with independent restaurants, hospitality groups, and enterprise restaurant brands across the country.

Learn more at Hostie.ai or follow on Instagram.

Media Contact:
Hayley Foppiani
[email protected]

SOURCE Hostie AI

The company reached profitability in 2025 and is projected to generate $500 million in gross healthcare system savings while tripling its patient base from 2024 through the end of 2026.

NEW YORK, July 8, 2026 — Pearl Health, a healthcare technology company helping manage risk and deliver better care to Medicare patients, today announced a $110 million capital raise, comprised of equity investment led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, Ulysses Capital, and a debt facility led by Trinity Capital. The new capital will expand Pearl’s AI platform, turning clinical intelligence into measurable outcomes, and accelerate its growth across enterprise health system and payer partnerships, its expansion into Medicare Advantage, and new risk offerings.

More than 70 million people today rely on Medicare, with costs exceeding $1 trillion and climbing. Across healthcare, reimbursement is increasingly tied to outcomes rather than utilization, creating powerful incentives for providers to prevent avoidable illness, intervene earlier, and manage patient populations. As healthcare shifts from reactive treatment to preventative care, demand is accelerating for technologies that enable providers to succeed in this new model.

“Pearl was founded on a simple belief: healthcare should reward keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they are sick,” said Michael Kopko, co-founder and CEO of Pearl Health. “Unnecessary costs and poor outcomes persist in US healthcare because most providers lack the capabilities to shift to outcomes-based care alone. With this financing, we are investing in accelerated innovation and growth to expand our impact across the healthcare system.”

“Pearl has demonstrated that managing risk across large patient populations across many different settings of care can improve patient outcomes, generate meaningful savings, and support a sustainable business model at scale,” said Vineeta Agarwala, MD, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “Pearl’s ability to enable providers to participate in value-based payment p”rograms successfully – and to do so through technology, rather than clinical workforce expansion – is a testament to both the vision and execution of the Pearl team.”

“We believe Pearl Health is changing how providers participate in value-based care, simplifying the data and daily workflow so they can spend more of their time and attention on their patients,” said Phil Gager, Senior Managing Director, Tech Lending at Trinity Capital. “We are proud to support this team and what they are building as they enter their next stage of growth.”

Pearl’s AI platform helps providers across the country manage and predict risk, orchestrate workflows, and automate action before issues become costly emergencies. Pearl’s continued expansion of Performance Intelligence will empower population health leaders and care teams with AI-driven, chat-enabled expertise focused on their unique patients and opportunities – delivering real-time insights on total cost of care, quality, and utilization patterns to surface the highest-impact actions. Pearl is also advancing development of Care Orchestration AI agents to further automate administrative workflows such as annual wellness visit scheduling, post-discharge follow-ups, and care management outreach, freeing clinicians to spend more time on patient care.

Pearl supports a network of more than 10,000 providers, including health systems like University of Vermont Health and MDX Hawaii, across over 40 states, caring for over 250,000 Medicare beneficiaries. The company manages approximately $3.6 billion in annualized medical spend, up from $2.4 billion the prior year and $1.6 billion the year before that. Pearl is projected to deliver $500 million in gross savings and triple its patient base from 2024 through the end of 2026. The company reached profitability in 2025 – a milestone few in this space have achieved while maintaining aggressive growth. 

The new raise includes a $50 million equity round and a $60 million credit facility, which will power the next phase of the company’s growth, bringing its intelligent risk management model to more providers, more patients, and new segments of the Medicare market.

About Pearl Health
Pearl Health enables clinicians and care organizations to deliver smarter, more affordable care outcomes through AI-powered predictive insights, financial risk modeling, and streamlined workflows. The company is building the platform for healthcare outcomes, identifying at-risk patients so providers can intervene before issues become emergencies. Founded in 2020, Pearl supports a network of over 10,000 providers and leading health systems across more than 40 states. Learn more at pearlhealth.com.

About Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
a16z invests in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies across AI, bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, infrastructure, and companies building toward American dynamism. We believe the future belongs to builders, and our job is to make sure they have what they need to build it. 

About Trinity Capital Inc.
Trinity Capital Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIN) is an international alternative asset manager that seeks to deliver consistent returns for investors through access to private credit markets. Trinity Capital sources and structures investments in well-capitalized growth-oriented companies across five distinct lending verticals: Sponsor Finance, Equipment Finance, Tech Lending, Asset Based Lending, and Healthcare & Life Sciences. As a long-term, trusted partner for innovative companies seeking tailored debt solutions, Trinity Capital has deployed more than $5.7 billion across over 470 investments since inception in 2008 (as of March 31, 2026). Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Trinity Capital’s dedicated team is strategically located across the United States and Europe. For more information on Trinity Capital, please visit trinitycapital.com and stay connected to the latest activity via LinkedIn.

Notifications

These Materials contain forward-looking statements that relate to, without limitation, future financial performance, business strategy, projected growth, market opportunities, operational plans, anticipated regulatory developments, competitive position, and other similar matters. These statements can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “may,” “will,” “expect,” “intend,” “estimate,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “seek,” “project,” “plan,” “potential,” “preliminary,” “possible,” or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts, and projections about the business of Pearl Health, Inc. and its affiliates (collectively, “Pearl”), the healthcare industry, and general economic conditions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve significant risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Financial projections contained in the Materials are inherently uncertain and speculative in nature and should not be relied upon as necessarily being indicative of future results. The assumptions underlying these projections may prove to be inaccurate, and actual results may vary significantly from projected results. Pearl Health has not independently verified and does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of any third-party data or market research referenced herein.

The Materials are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an offer to buy or sell any securities of Pearl.  Any offer or sale of securities will be made only through definitive offering documents, which will contain material information not contained herein and which will supersede these Materials in their entirety. The Materials should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or financial advice. Pearl Health undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, projections or other aspects of the Materials, whether as a result of new information, future events, changed circumstances, or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. 

Media Contact
Ksenia Kulik, Interdependence
(919) 349-3786
[email protected]

SOURCE Pearl Health

Backed by Leading Investors Including B Capital, Redpoint Ace, Goodwater Capital, and DCM, Kaon’s Berkeley-Educated Founders are Outpacing Big Tech in Building a Vertically Integrated AI Entertainment Empire.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 8, 2026 — Kaon AI, a generative AI platform and research lab pioneering the next era of interactive entertainment, today announced it has closed a Series B round to advance what is quickly becoming one of the most engaging generative AI content experiences. Backed by marquee tech and consumer investors, including B Capital, Redpoint Ace, Goodwater Capital, and DCM, the capital milestone validates an up-and-coming, Berkeley-educated founding team quietly re-architecting how millions of everyday users consume digital media.

While Big Tech races to automate the workplace, Kaon AI is capturing the most valuable commodity of the generative era: attention. The future of entertainment lies in long-horizon, hyper-personalized consumer content: a shift Kaon has capitalized on to build an AI-native ecosystem that is currently generating an eight-figure ARR. Led by CEO Jay Dang, CTO Alex Xi, and COO Lifan Wang, the company’s flagship consumer product, Emochi, already commands an average daily session time of 150 minutes among more than two million daily active users. By treating deep computer science as a vehicle for mainstream culture, Kaon is achieving sustained user engagement metrics that are simply out of reach for most general-purpose AI startups today.

The Founders Rewriting the Economics of Trillion-Token Media
Traditional media is losing its audience. As AI drives the cost of content production toward zero, Kaon’s Berkeley-bred founding team saw a different problem worth solving: not how to make more content, but how to make content that actually responds to the person consuming it, turning passive viewers into co-creators powered by AI

By focusing on content generation rather than distribution, Kaon inverts the legacy media model. Instead of matching a user to an existing video or story, Kaon’s proprietary architecture serves as a “customization engine” that writes, illustrates, and evolves immersive multimedia narratives frame-by-frame based on real-time human behavior.

To make this vision economically viable, the technical team is building a custom full-stack inference infrastructure that manages more than a thousand GPUs across dedicated partners like Nebius and DigitalOcean. The result is an operation that processes trillion-level daily token volumes at roughly 10x lower cost than a legacy cloud structure.

“We believe interactive AI entertainment is emerging as the next distinct consumer category,” said Daisy Cai, General Partner, B Capital. “Kaon stands out because Jay, Alex, and Lifan have built a full-stack powerhouse that owns its data pipeline from the ground up. That level of integration creates a compounding advantage in performance, data, and product iteration that is difficult to replicate, and we are excited to support the Kaon team as they help define this new category.”

The Strategy Bridging Deep Computer Science and Mainstream Digital Culture
As model access commoditizes, Kaon’s founders’ insistence on a token-to-application structure has become a compounding competitive advantage. While most competing platforms rely on a partner-oriented open structure, the founding trio controls the entire ecosystem end-to-end, ranging from front-end consumer interactions and token economies to core inference infrastructure. This autonomy turns what is typically a massive operational bottleneck for startups into a highly defensible, low-cost moat.

This token-to-application ownership also shapes the team’s approach to AI research. Their new research arm, Kaon Labs, will leverage Kaon’s hyper-engaged, millions-strong consumer base as its live scientific sandbox, enabling rapidly iterative models to be brought to market in days, rather than months.

“Every streaming platform today recommends what could be your next favorite show from a long list of preset options. In the generative AI era, though, this finite catalog is poised to become the ‘Blockbuster’ of the 2020s,” added Jay Dang. “At Kaon, we’re building a new type of content engine to create individualized narratives that truly resonate, moving the industry past static text prompts and into real-time multimedia.”

Scaling the San Mateo R&D Footprint for Personalized Content Generation
With deep roots in the Bay Area research community and at its founders’ alma mater, UC Berkeley, Kaon Labs is actively in discussions with academic advisors, collaborators, and other top-tier research talent as they look to expand to a new R&D hub in San Mateo. For more information on Kaon Labs, including initial research documentation, technical pillars, and the core mission statement, visit kaonlabs.com.

About Kaon AI
Kaon AI is building the customization engine for AI-native entertainment. Moving beyond the era of static recommendations, Kaon AI uses real-world user behavior to generate personalized stories, characters, and video experiences in real-time. Headquartered in San Mateo, Kaon AI powers a global ecosystem of creators and consumers through its flagship products FlowGPT, Emochi, Tickle, and Branches. For more information, visit www.kaon.io.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Michael McKay
(406) 369-2093
[email protected]

SOURCE Kaon AI

Mercury Fund and Lockheed Martin Ventures back Houston-built, hypersonic-enabling rotating detonation rocket engine technology for American defense and aerospace

HOUSTON, July 8, 2026 — After completing the world’s first successful flight test of a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) in May 2025, Venus Aerospace today announced the close of a $91 million Series B financing led by Mercury Fund, a Houston-based venture capital firm, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, Green Sands Equity and other new and existing strategic and institutional investors.

The round will fund Venus as it scales development and production, moving its RDRE propulsion system from successful flight demonstration toward deployment for a range of near-term defense and space applications. Current systems struggle to meet customer requirements for range, performance and domestic production. Venus is building to close that gap.

The announcement follows the recent appointment of Pam Melroy, former NASA Deputy Administrator, to Venus’ board of directors.

Unlike conventional rocket engines, which burn fuel through subsonic combustion, Venus’ RDRE employs a continuous supersonic detonation wave that rotates around the combustion chamber. The result is the most efficient rocket engine architecture ever flown, by a margin of 15 percent. This efficiency gain can translate into extended range, increased payload flexibility, and more capable systems across defense and space missions where performance margins are critical.

Built from 3D-printed components and standard materials, the RDRE is designed for domestic manufacturing at scale through accessible supply chains, reducing reliance on constrained or foreign-sourced parts. The engine is reusable and throttleable, with a wide range of mission applications, from munitions and space launch to orbital transfer and landers. Rather than developing a different engine for each application, Venus is building a common propulsion architecture intended to serve across multiple mission classes.

Demand for hypersonic and long-range capability is accelerating as the U.S. and its allies move to field systems that can reach farther and fly faster than legacy platforms allow. Venus is building its engines in Texas with American engineering talent for customers whose missions depend on reliable, sovereign propulsion capability.

“This financing marks an important step in moving Venus from breakthrough demonstration to scaled capability,” said Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. “Our customers need propulsion systems that go farther, can be produced reliably and are built on supply chains they can trust. We are advancing that capability with American engineering and manufacturing talent to strengthen U.S. defense, expand space access and support the future of high-speed flight.”

“Venus is exactly the kind of company Houston capital should be backing,” said Blair Garrou, co-founder and Managing Partner at Mercury Fund. “It combines multiple frontier technologies, domestic manufacturing and clear commercial and national security relevance. We believe this team is positioned to lead an important new chapter in defense and space, and we are proud to support a company building breakthrough technology here in Texas.”

“Lockheed Martin Ventures invests in technologies to help increase mission effectiveness,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures. “Since our initial investment, Venus has progressed very quickly in its technology development. Our reinvestment in Venus recognizes Venus’ accomplishments to date and focus on speed to manufacture, cost management and reduction of supply chain constraints. Venus is working effectively to position its propulsion system for the production scale required by defense programs.”

“This capital allows us to move from successful flight demonstration toward deployable propulsion systems,” said Andrew Duggleby, co-founder and CTO of Venus Aerospace. “What differentiates our RDRE is not just that it works, but that it has flown at high thrust and was designed with scale, manufacturability and mission integration in mind. Our propulsion architecture combines efficiency, throttling, reusability and manufacturability in a way that customers need for real defense and space missions. We are focused on translating technical progress into reliable systems for operational use.”

Venus conducted the world’s first flight test of a high-thrust rotating detonation engine in May 2025, reaching that milestone in just over four years on $80 million in capital, one of the fastest and most capital-efficient engine development efforts of its kind.

About Venus Aerospace:

Venus Aerospace is building next-generation propulsion systems for defense, space, and future high-speed flight. Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, Venus is developing flight-proven Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) technology designed to deliver greater efficiency, range, and scalability for defense and space missions. Venus’ propulsion systems are designed for domestic manufacturing and mission flexibility across national security and aerospace applications. Venus is backed by Mercury Fund, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Prime Movers Lab, Airbus Ventures, Trousdale Ventures and others. To learn more, visit www.venusaero.com.

Media Contact:

Sarah Boland Heine
Head of Communications
[email protected]
502-471-6186

SOURCE Venus Aerospace

By transforming the GTM stack, Alta’s AI team brings a learning curve managers can only dream about

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 8, 2026 — Alta, the AI System of Actions for go-to-market teams, today announced $25 million in Series A funding. The round was led by IN Venture, with participation from Mindset Ventures, Skywell Capital, LeumiTech77 and existing investors Entrée Capital, Target Global, and Verissimo Ventures, along with prominent angel investors and scout funds.

Alta will use the funding to accelerate growth by expanding its team globally, growing its customer base, and enhancing the platform – adding new data, CRM, and advertising integrations, as well as introducing agents for account management and cross-selling.

Alta hit its first million in revenue within months of commercializing and is on track for 800% revenue growth this year. Its platform is already being used by Snowflake, Deel, Atlassian, and Atoms, as well as hundreds of businesses, from Fortune 500 companies to SMBs.

For decades, GTM has run on “systems of record”: CRMs and data warehouses storing information until a human acts on it and dozens of disjointed tools that don’t communicate.  As companies increasingly implement AI, the industry has bet on AI agents as point solutions for automating outbound or inbound GTM at scale. The results, however, often fall short, and can even exacerbate problems by scaling broken playbooks. Even though AI allows teams to generate more activity, pipelines remain flat, lead quality has fallen, and reply rates have dropped as buyers’ inboxes are filled with generic, monotonous, AI-generated outreach.

Industry leaders like Salesforce and HubSpot have introduced agent-enablement layers through APIs, MCP tools, and CLI interfaces, underscoring a broader race to add intelligence to systems originally designed for data storage and workflow management. But retrofitting intelligence onto legacy architectures is fundamentally different from building an intelligence-native platform from the ground up – one that understands business context, orchestrates every customer and operational touchpoint, and continuously compounds value through real-world outcomes. Recognizing this need, Alta designed and built its solutions.

Alta tackles the challenge of deploying AI agents by first building a “Company Brain” that serves as a centralized intelligence layer that maps exactly how a business’s GTM engine works. Instead of relying on a fragmented stack of disconnected software, Alta replaces them with a single, coordinated network of AI agents that learn from every action. Powered by this shared “Brain” and fueled by more than 50 data sources and hundreds of buying signals, these agents orchestrate and act on existing systems of record, collaborating and evolving as a single unit with every single interaction. The platform partners with Salesforce, HubSpot, IBM, and Google, and connects to 60+ GTM tools, including Attio and Clay, enabling Alta to run on top of the stack teams already in use rather than locking them into a closed box.

“Before the cloud, every company building software racked and maintained its own servers,” said Stav Levi-Neumark, CEO and Co-founder of Alta. “We’re doing for go-to-market what AWS did for infrastructure and the cloud: transforming a stack of cobbled-together tools that never communicated into one system that simply runs well, learns, and drives revenue pipelines and sales.”

“The market spent three years adding tools to the sales stack. The team at Alta went the other way and built the intelligence layer the whole stack was missing,” said Eitan Naor, Managing Partner at IN Venture (Member of Sumitomo Corporation’s Venture Group). “Alta isn’t competing in a category — it’s defining one. That’s why we wanted to lead this round, and why we’re excited to introduce Alta to Japan and Southeast Asia, backed by Sumitomo’s global reach.”

“Having worked closely with Stav at monday.com, I knew firsthand her rare ability to turn complex data into explosive growth,” said Avi Eyal, Managing Partner at Entrée Capital. The Alta team is not just building another AI feature; they are fundamentally redefining GTM architecture. Watching them scale from inception to this milestone proves that the market is starving for a single, intelligent system of action.”

About Alta

Alta is the AI System of Actions for go-to-market. We run your GTM, replacing the fragmented sales stack with coordinated AI agents that share one Company Brain and compound with every interaction. Founded in 2023 by Stav Levi-Neumark and Tom Hoffen, both ex-monday.com, and serial entrepreneur Mor Shabtai, Alta handles prospecting, research, multi-channel outbound, inbound qualification, AI calling, and continuous optimization. Alta hit its first million in revenue within months of commercializing and is on track for 800% revenue growth this year. Its customers include revenue teams at Snowflake, Deel, Atlassian, Atoms, Riverside, and Sabio Group. Learn more at altahq.com.

Contact:

Rebecca Ash
[email protected]

SOURCE Alta

With 10x revenue growth and more than 4,000 families served, the Series B led by RPS Ventures and joined by new investor Angelini Ventures will fuel nationwide expansion of a care model purpose-built around clinician development, full-spectrum acuity, and measurable outcomes.

NEW YORK, July 8, 2026 — Handspring, a virtual mental health clinic providing evidence-based care to youth, young adults, and their families today announced $19 million in Series B financing. The round was led by RPS Ventures, with participation from new investor Angelini Ventures and continued backing from returning investors Cobalt Ventures, NextView Ventures, nvp capital, Hyde Park Angels (HPA), Cornucopian Capital, and others. The financing brings Handspring’s total capital raised to $37 million and underscores deepening payer conviction in the company’s clinically rigorous and cost-effective model of care.

Handspring’s model starts with the clinician: the belief that the best way to deliver high-quality care is to invest in the people providing it. Its therapists are employed rather than contracted, trained in-house in evidence-based modalities including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and exposure therapy, and backed by ongoing training, one-on-one clinical support, and clinical consultation groups.

This investment in clinicians enables Handspring to treat the full spectrum of acuity — patients step up or down without being turned away. Handspring’s Complex Care program extends this to high-risk youth too often underserved, turned away from traditional outpatient services, or unnecessarily referred to higher levels of care such as emergency departments (ED) or intensive outpatient programs (IOP). At Handspring, families are matched to the level of care a child actually needs and not the most intensive, most expensive program available.

“Good therapy depends on the therapist, so we built the company around supporting ours, with training, supervision, and regular clinical consultation, instead of just matching families to whoever is available,” said Sahil Choudhry, CEO and co-founder of Handspring. “That’s what lets us care for a child whether their needs are mild or severe. This round lets us bring that model to many more families.”

Handspring has treated over 4,000 families, grown revenue more than 10x over the last two years, while maintaining strong clinical outcomes:

• 93% of families report improvement in the daily life of their family upon discharge.
• The company maintains a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 81, reflecting exceptional satisfaction and trust.
• 81% of patients in treatment for anxiety and 78% of patients in treatment for depression saw clinically meaningful improvement, as measured by validated clinical scales at the completion of their care.

Since its Series A, Handspring has expanded its geographic and payer footprint to nine states — California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Washington — and added parent coaching to its care offerings.

Powering the care model is a fully integrated AI-enabled technology platform: custom-built patient and provider portals, a proprietary telehealth experience, an AI-enabled clinical scribe developed in-house, and an AI-powered therapist matching engine that pairs families with the right therapist for their needs from day one. The result: less overhead for clinicians and a seamless experience for families.

“Our technology buildout has focused on making high-quality care easier to deliver, scale, and measure. We’ve built a software-enabled care platform that supports the full patient journey and spans everything our families and clinicians touch,” said Kwasi Kyei, co-founder and president of Handspring. “This infrastructure is what will let us scale this level of care to far more families without losing what makes it work.”

The company also announced that Nancy Hilliker of RPS Ventures has joined its board of directors, and Sarah Fox of Angelini Ventures has joined the board as an observer. RPS Ventures is a late-stage venture firm that backs teams transforming large consumer and technology markets, while Angelini Ventures is a global healthtech venture firm focused on medtech, digital health, and biotech.

The Series B will be used to scale Handspring’s clinician workforce and its clinical-development model, expand value-based care partnerships and geographic coverage, deepen its Complex Care program, and further develop its technology platform.

About Handspring
Handspring Health is reimagining mental health care for the next generation – serving children, adolescents, young adults, and their families through structured, measurable, and evidence-based virtual therapy. With a team of licensed clinicians trained in treating anxiety, depression, OCD, ADHD, trauma, and more, Handspring empowers young people and their families to thrive. Care is personalized, timely, and grounded in outcomes – because better mental health starts with better care. For more information, visit handspringhealth.com.

For media inquiries, contact Sahil Choudhry at [email protected]

SOURCE Handspring Health

New privacy-first smart home platform raises $5M seed round led by Fifth Wall to scale bespoke hardware and software that requires no pairing, no subscriptions, and no external data collection

PHOENIX, July 7, 2026 — The smart home was supposed to belong to the homeowner. Somewhere along the way, the home stopped being private. Today, One Raven launched to rebuild the smart home around a different premise: what happens inside the home should stay inside the home.

Backed by a $5M seed round led by Fifth Wall, One Raven is the first privacy-focused smart home platform built from the hardware up—every component, every line of code, designed to keep the home’s intelligence inside the home. At its center is the One Raven Home Server, which allows every device to run locally and keeps homeowner data on the home network. Homeowners can securely access and manage the system remotely, with no subscriptions, no hidden fees, and no behavioral data quietly monetized in the background.

The One Raven system pairs the Home Server with smart devices that work without sending the home’s data to the cloud. Homeowners can configure each home with the devices they want—including thermostats, locks, leak detection and security sensors—and every system arrives pre-paired and factory-configured. The full system already knows itself before the box is opened.

The promise of the smart home was simple: your house, smarter.

What arrived instead was a fragmented maze of apps, recurring subscriptions, cloud dependencies, and privacy policies buried in legal language. Devices lose functionality when the internet goes down, when a company changes its pricing model, or when a feature moves behind a higher subscription tier. Homeowners didn’t agree to rent the intelligence inside their own homes. Too often, that is what they got.

“We spent a decade building the smart home for the Renters and Commercial Owners of multifamily portfolios. One Raven is for every homeowner who wants a modern living experience while maintaining their privacy,” said Lucas Haldeman, co-founder and CEO.

This shift is arriving at a moment when consumers are increasingly concerned about privacy and longevity of connected devices. A November 2024 Federal Trade Commission staff report found that 89% of smart products surveyed failed to disclose how long they would receive software updates. Meanwhile, 81% of Americans say they are concerned about how companies use their data, according to Pew Research Center.

Your home is yours. Your data should be too.

Built for the Next Generation of Homeowners

One Raven was founded by Lucas Haldeman and Sarah Roudybush, the team behind SmartRent’s rise to the largest smart apartment platform in real estate. With One Raven, they are bringing that experience to a new category: a smart home platform designed for people who live in the home, not the companies that collect data from it.

“The first generation of the smart home asked homeowners to send their data to the cloud and pay monthly fees for features they already owned. We don’t think any of that is necessary. One Raven is built to prove there is a better model—one where the home is intelligent, simple, private, and fully owned by the homeowner,” shared Roudybush, co-founder and President.

Haldeman and Roudybush are building One Raven together as the next chapter of a partnership that helped define the first generation of the institutional smart home. They are now building the category for the people who live in the home, not the people who own the building.

Haldeman leads technology and sales. Roudybush leads marketing and operations.

Backed by Fifth Wall

The $5M seed round was led by Fifth Wall, the largest investment firm focused on technology for the built environment, which previously backed Haldeman and Roudybush at SmartRent. Fifth Wall Founder Brendan Wallace joins the board.

“Fifth Wall is backing Lucas and Sarah for a second time because we believe they are building the next generation of the smart home,” stated Brendan Wallace, Founder, CEO, and CIO of Fifth Wall. “The first generation was fragmented, cloud-dependent, and built around recurring fees. One Raven is building the opposite: a local-first, privacy-first platform designed for homeowners, builders, and a future where the home itself becomes intelligence infrastructure.”

The capital will support scaled production of the One Raven Home Server and initial device suite, expansion of the company’s local-intelligence software and growth of the sales and partnership teams.

One Raven is hiring across hardware engineering, software, field deployment, and go-to-market roles in Phoenix. The company will announce its first homebuilder partnerships later in the third quarter.

The smart home’s first generation belonged to the cloud. The next one belongs to the homeowner.

About One Raven

One Raven is a local-first smart home platform designed around homeowner ownership, privacy, and simplicity. Powered by the One Raven Home Server, the system runs locally inside the home, stores data on the homeowner’s own network, and delivers a unified smart home experience without subscriptions or external data collection. Learn more at oneraven.com.

About Fifth Wall

Founded by Brendan Wallace, Fifth Wall is the largest investment firm focused on technology for the built environment. The Firm is driving the growth of nearly 170 companies, backing category-defining PropTech leaders such as Opendoor, Procore, Blend, Hippo, and Bilt Rewards. It’s supported by nearly 115 of the world’s largest real estate owner-operators including CBRE, Hilton, Hines, Marriott, Public Storage, Related, and Starwood. Founded and headquartered in Los Angeles, Fifth Wall’s other offices include New York City, San Francisco, and London. For more information, visit fifthwall.com.

SOURCE One Raven

The investment underscores growing conviction that professional services teams are becoming the central engine of enterprise AI outcomes and that the category is ripe for a generational shift

SAN FRANCISCO, July 7, 2026 — Rocketlane, the agentic platform for implementations and professional services teams, today announced a strategic investment from Atlassian Ventures. The investment is a strong vote of confidence from one of the world’s most influential enterprise software companies and a signal that professional services is entering a fundamentally new era.

The news arrives on the heels of Rocketlane’s landmark year: a $60 million Series C led by Insight Partners (bringing total capital raised to $105 million), the launch of Nitro, the industry’s first agentic execution platform for PS teams, more than doubled revenue, and a customer base that now spans 750+ companies globally, including 20 on the Forbes Cloud 100.

What makes this investment particularly notable is that Atlassian is not just a believer in Rocketlane’s vision, they are a customer and have internally adopted Rocketlane to handle AI-driven professional services.

That experience, according to Atlassian Ventures, is precisely what drove the investment decision.

“We’re seeing AI create meaningful opportunities for disruption across industries. Rocketlane’s thoughtful approach to launching AI agent-led experiences for implementation services and consulting teams is exciting. Seeing our own services team at Atlassian choose Rocketlane was compelling proof of their momentum and the strength of their product in the category.” 

– Georgia Zhang, Head of Atlassian Ventures

‘What the AI era means for PS delivery’

The AI era is forcing a fundamental reckoning in professional services, not just in the tools teams use, but in what delivery itself means. How work is scoped, priced, staffed, and measured is all up for reinvention. Rocketlane’s bet is that the companies willing to sit with that discomfort and rebuild their delivery model around it will define the next decade of the industry.

“AI isn’t just changing how PS teams do their work. It’s challenging every assumption about what that work should look like in the first place. How you scope a project, how you price it, how you draw the line between human judgment and agent execution… these are all open questions now. The temptation is to take everything you know and layer AI on top of it. We think that’s the wrong instinct. The teams that will win are the ones willing to rethink delivery from scratch, and that’s exactly what we’re building Rocketlane to support.” 

– Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO and Co-founder, Rocketlane

Rocketlane Nitro: Transforming How Services Work Gets Done

Rocketlane operates across the full lifecycle of professional services delivery: project management, resource and financial management, and customer-facing delivery. Through Nitro, the company is set to transform delivery operations across all three:

Execution transformation. For the first time, repeatable delivery tasks: migrations, configurations, environment setups, documentation, can be handed off to agents entirely. In early deployments, Nitro has demonstrated the potential to reduce delivery effort by up to 50 percent.

Delivery transformation. Signals surface risks and opportunities from project data, calls and emails as they rise. Nitro monitors customer health in real time, flags deviations, and enables proactive governance rather than reactive firefighting.

Back-office transformation. AI agents handle the administrative overhead that consumes delivery teams: timesheet governance, utilization tracking, compliance tasks, freeing consultants to focus on high-value billable work.

Together, these three layers represent a fundamental shift: from a platform that tracks the work, to one that does it.

About Rocketlane

Rocketlane is the agentic delivery platform built for teams running enterprise AI implementations. It empowers services teams to automate execution work such as migrations and configurations, streamline back-office operations, and transform project delivery with AI agents. Rocketlane also monitors delivery and customer signals, enforcing governance, surfacing risks early, and enabling proactive intervention. By unifying project management, resource planning, collaboration, and customer-facing experiences in a single platform, Rocketlane helps organizations deliver faster, more predictable outcomes. Trusted by modern and AI-native companies including Decagon, Intercom, Glean, Vercel, Notion, and 20 of Forbes Cloud 100 companies, Rocketlane is redefining how services teams deliver value in the AI-first era.

Learn more at www.rocketlane.com.

Press Contact:
Varun Singh
[email protected]
+91-9176149544

SOURCE Rocketlane