Major New Clients Include Coachella, Stage Coach, Rapha, Swingers – The Home of Revelry, Boots in the Park, Defected, State of Play Hospitality, Bingo Loco and More

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2026 — Experience commerce platform Easol has just announced the raise of a $30 million Series A extension funding round with $20 million equity from Y Combinator, Tiger Global, Foundation Capital, FMZ Ventures, Notion Capital, Eight Roads and a $10 million debt facility with Viola Credit. Easol has now raised $60 million to date.

Easol was launched in 2021 by festival Co-Founders Ben and Lisa Simpson and has quickly scaled to become the go-to experience commerce platform for the leading experience businesses around the globe from festivals, wellness retreats, sports, adventure and location based entertainment venues. With offices in London, New York and Los Angeles, so far in 2026, Easol has powered experiences booked by 2.8 million guests in over 135 countries.

The funding allowed Easol to develop and launch the leading agentic tool, Teammates, for experience businesses globally. Easol’s evolution comes as the experience industries continue to see increased consumer demand, while encountering the challenges of tighter margins and rising costs. Despite this, drawing on multiple surveys of tens of thousands of customers worldwide, Live Nation’s recent Return To Real survey found that 93% of fans crave real experiences over digital ones, while 80% would rather spend on experiences than on things.

Easol was built to enable experience businesses to bring their technology in-house with full ownership to manage bookings, payments, marketing and support, and guest data through one-connected system. That one-stop solution now enables Easol customers to create their own AI agents, Teammates, that live and work directly inside the Easol platform, and understand the entirety of a business. Easol’s solution means Teammates can provide the tailored support, sales and operations expertise required to greatly increase client efficiency.

Many experience businesses operating with small central teams, means missed revenue – but with Easol’s Teammates they can now put their revenue on auto pilot. One major business’ Teammates Agent found hundreds of guests holding a booking with no upsells booked, around $50,000 of revenue opportunity, and produced the customer list and the outreach to go after it. Another business using Teammates identified $28,000 of recoverable payments in seconds, a job that had previously taken two days.

Eve Szlendak Head of Sales, State of Play Hospitality UK said “I used to spend up to three days building reports to capture every possible scenario. Now, the dashboards give me the information I need instantly.”

A differentiator since launching is how Easol gives experience creators full ownership of every aspect of their business, bringing their technology in-house and a commitment to ensuring a business’s data stays its own. Unlike many traditional marketplaces, ticketing companies and booking platforms, data has never been sold by Easol. All Teammates Agents run inside the existing Easol platform, behind the same single sign-on, SOCII compliance, audit logs, payments compliance and data residency controls customers already have.

“We built Easol to give experience businesses control over their entire business and bring their technology in-house. AI is now allowing us to do so much more, with rising costs and tighter margins we can now support experience creators in scaling their business growing revenue in ways we couldn’t have imagined when we first launched the platform in 2021 said Ben Simpson, Co-Founder and CEO of Easol. “We believe the experience businesses that adopt AI will have a competitive advantage that will be transformative. They’ll be able to look after every guest like never before, grow bookings with specialist agents working as an extension of their team using their live data to operate, analyse, provide insights and take action across and keep watch over their whole business, while their teams focus on their customer relationships and delivering world class experiences.”

About Easol

Easol is the AI platform for experience businesses. Enabling festivals, wellness retreats, sports and location based entertainment venues to bring their technology in-house, running bookings, payments, marketing, customer support and guest data through one connected system. Now with Teammates, experience businesses on Easol can build their own AI agents that use their live business data to handle support, sales and operations and identify and close missed revenue opportunities. Easol was launched in 2021 by Ben and Lisa Simpson, Co-founders of Rise Festival, who ran experience businesses with 2 million guests a year from the French Alps to the Sahara Desert. When they hit walls trying to scale and ran on too many tools that controlled their data – they built Easol to give experience creators full control of their business. Easol now powers businesses in 135 countries including Coachella, Stagecoach, Boots in the Park, Defected, Snowboxx, Afronation, Swingers – The Home of Revelry, The Cube, Hijingo and more. Easol has raised $60 million to date from investors including Y Combinator, Tiger Global, Viola Credit, Foundation Capital, Eight Roads and Notion Capital and Eight Roads. www.easol.com

SOURCE Easol

Formation Bio Drug Development Accelerator Fund pairs dedicated capital with the company’s AI-native development platform to scale its portfolio of clinical-stage medicines

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2026 — Formation Bio, an AI-native pharmaceutical company, today announced the Formation Bio Drug Development Accelerator Fund (the “Fund”), with $600 million in capital commitments. The Fund is designed to expand the company’s portfolio of clinical-stage medicines. Combining dedicated capital with Formation Bio’s AI-native development platform and clinical operating infrastructure, the Fund will support the company’s ambition to acquire 10–15 drug programs over the next 3–5 years and advance them through key clinical milestones.

The Fund’s limited partners include leading research foundations, institutional endowments, hospitals, and philanthropic organizations.

The Fund helps scale Formation’s hub-and-spoke model, exclusively financing the acquisition and development of drug programs within Formation Bio’s portfolio. Formation Bio serves as the Fund’s general partner through a wholly owned subsidiary and has committed its own capital alongside the Fund’s limited partners.

Each funded program is housed in a standalone corporate entity supported by Formation Bio’s established development organization, keeping the economics of each asset financially distinct, while allowing more capital to be directed toward clinical development rather than toward separate, redundant operating infrastructure within multiple companies. The Fund’s limited partners benefit from all of Formation Bio’s scientific, clinical and operational expertise and capabilities, both in evaluating programs and executing their development plans.

“This Fund gives our LPs access to an important and emerging investment category—individual drug assets—through a capital-efficient structure,” said Benjamine Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of Formation Bio. “For Formation Bio, it expands the number of promising drugs we can pursue, gives us strategic and financing flexibility, creates paths to liquidity without selling the parent company, and positions us to lower our cost of capital over time. Together, these advantages address structural challenges in our industry, allow us to develop more drugs for patients, and support our ambition to build this generation’s enduring pharma company.”

Formation Bio acquires or in-licenses Phase 1 and Phase 2 programs from pharmaceutical companies and biotechs, prioritizing assets with a clear path to clinical proof of concept. The company focuses on diseases with substantial unmet need but limited active development across the industry, targeting major clinical milestones within 2–4 years of acquisition, depending on the program.

Capital will be deployed according to each program’s development needs, allowing Formation Bio to concentrate resources on the most promising opportunities. As the portfolio grows, Formation Bio expects to continuously improve its technology and development capabilities, creating efficiencies that benefit future programs. Following meaningful clinical progress, the company expects to partner programs with pharmaceutical companies for commercialization or co-commercialization.

“As a biotech investor and founder, I’ve seen firsthand how promising medicines can get stranded in company pipelines,” said David Steinberg, Chief Business Officer at Formation Bio. “The Formation Bio Fund offers a new way to unlock their potential, leveraging the scale and sophistication of an AI-native drug developer.”

The Fund represents an important step toward the company’s broader ambition: developing more medicines, more efficiently and with a greater likelihood of success, so that more innovative therapies can reach patients.

“Few applications of AI have the potential to deliver as profound an impact on society as accelerating the development of new medicines,” said Michael Ehlers, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of R&D at Formation Bio. “This is a meaningful next step for real-world application of AI that expands our ability to bring innovative therapies to patients.”

About Formation Bio

Formation Bio is an AI-native pharmaceutical company building a more efficient model for drug development. The company combines deep pharmaceutical and clinical expertise with proprietary technology and AI systems designed to accelerate the development of medicines. Formation Bio acquires and in-licenses clinical-stage drug programs, then applies its technology, operational capabilities and development expertise to advance them toward clinical proof of concept and beyond. The company is headquartered in New York City, with a second office in Boston.

Media Contact

[email protected]

SOURCE Formation Bio

Massachusetts founders developing climate and energy technologies will receive $50,000 in non-dilutive funding and six months of hands-on support to advance from idea to prototype

SOMERVILLE, Mass., Oct. 28, 2026 — Applications are now open for the second year of Greentown Labs Boston’s First Valley Fellowship, a six-month program supporting early-stage climate and energy founders in Massachusetts as they advance their technologies from proof of concept to first prototype.

Building on a successful inaugural year of the program, year two of the Fellowship will deepen its support for early-stage founders with $50,000 stipends for selected Fellows, funded by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC). The program is also supported by the Barr Foundation.

The transition from proof of concept to a validated prototype is one of the most challenging phases for early-stage technical founders. Often referred to as the “First Valley of Death,” this stage requires founders to reduce technology risk, validate market demand, and prepare for fundraising while still securing the funding, prototyping space, and go-to-market support needed to move forward.

Since 2011, Greentown has specialized in helping startups navigate the “Second Valley of Death”: the capital-intensive transition from working prototype to first commercial pilot and early revenue. This support helps startups scale hardware, secure capital, build partnerships, and grow their teams.

Massachusetts is home to one of the strongest early-stage innovation ecosystems in the world. University commercialization programs, research fellowships, and early-stage accelerators help researchers develop breakthrough technologies, build entrepreneurial skills, and launch companies. The First Valley Fellowship is designed to complement that work, serving as a bridge between these labs and Greentown: a place where founders can physically build their prototypes alongside experienced peers and connect with Greentown’s network of industry partners and investors.

The inaugural cohort, which kicked off in May 2026, brought together six founders from five startups: CemCycle, Evidion Energy, Solas Capture, Aelun, and Thalon Materials. Over six months, Fellows received more than 60 hours of mentoring to refine their business models and engage potential customers. Four of the five Fellows surveyed reported greater readiness to fundraise, and three of the five startups have since joined Greentown as full members, including Evidion Energy, which completed its university spin-out.

“Since starting the Fellowship, we’ve refined our direction and are now preparing to fundraise,” said Trent Weiss, CTO of Evidion Energy. “We’ve completed extensive customer discovery, built our techno-economic and financial models, and refined our pitch, and access to Greentown’s resources and network was invaluable along the way. We would not be in the position we’re in today without this program.”

“Early-stage founders need access to a place to build and a community of entrepreneurs who have navigated these challenges before,” said Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown. “The First Valley Fellowship provides both, building on the strong foundation that universities and early-stage programs across Massachusetts have established. We are grateful to MassCEC and the Barr Foundation for helping us extend this support to more founders in year two.”

In year two, selected startups will receive $50,000 in non-dilutive funding, including a $25,000 living stipend and $25,000 in R&D support, along with six months of no-cost membership and workspace at Greentown Boston for up to two co-founders. Fellows will gain access to more than $1 million in in-kind resources, including free and discounted software, legal services, business support, and access to specialized facilities. Each Fellow will be matched with dedicated mentors in areas such as go-to-market strategy, customer discovery, technical development, finance, legal/IP, and product design. Greentown also provides investor readiness and fundraising support, with connections to equity and non-dilutive capital. There is no cost to apply or participate, and Greentown does not take equity.

“Massachusetts has some of the brightest minds and is exceptionally good at generating breakthrough climatetech ideas, which is why programs like the First Valley Fellowship are critical in turning that research into lasting companies,” said Dr. Jennifer Le Blond, managing director of emerging climatetech at Mass Clean Energy Center. “Through this partnership with Greentown, our state is providing the essential early support they need to move their technologies towards the market.”

The Fellowship is open to pre-seed or pre-funding startups at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 2–4 that have raised $1 million or less and plan to fundraise in the next 6–12 months. Fellows must reside in Massachusetts and operate their research or business activities in the state for the duration of the program. Eligible technologies address a challenge across the world’s foundational systems—Energy & Power; Manufacturing & Processing; Infrastructure & Construction; Transportation & Logistics; or Food, Water, & Land. Priority is given to founders who plan to engage in person at Greentown Boston nearly every week. Graduate students, postdocs, research scientists, solo founders, and early-stage teams are encouraged to apply.

“We are excited to support the First Valley Fellowship to help the region’s entrepreneurs advance climate solutions,” said Kathryn Wright, senior program officer for clean energy at the Barr Foundation.

Applications are due by February 19, 2027, at 11:59 p.m. ET. The Fellowship runs from May through October 2027 at Greentown Boston in Somerville, Mass. Learn more and apply at greentown.org/first-valley-fellowship.

About Greentown

Greentown is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping climate entrepreneurs build faster. As the world’s largest climatetech and energy startup incubator network, Greentown Labs provides startups mission-critical access to labs, equipment, customers, capital, talent, community, and resources to accelerate their growth and impact. Greentown Go, its open-innovation programs, inject momentum and scale into startup-corporate collaborations to propel new technologies to market faster. Greentown is home to more than 300 startups and has supported more than 700 since its founding in 2011; these startups, with a survival rate of 88 percent, have collectively created more than 16,600 jobs and raised more than $15B in funding. For more information, visit greentown.org or follow Greentown on LinkedIn.

About the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC)

The Mass Clean Energy Center is a state economic development agency dedicated to accelerating the growth of the clean energy and climatetech sector across the Commonwealth to spur job creation, deliver statewide environmental benefits, increase affordability, and secure long-term economic opportunities for the people of Massachusetts. Since 2010, MassCEC has awarded $990 million in programs and investments and attracted $3 billion in private and public funds.

About the Barr Foundation

The Barr Foundation’s mission is to invest in human, natural, and creative potential, serving as thoughtful stewards and catalysts. Based in Boston, Barr was founded in 1997 and works in partnership throughout New England with community leaders, nonprofits, and other foundations to elevate the arts, advance solutions for climate change, and equip all high school students to discover and actualize their unbounded potential. Barr is one of the largest charitable foundations in New England, with a 2026 grantmaking budget of $130 million. Learn more at barrfoundation.org.

Greentown Media Contact

Mark Lancaster
Head of Marketing and Technology
[email protected]

SOURCE Greentown Labs

New onchain credit platform backed by an extensive network of investors will initially provide structured credit to crypto trading firms, with plans to expand into other emerging tech markets.

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2026 — Ibis, an onchain credit platform built to expand institutional access to credit across frontier markets, today announced its emergence from stealth, highlighted by a $250 million Credit Facility with FalconX. The company also unveiled the closing of its pre-seed round, led by FalconX and other notable investors and industry executives across digital assets, institutional credit, capital markets, and financial infrastructure. Anchorage Digital Bank, N.A., will serve as a custody, banking, and design partner, while Innovating Capital will provide additional expertise in credit, transaction structuring, and strategic development.

Ibis originates, tokenizes, risk-manages, and services structured credit facilities, connecting institutional capital providers with companies looking to access new sources of scalable credit. The company was founded to address a structural gap in frontier-market credit, as traditional lending infrastructure often isn’t designed for emerging industries with complex risk profiles and rapidly evolving collateral. Ibis is building the infrastructure to underwrite, structure, and manage these opportunities at institutional scale, starting with digital asset markets.

“Frontier markets are developing faster than the financial infrastructure built to support them. Today, many high-quality businesses with strong fundamentals are underserved, not because they lack creditworthiness, but because traditional underwriters refuse to innovate,” said Cooper Emmons, Founder and CEO of Ibis. “Our goal is to build a credit platform that can evolve alongside these markets, bringing a more sophisticated approach to how emerging businesses are evaluated, financed, and managed as they scale, and offering those opportunities to a broader audience. We identified the need across institutions within the crypto & prediction markets vertical as our starting point, but the underlying need extends well beyond digital assets.”

“Access to reliable, institutional-grade credit is an important part of the continued maturation of digital assets,” said Joshua Lim, Co-Head of Global Markets at FalconX. “Ibis is building infrastructure to help bridge the gap between institutional capital allocators and a new generation of onchain market participants. As the digital asset market and other onchain asset classes continue to evolve, scalable credit infrastructure will be increasingly important to supporting sustainable growth.”

Ibis’ pre-seed round includes FalconX, Anchorage Digital, and Innovating Capital, and executives from Erebor, Revolut, Injective Foundation, Agora, Selini, Superstate, Flowdesk, Blockchain.com, DV Chain, Pyth, Colter Lewis, and GenCap Management, among others.

The initial focus on firms within crypto capital markets represents Ibis’ entry point into a significantly broader opportunity. As frontier industries mature, Ibis plans to extend its infrastructure to additional asset managers across emerging market segments, including GPUs, robotics, and venture capital, while expanding its network of institutional lenders and capital providers.

Investor Quotes

Nathan McCauley, CEO and Co-Founder, Anchorage Digital
“Credit is one of the last pieces of institutional infrastructure that digital asset markets are still building. Ibis is taking a disciplined approach: structured facilities, real underwriting, and collateral held in regulated custody at Anchorage Digital Bank. That combination is what lets institutional capital participate with confidence, and it’s why we’re backing the team as both a partner and an investor.”

Roshun Patel, Head of Credit, Alternatives at Erebor
“Frontier markets need access to credit, and the gap has been wide for far too long. In lending, structure matters, and Ibis has built one designed to scale. I’m excited to support their vision.”

Jordi Alexander, CEO, Selini
“Digital asset trading firms have long been underserved by traditional lenders, not for lack of performance, but for lack of infrastructure. We are looking forward to Ibis bringing institutional-grade credit to the businesses powering digital asset markets and opening new opportunities for investors.”

Shiliang Tang, Managing Partner, Monarq Asset Management 
“The businesses driving frontier markets, like digital asset trading firms, are real, highly profitable, and maturing fast, but the credit markets haven’t caught up to them. Ibis is closing that gap with a platform built to underwrite these companies on their fundamentals, and I’m excited to back them as they do.”

Anthony Georgiades, General Partner, Innovating Capital
“Working with Ibis, we saw an opportunity to bring the discipline of private credit to businesses that traditional lenders have struggled to serve. That means understanding each borrower’s business, structuring facilities around its risks, and giving capital providers the downside protections and transparency they expect. We’re excited to bring our experience in credit and transaction structuring to Ibis as it builds the infrastructure to deliver that approach at scale.”

About Ibis
Ibis is an onchain credit platform that originates, tokenizes, risk-manages, and services structured credit facilities for frontier markets that lack access to institutional capital. Ibis launched with a $250 million Credit Facility from FalconX, providing institutional credit capacity for eligible crypto trading firms. Starting with crypto trading firms, Ibis is building infrastructure to connect institutional lenders with borrowers across emerging categories of the global economy.

Media Contacts
M Group Strategic Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE Ibis

Plato gives AI developers a repeatable way to train and test models on the tools, decisions, and constraints that shape real work

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28, 2026 — Plato, a company building simulated workplaces where AI can learn to do real jobs, today announced a $16 million Series A funding round led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Gradient Ventures, Transpose Platform, and Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman. Freddie Martignetti, founder of Nava Ventures, joins the board. The round brings Plato’s total funding to $19 million, following a seed round led by Gradient Ventures.

As AI moves from answering questions to taking action, it needs practice using software, responding to changing circumstances, and completing multistep tasks. Plato gives AI labs realistic, repeatable environments where models can learn from feedback before operating in live systems.

“Mastering real complex work comes from experience doing those tasks,” said Robert Farlow, co-founder and CEO of Plato. “We’re building simulations that capture the tools, decisions, and unexpected situations those tasks involve, so AI models can gain experience in safe, contained environments before developers put them to work.”

For AI labs, training models directly in live software can carry real consequences: A model learning to place an order could spend actual money, while one practicing an administrative task could alter real records. Plato recreates these workflows in simulations that can be reset and reused, giving labs a place to train and test models without affecting live operations.

Plato works with domain experts to recreate the tools, situations, and expectations that shape jobs in customer support, people operations, finance, accounting, and healthcare administration. AI labs use these environments for reinforcement learning, a process in which models attempt tasks and receive feedback that helps them improve. Plato is developing richer simulations involving longer sequences of work and interactions with simulated people.

Plato evaluates both the outcome and how a model reaches it. Completing a purchase, for example, should not count as success if the model exceeds the budget. Its evaluations also examine whether models exploit weaknesses in a simulation to earn a high score.

“The feedback a model receives shapes what it learns,” said Pranav Putta, co-founder and CTO of Plato. “We build evaluations that reflect what the job actually requires, so developers can distinguish a high score from work done correctly. That means checking whether a model followed instructions, respected constraints, and completed the task.”

Farlow and Putta bring firsthand experience building systems for AI training. Farlow built an annotation platform at Yutori to support training computer-use models. Putta’s background includes research in computer vision, robotics, and reinforcement learning, as well as work training computer-use models at MultiOn.

“Robert and Pranav are deeply talented researchers and developers from Waterloo and Georgia Tech. They have developed a unique way to create high fidelity environments at scale, which is what initially drew us to the company,” said Freddie Martignetti, Founder of Nava Ventures. “However, we quickly learned that Plato is really a data lab, working on the frontier of the field to support the world’s best model development. We believe the work that Plato is doing is critical to unlocking the potential of AI at the enterprise level”

Plato will use the funding to expand its library of real-world work experience, paying professionals to recreate their jobs in simulated environments and deploying AI agents on real tasks to collect additional experience.

For more information, visit plato.so.

About Plato
Plato builds working simulations of real jobs and tasks for AI training and evaluation. Its environments combine realistic tools, situations, and task requirements so AI labs can train models on complex work and assess their performance in contained settings. Founded by Robert Farlow and Pranav Putta, Plato brings firsthand model-training experience and domain expertise to the challenge of making AI useful in the real world.

Founded in 2025 and based in San Francisco, Plato has raised $19 million in total funding. Investors include Nava Ventures, Gradient Ventures, Transpose Platform, and Microsoft AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman.

Dacyl Armendariz
[email protected] 

SOURCE Plato Technologies, Inc.

Amity Ventures led the seed round for the advanced materials platform, with participation by Human Capital, Anti Fund, and Powerset

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 28, 2026 — American Advanced Materials (AAM) today announced $12.5 million in seed funding led by Amity Ventures, with participation by Human Capital, Anti Fund, and Powerset. The company is developing an AI-native manufacturing platform for the advanced materials that underpin AI, energy, and defense, starting with titanium sponge. AAM will use the funding to grow its team and advance the front-end engineering and design of its manufacturing projects. The company plans to raise project financing to build and operate the integrated commercial facility. AAM’s founding team members have previously designed, built, and operated the world’s largest and most advanced titanium sponge and zirconium plants, both in the United States and abroad. They are joined by veterans of Tesla, ATI, TIMET, and Westinghouse.

Titanium sponge is the metal used by melters and alloy makers to manufacture America’s most important aerospace and defense programs. The United States is home to some of the world’s largest titanium melting operations, yet has produced no sponge since 2020. Meanwhile, titanium sponge imports hit a record 44,000 metric tons in 2025, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Industry experts project domestic demand to reach 60,000 metric tons over the coming 18 months, leaving America’s industrial base fully exposed to foreign supply chains that are fragile, unreliable, and capacity constrained. AAM is supporting the most strategic interests of America and allies by restoring the critical midstream process manufacturing layer that sits between upstream mineral mining and downstream end-product fabrication.

“America has the feedstock, energy, and expertise to lead in manufacturing these materials again,” said Alex Liegl, co-founder and CEO of AAM. “We aspire to build a next-generation DuPont, with globally competitive quality and cost as the starting point. Our goal is to make advanced materials abundant again so that their supply no longer limits what we can build.”

AAM’s first facility is designed with a vertically-integrated approach around the commercially proven Kroll process, drawing on the team’s direct experience building and operating large-scale titanium sponge plants. It is the first step toward an integrated manufacturing platform for titanium group materials that can add related materials using shared feedstock, infrastructure, and process expertise.

In addition, AAM is developing zirconium oxychloride (ZOC), the key precursor for all zirconium and hafnium materials used in nuclear fuel, gas turbines, rockets, and AI chips. Today, America fully relies on Chinese imports of ZOC. Over time, AAM intends to extend this model to offer America and its allies an advanced materials platform that manufactures the building blocks for all of their most important strategic interests.

AAM has signed offtake letters of intent for its future production of titanium sponge and zirconium oxychloride materials worth over $1 billion. Its prospective customers include domestic melters and alloy makers that supply the aerospace, AI infrastructure, defense, and energy sectors.

“We’re combining decades of process knowledge with modern engineering, AI, and robotics automation,” said Diego Represas, co-founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer of AAM. “America doesn’t need to wait for new technologies to lead the world in production cost, quality, and volume. What it needs is to build quickly. For AAM, the factory is the product. We design the plant, its software, and its operations as one system to carry what we learn into every future facility we build.”

“The opportunity in advanced materials isn’t simply to invent a new process. It’s to rebuild the industrial capacity that America has lost,” said Patrick Yang, Co-Founder and General Partner at Amity Ventures, which manages more than $2 billion in assets. “Alex and Diego have brought together the rare team, technical ambition, and urgency required to do that, starting with titanium sponge. We believe AAM has the potential to become a cornerstone of the next generation of American reindustrialization.”

Liegl and Represas founded AAM in 2025 after years of considering solutions to the same problem: demand for AI, energy, and defense kept climbing, while the supply of the advanced materials required by America and its allies stayed flat or entirely vanished. Liegl previously founded Tenet Energy, a nationwide fintech platform for electric vehicles and home electrification backed by Human Capital, and Layer1, a renewable-energy bitcoin mining company backed by Peter Thiel. Represas, an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, previously founded Able AI, an AI data platform backed by Human Capital and Canapi Ventures, that was acquired by Moody’s Corp. The two met as freshmen at Stanford University.

About American Advanced Materials

American Advanced Materials (AAM) is an AI-native advanced materials platform that manufactures the building blocks for AI, energy, and defense Our mission is to restore American leadership in the materials that underpin our most important strategic interests. Founded in 2025 and based in Mountain View, California and New York City, New York, AAM brings together America’s top industry experts, industrial engineers, and AI talent to enable globally competitive production in the United States. Titanium sponge is its first commercial project, followed by zirconium oxychloride. Learn more at www.americanadvanced.com.

Media contact
Garrett Marquis | Throughline Global Advisors
[email protected]

SOURCE American Advanced Materials

Edwards brings a decade of experience in technology policy, competition, and AI infrastructure to help early-stage founders navigate critical decisions as they build and scale.

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 2026 — Spice Capital, the early-stage venture capital firm founded by Maya Bakhai, today announced the appointment of Jamal Edwards, former Chief of Staff to Microsoft’s General Counsel for Infrastructure Legal Affairs, as a strategic advisor to the firm and its founder network.

Spice Capital is known for backing entrepreneurs before their ideas gain widespread recognition. As its founders build businesses in artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, they face decisions that extend well beyond product development and fundraising: how to manage the cost of computing infrastructure, enter markets dominated by established competitors, and build products that large organizations can adopt and trust. Edwards will work with Bakhai and founders across the firm’s network, bringing experience from some of the technology industry’s most consequential business and regulatory matters.

“Being the first to believe in a founder means more than writing the first check,” said Maya Bakhai, founder and general partner of Spice Capital. “It means understanding what they’re trying to build and helping them get there. Jamal has spent his career working through complex questions about how technology companies compete, grow, and operate at scale. That experience will be valuable to founders making decisions today that could shape their companies for years to come.”

“The decisions that determine whether a company succeeds aren’t always the most obvious ones,” said Edwards. “A founder can build an extraordinary product and still struggle with the cost of bringing it to market, the power of established competitors, or the demands of customers operating in highly regulated industries. I want to help founders think through those questions early, when they still have the greatest freedom to shape what comes next.”

Edwards joins Spice Capital following a decade at Microsoft, where he held leadership roles spanning competition policy, regulatory strategy, and corporate affairs. Most recently, he served as Chief of Staff to the General Counsel for Infrastructure Legal Affairs, supporting the legal function underpinning Microsoft’s global cloud and AI infrastructure expansion. Previously, as Director of Competition Policy and Market Regulation, he helped lead advocacy strategy across 17 jurisdictions in connection with Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

That transaction also marked the beginning of his relationship with Spice Capital. In 2023, the firm joined six other venture investors in filing an amicus brief supporting Microsoft’s position during the Federal Trade Commission’s appeal, arguing that mergers and acquisitions play an important role in sustaining competition and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors.

For founders in Spice’s network, the relevance of Edwards’ experience is immediate. At OpenAssistant, decisions about computing infrastructure and the economics of operating AI products are central to the company’s growth.

“At OpenAssistant, scaling an AI product means making decisions about infrastructure, compute, and gross margins much earlier than early-stage founders once had to,” said Paul Canetti, co-founder of OpenAssistant. “Jamal understands how those choices play out at global scale. Giving Spice founders access to that perspective creates a practical edge most venture firms cannot offer: the ability to anticipate how infrastructure decisions and the surrounding policy environment will shape a company before early choices become expensive to reverse.”

For Resolvd, which develops digital workers deployed within hospital systems, the challenge is different: building software capable of performing meaningful work within complex organizations while meeting demanding requirements for reliability, oversight, and accountability.

“At Resolvd, we deploy digital workers inside hospital systems, where software has to complete real operational work across legacy systems while meeting strict standards for control and auditability,” said Ananth Manivannan, founder and CEO of Resolvd. “That experience makes clear that technical architecture and institutional trust are inseparable at scale. Jamal understands what it takes for technology to earn adoption inside complex organizations. His perspective gives Spice founders an uncommon advantage as they build products that consequential institutions can rely on.”

Bakhai also serves on Resolvd’s board of directors.

The appointment builds on Spice Capital’s approach to early-stage investing, pairing conviction in founders with access to the relationships and experience that can help turn promising ideas into enduring businesses.

About Spice Capital

Founded in 2021 by Maya Bakhai, Spice Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm backing founders before consensus forms around emerging markets and technologies. Its high-conviction, research-driven investment strategy spans artificial intelligence, the creator economy, financial technology, and vertical software, with investments including Beehiiv, HYPE, and GIRL BEER. Learn more at spicecapital.vc

For media inquiries contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Spice Capital

The grant funds the next chapter for Caravel’s full-stack platform—built to create value for all proteins—while scaling machine learning datasets and real-world pilots for existing customers. Michał Jastrzębski also joins as CTO to lead the company’s AI-driven protein engineering work.

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 28, 2026 — Caravel Bio, the company creating new high-performance systems for discovering, engineering, and manufacturing biomolecules, has been awarded a $1,246,984 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award, secured by fewer than 5% of applicants over the last decade, will support development of a system for creating and scaling proteins with new-to-nature chemistries. The Caravel platform massively parallelizes biological experimentation, enabling the building and testing of millions of protein designs at once. That scale generates the data AI needs to engineer proteins nature never built, accelerating development from the lab to products that can strengthen the economy, reduce pollution, and improve human health. The company has also welcomed Michał Jastrzębski, formerly of Ginkgo Bioworks, Proxima, and Intel, as Chief Technology Officer to lead the company’s work in training advanced AI models for biomolecular design.

Nearly every industrial enzyme, therapeutic protein, and biomaterial on the market today has been built from the same 20 canonical amino acids found in nature. Beyond those 20 exist hundreds of additional amino acids that could enable amazing new products—for example, the blockbuster drug Ozempic improves stability using one non-canonical amino acid—but, as a field, biotechnology has generally lacked reliable methods to discover proteins and manufacture products at scale using these new chemistries. And while AI is generating promising protein designs faster than ever, labs can test only a fraction of them. Compounding the problem, protein engineers don’t have effective feedback loops for turning laboratory experiments into scalable products without enormous expense and risk.

Caravel is building systems to close these gaps simultaneously through its novel design-build-test-learn cycle.

“I was really exhausted by the inability of the work I and my peers were doing, all with the best intentions, to actually improve the world without spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get a product across the finish line,” says Trevor Nicks, PhD., Founder & CEO of Caravel. “So when we set out to build Caravel, we started completely from scratch, re-designing the entire process of biomolecular engineering to lower costs while increasing speed, volume, and the real-world relevance of generated data.”

Caravel’s platform combines a suite of new lab techniques that unlock the broader amino acid palette for both discovery and manufacturing of new proteins. This data-rich workflow incorporates machine learning that converts each round of experiments into sharper predictions for the next. Notably, the data generated not only identifies what should be made, but also lays the foundation for manufacturing it at scale.

“When an experiment costs a fraction of a cent instead of tens of dollars, you stop asking which handful of ideas might work and instead start testing all of them,” says Emily Bowman, PhD., CSO of Caravel. “The systems we have built unlock massive data sets with very low costs. AlphaFold’s success in protein design illustrates the potential of large datasets. But importantly, those datasets were made possible by billions of dollars in publicly funded research. We are thankful that the NSF recognizes the value in decreasing those costs and is supporting our work in the massive parallelization of experimentation.”

One Year In: Partnerships, Funding, and Performance Gains
Since completing its Phase I grant in 2024, Caravel has translated its lab-stage platform into industrial partnerships, funding, and measurable performance gains. The company:

• Formally launched in October 2025 alongside a $7.8 million award from the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships
• Joined the Shell GameChanger program to create new ultra-stable enzymes for low-cost carbon capture and surpassed a key technical milestone within six months by increasing enzyme stability under industrially relevant conditions 12-fold
• Built a network of scientific and strategic partners, including Avery Bio, Caltech, Rutgers University, Oregon State University, Southern Connecticut State University, Rubi Laboratories, and the vHive Animal Health Incubator

Under Phase II, Caravel aims to extend its platform to additional enzyme classes for existing customers, and eventually scale those products for pilot deployment to innovate new, real-world protein products across DNA writing, carbon capture, rare earth separations, and more.

Deepening Leadership: Caravel’s New CTO
The company also announced the addition of Michał Jastrzębski as Chief Technology Officer. As Caravel builds the infrastructure poised to define the next era of protein design, Jastrzębski will lead Caravel’s artificial intelligence initiatives while helping advance its product roadmap and market strategy. Jastrzębski began his extensive career in technology at Intel Corporation and has since held roles at GitHub, bytewax, and Promixa. More recently, Jastrzębski worked at Ginkgo Bioworks, where he co-authored a collaboration with OpenAI exploring the use of a GPT-5-driven autonomous laboratory to optimize cell-free protein synthesis.

“I’ve seen firsthand how much AI in biology is still held back by a lack of the right data, not a lack of ambition,” said Jastrzębski. “Caravel is solving that problem at the source. Joining as Chief Technology Officer means helping build the system that finally gives protein design the scale of data it needs.”

ABOUT CARAVEL BIO
Caravel Bio has built a new data engine for biomolecular engineering, dramatically increasing the scale and speed of generating data. The platform tests millions of protein designs in parallel at a fraction of a cent per experiment, versus tens of dollars with conventional methods, providing the data AI-driven biology has been missing. The company’s Artificial Evolution™ technology combines cell-free protein synthesis, microfluidic droplets, and bacterial spore display to supercharge biomolecular engineering, so labs can generate the data AI needs to design proteins nature never built. Caravel was selected to lead a $7.8M NSF Technology, Innovation and Partnerships award and a $1.2M NSF SBIR Phase II grant. Caravel is on a mission to expand the role of biology as a transformative force for societal good. Learn more at www.caravel.bio.

About the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Programs
America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF awards $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. Startups working across almost all areas of science and technology can receive up to $2 million to support research and development (R&D), helping de-risk technology for commercial success. America’s Seed Fund is congressionally mandated through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The NSF is an independent federal agency with a budget of about $8.5 billion that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

MEDIA CONTACT
Tess Pawlisch
608-333-9788
[email protected]

SOURCE Caravel Bio

Slauson & Co. leads round, joined by InvestTN and Baukunst, to scale the discovery-driven marketplace helping brands turn excess inventory into revenue.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 28, 2026 — Offe Market, the online marketplace giving excess inventory from beloved brands a new life, today announced a $3 million seed round, bringing its total funding to $4.3 million. Slauson & Co. led the round, with participation from InvestTN and Baukunst, which led the company’s pre-seed round. Additional investors include commerce angels Jill Fisher Bowen, Stephanie Kleinjan, and Ruffin Mitchener, creator and founder of Brydge Club. The funding will advance Offe Market’s commerce intelligence platform, focusing on AI-powered pricing, personalized discovery, and live commerce.

Founded by retail veteran Rachel Gannon, Offe Market offers a curated, ever-changing assortment of fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands at 30–80% off retail prices. The company has grown 2.5x year over year in revenue, shopper count, and order volume. Offe has worked with more than 200 brands, including consumer favorites Harper Wilde, OBEY, Rachel Antonoff, Wrangler, and Dolce Vita. Offe has also expanded into home and beauty, offering rugs, furniture, candles, and skincare from brands like Nopalera, P.F. Candle Co., Papier, Chillhouse Nails, and Wildflower Cases.

“The satisfaction of a great deal never gets old. What’s changed is how we shop and whose recommendations we trust,” said Rachel Gannon, founder and CEO of Offe Market. “We do the handpicking for you and let you in on the best finds. I love watching our customers share their hauls and discover new brands. Knowing those purchases help keep products out of landfills makes it even better.”

Gannon developed the concept for Offe Market after a decade in buying and merchandising. After joining Rue La La at the height of the flash-sale era, she managed a $120 million business at Macy’s. She later became ban.do’s first buyer, building its third-party buying channel into a multimillion-dollar business. In these roles, she saw firsthand the limitations of traditional off-price channels, including low payouts, complicated logistics, limited sales data, and little control over how products were presented and sold.

Offe Market gives brands a flexible way to sell excess merchandise without diluting brand value and image. Its commerce intelligence platform connects directly to brands’ inventory systems, syncing product information, pricing, and availability in real time while automating fulfillment routing from its distribution center. Offe gives brands control over pricing and merchandising along with sell-through data to inform inventory decisions. For shoppers, personalized recommendations make it easier to discover new brands and products.

“Off-price is a multibillion-dollar industry, yet some of its biggest players still generate less than 2% of sales online,” said Waverly Middleton, an investor at Slauson & Co. “With Offe Market, we see an incredible opportunity to reach a new generation of shoppers while giving brands a trusted channel to move excess inventory. Rachel understands both sides of the business, and we believe she has the potential to reshape the category.”

The company recently unveiled a refreshed brand identity and interface designed to spotlight curated product drops. Its Echo Park store in Los Angeles also serves as a gathering space and content studio producing organic social and live commerce content. The location hosts sample sales and events, including a Galentine’s Day celebration that drew more than 400 attendees.

About Offe Market
Offe Market is a next-generation off-price and marketplace connecting shoppers with cult-favorite fashion and lifestyle brands at 30–80% off retail. By pairing discovery-driven shopping with a circular commerce model, Offe Market gives unsold inventory a new life while making premium products more accessible and sustainable. Learn more at https://offemarket.com.

Media Contact
WDRD PR
Hannah Woodard
[email protected]

SOURCE Offe Market