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Premier bridge loan company Atlas Invest announced the closing of an $11 million funding round. Combining decades of real estate legacy and financial expertise with advanced AI, Atlas offers real estate developers seeking efficient financing solutions and private and institutional investors looking to invest in US real estate debt. This funding round, led by The Garage with participation from State of Mind Ventures, Anfield, Guy Gamzu, and other previous investors, will advance Atlas' expansion and further strengthen its position leading the real estate-backed debt market.

Indapta Therapeutics - a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company developing next-generation cell therapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases - announced it has closed a $22.5 million round of new financing to accelerate the clinical development of its differentiated allogeneic Natural Killer (NK) cell therapy. And current investors RA Capital Management, LP, Leaps by Bayer (the impact investment arm of Bayer AG), Vertex Ventures HC, Pontifax, and the Myeloma Investment Fund, the venture philanthropy subsidiary of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, completed the round.

FedEx announced that its Board of Directors has concluded a comprehensive assessment of the role of FedEx Freight as part of its portfolio and has decided to pursue a complete separation of FedEx Freight through the capital markets, creating a new publicly traded company. The separation is expected to be tax-efficient for FedEx stockholders and will be executed within the next 18 months.

Salt AI - a pioneer in AI workflow orchestration - announced it has raised $3 million in seed funding and appointed technology veteran Aber Whitcomb as Chief Executive Officer. Whitcomb (former co-founder and CTO of MySpace and Jam City) brings decades of experience scaling breakthrough technologies across social media, mobile gaming, and blockchain.

ŌURA, the company behind the leading smart ring, Oura Ring, announced today that it has completed a $200 million Series D funding round. Fidelity Management & Research Company and Dexcom, the global leader in glucose biosensing, participated in the round, which raised the company’s valuation to $5.2 billion.

Simulation Theory, a company focused on reducing waste by optimizing compute resources, has successfully raised $2 million in pre-seed funding. The funding round was led by Larry Russ, managing partner at Russ, August & Kabat, with individual investors including Ryan Peterson (former CEO of Finger Food Advanced Technology Group), and Robert Wallace of Strategic Alternatives.

SandboxAQ announced a funding round of over $300 million from Fred Alger Management, LLC, T. Rowe Price Associates, Mumtalakat, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, Rizvi Traverse, S32, US Innovative Technology Fund, Ava Investments, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, David Siegel, Yann LeCun, IQT, and other prominent investors. This funding round valued the company at $5.3 billion on a pre-money basis.

Plume, which is the first fully integrated modular Layer-1 blockchain focused on Real World Asset Finance (RWAfi), announced the closing of a $20 million Series A funding round from Brevan Howard Digital, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Superscrypt, Hashkey, Laser Digital (Nomura Group), A Capital, 280 Capital, SV Angel, Reciprocal Ventures, and others, showcasing strong industry conviction from crypto-native and traditional finance investors in Plume's vision of an on-chain RWAfi ecosystem.

XGEN Venture, a leading VC firm specializing in life sciences investments, proudly announces the final closing of its XGEN Venture Life Sciences Fund. This fund has successfully raised about €180 million in total commitments, surpassing expectations and solidifying its position as a key player in the European life sciences investment landscape.

Leading B2B commerce platform AppDirect announced it has acquired Firstbase, an IT asset management platform that supports customers globally in procuring and managing the equipment deployed within their organizations. Through this acquisition, Firstbase's platform functionality will integrate into AppDirect's platform, providing AppDirect’s advisor community with a single destination for their end customers to manage their telecom, software, and IT assets.

Parafin, a company that builds embedded finance infrastructure, has announced the close of its $100 million Series C financing at a $750 million valuation. Notable Capital led the funding, with significant participation from Redpoint Ventures. Existing investors Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, and GIC participated in the round.

Acre Homes - a tech-enabled real estate company - announced the closing of a seed round led by Anthemis, bringing the total venture capital raised to over $10 million. The funding included notable participation from Sovereign's Capital, Home Technology Ventures, Studio VC, Front Porch Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, Duke Capital Partners, and former CEO of Invitation Homes Fred Tuomi. This funding will support the company's efforts to accelerate growth in existing markets, including the newly launched Atlanta.

Next Horizon Capital announced an investment in Telle Tire & Auto Centers, a well-established, fast-growing tire retailer and automotive service company with a strong presence in the Midwestern United States. The financial terms of the investment were undisclosed.

Team Velocity is a company that is transforming the automotive industry with technology that digitizes the car buying and vehicle ownership processes. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Team Velocity CEO and founder David Boice to learn more about the company.

As part of the foundation’s 100th anniversary celebration, the Duke Endowment’s Trustees announced their intent to distribute up to $5 billion in grants across North Carolina and South Carolina over the next 15 years.

Warburg Pincus, a pioneer of private equity global growth investing, announced the first closing of its first multi-asset continuation fund transaction, with over $2.2 billion in commitments. The deal was co-led and fully capitalized by HarbourVest Partners, Ardian and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments).

Slip Robotics, a next-generation provider of automated truck-loading robots as a service, announced it has raised a $28 million Series B financing led by DCVC. The funding reflects Slip’s rapid growth with industry-leading customers, including John Deere, GE Appliances, Valeo, and Nissan, using SlipBots to load and unload any truck in just five minutes.

Anatomy Financial - a developer of the AI-based lockbox to convert paper mail from healthcare practices of all sizes to an email-like experience for simplified billing workflows - announced $19 million in Series A funding led by Canapi Ventures. And Neil Underwood from Canapi and Nicole Quinn from Lightspeed Venture Partners will join the Anatomy board, supporting Anatomy’s efforts to bring a digital back office and AI-based financial operations to healthcare providers across the US.

Starboard - an emerging leader in AI-based logistics solutions - announced it raised $5.5 million in funding led by Eclipse, with participation from previous backers Garuda Ventures and Everywhere Ventures.

Convergent Energy and Power, a leading provider of energy storage solutions in North America, announced that the company has received a conditional commitment from the U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office (LPO) for a loan guarantee of up to $559.4 million for its subsidiaries to build a solar photovoltaic (PV) system with an integrated battery storage system and three stand-alone battery storage systems across Puerto Rico.

Dentons announced it has welcomed experienced corporate tax specialist Neil McKnight as a partner to its Tax team in London. And he joined the firm from Morgan Lewis, where he was a partner in the tax practice.

The Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) announced that the state’s life sciences ecosystem raised $2.15 billion in 2024, a 46% increase compared to 2023. Colorado - recognized as the Hub for Health Impact - has brought in nearly $12 billion for life sciences research and development during the last eight years from public and private sources and federal, state, and foundation grants.

rPlus Energies announced the closing of $304 million in new financing facilities like a $179 million construction debt facility for its Pleasant Valley Solar 2 project and a $125 million Corporate Letter of Credit Facility secured with Deutsche Bank to support the company’s ongoing growth.

Fashion marketplace LAAM announced it has raised a $5.5 million funding round to make South Asian fashion global. Disrupt.com and Zayn VC led this seed funding round, with participation from Graph Ventures, Mentors Fund, and tech leaders from Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce.

Symmio - a decentralized derivatives protocol with over $8 billion in trading volume - announced it raised $3.1 million in funding, including $2.1 million in new investments from top-tier investors, including Spartan Group, Orbs, MCLB, and Blockchain Founders Fund, as well as previous investments by @AgentChud (Messi), MS2 Capital, Gametheorizing (Selini Capital), GMoney & Prime Ventures.

Alessa Therapeutics - a clinical-stage drug development company pioneering an innovative and proprietary localized drug delivery technology for the early interception of cancer and other diseases - announced the closing of a $15 million seed funding round led by Mission BioCapital joined by Johnson & Johnson (through its corporate venture capital organization, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC)., and a representative of JJDC  will join the Board of Directors at Alessa Therapeutics.

Cartesia, a company whose state-space models (SSMs) are transforming the next wave of innovation in generative AI, announced $22 million in new funding led by Index Ventures, bringing the total capital raised to $27 million. Also joining in this round are venture funds like A* Capital, Conviction, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and SV Angel, along with 90 prominent angel investors, including the founders of Abridge, Airtable, Captions, Cognition, Cohere, Databricks, Datadog, Hugging Face, Hubspot, Infinitus, Llamaindex, Mercury, Mistral, Okta, Perplexity, Pika, Pinterest, Postman, Ramp, RunwayML, Snorkel, Sonos, Together AI, Tripedot Studios, Typeface, Vercel, Weaviate, Weights and Biases, and Zapier.

Mynt - a leading provider of corporate credit cards and spend management solutions - announced a €22 million funding round at a significantly increased valuation of about €175 million, led by Vor Capital, with participation from existing investors CNI, Incore, and others. The Series B round brings Mynt’s total funding to over €50 million.

Alira Health - a global healthcare consulting and technology firm - announced the securing of up to $100 million in growth debt from premier healthcare and life sciences investor Symbiotic Capital.

Marcy Venture Partners, a venture capital firm founded by rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z, merged with Black-owned Pendulum Opportunities (the investment arm of Pendulum Holdings). The combined company will be called MarcyPen Capital Partners, with a reported $900 million AUM.