David Pakman

Revolutionizing Art Stewardship: Strobe Ventures portco Winston Artory Group (WAG) is using blockchain and unique data to redefine trust in a $3 trillion industry A core Strobe thesis is that specialized vertical marketplaces (particularly those underpinned by blockchain rails) will serve to 'unbundle Sothebys' and provide better user experiences for cheaper, as compared to the expensive, gated and inefficient generalized incumbents WAG is a technology platform operating at the forefront of intelligent art and collectibles stewardship. They count 30% of the world’s top billionaire art collectors as clients, and have a legacy of appraising over $100 billion in art and have tokenized another $2 billion With new collection management software and a right-to-win in the art-lending space, WAG is just getting started -- read our full piece here: https://lnkd.in/ez4r9Gxc

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Addepar continues to demonstrate that the real advantage ahead lies in platforms that unify data, insight, and action. Eric’s session at Sway Minds highlighted why it became one of Sway Ventures’ early investments, and why so many of our LPs use it as their system of record.

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We are thrilled to celebrate Powerline’s $7M Seed round and our partnership with this exceptional team. Led by Matineh Eybpoosh and Julian Lamy, Powerline is solving the most critical bottleneck of the energy transition: the "Intelligence Gap." As global energy demand surges, the grid requires capacity that is both faster to deploy and hyper-efficient to operate. Powerline is proving that the answer lies in software-driven intelligence. Their AI platform — the Battery Co-Pilot™ — radically improves the unit economics of energy storage, converting batteries from passive backup into high-yield financial assets. They are already delivering measurable results across the energy lifecycle: Existing Installations: Retrofitting "brownfield" battery portfolios with an intelligence layer that captures missed revenue and manages market volatility. New Deployments: Providing the digital testbeds needed to scale global fleets with institutional precision, significantly shortening the path to ROI. Legacy Displacement: Delivering a cost-effective alternative to polluting "peaker-plants," which can cost up to $200/MWh more than an optimized Powerline fleet. While solar-plus-storage is now consistently 20-30% cheaper than new-build gas, the real victory is in how that hardware is managed. At J-Impact Fund, we focus on the massive value creation that occurs when technology turns energy scarcity into abundance. By shifting the grid from a model of expensive, finite fuel to one of persistent, harvested power, we unlock superior financial upside. For us, deep decarbonization is the inevitable byproduct of this superior economic model. Congratulations to Matineh, Julian, and the entire team—we are proud to be on this journey with you. #EnergyStorage #AIOptimization #VentureCapital #AssetManagement #SeriesSeed #FinancialAlpha

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Thrilled for OVNI Capital to be backing RIFT in a pre-seed round led by AlleyCorp (Luc Ryan-Schreiber). Rift is building the first real-time aerial intelligence network, a new layer of infrastructure for persistent, on-demand visibility where it matters most. This funding will scale production of their autonomous stations, accelerate deployment in high-stakes environments, and expand the team leading the next phase. 🗞️ Explore the full story: - StartupMafia: https://lnkd.in/dARrg25N - BFM Business (FR): https://lnkd.in/eADSUsn7 - Les Échos (FR): https://lnkd.in/eFG3zAy5 👨‍🚀 Join the mission → https://lnkd.in/erm_SrTG

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We're thrilled to announce our investment in Mozart AI, as part of their $6M seed round led by Balderton, and are incredibly excited to partner with Sundar Arvind, Arjun S Khanna and Pascual Merita on this journey. Mozart is building the next-generation AI-native studio for music creation, editing, and production. From our very first conversation with the team, we were struck by their clarity of vision, passion for music and exceptional speed of execution. Here is why we invested: >> Responsible foundation: Built on rights-cleared music models like ElevenLabs, Mozart shares our conviction that creators should be fairly compensated for their work, not only when the song is streamed, but when their work helps train the AI behind it. >> Human-led AI creation: Mozart re-imagines the studio as a space where AI works with the creator; understanding the creative context, adapting in real time, and becoming a true collaborator. >> A connected creative ecosystem: The company’s vision extends beyond individual tracks; they aim to join up creative expression across media, connecting music, video, and storytelling in an integrated, collaborative environment. In a world where technology can easily overshadow artistry, Mozart AI is building tools that keep the human at the center of creation which is why we are very so excited to partner with them. And, let’s admit, it’s hard to think of a better name for a music startup than Mozart. 👉 Read our blog post on why we invested (link in comments)

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My investment framework centers on 7 layers. CASIMIR fits into the first layer which is the Observation Layer. Out of 22 billion IoT devices on earth and ~10k satellites in space in 2026 we may have a 6 billion (and growing) ultra low power devices on earth and space that can one day run on MicroSparc 👍🏼 -> Eternal power chip Harold “Sonny” White + Capital Factory #HardThings #deeptech

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It is great to be working with RaviKiran Gopalan and Aditya Akella as they build Canyon Code, the workflow intelligence layer for heterogenous AI datacenters. Proud to see these fellow Indian Institute of Technology, Madras alums taking a research-led approach to tackle a large problem within enterprise AI today: abstracting the complexity of heterogenous datacenters to deliver agentic workflow level transparency. NewBuild Venture Capital co-led this pre-seed round alongside Cota Capital and Blackhorn Ventures.

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> Early-stage VC success boils down to three pillars: traction, market, and team. The key is ensuring your traction matches your stage—shifting from problem validation at Pre-Seed, to product "stickiness" at Seed, and finally to repeatable revenue by Series A. Ultimately, investors aren't just looking for a pitch; they are looking for founders who combine deep market insight with relentless execution and data-backed storytelling. When you nail that narrative, your company’s growth doesn't just look likely—it feels inevitable.

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Transcend Portfolio Spotlight: Brain Jar Games 🪩 Genre-defying game studio creating bold and vibrant games that players feel compelled to share, founded by industry AAA veterans Will Cook, Rohan K., and Krys H Kozlowski 🏆 With 700K+ Steam wishlists, 275M+ TikTok views, 1M+ demo players, and a 98% overwhelmingly positive review score, the first public demo for their flagship title Dead as Disco debuted to an incredible reception powered by viral UGC ◾ Transcend. co-led the oversubscribed $6.7M Seed with Menlo Ventures accompanied by a standout syndicate of executives from gaming (Blizzard, Activision, Sony, Riot, Oculus, Netflix, Zynga), music (Harmonix, Octone Records), and live streaming (CohhCarnage, Sacriel) 📌 Learn More: ➤ VICE: https://lnkd.in/dZNTMiKq ➤ GameDiscoverCo: https://lnkd.in/dRUym_Q8 ➤ VentureBeat: https://lnkd.in/dBDsvW4x ➤ Transcend: https://lnkd.in/dsY-kqGx #venturecapital #startups #innovation

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Exciting to see the incredible progress from Peptone, a company we’ve backed since the early days at Walden Catalyst Ventures. Peptone just announced Peptron-O, developed in collaboration with NVIDIA — a groundbreaking AI engine that brings ensemble-first structure prediction to the disordered proteome. This is a major scientific and technological milestone, targeting one of the most complex and previously inaccessible areas of biology: intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs). By shifting the paradigm from static models to dynamic ensembles, Peptron-O opens new doors for drug discovery — especially in areas like oncology and neurodegeneration, where IDPs play critical roles. We’re proud to have supported Peptone on their mission to build the infrastructure for next-gen molecular physics. Their work is a great example of how deep tech can transform life sciences. Read more about the announcement: 👉 https://lnkd.in/eygnKQ67 #AI #Biotech #DrugDiscovery #DeepTech #LifeSciences #WaldenCatalyst #Peptone #NVIDIA #PeptronO with: Kamil Tamiola, Ph.D. Francis Ho Shankar Chandran Nicolas Autret Andy Kau Roni Hefetz Victoria Slivkoff

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🚀 Thrilled to announce that Connect Ventures is partnering with the formidable Gabriella Hachem and Nim Cheema by leading a $6m seed round in Dessn, with the participation of betaworks, N49P, Declan Kelly, Roeland Delrue, Nicolas Steegmann, Zoe Mohl. 😍 High conviction => my first meeting with Gabriella Hachem, 30 seconds into her pitch: "This is a very hard problem, both technically and UX-wise. But if done successfully, it's a game changer". 🤝 High fit => The best product founders are overly technical and bold. And they build products that let users express themselves in the ways they actually want to work. 🤌 Anthropic launched Claude Design, making it obvious to the world that code is becoming the design surface. But why just extract from the product when you can run it? That’s Dessn. Dessn turns your codebase into a design environment in one click. Infinite exploration. One source of truth, for one product team. ✏️ I wrote the full investment thesis here: Design in production. Why we invested in Dessn https://lnkd.in/gjZ7VbWZ

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Interesting take here from Tim Rowe from State of Streaming, comparing The Trade Desk's new OpenTTD platform with FirstPartyCapital's new model for corporate innovation. It's a strong validation of our offering for it to be positioned as an alternative solution to one of the greatest adtech companies of all time. We are working hard to give clients streamlined access to our portfolio, in a modular way, so that they can build a stack that is tailor-made to their specific needs. https://lnkd.in/eEe9-WwW #adtech #data #tech #business #media

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I am excited to announce that Shine Capital has led AudioShake’s $14M Series A. Our investment represents the culmination of two years of searching for a company that will define the next generation of audio. Since 2023, we have been asking ourselves the question, "What technology will be used pervasively across the totality of the audio landscape?" Then we met Jessica Powell and Luke Miner, founders of AudioShake. AudioShake makes a suite of AI-powered tools for processing audio that include stem-splitting, voice isolation, speaker separation, and more. These primitives are critical infrastructure for almost any task involving audio, as evidenced by the breadth of use cases that the company serves. The Walt Disney Company and Downtown Music use AudioShake to make tracks available for sync licensing. Film studios and post-production houses use AudioShake to clean up sound from microphones to prevent re-recordings and manual audio engineering. Sports leagues and broadcasters use AudioShake to separate stadium noise from commentary to enable clean captioning and crisper audio. And Big Tech and frontier labs use AudioShake to prepare their audio data for multimodal AI training. We believe that audio will be the most important medium in the age of AI, defined by explosive growth across three categories that are even better with AudioShake: 1) Audio-as-AI-Interface: For the first time, people can perform complex compute operations using their voice. Conversing with AI will propel voice assistant usage well beyond its current ~50% adoption. 2) Explosion of Content: The rate at which user-generated content is made continues to accelerate, which will be further amplified by the possibility of AI-generated content. Audio is a superset of video — nearly every video uses sound to convey meaning, message, or emotion. 3) Voice Agents for Business: More than $100B of phone labor is performed annually in the United States. While some of it sits in call centers, most of it is fractional work. Businesses across finance, healthcare, and beyond have rapidly adopted phone agents. We are fortunate to partner with Jessica Powell and Luke Miner, passionate entrepreneurs and audiophiles dedicated to making audio as easy to work with as images or text. Audio contains vast amounts of information and creative possibility, and AudioShake will help unlock it. Thank you to our friends at Indicator Ventures for connecting us to Jessica. We are thrilled to support the AudioShake team with them, alongside Origin Ventures, Thomson Reuters, Precursor Ventures and Background Capital.

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**Fubo and Hulu Live TV: A Strategic Fusion in Live Sports Streaming** The recent merger of Fubo with Hulu Live TV reflects a growing trend in the streaming industry—converging platforms to enhance viewer experience and broaden content offerings. As Fubo integrates its live sports features into a more comprehensive service, we at ElevenX Capital see the potential for this model to reshape competitive dynamics within the sector. How do you think this merger will impact subscriber growth and market positioning for both brands? #investing #innovation #venturecapital #entrepreneurship

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"Worst market since [1830]" or similar hyperbole. No doubt it's very tough, but I think this mammoth first time fundraise from Vista founding team member Brian Sheth highlights the fact that a blue chip investment background, attributable connection to successful deals, an attractive investment strategy and LP connectivity can cut through the noise in a big way. No doubt the GP commitment was significant too... William Blair worked on this raise I believe. https://lnkd.in/gDTuyNEd

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Every #VentureStudio GP knows some portfolio bets won’t hit. That's expected - and it's one of the reasons studios are such a powerful vehicle for innovation. And while a venture's failure might be what's visible to the outsider, what keeps them up at night isn’t failure at the venture level — it’s failure at the systemic level within the studio. One bad entity design. One IP misstep. One governance gap. That’s how studio operations fall apart. We break down how to spot (and fix) these cracks before they turn into fault lines in our latest paper, "The GP Dilemma" - DM me and I'll send you a copy!

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Big milestone for Ayar Labs — $500M Series E at a $3.75B valuation. This raise underscores just how critical optical I/O and co-packaged optics (CPO) have become in the AI and HPC era. As compute scales, the bottleneck is no longer just processing — it’s moving massive amounts of data efficiently, with lower power and latency. That’s where Ayar’s photonics platform is positioned to fundamentally reshape system architecture. Notably, this round combines top-tier institutional investors (Neuberger Berman, ARK, Insight, QIA, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, 1789 Capital) alongside strategic leaders like AMD, MediaTek, NVIDIA, and Alchip. That mix of financial and commercial backers signals both capital confidence and ecosystem pull. The focus now: scaling high-volume production and test capacity to accelerate deployment of their CPO solution. Moving from breakthrough technology to manufacturing scale is the real unlock. Congrats to the Ayar Labs team on continuing to push the semiconductor and photonics frontier forward. #optical #photonics #semiconductor #AI #HPC

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