Morning VC Brief丨2025.03.06

Week10 Highlights丨Odeko, Peregrine, Aescape, Viam, LlamaIndex, Firsthand, Swap, Capow, Freed, Gem Health, Momentic, Deepnight

Author

eric gu
March 06, 2025

Morning VC Brief is an expert daily curation of tech and venture news. Feel free to forward; the sign-up is here

00. TL;DR

01. Venture News

1/ Operations Platform for F&B Business Odeko raised $126M Series E

  • Product: Provides 14,000+ independent F&B businesses with a unified portal for supply ordering, vendor management, and financial solutions

  • Highlight: Expanded services via acquisition of Butter Insurance; Enabled 80% growth for suppliers like tea brand Dona through market access; Added industry veterans to executive team

  • Investor: B Capital (Lead), Banc of California(Debt)

  • #Vertical SaaS #Retail - Source

2/ Public Safety Support Platform Peregrine raised $190M Series C at $2.5B

  • Product: Backend data integration and frontend analytics platform for public safety (crime reduction, disaster management) and commercial use cases (fraud detection, healthcare)

  • Highlight: Tripled annual revenues for 3 consecutive years; Deployed by New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX security coordination; Expanding into international law enforcement and private sectors

  • Investor: Sequoia Capital (Lead), Goldcrest Capital, Friends & Family Capital

  • #Vertical AI #GovTech - Source

3/ AI Wellness Robotics Aescape raised $83M Venture Round

  • Product: AI-powered robotic massage systems for personalized fitness recovery and wellness

  • Highlight: Expanded partnership with Equinox to deploy AI massage in 60 U.S. locations, boosting membership growth; Secured partnerships with Four Seasons, Marriott, and Ritz-Carlton in hospitality and sports sectors

  • Investor: Valor Equity Partners (Lead), Fifth Wall, Alumni Ventures

  • #Robotics #Wellness - Source

4/ AI-Physical Integration Platform Viam raised $30M Series C

  • Product: Software platform connecting AI/data to physical systems for automation in manufacturing, marine tech, and sports/entertainment

  • Highlight: Enables legacy industries to adopt AI-driven automation using existing infrastructure; Accelerating European expansion

  • Investor: Union Square Ventures(Lead), Neurone Ventures(Lead), Ferrari Family

  • #AI #Simulation - Source

5/ Enterprise Knowledge Management Platform LlamaIndex raised $19M Series A

  • Product: Enables enterprises to build AI agents for processing complex data, offering document parsing (LlamaParse), knowledge management (LlamaCloud), and multi-agent application frameworks

  • Highlight: 3M+ monthly downloads, 40K GitHub stars; trusted by KPMG, Rakuten, and Salesforce

  • Investor: Norwest Venture Partners (Lead), Greylock Partner

  • #AI Agent #AIOps - Source 

6/ AI Marketing Platform Firsthand raised $26M Series A

  • Product: AI-powered Brand Agent Platform enabling personalized consumer engagement via AI-driven brand representatives

  • Highlight: Transforms ads into dynamic interactions; integrates Lakebed™ for secure data control

  • Investor: Radical Ventures(Lead), FirstMark Capital, Aperiam Ventures

  • #AI #GTM - Source

7/ Cross-Border E-Commerce Platform Swap raised $40M Series B

  • Product: Unified platform for managing cross-border logistics, tariffs, inventory, and returns for global e-commerce merchants

  • Highlight: 500+ brands onboard (initially focused on fashion); expanding to beauty, home goods, and consumer tech; Founded by ex-DTC entrepreneurs (Slow Goods), solving pain points from their own cross-border trade challenges

  • Investor: Iconiq Growth(Lead), Cherry Ventures, QED Investors

  • #E-Commerce - Source

8/ Robotics In-motion Electric Charging System Capow raised $15M Series A

  • Product: "Genesis" in-motion power delivery system eliminating charging downtime for robotic fleets, reducing Li-ion battery dependency

  • Highlight: 45% operational efficiency boost and 32% cost reduction for clients

  • Investor: Toyota Ventures(Lead), IL Ventures, Elements VC

  • #Robotics #Energy - Source

9/ AI Medical Scribe Platform Freed raised $30M Series A

  • Product: Automates specialty-specific clinical notes, integrates with EHR systems, and offers smart visit preparation to reduce administrative burdens

  • Highlight: Used by 17,000+ clinicians, generates 70k daily notes (2M+ monthly), and has saved 2.7M+ clinician hours

  • Investor: Sequoia Capital(Lead), Scale Venture Partners, Daniel Gross

  • #Vertical AI #Healthcare - Source

10/ Virtual Sleep Care Startup Gem Health raised $7M Series A

  • Product: AI-driven virtual sleep care platform (GEM SLEEP) offering remote diagnosis/treatment for conditions like sleep apnea, eliminating clinic visits

  • Highlight: 70% patient retention beyond 30 days (vs. 40-50% industry average); 7x revenue growth in 2024

  • Investor: HealthTrend Capital(Lead), LFE Capital(Lead), Base10 Partners

  • #AI #Wellness - Source

11/ AI Software Testing Startup Momentic raised $3.7M Seed

  • Product: AI-driven testing platform that converts natural language instructions into browser interactions, eliminating flaky scripts

  • Highlight: Reduces test automation time by 70%, lowers flakiness by 99%, executes millions of daily steps, and serves clients like GPTZero

  • Investor: FundersClub(Lead), AI Grant, Y Combinator

  • #AI #AIOps - Source

12/ AI Night Vision Software Deepnight raised $5.5M Seed

  • Product: AI-powered smartphone software replacing $13k+ analog night vision goggles with real-time 90fps low-light imaging

  • Highlight: Costs $99/month via app vs. traditional $13k-30k devices; uses on-device AI accelerators; military interest validated via YC demo

  • Investor: Andreessen Horowitz(Lead), Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins

  • #AI #CV - Source