Morning VC Brief丨2025.04.30

Week18 Highlights丨Chainguard, Apex, Lightrun, Reducto, Nous Research, Superpower, IXI, Deepinfra, Ravenna

Author

eric gu
April 30, 2025

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

TL;DR

01. Venture News

1/ Open Source Supply Chain Security Startup Chainguard raised $356M Series D

  • Product: Securing open source supply chain through hardened container images (1,400+), VMs, and libraries built via its automated "Chainguard Factory"

  • Highlight: Revenue surged from $5M to $40M in a year (targeting $100M+ in 2025); saved customers 288k+ engineering hours

  • Investor: Kleiner Perkins(Lead), IVP(Lead), Salesforce Ventures

  • Source

2/ Satellite Bus Manufacturing Startup Apex raised $200M Series C

  • Product: World's first configurable satellite bus platforms for defense and commercial missions

  • Highlight: Achieved 1-year on-orbit milestone for debut mission; secured $46M U.S. Space Force contract

  • Investor: Point72 Ventures(Lead), 8VC(Lead), a16z

  • Source

3/ Autonomous Code Remediation Platform Lightrun raised $70M Series B

  • Product: AI-driven Autonomous Remediation Platform enabling real-time code fixes for runtime issues

  • Highlight: Cuts issue resolution from days to minutes; adopted by F10 financial giants

  • Investor: Accel(Lead), Insight Partner(Lead)

  • Source

4/ Unstructured Data Processing Startup Reducto raised $24.5M Series A

  • Product: AI-powered document parsing platform combining computer vision and Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to convert complex documents into LLM-ready data

  • Highlight: Processes 100M+ documents for clients like Scale AI and FAANG companies

  • Investor: Benchmark(Lead), First Round Capital, Y Combinator

  • Source

5/ Decentralized AI Training Platform Nous Research raised $50M Series A

  • Product: Decentralized AI training infrastructure enabling distributed model development

  • Highlight: Targets demand for privacy-preserving AI collaboration; leverages blockchain-inspired distributed computing architecture

  • Investor: Paradigm(Lead)

  • Source

6/ AI-Powered Health Platform Superpower raised $30M Series A

  • Product: A super app offering biannual lab testing (100+ biomarkers across 21 categories) combined with AI-driven health insights, personalized action plans, and access to a healthcare provider marketplace

  • Highlight: 150,000 waitlist users; integrates medical records, fitness trackers, and genetics

  • Investor: Forerunner(Lead), Day One Ventures, Susa Ventures

  • Source

7/ Autofocus Eyewear Startup IXI raised $24.5M Series A

  • Product: Auto-adjusting prescription glasses using eye-tracking and liquid crystal lenses for presbyopia correction

  • Highlight: Founded by ex-Nokia/Microsoft HoloLens team; targets $200B+ eyewear market growing 8% annually

  • Investor: Plural(Lead), Amazon Alexa Fund

  • Source

8/ Open Source AI Infrastructure Deepinfra raised $18M Series A

  • Product: Production-grade infrastructure platform for deploying AI models at scale

  • Highlight: Scaled processing volume 8,000x since seed stage; secured NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to support rapid growth

  • Investor: Felicis(Lead)

  • Source

9/ AI Enterprise Service Management Startup Ravenna raised $15M Seed

  • Product: AI-native internal support platform integrated with Slack for IT/HR/operations workflows

  • Highlight: Cuts ticket volume by 70% via AI automation; Focuses on Slack-first UX and zero-learning-curve design

  • Investor: Khosla Ventures(Lead), Madrona(Lead)

  • Source