Entrepreneurs First

Certo has raised a $4M Seed round led by Daphni to build the AI-powered compliance platform for beauty and consumer goods brands. Founded by Bastien and Jean, Certo helps regulatory teams review products across ingredients, formulas, claims, labelling and market entry, turning a process that can take days into minutes. The platform is already used by leading beauty and CPG companies across Europe and the US to navigate growing regulatory complexity across 40+ markets. Proud to back this team from day zero at EF.

Thanks @creandum for tonight! Good to bump into some @join_ef alum ❤️

Scope AI has raised $20M led by Index Ventures to build the future of inspection. Inspection is the most common way physical data is collected, underpinning the integrity, operation, and safety of every industry. Yet the software these inspections run on hasn’t changed in 20 years. Founded by Jonathan Low and Jakob Cassiman, Scope is building the AI-native paradigm for the 10x inspection engineer to speed up industrial inspection workflows, from reporting to asset integrity. Proud to back Jonathan and Jakob from day zero at EF.

We hosted 300 of SF’s best VCs in our office two weeks ago. 17 teams took the stage to share their story and ambition. If you missed our April 26 Demo Day, the full recording is now available: youtu.be/pbevtn0Beg4

Very few people have seen my childhood magic tricks. I found old clips of me doing judo, making random videos, and taking card tricks way too seriously. That obsession is the job. We’re hiring creators at @join_ef. London + SF. If you made holiday edits, Fortnite montages, or random internet videos before anyone cared, DM me.

@join_ef just kicked off one of its biggest cohorts ever last week. After spending the last 6 months carefully selecting and curating every individual in this batch, I now get to work closely with ~100 exceptional folks coming together to build from scratch.

Helicon is building autonomous factories to mass produce carbon fiber parts for unmanned systems. Their platform, Argos, runs the full composite engineering loop automatically, connecting DFM, mold design, simulation, quoting, manufacturing, and quality inspection into one system. It turns composite production from a manual, artisanal process into a scalable one, collapsing lead times and unlocking the industrialization of composites. Their mission: accelerate the world's transition to advanced materials. Meet @alexnhaus and Edmundo

Asterix Health has raised a £2.1M pre-seed round led by TriplePoint VC to expand remote GP services for UK healthcare providers. Proud to back Julian & Max from day zero at EF.

Lucentia (@Sahar_Jal) is coming out of stealth to build a new generation of heart imaging.

Excited for May.

- Icarus Robotics partnered with Voyager Technologies for JOYRIDE-1, its year-long free-flying robotics deployment to the ISS, scheduled for early 2027

The most important updates aren’t always fundraises. Here’s what else happened across the EF portfolio 🧵

Proud to back this team from day zero at EF.

The team is also introducing Gaudi-1, its first proprietary model for automated architectural generation under regulatory constraints, already achieving state-of-the-art results on floor-plan generation benchmarks.

Davis AI is emerging from stealth with a $5.5M pre-seed round led by Heartcore Capital and Balderton Capital to accelerate early-stage real estate development with AI.