Jason Chen

Today, we're launching AEC-Bench — the first open, multimodal agent benchmark for construction. 196 tasks across real construction documents. Full agent harness. Automated evaluation. Apache 2.0. We benchmarked Claude Code, Codex, and our own agent. Here's what we found 🧵

Thank you to our investors for supporting Valinor in our mission to use AI to transform clinical trials, which are the core bottleneck to drug development. The work ahead is clear: partner with drug developers to bring better medicines to market faster by making every clinical trial smarter, more targeted, and more likely to succeed for patients. Now back to work!

They're hiring! More details here: orchard.ai/careers

Real innovation in agriculture (AI or otherwise) requires bridging a massive data gap. Orchard does this, and so much more. Today, they've built the trusted OS for modern farms all over the country. Congrats @charliewu and @orchard_robots on this deserved milestone!

@charliewu @orchard_robots Congrats!!

I'm excited to announce our $22M Series A here at Orchard!🍎 Here @Orchard_Robots, we’re securing America’s food supply by building the AI farmer that automates our nation’s farms. Our mission is to make farming profitable, efficient, and sustainable again.

Contrary’s VP program continues to be the very best place to accelerate your path in startups and tech. If you’re a builder looking for others who share your ambition and drive, the VP program is for you. Apply today!

@danielreidcahn Congrats on launch!

I’m excited to announce Ash by Slingshot AI, the first AI designed for therapy backed by $93M in funding from the world’s top mission-driven investors.

They said it couldn't be done. They said it *shouldn't* be done. We tried anyways. Today we're launching Ash, the first AI designed for therapy, and announcing $93M in funding from @radicalventures @ForerunnerVC @a16z @felicis @trailmixvc @joinsequel and many more. We've had 50k people using it, with pretty transformative results. Here's my co-founder @danielreidcahn telling our story. Link to Ash below.

First tweet ever. Hopefully the Series C won’t be the second. @_MomentHQ has raised a $36M Series B led by @indexventures to automate the $150T fixed income market. We're also announcing our partnership with LPL Financial, the largest broker-dealer in the U.S. Our team automated bond trading at Citadel and Jane Street - now we’ve assembled a world-class team to power every mission-critical workflow in fixed income. Thanks @PaigeSmithNews for the write-up in @business, and to @a16z, @lightspeedvp, @Venrock, @neo & @contrary for the continued support. And welcome, @janatindex to the board.

A fantastic read from @CoryBAnderson and the @Contrary_Res team on the past, present, and future of America's electrical grid. Coauthored with @alexstratmoen and @AryanAfrouzi, who are working hard to fix it!

Learn more here: contrary.com/blog/investing…

I’m thrilled to announce we’ve led @voltraenergy's pre-seed. Breakthroughs in energy technology across batteries, nuclear, solar, wind, and more speak to the potential for resource abundance and meaningful progress in energy production. Energy demand, spurred on by rapid innovations in AI and the push to increase domestic industrial production, is expected to grow faster than ever before. But against this backdrop is aging infrastructure and an electrical grid that is ill-prepared to handle the increased load. The average current age of US transmission lines is 40 years old. Many of the country’s power transformers are at or beyond their expected lifespan. Put simply, the grid is old and vulnerable. To fix this, we obviously need to build new infrastructure. But that is costly, time-intensive, and mired in political and regulatory complexity. To supplement this, and to ensure that we can prepare for tomorrow’s energy demands today, we also need better software that is not built for Windows Vista. Enter Voltra. Their lofty goal is to build the operating system for the electrical grid - a unified platform that allows any energy-related asset to seamlessly connect and work together. Most solutions today are asset- or company-specific, and very few speak or work together. Voltra aims to change that. They are launching today with their first product, Charge. Built for electric vehicle charging, it has intelligent load management, real-time grid coordination, and a unified API across multi-vendor hardware and systems. More important, it provides access to the thousands of physical assets and vendors that will serve as the foundation to a more intelligent grid. Congratulations to @alexstratmoen and @AryanAfrouzi and the whole Voltra team! Also - no joke - I got a power outage while drafting this last night. We need to fix this!

@alexstratmoen Excited!

It’s been many sleepless nights, and a wild ride, but I am so excited to announce today, Voltra has raised a 1.8M Pre-Seed lead by our amazing partners at Contrary, with participation from Hanover and the brand new Velocity Fund II. Voltra.com/helloworld

@AryanAfrouzi Excited!

Today we are announcing the launch of our first product charge alongside a 1.8M Pre Seed raise lead by Contrary with participation from Hanover and Velocity Fund. So excited for what the next chapter of Voltra will hold!

Today we're excited to launch Valinor Discovery!

The diamond drill rig for mineral exploration was first tested in Minnesota in 1890 and hasn't seen a fundamental innovation since 1953. We @durinmining built a remotely operable drill rig in 4 months. Our next version will be autonomous. Testing begins in Nevada next week.

Just closed our first million dollar deal 🥳 With a customer that grew ~50x in 6 months of using our tech 💪 Never been more bullish on Orchard 🍎

This is what tech media is missing - a digestible, daily show that examines the most important tech stories of the day from the perspective of those in the arena. Excited!!

We're excited to share DOSS.COM with the world, and congratulate them on an $18M Series A! The 21st Century is finally dawning for ERP systems. @wileycwj and Arnav are doing their part to bring systems of record to the cutting edge. contrary.com/blog/investing…