Upfront Ventures

The becvrd.com team knows the ins and outs of the benefits and govt contractor space better than anyone, and now they have even more capital to accelerate in this quietly massive market. Excited to have @upfrontvc leading the seed after @LookingGlassCap's pre-seed investment upfront.com/thoughts/backi…

Incredibly excited to lead Village's $9.5M Seed Round alongside Bling Capital, GTMfund, and Perceptive Ventures. Working with @IAmBrandonTerry, @_allansmith_, and the rest of the Village team has been an nothing short of astounding. Changing the paradigm for pediatric specialty care is no small undertaking, but we have no doubt this is the team that will do it. A special thank you to @BrockEWTurner and the @axios team for covering the story.

When my daughter was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition, my family entered a healthcare system that simply wasn’t built for kids like her. We spent years navigating waitlists, fragmented care, and thousands in monthly out-of-pocket costs — all while acting as the quarterback between providers who rarely spoke to each other. And we learned quickly that we weren’t alone. Nearly 1 in 5 children in the U.S. face developmental, behavioral, or mental health needs — and millions of families are navigating the same broken system. That’s why Village exists. Today, we’re excited to announce that Village has raised $9.5M led by @upfrontvc , with participation from @blingcapital , @gtmfund , and @PerceptiveVC to build a modern health system for specialty pediatrics. Fortunate to have so many great partners like @kesarvarma @XtinaFattore @kevinyzhang @msuster @bling0 @kylelui @KomalKothariMD @HackItMax @PaulGTM @CamiloBAcosta and so many more. We’re building infrastructure that helps families find care faster, enables providers to focus on patients instead of paperwork, and brings care teams together in one place. This is just the beginning. Grateful to our team, providers, families, and investors who believe this system can be rebuilt. Read more in Axios here: axios.com/pro/health-tec…

At events like this, I’m always reminded that the future of health, longevity, and innovation is built through conversation. Thank you to @upfrontvc and @FenwickWest for bringing together such an inspiring group of founders, investors, and innovators for an evening of thoughtful discussion and meaningful connection. Some of the most important breakthroughs don’t start in the lab or clinic. They start with people like Upront Team host @XtinaFattore willing to ask better questions. Grateful to be part of the conversation.

Will be there too! Week of 6/22. Planning a few founder dinners, join us!

Going to be in London (and hopefully Vienna) this summer. Who should I meet with while I'm in town?

Had a great time in Princeton & Boston with @pzakin this week. A few highlights: - electrical engineering is cool again - debates on PhDs vs dropping out - students are crashing their laptops using local models & RL

Our Co-Founder & CEO, @IanCinnamon, recently spoke at @upfrontvc's 2026 Upfront Summit on the very challenge Apex was founded to address: ensuring the U.S. beats our adversaries and wins this critical space race. As satellites have evolved from niche technology into foundational infrastructure that powers our daily lives, their resilience (through proliferation) is now core to our society's continued connectivity, security, and innovation. In this 7-minute talk, Ian breaks down: – Why satellites are more central to daily life and national security than ever before – Why the legacy model of building bespoke, expensive satellites is a strategic liability – How proliferated constellations of smaller satellites create resilience and redundancy (a trend we see extending beyond space to land, air, and sea) – How China is outpacing the U.S. in government & civil satellite deployments (and what that means for strategic dominance) – Why Los Angeles is emerging as the hub for the next era of space infrastructure, and how that talent ecosystem is powering Apex Want to play a part in the New Space Race? Join us: apexspace.com/careers

Enterprise software development agents are stress-testing sandbox infrastructure in ways that were not anticipated when most of these systems were designed. At the recent @daytonaio Compute Conference, @EnoReyes, co-founder & CTO of Factory joined @pzakin, VC at @upfrontvc to examine what persistence, branching execution, and self-hosted control need to look like as software development agents take on longer, more complex, and more compliance-sensitive workloads.

Our Co-founder & CEO Geoffrey von Maltzahn at #UpfrontSummit, hosted by @upfrontvc, on why LILA will reshape medicine, energy, and scientific discovery for generations, and the glimpses we're already seeing of what's possible. youtube.com/watch?v=0KnOKG…

"Agents really love files. They might need to tap into files you've curated or want to share with them — but you probably want a partitioned file system that only the agent has access to and can't touch other things." @Levie spoke at @daytonaio's Compute Conference with @msuster on why agents need file systems and why getting that foundation right is one of the most important infrastructure decisions enterprises will make.

Every enterprise has decades of knowledge locked in documents that no one can find. Agents are the first technology that can actually do something with all of it. Recently at the @daytonaio Compute Conference, @levie, co-founder/ceo of @Box, joined @msuster, general partner at @upfrontvc, to explore what the content layer needs to become when agents are reading, generating, and acting on unstructured data at scale.

It was awesome to host @msuster last night. He’s been on both sides of the table: first a founder, now an investor @upfrontvc. Two takeaways that stuck: Build real rapport and connection. With teammates, investors, customers. Early success comes down to the founder and the early team. If you can’t connect, you can’t recruit or sell. Your 20s and 30s are your shot clock. Be on the court. Building, even with high failure rates, is worth it for the lessons alone. We really enjoyed this one. 🌋

In Princeton (4/14) and Boston (4/15) to run back our student founder events. DM @pzakin or me for an invite, only a few spots left in each city.

Will be in NY, Princeton, and Boston next week. Excited to catch up with mutuals and folks building something great in AI and dev tools. A few particular areas of interest/questions I'm thinking about:

Agents are becoming the primary consumers of APIs. At the Daytona Compute Conference, @a85, Co-founder and CEO of @getpostman, sat down with @pzakin, Partner at @upfrontvc, to discuss how API design needs to evolve as a result, and what that means for every developer building today.

Beaming power from space to Earth is no longer sci-fi. @AetherfluxUSA is building the infrastructure to deliver electricity to off-grid locations, support contested environments, and eventually power drones from orbit. @BaijuBhatt shared more about his company & vision at the #UpfrontSummit 👇

Today, we're making Creator Studio available to everyone. Bring a prompt, a Figma file, or a URL and walk away with a polished video your team can actually use. No agency, no design queue and no five-figure budget.

At the #UpfrontSummit, @dps of @dreamer, @claybavor of @SierraPlatform, and Laela Sturdy of CapitalG got into what it takes to build agents people can trust: - Safe deployment at scale is harder than it looks - Seat-based pricing models are under pressure under SaaSpocalpyse - And a new role called the AI Architect is already emerging inside enterprise teams "The last mile is actually the last 80 miles." - Clay Bavor on why building an agent is the easy part. Watch the full conversation moderated by @shiringhaffary on our YT channel

AI will cure many diseases and destroy entire professions. Both are true. @sacca spoke at @upfrontvc about the gray area of AI, balancing energy demand, and why our only edge left against superintelligence is to be weird and unafraid to make mistakes. youtube.com/watch?v=0yfD7b…