DCVC

Ron Alfa, MD, PhD is speaking at SynBioBeta in May and you probably already know who he is if you've been paying any attention to the AI x bio space. Ron spent years at Recursion as SVP of Research and acting CSO, helping build one of the most ambitious tech-bio platforms in the industry, shepherding programs across rare disease, neuroscience, oncology, and immunology from discovery into the clinic. Recursion went on to land landmark deals with Roche, Genentech, Sanofi, and Bayer. Ron was one of the architects of how that science got built. Then he left to found NOETIK — and made a bet that the real unlock in oncology wasn't another drug. It was building AI that actually understands human tumors at the patient level. The result is OCTO: a virtual cell foundation model trained on hundreds of millions of spatially resolved human tumor and immune cells. Instead of running experiments in mice and hoping they translate, Noetik lets you simulate how a patient's tumor will behave, which patients will respond to a given therapy, and why. In January, GSK licensed it for $50M. That's right. Not a drug, not a clinical asset, a model. Agenus is using it to identify responders to their lead IO combination. Stanford University's Bio-X called Ron one of the most important physician-scientists working at the intersection of technology and medicine. If you are wondering where biopharma partnerships are heading and the people defining that shift. You'll find your answers on stage at SynBioBeta May 4 - 7th in San Jose. A ticket link is available in the comments.

Enterprise communications stacks were built on an assumption that no longer holds: that the person on the other end of the call is who they claim to be. Today, generative AI tools enable bad actors to impersonate and defraud at scale. Orange Business just changed that equation. Together, Orange Business and Reality Defender are bringing multimodal deepfake detection into the enterprise communications infrastructure that 7,000+ companies already rely on. Detection isn't a standalone tool organizations have to find and deploy on their own. Because our platform integrates seamlessly with existing systems, it is now a native capability inside voice workflows like those used by Orange Business. This is what trust infrastructure looks like at enterprise-grade scale: combining turnkey integrations in everyday communication apps to protect assets and preserve trust. Read the full blog below to learn how we are embedding real-time, operational deepfake defense from day one. https://lnkd.in/ekAwYKpk

Announcing NVCA's 2026 Startup Innovator: Radiant! What does it take to solve one of America's most urgent energy challenges? Innovative solutions like a portable nuclear microreactor with 110x the energy density of existing diesel systems that fit in a shipping container. That's exactly what Radiant is building with their Kaleidos 1MW microreactor — the world’s first portable, zero-emissions power source. And that's exactly why we're proud to name them NVCA's 2026 Startup Innovator. "Radiant is a powerful example of American innovation rising to meet our most urgent energy challenges... ushering in a new era of advanced nuclear energy." — Bobby Franklin, President & CEO, NVCA We'll celebrate Radiant and our other 2026 award winners at the annual NVCA Leadership Awards Dinner on May 14 at the Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, CA. 📅 Mark your calendars to join the celebration. Registration is required → https://lnkd.in/e3wr-T9S  Congratulations to the entire Radiant team! This is the kind of bold, high-conviction innovation the venture community exists to back. 

Excited to report that longtime DCVC #quantum company Horizon Quantum (whom we've backed since 2018) has gone public on Nasdaq ($HQ)! Huge congrats to Joe Fitzsimons and the whole HQ team! https://lnkd.in/gWeEkT4H

Five DCVC-backed companies named to TIME and Statista Green Tech 100 list, including spots #1 and #2! Congratulations Fervo Energy (#1), Pivot Bio (#2), Lunar Energy, Mainspring Energy, and Zap Energy 🎉