2025 “Fund Zero” report
Last year the seeds started to sprout...
When you’re starting a new fund, and you already have a portfolio as an angel investor or other role that isn’t leading a fund, some people refer to that portfolio as your “Fund Zero”.
Despite overall challenging market conditions, my Fund Zero had a good year in 2025.
Highlights from the angel investing portfolio:
EXITS
BillionToOne went public in Nov 2025! They’re now at a $3.2B market cap, well above their $2.4B target. They have a non-invasive alternative to amniocentesis that can be provided for every pregnancy in the world to test for genetic defects, which is now a $200M+ annual revenue business and doubling annually for the last two years. They also provide highly accurate liquid biopsies. I joined via SPV at the Series A, and this looks like a 16X net markup.
Two secondary exits: a confidential semiconductor fab at a 6X net markup, and Verse Medical (AI-enabled ordering for at-home healthcare) at a 22X net markup.
MILESTONES
Jumbotail raised a $120M Series D at a unicorn valuation to rebuild the Indian kirana supply chain. Jumbotail is tackling a uniquely Indian challenge – India’s grocery retail market is dominated by roughly 20 million kirana (mom-and-pop) stores that handle about 90% of the country’s FMCG transactions. Jumbotail built a full-stack B2B platform to serve this fragmented, under-digitized segment. Beyond being a wholesale marketplace online, Jumbotail also provides the physical supply chain infrastructure (warehouses and delivery), and financial services such as working capital credit and POS systems. You hear about Flipkart because Walmart bought it, it’s in the biggest cities, and it’s the most like Amazon. But in the long run, I believe Jumbotail could have a higher impact in India.
Axiom Space conducted their 4th successful commercial human spaceflight mission onboard the International Space Station (ISS), which included the USA, India, Poland, and Hungary. They finished their first module for their ISS replacement space station planned to fly in 2028, and completed the first vacuum test of their next-gen spacesuit (in collaboration with NASA). Axiom Space has the exclusive right to dock with the ISS until it is deprecated later this decade – although there are two well funded companies building private space stations, Axiom has a first mover advantage for complex missions with sovereign nations.
ProteinQure (AI-powered drug discovery) reached their first clinical trial dosing for cancer patients. They went from first program start to clinical trial for their AI-designed peptide for triple-negative breast cancer in just three years with $16M in funding. That is extreme speed and efficiency. They have unique IP around using quantum computers to generate data for ML models of non-natural amino acids.
Contraline completed their first 24-month trial of their injectable (and reversible) gel contraceptive for men while demonstrating safety and efficacy, and they licensed in the NES/T topical contraceptive hormone treatment for men to prepare it for Phase III trials. Contraline is emerging as a leader for male contraception, as covered in this Fast Company article. Their proprietary injectable material (ADAM) can be applied in just ten minutes, and can be just as easily reversed. It will be like an IUD for men.
Green Canopy Node achieved monthly breakeven after building 300+ homes and five real estate funds! They have a modular kit for building all the parts of a home OTHER than the prefab structure, allowing ultra-rapid home assembly on-site.
CapConnect+ built an auction marketplace for commercial paper, and in 2025 had over $11B in issuances and reached profitability! They achieve in minutes what used to take hours or days. Haven’t heard of commercial paper? The market size is $1.4 trillion. And their tech works for corporate bonds too.
Jeeves, the LATAM fintech unicorn (corporate cards, expense management, B2B cross-border trade) is launching stablecoin-backed credit cards throughout the region. In just 6 months during 2025, they doubled topline revenue and ARPU.
Sandbox VR is a narrative violation – a live VR events franchise thriving at a time when Meta and Apple seem to be throwing in the towel on VR devices in favor of AR. Now backed by a16z and Alibaba, in 2025 they reached 60 locations worldwide, and have another 60 locations now under development.
Asymmetry Ventures syndicate companies are thriving too.
Quaise Energy, a leader in ultradeep geothermal energy, drilled 100 meters down through granite with millimeter wave radiation from gyrotrons. Watch the video.
Kernal Bio, an mRNA platform company with a half dozen drugs in pipeline, was awarded up to $48 million in funding from ARPA-H to accelerate in vivo CAR-T therapies toward the clinic.This milestone supports their mission to deliver scalable, lower-cost treatments for hematological cancers and autoimmune diseases.
Array Labs announced partnerships with Umbra, Raytheon, Maxar and DARPA, and raised a $20M Series A round led by Catapult. Array Labs provides 3D imaging of the Earth using rotating cubesat arrays.
EarthAI closed a $20M round for AI-powered mineral discovery, backed by Tamarack Global and Cantos Ventures, after discovering one of the largest palladium deposits in Australia. Earth AI discovers, develops (i.e. conducts initial drilling), and sells off interests in critical mineral projects to enterprise mining companies. Their success rate in validating sites is an absurd 75% vs. the industry average of 0.5%.
Rubedo Life Sciences signed a term sheet with a Tier 1 VC for a large Series B, finished their Phase 1 clinical trial and received FDA clearance for Phase 1b/2a clinical trials for actinic keratosis. Rubedo is pioneering the use of AI-powered drug design for senolytics drugs (i.e. drugs that selectively eliminate senescent cells). This is a longevity play long-term with immediate applications to skin disease in the short term.
Featherless AI provides blazing fast and high utilization serverless LLM hosting (inference) with their ability to hot swap ML models on GPUs. They are a key partner to HuggingFace and serve over 12,000 of their open-source ML models. After hitting 6B tokens served daily in 2025, they closed a Series A that is still confidential, led by Tier 1 CVCs from the chip and aerospace sectors.
Odys Aviation makes hybrid-electric vTOL (vertical takeoff/landing) aircraft for both unmanned and manned use. They closed a $26M Series A funding round, achieved transition flight, were awarded 3 Phase II SBIR contracts, completed builds for their first pre-production Laila aircraft, and their order book grew into the billions. They announced their first Operational Launch Program (OLP) in Oman and a POC trial with Fiji Airways.
Enlightra emerged from stealth and announced $15M raised to replace copper wires with optical chip-to-chip communication in data centers.
Wispr Flow, which has the best voice dictation software on the planet in my personal experience, closed a $30M Series A led by Menlo Ventures, and just a few months later, added another $25M from Notable Capital.
Unspun, inventors of robotic “3D weaving” of clothes, announced their $32M Series B and a major partnership with Walmart.