Welcome to another issue of Vesting Weekly. After a brief hiatus I’m happy to announce we are back and plan to start with a weekly cadence moving forward. We’ll be experimenting with the format and content, but want to make sure it’s extremely valuable for you so if you have any feedback or suggestions on what you would want to see please reply and let us know! We’ll read and reply to everyone!
This week, Bryce was on the ground at a16z Speedrun's Demo Day in San Francisco. Tons of investors in one room watching the next generation of founders pitch. The energy was different. I'll tell you everything below.
Let's get into it.
📊 THE NUMBERS
The data founders actually care about, every week.
Global VC deployed in Q1 2026 - $300B (all-time record)
% of Q1 funding that went to AI - 80%
Seed deal count change YoY - 30% (but round sizes up 31%)
Biggest round this week - Slate Auto $650M Series C
Y Combinator S26 Deadline - May 4th at 8PM PT
💸 ROUNDS THIS WEEK
The deals that moved the needle this week
Slate Auto — $650M Series C Jeff Bezos-backed EV startup building an affordable pickup truck, targeting a sub-$30K price point in a market where everyone else is going upmarket. TWG Global led the round. The company has now raised $1.4B total and is aiming to start production by end of 2026. The kicker: the CEO, co-founder, and some of the leadership team came from Amazon.
Hermeus — $350M Equity + Debt Unmanned hypersonic aircraft. No pilots. Mach 5+. Khosla Ventures led with Founders Fund participating. They're building unmanned fighters and want defense contracts. One of the wildest bets in venture right now.
Glydways — $170M Series C Dedicated autonomous vehicle guideway network, small lanes, purpose-built EVs, moving people at transit-level throughput without mixing with regular traffic. Suzuki, ACS Group, and Khosla co-led. Their first public networks go live in 2026.
Sygaldry Technologies — $105M Series A Quantum-accelerated AI servers designed to sit inside existing data centers, not replace them. Breakthrough Energy Ventures led. YC and In-Q-Tel backed. The "quantum in the rack" thesis is getting serious money behind it.
nEye.ai — $80M Series C Optical circuit switching for AI data centers, basically solving the bottleneck that slows down model training when data can't move fast enough between compute and memory. Sutter Hill led, CapitalG and Microsoft M12 participated.
Mintlify — $45M Series B AI-readable developer documentation infrastructure. If you've used any modern dev tool recently, you've probably hit their docs. One of the quieter SaaS compounders getting a real growth round.
🎬 THIS WEEK ON VESTING
In case you missed us.
🎯 COVER STORY: INSIDE A16Z SPEEDRUN DEMO DAY
Bryce was in the room. Here's what he saw.
A16z held the Demo Day for Speedrun SR006 this week, its most selective startup accelerator. Tons of investors. Two-minute pitches. Companies that started with just an idea 12 weeks ago.
Here's what you need to know about Speedrun:
They invest up to $1M per company — $500K upfront for 10% equity, plus $500K reserved for your next round
Every accepted startup gets $5M+ in cloud and AI credits
They've deployed $180M+ across 150+ startups since launching in 2023
SR005 had 14,000+ applications with a sub-0.5% acceptance rate. More selective than Harvard. More valuable than most MBAs.
Brycent’s Thoughts on Speedrun Demo Day
3 Startups that I thought were interesting…
Loops AI - Applied AI company that enables brands to sell more through agentic commerce. Selling outcomes through guided shopping experiences.
Thesis: Loops AI will improve shopping experiences by creating an integrated knowledge source that allows customers to ask questions related to sizing and get detailed responses on the items they are looking to buy. Imagine you have all of your sizing information you're trying to understand whether or not a sweater will fit you. Based on the knowledge source that Loop's AI would have, you could provide your sizing information and even photos and loops would be able to give you an accurate understanding of whether or not certain sizes would fit.
Loops AI
Omi Health - Function Health for Pets
Thesis: Pet owners love their pets just as much as parents love their kids. However, health data on animals has always been confusing and less democratized. Often, you're going to the vet when your dog has an issue, but what if you could prevent those issues before they happen? This company has a ton of potential, and I'm willing to take the bet that millions of pet owners would love to be able to detect diseases before they happen
Omi Health
Syncere - Robotic lamp that does your chores
Thesis: Syncere here is building a robotic lamp that does your chores. After seeing the lamp in person, the ingenuity, the craftsmanship, and the sleek design, I'm a firm believer that they could revolutionize the in-home AI space. The products don't feel dystopian; they feel warm, sensible and of human touch. There is never an easy road to building hardware that people love, but they have the potential to be a huge player in consumer, in-home hardware.
The bigger picture: Speedrun is quietly becoming one of the most important early stage launchpads in tech. After speaking with multiple founders from the event, I can confidently say that speedrun leaves founders feeling supported through and through. Many of them stress the importance of the partners and how instrumental they were throughout the batch.
Above I’ve inserted three gems that I think have the chance to do incredible things, but overall, the quality of speedrun is looking great.
-Bryce
SR007 early applications are open now. Apply at speedrun.a16z.com
⚡TODAY ON THE VESTING SHOW
Guest: Brianna Lin, Co-Founder of Copperlane (YC W26)
Run of show: 5pm est. twitch.tv/vesting (also LIVE on LinkedIn, X, and YouTube)
Speedrun Demo Day Recap
Sabi beanie wearable emerges from stealth
Single Until Series B Trend-Setter
Brianna Joins The Show
Her Co-Founder Breakup
Pivot to Copperlane
Y Combinator Experience
Brycent Chatting with a Founder at Speedrun Demoday
🔍 FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
One founder we're watching. Every week.
Gene Yu Blackpanda | Series A | Singapore
Who they are: Gene Yu was born in Concord, Massachusetts, where he says he was the only Asian kid in town. He went on to compete as a Division I tennis player, then graduated from West Point with a degree in computer science. After that he went straight into the U.S. Army Special Forces as a Green Beret, serving multiple combat tours across Iraq, the Philippines, and Kurdistan. Then in 2008, his uncle Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated as the President of Taiwan. An internal investigation was opened into Yu's family ties while he was still in Special Forces, and he was ultimately pressured out of the military at what he's described as his peak. He spent the next stretch in finance and tech, working as an equity swaps trader at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong and later in business development at Palantir in Singapore. Then everything changed when a family friend was kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf terrorists in the Philippines. Yu flew to Manila, organized two unofficial task forces made up of Filipino soldiers and private security contractors, and brought her home in 35 days. The rescue made international headlines and publicly revealed his connection to Taiwan's president, which in Asia meant he could suddenly get a meeting with anyone.
What they're building: Blackpanda is a cyber emergency response firm. Think of it as a fire department for companies getting hit by ransomware or cyberattacks. Businesses pay a flat subscription that covers preparation, live incident response, and financial recovery through cyber insurance, all bundled into one product. When you're breached, someone picks up the phone immediately, day or night.
Why we're watching: The idea came directly from the hostage rescue. Yu realized that companies facing a cyberattack need the same kind of fast, around the clock crisis response that physical security firms provide in kidnapping situations. He took the military model and rebuilt it for the digital world, and nobody else was doing it at that level in Asia. The cybersecurity market is enormous and most companies don't find out they need incident response until they're already on fire. Blackpanda is the call they make when that happens. That's not a feature. That's a category.
By the numbers: → Founded: 2015 → Raised: Over $21.M total (Series A complete) → Investors: Singtel Innov8, Gaw Capital Partners, WI Harper Group → Traction: 140% YoY revenue growth in Hong Kong in H1 2024. Strategic partnerships with Singtel, SoftBank Corp, and the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore
Know a founder we should spotlight? Reply and tell us.
📣 SPOTTED ON X
Tweets we thought were interesting this week
Follow us on X → @vesting_tv
⚡ SIGNAL
One idea worth sitting with this week.
Seed deal counts are down 30% year over year. But the rounds that do get done are 31% larger.
What that means for you: VCs aren't writing fewer checks because they're scared, they're getting pickier. The bar to get a meeting is higher. But if you clear it, the check is bigger than ever.
The play: Stop optimizing for volume of VC outreach. Optimize for fit. One warm intro to the right partner at the right fund beats 50 cold emails. Build in public so investors find you.
📚 Read: Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor (Former a16z Managing Partner)
Kupor breaks down exactly how VCs actually make decisions, what they're looking for, how partnerships vote on deals, and why fit matters more than the pitch itself. It's the closest thing to an insider manual on how the people writing those bigger checks actually think. No we are not getting paid for this shill, we just think it’ll be valuable
📅 EVENTS
Worth going in our opinion
🗺 IN-PERSON
The Startup Pitch: Demo Showcase | NYC | April 16th | $5
NYC Coffee Club - Early-Stage Founders & Funders | NYC | April 24th | Free
AI B2B Founder/VC Breakfast | SF | April 21 | $19
Did You Know? The term "venture capital" didn't exist until the 1940s. Before that, funding startups was just called "being rich and taking a chance." The first true VC firm, American Research and Development Corporation, was founded in 1946 and made its legendary bet on a little computer company called Digital Equipment Corporation. A $70,000 investment turned into $355 million. That single deal essentially invented the VC industry as we know it.
🤝 HOW VESTING CAN HELP YOU
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Till next time,