Investing in Software Entrepreneurs and Innovation Across America

Big milestone for Plasma: the team just closed a strategic investment from Founders Fund at a $500M pre-money valuation. With over $1B in stablecoin deposits already raised ahead of its upcoming ICO, Plasma is quickly becoming a category-defining player in programmable payments infrastructure. Congratulations to Plasma and to the founders Paul Faecks and Hans Brehens.

In 2024 Plasma acquired Mercury portco Apparatus. Mercury previously led the Apparatus seed and Series A rounds.

Congratulations David Sutter, Jeff Handler, Tom Niermann, and the OpenTrade team on closing $7M in funding, bringing their total raise to $11M in just six months. OpenTrade is building the foundational infrastructure for yield-bearing stablecoin accounts—starting with a B2B2C “yield-as-a-service” model already powering products across Latin America and Europe. Under current U.S. law, stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle can’t offer yield. OpenTrade can, bridging crypto infrastructure with mainstream savings behavior. The round was co-led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, CMCC Global, and other existing partners.

Congratulations to Misbah Uraizee, Farah Uraizee, and the entire Nectar Social team on the close of their $10.6M seed round and emergence from stealth mode. The Mercury portco’s latest raise—led by GV (Google Ventures) and True Ventures—positions Nectar to become the leading agentic platform transforming social interactions into revenue channels for today’s disruptor brands. As the traditional marketing funnel breaks down, Nectar’s AI-powered platform turns organic engagement into measurable, revenue-generating commerce.

Read more in Fortune.

Congratulations to Founder & CEO Omair Tariq and the Cart.com team on their $50M fundraise. The company will use the new funding to fuel growth of its unified commerce platform and logistics network. Cart acquired OceanX in December and continues to scale rapidly, having already met its 2025 sales bookings goals in May 2025.

Collide.ai has raised a $5 million seed round to bring GenAI-native tools to the energy sector. The round was led by Mercury, with participation from Bryan Sheffield, Billy Quinn, David Albin, and other leaders from the energy industry. Built by oil and gas veterans, the platform is already used by over 6,000 professionals in 122 countries and helps engineers and operators save up to 33% of their time. Congratulations to Collin McLelland, Chuck Yates, and the entire Collide team.

Congratulations CEO Michael Provenzano and the entire Vistar Media team on the company’s acquisition by T-Mobile. Vistar is the leading digital-out-of-home (DOOH) content management system for programmatic advertising.

Austin-based Buildforce, the leading online talent management platform for the construction industry, continues to expand within the Southeast with its acquisition of YC-backed, Atlanta-based Ladder. With the acquisition, Buildforce gains access to Ladder’s fleet of customers and 10,000 pre-screened electricians.  Congratulations to Buildforce Co-Founder/CEO Moody Heard and the entire team.