Built By Berkeley

Deal of the Week

Always fun when another company I invested in a while back via Courtyard Ventures raises a round. Ridepanda (Founded by Haas MBA Chinmay), an e-bikes-as-an-employee-benefit platform, just raised $12.6M led by Bikeleasing Group, Yamaha Motor Ventures, and Blackhorn Ventures. Ridepanda is a benefit for employees at leading companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, letting them use commuter allowances to lease e-bikes. The business is reaccelerating as companies enforce return-to-office mandates. What better way to cushion the blow of going back to the office than a healthy benefit that gets you there!?

It seems this was the week of the e-bike, with Brazilian based Vammo (Haas MBA Billy Blaustein raising $45M as they continue to build out a battery swapping platform.

The CAPEX Party is Not Stopping

The scale of hyperscalers’ CAPEX is pretty flabbergasting. Expectations are for $518B in 2026, after $400B in 2025. These numbers are wild. Honestly, so exciting. Everyone’s worried this won’t be a good ROI for the hyperscalers (though there are some early signs of ROI in the latest earnings with cloud growth accelerating). But who cares if it’s not a great ROI for them, some clever startups are going to build amazing products and tools that harness this enormous CAPEX buildup.

Short Takes

• Just been reading John Malone’s autobiography. In it he calls the 2001 Time Warner and AOL $165B merger one of the most capital-destructive deals of all time. Fast forward to today and AOL just got bought by Bending Spoons for $1.6B. Bending Spoons seems a fascinating company based out of Milan. They buy legacy tech businesses and then look to turn them around. So far they’ve bought, among others, Evernote, Vimeo, and WeTransfer. Maybe this is where Zombiecorns go to be resurrected!?

• Berkeley recent Nobel Prize winner John Martinis on a podcast talking Quantum.

• Someone anonymously donated $10M to Haas for entrepreneurship - maybe a reader (or an author 😉 ) !?

• When one of Sam Altman’s investors questioned how he was going to make $1.4T of spending commitment there was a spicy clapback (worth watching the clip!).

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 8 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $171M of capital raised from the 27th Oct to 2nd Nov

💡 Got any ideas or feedback on how to improve this weekly digest? Just hit reply.

Acquisitions

🧪 Marimo Acquisition 🇺🇲 Open‑source reactive Python notebook. 💰 CoreWeave

🐻 Myles Scolnick, Co‑Founder & CTO.Article

Closed Rounds

🚀 AheadComputing $53.1M Seed 🇺🇲 High-performance RISC‑V cores. 💰 Eclipse Ventures, Maverick Capital

🐻 Debbie Marr, Founder & CEO. BS EECS Article

🚲 Vammo $45M Series B 🇧🇷 Electric two-wheel battery swapping 💰Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Maniv, Monashees

🐻 Billy Blaustein, Co-Founder & COO. Haas MBA Article

🧩 CoreStory $32.0M Series A 🇺🇲 AI-powered legacy software modernization. 💰 Homebrew Management, New Enterprise Associates, SineWave Ventures

🐻 Anand Kulkarni, Founder & CEO. PhD Industrial Eng Article

🏛️  Kaizen $21M Series A 🇺🇲  Commerce Platform for Government Agencies 💰Accel, A 16z, NEA

🐻 KJ Shah, Co-Founder & COO. BS Business. Article

🎒 Ridepanda $12.6M Series B 🇺🇲 Electric transportation as a company benefit. 💰 Blackhorn Ventures, Courtyard Ventures, Yamaha Motor Ventures

🐻 Chinmay Malaviya, Co-Founder & CEO. Haas MBA Article

🛡️ SalesPatriot $5.0M Seed 🇺🇲 AI‑powered defense‑contracting platform. 💰 CRV, Link Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures

🐻 Nelson Ray, Co‑Founder & CEO. MET Article

🎮 Ottodot $1.65M Seed 🇸🇬 Science‑learning games for kids. 💰 Monk’s Hill Ventures, 

🐻 Le Yi Khor, Co‑Founder. EECS Article

🔧 IndustrialMind.ai $1.2M Seed 🇺🇲 AI-driven factory automation tools. 💰 Antler, Plug and Play Tech Center

🐻 Justin Li, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer. Haas MBA Article

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Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻