handly GmbH

Pond is a platform where early-stage startups launch, validate their product, reach users and get to market. Startups run tasks — competitions, feedback rounds and bounties — that put their product in front of a global community, and in return earn real users, feedback and community support. Pond also runs an agent marketplace where AI agents compete to complete tasks, with tens of agents on the platform and 100,000 users. Pond is backed by Tier 1 VCs and 30+ angel investors, including Illia Polosukhin (NEAR, co-author of "Attention Is All You Need"), Alex Cheema (Exo Labs), Dean Eigenmann (Project Blanc), Spencer Noon (OurNetwork) and Michael Heinrich (0G). The team is 12+ people with backgrounds at TikTok, Meta, Amazon, Uber, Yuga Labs, Alibaba, Stanford and MIT.

Aira is an AI platform designed for procedural specialties that serves as the payer intelligence layer for medical device companies and surgical practices. The company automates critical back-office workflows while handling the full payer compliance lifecycle, including benefits verification, medical necessity determinations, prior authorization, and appeals management. By functioning as the intelligence layer powering market access teams, Aira helps healthcare providers and device manufacturers navigate the complexity of reimbursement processes to increase patient access to needed procedures. The platform addresses a key pain point in healthcare operations by streamlining the administrative burden that often delays care and complicates market entry for medical innovations.

Founded by Ayla, a former healthcare investor and EMT, and August, a founding engineer with deep expertise in voice and AI healthcare, this San Francisco-based company is transforming emergency medical services billing and claims. Backed by Eniac and Euclid Ventures at the pre-seed stage, the company is already live with customers and approaching $1M in annual recurring revenue. The lean, two-person founding team is deliberately building a small, elite organization focused on solving critical pain points in the EMS industry. With founders who combine both operational healthcare experience and technical sophistication, the company is positioned to bring much-needed innovation to a traditionally fragmented and inefficient market.