Root Global

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.

handly is an early stage, VC backed company building an AI first operating system for craft businesses. We recently raised €3.75m from 20VC, Stride and Base10 and are building a small, performant team with high ownership and high trust.

Aleph is AI-native and designed to be the always-on decision layer for modern businesses, offering real-time data collaboration for finance teams and automating reporting, variance analysis, and forecasting. It operates as a global digital advertising powerhouse serving 150+ countries, connecting over 26,000 advertisers to a 3 billion consumer audience and partnering with major platforms such as TikTok, X, Microsoft, Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit, Spotify and Google. Its mission is to make the digital world accessible to all, while connecting global brands with local audiences in emerging markets and empowering businesses and individuals through its Digital Ad Expert education platform. The company also facilitates cross-border payments and credit underwriting through Local Payments by Aleph, supported by a team of over 1,500 digital experts in 75+ offices and backing from investors including CVC Partners, Mercado Libre, Sony, X (formerly Twitter), and Snap. Aleph serves a spectrum of clients from small startups to multinational corporations, boasting a trial-to-customer conversion rate exceeding 90%.