Q4 Sprint

Hear me out

Author

Dan Entrup
September 02, 2025

It’s the final quarter sprint.

“BuT sEPtemBeR iS Q3”

Hear me out.

We all know November is only two real working weeks. Then after Thanksgiving, there is one more two-week sprint before the December holidays. So in reality, September marks the start of the final three months worth of working days of the year.

So, let’s review where we’re at…

Lead Investors (4 rounds led each YTD)

FINTOP Capital is a Nashville based FinTech focused firm run by a team of experiences builders and operators in the sector. The firm is led by Managing Partners Joe Maxwell (prior Ipreo, CapControls, Investment Scorecard) and Rick Kushel (prior DealCloud, iLevel, Archive Systems).

FINTOP Capital is partnered with Jacobs Asset Management (JAM) on a joint venture fund, JAM FINTOP, with over 65 community banks as LPs. JAM FINTOP co-led the investments in SRA Watchtower, Infinant, and DiligentIQ.

This year, the firm has led rounds in the following companies:

  • $15M Series A - Infinant (bank platform)

  • $12M Series A - DiligentIQ (AI-powered private equity diligence platform)

  • $4.8M Series A - Filament Syfter (private markets data and workflow platform)

  • $4.0M round - SRA Watchtower (risk management solutions)

ICONIQ is a San Francisco based firm founded by Divesh Makan, Michael Anders, Chad Boeding who all worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley prior to starting ICONIQ in 2011.

This year, the firm has led rounds in the following companies:

  • $100M Series C - Statsig (data-driven product development)

  • $69M Series B - Omni (business intelligence)

  • $50M Series D - Virtru (data security)

  • $47M round - TinyFish (web data collection)

Alphabet invests across three main platforms, GV (Google Ventures), growth stage through CapitalG, and early stage through Gradient. The firms are led by David Krane (GV), Laela Sturdy (CapitalG), Darian Shirazi (Gradient), and Zach Bratun-Glennon (Gradient).

This year, the firm has led rounds in the following companies:

  • $210M Series B - GV - OpenEvidence (AI-powered medical search)

  • $100M Series D - GV - Redpanda (real-time data platform)

  • $2.5M Pre-Seed - Gradient - Springtail (Postgres database scalability)

  • Series C - CapitalG - Clay (GTM data)

At 3 rounds led a piece, we have Accenture, Felicis, General Catalyst, Goldman Sachs, Greycroft, Lightspeed, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Sequoia. Will any of them put another deal on the board before year end?

Largest Fundraise By Round

Bioinformatics company, ScienceMachine, announced it raised $3.5M in a Pre-Seed round led by Revent and Nucleus Capital, with participation from Juniper and Opal Ventures. The company enables faster analysis of biomedical data through an AI Bioinformatician. ScienceMachine is based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2024 by Lorenzo Sani (prior Hirebolt) and Benjamin Tenmann (prior BenevolentAI, Adarga).

Atlas Data Storage raised $155 Million in a Seed round from investors including ARCH Venture Partners, Deerfield Management, Bezos Expeditions, Tao Capital Partners, Rsquared VC, Earth Foundry, and In-Q-Tel. Atlas' core technology combines novel semi chips and enzyme engineering, ushering in a new era of high-throughput and parallel chemistry. The company was founded by Bill Banyai (prior Twist Bioscience, Complete Genomics) and is led by CEO Varun Mehta (prior Sneller, HPE).

Data platform for AI inference company, Chalk, announced it raised $50M at a $500M valuation in a Series A led by Felicis with participation from Triatomic Capital and existing investors General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Xfund. The company is based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2022 by Marc Freed-Finnegan (prior Stripe, Index, Google), Elliot Marx (prior Credit Karma, Haven Money, Affirm), and Andrew Moreland (prior Credit Karma, Haven Money, Palantir).

Medical search and AI application, OpenEvidence, announced it raised $210M at a $3.5B valuation in a Series B led by Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins with participation from Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Conviction, Greycroft, and Thrive. OpenEvidence is the fastest-growing clinical decision support platform in the United States, and the most widely used medical search engine among U.S. clinicians. The company is based in Cambridge, MA, and was founded in 2021 by Daniel Nadler (prior Kensho) and Zachary Ziegler (prior IMAX AI, FeatureX).

Analytical database and real-time data warehouse company, Clickhouse, announced it raised $350M at a $6.35B valuation in a Series C led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from new investors BOND, IVP, Battery Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners, as well as existing investors including Index Ventures, Lightspeed, GIC, Benchmark, Coatue, FirstMark, and Nebius. With ultra-fast columnar processing and native support for streaming data, ClickHouse is fast becoming the platform of choice for product analytics, observability, and financial intelligence. The company is based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2021 by Aaron Katz (prior Elastic, Salesforce), Alexey Milovidov (prior Yandex), and Yury Izrailevsky (prior Google, Netflix).

Professional services focused AI company, Harvey AI, announced it raised $300M at a $3B valuation in a Series D led by Sequoia, with participation from Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, OpenAI Startup Fund, GV, Conviction, Elad Gil, and REV (RELX). Harvey AI is a legal AI platform that helps law firms and legal departments perform tasks like legal research, document drafting and analysis, due diligence, and contract review, by providing domain-specific AI models and tools. The company is based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2022 by Winston Weinberg (prior O’Melveny & Myers) and Gabe Pereyra (prior Meta, DeepMind).

AI-powered data security company, Cyera, announced it raised $540 Million at a $6 Billion valuation in a Series E led by Georgian, Greenoaks, and Lightspeed. The company helps enterprises discover, classify, and protect sensitive data across cloud and hybrid environments. With this war chest, Cyera is eyeing market leadership as companies race to get their data under control. The New York City based company was founded in 2021 by Yotam Segev (prior IDF) and Tamar Bar-Ilan (prior Lynxight, IDF).

Healthcare intelligence and AI platform, Innovaccer, raised $275M in a Series F with participation from B Capital Group, Banner Health, Danaher Ventures, Generation Investment Management, Kaiser Permanente, and M12. The company helps healthcare organizations provide better care by integrating complex data across multiple distributed sources to give insights. Innovaccer is based in San Francisco, CA, and was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Shashank (prior Ingersoll Rand), Kanav Hasija (prior KCG), and Sandeep Gupta (prior Ingersoll Rand).

Investment data platform, Addepar, announced it raised $230 Million at a $3.25 Billion valuation in a Series G led by Vitruvian Partners and WestCap, with participation from 8VC, Valor Equity Partners, and EDBI. Addepar's platform aggregates portfolio, market, and client data, helping investment professionals provide more precise guidance for their clients. The company was founded by Palantir execs Joe Lonsdale and Jason Mirra and is currently led by CEO Eric Poirier (also prior Palantir).

Financial advisor CRM builder, Wealthbox, announced it received a $200 Million Growth investment from Sixth Street Growth. The platform is the central hub for financial advisors, enabling client management, prospecting, and collaboration. Existing investor, Frontier Growth, will retain its position by rolling over a portion of its equity into the recap. The company is based in Providence, RI, and was founded in 2013 by John Rourke (prior Bantam, Upswing CRM), Dan Ferranti (prior Constant Contact, Bantam).

Acquirers (4 acquisitions each YTD)

Triple Private Equity is a specialist PE firm investing in B2B data and software businesses in the finance, risk, and compliance space in the UK and Northern Europe. The firm was founded in 2023 by Mads Hansen (prior Hg) and Ben Shepherd (prior LSEG, Refinitiv, Oliver Wyman), with David Craig (prior Refinitiv CEO) as Chair of the Investment Committee.

S&P Global is expanding far beyond traditional financial markets data with a set of targeted acquisitions that signal where the future of market intelligence is heading. Through these deals, specialized data meets interpretability, positioning S&P as not just a data provider, but an insights platform for a world moving at machine speed. With predecessor companies dating to 1888, NYSE-listed SPGI is one of the big-four financial terminal providers. The company is led by Martina Cheung.

Databricks has also been making surgical acquisitions to shore up the core infrastructure of its data and AI platform. Each, a strategic signal that the company is quietly tightening every layer of the stack. Founded in 2013 by the creators of Apache Spark, the cloud-based platform company is led by CEO Ali Ghodsi.

  • BladeBridge (AI-powered enterprise data warehouse migration solutions)

  • Fennel (data pipelines)

  • Neon (serverless PostgreSQL)

  • Tecton (real-time data)

Crisp, the real-time data platform for the CPG and retail supply chain, has quietly emerged as one of the most aggressive acquirers in analytics this year. Each deal adds a key puzzle piece, positioning Crisp as the operating system for retail data collaboration. The Bentonville, Arkansas based company was founded in 2016 and has raised $160.5M in a mix of equity and debt financing. Crisp is led by Are Traasdahl (prior Tapad).

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