Neon and Razorpay Partner to Bring World-Class DTC Payments to India’s Gaming Market




Neon and Razorpay Partner to Bring World-Class DTC Payments to India’s Gaming Market

Neon’s Merchant of Record platform now supports payments in India, expanding its global Payment Service Provider network and strengthening Neon’s international reach

SAN FRANCISCO and BENGALURU, India, Aug. 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Neon, a leading direct‑to‑consumer (DTC) payments platform for games, today announced a strategic partnership with Razorpay, India’s premier payment service provider headquartered in Bengaluru. The integration enables Neon clients to accept payments from players in India using local currency via UPI‑enabled methods, in addition to credit and debit cards.

Global reach meets local precision

With this launch, Neon’s payment network includes seven partner Payment Service Providers (PSPs), including Razorpay, Stripe, PayPal, Paysafe, dLocal, bamboo, and Komoju. Neon’s payment network covers 99%+ of global mobile game spending, including all top 50 global markets. India represents one of Neon’s priority markets, aligned with client demand and the fastest‑growing user base in mobile gaming.

Chris Faught, Founder and CEO of Neon, summarized the partnership:

“India is one of the most exciting growth opportunities in gaming today: a massive, mobile-first audience, now reachable through efficient direct-to-consumer payments. This is exactly why we built Neon. With Razorpay, we’re unlocking both scale and margin for our clients, while giving players in India the seamless, local experiences they expect.”

Why India & UPI matter

India’s mobile gaming ecosystem continues its remarkable expansion:

• A record 8.45 billion app installs occurred in FY 2024–25, making India the largest mobile‑gaming market by volume globally.
• Yet revenue monetization remains nascent. Total IAP revenue remains modest (~$400 million) but is accelerating as digital payment infrastructure matures.

Digital payment behavior in India strongly favors UPI: in FY 2024–25, UPI accounted for a staggering 83% of all digital transactions in India and 186 billion transactions, making UPI India’s dominant real‑time payment rail.

How Neon + Razorpay work together

With Razorpay’s Online Payment Gateway, Neon now enables Indian players to pay using UPI-enabled wallets, local credit and debit cards in Indian rupees. This unlocks the dominant payment options in India, where UPI accounts for the vast majority of online transactions.

For game publishers, Neon acts as the Merchant of Record (MoR) in India, handling everything from checkout and tax compliance to fraud protection and dispute management. Razorpay’s compliance with the RBI’s PA-CB framework ensures secure, cross-border remittance and timely settlements, allowing Neon to reliably move funds out of India and into global operations.

About Neon
Neon is a direct-to-consumer payments platform specializing in the games industry. Serving global game studios and publishers, Neon provides Merchant of Record services, tax and compliance, fraud protection, plug-and-play webshop, customizable checkout, and seamless local payment coverage worldwide.

About Razorpay
Razorpay is India’s leading payments platform, enabling businesses to accept and manage payments via UPI, cards, and more. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Razorpay powers payments for over 10 million Indian businesses.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/68f69a1a-170d-47ce-9f5f-0a0cbf66177a

CONTACT: Media Contact:
Andrew Dubatowka
andrew@neonpay.com

Neon and Razorpay Partner to Bring World-Class DTC Payments to India’s Gaming Market




Neon and Razorpay Partner to Bring World-Class DTC Payments to India’s Gaming Market

Neon’s Merchant of Record platform now supports payments in India, expanding its global Payment Service Provider network and strengthening Neon’s international reach

SAN FRANCISCO and BENGALURU, India, Aug. 12, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Neon, a leading direct‑to‑consumer (DTC) payments platform for games, today announced a strategic partnership with Razorpay, India’s premier payment service provider headquartered in Bengaluru. The integration enables Neon clients to accept payments from players in India using local currency via UPI‑enabled methods, in addition to credit and debit cards.

Global reach meets local precision

With this launch, Neon’s payment network includes seven partner Payment Service Providers (PSPs), including Razorpay, Stripe, PayPal, Paysafe, dLocal, bamboo, and Komoju. Neon’s payment network covers 99%+ of global mobile game spending, including all top 50 global markets. India represents one of Neon’s priority markets, aligned with client demand and the fastest‑growing user base in mobile gaming.

Chris Faught, Founder and CEO of Neon, summarized the partnership:

“India is one of the most exciting growth opportunities in gaming today: a massive, mobile-first audience, now reachable through efficient direct-to-consumer payments. This is exactly why we built Neon. With Razorpay, we’re unlocking both scale and margin for our clients, while giving players in India the seamless, local experiences they expect.”

Why India & UPI matter

India’s mobile gaming ecosystem continues its remarkable expansion:

• A record 8.45 billion app installs occurred in FY 2024–25, making India the largest mobile‑gaming market by volume globally.
• Yet revenue monetization remains nascent. Total IAP revenue remains modest (~$400 million) but is accelerating as digital payment infrastructure matures.

Digital payment behavior in India strongly favors UPI: in FY 2024–25, UPI accounted for a staggering 83% of all digital transactions in India and 186 billion transactions, making UPI India’s dominant real‑time payment rail.

How Neon + Razorpay work together

With Razorpay’s Online Payment Gateway, Neon now enables Indian players to pay using UPI-enabled wallets, local credit and debit cards in Indian rupees. This unlocks the dominant payment options in India, where UPI accounts for the vast majority of online transactions.

For game publishers, Neon acts as the Merchant of Record (MoR) in India, handling everything from checkout and tax compliance to fraud protection and dispute management. Razorpay’s compliance with the RBI’s PA-CB framework ensures secure, cross-border remittance and timely settlements, allowing Neon to reliably move funds out of India and into global operations.

About Neon
Neon is a direct-to-consumer payments platform specializing in the games industry. Serving global game studios and publishers, Neon provides Merchant of Record services, tax and compliance, fraud protection, plug-and-play webshop, customizable checkout, and seamless local payment coverage worldwide.

About Razorpay
Razorpay is India’s leading payments platform, enabling businesses to accept and manage payments via UPI, cards, and more. Headquartered in Bengaluru, Razorpay powers payments for over 10 million Indian businesses.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/68f69a1a-170d-47ce-9f5f-0a0cbf66177a

CONTACT: Media Contact:
Andrew Dubatowka
andrew@neonpay.com

Rillet raises $70M to replace 20th-century accounting software with AI-native ERP built by accountants




Rillet raises $70M to replace 20th-century accounting software with AI-native ERP built by accountants

The AI-native ERP platform secures backing from Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ, bringing total funding to over $100M in one year.

San Francisco, Aug. 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Ambitious companies don’t rise or fall by product alone – they win or lose by how they run finance and accounting. Rillet, the AI-native ERP (enterprise resource planning) platform built for modern finance teams, today announced a $70 million Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ with participation from Sequoia, Oak HC/FT and earlier investors. In conjunction with the new funding, Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Alex Rampell and ICONIQ General Partner Seth Pierrepont are joining the board.

This round comes just 10 weeks after Rillet announced a $25m Series A round from Sequoia, the company has now raised over $100 million in under a year. Since launch, Rillet has signed over 200 customers and doubled its ARR over the past 12 weeks. The rapid growth has also resulted in strategic partnerships with many of the nation’s top accounting firms like Armanino (top 20) and Wiss (top 50).

Rillet CEO and co-founder: Nicolas Kopp.

The investment accelerates the company’s mission to rebuild enterprise accounting from the ground up, giving finance leaders the ability to scale multi-billion dollar companies with teams a fraction of the size.

“As US CEO of N26, I experienced firsthand how frustrating it was to wait weeks for critical business metrics,” said Nicolas Kopp, CEO and co-founder of Rillet. “My finance team was world-class, but simple requests took weeks because the systems were stuck in the past. I knew there had to be a better way.” That conviction led Kopp to partner with Stelios Modes, the technical architect behind N26’s payment infrastructure, to completely rethink what enterprise accounting could become.

The transformation they envisioned is now a reality. PostScript, a unicorn with over $100 million in ARR and global operations, closes their books in just three days using Rillet. Windsurf, one of the fastest-growing companies in recent memory, runs their entire finance operation with a lean team of two people. Customers consistently report cutting their close times to just a few days while implementing Rillet as fast as 4 weeks vs the 12 months required in traditional systems.

Rillet’s breakthrough lies in how it redefines financial systems architecture. Legacy ERPs are, at their core, “dumb databases”. They store transactions, but the real work happens in spreadsheets and bolt-on analytics tools. Rillet flips that model. It starts with native integrations, which enable structured data to flow into their smart general ledger. AI is then applied directly within the system, empowering finance teams to collaborate in real time, automate workflows natively and get insightful reporting the moment something happens, not days or weeks later.

Rillet is the AI-native ERP automating accounting and making zero day close a reality.

Although accounting is the single biggest category in enterprise software –  a $500B+ global market that nearly every company on Earth depends on –  the space is dominated by incumbents owned by slow-moving conglomerates: NetSuite by Oracle, Intacct by Sage, Dynamics by Microsoft. Even more recent players like Acumatica are being folded into private equity portfolios. 

Rillet is a clean-slate rethink for this new era – built for speed, intelligence, and scale. And unlike those legacy platforms, Rillet is built by accountants. Its Chief Product Officer is a former EY controller; the Head of Customer Success came from PwC; and the VP of Implementations is a CPA and former customer. This DNA shows up in every workflow, every implementation, and every customer result.

“Finance teams deserve the same AI advantages that have revolutionized sales, engineering, and legal.” said Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. While Seema Amble, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz added: “Rillet is delivering that transformation by rebuilding ERP infrastructure specifically for the AI era. We’re excited to support their vision as they scale to serve the next generation of high-growth companies.” 

Rillet dashboard, providing real‑time insights and visibility across finance workflows.

“In our view, Rillet is not just modernizing accounting software, it’s redefining what finance teams can achieve when freed from outdated systems, said Seth Pierrepont, General Partner at ICONIQ. “Their AI-native approach can give companies a clear edge: faster insights, leaner teams, and smarter decisions. We believe Rillet will become foundational infrastructure for the next generation of category-defining businesses.”

The timing here is critical. The accounting industry is facing a major talent crunch, with 75% of accountants expected to retire in the next 15 years. At the same time, 80% of routine financial operations could be automated according to Accenture. Rillet sits right at this crossroads, creating a new platform shift in how humans and AI work together in finance. The result is transformative: finance teams get more done with fewer people, while shifting their focus from manual grunt work to strategic analysis that actually moves the needle for their business.

Looking ahead, Rillet’s plan is to expand its AI capabilities and deepen integrations across the financial technology stack. The team’s ultimate vision extends far beyond automation; they’re building towards a collaborative platform where AI agents and human expertise work together to transform how businesses understand and manage their financial performance. 

“Our customers are building the companies that will define the next decade of business,” Kopp concluded. “We’re building the infrastructure that will take them there and redefine what’s possible when finance teams have truly modern tools.”

With several customers expected to go public on Rillet’s platform in the next 6-12 months, the company is set to prove that today’s most ambitious businesses can scale from startup to IPO on truly AI-native financial infrastructure – signaling the first major shift in years in how companies run, and win, with finance.

Media images can be found here. 

About Rillet
Rillet is the AI-native accounting platform made to tailor fit the workflows of accountants and a full replacement for legacy ERPs. Scaling and hyper-growth companies like Windsurf, Bitwarden and Decagon use Rillet to enable a smarter close with native integrations, automated journal entries and AI embedded workflows. They have raised over $100M from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, ICONIQ and others with offices in New York, San Francisco and Barcelona. For more information please visit https://www.rillet.com/

About Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (aka a16z) is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs building the future through technology. a16z is stage agnostic and invests in seed to venture to growth-stage technology companies, across AI, bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, infrastructure, and companies building toward American dynamism. a16z has $46B in committed capital across multiple funds.

About ICONIQ
ICONIQ is a global investment firm catalyzing opportunity through extraordinary community. Its venture and growth investment platform partners with visionaries defining the future of their industries to achieve uncommon outcomes. Drawing on the wisdom and connectivity of its extraordinary community, they support their portfolio companies’ success at every inflection point, from inception to IPO and beyond. ICONIQ’s robust portfolio includes Adyen, Airbnb, Alibaba, Alteryx, Airtable, Automattic, BambooHR, Braze, Canva, Chime, Coupa, Databricks, Datadog, DeepL, ElevenLabs, Figma, Gitlab, Glean, Groww, Netskope, Procore, ServiceTitan, Sierra, Snowflake, Writer, Zoom and 1Password, among others. For more information visit https://www.iconiqcapital.com/growth.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the Rillet press office: Bilal Mahmood on b.mahmood@stockwoodstrategy.com or +447714007257.

TechAlliance to host first-ever Techstars Startup Weekend in London, ON




TechAlliance to host first-ever Techstars Startup Weekend in London, ON

LONDON, Ontario, Aug. 06, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Headquartered in the city ranked #4 on North America’s top emerging tech markets index, TechAlliance is the voice of record for the most promising startups and highest potential technology companies in Southwestern Ontario. Making its London, ON debut in September 2025, TechAlliance is thrilled to host Techstars Startup Weekend, a globally recognized experience for early-stage innovation. 

Techstars selects and partners with leading organizations like TechAlliance, to support entrepreneurs in more than 160 countries all over the world. This 54-hour immersive experience is designed for aspiring entrepreneurs, first-time founders, developers, creatives and builders to experience startup life, and transform innovative ideas into real ventures. 

Marking significant velocity for the startup ecosystem, Techstars Startup Weekend anchors local economic momentum – fuelling business creation, workforce development, and cross-sector collaboration. Through deep experiential learning and connecting passionate people driven to move fast and build smart, participants will learn what it really takes to innovate, disrupt, and start a company from people who’ve been there. “We’re witnessing a shift in Canada. We must be bold, own our narrative, tell our stories, answer the call, and represent Canadian ambition. Hosting Techstars Startup Weekend is just that – creating real opportunities for innovators to build companies not only for Canada, but for the world,” says Christina Fox, Chief Executive Officer at TechAlliance. “I’m certain we’ll see some of this very fire over three days in Info-Tech Research Group’s magnificent space. Unstoppable innovators and aspiring founders will work on things that matter, and if they build things in Canada that matter, the story will begin to tell itself.” 

What to expect: Over the weekend, innovators will be matched to form cross-disciplinary teams, build prototypes, validate business models, and pitch concepts with support from local and national industry mentors, tech experts, and serial entrepreneurs. Rounding out the weekend with a pitch competition, the teams will be judged by experienced investors and tech CEOs, helping participants transform their novel concepts into real startups. 

First Mover applications are now open and close at noon on September 5, 2025, innovators can apply here to participate. Industry experts who would like to be considered as a Mentor for the weekend can apply here. Techstars Startup Weekend is powered by TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario; and hosted at and supported by Info-Tech Research Group, headquartered in downtown, London, Ontario.

For more information or media inquiries, please contact: 
Farida Abdelnabi
Communications Manager
TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario
647.676.2461
farida.abdelnabi@techalliance.ca

About TechAlliance of Southwestern Ontario 
Headquartered in London, Ontario – one of the top ten emerging tech markets in North America, TechAlliance is the lead voice for the most promising startups and highest potential scaling companies in Southwestern Ontario. Home to a concentration of made-in-Canada unicorns, and supporting pathways to capital, customers, and talent, TechAlliance empowers world-class ventures and fuels growth in Canada’s innovation economy by supporting founders and ventures at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey. 

As the place for dreamers, innovators, and world-changing ideas, TechAlliance fosters a vibrant tech community for founders, industry leaders, tech talent, and capacity builders, champions and coaches entrepreneurs, and amplifies and impacts businesses across the region. Funded in part by the Government of Ontario, Regional Innovation Centres help Ontario-based innovators and entrepreneurs clear commercialization hurdles – accelerating the growth of companies so that they can compete and succeed globally and create high quality jobs in our province.

Qbeast secures $7.6M in seed funding to help open data platforms scale efficiently




Qbeast secures $7.6M in seed funding to help open data platforms scale efficiently

Barcelona Supercomputing Center spinout lands funding from Peak XV to accelerate the development of the first open, multi-dimensional indexing layer for Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi.

Bellevue, Aug. 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — As enterprise data volumes explode and AI pipelines strain modern infrastructure, the open Lakehouse architecture has emerged as the new standard for analytics at scale. But while formats like Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg, and Apache Hudi are powerful, they come with a hidden tax: up to 90% of compute resources are wasted scanning irrelevant data, according to Databricks. Today Qbeast, the next-generation data optimization platform, announces a $7.6 million seed round to fix that. 

The seed round was led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia Capital India), with participation from HWK Tech Investment and Elaia Partners. The new capital will fund team expansion, broaden product support across more analytics use cases,, and double down on the company’s mission to make open data platforms faster, simpler, and more cost-efficient.

Born out of research at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Qbeast’s platform plugs directly into existing Delta, Iceberg, and Hudi tables and accelerates workloads by prioritizing just the data you need. Its multi-dimensional indexing can handle complex filters across columns like time, region, or customer segment – optimizing for both real-time and historical queries in a single table. Unlike traditional partitioning or sort orders that work in single dimensions, Qbeast enables simultaneous filtering across any combination of data attributes. And it integrates with popular compute engines like Spark, Databricks, Snowflake, DuckDB, and Polars without requiring teams to rewrite pipelines or adopt a new storage layer. 

To lead the next chapter of the company’s growth, Srikanth Satya, a cloud infrastructure veteran with decades of experience at AWS and Microsoft Azure, has been appointed as Qbeast’s CEO. His deep technical expertise in cloud-native architecture and strategic leadership will steer Qbeast through its next phase of global expansion.

Qbeast CEO Srikanth Satya.

 “Data teams shouldn’t have to choose between speed, cost, and openness,” said Satya. “We built Qbeast to make high-performance analytics simple and accessible, without locking organizations into proprietary systems. In a world where data is growing faster than ever, we’re here to ensure every company can turn that data into value on their own terms.”

Today’s data lakes are massive, but not smart – and this is where the technical challenge lies. Everyone’s storing their data in open formats, but compute costs are exploding and most queries are painfully slow. Qbeast solves this with drop-in indexing that delivers sub-second performance and cost savings, without locking you into a new stack. In production environments, Qbeast has already delivered query speedups of 2–6x and compute cost reductions of up to 70% for workloads in finance, healthcare, and retail.

“There is an undesirable compute cost hidden in the data layout that has been highly neglected by the market for data lakehouses,” shared Flavio Junqueira, CTO of Qbeast and co-creator of Apache ZooKeeper and Apache BookKeeper. “Our technology enables customers across verticals to reduce or even eliminate such costs in a manner that embraces the openness of the data lakehouse stack and that is both engine and format neutral.”

The team behind Qbeast includes heavy hitters in distributed systems and open data. The company’s core technology is rooted in research conducted by Cesare Cugnascom, CSO of Qbeast, and Paola Pardo during their time at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, where breakthrough work in multi-dimensional indexing laid the foundation for today’s platform. Unlike closed platforms that require vendor lock-in or significant rewrites, Qbeast plays natively with the tools data teams already use, serving organizations across finance, retail, healthcare and beyond — any team using open formats to power analytics, AI, or business intelligence at scale.

“We believe every organization, not just the tech elite, should be able to extract value from their data without incurring massive cloud costs or hiring a team of engineers to tune performance,” added Satya. 

“We believe Qbeast is solving a fundamental challenge in the modern data stack. In a context of data volume explosion, their multi-dimensional indexing layer has the potential to become critical for every company moving to a lakehouse model”, said Juan Santamaría, CEO and Managing Partner at HWK TechInvestment.

“By empowering enterprises to unlock more value from their data with less complexity and expense, Qbeast aims to become the cornerstone indexing layer for modern data stacks”. said Sébastien Lefebvre, Partner & Deep Tech Investor at Elaia. 

Looking ahead, Qbeast plans to extend its platform with auto-tuning, adaptive indexing, and deeper engine support across cloud providers and use cases. The goal: to become the default indexing layer for open Lakehouse architectures and unlock a future where data-driven innovation doesn’t come at the cost of performance, scalability, or sanity.

Media images can be found here.

About Qbeast
Qbeast is a data infrastructure company transforming analytics performance for the Lakehouse era. Initiated with research conducted by our founding team at BSC, Qbeast blends cutting-edge academic innovation with practical industry expertise to deliver multi-dimensional indexing for modern open data platforms, including Delta Lake, Apache Iceberg and Apache Hudi. The company exists to make open Lakehouse platforms faster, cost efficient, and easier to use.

Qbeast’s leadership team includes world-class experts in cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and data indexing. CEO Srikanth Satya brings decades of experience building cloud-scale platforms at AWS and Azure. CTO Flavio Junqueira is a renowned distributed systems researcher and co-creator of open-source projects based on distributed consensus such as Apache ZooKeeper and Apache BookKeeper. Qbeast’s core technology is rooted in research conducted by Cesare Cugnasco and Paola Pardo during their time at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC).

About Peak XV
Peak XV (formerly Sequoia Capital India & SEA) is a leading venture capital firm investing across India, Southeast Asia and beyond. Peak XV (pronounced Peak Fifteen) was the name used for Mount Everest before it was called that. Over the last 17 years of our operations in the region, Peak XV has grown to manage over USD 9 billion in capital across 13 funds and invested in over 400 companies. To know more, please visit: www.peakxv.com.

About HWK
HWK is a Madrid-based VC firm backing ambitious tech founders across Europe. We invest in early-stage companies building foundational technologies in fields like cybersecurity, AI, and observability.They focus their investment on high-conviction investments with long-term support, helping founders scale from pre-seed to market leadership. Learn more: http://www.hwk.es • @HWK_VC

About Elaia
Elaia is a European top-tier VC firm with a strong tech DNA. We back tech disruptors with global ambition from early stage to growth development. For the past 20 years, our commitment has been to deliver high performance with values. They have been an active partner in over 100 startups including success stories such as Criteo (Nasdaq), Orchestra Networks (acquired by Tibco), Volterra (acquired by F5), Mirakl (valued $3.5B in Series E) and Shift Technology (valued $1B+ in Series D). Learn more http://www.elaia.com • @Elaia_Partners

About Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS):
BSC is the leading supercomputing center in Spain. It specializes in high-performance computing. It has a dual role: providing infrastructure and a supercomputing service for Spanish and European scientists, and generating knowledge and technology to be transferred to society. It is a member of the top-level European research infrastructure PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe) and coordinates the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES). BSC is a public consortium owned by the Spanish Government Ministry of Science and Innovation (60%), the Catalan Government Department of Research and Universities (30%) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (10%).

CONTACT: For mor information please contact Bilal Mahmood on bilal@stockwoodstrategy.com or +447714007257

Ex-big tech cyber leaders launch Dawnguard from stealth with $3M to rewrite DNA of cybersecurity




Ex-big tech cyber leaders launch Dawnguard from stealth with $3M to rewrite DNA of cybersecurity

Former IBM, Microsoft, Amazon and military cybersecurity leaders have combined to introduce a new cyber category — embedding various AI/ML engines across the entire IT lifecycle, from day zero to day 10,000.

Amsterdam, July 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Dawnguard, a cybersecurity startup on a mission to make the digital world safer through intelligent, design-first security, has emerged from stealth with $3 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by 9900 Capital and a group of angel investors, from scale-up founders to experienced CIOs and CISOs. The funds will be used to expand Dawnguard’s engineering team, deepen enterprise integrations, and bring its platform to broader production use.

Dawnguard is introducing a new cybersecurity category. Rather than bolting on security in production, Dawnguard embeds it at the core of system architecture — ensuring secure, compliant, and scalable designs from the earliest phases of development.

Dawnguard founders: CTO Kim van Lavieren and CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak.

“Our industry treats security as a checkbox. It’s broken,” said Mahdi Abdulrazak, CEO of Dawnguard. “We built Dawnguard because security needs to be part of the system’s DNA from the start, not an afterthought. This is about aligning intent with reality, and giving teams the tools to enforce that alignment at the earliest stage and long after deployment.”

Dawnguard’s holistic approach sets it apart. Rather than just scanning deployments or automating reviews, it provides a shared canvas for engineering and security teams to collaborate on secure, compliant architecture that also balances cost, resilience, and sustainability.

Dawnguard was born out of a broken model – where security was reactive, slow, and dangerously disconnected from the pace of modern development. The founding team, led by CEO Mahdi Abdulrazak and CTO Kim van Lavieren, is composed of industry veterans from military and big tech companies like IBM, Microsoft and Amazon, with decades of experience running large-scale security programs and with unique experience at the intersection of security, AI, and cloud. 

Dawnguard is set to flip shift-left and security-by-design on its head. Instead of treating security as an afterthought, Dawnguard embeds it directly into a system’s architecture, from day zero to day 10,000. The company is building various AI/ML-driven engines that integrate across the entire IT landscape to spot issues in the design phase, adapt to evolving environments, and make security native.

“Dawnguard closes the gap between design and reality,” said Kim van Lavieren. “We’re giving teams the power to translate security intent into enforceable code so they don’t have to rely on spreadsheets, static docs, or guesswork.”

The platform is designed for security architects, DevOps engineers, and cloud teams. At its core, Dawnguard is a security architecture automation platform purpose-built for cloud-native environments. It helps teams validate cloud infrastructure designs before deployment, automatically generate production-ready Infrastructure as Code (IaC) from validated designs, and continuously enforce security posture after deployment to eliminate drift.

“Dawnguard isn’t just building tech — they’re rewriting the DNA of cybersecurity. In a world addicted to patching symptoms, they’ve chosen to re-engineer the root. That’s not just bold — it’s necessary,” said Dimitri van Zantvliet, Dutch Railways CISO & Chair Dutch CISO Community, and a Dawnguard investor and advisor.

“Hundreds of security tools overwhelm CISOs with promises of better detection, yet few tackle the root issue: design flaws in code that AI-driven threats exploit. As attacks grow smarter, defenses must shift left—embedding resilience at the codebase. We are excited to back Dawnguard, who build protection by design, not patch by necessity,” said Chris Corbishley, Managing Partner 9900 Capital.

Looking ahead, Dawnguard aims to reshape how the industry embeds security in the AI era. The company plans to expand its platform to support more dynamic environments, close the security gap between “vibe coding” and the infrastructure where GenAI coded applications run, and deliver a new operating model for building trust at scale.

“With software moving faster than ever, security can’t be stuck in the past,” Abdulrazak said. “We’re creating the platform that makes secure architecture not just possible, but inevitable.”

Media images can be found here. 

About Dawnguard
Dawnguard’s mission is to redefine cybersecurity with a platform that enables true shift-left security, from day zero to day 10,000. For more information please visit https://dawnguard.ai/

About 9900 Capital
9900 Capital is a global investment firm backing category-defining software companies that address the world’s most pressing challenges—from building resilient supply chains to more secure cyber infrastructure. Founded in 2023 by Chris Corbishley (formerly of Hedosophia) and Rory Mounsey-Heysham (formerly of the Bill Gates Foundation), the firm is driven by a philosophy of Benevolent Disruption, which takes a data-driven approach to uncovering extraordinary commercial opportunities that deliver meaningful, systemic change.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the Dawnguard press office on press@dawnguard.ai   

Metaforms raises $9M to give market research agencies their own AI workflows




Metaforms raises $9M to give market research agencies their own AI workflows

Metaforms to expand its platform of intelligent agents purpose-built for the market research industry. With leading agencies already in production, the company is reshaping how insight work gets done.

San Francisco, July 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The market research boom is creating an unexpected casualty: the agencies themselves. In an industry where clients expect faster turnarounds, competitive pricing, and diverse capabilities, agencies are turning down work – not for lack of interest, but because outdated operational systems keep them from meeting client expectations. Metaforms, a startup born from this bottleneck, is helping research teams scale without burning out. Today, the company announces a $9 million Series A to expand its AI infrastructure platform and accelerate adoption across the $130 billion global research industry.

The round was led by Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India), with participation from Nexus Venture Partners and Together Fund. It brings Metaforms’ total funding to just over $10 million and will be used to grow the team, expand into new workflows like report generation and voice-based research, and deepen integrations with tools like Decipher, SPSS, and Confirmit.

Metaforms cofounders Arjun S and Akshat Tyagi.

“We’re thrilled to partner with Akshat and Arjun as they reimagine what a market research agency could look like in an AI-first world. Metaforms is scaling rapidly, by enabling some of the largest research agencies globally to automate workflows such as survey programming and data processing through their suite of AI agents.” Shailendra Singh, MD, Peak XV

When a global brand like a shoe company wants to make critical decisions about how to market it’s new pair of shoes in a geography it has never ventured into before. It engages a market research agency to figure out lifestyle habits and cultural perceptions of a population. For this the agency has to recruit a target population, design a research study, convert the survey questions into an online link, clean the data for fraud, do in-person interviews, combine all the data to finally make a presentation.

Metaforms builds AI agents designed to work within research agencies’ existing workflows, automating the manual processes that limit capacity and erode margins. Instead of replacing research expertise, the platform acts as a force multiplier: turning questionnaires into survey code, flagging bad data before it breaks a project, coordinating panel vendors, and tracking quotas across complex multi-country studies. 

Survey programming dashboard in Metaforms.

For many agencies, this means the difference between turning away work and scaling up confidently.

Metaforms has been incredibly successful thanks to their uniquely thoughtful approach to modernizing research operations—embedding seamlessly into the workflows, tools, and platforms that researchers and agencies already use. I’m excited to continue supporting the team as they build on that momentum with this Series A— Jonathan Tice, GTM Consultant [Prev: Chief Customer Officer, Forsta]

Founded in 2022 by Akshat Tyagi and Arjun S, Metaforms was born out of a personal pain point. As early-stage founders, they struggled to access professional market research. The problem wasn’t demand – it was bandwidth. So Akshat and Arjun set out to build software that gave agencies a way to do more with what they already have.

“Our goal is simple: help great research teams spend less time firefighting and more time doing the work that actually matters,” said Akshat Tyagi, co-founder and CEO of Metaforms. “When you automate the grunt work, you make high-quality research more accessible to more companies.”

Since launching commercially just six months ago, Metaforms has signed four of the world’s top twenty research agencies, including Strat7, one of the largest market research agencies globally. The platform now processes over 1,000 surveys per month, and serves Fortune 500 companies. Every customer that started with a single AI agent has expanded to adopt additional ones, achieving a 100% expansion rate.

Bidding management with Metaforms.

“Metaforms is a breakout example of the India-to-global play in AI,” said Manav Garg, Co-founder and managing partner at Together Fund. “They’re not just automating tasks — they’re rebuilding research infrastructure for the modern era. With their early traction across global agencies, Akshat and Arjun are showing what’s possible when deep customer empathy meets technical ambition.”

That accessibility is already changing the industry. By compressing turnaround times and reducing operational costs, Metaforms enables agencies to serve clients they would otherwise turn away, from early-stage startups testing their first ideas to global brands launching multi-country trackers.

“Our partnership has delivered strong ROl, thanks to Metaforms’ exceptional service and prompt support” added Tabita Razaila Head of operations, Strat7

“They’re solving a major pain point for the entire industry. That focus and ability to deeply understand customer needs and address that using genetic AI is the hallmark of Metaforms team. We are thrilled to back Akshat and Arjun in their journey of building a remarkable company!”, said Jishnu Bhattacharjee and Arjun Gandhi, Nexus Venture Partners.

Looking ahead, Metaforms plans to triple its team and continue expanding the breadth of its agent capabilities. Voice research, automated report generation, and expanded language support are all on the roadmap. The long-term vision is to process over 100,000 surveys per year and make professional-grade research available to every business that needs it.

“When research agencies grow, better business decisions get made,” added Akshat Tyagi. “We’re not here to replace the humans in the loop. We’re here to give them leverage.”

Media images can be found here. 

About Metaforms
Metaforms is the AI platform that helps market research agencies operate smarter and win more business. Our AI Agents augment research teams’ work output across survey programming, data processing, bidding management, and voice research; enabling them to handle exponentially more projects while maintaining quality.

CONTACT: For further information please contact the Metaforms press office on hello@metaforms.ai

Retab raises $3.5M and launches most powerful document AI platform on the market




Retab raises $3.5M and launches most powerful document AI platform on the market

The developer-first platform for document automation comes out of stealth with new funding, new product, and a bold plan to become infrastructure for the next wave of vertical AI.

San Francisco, July 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AI agents are poised to change the world, but they can’t read the documents that run it. Retab, a San Francisco-based startup founded by engineers frustrated by the broken state of document AI, is fixing that. Today, the company announces $3.5 million in pre-seed funding and the launch of its platform.

The round was backed by leading early-stage funds including VentureFriends, Kima Ventures, and K5 Global, alongside Eric Schmidt (via StemAI), Olivier Pomel (CEO, Datadog), and Florian Douetteau (CEO, Dataiku). The new capital will support platform development and community growth, as the company scales its infrastructure to meet rising demand from vertical AI startups and internal innovation teams alike.

Retab founders: (L to R) Sacha Ichbia, Louis de Benoist and Victor Plaisance.

Retab is a developer platform and SDK that redefines everything about document processing in the age of large language models. Developers define the schema of the data they need; Retab handles the rest – from dataset labeling and evaluations, to automated prompt engineering & model selection. 

Retab platform. 

“People keep building demos that look like magic, but break the moment you put them into production,” said Louis de Benoist, co-founder and CEO of Retab. “We lived that pain ourselves. Wiring up fragile pipelines just to extract a few fields from a PDF. We built Retab because it’s the developer-first platform we always wished we had.”

Louis and his co-founders cut their teeth building internal automation tools for document-heavy workflows in logistics. Over time, they realized their true value wasn’t in the output, but the orchestration layer they’d built to make the models work. That tooling became the foundation of Retab – now used by dozens of companies to extract structured data from messy, real-world inputs.

Retab is not another large language model. It’s the essential intelligence layer that makes the world’s most powerful models—from providers like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic—usable for critical workflows. Developers define the data they need, and Retab’s platform manages the entire lifecycle to ensure verifiable accuracy.

The platform delivers guaranteed performance through a system of intelligent checks and balances:

Self-Optimizing Schemas: An AI agent automatically tests and refines instructions based on a user’s documents, maximizing accuracy before the system ever goes live.

Intelligent Model Routing: The platform is model-agnostic. It automatically benchmarks and routes each task to the best-performing model for the job, whether the priority is cost, speed, or accuracy. This can make processes up to 100x cheaper than other solutions.

Guided Reasoning & k-LLM Consensus: Retab forces models to “think” step-by-step and uses a consensus mechanism among multiple models to quantify uncertainty, acting as a powerful safety net to ensure trustworthy results.

“Retab is the OS for reliably extracting structured data,” said de Benoist. “It wraps the best models in a layer of logic that actually makes them usable with error handling and structured outputs. That’s what devs need if they want to build production apps, not just prototypes.”

Customers across logistics, finance, and healthcare are already seeing results. A major trucking company used Retab and found the smallest, fastest model configuration that could meet their 99% accuracy threshold, dramatically lowering operational costs. A financial services firm uses Retab to extract specific quantitative metrics and qualitative risk factors from 200-page quarterly reports – a task that previously took a team of analysts days to complete. Others are automating claims processing, medical records, identity verification, and onboarding with minimal setup.

According to Florian Douetteau, co-founder and CEO of Dataiku and investor in Retab, “the AI-fication of the economy depends on the capability to convert operations based on millions of documents into verified, structured data that autonomous systems can utilize. On a large scale, this process hinges on quality control, cost efficiency, and rapid implementation. The team at Retab understands this thoroughly and is uniquely positioned to solve it for the thousands of AI first companies that are emerging.”

Looking ahead, Retab is expanding its platform to apply the same reliable extraction methods to websites and is launching integrations with automation platforms like n8n, Zapier, and Dify. 

Retab is also building toward its long-term vision: to serve as the intelligent middleware layer between the world’s unstructured data and the AI agents that need to understand them. Whether it’s parsing a loan file, a contract, or a customs manifest, Retab makes unstructured data usable, safe, and programmable.

With just ten employees and a fast-growing developer base, Retab is already positioning itself as a foundational layer in the AI infrastructure stack – a tool that doesn’t just show what’s possible, but lets anyone build with it.

Media images can be found here.

About Retab
Founded by engineers from Cambridge and École Polytechnique — Louis de Benoist, Sacha Ichbiah, and Victor Plaisance — Retab is an AI agent that builds document extraction pipelines. Its all-in-one platform turns messy PDFs, handwritten scans, and more into clean, structured data, without stitching together brittle third-party tools. Just describe what you want, upload your files, and Retab does the rest: building the extraction logic, labeling your dataset, and giving you precise benchmarks. It automatically routes tasks to the best model for the job — and switches as better ones emerge. Whether you’re processing contracts, invoices, or compliance documents, Retab helps teams replace manual work with fast, accurate, self-improving workflows.

CONTACT: For further information please contact Louis de Benoist at louis@retab.com 

Ex-Amazon, Coinbase engineers launch Drizz with $2.7M for Vision AI mobile app testing agent




Ex-Amazon, Coinbase engineers launch Drizz with $2.7M for Vision AI mobile app testing agent

Drizz emerges from stealth to transform mobile app testing with AI. The company’s vision-based automation platform replaces brittle test scripts with natural language prompts – cutting test time from days to minutes.

Bengaluru, July 28, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — As AI transforms how software is written, testing remains painfully manual. Traditional test frameworks can’t keep up with AI-generated code or today’s rapidly evolving mobile apps – and it’s costing teams time, confidence, and revenue. Drizz, founded by Asad Abrar, Partha Mohanty, and Yash Varyani – engineers from Amazon, Coinbase, and Gojek – is taking on this challenge. Today, the company launches from stealth and announces a $2.7 million seed round to introduce the fastest Vision AI mobile app testing agent.

The round was led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Shastra VC, with participation from Anuj Rathi (ex-CBO, Cleartrip) and Vaibhav Domkundwar. The funding will fuel the continued development of Drizz’s Vision AI engine, enhancing its speed, accuracy, and usability across enterprise environments.

Drizz Founders: (L-R) Partha Mohanty, Yash Varyani, Asad Abrar.

“Every app team is accelerating with AI, but testing still lags behind,” said Asad Abrar, co-founder and CEO of Drizz. “During my time as a product manager at Coinbase, locator-based tests broke with every UI shift, turning QA into a bottleneck. That frustration led us to build Drizz—an AI-native platform that keeps up with modern development and actually delivers confidence at scale.”

Drizz allows teams to write, run, and maintain end-to-end test coverage using plain English prompts instead of fragile code. The system evaluates apps visually – just like a real user – eliminating the need for locator selectors, manual updates, or separate test suites across devices. Its AI doesn’t rely on brittle xPath locators or accessibility IDs, and instead interprets the UI visually – adapting automatically to screen density, hardware differences, and device-specific behaviors.

Drizz is a Vision AI mobile application testing agent, built for the speed and complexity of AI-powered app development.

“Drizz’s multimodal engine understands the screen context and layout, even when elements are dynamic and constantly changing,” said Yash Varyani, co-founder and CTO of Drizz. “Where traditional testing may break, Drizz remains stable and flags bugs with detailed log intelligence that pinpoints the root cause. This ultimately saves testing teams both time and guesswork.”

Developers and QA teams can run tests across iOS and Android using one shared suite, generate test flows in natural language, and rely on self-healing automation that stays stable across UI changes. The platform is built for production readiness, with support for CI/CD pipelines, real device cloud testing, real-time reporting, and full enterprise-grade compliance. Drizz supports a comprehensive range of testing needs – including UI, Functional, API, multi-app, and end-to-end testing.

The system also supports field-level fallback logic and step-by-step execution that boosts reliability and makes debugging easier – even on the most complex interfaces. This opens doors for non-technical stakeholders to actively contribute test scenarios, with no coding required. It streamlines collaboration and helps teams move efficiently. In early deployments, Drizz has helped teams achieve over 97% test accuracy, and reduce test creation time by a factor of 10.

The company is already working with multiple unicorns globally and is seeing strong developer engagement, with users spending an average of 15 hours per week writing and executing test cases. Looking ahead, Drizz plans to extend its vision-based infrastructure toward testing for visually rich and highly interactive environments – areas where traditional locator-based tools can’t operate due to dynamic interfaces and the lack of deterministic DOM structures. 

“We want to redefine how quality software is shipped in the age of AI,” said Partha Mohanty, Drizz co-founder and CPO. “With Drizz, test authoring becomes effortless, execution highly accurate, and bug resolution near-instant – all powered by intelligent automation.”

Alok Goyal, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners commented: “AI is fundamentally changing how software is built, tested, and deployed. In an era where more software needs to be shipped even faster than ever, software quality has become the biggest bottleneck. Drizz is therefore tackling one of the most critical parts of the software development cycle with a unique, vision-first approach. By solving real QA pain points and bringing non-technical users into the loop, Drizz is reimagining mobile application testing with AI. We’re thrilled to partner with them on this journey.”

With AI redefining the speed and complexity of software creation, Drizz is supercharging teams to test faster and ship confidently.

Media images can be found here. 

About Drizz
Drizz is a Vision AI mobile application testing agent, built for the speed and complexity of AI-powered app development. Drizz’s proprietary multimodal engine understands screen layouts, UI flows, and dynamic elements like a human would—enabling smarter, more stable test execution. Test scenarios can be authored using simple English prompts, allowing even non-technical stakeholders to contribute without writing code.

Founded in 2024 by former engineering leaders from Amazon, Coinbase, and Gojek – Asad Abrar, Partha Sarathi Mohanty, and Yash Varyani – Drizz helps teams ship high-quality software with confidence. To know more, visit www.drizz.dev

About Stellaris Venture Partners
Stellaris Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on backing Indian founders building for Indian and global markets. With a team of former entrepreneurs and business builders, Stellaris is dedicated to helping founders at the earliest stages of company formation build sustainable, market-leading businesses.

Stellaris manages over $600 million in assets and is currently investing from its third fund of $300 million. Stellaris has built a portfolio of more than 40 companies across SaaS, Consumer, Financial Services, B2B Commerce, Education, Mobility and Healthcare. Stellaris portfolio companies that are market leaders in their spaces include Mamaearth, Whatfix, Propelld, Turno, Dashtoon and Kiwi, among others.  Website | LinkedIn | X | YouTube

CONTACT: For further information please contact the Asad Abrar on asad@drizz.dev.

Made In Cookware Launches Exclusive Collection with Crate & Barrel, Blending Performance and Design




Made In Cookware Launches Exclusive Collection with Crate & Barrel, Blending Performance and Design

Best-Selling Stainless and CeramiClad™ Cookware Reimagined with Elegant Antique Brass Hardware Along with Chef-Loved Carbon Steel — Available online and in 36 Crate & Barrel Stores Nationwide Starting July 24

Austin, TX, July 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Made In Cookware, the acclaimed cookware brand trusted by home cooks and world-renowned chefs alike, is proud to announce the exclusive launch of its newest product collection with Crate & Barrel. Beginning July 24, customers can shop Made In’s most beloved cookware pieces—now with a design-forward twist—online and in 36 Crate & Barrel locations across the United States.

The exclusive Made In collection for Crate & Barrel features best-selling Stainless Clad and CeramiClad™ sets and individual pieces, thoughtfully updated with warm Antique Brass handles, evoking the refined charm of vintage European kitchens while maintaining the high performance that Made In is known for. In addition to the new collection, Crate & Barrel will also carry Made In’s chef-favorite Carbon Steel Frying Pans and Griddle perfect for indoor and outdoor cooking all summer long.

“This collaboration is an exciting moment for Made In in our young retail journey,” said Chip Malt, CEO and Co-Founder of Made In. “Crate & Barrel has long been a tastemaker in the world of modern home design, so we’re excited to bring both our chef-inspired product line as well as an exclusive and beautiful Brass Hardware Stainless Clad Collection to their customers. Our cookware has always been about marrying performance with purpose, and this exclusive collection does just that—delivering tools that are not only beautiful but also built to last a lifetime.”

Select product highlights from the exclusive collection include:

• The 10-piece Stainless Clad Set, featuring a stock pot, saucier, two saucepans, and two frying pans with superior heat control and restaurant-grade performance.
• The CeramiClad™ Non Stick Frying Pans, ideal for weeknight meals with easy release and effortless cleanup—all without any harmful chemicals.
• The Carbon Steel Griddle, celebrated by barbecue enthusiasts for its naturally nonstick surface and unparalleled searing ability.

In line with both brands’ commitment to sustainability and wellness, all cookware in the collection is made using responsibly sourced materials and is crafted in Sweden, Italy, and the United States. The entire line is free of toxins like PFOA, PFAS, and PTFE, making it a safe and healthy choice for everyday cooking.

“Partnering with Made In on an exclusive collection that’s not only beautiful and thoughtfully designed but also tailored for the way people cook and live today is so authentic to the high-quality standard of our brand,” said Alicia Waters, Brand President, Crate & Barrel and Crate & Kids.

The full collection will be available starting July 24 at 36 Crate & Barrel locations and online at crateandbarrel.com. Quantities will be limited.

About Made In Cookware
Made In Cookware (Made In) is a premium cookware brand based in Austin, TX. Founded in 2017 but born of a 4th-generation, family-owned kitchen supply business, Made In creates best-in-class cookware developed in partnership with the world’s finest chefs and foremost craftsmen. Today, you’ll find Made In products in more than 2,000 restaurants, in the hands of James Beard Award-winning chefs at Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, and in the kitchens of home cooks everywhere. Made In products have garnered over 100,000 5-star reviews, and the company was named one of Inc. Magazine’s best workplaces and Newsweek’s best online shops of 2024. For more information, visit madeincookware.com.

About Crate & Barrel Holdings, Inc.
Global specialty retailer Crate & Barrel Holdings Inc. curates inspiration for the modern home, connecting the creative work of artisans and designers to people and places around the world. Known for high-quality products, exclusive designs, and timeless style since 1962, Crate & Barrel Holdings Inc. includes lifestyle brands Crate & Barrel, CB2, Crate & Kids, and Hudson Grace. Today, the company is a member of the Otto Group and operates over 100 Crate & Barrel, CB2, and Hudson Grace stores throughout the U.S. and Canada, with franchise locations in nine countries. More than 200 million customers visit the Company’s stores and websites each year. To learn more, visit www.crateandbarrel.com/about-us.

Contact Info

Katrina Montgomery
katrina@madeincookware.com
+1 512-957-9956

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• Made In CeramiClad Antique Brass