UpRound: Two Quarters In
Two quarters in and we have welcomed 18 members and growing. Members across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, the UK, and the US. No fees. No fund manager. Just smart people investing collaboratively.
Here is what we have done so far.
We targeted 7 to 8 deals in year one. We are halfway through and already at five. Every position was sourced through Brinc's network, VCs we have relationships with, or members in the community.
Together AI is the full-stack infrastructure layer for open-source AI, backed by General Catalyst, NVIDIA, Kleiner Perkins, Coatue, and Salesforce Ventures. The company owns GPU infrastructure, builds optimized inference engines, and ships research that improves performance every quarter. They are currently generating over $1 billion in annualized revenue and are in talks to raise their next round at a $7.5 billion valuation. Customers include Cursor, Salesforce, Zoom, and ElevenLabs. The open-source AI infrastructure market is one of the most important buildouts happening right now and Together AI is the independent alternative to the hyperscalers. This is the position in the portfolio we are most excited about.
Kapital is a data-driven neobank built for LATAM SMBs, backed by Y Combinator and Tribe Capital. The company raised a $125M Series C at a $1.35B post-money valuation. The thesis is straightforward: tens of millions of small businesses across Latin America are underserved by traditional banking, and Kapital is building the infrastructure layer to serve them. We invested because the unit economics are proven, the YC and Tribe pedigree validates the business, and the path to IPO is visible. This is the kind of pre-IPO anchor position the barbell was designed for.
Hamsa is building the financial infrastructure layer for the next era of global banking. Their Unified Ledger connects central banks and financial institutions across borders, automating clearing and settlement in a way that is faster, cheaper, and privacy-preserving. The company will clear over $400 billion in assets in 2025 and has tokenized over $3.2 billion to date. Blockchain is the engine underneath, but the product is institutional infrastructure. That distinction matters. The companies that win in this space will not be crypto-native platforms pitching to retail. They will be the ones embedded inside the world's largest banks. We invested alongside Greycroft, Haven Ventures, Valor Capital, and Quona Capital because the Unified Ledger is a category-defining piece of infrastructure and first-mover advantage here compounds in ways that are difficult to replicate.
Bilby AI uses AI to help investors and enterprises predict government activity, turning regulatory change into alpha. By analyzing regulatory documents, policy statements, and government filings, Bilby gives funds, pharma companies, and financial institutions a structured intelligence layer on top of the world's most consequential data source. The market for this is genuinely large and almost entirely underpenetrated. We invested because the founding team has deep domain expertise, the client base validates enterprise willingness to pay, and Brinc has backed Bilby since 2021 which means we had visibility into this business long before most investors did.
Wildfire Energy has developed MIHG, a patented gasification technology that converts waste directly into electricity, hydrogen, and syngas with negative net carbon emissions, without any feedstock pre-treatment. The technology solves a gap that large-scale gasification cannot: distributed, small-scale energy-from-waste projects that are commercially viable. Their first commercial project, Project Proton, is a waste-to-hydrogen hub in South East Queensland. We invested alongside SBI, Artesian, and Katapult because the technology is patent-protected, the pilot has been validated, and the energy transition creates structural demand that does not depend on policy cycles.
Beyond the Portfolio
The portfolio speaks for itself. But what we are most proud of is harder to put in a memo. It is the members who pushed back on a deal, the ones who made the intro that unlocked access, and the ones who showed up when the IC was tight. That is what a community of aligned capital looks like in practice.
Going forward we are being more selective. Not because the pipeline is thin but because the standard is higher. The right deals with the right people. That is the only way we know how to do this.
Bashar Aboudaoud
Managing Member, UpRound
