Funding & Business
RealSense spins out of Intel to scale its stereoscopic imaging technology
After 14 years of developing inside of semiconductor giant Intel, RealSense is striking out on its own.
RealSense sells cameras that use stereoscopic imaging, a process that combines two images of the same object from different angles to create depth, enhanced with infrared light. This technology helps machines like robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles have a better perception of the physical world around them. The tech is also used for facial authentication.
“The common denominator of all of them is they live in the real, physical world,” CEO Nadav Orbach told TechCrunch. “They need to understand the surroundings in 3D and based on that, take and plan actions right in the world. And for that, they need a real-time, high-accuracy ability to understand the surrounding in 3D. And that’s what we do best.”
Orbach joined Intel back in 2006 as a CPU architect in Israel. He started working on vision technology in 2011 before becoming the general manager of incubation and disruptive innovation in 2022 and moving to San Francisco last year.
“We knew and understood that 3D perception was going to be big,” Orbach said about the early days of RealSense. “To be honest, we weren’t quite sure in which domain. We tried that across different market segments and different applications, all the way from gesture recognition with computers, phones, until we really found our sweet spot over the years, mostly in robotics.”
The company works with numerous industries outside of robotics, too. Orbach said they’ve heard from fish farms looking to track the volume inside their pens. Chipotle has also used RealSense cameras, in a partnership with AI restaurant software company PreciTaste, to track when food containers are low.
RealSense has more than 3,000 customers and has seen a surge in new interest over the last three to four years as AI has improved. With that, the applications for robotics, especially, have scaled.
The company realized it may have a better chance keeping up with demand — and scaling itself — if it spun out of Intel and raised its own capital, Orbach said.
The spinout plans hatched last year and got the approval from former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger. The company is now independent and raised a $50 million Series A funding round from Intel Capital and other strategic investors to get started on its own.
“For me, it was exciting, to be honest,” Orbach said. “I’m a veteran executive in the company, but it’s first time that I’m, you know, I was on the other side of the table. It was a very humbling experience for me as a first-time CEO to go and and raise money.”
RealSense will put the capital toward building out its go-to-market team and making improvements to its technology. The company is particularly focused on improving the tech so it can help improve safety during humans and robot interactions and to improve access control.
“There is a learning curve of, you know, stepping out,” Orbach said. “I’m extremely excited about that. I’m fortunate to have a very strong team with a lot of people in my team that that have entrepreneurial experience. I feel that with my background, together with with some strong teammates, I think we have the right mix for success. And for me, it’s a dream coming true.”
Funding & Business
The great AI agent acceleration: Why enterprise adoption is happening faster than anyone predicted
Enterprise AI agent adoption is accelerating faster than predicted. Get the 4 key takeaways from VB Transform 2025 on how leaders from Intuit, Capital One, and more are deploying agents in production and reshaping their teams for a new era of AI.Read More
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Funding & Business
Fintech Attracts Biggest Rounds While AI Holds Strong
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board.
This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.
This week was a productive period for fintech funding, with two companies in the space — iCapital and Bilt Rewards — pulling in the largest rounds. In addition, we also saw sizable financings for companies in a range of other industries, including micromobility, drug discovery and green steel.
1. iCapital, $820M, fintech: iCapital, a fintech platform for alternative investments and investors, raised more than $820 million in a funding round that took its valuation to over $7.5 billion. SurgoCap Partners and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price co-led the financing for the New York-based company.
2. Bilt Rewards, $250M, fintech: Bilt Rewards, a rewards program for home renters to use with local merchants, raised $250 million in a venture round led by General Catalyst and GID. The financing sets a $10.75 billion valuation for the New York-based company.
3. Also, $200M, micromobility: Also, a micromobility startup spun out of Rivian, raised a reported $200 million in a new financing led by Greenoaks at a $1 billion valuation. The Palo Alto, California-based company is developing small EVs, with an initial product launch anticipated next year.
3. Varda, $187M, spacetech and drug discovery: El Segundo, California-based Varda, a self-described “microgravity-enabled life sciences company,” raised $187 million in a Series C led by Natural Capital and Shrug Capital. The company bases its research on the finding that materials including active pharmaceutical ingredients crystallize differently in space, enabling novel drug formulations.
4. MaintainX, $150M, equipment maintenance: MaintainX, which operates an equipment maintenance and asset management platform, raised $150 million in a Series D backed by a long list of investors including Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. The financing boosted the San Francisco-based startup’s valuation to $2.5 billion.
5. Harmonic, $100M, AI: Harmonic, a developer of AI mathematical reasoning models, announced a $100 million Series B financing led by Kleiner Perkins. The round brings total funding to date for the 2-year-old, Palo Alto, California-based company to $175 million, per Crunchbase data.
6. Neuros Medical, $56M, neurostimulation: Neuros Medical, developer of an electrical nerve stimulation system used to treat chronic post-amputation pain, raised $56 million in a Series D round. EQT Life Sciences led the financing for the Aliso Viejo, California-based company.
7. ServiceUp, $55M, vehicle repair: Los Gatos, California-based ServiceUp, developer of a platform for fleet operators to manage repairs and maintenance, raised $55 million in a Series B round led by PeakSpan Capital.
8. Renasant Bio, $54.5M, biopharma: Renasant Bio launched with $54.5 million in seed funding to develop treatments for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. 5AM Ventures led the financing for the Berkeley, California-based startup.
9. (tied) Boston Metal, $51M, green steel: Green steel maker Boston Metal announced that it raised $51 million in a convertible note investment from existing investors including BHP Ventures, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Piva Capital and SiteGround. The funds will be used in part for a metals plant in Brazil, slated to come online next year.
9.(tied) Spacelift, $51M, enterprise software: Redwood City, California-based Spacelift, developer of an infrastructure orchestration platform for enterprises, raised $51 million in Series C funding led by Five Elms Capital with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and Inovo.vc.
Methodology
We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of July 4-11. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
Crunchbase Daily.
Funding & Business
Accel, General Catalyst Topped Increasingly Busy Active Investor Ranks In Q2
The most active global startup investors largely got busier in the second quarter of 2025, backing and leading more rounds and putting larger sums of capital into deals.
Overall, nine of the 10 most active venture investors did more deals in Q2 than in Q1, per Crunchbase data. Ditto for 80% of the top 10 lead investors by deal count, as well as the vast majority of the spendiest investors in Q2.
However, while many big-name firms upped their investment activity, we did see one Q1 record-setter step back. SoftBank, which backed OpenAI’s unprecedented $40 billion financing in late March, did not place in any of our most-active or highest-spending investor rankings for Q2.
Below, we drill into the active investor rankings in more detail, looking at top venture investors, biggest spenders and busiest seed backers.
Lead venture investors
We’ll start with lead investors, as this provides a snapshot of busy dealmakers who also put a lot of capital to work in each round.
For Q2, Accel and General Catalyst stood out as the most active by this metric, with 20 and 16 lead rounds, respectively.
Many of those deals were jumbo-sized investments as well. Accel, for example, led five rounds of $100 million more, including a $500 million financing for generative AI unicorn Perplexity and a $260 million Series C for spacetech startup True Anomaly.
General Catalyst also kept busy, leading eight deals of $100 million and up. Its biggest investment was a $1 billion financing for AI writing and productivity assistant Grammarly.
The rest of the top five — Insight Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners — weren’t too far behind. Below, we ranked them in a list of the 21 most-active lead investors for the quarter.
Spendiest investors
While Accel and General Catalyst may have led the most deals, they didn’t spend the most money in Q2.
That title goes to Meta for a single deal: Its $14.3 billion investment for Scale AI as part of a strategic and financial deal that also had founder Alexandr Wang join the social media giant.
After Meta, the next-heaviest spenders were Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. For Founders, the ranking was mostly due to the $2.5 billion round it led for defense tech unicorn Anduril. For Andreessen, the biggest round was the $2 billion seed financing it led for Thinking Machines Lab.
After them came Greenoaks, which led Safe Superintelligence’s $2 billion round in April.
Busiest venture dealmakers
While some venture investors concentrate their bets on a few rounds, others spread their money across a high number of deals.
In this latter group, a perennial standout is Y Combinator. Though best known as a seed accelerator, it also participates in later rounds for companies it incubated, usually as a non-lead investor.
That translates into a lot of deals. For Q2, Y Combinator participated in 45 post-seed financings, the most of any investor. The lineup included large rounds for high-profile companies including HR platform Rippling and AI robotics startup Gecko Robotics.
After Y Combinator, the second-most-active by deal count was General Catalyst, which participated in 38 deals as a lead or non-lead investor in Q2. In third place was Accel, with 31 deals, followed by Khosla Ventures, with 30.
Below, we ranked the 22 most-active post-seed investors of the quarter by deal count.
Seed investors
Seed-stage investors also kept busy in Q2, with familiar names leading the way.
Y Combinator landed the top slot, with 50 reported seed investments. Next was Antler, with 33 seed deals.
For a broader perspective, below we ranked the 18 most-active global seed dealmakers, based on reported rounds.
It should be noted that seed investment reporting differs from other stages and this can affect deal counts. For one, accelerators commonly report investments in batches, causing high deal-count fluctuation from quarter to quarter. Additionally, seed-stage companies and backers are often stealthy and are known to delay reporting new financings.
Overall: Busy times, big checks
As we review our rankings of the most-active and highest-spending investors for the quarter, the broad takeaway looks pretty clear. Overall, these are bullish times for startup backers, evidenced by high deal counts as well as big-ticket individual rounds.
Looking ahead, we’ll be curious to see if a pickup in IPO activity translates into more deals and large pre-IPO rounds from growth investors. Given that the active investor list is dominated by U.S.-focused firms, it’ll also be interesting to see more international representation in the ranks.
Related reading:
Illustration: Dom Guzman
Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the
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