Augment Ventures December 2025

Augment Ventures 2025 Year-in-Review

From the Midwest to West Coast, 2025 was full of exciting additions, new milestones, and plenty more that has transformed and elevated Augment! As we continue to carry this upward momentum into 2026, we wanted to take a moment and recap our 2025 highlights!

7 New Companies Joined the Augment Family!

Trustwise

Trustwise provides the first runtime trust and control layer for enterprise AI agents, ensuring they remain secure, compliant, and cost-efficient as organizations scale AI from experimentation to production. Led by serial entrepreneur Manoj Saxena (former GM of IBM Watson, $1.8B in prior exits) and recently recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor, Trustwise is positioned to capture the emerging $80B AI trust market.

Concierge

Concierge.ai provides a branded AI answer engine that transforms how B2B companies engage with customers on their websites, moving beyond static content to provide instant, conversational answers. This investment capitalizes on the fundamental shift in buyer behavior toward direct, AI-driven interactions, a market with enormous growth potential.

Nexxa.ai

Nexxa.ai is developing a platform to automate complex workflows in system-critical industries like rail and manufacturing, replacing outdated and rigid Robotic Process Automation. This investment targets the massive industrial sector, where Nexxa’s AI-powered agents can deliver immense ROI by seamlessly integrating with legacy systems and dynamically adapting to real-time operational data.

Mundo

Mundo.ai is building the critical data infrastructure for the next wave of artificial intelligence by creating high-quality, culturally nuanced voice and text datasets for the world’s low-resource languages. Having already secured contracts with leading AI labs, we are excited to support Mundo as they become the definitive provider of multilingual data for a more equitable AI ecosystem.

Lincode

Lincode provides a hardware-agnostic, AI-powered visual inspection platform that revolutionizes quality control for major manufacturing industries like automotive and aerospace. By leveraging its proprietary deep learning system, the company enables rapid, high-accuracy defect detection for customers including Tata Boeing, Schneider Electric, and Honda, reducing quality escapes by up to 30% and improving labor efficiency by 15%.

SocialCrowd

SocialCrowd provides a real-time, goal-based incentive platform designed to motivate and retain the frontline workforce, a massive and historically underserved segment. The platform integrates with existing POS and HR systems to automatically track performance, nudge employees toward targets, and instantly reward them, driving significant operational improvements for customers like Starbucks, Shake Shack, and Motorola Solutions.

PreventiveHealth.ai

PreventiveHealth.ai is building a personal AI health coach that integrates data from labs, imaging, and wearables to provide continuous, personalized guidance for preventing chronic disease. This investment addresses the massive and costly gap between reactive medical care and fragmented wellness apps, creating a new category of proactive, data-driven health management for consumers and employers.

Augment Hosts 6 Community Events Across the US

This year was defined by connection. Across Michigan, the Bay Area, and beyond, we brought founders, funders, operators, and partners together through events designed to spark conversation, deepen networks, and strengthen the ecosystems we serve. Here’s a look back at some of the highlights:

International Women’s Day – Bay Area

Augment celebrated Women’s History Month with a gathering in the Bay Area. Guided Sonali, attendees participated in an exercise in which each person selected a stone inscribed with a single word and connected it to a personal leadership moment. The afternoon brought together a community of women leaders and supporters for substantive exchange and connection.

International Women’s Day – Ann Arbor

We marked International Women’s Day with an inspiring event cohosted with the Zell Lurie Institute at the University of Michigan. Jen Baird joined Sonali Vijayavargiya and Sarika Gupta for an evening of candid discussion and community-building, bringing together more than 50 women leaders and supporters from Ann Arbor and Detroit.

Augment Annual Meeting – Ann Arbor

Our meeting delivered a focused room and direct engagement from our LPs across the US. Sonali and the team broke down the venture industry, macro conditions, current trends, and a disciplined year-in-review. Six founders from Institutional Fund II introduced their companies and the innovative ideas they are building, giving LPs an unfiltered view.

Founders & Funders AMA – San Francisco

Our first Bay Area AMA was standing room only, bringing together an energized group of founders and funders. Tim Buchner and Philipp Wehn, moderated by Sonali Vijayavargiya, led an insightful discussion that set a high bar for future SF events.

Founders & Funders AMA – Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor delivered a packed room and strong founder engagement for our Michigan AMA. Kurt Skifstad and Rajesh Iyengar joined Sonali Vijayavargiya for a candid discussion that sparked thoughtful questions and great conversations.

High Tea with Augment – Bay Area

We hosted our first High Tea with Augment Ventures in the Bay Area, creating an intimate space for founders and funders to discuss venture capital and shared experiences. Sonali Vijayavargiya led a thoughtful conversation on her journey building Augment and demystifying the VC landscape.

Co-Working Day in Michigan

From strategy sessions at Newlab Detroit to team off-sites and founder meetups supported by Ann Arbor SPARK, we spent meaningful time embedded in the Michigan ecosystem. These days created space for collaboration, planning, and relationship building across the portfolio and pipeline.

Expanded Media Presence and Thought Leadership

2025 was also a year of building, not only through investments and portfolio support, but through the platforms and content that help communicate who we are, what we believe, and where we’re going.

New Augment Ventures Website Augment introduced a fully revamped website designed to more clearly articulate our mission, highlight our portfolio, and present a sharper view of our focus on industrial intelligence and applied AI. The updated platform is faster, more streamlined, and structured to scale with the firm’s growth. We also partnered with our portfolio company Concierge to deploy the Augment Agent, a site-integrated chatbot that enables visitors to explore any aspect of Augment’s work with greater depth and immediacy. Check it out here!

Introducing: Augment Edge We debuted Augment Edge, our new deep-dive research series exploring the frontier sectors shaping our investments. The first edition, focused on Agentic AI, breaks down the rise of autonomous AI systems and the category’s emerging security, orchestration, and infrastructure layers. Edge will continue into 2026 with new sectors, insights, and founder stories. To read the Augment Edge click here!

Expanding Our Digital Presence This year we also grew our media footprint across LinkedIn, Medium, and our revamped newsletter. These channels help us share portfolio updates, thesis content, founder resources, and on-the-ground views from the markets we serve.

If you haven’t already, make sure to follow us: LinkedIn | Medium | Website | YouTube

Help us Support Food Gatherers!

In the spirit of giving during the Thanksgiving season, Augment Ventures proudly supports Ann Arbor-based Food Gatherers and its efforts to fight hunger and food insecurity in our community.

Food Gatherers is the food bank and food rescue program serving Washtenaw County. The lead agency for hunger relief in the County, Food Gatherers supports a network of more than 140 community partners with free and low-cost food, deliveries, and trainings. They operate several large direct service programs — the Food Gatherers Community Kitchen, the Summer Food Service Program, and the Healthy School Pantry Program — and work closely with community schools, universities, and healthcare providers to address gaps in services. Because hunger will not be solved with food alone, the organization advocates for policies and system changes to create an equitable food system.

In the last year, Food Gatherers distributed 9.9 million pounds of food — the equivalent of 8.2 million meals — through their network of partner programs.

Please join us in supporting Food Gatherers or your local food bank to help those families in need this holiday season.

Augment Portfolio 2025 Highlights

Secro Announces Oversubscribed Series A Secro, the AI-powered trade workflow platform modernizing global commodity trading, has closed an oversubscribed $10M Series A round. Augment Ventures, a seed lead and early believer, joined the raise alongside Assembly Ventures, Sway Ventures, and Signal Group. With over $1B in shipments processed by 130+ enterprise users, Secro is replacing outdated paper-based systems with secure, digital infrastructure. The new capital will fuel team expansion, product development, and a global push—including a new EMEA HQ in Geneva. For more on the announcement click here.

Optilogic Raises $40MM Series B We’re excited to share that Optilogic, a leader in AI-powered supply chain design, has raised a $40M Series B round led by NewRoad Capital Partners. Augment Ventures joined the round alongside MK Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures. This funding will accelerate the development of Optilogic’s next-generation platform, which enables businesses to model complex scenarios, assess risk, and make smarter, faster supply chain decisions. The raise marks a major milestone as Optilogic becomes the new standard for enterprise supply chain optimization. To read more on the announcement click here.

ConverSight’s Athena wins 2025 AI Agent Product of the Year ConverSight has been recognized by TMCnet as the winner of the inaugural 2025 AI Agent Product of the Year Award for its intelligent agent, Athena. The award honors AI-powered agents that deliver exceptional user experience and measurable business impact—Athena stood out for enabling fast, natural conversational insights and decision making across supply chain and ERP contexts. This recognition highlights ConverSight’s leadership in unified decision intelligence platforms that translate complex data into actionable outcomes via conversational AI. To read more click here.

Fluree Named a Top 25 Database Product Company in the U.S. Fluree has been recognized by AIM Media House as one of the Top 25 Database Product Companies in the United States, highlighting its leadership in delivering secure, AI-ready data infrastructure. With its semantic knowledge graph platform and built-in governance, Fluree enables enterprises to unify data, improve GenAI accuracy, and ensure trustworthy insight across their organization. See the full list here.

Perennial Announces First Verra-Approved AI Tool Perennial has launched VT0014, the first Verra-approved AI tool for scalable soil carbon quantification. Built on the ATLAS-SOC model trained on 350,000+ soil samples, VT0014 drastically reduces measurement costs and enables rigorous quantification even in remote, data-scarce regions. The approval opens new pathways for carbon markets and regenerative finance, helping unlock incentives for millions of acres of farmland worldwide. Partners including Bayer, rTek, and Anthesis are already deploying the tool to bring market-grade soil carbon measurement to projects across six continents. For more on the announcement click here.

Celera Semiconductor Announces $20MM Series A Investment Celera Semiconductor has raised a $20 million Series A led by Maverick Silicon to accelerate its mission of automating analog chip design using AI. By reducing design time from months to minutes, Celera aims to transform a $60B market that has long relied on manual processes. The funding will fuel R&D, hiring, and go-to-market efforts for its AI-powered platform built to unlock speed, accuracy, and scalability in analog development. Read more here.

Nexxa.ai Raises $4.4MM to Bring Specialized AI to Heavy Industries We’re excited to share that Nexxa.ai, a pioneer in applying specialized AI to heavy industries, has raised a $4.4MM seed round led by a16z Speedrun, with participation from Augment Ventures, Beat Ventures, Propeller Ventures, and Untapped Ventures. Nexxa’s platform automates complex, manual workflows in sectors like manufacturing, energy, and logistics—bringing intelligence to the physical economy where efficiency gains have outsized impact. This funding will accelerate product development and expansion as Nexxa partners with global industrial leaders to modernize operations. To read more on the announcement click here.

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