Truth Systems is building the monitoring, governance and policy engine that enables enterprises such as law, financial services, and beyond – to guide how AI is used, detect and prevent misuse. Their approach puts control back in the hands of compliance and security teams, turning acceptable-use policies into active enforcement that ensures AI remains aligned with human intent, values, and trust.
Sector: Technology
Chance Mathisen
Chance is an Associate at F-Prime, where he focuses on early-stage investments in enterprise software. Before joining F-Prime, he was a consultant in Accenture’s Software & Platforms Strategy practice, advising leading hyperscalers and technology companies on go-to-market, product, and market expansion strategies.
Chance holds a B.S. in Managerial Economics from the University of California, Davis.
Robotics on the Rise: The State of Robotics Investment in 2025
Updating our annual report.
We had the opportunity to provide a mid-year update on our State of Robotics report at RoboBusiness 2025. The buzz at the conference was palpable, as this year is proving to be an incredible year for robotics. The market is hitting an inflection point with investment on pace to hit record highs, public and private market valuations growing rapidly, exits accelerating, and innovation continuing to offer transformative opportunity. The future of robotics is more exciting than ever!
We invite you to download the report here, and reach out to authors Sanjay Aggarwal and Betsy Mulé.
Kanastra
Kanastra is a Brazil-based fintech company providing end-to-end infrastructure solutions for the country’s rapidly expanding private credit market. Its platform integrates fund, securitization, and banking services — covering the full operational lifecycle — with deep automation to help originators, asset managers, and banks scale portfolios with greater transparency, efficiency, and control. Kanastra is setting the standard for how private credit infrastructure matures in Brazil and across Latin America.
F-Prime’s Summer Internship and Fellowship Program: Meet Our 2025 Interns and Fellows
A big thank you to our interns and fellows for their valuable contributions this summer!
This summer, F-Prime was excited to welcome a talented group of interns and fellows to our Cambridge and London offices. They played key roles in competitive landscape analysis, sourcing, founder calls, and more. Read on to discover what it’s like to be part of our internship and fellowship programs.
“This experience has deepened that interest, especially seeing how these tools might fit into real business contexts like VC. Listening to discussions where those kinds of possibilities are explored has also been hugely motivating. ”
“The work is creative. I expected rigorous diligence, but I didn’t anticipate how much of the job involves pattern recognition, storytelling, and forming contrarian but grounded views on where a field is heading. You’re constantly toggling between scientific depth and high-level strategic vision.”
“I am most surprised by how fast-paced and rapidly evolving the job is. The team has many new calls every day, while also having to study new technologies, keep up with the news, and manage the portfolio companies. I am learning a great deal about how to manage all these aspects of being a venture capitalist.”
“I have come to further appreciate how the venture framework is about asking the right questions rather than having all the answers. The best investors seem to pair scientific curiosity with disciplined judgment, which has given me a deeper appreciation for how to approach underwriting risk.”
“One thing that stood out is how hands-on and multidimensional the team is at every level. I expected sharp and high-level strategic thinking from partners, but it was refreshing to see just how engaged they are in the details; in every meeting, building models, debating sourcing strategies, refining TAMs.“
“I was most surprised by the rapid pace of innovation and how quickly the team collaborates to evaluate and act on exciting new opportunities. I also learned how important building relationships are in the VC world. it’s not only about finding good investments but also about fostering long-term relationships with founders and industry leaders.”
“I learned about F-Prime through a family friend. I decided to join as an intern because F-Prime gets to work with amazing biotech startups and help them grow as a business. Additionally, the culture at F-Prime is extremely friendly and everyone at the firm wants to help you be the best version of yourself.”
Applications for our 2026 program are not open yet, but if you are interested in learning more, please send an email to careers@fprimecapital.com.
Kanastra: Private Credit Infrastructure Gets A Full-Stack Overhaul
At F-Prime, we have long tracked the rise of alternative assets as they become a core piece of the modern investment portfolio, and the subsequent rise of infrastructure players enabling their expansion. Within “alts”, private credit has been one of the fastest-growing and most overlooked segments. With some estimates for the asset class standing at $1.8T (largely driven by direct lending in the US), others have sized the more complex asset-based finance market in emerging economies closer to $20T. In countries like Brazil, regulators are actively encouraging investment in private credit while simultaneously spurring the creation of new non-bank and fintech loan originators. Thanks to macroeconomic and regulatory tailwinds, the market has grown 230% over the last five years, driven largely by private markets behemoths such as Ares and Patria expanding their footprint into private credit. The sector’s AUM has now outpaced the technology that supports it, with both funds and originators relying on manual, headcount-heavy processes and technologies.
As co-founders of a $500M asset management firm in Brazil, Gustavo Mapeli and Manuel Netto were well-acquainted with the pain of managing a burgeoning asset class with outdated technology. The pair built and then spun out a software product that would solve those pain points, and the result is Kanastra: a back-office platform to manage private credit funds, enabling funds and originators to more efficiently structure, manage, and monitor private credit facilities.
Currently, there is very little infrastructure to support private credit markets in emerging markets, and Kanastra has emerged as an all-in-one tech platform for funds and originators alike. In a market with too many service providers to interact with on a manual basis — fund managers, fund administrators, custodians, controllers, securitization companies, BaaS platforms, loan-as-a-service providers, and monitoring agents — the company provides a tech-forward fund admin solution with end-to-end platform features. The team’s product roadmap is smart and ambitious, with plans to automate onboarding, day-to-day management, risk management, monitoring, analytics, and business intelligence.
We were thoroughly impressed by Gustavo, Manuel, and the Kanastra team when we first met in 2022, and it has been exciting to watch their growth in the years since. Kanastra is well on its way to becoming the leading fund admin provider in Brazil, serving some of the country’s largest banks (Itaú), investment management companies (XP Investments), private credit funds (Patria Investments, Vinci Partners), and originators (Solfácil, Creditas). Earlier this year, Kanastra secured a strategic investment from Itaú alongside a commercial agreement.
At F-Prime, we are proud to have backed foundational companies in the capital markets arena like Kensho, FutureAdvisor, and Canoe Intelligence. Today, we are thrilled to announce that we are leading Kanastra’s $30M Series B. Congratulations to Gustavo, Manuel, and the whole team on the milestone, and we look forward to the years of partnership ahead.
Tenzin Jampa
Tenzin Jampa joined F-Prime in 2025 as a data scientist, where he focuses on data science and automation. Tenzin graduated from MIT in 2025. During his time at MIT, he conducted research at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, worked on analyzing the early data samples from the 2024 LHCb Run, and evaluated Large Language Models for physics domain specialization. Tenzin enjoys writing and occasionally publishes on his blog. In his free time, he loves to watch or play soccer, go on walks, play video games, or read.
Tenzin holds a B.S. degree from MIT in Physics and Philosophy.
Eric Blatte
Eric joined F-Prime in 2021 as a Venture Partner focused on executive leadership and go-to-market functions in technology and cybersecurity companies. Eric has founded and helped lead organizations from startup to $100 million plus revenue, including RiskRecon (acquired by Mastercard), Trusteer (acquired by IBM), Imprivata (IPO), and Centra Software (IPO).
Eric earned his undergraduate degree from Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.
AI Can Turn the Robotics Industry’s Golden Opportunity Into a Golden Age
It took longer than many thought, but robotic systems are starting to show up in average people’s lives.
Self-driving taxis now ply the streets of major American cities, it’s now commonplace to see shelf-scanning robots roaming grocery store aisles, and humanoids dance, flip, and carry objects in videos on our social media feeds. As we’ve tracked for several years now, investors are pouring money into robotics startups — some with practical business cases, others explicitly chasing a massive disruption of the entire world economy. As long-time investors in the robotics space, it’s clear to us that the industry is now experiencing a long-sought period of momentum. So what’s fueling it?
We recently hosted two of the world’s leading roboticists — iRobot co-founder Colin Angle and Director at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Sertac Karaman — in F-Prime’s Cambridge offices to discuss how advances in AI are unlocking new opportunities for robotics startups. And while the general sentiment is that we are in the early days of this AI wave, we have a “golden opportunity” to capitalize and usher in a robotics “golden age.” Here’s how.
Golden Opportunity vs Golden Age
As exciting as self-driving cars and humanoids are, most of the robotics companies receiving all that attention are not yet solving problems at scale. To move from media hype to real value creation, entrepreneurs must avoid the traps that have befallen previous waves of robotics innovation: start with real-world problems in need of a solution, not cool technology in search of an application. AI is dramatically enhancing machines’ ability to perceive, plan, and make decisions, creating a window for companies that can build genuinely useful robots instead of a generation of machines in search of a reason to exist.
So what is the role of humanoids? For now, they are generating excitement and showcasing what could be possible with AI-powered perception and control. However, commercialization is still a long way off. Nevertheless, the R&D work at the cutting edge of building humanoids is delivering technology advances that smart entrepreneurs can leverage to build viable businesses, like dual-arm manipulators, real-time human interaction, spatial awareness. Industrial cleaning, infrastructure inspection, goods delivery, and elder care are all ripe for robotic automation and technically viable with AI systems that can navigate spaces, operate in unstructured environments, and work alongside humans,.
Smart entrepreneurs are already mapping physical AI opportunities by asking: what level of dexterity is required? Does it need emotional intelligence? How generalizable must the system be? From that framework, they’re building task-specific robots that solve pressing problems now, not 10 years from now.
The Role of AI Foundation Models in Robotics
Think of robotics foundation models as a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) for motion and manipulation. The challenge here is that while robotics data is available, it’s expensive. Entrepreneurs can’t scrape the internet for robotic grasping demos. Collecting and labeling real-world interaction data at scale is hard, slow, and costly, with an uncertain payoff for startups. It is ultimately a game of who raises the most capital, which is out of reach for most startups.
As a result, smaller, skill-specific models will be much more valuable in the near term. Foundation models for warehouse navigation, or picking and placing in cluttered environments, or understanding facial expressions and verbal language will be cheaper to build, quicker to deploy, and easier to tune. For businesses going after a specific, real-world use case, these smaller foundation models will offer early traction and real ROI without waiting on a billion-dollar general-purpose robotics brain.
From Tools to Real-World Impact
Recent AI breakthroughs are answering a long-standing question in robotics, which is whether the technology’s limits lay in software or hardware. As we’ve seen, today’s robots can walk, run, and even do backflips because of smarter code and learning systems, not some radical new motor.
AI is creating a new toolbox for robotics engineers. Ten years ago, basic robotic manipulation was unreliable, but AI has enabled the creation of perception stacks that understand 3D environments, reinforce learning to teach agile motion, and adjust in real-time via smart control systems. Thanks to these tools, robots can now fold laundry and scramble over rubble — not exactly headline-grabbing use cases, but they are the foundations of real businesses with real revenue.
AI-Assisted Design
When designing chips, AI can optimize transistor placement far better than human engineers. We’re now seeing the same dynamic in robotics. AI-enabled simulators are starting to bridge the sim-to-real gap, making robot training faster and easier. At the same time, simulations combined 3D printing and rapid prototyping enable engineers to significantly shorten design cycles.
As a result, the future of robotic design may not be intelligible to humans. AI systems trained through simulation and reinforcement learning could generate optimal algorithms and designs that weren’t obvious to human engineers, just like AlphaGo will play moves that no human had previously imagined.
The real transformation in robotics is happening under the hood, in the tools, workflows, and enabling technologies that AI has brought to life. The robotics industry currently faces a golden opportunity. But the golden age will follow after a few standout successes — built on the most useful system, not the flashiest robot — show what’s possible.
Spinwheel
Spinwheel is revolutionizing the consumer credit ecosystem. The company partners with lenders, marketplaces and personal financial management platforms to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs and its agentic AI platform.