Oliver Roup

Project Vend reads less like a capability story and more like a governability story. Phase two improved because institutional scaffolding (tools, procedures, role separation) reduced predictable judgment failures—persuasion, compliance blind spots, boundary confusion, values drift. The board-level question isn’t “can an agent run a business?” but “what governance primitives must exist before we delegate authority.” Until incentives, escalation rights, and refusal boundaries are structurally enforced—not merely prompted—agents remain high-performing managers, not autonomous executives.

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At CRV, we’ve been fortunate to partner with some of the most visionary founders reshaping the future of cybersecurity over the past five decades. From cloud-native data protection to developer-first security and AI-driven detection, our portfolio reflects the breadth and depth of innovation happening in the industry today. Companies like Cyera, Cribl, Astrix Security, Tailscale, and Vega (among many others) are tackling the hardest problems facing CISOs and developers — from securing non-human identities, to modernizing log pipelines, to making zero-trust networking effortless. What’s exciting is not just the individual companies, but the ecosystem effect: each is building in complementary areas, and together they’re advancing how enterprises secure data, infrastructure, and applications in an AI-powered world. Cybersecurity has never been more mission-critical, and the next decade will see even greater disruption as AI, automation, and new architectures redefine what’s possible. We’re proud to support founders leading that charge.🚀 If you’re building in cyber, we’d love to connect!

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Seth Levine nailed it! The concentration problem isn't just a GP pain point... it's choking innovation. When capital pools around the same 20 funds, emerging managers and founders get shut out. Love that he's using his platform to call this out. Foundry has backed 50+ emerging managers. That's the diversification the ecosystem needs. This is exactly why Carta exists — making capital allocation visible and accessible. Capital Evolution hits at exactly the right moment. Thanks for having us Daniel Dart. Team Carta loves the community of FUTURE TITANS you have built 🚀

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As AI continues to reshape how agencies build, deploy and secure software, transparency and deeper risk understanding are becoming essential to getting it right. I recently joined Sonatype Senior Vice President of Product, @Tyler Warden, and Lockheed Martin Vice President and Chief Digital AI Officer, Mike Baylor, for a GovCIO Media & Research #GovFocus virtual panel on the realities of open-source AI — where it accelerates innovation, where it introduces new exposure and what federal teams should be thinking about as they modernize their software supply chains. If you're navigating AI adoption or looking to strengthen your security posture, this discussion offers a grounded look at the challenges and opportunities ahead. Watch “How AI is Reshaping Open Source, Software Supply Chain” here: https://lnkd.in/es9xv9Wi #SupplyChain #FederalIT #GovTech #AI #ArtificialIntelligence

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Most people underestimate how many tasks AI will automate — the opportunity is far bigger than the current narrative suggests. Great overview here: 

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Trying something new this week - a studio industry roundup with my take on what matters. The studio model is no longer an experiment being run in a handful of places. It is infrastructure being built across geographies, sectors, and institutional types. 5️⃣ stories from the past seven days:  1️⃣ OSS Ventures hit a EUR 40M first close on a EUR 75M follow-on fund -- capital raised specifically to back the 30 companies their studio created since 2019. The "build then fund" lifecycle is maturing. B'More Venture Studio with a similar thesis: studio operations first, then dedicated capital to scale what's working.  2️⃣ Delta40 raised $20M from 54 investors across 13 countries to launch Africa's first integrated venture studio and fund. The LP base is almost entirely DFIs and foundations. Impact capital is discovering the studio model as a deployment vehicle, something I seeing across geographies (conversations with Michael Bob Starr and Damias McDonald this week alone) 3️⃣ Start Holdings launched Start.vc out of NYC and Barcelona after a $200M EV infrastructure exit. Another operator-turned-studio-founder. This is the pattern we see quite often in our work at 9point8 -- experienced operators like Jason Goldsmith who've built and exited deciding the studio model is how they want to build next.  4️⃣ UBC HATCH admitted 10 new deep-tech spinouts for Winter 2026 -- mostly climate tech. University venture builders are quietly becoming one of the fastest-growing segments. Follow Evan Allen and Jaimie Testai to keep track of its rapid evolution.  5️⃣ The INVEST Act is advancing through the Senate. If passed, it expands qualifying VC fund size from $10M to $50M and loosens general solicitation rules for accelerator and university events. For studio-funds -- and for folks in the The Venture Studio Forum community tracking policy -- this could be the most significant capital formation legislation since the JOBS Act. If this roundup format is useful, I'll keep it going. What other noteworthy news hit your desk this week, and what stood out to you?

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We're excited to introduce our latest investment, Oryo.io - the security layer for agentic AI. Prashanth R. and Swaroop S., veterans of Okta and Wiz, are building agentic visibility and a trust layer on the MCP protocol for enterprise autonomous agents. Like Waymo’s cars today, agentic AI across enterprises will soon ingest data, make decisions, and take action. As adoption rises, the problem shifts from capability to control. CISOs manage identity and access for humans today. Okta anchors that trust layer for non-humans tomorrow. After our Agentic AI conference in Feb 2025 led by Anand Rao, we came with prepared minds to our first call with Oryo. Michael Marmor led diligence and is working closely with the founders as they build their MVP. We wrote the first check into Oryo. Village Global (Reid Hoffman) and Seven Hill Ventures (Michael Coates) followed soon after. Perhaps Nikesh Arora should take notice :) Venkat Raju, JB Michel, Rahul Harikumar, Quentin Staes-Polet Josh Cunningham

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