Drew Anderson

Podonos just raised $2.4 million in pre-seed funding, and the signal is loud and clear: the voice AI industry finally has someone measuring the sound, not just making the noise. Based in Los Gatos, Podonos is building the infrastructure layer that decides whether voice AI feels real, human, and ready for primetime. The industry is racing toward a projected $47.5 billion by 2034, but growth without standards is chaos. Podonos is making sure the hype actually holds up when you press play. At the center is ✦Soohyun Bae, PhD in Computer Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and Y Combinator W22 alumnus. His track record stretches from engineering roles at Google Maps to leading AR mapping at Niantic, plus co-founding Bobidi and TickTock AI. He has seen what happens when technology scales without proper #guardrails. With Podonos, he's betting the future of AI isn't just about how smart the models get, but how believable and trustworthy they sound. Podonos evaluates models across naturalness, similarity, emotion, recognition accuracy, pronunciation, tone, and resilience. Add in #personaconsistency, and suddenly you're not just testing machines, you're testing their ability to pass as human. The twist? They deliver results in under twelve hours, when the legacy approach drags on for two months. In AI time, that's the difference between relevance and irrelevance. Investors caught the beat. Serac Ventures, led by Kevin Moore, took the lead, backed by NAVER D2SF, the venture arm of South Korea's NAVER, and KAIST Venture Investment Holdings. Together, they've now backed Podonos twice, with this $2.4 million round stacking on top of a $750,000 raise in March 2025. Total funding sits at $3.15 million, and every dollar is pointed toward scaling #engineering, refining #analysistools, and launching into the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. This isn't theory. Podonos already serves Resemble AI, Play AI, and Sanas AI, hitting six-digit ARR by November 2024 with just four employees. Their secret weapon is reach: 150,000 evaluators spread across nine languages and thirteen locales, forming a human-in-the-loop platform that blends speed, rigor, and global coverage. That reach lets Podonos deliver evaluations at a scale and pace that no competitor has matched. The strategy is ambitious: expand into high-demand sectors like #healthcare, #finance, #gaming, and #advertising, then move beyond voice into #multimodal model evaluation, spanning video AI and large language models. The mission isn't just to check if AI works, it's to decide if AI works for people. #Startups #StartupFunding #EarlyStage #VentureCapital #PreSeed #AI #AIInfrastructure #Voice #VoiceAI #VoiceTech #Infrastructure #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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South 8 Technologies just secured an $11M follow-on round, and the timing feels like the universe finally syncing to their frequency. LiGas has been the quiet storm building since the UC San Diego lab days, where Co-founder and CEO Jungwoo Lee, PhD, and Co-founder and CSO Cyrus Rustomji, PhD, took liquefied #gaselectrolytes from academic theory to a field-tested advantage that laughs at minus 60°C. Now that same tech is scaling inside their San Diego facility to meet multi-year demand from defense and aerospace programs that cannot afford another battery shrugging the moment the temperature dips. The round brings in W. L. Gore & Associates Ventures and Lockheed Martin Ventures as co-leads, backed by Anzu Partners, IQT, LG Technology Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Foothill Ventures, Alumni Ventures, and strategic partner Galvion. When investors built on #precisionengineering, #nationalsecurity, and aerospace resilience put skin in the same game, you pay attention. South 8 has already shipped thousands of #LiGas-based 18650 cells, showing 96% energy retention at minus 20°C and 87% at minus 40°C, while standard LNMO electrolyte barely clears 5%. That is not an incremental improvement. That is physics deciding to switch sides. What makes this raise compelling is how disciplined the company has been in turning IP into infrastructure. A portfolio of 42 patents across 14 countries is impressive, but pairing that with compatibility across #graphite, #NMC, silicon-anode chemistries and a domestic gas supply chain is what turns a breakthrough into a business. Investors do not back dreams. They back proof. South 8 has stacked validation from U.S. Army ballistic testing, thermal fuse abuse trials, and a $6.4M NanoGraf Corporation subcontract, all while delivering real cells to real integrators with real deadlines. The partnerships paint an even sharper picture. NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, LG Energy Solution, and KULR Technology Group, Inc (NYSE: KULR) want LiGas for space missions demanding operation at minus 60°C. Galvion and CTNS are building LiGas into soldier power and aerospace systems where traditional lithium cells act more like decorative paperweights. The company is shaping a market where performance is not a pitch but a prerequisite. If you build #drones, #satellites, soldier systems, or industrial hardware that has to work when the environment works against you, South 8 is not just a name to watch. It is a signal that the battery world is shifting under your feet, one liquefied molecule at a time. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #Battery #BatteryTech #Defense #DefenseTech #Aerospace #DeepTech #Infrastructure #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring

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Happy Friday! 🖼️ A picture is worth a thousand words! ☺️ This is the latest data from our Central Plant AI optimization solution running at California State University-Dominguez Hills Kenny Seeton. Pretty exciting that we've confirmed that it takes our AI/ML/RL platform a total of TEN (10) days, from “scratch, to completely RE-discover the data points needed, classify them, "map" them, build its OWN model, train itself, and INCREASE the Central Plant efficiency by FORTY-EIGHT PERECNT! From 0.81 kW/ton down to 0.39 kW/ton! 🚷 NO human intervention! Below is a snapshot of the CP. Restart 5/5/25. We deleted ALL of the learnings from the last 2 1/2 years. About 2GB. 1 week baseline. 10 days RL. Notable observations: 1. Even though the Plant Efficiency increased by 48%, the Chiller is STILL "holding" the CHW-S temp set-point of 47 DEG F (46.5 DEG F Actual). 2. The one-thousand TON (rated) JCI/York YMC2 Chiller is "putting out" 668 TONS of cooling (67% of its RATED capacity), YET the Chiller itself is only "loaded up" 39.4%! This means the Chillers CAPACITY (output) INCREASED significantly. 3. The original BMS algorithm was programmed to set the CW Temp to Outside Air Wet-Bulb (OA-WB) PLUS five (5) degrees. Which is standard practice, and has been, for decades. However, our AI trained itself and controlled the CW Temp everywhere from +4 degrees above OA-WB to TWENTY-FOUR (+24) degrees above OA-WB. And everywhere in between. Every five (5) minutes. 288 cycles (solutions) per day. The new set-point is computed and sent from the cloud. Takes 4-5 secs. Let's talk about "guardrails". 😉 YES! 😁 They're there. Low: 60.0 DEG F to a High: 90.0 DEG F. In fact, these same "guardrails" are typically already IN PLACE, with your existing BMS logic. AND there's mechanical safeties, ON the Chiller(s) and equipment. We take the safety and security of your organization VERY seriously. But here's the thing about facil.ai: How can you TRUST our AI? Because you can TRUST the people who built it! And install it. Our partners are the same BMS service providers, consultants, mechanical contractors, ESCOs, Property Managers, Peers and friends: Who are serving you right now! Ready to learn more? Contact us: https://lnkd.in/gVutYEiX Want to explore being a partner? https://lnkd.in/gigtx2vx Want to invest in the future of AI Digital Technology? We're putting together a crowdfunding growth round with StartEngine https://lnkd.in/gwcSRR3b Please sign up on the list if interested: https://lnkd.in/gJ_2yCr3 Let's start a conversation! I'm always ready to "talk shop" 🤗 Shoot me a note on LinkedIn or e-mail: keith@facil-ai.com 🦄 We’re thrilled to be in conversations with several large infrastructure companies as partners or acquirers. Inquiries to our interim CTO John Majeski BUILD🛠️GROW📈FUND💰EXIT🦄 ❤️ Our customers love us! 🚀 facil.ai is proud to be a Portola Valley Partners portfolio company. #innovation #technology #management #creativity #future

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What a great example of #airporttech! I like the "...friendly nudge by an officer." Excellent use case of curb management. Thank you Andrew K Kirk and Automotus for your partnership. INRIX #airports #govtech

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⚙️ Claude Code is creating a buzz among Seattle engineers, who describe the AI tool as a supercharged coding partner that can refactor large codebases, handle tedious boilerplate, and stitch services together at speed. The article paints a picture of software teams rethinking roles, workflows, and onboarding as coding assistants shift from autocomplete to true collaborators. For engineering leaders, the big challenge is how to harness this productivity jump while maintaining code quality, security, and human expertise in the loop. #AI #Claude #SoftwareDevelopment #EngineeringLeadership #DevTools #Productivity #AIFreakyFacts

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📈 More LLMs, higher quality!! 💰 Gemini, Cursor (Composer) & GPT-5 reviewed Claude plans & implementation on 27 PRs Only 35% of issues were found by multiple LLMs. The rest of the findings? Completely unique to a single tool. Claude caught a CSRF bypass and WebSocket auth gaps that nobody else touched. GPT-5 flagged flow-breaking type errors. Cursor caught race conditions and a few bugs. Dropping any one tool would leave blind spots. Claude is the strongest reviewer, however, in Claude Code it has the most context as well. Subjectively, Cursor Bugbot delivers best insights & actual bugs on Github - Composer run on local changes is not as productive. My next steps are 1) Quantify quality of Copilot & Bugbot reviews on Github 2) try claude-octopus (link in comments) & acpx for stability of the setup

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AI Agents: Powerful, But Not Plug-and-Play After reviewing this insightful article on the challenges of AI agents (link: https://lnkd.in/gaw97Mwv) I wanted to echo a hard-earned truth: Teams without real-world experience in deploying AI automations are walking clients off the hype train and into the trough of disillusionment. The right approach to AI isn't blind automation — it's strategic augmentation. From our work supporting high-stakes environments like nuclear operations, mechanical repair, and surgery, we've seen firsthand how critical it is to apply guardrails, checkpoints, and human-in-the-loop oversight to mitigate hallucinations and ensure reliable, deterministic outcomes. Beware automation providers pushing no-code/low-code tools that “replace your team.” That pitch might sound great — until you realize there's no one left to supervise the machine. We believe in professional-grade automation: Tools that empower your existing team to work smarter — freeing them to focus on what really matters: customer experience, strategy, and growth. If you're thinking about integrating AI agents into your business operations, don't fall for hype. Find a partner who knows how to balance innovation with precision. Reach out to Aptitude AI for your free Automation Audit: https://lnkd.in/g8sWBgA5 #AIAgents #Automation #ProcessEngineering #DigitalTransformation #ResponsibleAI

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As a prelude to the AI Infra Summit starting today at the Santa Clara Convention Center (Sept 9-12 2025), I published a paper highlighting the architecture challenges facing the industry. You can download the paper from the following link: https://lnkd.in/gz3-3cTn Artificial Intelligence is no longer a niche workload—it is the engine driving hyperscale data centers, autonomous vehicles, and mission-critical systems worldwide. Yet behind the promise lies a crisis in design: unpredictable workloads, skyrocketing silicon costs, interconnect bottlenecks, thermal hotspots, and the fragility of heterogeneous chiplet integration. This paper cuts through the noise, showing why traditional tools and benchmarks are failing us and why predictive, system-level exploration is now essential. From chiplets to cloud, it demonstrates how early modeling uncovers bottlenecks, reduces risk, and saves millions in time and cost, while enabling safer, faster, and more energy-efficient AI infrastructure. If you care about building AI systems that actually deliver in the real world—reliably, at scale, and ahead of competitors—this is the paper you cannot afford to ignore #AISystemArchitecture #ErchitectureExploration #PredictiveModelingForAISystems, #AIInfrastructureDesign #ChipletSystemDesign #SoCArchitectureExploration #DataCenterAIArchitecture #VisualSimArchitect #AIWorkloadModeling #ChipletIntegrationChallenges #SystemLevelSimulationTools #CacheHierarchyOptimization #MemorySystemArchitecture #InterconnectBottlenecksInAI #AIPowerAndThermalManagement #AIPerformanceVSReliabilityTradeOffs #EarlyStageSystemDesignExploration

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