Moves in VC: week of july 12 - july 18. This week's Moves in VC contains 20 Moves and 11 new fund announcements, compiled from 40+ sources. Icymi. Kirk Hourdajaian left his role as a Partner at Montauk Capital. Montauk Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on the electron economy. Eastern US. Ali Afridi and Chelsea Zhang were promoted to Partner at Equal Ventures, while Sophia Dodd was promoted to Principal. Equal Ventures is a seed-stage venture fund investing in companies that deploy technology to legacy industries. Jeff Berger left his role as an Operating Partner at FJ Labs. Jeff joined Hubble Contacts as CEO. FJ Labs is a stage-agnostic venture fund. Loubaba El Ayoubi joined Northzone as a VC Investor. Loubaba recently graduated from Stanford University with a Master's in Management Science & Engineering. Madeline Behr was promoted to Investor Relations and Capital Formation Principal at SOSV. SOSV is a deep-tech venture capital firm. Sam Schwartzben left his role as an Investor at Affinity Partners. Sam will be building House Capital as a Partner. Affinity Partners is an investment firm focusing on American and Israeli companies. Interested in having your job posting featured here? Western US. John Edgar and Jane Lee transitioned to Investment Partner and Marketing Partner, respectively at Maple VC. Maple VC is an early-stage venture capital firm backing Canadian founders. Catie Calcagno joined Playground Global as a Director of Investor Relations. Catie previously worked at The Westly Group as the Head of Investor Relations. Playground Global is an early-stage deep tech venture capital firm. Simran Arora joined Gigascale Capital as the Head of Finance. Simran previously worked at SemperVirens Venture Capital as a Director of Finance. Gigascale Capital is a venture capital firm focusing on companies rebuilding the physical economy. HK (Hyukmin Kwon) joined SK hynix as a Venture Investment Director. HK previously worked at Entegris Ventures as a Senior Principal. SK hynix invests in the AI infra stack. Eric Fett left his role as a Vice President at NGP Capital and is joining Gradial as the Head of Strategy and Business Development. NGP Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm focusing on B2B companies in Europe and the US. Luke Riggan joined Amplify Partners as an Associate Investor. Luke previously worked at EGB Capital as a Venture Partner. Saveena Mandadi is leaving her role as a Venture Partner at Mantis Venture Capital. Saveena joined Mesh Optical Technologies, one of Mantis' portfolio companies, as a Business Operations and Finance Lead. Mantis Venture Capital is an early-stage technology venture capital firm focusing on B2B software companies. Southeastern US. Patrick Bailey was promoted to Senior Investment Diligence Manager at SC Launch Inc. SC Launch Inc., is the investment affiliate of SCRA (South Carolina Research Authority). Canada. Evan Kerr joined Sagard as a General Partner focused on their AI fund. Evan previously worked at Georgian as a Lead Investor. Sagard is a global multi-strategy alternative asset management firm. Middle east. Naftaly Gluskin joined Vine Ventures as a Principal. Naftaly previously worked at Essentia Venture Capital as an Investor. Vine Ventures is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm. Africa. Tramayne Monaghan is stepping down from his role as a Chief Venture Officer at NEXT176. NEXT176, backed by Old Mutual, focuses on the future of emerging economies. Asia. Chris Starkey was promoted to Head of Finance at Woven Capital, while Jarek Khoilian and Manas Punhani were promoted to Principals. Woven Capital is a growth fund focusing on the future of mobility. New funds. These firms are ready to write checks, with new funds recently closed. Menlo Park-based Greylock Partners closed $1.5B for its eighteenth early- stage fund. San Francisco-based Omni Ventures closed its first $33M fund to focus on early-stage startups building the next generation of manufacturing technology. San Francisco-based Paradigm raised $1.2B to invest in 'technical frontier' startups. San Francisco-based Drumbeat Capital launched its debut $50M fund to invest in early-stage deep tech companies. Milan-based Primo Capital launched its second $137M fund aimed at civil and defence space technology. Milan-based Panakès Partners closed its first $22.8M fund to advance early-stage therapeutics startups in Italy. The University of Toronto, McMaster, and the Ontario government teamed up to launch a new $40M fund to back early stage life science spinouts. San Francisco-based B Capital closed its third $500M Ascent fund to back AI and frontier tech founders. Arlington-based Marlinspike Partners closed its second $127M fund to support companies operating at the intersection of national security and next-generation industrials. Warsaw-based Expeditions closed its second $225M fund to shape the future of European security. New York-based AlleyCorp closed its second $335M fund to support early-stage founders. For emerging managers. Join over 3,000 VC professionals receiving key legal insights by Chris Harvey. Discover the "Law of VC" Substack with free checklists, forms, and guides. Stay tuned for next week's Moves in VC!

Texture raises $12.5M to tackle the operational complexity of the modern grid. Thursday, May 21, 2026 VoLo Earth and Equal Ventures co-lead Series A in grid technology firm building an "operating system" to help utilities consolidate data and maximize value across operations - from data center load to renewables growth to distributed energy resources. Texture, the grid software platform that provides utilities a single view of every device and data source on their network, announced on May 20 a $12.5 million Series A co-led by VoLo Earth Ventures and Equal Ventures, with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Abstract Ventures. The funding supports a platform already operational at utility cooperatives and energy companies, providing the coherent data infrastructure needed to operate the grid in real time. Power utilities are operating a system that's drifted far from what it was originally built to handle. Grids built for one-way power flow are now expected to coordinate insatiable demand from data centers, manage increased congestion, integrate utility-scale renewables, manage local networks amid an influx of electric vehicles and distributed generation, and harden transmission assets against extreme weather, all at once. At the same time, they're being asked to ensure the wave of new technologies being deployed to modernize the grid - artificial intelligence (AI), sensors, grid-enhancing technologies, advanced metering - actually delivers on the investment. Texture connects to any meter, device, or data source, giving operators a real-time picture of the system state. Advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), batteries, electric vehicles (EVs), solar, and smart thermostats all flow into a single layer where alerts surface when action is needed. The platform doesn't require rip-and-replace of existing systems or dedicated engineering teams to manage it. Market entry through co-ops. Texture's offering is gaining early traction at utility cooperatives, member-owned organizations serving 42 million Americans across distributed and rural territory, including 92% of the country's persistent-poverty counties. Co-ops manage coal plant retirements, data center load growth, and aging infrastructure with teams and budgets that are a fraction of those of investor-owned utilities. Enterprise grid software was built for utilities 10 times their size. Texture provides the same capabilities without enterprise budgets or multi-year implementations. "Co-ops kept telling me the same thing," said Sanjiv Sanghavi, Texture's co-founder and CEO. "They wanted to run modern grid programs but didn't have software built for their scale or budget. A co-op serving 15,000 members shouldn't have to build custom technology to launch a battery program or manage transformer load. We built Texture so they don't have to." Unlike legacy vendors with multi-year implementation timelines, utilities using Texture are operational within days. The platform connects to existing systems, models the data into a coherent layer, and makes it available where operators need it. Capital deferral and market access. The platform's real-time monitoring alerts operators to transformer overload, voltage anomalies, and outage risk before failures occur. A home that adds an EV can double its energy draw overnight. Multiplied across a neighborhood, that kind of load shift puts real stress on distribution infrastructure that was never sized for it. Texture sees that signal at the meter level and traces its impact up through the feeder, giving operators a chance to act before a transformer fails. Transformer prices have risen as much as 95% since 2019, according to Wood Mackenzie, and lead times on large units now exceed two years. Preventing a single failure avoids not just replacement cost but months of operational exposure. Vermont Electric Cooperative, one of the country's few carbon-neutral utilities and widely cited as among the most innovative co-ops in the northeast, uses Texture to monitor its grid and manage hundreds of batteries across its service territory. "As a co-op, our job is to provide affordable, reliable energy to our members. The challenge is that we have so many systems, and the data is spread out. You can't afford to spend half the day just hunting down the right numbers. Texture helps us bring that visibility into one place, so we're not chasing information just to figure out what to do next," said Peter Rossi, COO of Vermont Electric Cooperative. Through Texture, co-ops gain access to hardware integrations they couldn't secure on their own. Many of the biggest original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) require minimum deployment thresholds before providing direct data access. Texture has already built those integrations, with first-party connections to 50+ OEMs, including Tesla, FranklinWH, Honeywell, Ecobee, and SolarEdge, with direct relationships and service-level agreements. Ann Arbor's Sustainable Energy Utility used that access to launch a community battery program with FranklinWH across 100 homes, operational as of March 2026. Partnership and deployments. Along with the funding, Texture is partnering with NRTC (National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative), whose network represents 850 utility co-ops across the country. Through the relationship, Texture will provide member co-ops with access to grid management infrastructure previously available only to larger utilities. "Our members are under pressure to integrate new resources and manage a growing load, without adding headcount or relying on vendors whose products weren't built for co-ops. We've partnered with Texture to offer the NRTC DERMS [distributed energy resource management system] powered by Texture, giving co-ops a practical way to coordinate batteries, thermostats, and other distributed resources in real time," said Milt Geiger, vice president of Smart Grid Solutions with NRTC. Kareem Dabbagh, managing partner at VoLo Earth Ventures, joined Texture's board as part of the financing. "Co-ops are managing the hardest grid transitions happening right now. Coal plant closures, battery deployments in rural communities, and data center load growth that wasn't in anyone's forecast five years ago. Texture is the infrastructure layer that makes those programs work. That's why VoLo and Equal came in together on this round and why I joined the board," said Dabbagh. "Our initial thesis was that APIs [application programming interfaces] and data connectivity would be enough. We were wrong in the best possible way. What Texture has evolved into is the operating layer the energy industry has been missing: the infrastructure that lets utilities and VPPs [virtual power plants] actually act on their data, not just collect it. The teams building this industry's future need a foundation they can trust. That's what Texture is becoming, and it's why we're doubling down," said Rick Zullo, co-founder and general partner with Equal Ventures. The Series A brings Texture's total funding to approximately $23 million. The capital will fund team growth and platform expansion. Texture has integrations with leading OEM and energy data companies, including Tesla, FranklinWH, Honeywell, Ecobee, SolarEdge, Leap Energy, and WattTime, and has completed its System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type I and Type II security certifications. Texture is a grid software platform built for the decisions utility operators make under pressure. The platform connects to any meter, device, or data source and provides real-time monitoring, outage detection, transformer load tracking, and DER coordination. Co-ops, municipal utilities, and energy companies use Texture to prevent hardware failures, manage rising load, and coordinate distributed resources without enterprise budgets or multi-year implementations. Headquartered in New York City. Learn more at texturehq.com. Tagged in: