Good day. Strong returns don’t guarantee a fast fundraise for emerging venture-fund managers in today’s market.

Restive Ventures, a San Francisco firm that invests in early-stage financial services startups, closed on $45 million for its third fund in March, after about a year and a half in the market. The firm had to reduce its initial fund target of $70 million, in part because of the extended fundraising process, said Ryan Falvey, Restive’s co-founder and managing partner.

The fundraising took longer than the firm expected, given the strong performance of its prior funds, Falvey said. But it isn’t unusual.

Data from Preqin, a division of BlackRock, shows that most venture firms in the market as of last October had spent more than 18 months seeking capital, and approximately 40% had been fundraising for two full years.

LPs that backed its new fund include endowments, such as that of Loyola University Chicago, and financial services companies, including Northwestern Mutual.

Despite the challenges, Falvey said that Restive has enough capital to execute on its strategy and that the third fund is already marked up. Its portfolio company Hiro, an artificial intelligence-powered personal finance app, was recently acquired by OpenAI.

We spoke with Falvey about the fundraising process and what’s happening in the fintech segment.

WSJ Pro: What was it like raising this fund?

Falvey: It took three months longer to raise this fund than the second fund. And a lot more conversations. We saw a really significant change in the LP base. Fund-of-fund limited partners were capital constrained. There was also consolidation at the fund-of-funds layer. We did see a retraction of check size from that group of LPs.

To fill that, we added strategic demand—from banks, financial institutions, payments firms, tech firms who really care about what’s happening at the nexus of AI and financial services.

Read the full article.

And now on to the news...

AI efficiency. Some companies are trying to solve the computing crunch by making more efficient hardware. A startup called RadixArk is trying to solve it by making more efficient software—and its approach has gained the backing of some of the tech industry’s biggest names.

• The startup runs a software tool that it says allows artificial-intelligence models to process queries more efficiently and at a lower cost, in part by better utilizing short-term memory to reduce the total amount of computing power needed to do calculations. Its open-source software engine, called SGLang, operates as a middle layer between the models and the hardware.

Anthropic is releasing new AI agents tailored to banks and other financial services businesses—part of the artificial intelligence company’s plan to expand its reach among enterprise customers as it charts a path to an anticipated initial public offering as early as this year. On Tuesday, the company announced 10 new AI agents that help automate what it described as the most common forms of financial work, among them, building pitchbooks, closing the books and drafting credit memos.

Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft and xAI have reached an agreement with the Trump administration to share early versions of their artificial-intelligence programs to assess their capabilities and security before releasing the models to the public.

• The Commerce Department’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation will lead evaluations of the AI programs. The center has completed more than 40 evaluations, including on models that remain unreleased. ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Anthropic reached a similar agreement with the Commerce Department in 2024.

Funds

Industrial packaging company Atlantic Packaging launched New Earth Ventures to invest in packaging and supply chain startups. Alongside the launch, the Wilmington, N.C.-based investor is raising a fund targeted at $25 million, according to an SEC filing.

QuantWare, an industrial quantum processor startup based in the Netherlands, scored $178 million in Series B funding from investors including Intel Capital.

Nyobolt, a U.K.-based provider of fast-charging energy technology, raised $60 million in Series C funding at a $1 billion valuation. Symbotic led the investment, which included contributions from IQ Capital Partners, Scania Invest and others.

ZyG, an Israel-based startup building an agentic operating system for e-commerce,  landed $60 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round, which included participation from Felix Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Sonali De Rycker, partner at Accel, will join ZyG’s board.

Astrocade, an AI-powered interactive game creation platform, picked up $56 million in new funding, including a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital.

Moment Energy, a manufacturer of commercial-scale battery energy storage systems using repurposed batteries, raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Evok Innovations. The company is headquartered in Vancouver and Austin.

Nova Intelligence, a San Francisco-based AI platform built for SAP development and migration work, grabbed $31.5 million in Series A funding led by Chemistry.

Magrathea, a San Francisco-based startup developing a new process for making clean, secure magnesium metal from seawater and brines, closed a $24 million Series A round from investors including Balerion Space Ventures.

Altara, a San Francisco-based provider of AI agents for scientific and engineering workflows, was seeded with a $7 million investment led by Greylock.

Davis, a Paris-based startup using AI to accelerate early-stage real estate development, nabbed $5.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Heartcore Capital and Balderton Capital.

Astrada, a San Francisco-based startup building a data layer for autonomous finance, snagged a $3.8 million seed round from investors including Bain Capital Ventures, QED Investors and Nyca Partners.

Jurisphere, a legal AI platform, collected $2.2 million in funding from investors including Flourish Ventures.

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• SEC Proposes to Eliminate Quarterly Reporting Requirement for Public Companies
   
• Publishers Sue Meta for Allegedly Using Copyrighted Works to Train AI
   
• KKR Says Market Distress Is Overblown
   
• I Asked ChatGPT to Manage a Stock Portfolio. Here’s How It Did

This newsletter was compiled by Yuliya Chernova and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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