During Q1, we invested in one new core company; Doxx is building the next generation of consumer and enterprise privacy network security.
Last year, ShopMy acquired ThingTesting in an all-stock deal at an implied valuation of roughly ~0.5x our original investment. Following a ~3x step-up and reaching a $1.5B valuation, we sold our entire position to Menlo Ventures, realizing ~1.5x MOIC. Given limited exposure and visibility, we opted for liquidity and will distribute ~$1.9M in April.
Zocaloclosed an oversubscribed $15M Series A led by EO Ventures, a firm with deep healthcare expertise. The valuation increased 3.4x to $70M, and we invested an additional $722K in the round.
Upside Roboticsclosed a $7.5M seed round led by PluralVC, a deep-tech & robotics-focused firm. The round closed at a $34M post-money valuation, representing a 2x step-up from the previous round. We invested an additional $560K in this round.
Maior completed a $1.1M round extension at a slight step-up. We invested an additional $340K, bringing our MOIC in the company to ~1.4x.
Reins signed a $3M term sheet led by Album VC at a $15M post-money valuation. The round is expected to close in Q2.
1.2x
Gross MOIC
$43.9M
Total Invested
30
Active Companies
33
Portfolio Companies
ANIMO Fund II · Summary
Total Capital Commitment$75.8M
Called for investments + mgmt fees + fund expenses$50.7M
66.8% of total capital commitment
Capital
Capital called for investments$42.9M
Recycled capital investments$999K
Management fees*$7.4M
Portfolio
Time to date3.9 years
Current dollar-weighted average holding period1.5 years
Returns
Total unrealized gains**$10.8M
Total realized gains/losses***-$1.2M
LP distributions$0
Notes
*Includes $229,544 of Incentive Contribution
**Includes proceeds from Convertible Notes ($277)
***Includes proceeds from Convertible Notes ($94,216)
VC Industry Outlook · Q1 2026
Market
$300B
Global venture deployed in Q1 2026, the largest quarter on record
Crunchbase
65%
Of that capital went to AI mega-rounds
Crunchbase
$347B
Q1 2026 US VC exit value, a recent high
Pitchbook
17.9%
VC distributions as a share of NAV, funds aged 5–10 years
Pitchbook
What's happening in AI
Largest AI rounds in Q1 2026 (US$ billions)
Anthropic$65B
OpenAI$40B
xAI$10B
Source: Crunchbase 03/31/2026
65% of the $300B deployed were AI mega-rounds.
Early-stage funding increased 43% YoY to $53B but with a lower total number of deals.
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are generating a lot of buzz with potential IPOs in the second half of the year.
Capital deployment
Global venture funding reached record levels in Q1 2026, driven by unprecedented late-stage AI mega-rounds from a handful of companies such as OpenAI & Anthropic.
Public markets
Public markets remained uneven. Companies that were perceived as benefitting from AI performed well while the broader SaaS stock index took a beating.
VC distributions
VC distributions improved from recent lows but stayed below historical peaks, with liquidity still concentrated in a handful of privately held late-stage companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Early stage
Pre-Seed and Seed activity hovered near multi-year lows. Series A/B improved modestly but continued to be highly selective.
US median Seed pre-money valuation ($M)
$10.62022
$11.42023
$13.62024
$16.02025
$18.42026
Source: Pitchbook 03/31/2026
Exits
Exit values surged to record highs in Q1, driven by major AI transactions, while broader IPO and M&A markets stayed narrow. IPO activity is expected to accelerate in Q3/Q4.
US VC exit value by quarter ($B)
$59Q1 25
$65Q2 25
$78Q3 25
$86Q4 25
$347Q1 26
Q1 2026 driven by xAI–SpaceX and Google–Wiz · Source: Pitchbook 03/31/2026
VC fundraising
VC fundraising was still slow. Capital flowed primarily to large, established platforms.
US VC capital raised ($B) and no. of funds
$16920211,609
$22420221,793
$11020231,395
$10620241,059
$672025626
$482026172
Source: Pitchbook 03/31/2026
ANIMO's take
This environment favors managers with conviction, access, and patience—those able to identify overlooked winners early while most are focused on a narrow set of consensus opportunities.
Core Portfolio Description
Portfolio Summary
Active core portfolio companies, grouped by our current read on trajectory.
↓Click any company to see the full detail and its Q1 2026 performance
Filter
Showing 23 active core positions — 33 companies total across the fund. Full portfolio in the Appendix.
Barrett is a Miami-based serial entrepreneur who has founded four cybersecurity companies, including Prolexic, a pioneer in DDoS protection that was acquired by Akamai for $370 million. A wunderkind hacker, Barrett has had books written about him, and his contributions have helped make the internet safer and more resilient.
Boring stuff
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, BS IN PHILOSOPHY, PHOTOGRAPHY
Fun stuff
CREATED THE INTERNET’S ICONIC OPTE MAP
CO-FOUNDER OF THE MAYAN WARRIOR AT BURNING MAN
ANIMO Performance
ANIMO Fund II
Cumulative
CAPITAL CALLED VS. STRAIGHT LINE*
$50.7M
Called to date
Investments + mgmt fees + fund expenses
$51.5M
Straight-line pace
Equal pace of deployment, as of Q1/26
98%
Of pace
$0.8M below the straight line
Investments $42.9MManagement fees $7.2MFund expenses $0.6MRecycling $1.0MStraight line $51.5M
Hover or tap a quarter to see its breakdown.
*Given forecast variability and uncertainty, the orange line now shows an equal pace of capital deployment as an objective benchmark. Annual investments and management fees were set at $11.6 million and $1.7 million, respectively
**Excludes $229,544 of Incentive Contribution
***The recycling amount is excluded from the “called for investments + mgmt fees + fund expenses” shown on the next slide.
Track Record
Realized Returns
Realized gains and write-offs across the fund's life. Click any row for the full story.
Realized Wins
Total Invested$1.35M
Total Realized Gain+$546K
CompanyExit DateGain
Ecommerce · Supporting portfolio
Invested Capital$1,348,581
Proceeds from Converted Notes$94,216
Realized Gains (Losses)$546,374
Exit DateMAR 2026
Company Valuation at Sale$1,500,000,000
IRR11.76%
Realized Losses (2 positions)
Total Invested$2.82M
Realized Loss-$1.82M
CompanyExit DateLoss
Marketplace
Merri was a 3D visualization platform for the events industry – bringing venues, planners, and vendors onto a single platform to design and execute best-in-class events.
EXIT DESCRIPTION
Merri was not able to raise a Series A for a few reasons. VCs are sour on the events industry, given past failures. More importantly, Merri started executing on the marketplace vision too late. By the time runway was tight, growth on the core product wasn’t near VC benchmarks and the traction on the marketplace wasn’t enough. Luckily, the team found a solid home in TripleSeat, and ANIMO was able to recycle ~30% of invested capital.
Invested Capital$1,517,154
Realized Loss-$1,001,217
Exit DateMAY 2024
Recycled Proceeds$515,937
Randi Bushell
FOUNDER & CEO
Future Of Work
Pollen was the career development platform for the future of work. They provided freelancers and independent consultants with the professional network and business training they needed to be successful.
EXIT DESCRIPTION
After several months of executing the pivot, Pollen realized there was not enough customer interest and willingness to pay for such a product. Despite having enough runway, Hillary was tired and not committed enough to giving it another try and exploring a different direction. She decided to wind down the company and return the available cash to investors. We recovered 37% of our investment, which we aim to recycle into other companies.
Welli is a medical financing company based in Colombia. It provides patient loans at the doctor’s office or clinic in seven medical specialties that are paid out of pocket. Welli aims to become the financial partner of doctors & patients alike across LatAm.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Another fantastic quarter for Welli, with funded loan volume growing 54% QoQ — an important leading indicator for future revenue growth. The company also originated its first medical equipment loan during Q1, marking a meaningful expansion of its product offering. Additionally, Welli now has a full-time team on the ground in Peru, laying the operational foundation for broader international expansion.
Investment Summary
Invested Capital$2,889,816
Ownership14.2%
Unrealized Gains$2,281,294
Current Valuation$36,358,580
MOIC1.8x
KPIs · Q1 2026
Revenue · Q1 Revenue$1,623,083 (+26%)
Users · Amount disbursed in credits$9,147,600 (+54%)
Crew is a climate-tech company removing carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere through wastewater plants. Its technology was a spin-off from Yale University, where its founders did their PhDs and became two of the world's experts in carbon removal technologies. Crew’s enhanced-weathering approach enables highly measurable and affordable carbon and greenhouse gas removal at scale in closed-loop systems.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Crew continued building momentum in Q1, growing live projects from six to eight and signing two additional strategic contracts. The company also launched a new “treatment optimization as a service” offering alongside its carbon credit business. Operationally, Crew surpassed 2,000 tons of CO2 removed (4.2x YoY), strengthened the team with key hires, completed an equipment refinance, and secured an additional $2M in venture debt.
Area2Farms designs, builds, and operates innovative vertical farms within cities. Through robotics & advanced plant breeding, Area2Farms is the first to achieve this using soil instead of hydroponics. They will sell farm franchises to aspiring farmers and entrepreneurs. By being vertically integrated in the middle of every city, Area2Farms will be the center of the new food economy.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Q1 was broadly positive for Area2, with the primary setback being permitting-related delays for the second location. Outside of that, the company completed all regulatory requirements needed to begin selling franchises. The original location continues to improve operational efficiency and grow customer demand. Increased public visibility around the franchise strategy has also driven inbound interest from prospective farmers & investors.
Zocalo Health is a virtual primary care platform for the Latino community. The company is making healthcare more inclusive and accessible for the more than 60M Hispanics in the US through a culturally-adapted and value-care-based system.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Zocalo closed its oversubscribed $15M Series A. It was led by EO Ventures, which has a good healthcare investment practice. Revenue decreased a bit because of seasonality and the focus on the raise. The focus now is to level up and strengthen the team with key hires and lay the foundations for larger-scale operations.
Upside Robotics is building AI-powered autonomous robots for the agriculture sector. They are focused on reducing costs and improving the yield of row crops (corn first) by using computer vision to monitor soil and plant health and inject fertilizer directly into the roots.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Upside closed an oversubscribed $7.5M seed round, led by Plural VC, a specialist firm focused on deep-tech. Q1 was focused on strengthening the technical team, moving to a new manufacturing facility and starting to build the new base stations and robots to fulfill the orders for the upcoming growing season. Farmer engagement and interest remain high.
Maior is an AI-first SMB lending platform that uses proprietary data and AI tools to better assess creditworthiness and offer working capital loans to small businesses through community banks & other financial partners.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Maior has been moving at breakneck speed on team, product, partnerships, and capital. Given the quality of these leading indicators, we decided to invest a bit more. The first loans should go out the door in Q2, and the model allows for hypergrowth with fairly low risk, given the distribution partnerships they have secured. We will learn a lot more in the next six months.
Vardera is building an AI-first appraisal and valuation platform for real world assets. Their initial focus is to provide the infrastructure and workflows with which auction houses, collectible marketplaces and resellers value and process their inventory.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Vardera’s new focus on larger marketplaces continues to show strong momentum, with some of the most relevant players in the space moving to contracting, such as eBay, GameStop, Collectors, etc. However, the interest now needs to materialize into actual signed contracts and revenue. Aside from that, there has been good progress across hiring and product development.
Maestro is an AI-powered travel agency/concierge that helps travelers plan, book, and optimize travel through personalized recommendations, perks, and rewards optimization, bringing high-touch travel planning to the masses.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Maestro has onboarded its first hundred paying members, an important early milestone. Product velocity and the team’s obsession with delivering a magical user experience both remain strong. While still early, we have been impressed by Prahar’s execution ability.
Foyer is the "401k for homeownership" helping people save for the American dream faster. Through a combination of real estate partnerships, tax benefits, and employer matching, Foyer aims to make a dent in the housing affordability crisis.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Tough quarter for Foyer after Zillow, its key distribution partner, ended the partnership following internal reorganizations. The loss has negatively impacted growth and revenue at a time when cash burn remains elevated and the runway is tightening. Unless existing insiders step up with additional support, we are increasingly concerned about the company’s outlook.
Endless Commerce is an AI-first ERP looking to disrupt NetSuite. It is built to become the new operating system for multi-channel consumer brands and drive sales growth.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Gangbusters quarter for Endless as newer product lines saw strong customer adoption, driving a meaningful increase in revenue. That said, roughly two-thirds of the new revenue carries ~15% gross margins versus ~90% for the software layer. Given the momentum, the company plans to pursue a Series A raise in Q2.
Synvect uses CRISPR to engineer sterile mosquito eggs that, once released, mate with wild populations to collapse carriers of malaria, dengue, Zika, and other diseases. Classified as a biopesticide, it offers a cleaner, more effective, and cost-efficient alternative to traditional chemical pesticides.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Synvect continued expanding lab capacity and operational efficiency, reaching production of 10 million mosquito eggs per month. On the regulatory side, delays to the experimental use permit impacted the timing of the company’s Puerto Rico contract. In response, the team is broadening commercial efforts to diversify revenue streams and reduce regulatory dependency risk.
Hamlet leverages AI to turn endless hours of local government meetings into actionable data for private companies.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Hamlet received an unsolicited $5M financing offer from a trusted investor, driven largely by strong product velocity and innovative work leveraging government data. On the other hand, the company also faced a setback as its largest customer churned, citing reduced focus on new real estate development projects.
Reins makes it easy for millions of SMBs (Small & Midsize Businesses) to create, customize, and manage stock and profit-sharing plans. By leveraging the trend of transferring business ownership to newer generations and retaining key talent, the company is setting a new standard for how traditional businesses treat and incentivize their top employees.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Strong quarter from Reins from a revenue perspective, culminating in a $3M seed term sheet from Album VC. The team continues to be highly thoughtful about the category and is beginning to see encouraging signs of product-market fit. The core challenge remains converting an important problem into an urgent one in order to accelerate sales velocity.
Velou is an AI-powered e-commerce infrastructure company. They provide brands and retailers with innovative solutions around data intelligence, product data enrichment, optimized search, automatic catalog description, and other products that serve as the first product catalog AI agent in the industry.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Velou had a slower quarter, with growth impacted by team constraints and increased focus on exploring strategic M&A opportunities. The company is currently in advanced discussions with several strategic acquirers that have expressed interest in a transaction. We expect to have greater clarity in the coming weeks, although we do not currently anticipate an outcome that would generate meaningful returns for the portfolio.
Ruck is a last-mile delivery marketplace for construction materials. The company connects construction professionals, vendors, and material suppliers with a proprietary network of drivers with specialized vehicles. They are the "DoorDash for building materials”.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Another bad quarter for Ruck. We are now advocating for the team to go back to the drawing board and work on a full pivot. Burn is too high and nothing on the GTM or product fronts seems to be working.
Atarraya is building the future of sustainable shrimp farming in the US. Through tech-enabled & indoor farms, they leverage software, hardware and biotech to produce locally-sourced, chemical-free and high-quality shrimp. Their modular farms can be built anywhere and close to cities. They currently operate farms in New Jersey, and Indianapolis.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Another difficult quarter for Atarraya. With a leaner team and a more asset-light, licensing-focused model, the company is working to stabilize operations and reposition for growth. The pilot deployment in Abu Dhabi has slowed due to regional conflict. Positively, the company has received interest from a seafood operator to take over the New Jersey facilities and from a large agro-industrial group exploring expansion into the UK.
Roomie offers to-scale 3D models that empower residents to lock down their room layout and take the drama out of move-in day.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Another decent quarter from Roomie with 15% QoQ growth. While the product is improving and sales are slowly picking up, we still do not believe Roomie will drive meaningful returns.
DeepTrust secures live voice and video communications by detecting deepfakes, social engineering, and risky behavior in real time. Using AI, it analyzes calls and videos as they happen and provides contextual, in-call guidance to users while giving security teams visibility into human risk across platforms.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
The goal was for DeepTrust to sign three enterprise customers in Q1 which did not occur. We are pushing the team to cut burn in order to extend runway and provide time for these large enterprise deals to close. Product velocity remains high.
Streamlane is an AI-driven shipping spend & process optimization solution for large e-commerce shippers who are plagued by rising costs, manual work, and a lack of visibility.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Effectively a flat quarter for Streamlane and still only halfway to the $1M goal we had for the end of 2025. We keep pushing the team to be more aggressive and use existing capital to brute force growth initiatives. The product expansion for 3PLs is showing good initial interest, but it needs to materialize into signed contracts.
Draftboard is building a talent recruiting marketplace that leverages the power of social graphs & community networks to match them with an innovative system of bounties and referrals.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Another slow quarter for Draftboard, with most efforts focused on product development and preparation for the public launch of its new AI sales manager tool powered by warm introductions. The launch is expected in Q2, at which point we should have better visibility into the product’s potential.
Parente delivers parent-led, evidence-based and world-class treatments to children with behavioral and cognitive challenges. They do so through PAT, a personalized AI therapist who was built by leading researchers in children’s mental health from Stanford and Palo Alto Universities.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Parente is still unable to figure out their sales and go-to-market strategy with any sort of scalability. Product is unique and improving rapidly, which has spiked potential M&A interest from one of the largest players in the space.
Revolute Robotics builds hybrid ground and aerial robots that can reach confined, complex and extreme environments. In doing so, they are able to perform inspection and monitoring of critical infrastructure in the US, including oil & gas, steel, mining, construction defense and other industries.
COMPANY PERFORMANCE
Revolute continues to move slowly. Technical challenges around flight stability remain unsolved and pilots have been limited. Thus, the company has had little commercial traction. The team is cutting expenses in order to extend the runway and be able to raise a seed round towards the end of the year.
