Lightspeed

Congratulations to the Andera team! Thrilled to be your partners.

“Models only have so much sort of capacity to ingest a stream of tokens.” “As an agent goes through its loop, it’s basically stacking these on top of each other.” And long before the context window is full, “it turns out the models get a lot dumber in this zone.” Nnamdi Iregbulem on context overflow and the emerging practice of engineering around it. From Lightwork.

Congratulations to Diagonal Therapeutics on the first patient dosed in their Phase 1/2 clinical trials. This is a huge step forward for the expansion of HHT treatment options.

“In a weird way, the ideal environment for an agent is the file system—files and folders and various commands to interact with them.” Nnamdi Iregbulem on why agents are returning to computing’s oldest interface. From Lightwork.

Fintech funding surged 23% in the first half of 2026, despite overall deal count falling by more than 25%. In a new article from Crunchbase, Lightspeed Partner Justin Overdorff shares our conviction around the next generation of financial infrastructure. The state of fintech in 2026 is looking like fewer deals condensed into much bigger checks. Investments in money movement infrastructure, stablecoins, and tracking of real-world assets on the blockchain have been especially prominent. “We’ve never been busier: The quality of founders, the size of the markets they’re going after, and the maturity of the technology being built has never been more impressive,” Justin says. Read the full article below. https://lnkd.in/gaU9mTYv

AI is accelerating the discovery of new materials from years to months. CuspAI, led by co-founders Dr. Chad Edwards and Prof. Max Welling, is working to shrink timelines for materials discovery and evaluation. Since we invested in CuspAI’s 2024 Seed round, the team has made extensive progress on several projects, including industrial engineering with Hyundai and PFAS chemical solutions with Kemira. Their platform leverages generative AI, deep learning, and molecular simulation to create advanced materials for some of the most critical challenges in sustainability. Like the 'Bronze Age' and 'Stone Age,' critical materials define eras of progress. We are excited to continue backing the company and their mission to solve the breakthrough materials needed to help power human progress. Congratulations to Chad, Max, and the team on the raise. We’re thrilled to be your partners. CC: Antoine Moyroud

Audit’s moment is here. Thrilled to announce we at Lightspeed are leading Andera’s $37M Series A. I met Aryo Patel & Tinah Hong in February 2025 when a close friend was evaluating joining as Andera’s first employee. I left the convos thinking anyone would be exceptionally fortunate to work with these two. Boundless curiosity against steadfast conviction. Long-range prescience against today's focused execution. They are the type of founders whose radical duality convinces you of a new world for a 200+ year old regulated industry. Since then, I’ve had the chance to see them work closely with Chief Audit Executives at the largest Fortune10 companies, build a technical architecture that reflects how an auditor’s brain truly works, and lay the foundation to a new world model of what the future of audit will look like. It is an understatement for me to say that I am excited to have the exceptional fortune to work with Aryo, Tinah and the Andera team. For more on why we invested: https://lnkd.in/dgKR2Hnn And a special thank you to Carina Marie Averilla who introed us & who I am over the moon to be working with at Andera as well :)  cc: Bucky Moore

How do you design good loops for agents? Lightspeed Partner Nnamdi Iregbulem breaks down loop engineering: how it works, where it tends to break, and how to leverage loops alongside your prompts. Claire Zau and Josh Machiz also unpack 1X NEO robot’s hands shaping robotics and explore three essays that emerged this week on AI: • Hassabis calls for institutional changes in the AI space • Nadella exposes the hidden cost of how AI is operating right now • Murati explores the philosophical approach to AI’s trajectory, and nailing down what knowledge itself actually is Full video below.

We’re excited to lead Andera’s $37M Series A. For the average public company, audit fees cost around $3M annually. For Fortune 100 companies, they can spend north of $20M annually. Andera’s platform aims to build the future of AI auditing, starting with: -Automating workpapers in specific formats -Contacting control owners to gather and verify evidence -Consolidating all discrepancies into a single dashboard for easy use The two co-founders behind Andera have career experience aligned with the company’s mission: After stints at Microsoft and Jane Street, CEO Aryo Patel partnered with CTO Tinah Hong, a software engineer by training who worked on machine learning systems at Stripe. Before building, the team behind Andera spoke with finance professionals across industries, and the evidence largely pointed towards a market primed for AI automation. Their research made clear the opportunity for AI to provide another layer of assessment in the audit process. Today, they automate the thousands of hours of manual work for their Fortune 10 clients, turning weeks of work into minutes. Congratulations to Andera on the raise! We’re excited to back a company that approaches complex systems with a fresh tech perspective, and look forward to watching their journey. CC: Bucky Moore, Katherine Zhang