Latest news with #GoldcrestCapital
Business Wire
09-07-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Unblock Raises $13.5M to Convert Wasted Energy into Computing Power Across Latin America
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Unblock, the energy infrastructure company turning stranded energy into computing power, today announced $13.5 million in total funding led by Goldcrest Capital and Collaborative Fund. Argentina's energy powerhouses Pampa Energia and Grupo Sielecki joined this round along with FJ Labs, NYDIG, Luxor Technology, Sunna Ventures, and prominent Latin American entrepreneurs. Unblock deploys modular data centers at remote energy production sites. These data centers capture gas that would otherwise be flared or renewable energy that gets curtailed. The result: economic value for producers and 142,000 tons of CO 2 eliminated annually. "We are building at the crossroads of AI's explosive energy demand and Latin America's vast bottlenecked energy resources,' said Tomas Ocampo, CEO and founder. 'Latin America's infrastructure constraints create the perfect breeding ground for flexible computing. We envision an elastic computing network that flexibilizes midstream infrastructure while also smoothing volatility in the power grid." 'At Collaborative Fund, we back companies that make the world better while delivering strong financial returns,' said Craig Wilson, Partner at Collaborative Fund. 'Unblock's approach represents exactly that. Tomas' and the team's vision along with their impeccable execution convinced us to partner.' Rapid Scale Meets Demand Argentina's fast-growing flaring problem drives Unblock's rapid scale. The company operates the world's second-largest computing fleet at oil field facilities. Two major projects will double Unblock's capacity by September. "We were super excited to partner with Unblock,' said Dan Friedland, Managing Partner at Goldcrest Capital. 'The combination of already de-risked technology with strong local execution makes them uniquely positioned to capture Latin America's massive stranded energy opportunity. Their growth from 0 to 15MW in just over a year speaks volumes about their ability to execute." This funding fuels Unblock's aggressive hiring across their engineering and field operations teams. The company is also vertically integrating data center production locally and further accelerating their expansion across Latin America. About Unblock Unblock transforms wasted energy into compute. The company's mobile data centers turn flared gas and stranded renewables into revenue—eliminating 142,000 tons of CO₂ annually. Unblock builds at the crossroads of AI's explosive energy demand and Latin America's vast bottlenecked energy resources. Visit About Goldcrest Capital Goldcrest Capital is a venture capital fund with $1.9 billion in assets under management. Goldcrest Capital was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Its investments include SpaceX, Anduril, Peregrine, Sentilink, Sourcegraph, Two Chairs and Rowan, among dozens of others. About Collaborative Fund Collaborative Fund is a leading source of capital for entrepreneurs pushing the world forward. Operating on the principle that the best investment opportunities sit at the intersection of for-profit and for-good, Collaborative Fund has made 100+ investments out of three core investment funds since its founding in 2010. Its investments include Lyft, Quora, Reddit, Kickstarter, Blue Bottle Coffee, and AltSchool. Visit
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Arena Launches Atlas to Accelerate Humanity's Rate of Hardware Innovation
NEW YORK, April 8, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Founded in 2019 by Pratap Ranade and Engin Ural, Arena builds AI to accelerate hardware innovation. Today, Arena publicly launched Atlas, an AI hardware engineer that accelerates testing, debugging, and optimization for the world's most advanced hardware. Grounded in applied physics, and equipped to learn from the real-world environment, Atlas operates at every layer of the hardware stack, starting with electrical engineering. "While software has defined the last fifty years, the next big breakthroughs - from nuclear fusion to space colonization - require us to reimagine how we approach hardware development. Today, hardware innovation is slow, difficult, and expensive. Each build, test, and iterate loop takes orders of magnitude longer than it does for software. These are the same challenges I faced a decade ago as an experimental physicist - the rate limiter wasn't the physics, it was building the hardware for the experiment and making it work properly. Today, with LLMs, and tremendous advances in deep learning, we can reimagine the hardware development workflow — making it faster and easier than ever before," said Pratap Ranade, CEO of Arena. In the last 12 months, Atlas has been deployed in production and at scale with Fortune 500 companies like AMD, Bausch & Lomb, and other leading hardware engineering teams. Arena's customer base includes major aerospace, automotive, and defense companies. Users are seeing a 35% reduction in engineering man-hours, multi-month acceleration in time to market, and >3% improvement in product quality. Arena has raised $62M in funding from investors, most recently a $30M Series B. Arena's investors include Fifth Down Capital, Initialized, Goldcrest Capital, Founders Fund, Shield Capital, Garuda Ventures, Peter Thiel, General David Petraeus, Qasar Younis, Michael Seibel, and Flexport. About Arena Arena is on a mission to accelerate humanity's rate of innovation in hardware. Atlas accelerates testing, debugging, and optimization for the world's most advanced hardware, and operates in sectors including Aerospace, Automotive, Semiconductors, Medical Devices, Defense, and Robotics. Arena is backed by top VCs in Silicon Valley such as Initialized Capital, Founders Fund, Goldcrest Capital, Shield Capital, Fifth Down Capital, and Garuda Ventures. Contact:press@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Arena Sign in to access your portfolio
