Robotic Guides for the Blind, Anthropic Mega Round, and Why Healthcare Founders Have Crazy Grit

Happy Thursday.

In today’s issue:

• Angel Deals of the Week

• Bookmarks I think you’ll enjoy

• The best nugget from my conversation at DFW Startup Week with Trey Bowles, co-chair of the North Texas Angel Network, co-founder of 1845 Venture Studio, and former managing director at Techstars.

• Exclusive opportunity for angel network leaders

🔥 Angel Deals of the Week

Angel funding rounds announced in recent weeks, compiled from public sources. These deals represent the elite few that survived an angel network’s vetting process. Note: I have not personally analyzed these companies and am sharing for informational purposes only.

🤖 Deal summaries generated using dealmemo.ai.

🧾 Check out every deal we’ve tracked here.

Glidance Inc | Robotic mobility guide for the blind

Participating Groups: Cowtown Angels

Glidance is developing Glide, the world's first AI-powered autonomous mobility aid for the blind and visually impaired. The two-wheeled robotic guide provides navigation, obstacle avoidance, and scene description for millions with vision loss. Featured on NBC's Today Show as a CES 2025 top pick, Glidance secured funding from Cowtown Angels and strategic health impact partners to expand accessible mobility technology globally.

Luke Buckberrough & Amos Miller | Seattle, WA | September 2025 | Source

Spiritus | Direct air capture tech

Participating Group: New Mexico Angels

Spiritus is developing passive direct air capture technology targeting sub-$100/ton carbon removal, a 90% cost reduction from current methods. The company's proprietary sorbent material costs less than $10/kg to produce and operates without energy-intensive fans through its "Carbon Orchard" approach. Spiritus recently secured a $30 million Series A funding led by Aramco Ventures with participation from Khosla Ventures, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries America, and TDK Ventures. Funds will accelerate its 1,000-ton New Mexico pilot facility and 2-megaton Wyoming project.

Charles Cadieu | $30M Series A | Los Alamos, NM | July 2025 | Source

MgShell | Retinal drug delivery platform

Participating Groups: Club degli Investitori, Italian Angels for Biotech

MgShell is developing a magnesium-based drug delivery platform for treating retinal diseases, aiming to reduce therapeutic burden for patients and physicians. The Italian medtech company recently secured €1.14 million in seed funding led by Capital Cell and Dr. Andrea Giani, with participation from Club degli Investitori, Italian Angels for Biotech, and Bios Line Holding. The funding will accelerate preclinical validation, support product development, and strengthen the team as the company advances toward clinical trials.

Marco Ferroni | €1.14M Seed | Milan, Italy | April 2025 | Source

📣 Have an Angel Deal to Announce?

🔖 Bookmarks

1. 💰 Different Games, Different Goals: Trace Cohen breaks down why family offices target 2-5x returns while VCs underwrite every deal for 100x potential.

2. 🤖 That’s a Lot of Claude: Anthropic banks $13 billion at a mind-blowing $183 billion valuation to fuel its “safety-first” AI model. Fun fact, that’s about the equivalent of Ukraine’s GDP.

3. ♠️ All In: 41% of all VC dollars so far this year ($81.3 billion) have gone to just 10 startups.

🥇 The Nugget: My Top Takeaway from This Week’s Conversation with Trey Bowles

Healthcare founders tend to have crazy grit 💪

The origin story for the average healthcare entrepreneur is very different from the average SaaS founder (nothing against my SaaS friends). This leads to exceptionally high persistence rates compared to other sectors.

And it’s a good thing too, because innovation in healthcare is HARD and SLOW.

Takeaway: Understanding a founder's "why" is generally a good idea. But for deals in the healthcare space, it's even more critical, since everything - development, sales, approvals, all of it - takes a long long time and requires even more grit than usual.

Want more? Check out my full conversation with Trey 👇

Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and more.

📢 Angel Group Leaders: Need More Qualified Member Leads?

Every week, hundreds of angel investors read this newsletter. Many are interested in joining an angel group but don't know where to start. So, I’m helping them out.

What group leaders get: Pre-qualified leads for prospective membership.

The Angel Network Curator is LIVE: hit the button below to learn more, including how to sign up to get amplified exposure as a Featured Partner.

P.S. This curation only applies to subscribers who opt in. Everyone else - your info stays with me.

Until Next Week 👋

Thanks for reading - have a great week.

-Andrew

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