This is a monthly column that runs down five interesting startup funding deals that may have flown under the radar. Check out our previous entry here.
In a quarter when nearly two-thirds of global venture capital went to just four companies, it’s easy to lose track of the many other companies getting funding to tackle interesting problems. Nonetheless, we spotted five companies in just the past month working on issues from cleaner ferries and trains to foundational AI for plants. Let’s take a closer look.
$55M for a mineral rights-backed credit card
Natural resources can be incredibly valuable financial assets, but you can’t exactly buy your weekly groceries with oil or water rights.
That’s an issue that a Dallas-based fintech startup aims to solve. Frontlands recently raised $50 million in a debt round from StarMesa Capital to provide a credit card to U.S. households holding mineral rights to natural resources such as oil, natural gas, solar, wind or water.
“For the millions of mineral rights owners in the United States, these rights are one of the most valuable assets the family owns. But these families are just like the rest of Americans and often are carrying revolving credit card balances at more than 25% [interest],” Frontlands CEO Brandon Cotter said in a statement. “Historically, owners have had few options to access the value trapped inside their mineral rights without selling.”
Its AI system combines machine learning, production data, royalty payment histories, lease terms, commodity price forecasts, geologic data and traditional decline curve analysis to automate the underwriting process, the company says. While it’s historically been difficult for traditional lenders to assess natural resources as collateral, Frontlands says its process typically delivers a same-day credit decision.
The company’s recent credit facility is in addition to a $5.5 million equity raise announced in December from venture investors including Cambrian Ventures, Fiat Ventures, Wischoff Ventures and Lime Rock Partners.
Frontlands said its average credit line in early markets — Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, North Dakota, Wyoming and Oklahoma — is more than $30,000. It plans to launch its credit card product this summer in partnership with Texas-based sponsor bank TransPecos Banks.
Frontlands said it also expects to raise a Series A round later this year.
“Our goal isn’t to pile on more debt,” Cotter said in a statement. “But the opportunity to help our customers move away from high-interest credit card debt — and provide a path toward greater financial stability — is compelling.”
Investment in fintech startups hit a multiyear high in 2025, Crunchbase data shows, though remains well below the peak. Many of the best-funded companies in recent quarters have brought AI to bear on traditionally more manual or cumbersome processes in the financial services industry.
Related Crunchbase query: Funding To Financial Services Companies
$32M for ‘flying’ electric commuter ferries
As of this writing, oil prices are hovering around $100 a barrel — down from an even greater peak a few weeks earlier, but still among the highest levels seen in years, as the U.S.-Iran war disrupts global energy markets.
So Swedish electric vessel maker Candela’s recent funding of €30 million (about $32 million) seems timely. The Stockholm-based company makes electric “flying” boats that are used as commuter ferries. They differ from traditional vessels by using computer-controlled hydrofoils to lift the hull above the water, an approach the company says dramatically reduces drag and cuts energy use by up to 80% — enabling faster, smoother, zero-emission travel compared to conventional diesel ferries that push through the water.
“From a physics perspective, ships have been essentially the same for hundreds of years,” Candela founder and CEO Gustav Hasselskog said in a statement. “We’re redefining waterborne transport by effectively creating a new category of vessel. This allows cities and municipalities to finally take full advantage of waterways — while escaping the fossil-fuel cost trap that has long prevented them from being used efficiently.”
Its P-12 vessels have already been deployed as commuter ferries in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Oslo and Trondheim.
The new funding was led by The World Bank’s International Finance Corp. arm and included previous investors EQT Ventures, SEB Private Equity, KanDela and Ocean Zero LLC.
The capital will primarily be used to fund a second factory in Poland. Candela says it has more than 65 vessels on order and planned deployments across markets including India — where a fleet of 10 of its P-12s will reportedly cut travel times from Navi Mumbai Airport to the city center from around two hours to 35 minutes — the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
The startup’s funding defies an overall downturn in clean-tech funding. Funding for clean-tech related startups totaled $26.9 billion in 2025, down 23% year over year and the lowest annual amount since 2020, Crunchbase data shows.
Related Crunchbase query: Global Cleantech Startup Funding In 2025
$30M to electrify trains with batteries and microgrids
Let’s now turn from waterways to train tracks, with another company that recently raised significant funding aimed at giving centuries-old transportation systems a green overhaul.
Voltify, a Philadelphia-based startup, said last month that it raised $30 million in seed funding led by Australian mining company Fortescue Future Industries and Israeli venture firm Aleph to develop a new way of powering freight rail that avoids the high costs of traditional electrification.
The startup positions its technology as a way to decarbonize one of the world’s most efficient but still fossil-fuel-dependent transport systems. It’s targeting a major pain point for the rail industry: its heavy reliance on diesel. In North America alone, the six largest freight rail operators spend roughly $11 billion annually on diesel fuel, while full electrification of rail networks could cost more than $1 trillion, according to Voltify.
Instead of relying on overhead wires, Voltify says it’s building a system that combines battery-equipped railcars with technology that allows trains to recharge while moving. The goal is to help rail operators cut emissions and fuel costs without requiring massive infrastructure overhauls.
Its approach — using mobile batteries and distributed charging via microgrids — aims to sidestep those costs by retrofitting existing trains and building localized energy systems rather than rebuilding entire rail networks.
CEO and co-founder Daphna Langer told The Wall Street Journal that the company has signed a paid pilot agreement with a Class 1 railroad, though she declined to name the customer, citing a confidentiality agreement.
She noted in a LinkedIn post that raising funding for a transportation company in the current market was difficult. “Securing capital in the hardware space and traditional industries is challenging,” she wrote. “It is not the ‘in’ space; there is no FOMO at play, so we need to focus on metrics and execute quickly. With some of the top 5 largest rail companies globally and a large order pipeline, we are determined to keep moving at lightning speed.”
Related Crunchbase query: Global Transportation Venture Funding In 2026
$7M for foundation AI for biology
Funding to foundational model AI startups surged last quarter, reaching $178 billion, per Crunchbase data. But the vast majority of that funding went to AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic that are building general-purpose GenAI models.
Such models are fundamentally lacking for hard sciences, argues Living Models, a startup based in Paris and Berkeley, California, that last month raised $7 million in seed funding to develop foundation AI for biology trained on DNA, RNA and data from other “omics” fields, rather than human text.
The company’s first family of transformer models is called Botanic and is trained on data from 43 plant species. Living Models noted that it’s starting with the commercial crop industry, a massive global market that has abundant data, well-established research infrastructure, and fewer regulatory concerns and faster commercialization timelines than the pharmaceutical industry.
“Plant biology combines three properties that make it an ideal first domain for biological foundation models: genomic data is abundant and largely unrestricted, the commercial need is acute and quantifiable, and the feedback loop between computational prediction and real-world validation is well established through existing breeding infrastructure,” the company said in a statement.
The global seed industry is also dominated by a handful of incumbents, it noted: Bayer CropScience, Corteva Agriscience, Syngenta, BASF and Limagrain — companies that already spend billions of dollars a year on breeding research.
“Biology is an information problem at every scale, from a single cell to an entire ecosystem. The genomic data exists across many domains; what’s been missing is a model architecture capable of learning from it at scale,” Leonard Strouk, Living Models’ CTO and co-founder, said in a statement. “We start with plants because the data is rich and the breeding cycle is a clear bottleneck, but the same approach applies wherever sequence data meets slow, empirical discovery.”
The company’s recent funding was led by Artesian VC, Asterion Ventures, GrainCorp and The Galion Project. Other investors included Station F and Berkeley SkyDeck Fund.
Related Crunchbase query: Foundational AI Funding In 2026
$2.1M for a brain-stimulating consumer wearable
Billions of dollars a year are spent on therapy and other mental-health treatments, yet measuring progress can be elusive.
That’s one of the issues that San Francisco-based Mave Health aims to take on with a neuromodulation wearable headset that it says can reduce stress, improve attention span and mood, and more quantitatively measure mental health scores.
Mave’s device uses transcranial direct current stimulation, or tDCS, a noninvasive technique that delivers a low electrical current to the brain through electrodes placed on the scalp, with the aim of modulating neural activity. The technology is generally considered safe when used by adults as directed in controlled settings.
The company last month raised $2.1 million in seed funding led by Blume Ventures, with participation from individual investors including Tesla Autopilot AI lead Dhaval Shroff.
Crucially, Mave says it does not plan to pursue FDA medical-device approval for its product, which sells for $495. Instead, it is positioning the gadget as a wellness tool that consumers can use on a daily basis to improve their mental well-being and better measure the outcomes of talk therapy or other treatments.
“If you ask a psychologist how do you know if a person is making progress, their response to it is very standard, which is that it’s not about progress. It’s about process […] But for somebody with depression who is spending a lot of time in therapy, progress is important. So how do you know whether they’re making progress or not? And even these basic questions were not being answered,” co-founder Dhawal Jain told TechCrunch.
Mave’s funding comes amid an overall downturn in investment for wellness and fitness-related companies, although select wearables makers including Whoop and Oura have raised significant funding in recent years.
Related Crunchbase query: Fitness- And Wellness-Related Startup Funding
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Illustration: Dom Guzman
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