Habitat Happenings

Figure's $1B+ Series C, PopUp Bagels Expansion

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Daniel Faierman, Blake Lyon, JB Osborne & Emily Heyward
October 21, 2025

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Our goal: to keep our community informed on what’s happening at Habitat Partners in hopes of finding opportunities to collaborate with you in the future.

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(1a) 💫 Recent NEW Investments

📅 Trestle (Pre-Seed) - vertical SaaS data infrastructure layer enabling a modern system of record for government contractors starting with human service organizations (HSOs); hiring for Founding Product Designer and Founding Full Stack Software Engineer

Nonprofits called human service organizations (HSOs) generate $350B/year by contracting with the government to deliver direct welfare services like homeless shelters, job-training, and community health programs. HSOs spend enormous amounts of time and money entering data into government platforms that prescribe rigid and wildly inefficient methods of submission. Trestle is building Ledger, a purpose-built data management system for human service organizations.

🥦 Rooted Restaurants (Seed) - healthy fast casual meals made with 7 ingredients or fewer. If you’re in NYC, a must try; currently hiring for Assistant General Manager

Healthy eating doesn’t need to be bland or boring. Rooted is an NYC-based healthy fast-casual restaurant that serves delicious, minimally processed lunch and dinner meals. Customers choose from an assortment of proteins, starches, and vegetables (every dish is made with 7 ingredients or fewer) to complete a “bounty box.” Rooted launched its first unit near Gramercy Park (38 East 23rd St) in January. Make sure to visit or order on UberEats!

(1b) 👻 OUT OF STEALTH

🪞 Sincerely Yours: launched with a bang as 80,000 people packed American Dream Mall for SY’s pop-up launch event, outnumbering the launch event crowds for Hailey Bieber’s and Mr. Beast’s respective launch events. 45,000 Tik Tok videos were posted about the event with SY’s product line quickly selling out on Sephora.com. Press coverage: Forbes, Fashionista, BeautyMatter, and more.

🧴 Elm Biosciences: After five years in development, Martha Stewart and board-certified dermatologist Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali launched Elm Biosciences. Elm’s A30 complex is a proprietary, patent-pending antioxidant ingredient that works as a triple-pathway anti-senescent molecule to fight visible signs of aging. More on our excitement surrounding Elm here. Check out Elm’s exclusive feature in the WSJ. Press coverage: WWD, Harper’s Bazaar, Dermatology Digest, and more.

(2) NEW! Habitat Partners Job Board

  • 139 open roles

    • PMs, Engineers, Sales, Design, Ops, Growth, Customer Success, Partnerships, Finance, Marketing, etc!

(3) 📰 Portfolio Companies in the News

🤖 Figure AI: Figure AI received over $1B in capital commitments for its Series C at a $39B post-money valuation, landing them in the top ten most valuable startups in the USA. The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital with significant participation from Brookfield Asset Management, Macquarie Capital, Nvidia, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, Salesforce, Tamarack Global, and T-Mobile Ventures. The round enables Figure to continue accelerating its efforts to bring general-purpose humanoid robots into real-world environments at scale. Figure also announced its new strategic partnership with Brookfield.

Not to mention… Figure 03 is here (wild!) and was featured on the front of Time’s Best Inventions of 2025 as a winner in the robotics category:

🥯 PopUp Bagels: You’re About To See PopUp Bagels Everywhere. PopUp announced its ambitious plan to scale from its 13 locations on the east coast to 300 total locations from coast to coast with a focus on hubs like: Atlanta, Nashville, Orlanda, and San Diego. PopUp is creating bagel culture nationwide - a ‘win win’ for everyone in our opinion. Slightly problematic how often these land in our office though. Check out PopUp’s cheesiest collab with Kraft Mac n Cheese 🧀.

💰️ Farther: was named the fastest growing financial services firm in America by Inc. Magazine. Farther surpassed $13B in recruited assets in late July, adding three new managing directors to its RIA leadership team.

🫙 Ayoh: after a nationwide launch at Whole Foods, Ayoh popped up at Costco in Culver City and Huntington Beach in October. Offering build your own Ayoh two-packs, consumers enjoyed Ayoh-drenched hot dogs. Ayoh was also featured in Whole Food’s Top Food and Beverage Trends of 2026.

🌈 Rainbow Insurance: Rainbow, a digital insurance platform for small businesses, has launched its Restaurant Program business owner’s policy (BOP) in New York🗽. The expansion brings the program to 30 states and positions Rainbow in one of the most densely concentrated and regulated restaurant markets in the country.

🪖 Scout AI: Scout AI was awarded a major contract under the US Army’s Unmanned Systems (UxS) Initiative, a large army effort to advance ground autonomy. The program spans 16 months after which the Army may procure up to $150M in contract value.

💡 Haven Energy: the climate tech company expanding access to reliable, renewable energy is helping LA County homeowners secure no-cost solar and battery systems through California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). Haven handes the entire process for homeowners end-to-end - from program qualification to rebate application, permitting, installation, and energy optimization.

🍫 Mezcla: recently launched in 1,250 Targets, 1,350 Publix loations, and was named one of Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest growing private companies in America.

🍞 Original Sunshine: closed $1M in fresh capital to prepare for its upcoming launch with Dot Foods.

📈 Zenlytic: launched the Clarity Engine, a new foundation for intelligent analytics that combines the flexibility and depth of SQL with the explainability and governance of a semantic model.

🧴 InnBeauty Project: the cult brand was recently named one of WWD’s most powerful beauty brands. InnBeauty recently made its debut in Sephora UK.

🫧 Cleancult: became the first brand to introduce aluminum and paper-based packaging in the cleaning aisle at Whole Foods Market. Cleancult is scaling eco-conscious innovation where it matters most: in everyday routines.

(4) 📰🎧️ Good Reads/Listens

(5) Archive

🤝 Thanks for reading and continuing to be a part of our growing Habitat!

- Blake, Daniel, JB, and Emily