- Habitat Happenings
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- Habitat Happenings
Habitat Happenings
Scout AI, Rainbow Insurance, and more!
Daniel Faierman, Blake Lyon, JB Osborne & Emily Heyward
April 17, 2025
Habitat Friends and Supporters,
If you're receiving this, you're a founder, investor, or operator that we have genuinely enjoyed engaging with in the past… and/or someone we simply admire 🤩
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.
Thanks for reading and hope to hear from you soon!
(1) 💫 Recent NEW Investments
👻 Stealth Beauty/Personal Care (Pre-Seed)
(2) ‼️“Out of Stealth Mode”
🪖 Scout AI - we’re excited to annouce our investment in Scout AI, which recently emerged from stealth. Scout AI is on a mission to build the AGI brain for defense robotics. The oversubscribed $15M seed round was co-led by Align Ventures and Booz Allen Ventures. At the core of Scout's breakthrough is Fury, a defense-specific Vision-Language-Action (VLA) foundation model engineered to transform every defense robot into an intelligent, autonomous agent. Unlike traditional robotics software, Fury is an embodied AI system — capable of perceiving the physical world, interpreting natural language, and issuing real-time motor commands to act decisively even in communication and GPS-denied environments.
(3) 📰 Portfolio Companies in the News
🌈 Rainbow Insurance: announed an ~$8M Series A led by Zigg Capital. Rainbow will use the fresh capital to expand its specialized underwriting approach to additional business verticals, including its newly-launched program in the beauty & wellness industry.
🌱 Mezcla: the protein bar company announced it has officially launched nationwide at Sprouts. Be sure to check out Matcha Vanilla, Peanut Butter Chocolate, Maple Blueberry, and Pistachio Chocolate flavors on shelves.
🔋 Haven: Haven Energy is partnering with Clean Power Alliance to bring solar-plus-storage systems to low-income households in Southern California—at no cost to the customer. The program lowers energy bills, boosts resilience, and moves Haven closer to its goal of a more equitable energy grid.
♻️ Cleancult: the eco-friendly, refillable household cleaning essentials company officially launched in over 300 Costco locations across the US. Starting this month, Costco shoppers can pick up the brand’s award-winning All-Purpose Cleaner Variety Pack—recently named Best Multisurface Cleaner in Better Homes & Gardens’ 2024 Clean House Awards. The variety pack features three filled and refillable 20 oz aluminum bottles in fresh scents like Lemon Verbena, Wild Lavender, and Sweet Basil.
💰️ Farther: co-founder Taylor Matthews was featured in InvestmentNews to highlight Farther’s rapid growth. Taylor covers a wide range of topics in the interview, ranging from Farther’s vision to combine cutting-edge technology with personalized service, overcoming early challenges, and scaling without compromising client satisfaction.
🥪 Ayoh: was ranked one of the top 5 best, healthiest mayos by Eat This, Not That. Dieticians specifically called out Ayoh’s delicious texture and high-quality ingredients as standouts.
🧃 Roxberry: the declicious kids beverage is expanding quickly with its June launch in Kroger on deck. Recent new retail launches include Fresh Thyme Market, Pete’s Fresh Market, Sunset Foods, Giant Eagle Market District, and others.
Racks in the wild!
📽️ Motion: launched ‘AI agents’ to further enhance creative performance. Motion clients can now analyze ads, run creative audits, and speed through creative strategy tasks with expert creative agents at their disposal.
🏯 DamDam Tokyo: consumers are raving over the launch of Ginko Bouncy Cream, available at select Sephoras as well as online via DTC/Sephora.com.
🥯 PopUp Bagels: Adam Goldberg, Founder of PopUp Bagels was recently featured in Resident Magazine, depicting the story of the bagel revolution. Adam covered a wide range of topics in the interview, from making bagels in his home kitchen during the pandemic, to the appointment of Tory Bartlett as CEO, to his viral ‘Grip, Rip, and Dip’ concept, and more.
💄 InnBeauty: Glossy covered InnBeauty’s 1-year anniversary celebration of its hero product, the Extreme Cream Anti-Aging, Firming & Lifting Refillable Moisturizer. Since it launched in February 2024, Extreme Cream has become Sephora’s No. 3 best-selling moisturizer.
(4) 📰🎧️ Good Reads/Listens
Matt Brown’s latest on Vertical AI ~ Why vertical AI should fear the systems of record below them and not the AI around them.
Hunter Walk’s take on seed fraud ~ with heightened temptation and pressure on VCs to move quickly, especially for hypy AI deals, this short take felt particularly relevant.
Collab Fund’s Why Consumer ~ we love the Collab Fund team and found this piece particularly thoughtful as we balance CPG and technology investing at Habitat Partners.
Forerunner’s Consumer Trend Report ~ a great overview of where consumers are today and where they may be going.
WIN/WIN: Women in Innovation Podcast ~ Habitat Partner’s Emily Heyward recently joined the WIN/WIN podcast to discuss the Habitat Partners inception story.
Food Navigator Podcast ~ Habitat Partner’s Daniel Faierman recently appeared on the Food Navigator podcast discussing strategies to secure capital.
(5) Archive
🤝 Thanks for reading and continuing to be a part of our growing Habitat!