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H2Ok Innovations raises $12 million Series A to make manufacturing more precise for big-name customers like Coca-Cola and Unilever

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“My first job was a janitor in the quality lab,” said David. “I climbed distillation towers, swept the factory floors, and worked within the factory. I learned a lot about operations, and have a deep empathy for people within this industry.”

The Lus are siblings—David is the elder, and there are three years between them—and the cofounders of H2Ok Innovations, a startup providing precision automation solutions for manufacturers. 

Founded in 2021 after Annie dropped out of Harvard, H2Ok recently reached a new milestone: The company raised a $12.42 million Series A, led by Greycroft, Fortune can exclusively report. 2048 Ventures and Construct Capital also participated in the round, while Greycroft’s Jim Moffat will join the board under the terms of the deal. Currently, H2Ok—named for the original idea for the company focusing on water in industrial settings—counts AB InBev, Coca-Cola, Danone, and Unilever among its customers. H20k works in precision automation, with the goal of automatically optimizing how equipment runs through data collection, sensors, and more. 

“Imagine cleaning your dishes,” said Annie. “You have your pots, pans, plates, and they all have gunk on them. You put it into your dishwasher, which is pre-programmed for ‘normal wash’ or ‘quick wash.’ It’s programmed to clean for a certain amount of time. What your dishwasher doesn’t know is how dirty your plates are. If your dishwasher knew how dirty your plates still are, it could stop cleaning in 30 minutes, instead of going for the 45 the dishwasher was programmed for, for example.”

H2Ok is looking to provide tech that allows manufacturers to be more efficient, at a time when political and economic uncertainty has roiled supply chains and longstanding manufacturing norms. 

“Customers are talking about inflation, rising prices, supply chain risk, and geopolitical conflict, but they’re also thinking about how we create manufacturing in every region around the world,” said David. “How do you strengthen our most foundational sectors to make sure they’re still able to run effectively and efficiently?”

The Lus are both in their 20s, and are looking to grow with their manufacturer customers—but then again, they’ve already spent their lives in proximity to the industry. Their grandfather started a chemical manufacturing factory, a business their father also worked in.)

“We grew up spending summers on the shop floor,” said Annie. “I remember David cleaning floors and washing glassware. I think those experiences really brought us this deep appreciation, passion, and obsession with manufacturing and industrials. It’s something that’s deep in our blood.”

ICYMI…Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Labs, after much horse race reporting, has officially announced its mega-seed round of $2 billion at a $12 billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, while Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street participated. Read Murati’s post on X here. 

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Submit a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here.

Sara Braun curated the deals section of today’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Venture Deals

–Thinking Machines Lab, an artificial intelligence research and product company, raised $2 billion in additional funding. a16z led the round and was joined by NVIDIA, Accel, ServiceNow, CISCO, AMD, Jane Street and others. 

–Unify, a San Francisco-based AI technology company focused on streamlining AI and machine learning workflow, raised $40 million in Series B funding. Battery Ventures led the round and was joined by OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive Capital, Emergence and others. 

–evolvedMD, a Scottsdale-based collaborative care management provider, raised $34 million in Series B funding. Goldman Sachs Alternatives led the round and was joined by existing investors. 

– XTEND, a Tel Aviv-based robotics and autonomous systems provider powered by proprietary AI, raised $30 million in an extension of Series B funding. Aliya Capital Partners and Protego Ventures co-led the extension, and were joined by existing investors Claltech, Union-Tech Ventures and Chartered Group.

–Heron, a New York City-based startup using AI to automate workflows in business lending, equipment finance, and insurance, raised $16 million in Series A funding. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by Y Combinator, BoxGroup and Flex Capital.

–Linkby, a Sydney-based performance PR platform, raised $15 million in Series B funding. Volition Capital led the round. 

–Tavrn, an San Francisco-based AI-driven legal tech platform, raised $15 million in Series A funding. Left Lane led the round and was joined by existing investors A*, Hummingbird Ventures, and Box Group.

–Felt, an Oakland-based cloud-native Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platform, raised $15 million in funding. Energize Capital led the round and was joined by BCV and Footwork. 

–Heka, a New York City-based startup building a new category of identity intelligence for financial institutions, raised $14 million in Series A funding. Windare Ventures led the round and was joined by Barclays, Cornèr Banca, and others. 

–SuperAnnotate, a San Francisco-based AI data platform, raised $13.5 million in additional Series B funding. Dell Technologies Capital led the round. 

–Dakota, a crypto-integrated business banking platform, raised $12.5 million in Series A funding. CoinFund led the round and was joined by 6th Man Ventures and Triton Ventures. 

–ParadeDB, a New York City-based search and analytics program for Postgres, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Craft Ventures led the round and was joined by Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Susa Ventures, and others. 

–Rwazi, an Los Angeles-based AI platform for consumer data, raised $12 million in Series A funding. Bonfire Ventures led the round and was joined by Santa Barbara Venture Partners, Newfund, and Alumni Ventures. 

–Function, a BTC yield asset provider, raised $10 million in seed funding. Galaxy Digital, Mantle, and Antalpha joined the round. 

–Callidus Legal AI, a McKinney, Texas-based AI legal platform, raised $10 million in funding. Cervin Ventures led the round and was joined by AI Fund, Myriad Venture Partners, Tandem Ventures, and others. 

–Little Sesame, a Washington, D.C.-based hummus brand, raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. InvestEco Capital led the round and was joined by Watchfire Ventures, Santatera Capital, Beliade Consumer Partners, and others. 

–Monumental Labs, a New York City-based AI-powered architecture and sculpture design firm, raised $8 million in seed funding. Seven Seven Six led the round and was joined by Mythos Ventures, Gravity Capital, Path Ventures, and more. 

–Auriga Space, an Orange County-based aerospace technology company, raised $6 million in funding. OTB Ventures led the round and were joined by US AFWERX and SpaceWERX.

–Covenant, a New York City-based AI law firm built for private market investors, raised $4 million in seed funding. Flybridge Capital led the round.

Private Equity

-Dessert Holdings, backed by Bain Capital, acquired Willamette Valley Pie Company, a Silverton, Oregon-based pie and dessert company. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–E.GRUPPE, backed by Gimv, acquired LET Gruppe, an Ulm, Germany-based electrical engineering solutions company. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–Precision Aviation Group, backed by GenNx360 Capital Partners, acquired Turner Aviation, a Glasgow-based aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–Wilshire Advisors acquired ParkLexington Advisors, a Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based data and analytics firm focused on improving fund and investment firm operations, profitability, and performance. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–Advantive, backed by TA Associates and ST6, acquired PINpoint, a Burlington, Ontario-based manufacturing execution system. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–Trinity Hunt Partners acquired a majority stake in DACS Asphalt & Concrete, a Commerce City, Colorado-based commercial paving services provider. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

–Argentum acquired a minority stake in CloudCover, an Irvine, Calif.-based provider of third-party maintenance (TPM) and IT lifecycle management solutions. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Other

-Cognition agreed to acquire Windsurf, a Mountain View-based AI-powered code editor. Financial terms were not disclosed.

FUNDS + FUNDS OF FUNDS

–Verified Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, raised $175 million for its first fund focused on AI, SaaS, infrastructure, marketplaces, and payments.

–Mantis, a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm, raised $100 million for its third fund focused on cybersecurity, AI, frontier tech, data and cloud infrastructure, and healthtech.



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Senate Dems’ plan to fix Obamacare premiums adds nearly $300 billion to deficit, CRFB says

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8 hours ago

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December 5, 2025

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The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) is a nonpartisan watchdog that regularly estimates how much the U.S. Congress is adding to the $38 trillion national debt.

With enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire within days, some Senate Democrats are scrambling to protect millions of Americans from getting the unpleasant holiday gift of spiking health insurance premiums. The CRFB says there’s just one problem with the plan: It’s not funded.

“With the national debt as large as the economy and interest payments costing $1 trillion annually, it is absurd to suggest adding hundreds of billions more to the debt,” CRFB President Maya MacGuineas wrote in a statement on Friday afternoon.

The proposal, backed by members of the Senate Democratic caucus, would fully extend the enhanced ACA subsidies for three years, from 2026 through 2028, with no additional income limits on who can qualify. Those subsidies, originally boosted during the pandemic and later renewed, were designed to lower premiums and prevent coverage losses for middle‑ and lower‑income households purchasing insurance on the ACA exchanges.

CRFB estimated that even this three‑year extension alone would add roughly $300 billion to federal deficits over the next decade, largely because the federal government would continue to shoulder a larger share of premium costs while enrollment and subsidy amounts remain elevated. If Congress ultimately moves to make the enhanced subsidies permanent—as many advocates have urged—the total cost could swell to nearly $550 billion in additional borrowing over the next decade.

Reversing recent guardrails

MacGuineas called the Senate bill “far worse than even a debt-financed extension” as it would roll back several “program integrity” measures that were enacted as part of a 2025 reconciliation law and were intended to tighten oversight of ACA subsidies. On top of that, it would be funded by borrowing even more. “This is a bad idea made worse,” MacGuineas added.

The watchdog group’s central critique is that the new Senate plan does not attempt to offset its costs through spending cuts or new revenue and, in their view, goes beyond a simple extension by expanding the underlying subsidy structure.

The legislation would permanently repeal restrictions that eliminated subsidies for certain groups enrolling during special enrollment periods and would scrap rules requiring full repayment of excess advance subsidies and stricter verification of eligibility and tax reconciliation. The bill would also nullify portions of a 2025 federal regulation that loosened limits on the actuarial value of exchange plans and altered how subsidies are calculated, effectively reshaping how generous plans can be and how federal support is determined. CRFB warned these reversals would increase costs further while weakening safeguards designed to reduce misuse and error in the subsidy system.

MacGuineas said that any subsidy extension should be paired with broader reforms to curb health spending and reduce overall borrowing. In her view, lawmakers are missing a chance to redesign ACA support in a way that lowers premiums while also improving the long‑term budget outlook.

The debate over ACA subsidies recently contributed to a government funding standoff, and CRFB argued that the new Senate bill reflects a political compromise that prioritizes short‑term relief over long‑term fiscal responsibility.

“After a pointless government shutdown over this issue, it is beyond disappointing that this is the preferred solution to such an important issue,” MacGuineas wrote.

The off-year elections cast the government shutdown and cost-of-living arguments in a different light. Democrats made stunning gains and almost flipped a deep-red district in Tennessee as politicians from the far left and center coalesced around “affordability.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly smelling blood in the water and doubling down on the theme heading into the pivotal midterm elections of 2026. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Pennsylvania soon to discuss pocketbook anxieties. But he is repeating predecessor Joe Biden’s habit of dismissing inflation, despite widespread evidence to the contrary.

“We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything,” Trump said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting, in which he also dismissed affordability as a “hoax” pushed by Democrats.​

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle now face a politically fraught choice: allow premiums to jump sharply—including in swing states like Pennsylvania where ACA enrollees face double‑digit increases—or pass an expensive subsidy extension that would, as CRFB calculates, explode the deficit without addressing underlying health care costs.



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Netflix–Warner Bros. deal sets up $72 billion antitrust test

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9 hours ago

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December 5, 2025

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Netflix Inc. has won the heated takeover battle for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Now it must convince global antitrust regulators that the deal won’t give it an illegal advantage in the streaming market. 

The $72 billion tie-up joins the world’s dominant paid streaming service with one of Hollywood’s most iconic movie studios. It would reshape the market for online video content by combining the No. 1 streaming player with the No. 4 service HBO Max and its blockbuster hits such as Game Of Thrones, Friends, and the DC Universe comics characters franchise.  

That could raise red flags for global antitrust regulators over concerns that Netflix would have too much control over the streaming market. The company faces a lengthy Justice Department review and a possible US lawsuit seeking to block the deal if it doesn’t adopt some remedies to get it cleared, analysts said.

“Netflix will have an uphill climb unless it agrees to divest HBO Max as well as additional behavioral commitments — particularly on licensing content,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jennifer Rie. “The streaming overlap is significant,” she added, saying the argument that “the market should be viewed more broadly is a tough one to win.”

By choosing Netflix, Warner Bros. has jilted another bidder, Paramount Skydance Corp., a move that risks touching off a political battle in Washington. Paramount is backed by the world’s second-richest man, Larry Ellison, and his son, David Ellison, and the company has touted their longstanding close ties to President Donald Trump. Their acquisition of Paramount, which closed in August, has won public praise from Trump. 

Comcast Corp. also made a bid for Warner Bros., looking to merge it with its NBCUniversal division.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal on its face because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30% threshold.

The White House, the Justice Department and Comcast didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

US lawmakers from both parties, including Republican Representative Darrell Issa and Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren have already faulted the transaction — which would create a global streaming giant with 450 million users — as harmful to consumers.

“This deal looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare,” Warren said after the Netflix announcement. Utah Senator Mike Lee, a Republican, said in a social media post earlier this week that a Warner Bros.-Netflix tie-up would raise more serious competition questions “than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade.”

European Union regulators are also likely to subject the Netflix proposal to an intensive review amid pressure from legislators. In the UK, the deal has already drawn scrutiny before the announcement, with House of Lords member Baroness Luciana Berger pressing the government on how the transaction would impact competition and consumer prices.

The combined company could raise prices and broadly impact “culture, film, cinemas and theater releases,”said Andreas Schwab, a leading member of the European Parliament on competition issues, after the announcement.

Paramount has sought to frame the Netflix deal as a non-starter. “The simple truth is that a deal with Netflix as the buyer likely will never close, due to antitrust and regulatory challenges in the United States and in most jurisdictions abroad,” Paramount’s antitrust lawyers wrote to their counterparts at Warner Bros. on Dec. 1.

Appealing directly to Trump could help Netflix avoid intense antitrust scrutiny, New Street Research’s Blair Levin wrote in a note on Friday. Levin said it’s possible that Trump could come to see the benefit of switching from a pro-Paramount position to a pro-Netflix position. “And if he does so, we believe the DOJ will follow suit,” Levin wrote.

Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos had dinner with Trump at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last December, a move other CEOs made after the election in order to win over the administration. In a call with investors Friday morning, Sarandos said that he’s “highly confident in the regulatory process,” contending the deal favors consumers, workers and innovation. 

“Our plans here are to work really closely with all the appropriate governments and regulators, but really confident that we’re going to get all the necessary approvals that we need,” he said.

Netflix will likely argue to regulators that other video services such as Google’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the company’s perceived dominance.

The US Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the transfer of broadcast-TV licenses, isn’t expected to play a role in the deal, as neither hold such licenses. Warner Bros. plans to spin off its cable TV division, which includes channels such as CNN, TBS and TNT, before the sale.

Even if antitrust reviews just focus on streaming, Netflix believes it will ultimately prevail, pointing to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime and Walt Disney Co. as other major competitors, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking. 

Netflix is expected to argue that more than 75% of HBO Max subscribers already subscribe to Netflix, making them complementary offerings rather than competitors, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing confidential deliberations. The company is expected to make the case that reducing its content costs through owning Warner Bros., eliminating redundant back-end technology and bundling Netflix with Max will yield lower prices.



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The rise of AI reasoning models comes with a big energy tradeoff

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9 hours ago

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December 5, 2025

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Nearly all leading artificial intelligence developers are focused on building AI models that mimic the way humans reason, but new research shows these cutting-edge systems can be far more energy intensive, adding to concerns about AI’s strain on power grids.

AI reasoning models used 30 times more power on average to respond to 1,000 written prompts than alternatives without this reasoning capability or which had it disabled, according to a study released Thursday. The work was carried out by the AI Energy Score project, led by Hugging Face research scientist Sasha Luccioni and Salesforce Inc. head of AI sustainability Boris Gamazaychikov.

The researchers evaluated 40 open, freely available AI models, including software from OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. Some models were found to have a much wider disparity in energy consumption, including one from Chinese upstart DeepSeek. A slimmed-down version of DeepSeek’s R1 model used just 50 watt hours to respond to the prompts when reasoning was turned off, or about as much power as is needed to run a 50 watt lightbulb for an hour. With the reasoning feature enabled, the same model required 7,626 watt hours to complete the tasks.

The soaring energy needs of AI have increasingly come under scrutiny. As tech companies race to build more and bigger data centers to support AI, industry watchers have raised concerns about straining power grids and raising energy costs for consumers. A Bloomberg investigation in September found that wholesale electricity prices rose as much as 267% over the past five years in areas near data centers. There are also environmental drawbacks, as Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc. have previously acknowledged the data center buildout could complicate their long-term climate objectives. 

More than a year ago, OpenAI released its first reasoning model, called o1. Where its prior software replied almost instantly to queries, o1 spent more time computing an answer before responding. Many other AI companies have since released similar systems, with the goal of solving more complex multistep problems for fields like science, math and coding.

Though reasoning systems have quickly become the industry norm for carrying out more complicated tasks, there has been little research into their energy demands. Much of the increase in power consumption is due to reasoning models generating much more text when responding, the researchers said. 

The new report aims to better understand how AI energy needs are evolving, Luccioni said. She also hopes it helps people better understand that there are different types of AI models suited to different actions. Not every query requires tapping the most computationally intensive AI reasoning systems.

“We should be smarter about the way that we use AI,” Luccioni said. “Choosing the right model for the right task is important.”

To test the difference in power use, the researchers ran all the models on the same computer hardware. They used the same prompts for each, ranging from simple questions — such as asking which team won the Super Bowl in a particular year — to more complex math problems. They also used a software tool called CodeCarbon to track how much energy was being consumed in real time.

The results varied considerably. The researchers found one of Microsoft’s Phi 4 reasoning models used 9,462 watt hours with reasoning turned on, compared with about 18 watt hours with it off. OpenAI’s largest gpt-oss model, meanwhile, had a less stark difference. It used 8,504 watt hours with reasoning on the most computationally intensive “high” setting and 5,313 watt hours with the setting turned down to “low.” 

OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google released internal research in August that estimated the median text prompt for its Gemini AI service used 0.24 watt-hours of energy, roughly equal to watching TV for less than nine seconds. Google said that figure was “substantially lower than many public estimates.” 

Much of the discussion about AI power consumption has focused on large-scale facilities set up to train artificial intelligence systems. Increasingly, however, tech firms are shifting more resources to inference, or the process of running AI systems after they’ve been trained. The push toward reasoning models is a big piece of that as these systems are more reliant on inference.

Recently, some tech leaders have acknowledged that AI’s power draw needs to be reckoned with. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the industry must earn the “social permission to consume energy” for AI data centers in a November interview. To do that, he argued tech must use AI to do good and foster broad economic growth.



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