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Tech News
Arlington-based Quartermaster has closed a $140 million Series B just months after a $43 million Series A, with about $100 million in equity from Insight Partners, Overmatch Ventures and existing backers, plus a $40 million debt facility from Stifel. The company makes 'SmartMast,' a hardware package of cameras and radios mounted on ship masts that delivers real-time maritime data beyond basic AIS location pings.
Arlington-based Quartermaster raised a $140 million Series B just months after closing a $43 million Series A in May, according to CEO Neil Sobin. Roughly $100 million came from equity investors led by Insight Partners, with new backer Overmatch Ventures and existing investor First Round Capital, while the remaining $40 million came as debt financing from Stifel. The startup builds weather-hardened camera and radio hardware called SmartMast that mounts on ship masts to deliver real-time maritime data beyond basic AIS location pings.
Snorkel AI, a company that builds AI training data sets and simulated environments, closed a $350 million Series E at a $3.5 billion valuation, nearly triple its $1.3 billion valuation from 17 months earlier. The round included existing backers Addition, Lightspeed, Greylock, GV, and Wells Fargo, alongside new leads Insight Partners and S32. Snorkel reports an annualized revenue run-rate of $375 million, up 18-fold over the past year.
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, Gusto CEO Josh Reeves, Insight Partners' Michelle Johnson, and Leland CEO John Koelliker will discuss a session titled 'Hiring When AI Is a Co-Founder.' The panel examines how early-stage startups are structuring teams that mix human employees with AI agents handling engineering, support, and operational tasks.
In a TechCrunch interview, Insight Partners co-CEO Devin Parekh discussed why the $90 billion firm has spread investments across sectors instead of concentrating heavily on frontier AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, even though it holds stakes in both. He also addressed missed deals such as legal-tech startup Legora, conflicts of interest in venture capital, and downplayed fears of AI-driven catastrophic risk, citing potential medical breakthroughs as a greater upside.
Israeli-Dutch AI startup Wonderful closed a $550 million Series C round that values the company at $5 billion, more than double its valuation from roughly six months ago. Insight Partners led the round again, joined by existing backers Index Ventures, IVP, Vine Ventures, 9Yards, and Bessemer, with Salesforce joining as a new investor. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate product development and expand its forward-deployed engineering teams.