Irys is a San Antonio, Texas-based cybersecurity and IT company founded in 2017, delivering AI-native cybersecurity, resilient IT infrastructure, and adversarial simulation services to defense agencies, governments, and enterprises. The company emerged from the Geekdom startup community and is known for its work modernizing government digital platforms.

Pryon is an enterprise generative AI company headquartered in Raleigh, NC that enables leading enterprise and government organizations to deploy AI apps and agents grounded in trusted, proprietary content. The company was founded by AI pioneers instrumental in developing Alexa, Siri, and Watson.

Vulcan Elements — U.S. manufacturer of high-performance rare-earth (NdFeB) magnets. Founded 2023 by John Maslin (CEO) and Piotr Kulik (CTO); Durham, NC. $65M Series A (Altimeter Capital, One Investment Management, 1789 Capital); plus a $620M DoD Office of Strategic Capital loan and $50M Commerce equity (2025).