The dog-esque robots created by the likes of Boston Dynamics and MAB Robotics are already horrifying thanks to a mix of the “Metalhead” episode of Black Mirror and humanity’s natural apprehension for an uncertain future. This one highlighted by really got under my skin in an unnatural way.

can walk underwater and they took it on a test run for its YouTube channel. The steps it takes on the bottom of the pool create this weird ringing noise that’s just alarming as all hell. It’s like the engineering team hired John Carpenter to write a score for its robot.

It’s even scarier when the robot walks towards the camera like it’s hunting me down just before asphyxiation sets in and I drown. It sounds like they took a cue from the Skinamarink soundtrack. Someone make the horror in my head stop.

Node.vc has raised $77.3 million, or €71 million, for a new fund that is backed by 70 Nordic entrepreneurs.

This founder-first VC fund, (which is spelled node.vc by the company), is based in Stockholm and it has a “sector-agnostic” focus. Still, at least one of its early investments is in a game company. The firm is led by veterans of leading startups and scaleups (including eye tracking scaleup Tobii and Tobii Dynavox and video game pioneers Paradox Interactive).

The idea is to double down on building an ecosystem for entrepreneurs. The $77.3 million figure is the amount the fund has closed to date. I hope this means there is a sign of life in the venture capital investment climate, as recently investors have been gunshy.

Cornerstone investors in the new fund include Stockholm-based Saminvest (a venture capital company formed by the Swedish government in 2016, committed to establishing new and sustainable ventures), as well as several leading Nordic institutional investors, underscoring broad confidence in node.vc’ approach to venture capital. node.vc has built an investor base that includes more than 70 entrepreneurs.

Notable backers of the new fund include founders of Axis Communications, Yubico, Polarium, Cint, Evolution, PriceRunner, and Polar Structure. The Stockholm-headquartered VC firm’s investment philosophy is built on the power of becoming a node for the Nordic startup ecosystem, ensuring that the firm’s investor community is equipped to help identify, evaluate, and support portfolio companies.

A founder-first approach

Node.vc’s investment strategy revolves around building a founder-first ecosystem, where the firm leverages its extensive entrepreneurial network to identify, support, and scale innovative tech companies. The firm’s sector-agnostic approach is guided by the belief that disruptive innovation can emerge from any industry.

To date, the firm has already made three investments in Sweden: Lemonado, a no-code platform for building software and apps; Roro, a creative play studio; and Starhive, a next-generation unified data management platform for enterprises.

The firm’s thesis is based on the power of collaboration, connecting successful entrepreneurs with early-stage founders to accelerate growth and increase the probability of success. As the global landscape of work, innovation, and entrepreneurship evolves rapidly, Node.vc stands at the intersection of disruption and growth. The firm is committed to identifying and backing companies leading change across various industries, whether it’s reshaping virtual work, driving the future of AI, or unlocking new frontiers in interactive entertainment and enterprise technology, the company said.

Node.vc managing partner John Elvesjö said in a statement, “The Node.vc team started as founders and operators ourselves, we know what it takes to build and scale successful companies. That’s why we always put founders first; Node.vc is creating an ecosystem where entrepreneurs back entrepreneurs. Our approach is simple – when we invest in a company, we bring much more than capital.”

Elvesjö added, “Having been in the founders’ shoes ourselves, we know the challenges first-hand and deeply respect the journey. Our aim is to partner with founders, giving them the full weight of our experience, networks, and insights. With the incredible group of investors we’ve brought together, we’re certain we have built the largest entrepreneur-backed early-stage VC in the Nordics, all within one fund structure.”

Cornerstone investor Saminvest CEO Magnus Skåninger said in a statement, “Node.vc has the team and vision to deploy capital across the ecosystem in such a way that drives a new wave of entrepreneur- backed success. They are well-positioned to execute on the best investment opportunities across the tech landscape.”

David Karandish has been busy.

Capacity, his support automation company, was planning a $5 million “bridge round” to help the company reach the break-even point. But TVC Capital, Toloka.vc, and the venture’s other backers had something grander in mind. So they threw in an additional $21 million for what became Capacity’s $26 million Series D.

While all this was happening, Capacity acquired three companies: enterprise search firm Lucy (which had raised $5.6 million) and two startups focused on customer service automation, Linc and Envision.

“It’s an exciting time of transformation at Capacity as we grow to help brands do more to automate interactions with customers and team members,” Karandish told TechCrunch. “We’re at an inflection point for AI and many businesses are realizing that they need a complete platform to be successful, rather than cobbling together a bunch of point solutions.”

Karandish co-founded Capacity with Chris Sims in 2017 as a part of Equity.com’s incubator program. After the $900 million exit of Answers.com (which Karandish also co-founded), Karandish says he wanted to start a business to address what he perceived as major blockers in customer service operations.

“Rising costs have placed pressure on support teams to do more with less,” Karandish said. “At the same time, consumer expectations are shifting rapidly where consumers both want self-service but are increasingly frustrated by lackluster experiences. Our goal with Capacity is to provide a great customer experience while also recognizing that escalating to a human is the right thing to do in many cases.”

Capacity connects to a company’s tech stack to answer queries and automate support tasks. The platform mines information from files, apps like Gmail, customer relationship management software, and more to build a knowledge base that Capacity’s chatbot and helpdesk tools can pull from.

Employees can ask Capacity’s chatbot questions like “What was added to the merger contract yesterday?,” or even instruct it to do things like updating the status of a sales lead. The chatbot and helpdesk can also deliver company-wide announcements, like news and event notifications. And they can be made external-facing (with filters to hide sensitive data, mind you), embedded on a company’s website to answer common customer questions.

“We view Capacity as having the ease-of-use of a tool like Zendesk with the automation chops of a ServiceNow,” Karandish said. “From an approach standpoint, we are executing a very similar playbook to Parker Conrad’s ‘compound model’ — except in our case, we’re focused on support.”

Innovations in self-service software — including AI — are making them a more attractive solution to companies than they have been in the past. For example, Cleverly.ai — which Zendesk acquired in August 2022 — finds answers to customers’ questions by creating a knowledge layer on top of applications. Meanwhile, Directly taps algorithms trained by subject-matter experts to strategically answer customer issues in a variety of different messaging channels.

Customers like self-service options. According to a Zendesk poll, 67% prefer them over interacting with customer support. But it can be difficult to get them right. A Gartner survey found that, on average, only 14% of customer service and support issues are fully resolved in self-service.

Capacity will upgrade and expand its product portfolio through its recent acquisitions.

Karandish sees Lucy’s offering, which ingests and analyzes data from enterprise apps and systems, augmenting Capacity’s existing indexing technology. Envision, meanwhile, will help Capacity customers flag unresolved chats and calls and train human agents. And Linc will bring self-service tools for retail and e-commerce to Capacity, said Karandish.

The plan is for Lucy’s co-founders, Dan Mallin, Scott Litman, and Marc Dispensa, to join Capacity to help lead products and teams integration. Envision CEO Rodney Kuhn will oversee contact center solutions at Capacity, and Linc founder and CEO Fang Cheng will lead Capacity’s e-commerce efforts.

To date, Capacity has acquired eight companies — the other five being Textel, LumenVox, Denim Social, SmartAction, and Cereproc — and raised more than $89 million.

Karandish said that the newest tranche will be put toward growing Capacity’s headcount to 200 people by the end of the year as the Saint Louis-based company “heads toward profitability.” Capacity’s customer base now stands at over 2,500 brands, he added, while its annual recurring revenue is nearly $50 million.

“Our growth strategy reflects what our customers are asking for: an all-in-one AI platform that delivers across all communication channels,” he added. “We’ve identified 24 steps of the customer experience that are ripe for support automation … Each acquisition adds specific tech and talent to help Capacity become a leading provider of AI-powered solutions for customer and employee experience.”

The Federal Communications Commission is officially looking into broadband data caps and their impact on consumers. On Tuesday, the FCC approved a notice of inquiry to examine whether data caps harm consumers and competition, as well as why data caps persist “despite increased broadband needs” and the “technical ability to offer unlimited data plans,” as spotted earlier by Engadget.

Many internet plans come with a data cap that limits how much bandwidth you can use each month. If you go over the data cap, internet service providers will typically charge an extra fee or slow down your service. The FCC first started inviting consumers to comment on broadband data caps last June, hundreds of which you can now read on the agency’s website.

You can still share your experience with broadband data caps with the FCC through this form, which will ask for details about the name of your ISP, usage limits, and any challenges you’ve encountered due to the cap.

“For most people in the United States, rationing their internet usage would be unthinkable and impractical,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in the press release. “Restricting consumers’ data can cut off small businesses from their customers, slap fees on low-income families, and prevent people with disabilities from using the tools they rely on to communicate.”