SNAK Venture Partners announced Wednesday the close of its oversubscribed $50 million debut fund, anchored by the investment firm Pritzker Group (founded by Illinois governor JB Pritzker and his brother, Tony).

SNAK founders Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith worked at the firm and helped lead investments in companies like the auto marketplace Backlot Cars and TicketsNow (exited to Ticketmaster). The duo decided to break out on their own and, earlier this year, launched their firm to back digital marketplaces. 

“It felt like the timing was right and there was support within the firm to go do this,” Nagar said. 

The vision is that there is still so much to digitize, like in supply chain and construction, and this is the moment to strike because even holdout industries are more comfortable adopting new technology as fintech architecture advances. 

“If you look at the biggest venture wins over the last decade,” she said, pointing to the likes of Uber, Instacart, and Airbnb, “those are five of the top 10 outcomes in venture.” As in those companies that raised billions from investors, went on to IPO, and returned millions to them.

“Most of those wins were in consumer, which tends to be faster-moving than large enterprises,” Nagar continued. “We think there’s a ton of white space to double down and focus on B2B marketplaces.” Looking specifically for the categories that haven’t yet digitized. 

The firm has already invested in six companies, including Big Rentals and Repackify, focused on equipment rental and packaging logistics, respectively. Nagar said the firm hopes to overall write seed checks into at least 20 companies, at $1 million to $2 million a pop. She said they hope to deploy the entire fund within the next 3 to 4 years. 

Though many new funds are struggling to raise capital (and capital remains concentrated at the top), Nagar said she and Koopersmith were able to lean on their backgrounds when wooing LPs. 

Nagar previously helped launch Amazon apparel back in 2009, and was head of mobile at RetailMeNot. Koopersmith, meanwhile, spent 20 years at Pritzker Group and serves on the board of various marketplace companies. At the same time, Nagar said that without Pritzker’s support, it would have been quite hard to raise this fund, especially in last year’s environment.

Other LPs in their fund include the State of Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and executives from other marketplace companies, like Favor Delivery and RetailMeNot. 

Nagar said the firm is also location-agnostic, recognizing that the still-hidden marketplaces may not be found only in Silicon Valley and New York City. “We’re finding these overlooked founders in places where maybe other funds aren’t looking,” she said. 

SNAK is itself based in Chicago, which she said some LPs have questioned. “People perceive that as a disadvantage; we view it as an advantage,” she continued. “We can get to everybody very fast.” 

Uber is promoting Balaji Krishnamurthy, its VP of strategic finance and investor relations, to be its CFO, replacing its current finance chief Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah.

Krishnamurthy has been at Uber for over six years, spending most of his tenure in the company in its investor relations division. He often posts about the company’s autonomous ride-hailing efforts, and has a board seat at AV company Waabi — so the appointment may be a signal of the company’s plans to expand its driverless investments and operations.

Indeed, on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Krishnamurthy said the company would invest capital in its AV software partners, work with AV makers by investing equity or via offtake agreements, and “support our AV infrastructure partners.”

“With large and growing free cash flows, over the coming years we will invest with discipline across a multitude of opportunities, including positioning Uber to win in an AV future,” Krishnamurthy wrote in a statement detailing the company’s Q4 results.

Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on the call that he was convinced autonomous vehicles would “unlock a multitrillion-dollar opportunity,” for the company, adding that autonomy “fundamentally amplifies” the strengths of the company’s platform.

“By the end of 2026, we expect to be facilitating AV trips in as many as 15 cities globally, with a roughly even split of U.S. and international cities. And by 2029, we intend to be the largest facilitator of AV trips in the world,” Khosrowshahi said.

Over the past two years, Uber has amassed partnerships with at least 20 autonomous vehicle companies across a variety of use cases, including sidewalk delivery robots, robotaxis, and trucking. Waymo is perhaps its highest profile partner with shared robotaxi operations in Atlanta and Austin. It has also struck deals with Avride, UK-based Wayve, Chinese companies WeRide, Momenta, and Volkswagen, among others.

It has made direct investments in AV startups as well. Waabi, for instance, recently announced a $750 million Series C funding round that included an up to an additional $250 million (if it reaches certain milestones) from Uber to support the deployment of 25,000 or more robotaxis on its platform. Uber has also invested in Silicon Valley-based Nuro and Lucid as part of a deal to launch a premium robotaxi service.

Uber said revenue rose to $14.37 billion in the fourth quarter, up 20% from a year earlier, driven by strong demand for its food delivery services.

Mahendra-Rajah is leaving Uber after three years at the company.

Voice AI company ElevenLabs said today it raised $500 million in a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital, which was an investor in the startup’s last secondary round through a tender. Sequoia partner Andrew Reed is joining the company’s board.

The startup is now valued at $11 billion, more than three times its valuation in its last round in January 2025. Earlier in the year, the Financial Times reported that the startup was looking to raise at that valuation.

The company said that existing investor a16z quadrupled its investment amount, and Iconiq, which led the last round, tripled it. Some prior investors, like BroadLight, NFDG, Valor Capital, AMP Coalition, and Smash Capital, also joined the round. New investors for the funding included Lightspeed Venture Partners, Evantic
Capital, and Bond.

ElevenLabs said that it will disclose some investors later in February, which might be strategic partners. The company has raised over $781 million to date. It said that it will use the funding for research and product development, along with expansion in international markets like India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico.

The company’s co-founder, Mati Staniszewski, indicated that ElevenLabs might work on agents beyond voice and incorporate video. In January, the company announced a partnership with LTX to produce audio-to-video content.

“The intersection of models and products is critical – and our team has proven, time and again, how to translate research into real-world experiences. This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether. We plan to expand our Creative offering – helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents – enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action,” he said in a statement.

The company has seen good growth momentum as it closed the year at $330 million ARR. In an interview with Bloomberg earlier this year, Staniszewski said that it took ElevenLabs five months to reach $200 million to $300 million in ARR.

Voice AI model providers are an attractive target for investors and big tech companies. In January, rival Deepgram raised $130 million from AVP at a $1.3 billion valuation. Meanwhile, Google hired top talent from voice model company Hume AI, including CEO Alan Cowen.