About Refinery
Refinery is a venture capital firm founded in 2017. It is primarily based out of Cincinnati, United States. As of Oct 2025, Refinery is an active investor, having invested in 21 companies, with 2 new investments in the last 12 months. It primarily invests in Series A round in United States based startups. Its investments are spread across a wide range of sectors from Enterprise Applications to High Tech and Consumer. Most recently it participated in the $***** Series A round of Kernel Overall, Refinery portfolio has seen 3 acquisitions, namely Tealbook. A lot of funds co-invest with Refinery, with names like Grand Ventures sharing a substantial percentage of its portfolio. Refinery has team of 14 people including 2 partners.Key Metrics
Team Members
Portfolio Count
Portfolio Sectors
Portfolio Locations
Rounds of Entry
Series A & Seed
Portfolio Acquisitions
Portfolio Soonicorns
Refinery's List of Top Investments
Refinery has a portfolio of 21 companies. Their most notable investments are in StoryFit and FoodHealth.Their portfolio spans across United States and Canada. They have invested in Enterprise Applications, High Tech, Consumer and 11 other sectors, across stages such as Series A, Seed stages. Here is the list of top investments by Refinery:Online platform for performance management. Integrated coaching and feedback software for leadership development. It offers leadership assessment, virtual video coaching sessions, iterative feedback, a personal development plan, dashboard & insights, etc. The platform provides solutions for manager growth, diversity, equity & inclusion, onboarding, etc. The platform also provides mentoring and admin tools.
Key facts about Torch Leadership Labs
- Founded Year: 2017
- Location: San Francisco (United States)
- Stage: Series C
- Total Funding till date: $79.1M
- Employee Count: 357 as on Mar 31, 2026
- Investors: 137 Ventures, Leaf Ventures and 11 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series C, May 23, 2022, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
Creates unmanned aircraft systems. Government and business clients are served. They provide a portable, light, and military-grade ISR drone.
Key facts about Vantage Robotics
- Founded Year: 2013
- Location: San Francisco (United States)
- Stage: Series B
- Total Funding till date: $8.94M
- Employee Count: 34 as on May 31, 2026
- Investors: Hone Capital, Ruvento Ventures and 6 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series B, May 08, 2023, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
3. Astronomer
Cloud-based platform for data pipelines. It is a hosted data pipeline service that can be used to connect various data sources like Oracle, MySQL, Salesforce, etc to destinations like cloud platform amazon redshift, bi tools, google analytics, and website analytics tools like kissmetrics. The company also provides implementation services to the companies with no data engineer.
Key facts about Astronomer
- Founded Year: 2015
- Location: Cincinnati (United States)
- Stage: Series D
- Total Funding till date: $376M
- Employee Count: 4,602 as on May 31, 2026
- Investors: Meritech, Sierra Ventures and 27 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Series D, May 01, 2025, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
4. FoodHealth
Developer of a food scoring system based on nutritional data. The system analyzes nutrient density and ingredient quality to generate personalized scores. These scores help individuals make informed food choices based on health needs. The scoring system considers factors like fiber, protein, sugar, and fat content. It also adjusts for specific health conditions, such as pre-diabetes and gut health.
Key facts about FoodHealth
- Founded Year: 2020
- Location: San Francisco (United States)
- Stage: Series A
- Total Funding till date: $20M
- Employee Count: 27 as on May 31, 2026
- Investors: Ulu Ventures, Refinery and 15 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Angel, Jan 06, 2026, $*****
- Highlight: Editors' Pick
5. Tealbook
Provider of supplier data platform offering data cleansing and enrichment. The platform resolves supplier legal entities and maps corporate hierarchies. It enriches supplier profiles with attributes, providing a data foundation. The platform integrates with existing systems and offers continuous data updates.
Key facts about Tealbook
- Founded Year: 2014
- Location: Thornhill (Canada)
- Stage: Acquired
- Total Funding till date: $78M
- Employee Count: 34 as on May 31, 2026
- Investors: Workday Ventures, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and 15 Others
- Latest Funding Round: Conventional Debt, Dec 14, 2021, $*****
- Highlight: Acquired
Refinery's Year-on-Year Investment Trends
Refinery has invested in 21 companies over the last 8 years, with an average of 2 new investments annually in the last 5 years. In 2025, it made 3 investments. Its most recent first time investment was in Kernel and most recent follow-on round was in FoodHealth.Year | No. of Investments | ||
|---|---|---|---|
1st Round | Follow-on | Total | |
2026 (YTD) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2025 | 2 | 1 | 3 |
2024 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2023 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2022 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
2021 | 5 | 2 | 7 |
2020 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2019 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
2018 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Refinery's Investments by Stage
Refinery has made 10 investments in Series A stage with an average round size of $9.52M and 8 investments in Seed stage with an average round size of $4.86M.Stage of entry | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
Series A | 10 |
Seed | 8 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Refinery's Investments by Sector
Refinery has a diverse portfolio, with companies operating in the Enterprise Applications, Enterprise Infrastructure, High Tech, Vertical SaaS and Aerospace, Maritime and Defense Tech. Notably, it has invested in 21 Tech companies, 20 Enterprise (B2B) companies, 16 Software companies and at least 8 companies focusing on Saas.Sector | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
Enterprise Applications | 13 |
Enterprise Infrastructure | 5 |
High Tech | 3 |
Vertical SaaS | 3 |
Aerospace, Maritime and Defense Tech | 2 |
Others | 14 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Refinery's Investments by Geography
Refinery has made most investments in United States (16), followed by Canada where it has made 2 investments.Country | No. of Investments |
|---|---|
United States | 16 |
Canada | 2 |
Note: We have considered here, only first round of investments
Refinery's recent investments
Refinery has not made any investment in 2026 so far.Here are the most recent investments by Refinery:
Filter this listDate | Company | Location | Round Details | Round Amount | Co-Investors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Oct 15, 2025 | United States | Series A | 8214 | [+9] | |
Oct 09, 2025 | United States | Series A | 6705 | [+5] | |
Apr 14, 2025 | United States | Series A | 2386 | [+5] | |
Jun 26, 2023 | United States | Seed | 2385 | [+5] | |
Jan 13, 2023 | United States | Series A | 7064 | [+2] |
Acquired companies in Refinery's Portfolio
3 companies from Refinery's portfolio have been acquired. The most recent acquisition was Tealbook in Apr 2026 by supplier.io for $*****.Here are Refinery's portfolio companies that got acquired most recently:
Company | Acquisition Date | First Invested on | First Round of Investment | Round Size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Apr 03, 2026 | Jan 22, 2020 | Series A | 5142 | |
Sep 14, 2021 | - | - | 4773 | |
Oct 30, 2019 | Feb 14, 2018 | Series A | 5006 |
Team profile of Refinery
Refinery has a team of 14 members including 2 Partners, 4 Venture Partners and 2 Principals located in United States. Refinery's team does not sit on the board of any company as of now.Here is a list of top team members in Refinery:
Name | Designation | Location | Board Memberships | Contact Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Partner | - | - | - | |
Partner | Cincinnati | - | ||
Venture Partner | Jupiter | - | ||
Venture Partner | United States | - | - | |
Venture Partner | Cincinnati | - | - | |
Venture Partner | Bend | - | - | |
Principal | Columbus | - | ||
Principal | Cincinnati | - |
Co-investors of Refinery
Over the past 8 years, 118 investors have co-invested in Refinery's portfolio companies. This includes funds and angels.
- Invested before Refinery: M25, Connetic Ventures and 35 others have invested in rounds before Refinery. There are 3 companies where M25 has invested before Refinery and 2 companies where Connetic Ventures has invested before Refinery.
- Top Co-investors of Refinery: 52 investors entered a company along with Refinery. These include investors like Grand Ventures (2 companies).
- Invested after Refinery: A total of 29 investors have invested in Refinery's portfolio after their investments. Top Investors include SVB (2 companies), Veteran Ventures Capital (1 company) and Insight Partners (1 company).
Recent News related to Refinery
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Kernel Secures $22M to Enhance AI Agent Browser InfrastructureSiliconAngle•Oct 10, 2025•Kernel, Refinery, Vercel, Y Combinator and 3 others
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FoodHealth Company Raises $7.5M Series A to Expand Nutrition TransparencyBusiness Wire•May 06, 2025•Food Health, Reach Capital, Ulu Ventures, Supply Change Capital and 2 others
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Redi Health secures $14M for healthcare management platformMobiHealthNews•Feb 28, 2024•Redi, Blue Heron Capital, North Coast Ventures, Mutual Capital Partners and 4 others
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DeFi Credit Protocol Concordia Raises $4M in Round Led by Tribe, Kraken VenturesCoinDesk•Jun 16, 2023•Concordia, Tribe Capital, Krakenventures, Cypher Capital and 10 others
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On-demand delivery provider Frayt eyes large-scale shippers with $7M funding roundSupply Chain Dive•Apr 21, 2023•Frayt Technologies, Refinery
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Frayt Raises $7M in Series A FundingFinSMEs•Apr 11, 2023•Frayt Technologies, Refinery, Capital Midwest Fund, Venture 53 and 1 other
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Patient support platform Redi.Health raises new fundingVator•Oct 17, 2022•Redi, Refinery, Meritech, Rev1 Ventures and 1 other
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