shield-capital
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Luke Fischer
Luke Fischer is the co-founder and CEO of SkyFi, an Austin-based Earth intelligence platform that lets businesses and governments order satellite imagery and analytics on demand, the way you'd hail an Uber. A former U.S. Army Special Operations aviator with 16 years on active duty, Fischer went on to lead flight operations at Uber and government operations at Joby Aviation before becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Shield Capital. He teamed up with investor Bill Perkins, who was frustrated that buying satellite imagery could take three to six months, and together they built a marketplace connecting more than 50 imagery providers. In January 2026 SkyFi raised an oversubscribed $12.7 million Series A to push deeper into AI-driven analytics.
Sumit Agarwal
Sumit Agarwal is the CEO and co-founder of Ario, a Palo Alto AI assistant that takes aim at the 'invisible labor' of running a household - the school calendars, the returns, the meal planning. Before Ario he co-founded Shape Security, a fraud-prevention company F5 acquired for more than $1 billion. Earlier he was the youngest-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon, a retired US Air Force major and one of the first officers in network warfare at Cyber Command, and ran mobile operations at Google. Ario raised $16 million in seed funding in June 2024 from Floodgate, Wing Venture Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Moxxie.