RBV + Denarii Labs Weekly Newsletter 🧔📖 Week of 5/14/26

Announcements, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, Open Deals, Events & More

May 14, 2026

Welcome to the latest edition of the Red Beard Ventures newsletter, where we dive into exciting updates and insights from all over our portfolio and network!

📣 As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has a syndicate, fund, tokenomics accelerator, and Web3 consultancy:

  • The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Sports, Robotics, Biotech, and Climate. We invest anywhere between $100k - $1.5M. 

  • Red Beard Ventures Fund I invests $100k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain based companies.

  • Denarii Labs is a tokenomics accelerator which invests $100k into companies interested in designing and launching a token over a twelve week hands-on program. Denarii also features a consulting business for later stage clients with higher touchpoint needs in tokenomics, communications, growth, and marketing.

🎤 RBV / Denarii Labs Announcements:

Denarii Labs Cohort 4 - Applications Now Open for Cohort 4

Denarii Labs is now accepting applications for Cohort 4. We are actively reviewing applications and investing $100K into projects looking to design, launch, and scale their token ecosystems over a 12 week program.

Apply now to join a network of high-conviction builders shaping the next generation of on-chain economies.

One Spot Left!

Join our current accelerator alongside Canton and Starknet. We've previously run accelerator programs for Avalanche, Hedera, Flow, Xion & more.

If you'd like to partner with RBV/Denarii for an accelerator, DM Sean Melcher 

Looking for funding? Link to apply

🚀 RBV Spotlight:

Saga is building a new category of AI-native gaming infrastructure through persistent character agents that live beyond the game itself. Rather than functioning as static NPCs, these AI-powered characters can continuously interact across social platforms, extending engagement long after gameplay ends.

This transforms gaming IP from one-time entertainment assets into always-on digital personalities capable of building relationships, creating content, and driving ongoing community engagement. Instead of relying purely on advertising, games can leverage recognizable AI characters as persistent distribution and retention engines across the internet.

The opportunity extends beyond gaming into the broader future of AI-native consumer experiences. As digital personalities become increasingly embedded across platforms, Saga is positioning itself at the intersection of gaming, AI agents, and synthetic relationship infrastructure.

Congratulations to the Saga team 🚀

💼 Portfolio News:

•Focuses on creating AI agents with consistent personality, memory, and multimodal interaction.
•Targets growing demand for personalized customer experiences across enterprise platforms.
•Expands beyond chat interfaces toward fully interactive AI-native brand experiences.

•Signed production agreement to deliver a minimum of 1,000 Barracuda-500M precision strike missiles annually for three years.
•Advances scalable, lower-cost autonomous defense manufacturing for long-range strike systems.
•Further positions Anduril as a next-generation defense prime focused on software-defined warfare.

•Showcases AI-powered manufacturing systems built for rapid, adaptive defense production.
•Focuses on solving manufacturing bottlenecks rather than weapon design constraints.
•Positions Machina Labs as critical infrastructure for next-generation industrial and defense supply chain

QuickNode Highlights Explosive Growth of Hyperliquid Prediction Markets

•HIP-4 prediction markets reached $33.5M in trading volume across 73 markets in under two weeks.
•Over 5,900 unique traders and nearly 900K fills signal strong early product-market fit.
•Positions QuickNode as critical infrastructure powering next-generation onchain prediction markets.

•Developing privacy stack designed to secure onchain data in a post-quantum world.
•Addresses institutional demand for confidential and future-proof blockchain infrastructure.
•Expands Fhenix’s positioning within confidential compute and encrypted AI systems.

•New runtime delivers 30× faster execution and 75% lower trading costs.
•Moves execution and risk systems outside the LLM layer for improved reliability.
•Accelerates development of production-grade AI trading infrastructure.

•Players traded over $133K worth of assets and 485M+ UPX during April alone.
•Demonstrates continued activity and liquidity within Upland’s player-owned virtual economy.
•Reinforces long-term traction for real-world mapped metaverse economies.


🚀 Onwards!

Drew, Joshua, Ana, Sean, and Jeff