NextLadder Ventures is a new initiative investing in transformative technologies so more Americans can reclaim their path to progress.
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80% of jobs are never advertised. They’re filled through professional networks. Climb Together built Goldie, an AI voice coach that helps students practice the conversations that build those connections.
But practice alone isn't enough without feedback.
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Fellows in the AI for Social Impact Summer fellowship, created alongside @bicyclesftmind and @AnthropicAI, spent 10 weeks with Climb Together building Goldie Debrief — a NavTech tool that scores practice conversations and gives students feedback on how to improve.
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The result: in an initial round, only 3 of 16 students ended a practice conversation with a concrete next step. After feedback from Goldie Debrief, 11 of 16 did.
Read the full writeup: linkedin.com/pulse/you-rarel…
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.@FfwdOrg & google.org recently released the 2026 AI for Humanity Report & whitepaper featuring our CEO Ryan Rippel. His take: tech alone isn't enough. It's a force for change only when built for people and backed by partners committed to scaling what works.
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2/ Read the full report and whitepaper here: ffwd.org/ai-for-humanity-rep…
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Have you checked out the NextLadder website? You can read investee spotlights, see our focus areas, learn how we’re building NavTech, or get involved yourself.
Take a look: nextladder.com
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For formerly incarcerated jobseekers, interviews can be daunting. @ceoworks built ACE, a phone-based AI mock interview coach, so participants could practice for job interviews whenever they want.
But does it work?
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Enter our AI for Social Impact Summer Fellows Maya Welch and Ankita Goshal. They built a tool that uses CEO's own coaches to train AI judges and score every call on what good coaching looks like.
The result: more users were getting the practice they needed to land a job.
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Hear Maya describe how the team tackled it, and read the full writeup:
ceoworks.org/blog/what-we-le…
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Yesterday, 8 graduate students wrapped a summer-long NavTech Fellowship with @AnthropicAI and @bicyclesftmind, presenting tools built alongside the frontline experts they were designed for.
Here's what each team made:
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Two fellows built a tool with Climb Together that gives jobseekers feedback on real recorded coffee chats, helping them grow their networking skills.
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The AI models powering NavTech tools need an independent evaluator, and @ValsAI is just that.
We’re proud to join @a16z, @8vc, @pearvc, @BloombergBeta, & @HRTVentures as a part of Vals AI’s Series A and support their goal of bringing trust and accountability to the AI industry.
Today we're announcing our $40M Series A at a $400M valuation, led by @a16z , with participation from existing investors @8vc, @pearvc, and @BloombergBeta and new investors @HRTVentures and @nextladder.
Alongside the fundraise, three more announcements:
- Vals Smith: is now generally available. Anyone can create a custom coding benchmark from any GitHub repo with 120 free credits to get started.
- Frontier Risk Benchmarks: We are releasing the RSI Index in collaboration with @CoreWeave and just launched ReverseEngBench, a new cyber benchmark built with Columbia University, Tufts University, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. We are also sharing our initial work in mental health, with more to come across environmental impact, military, and biosecurity.
- Website + Vals Index 2.0: We completely rebuilt the Vals website and have released Vals Index 2.0, with coverage of more of the economy.
Our revenue has already grown 8x compared to all of 2025. Our customer base doubled and the team tripled in 6 months. Our results have been cited in model cards from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI.
The AI economy runs on self-reported grades. When a model ships, the scores come from the company that built it. No other trillion-dollar industry works this way. Finance has ratings agencies. Medicine has the FDA. AI has vibes and vendor benchmarks. We built Vals to be the independent evaluation layer the industry is missing.
Check out our new website and try Vals Smith!
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In 2018, Noella Sudbury was running time-intensive expungement clinics that could only reach a fraction of the people who needed help. Now, 34k people have a blank slate because of the NavTech she built. We’re proud to back her and @RasaLegal.
Read her story below:
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We’re proud to partner with the @DRKFoundation to catalyze new NavTech tools empowering individuals and families to climb the economic ladder. Together, we’re supporting founders deploying tech to break down barriers across key domains that impact economic mobility.
Read on:
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