The $20 million and Series A

Twenty million gets the first customers live. Then the machine scales.

The factory, then the scale

Trinity Sky is one company with two checks at two moments. The first is a $20 million seed. It stands the factory that gets the first customers live. A Fortune 100 or government committee signs an NDA. A six-, ten-, or sixteen-week proof installs the archive on their floor, with their data, on their hardware. They sign. They own it. Those installs are the book. The second check is a Series A of $250 million, sized in a $200–300 million band — land-and-expand after those logos exist.

The motion is short enough to want. The recall protocol runs on their machine. Fail-closed shows itself when the system is not sure. The proof fee credits against the land. Their install is the product launch. Their expansion is the traction. Twenty million buys the factory that can repeat that motion. Two hundred fifty million buys the company that motion becomes: more divisions, more seats, more of the archive in production, the ENTERPRISE factory at volume, and a public brand those first logos turn on.

Seed sells to a named committee. Series A scales the company that committee already runs. That is the sequence. Factory first. Scale after the logos.

What twenty million buys

Eighty-five percent of the raise is product, deploy, evidence, and credits. Five percent is the sales desk. The thing being sold is a runtime the buyer puts on-prem, not an API key. The factory is what those two account executives put on the floor.

Eighty-five percent of the raise is product, deploy, evidence, and customer-side proof credits — a factory that can install memory in six to sixteen weeks.

The eight lines are exact. The $7.0 million line staffs the engineers who can run that proof and keep the memory stack maintainable. The $3.0 million air-gap line is Trinity’s own disconnected install path. The $3.0 million enterprise line is single sign-on, SIEM, access control, and restore — Fortune 100 hygiene. The $2.0 million validation line pays an independent party to re-run the recall clocks. The $2.0 million in pilot credits sits on the customer side of the table so a CIO starts on an operating line.

Sales is $1.0 million — two account executives and legal. Security and IP is $1.5 million. Reserve is $0.5 million, intentionally thin. If the first proofs convert, the rest of Year-1 selling cost is funded by recognized revenue and deferred bookings. Use of funds is a stock. The Year-1 plan is a period. On the base plan the company consumes $8 million of cash at 42 heads. On the downside plan it consumes $14 million. Twenty million is sized so a miss still leaves a factory that can run a proof.

NDA, then weeks, then they own it

Proof length tracks the land. CORE is about six weeks — one division, a $2 million proposed annual. DIVISION is about ten — a line of business, $8 million. ENTERPRISE is about sixteen — air-gap as the default path, $25 million. Sales dollars open the door. The $7 million factory, the two $3 million deploy lines, and the credit line make those weeks real on the buyer’s floor.

They sign. They own it. Their install is the product launch.

When the contract books, the memory lives in their building or their own cloud. When the relationship ends, the archive stays. That is the close this seed is built to produce: a signed mind on customer hardware, not a rented window that forgets on Monday. Commercial first customers sit in a $4–12 million band. Sovereign work plans in a $15–40 million band as logos accumulate. Year 1 is the first lands — the factory repeating the same motion until the book exists.

The expand gate is three signed logos or $15 million booked. Either prong. Hit it, and the company is a first-customer business with installs on customer hardware — land-and-expand can begin. Miss it, and unused pilot credit is the first line we stop. It stays as runway. The factory stays. The weekly scoreboard is operational and short: NDAs opened, proofs started, logos signed, annual value booked.

Two hundred fifty million is scale

The trigger that unlocks Series A is either $80 million of recognized run-rate, or 15 logos plus one government task order of $15 million or more. A high run-rate means the mix table became a book. Fifteen logos plus a $15 million government task order means both the commercial motion and the sovereign motion exist. Either prong is a company that can take a quarter-billion raise.

Series A is a $250 million raise in a $200–300 million size band. That band is the size of the next raise, not a pre-money number on this seed. The capital is for scale after proof: land-and-expand on the first installs, the ENTERPRISE factory at volume, classified-capable deploy as a practiced motion, and the public brand those logos turn on. Seed sells to a named committee. The later campaign sells curiosity. The public brand is what the first logos buy the right to turn on.

That later envelope is sized for a company that already has installs. Thirty percent is SSI technology. Fifteen percent is global engineering. Fifteen percent is the computing ecosystem. Fifteen percent is sales and marketing. Ten percent is industry programs. The rest is sovereign security, acquisitions and IP, and working capital. The $4–12 million commercial band and the $15–40 million sovereign band are the pricing story of that later company — expanded annual value as logos accumulate.

Ask, then the trigger

$20 million is an ask. Forecasts are a plan. No customer logos yet. Seed enables the trigger — it buys the memory, the factory, and the work that can trip it.

Series A is a target after that trigger, not a date. If the trigger does not trip, the next conversation is a bridge and a rewritten sales plan.

They forget, and they bill you for the privilege. We remember on your hardware. That memory becomes every product we ship.

Next in the catalog: E8-SSII.