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Portage, Wellington, Crosslink Capital, 53 Stations, Titanium Ventures, Spice and Florida Funders also took part. Flex says the money brings its total equity raised to $180m, alongside $300m of debt. Headcount stands at 110 and the company expects to be past 200 by the end of the year.
Six months ago, Flex raised $60m and called it a Series B. On Tuesday it said it had raised another $70m, and rather than move down the alphabet, it settled on a Series B1. The round was led by Halo, the investment firm set up last year by Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith, who owns the NBA’s Utah Jazz and the NHL’s Utah Mammoth, together with his longtime backer Ryan Sweeney, a general partner at Accel.
"Walker Kessler obviously is a big piece. We expect him to come back. What's the situation like there?" Ryan Smith: "We love Walk. He's a big piece of where we're going."
Run It Back: Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith on re-signing Walker Kessler: "We love Walk. He's a big piece of where we're going."
Jazz owner Ryan Smith: "We met with Darryn at the combine. Darryn was awesome in the interview. Darryn wanted to go number one. Everyone wants to go number one. But by the way, we had three different top guys come in. I don't even call it a workout. I call it dinner. I don't even go. I'm like, okay, I'll go to dinner with you because there's no sweat, there's no nothing. They're sitting down with Will watching film. They put on their jersey to check out the size and everything. They take a couple of pictures, they call it a workout, but no one's doing like the three-minute run to see how fast they can go up and down the court."
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Jazz owner Ryan Smith: "There's reasons why those narratives take off and the one thing in the NBA is a lot of times I think we all have to do this, we all have to sit back and be like, okay, that's out there. I've never been in a business where so much is untrue that's out there. It's just completely untrue. And then you've got like your mother-in-law reading, can you believe this? And I'm like, oh my word. Like it's just -- and I try to explain to other consumers of regular news out there in the world, I was like, hey, if the rest of the world's anything like the NBA that's out there and how much is untrue, that's sad."
Jazz owner Ryan Smith: "I don't want to set expectations, but like we need to start winning. I think that's that's that's kind of where we're at. When we took over, I took over what was the number one team in the regular season and we got, I mean, it was interesting. My first day was like post-COVID. We were kind of into COVID and I had like two weeks to get a deal done with Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell. It was really complicated because normally you have a long time to do this, but that team came out, we were number one in the regular season the first year and just got bounced early."
Run It Back: Jazz owner Ryan Smith is excited that Darryn Peterson is headed to Utah 🔥 "DP was definitely #1 pick for most of the year... we were in a pretty good spot... he slides in perfectly next to Keyonte George." 💯
Regardless, sources indicate that the Jazz are also undecided on what to do at No. 2. Do not expect, however, that connections to Cameron Boozer through his father Carlos (who works in the Jazz front office) or Dybantsa through team owner Ryan Smith at BYU will be the deciding factor here.
League sources say Kessler, meanwhile, has long wanted to remain in Utah but is extremely disappointed with the way his situation is being handled. What’s more, there has long been an expectation that he would be a long-term priority, and part of the solution, after the Jazz spent recent years in rebuilding mode under the direction of owner Ryan Smith.
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Days after winning the No. 2 pick in the draft lottery, Jazz owner Ryan Smith said "everything should be on the table" when asked directly in an interview with the Deseret News if the organization would trade up to No. 1 to presumably select Dybantsa. "We don't control that," Smith said. "We are trying to win a championship. So everything should be on the table. Austin and Danny (Ainge) have also been known to do some pretty crazy stuff on draft night."
BYUtv Sports Nation: Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith on if they will trade up for AJ Dybantsa.
Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith on if they will trade up for AJ Dybantsa pic.twitter.com/DI2BYGljC1
— BYUtv Sports Nation (@BYUSportsNation) May 13, 2026
As soon as the lottery was revealed Sunday, the immediate question around the league and industry was whether the Utah Jazz, holding the No. 2 pick, might make an eventual overture to trade up to No. 1 to select AJ Dybantsa. This is factoring in the strong ties between Utah owner Ryan Smith, CEO Danny Ainge and president of basketball operations Austin Ainge to BYU.
Inside a sterile room on the edge of Lake Michigan, Austin Ainge let out a “yes” that cut through the quiet. “Well, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” Ainge justified later, smirking. The Utah Jazz’s president of basketball operations spent the last year trying to create NBA draft lottery luck in a place where none previously existed. Not only did he guide his team to 60 losses to secure the fourth-best odds, he personally surveyed every potential draft room representative to see who had the best fortune — only to see the battle scars of the past four years laid out in front of him. “Who wants it?” Ainge asked among the Jazz’s front office executives. “Justin Zanik said he’d already gone and lost. [Danny Ainge] same thing. Ryan Smith went and didn’t get the pick. You’re all fired, I said. I’ll be the one to go.”