A daily newsletter summarizing recent activity & interesting start-ups globally
RECENT NOTABLE ACTIVITY – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
- CognitiveScale, a provider of industry-specific cognitive intelligence software, raised $21.8M in series B round of funding co-led by Norwest Venture Partners, Intel Capital, and IBM. Link
- Recursion Pharmaceuticals, an AI based drug discovery company raised $12.9M in series A round of funding, led by Lux Capital, with participation from Obvious Ventures, Epic Ventures, Data Collective, AME Cloud Ventures, Wild Basin Investments. Link
- ViSenze, a Singapore-based AI company that develops visual technology for e-commerce and digital businesses, raised a $10.5M in series B funding round led by Rakuten Ventures, WI Harper Group and Enspire Capital with participation from SPH Media Fund, FengHe Fund Management, Raffles Venture Partners, Phillip Private Equity, and UOB Venture Management. Link
- ComplyAdvantage, a London-based company leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable firms to manage compliance obligations, raised $8.2M in series A funding round led by Balderton Capital. Link
- Troops, a slackbot for sales, raised $7M in series A funding round led by Felicis Ventures with participation from the Slack Fund, First Round Review, Aspect Ventures, Chicago Ventures, and Flight VC. Link
- Nugit, an AI-based data analytics company raised $5.2M in series A round of funding from Sequoia India. Link
- Deepgram, a “Search engine for sound” company raises $1.8M funding led by Metamorphic Ventures and Y Combinator. Link
- Brainspace, a Dallas-based creator of an unstructured data analysis discovery platform called Brainspace Discovery, raised a series B round of funding from In-Q-Tel, Inc. Link
- Google acquires API.AI, a company providing tools to developers to help them build conversational bots. Link
- Angel.ai, a company that builds chat bots, acqui-hired by Amazon. Link
- eBay acquired Corrigon, a visual search engine for $30M. Link
- Samsung acquired Viv, a next-gen AI assistant built by the creators of Apple’s Siri. Link
- Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft form nonprofit namely “Partnership on Artificial Intelligence” to benefit people and society. Link
- Nvidia launched new Xavier SoC, an AI supercomputer for cars which can manage 20 trillion operations per second, while only using 20 watts of power. Link
- Google launched Google Allo, a new smart messaging app for Android and iOS that helps the user make plans, find information, and express yourself more easily in chat and the more user use it, the more it improves over time. Link
SOME INTERESTING STARTUPS FOUND
Xpress Engine (2013, Gdansk) – Xpress Engine provides Human Emotion analysis platform for Video content.
Digest (2016, San Francisco) – Digest provides an intelligent slack platform for the daily digest of team chat conversation.
Ivo Technologies (2015, Hong Kong) – Ivo Technologies provides intelligent speaker named MoodBox.
LEADER BOARD – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Infrastructure – Machine Intelligence Systems
MLS – Machine Learning
Data Robot (2012, Boston, $57M) – Provides a machine learning platform for predictive analysis. Backed by Techstars, New Enterprise Associates, Intel Capital, and Others.
H2O.ai (2012, Mountain View, $31M) – Provides an open source machine learning platform for pattern detection and prediction. Backed by Nexus Venture Partners, Transamerica Ventures, Paxion Capital Partners and others.
MLS – Deep Learning
Sentient (2007, SF, $144M) – Operates distributed AI on large scale systems for finance and medical sectors. Backed by Tata Group, Access Industries, and Horizon Ventures.
DeepMind (2011, London, $50M, Acq.) – Combines techniques from machine learning and neuroscience to build general-purpose learning algorithms. Backed by Founders Fund, Horizons Ventures and others.
MLS – Cognitive Learning
Vicarious (2010, SF, $72M) – Provides machine learning software based on neo cortex learning. Backed by Open Field Capital, Felicis Ventures, Founders Fund.
Numenta (2005, Redwood City, $30M) – Working on development of machine intelligence software based on the principles of New-Cortex.
Infrastructure – NLP
NLP – Speech Recognition
Nuance Communications (1992, Burlington, IPO) – Provides speech recognition solutions for consumers, businesses to control devices. IPO in 2000.
Tellme (1999, Mountain View, $107M, Acq.) – Develops AI-based technology for Speech Recognition, enabling people to use the phone to get the information they need. Backed by AT&T, Benchmark Capital, KPCB, SV Angel.
NLP – Text Analytics
CrowdFlower (2008, SF, $36M) – Provides enterprise crowd-sourcing for data processing jobs. Backed by Microsoft, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures, Trinity Ventures, K9 Ventures, Harmony Partners, Quest Venture Partners, Canvas Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Ingk Labs, Canvas Ventures.
Idibon (2012, SF, $7M) – Provides Text analytics solutions. Backed by Khosla Ventures, Morningside Ventures, Inventec, Samsung Venture Investment, Altpoint Capital Partners, Morningside venture Capital.
NLP – Speech Analytics
VoiceBase (2010, Novato, $20M) – Provides API’s for speech recognition and speech analytics. Backed by Band of Angels, Ecosystem Ventures and others.
Clarify (2014, Austin, $1.12M) – Provides platform for understanding audio and video. Backed by Matrix Partners, Techstars, Crosslink Capital, ONSET Ventures, Silverton Partners, HardGamma, Playfair Capital, Social Starts.
Infrastructure – Visual Recognition
Face++ (2011, Beijing, $47M) – Provides face recognition API which developers can apply to their own websites, mobile Apps. Backed by Innovation Works, QI Ming Venture Partners.
Cortica (2007, Ramat Gan, $38M) – Developers of image recognition technology to comprehend visual data on the web. Backed by Horizons Ventures, Mail.Ru Group.
Infrastructure – Enabling Technologies
Attivio (2007, Newton, $102M) – Provides data discovery and integration solutions. Backed by Oak Investment Partners, Tenth Avenue Holdings.
Movidius (2005, San Mateo, $87M, Acq.) – Develops mobile vision processor chips. Backed by Summit Bridge Capital, Draper Esprit and others.
Applications – Enterprise
BI & Analytics – Business Intelligence
Palantir (2004, Palo Alto, $2.32B) – Intelligence products to augment human-driven analysis for critical government, commercial and non-profit institutions. Backed by Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel, 137 Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, Glynn Capital Management, Reed Elsevier Ventures, Ulu Ventures, Mithril Capital Management, Benjamin Ling, Keith Rabois, Jeremy Stoppelman.
Ayasdi (2008, Palo Alto, $108M) – Machine Intelligence platform for insight discovery from large data sets. Backed by Floodgate, Citibank, General Electric, Institutional Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Draper Nexus, Centerview Capital Technology.
BI & Analytics – Social Media Intelligence
Dataminr (2009, NYC, $175M) – Products for real-time extraction of insights from social media data aimed at Media, Finance, and Government sectors. Backed by Carissa St Clair, Box Group, Venrock, Institutional Venture Partners, GSV Capital, Deep Fork Capital, Fidelity Investments.
DataSift (2010, Reading, $70M) – Enables companies to aggregate, filter and extract insights from the billions of public social conversations. Backed by Daher Capital, IA Ventures and others.
Sales
InsideSales (2004, Provo, $199M) – Predictive and Prescriptive self-learning cloud-based platform for management. Backed by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, US Venture Partners, Zetta Venture Partners, EPIC Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Polaris Partners, Salesforce, Microsoft.
EverString (2012, San Mateo, $79M) – Predictive analytics platform helps B2B companies to identify and engage sales leads and new clients. Backed by Danhua Capital, IDG Capital Partners and others.
Marketing
Attensity (2000, Palo Alto, $105M) – Using NLP, surfaces events, entities, relationships, language, and context from volumes of unstructured text. Backed by Jefferson Capital Partners, Palomar Ventures, and others.
Bloomreach (2009, Mountain View, $97M) – Customer Analytics and site optimization Intelligence Platform based on machine learning. Backed by Bain Capital Ventures, Chris P.C., New Enterprise Associates, Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Security & Surveillance
Cylance (2012, Irvine, $177M) – Next generation antivirus, Cylance Protect which combines pre-detection, machine learning, and secure design lifecycle solutions. Backed by Khosla Ventures, Fairhaven Capital Partners, Blackstone Group, Dell Ventures, Capital One Financial Corp, DFJ Growth.
Darktrace (2013, Cambridge, $105M) – Enterprise immune systems solution powered by Bayesian mathematics and machine learning. designed to counter the most serious and sophisticated forms of attack, including Advanced Persistent Threats and insider threats.
Applications – Industry
Healthcare & Pharma
iCarbonX (2015, Shenzhen, $215M) – Platform to analyze omic data. Backed by Tencent, China Bridge Capital, Zhongyuan Union Stem Cell Bioengineering
Zymergen (2013, Emeryville, $174.14M) – Provides solutions for industrial microbiology to engineer industrial microbes. Backed by SoftBank, AME Cloud Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, True Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Data Collective, Iconiq Capital, Obvious Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Linden Mobile Ventures, Mission Bay Capital, HVF Labs, Prelude Ventures, Tao Capital Partners.
Fintech
FraudMetrix (2013, Hangzhou, $85M) – Provides internet security for financial transactions. Backed by IDG Capital Partners, CBC Capital, China Growth Capital, Oriza Holdings, Qiming Venture Partners, Linear Venture, China Growth Capital.
Kount (2007, Boise, $80M) – Provides Fraud prevention for online CNP transaction. Backed by CVC Capital Partners.
Transport
Mobile Eye (1999, Jerusalem, IPO) – Vision systems for onboard Driving Assistance & collision avoidance Systems. Currently, developing advanced vision systems to aid driverless technology. Backed by FIBI Holding, GlenRock Israel, Delek Group, Goldman Sachs. IPO in 2014.
Seeing Machines (2001, Braddon, IPO) – Manufactures vision-based driver monitoring system that can detect drowsiness and fatigue. Backed by VS Industry.
Advertising
RocketFuel (2008, Redwood City, IPO) – Programmatic media-buying platform that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to predict the right time for placement of an ad. Backed by Mohr Davidow Ventures, Labrador Ventures, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, DLA Piper, MF Capital, Nokia Growth Partners, Northgate Capital, Summit Partners, Cross Creek Capital, Comerica Bank.IPO in 2013.
QuantCast (2006, SF, $65M) – Provides a data intelligence platform, utilizing big data and machine learning to provide advertising solutions. Backed by Founders Fund, Glynn Capital Management, Polaris Partners, and others.
Education
Knewton (2008, NYC, $157M) – Adaptive learning technology provider for personalized learning. The adaptive learning platform consolidates data science, statistics, psychometrics, content graphing, machine learning, tagging, and infrastructure in one place in order to enable personalization at massive scale. Backed by Accel Partners, First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Founders Fund, Pearson, Atomico, GSV Capital, Silicon Valley Bank.
Declara (2012, Palo Alto, $14M) – Free social learning platform which connects people to a large amount of content using machine learning algorithms. Backed by Founders Fund, Data Collective, EDB Investments.
Agriculture
The Climate Corporation (2006, SF, $99M, Acq.) – Underwrites weather insurance for farmers based on predictive insights extracted using machine learning platform from historical weather data, soil observations, and other data sources.Backed by Founders Fund , Google Ventures , New Enterprise Associates, CODE Advisors, Allen & Company, Anthemis Group, Felicis Ventures,Glynn Capital Management, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, Joshua Schachter, Howard Morgan, Index Ventures. Acquired by Monsanto for $930M in 2013.
BlueRiverTechnologies (2011, Sunnyvale, $30M) – Blue River Technology, uses computer vision and robotics in fields for yield optimization, elimination of weeds and unwanted plants. Backed by Khosla Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, Data Collective, Stanford A&E, Ulu Ventures.
Legal
LexMachina (2009, Menlo Park, $10M, Acq.) – Provides IP Litigation Data and Analytics. Backed by XSeed Capital, Costanoa Venture Capital and Cue Ball. It was acquired by LexisNexis in Nov. 2015 for an undisclosed amount.
Judicata (2012, SF, $8M) – Legal Analytics platform to parse case law and turn unstructured court opinion into structured data to predict future legal arguments.Backed by SV Angel, Khosla Ventures.
Applications – Consumer
Virtual Assistant
X.ai (2014, NYC, $34M) – Virtual Assistant builds that schedules meetings for the business customers. Backed by SoftBank, Two Sigma Ventures, Pritzker Group and others.
Siri (2007, San Jose, $24M, Acq.) – Intelligent virtual assistant that has a natural language interface to answer questions, make recommendations and perform actions by delegating requests to web services. Backed by Morgenthaler Ventures, Menlo Ventures, SRI International, Horizons Ventures.It was acquired in 2010 by Apple.
Leaderboard includes all the top funded, IPO and successfully running bootstrapped companies along with their location, founding year and funding amount.
For latest updates visit Artificial Intelligence feed.