Intel Capital

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

<div>
 
 Datacore is a Software-defined Storage (SDS) software company that provides storage solutions for the cloud, edge, and core.
 
 
 
 
 DataCore&rsquo;s product portfolio consists of three primary products: SANsymphony &ndash; an SDS solution for SAN and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) environments; Swarm &ndash; a provider of on-premises object storage solutions for private and hybrid cloud environments; and Bolt &ndash; an enterprise-grade Kubernetes storage platform that offers data persistence for container and cloud-native ecosystems.
 
 
 
 
 DataCore claims to provide optimum flexibility, allowing customers to control how data is stored, protected, and accessed.
 
 
 
 
 Pricing is based on consumption and split into tiers: Enterprise, Standard, and Business.
 
 
 
 
 In January 2023, DataCore acquired Object Matrix, a media archive specialist and object storage pioneer. In 2021, DataCore acquired MayaData &ndash; a container automation and monitoring platform provider, and Caringo &ndash; a storage solutions provider for long-term retention, remote access, and distribution.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 DataCore has 10,000+ customers operating in industries such as healthcare, education, media and entertainment, as well as the government sector. Its customers include NASA, Thorntons, Pacific Star, RSD, Evergreen, TUI Cruises, Mission Community Hospital, and ExCeL London.
 
 
 
 
 Some of DataCore&rsquo;s strategic partners are Cisco, Dell, Citrix, Microsoft, Fujitsu, Lenovo, VMware, and Supermicro. Its technology partners include Rubrik, Commvault, Intel, Fujifilm, Brocade, Broadcom, Adobe, Iconik, Docker, SAP, and Milestone.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 DataCore&rsquo;s latest funding round was in December 2021, from a USD 9.7 million venture round.
 
 
 
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Lightbend is an enterprise software company that provides cloud-native microservices frameworks for building distributed systems.\Lightbend specializes in building reactive, scalable, and resilient applications, offering a suite of products to cater to these needs. Its flagship products include Akka, which provides a toolkit and runtime for developing distributed and fault-tolerant systems, and Lagom, a reactive microservices framework that simplifies the creation of microservices-based applications. These tools enable developers to build robust, highly concurrent applications that can handle the demands of modern, distributed computing environments. Additionally, Lightbend offers Play Framework for creating scalable web applications and tools like Lightbend Telemetry and Lightbend Console for monitoring and managing application performance in real time.Lightbend follows a subscription-based sales model.Key customers and partnershipsLightbend’s customers operate in industries such as entertainment, energy, financial services, retail, and consulting. Notable customers include DHL, IBM, Oracle, Verizon, Cisco, Deliveroo, and John Deere.Some of Lightbend’s strategic partners are Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cognizant, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft Azure, Hexaware, YoppWorks, and Red Hat. Its Platinum partners include Bahwan CyberTek, Applaudo, Mind Consulting, VirtusLab, Thornton Tomasetti, and Lunatech.Lightbend has acquired two companies; OpsClarity (2017) and BoldRadius (2016).Funding and financialsLightbend’s latest funding was in November 2021 from a USD 6.9 million venture round.

<div>
 
 Mirantis is a technology company that provides cloud-native software and services to help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure.&nbsp;
 
 
 Mirantis specializes in open-source software, focusing on Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies. Its core offering is the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform, a managed Kubernetes service that provides a complete set of tools for deploying and managing containerized applications. The platform helps organizations adopt and scale Kubernetes quickly and easily, with features like automated provisioning, integrated monitoring, and self-service access to resources. Mirantis also offers professional services including consulting, training, and support for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies.
 
 
 Mirantis sells its products and services through a subscription-based model. Customers can choose from various annual subscription plans, depending on their needs.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Mirantis focuses on enterprise customers who deploy and manage large-scale private clouds. Some of its high-profile customers include Volkswagen Group, Soci&eacute;t&eacute; G&eacute;n&eacute;rale, S&amp;P Global, Paypal, Volkswagen, and GSK.
 
 
 Mirantis also has technology partnerships with several companies, including Arm, Cisco, Entrust, and Fujitsu, and hardware vendors like Dell EMC, Intel, and Supermicro.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22579">
 October 2023
 </a>
 , specialty finance company Horizon Technology Finance provided a USD 35 million venture loan facility to Mirantis, Inc. A sum of USD 20 million was initially funded.
 
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<div>
 
 TileDB is a cloud database startup that offers a versatile and modern solution for handling complex, multi-dimensional data.
 
 
 TileDB's primary offering is its versatile cloud database platform, capable of storing an array of data types such as traditional, genomic, imagery, graphs, key values, and point clouds. It leverages serverless distributed computing to create efficient data pipelines and query algorithms, enhancing productivity and breaking down data silos. TileDB also supports generative AI models by enabling the combination of vector search and ML models, making it valuable for businesses safeguarding GenAI workloads. Additionally, it provides cost savings through reduced software licenses, lower cloud consumption, and streamlined data engineering. The platform excels in delivering fast insights due to its high-performance database.
 
 
 TileDB follows a subscription-based sales model for its cloud database platform.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 TileDB supports cloud storage integrations with Amazon S3, Azure Blob Storage, MinIO, HDFS, and Google Cloud Storage, allowing users to move data between these platforms.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 TileDB&rsquo;s latest funding was in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22580">
 October 2023
 </a>
 from a USD 34 million Series B round led by AlleyCorp, with participation from several other investors. TileDB plans to use the funds to advance its vision of building a &quot;modern database&quot; that integrates multiple data modalities, runnable code, and versatile compute in a single product.
 
 
 
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Tetrate is a technology company that specializes in providing enterprise-grade service mesh solutions.Tetrate offers its Tetrate Service Bridge platform and consulting services to simplify the adoption and management of service mesh technologies. It focuses on security, observability, and interoperability while actively contributing to the open-source community.The unique selling proposition of Tetrate Service Bridge lies in its ability to simplify and streamline the adoption, management, and operation of service mesh technology across diverse environments while offering advanced traffic management, observability, and security features.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22675">October 2023</a>, Tetrate launched Tetrate Istio Subscription (TIS), a curated instance of the open-source Istio service mesh. The subscription includes support and patches for six months beyond Istio's eight-month support period.Tetrate utilizes a direct sales model for its cloud-native networking and service mesh solutions.Key customers and partnershipsTetrate's technology partners include major cloud service providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure, and Red Hat. Tetrate also has several integration partnerships with Mirantis, Cequence, Keyfactor, and Jetstack.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates">April 2024</a>, Tetrate partnered with the United States Air Force (USAF) Platform One team to launch AuthService, an open-source project, to simplify the deployment and management of the existing authorization service for the Istio service mesh.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, Tetrate’s latest fundraising was in 2021 from a USD 40 million Series C round led by Sapphire Ventures.

<div>
 
 WSO2 is an API management, identity access management (IAM), and integration service provider.
 
 
 WSO2 offers a suite of open-source integration and identity management products designed to facilitate seamless connectivity and security across diverse applications and data sources. Its product lineup includes the WSO2 API Manager for API lifecycle management, the WSO2 Enterprise Integrator for integration across systems, the WSO2 Identity Server for identity and access management, the WSO2 Stream Processor for real-time data processing, and specialized gateways for secure API and microservices management. These solutions cater to organizations looking to streamline integration, enhance security, and harness real-time data insights within their digital ecosystems.
 
 
 WSO2 follows a direct sales and subscription sales model.
 
 
 In June 2021, WSO2 acquired the cloud-native application platform, Platformer, which was absorbed into the company.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29112">
 May 2024
 </a>
 , WSO2 was acquired by Swedish investment giant EQT for an undisclosed sum.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 WSO2&rsquo;s customers operate in industries and sectors such as hospitality, insurance, education, energy, financial services, retail, transportation, and telecommunications. Customers include Wipro, HNB, Nations Trust Bank, Micron, Lindex, Wickes, Nutanix, Proximus, Qantas, Verifone, ING Turkey, Motorola, Telstra, and Yoma Bank.
 
 
 WSO2&rsquo;s technology and integration partners include Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Istio, CGI, Axiata Digital Labs, STL, DP World, T-Systems, Visma, Entgra, Ellucian, Ping Intelligence, Axxiome, and GE Healthcare.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 WSO2&rsquo;s latest funding was in May 2022 from a USD 3 million Series E round, led by RedStart Labs.
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Spot is a provider of continuous cloud cost-optimization and management solutions.
 
 
 Spot analyzes real-time data and usage patterns to identify opportunities for cost savings and performance improvements across cloud resources. By automatically optimizing the allocation of cloud instances and workloads, Spot enables businesses to reduce costs while maintaining optimal performance.
 
 
 In addition, Spot offers real-time cost visibility and reporting. Its intuitive dashboard provides insights into its cloud spending, usage patterns, and cost allocation.&nbsp;
 
 
 Spot's sales model revolves around offering subscription-based access to its platform.
 
 
 In 2020, Spot was acquired by NetApp for USD 450 million. However, Spot continues to operate as a separate entity.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Spot serves a broad range of customers across many industries. Notable customers include Zalando, NetApp, Freshworks, Demandbase, Duolingo, and Finova.
 
 
 Spot also integrates with major cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 As of June 2023, Spot&rsquo;s latest fundraising was in 2018 from a USD 35 million Series B round led by Intel Capital and Vertex Ventures.
 
 
 
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<div>
 
 Cloudify is an Israeli open-source, multi-cloud orchestration and automation platform.
 
 
 The Cloudify platform automates deployment, configuration, and day 2 operations and also operates as an Environment-as-a-Service (EaaS). Cloudify integrates with the cloud ecosystem, which includes cloud, tools, and technology integration; continuous integration, continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) and GitOps integration; and ServiceNow ITSM (IT service management) and designer flow integration.
 
 
 Cloudify offers its platform as a subscription-based service.
 
 
 In January 2023, Cloudify was acquired by technology company Dell for USD 100 million, but Cloudify continues to operate as a separate entity.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Cloudify&rsquo;s customers include Intel, Accenture, AT&amp;T, Vodafone, Fico, Morgan Stanley, Proximus, KPN, Telia, NetNumber, Atos, Infosys, HCL, F5, and DHL
 
 
 Among Cloudify&rsquo;s technology ecosystem partners are Jenkins, F5, Amazon Web Services (AWS), ServiceNow, CircleCI, Azure, Wind River, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Technology partners include 6WIND, Intel, VMWare, Lumina, NetNumber, Metaswitch, and Versa, while Atos, Coda, Amartus, Aptira, Kapsch, GRTH, Antillion, and OneComm are among Cloudify&rsquo;s technology integration partners.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Cloudify&rsquo;s latest funding was in December 2018 from a USD 7 million Series A round.
 
 
 
</div>

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

<div>
 
 Vectra offers the &ldquo;Cognito&rdquo; platform, which includes a suite of tools to detect cyber threats in the cloud, a company&rsquo;s data centers, and IoT networks. The platform is artificial intelligence-powered and accelerates real-time detection, prioritization, and investigation of known and unknown threats. The company also offers a network detection and response (NDR) function, which monitors network access and usage to identify suspicious behavior and threats, such as ransomware, to assist in response actions.
 
 
 During 2020, Vectra recorded sales growth surpassing 100%, and its &ldquo;Cognito Detect&rdquo; security product for Microsoft 365 applications grew at a rate of 340%. Vectra claims its solutions are used by companies operating in financial services, manufacturing, education, healthcare, energy, and government.
 
 
 Vectra acquired the identity and SaaS posture management startup, Siriux Security Technologies in January 2022. Siriux Security Technologies provides the M365 Vulnerability Assessment tool that is based on four key principles including privilege management, attack surface reduction, service hardening, and transitive trust management. Siriux Security&rsquo;s M365 scan tool analyzes the security settings in cloud-based applications such as Microsoft Azure AD and Microsoft 365 against these principles to provide threat remediation recommendations to minimize the attack surface. The acquisition helps Vectra&rsquo;s customers to securely configure and detect threats in cloud identity and SaaS applications.
 
 
 In April 2021, Vectra raised USD 130 million in a Series F funding round led by Blackstone at a valuation of USD 1.2 billion. The company expects to use the funding to develop solutions for cloud-native application protection, which will require it to expand its team and invest in R&amp;D. Vectra will also explore acquisition opportunities to gain new technology and more customers.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 ZeroFox provides a patented platform that leverages AI-driven analysis to protect against external threats like ransomware, data exfiltration, and DDoS attacks stemming across the public attack surface, dark web, cloud-based applications, and social media platforms. The company provides actionable threat intelligence, pre-breach response services, and an app library that integrates with more than 500 applications.
 
 
 In December 2021, ZeroFox announced a merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) L&amp;F Acquisition Corp (LNFA). As part of the transaction, the company also acquired the digital privacy and data breach response services provider IDX, following a long-standing partnership. The combined entity &ldquo;ZeroFox Holdings&rdquo; became a publicly-traded company with an equity value of USD 1.4 billion and commenced trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker &ldquo;ZFOX&rdquo; in H1 2022. ZeroFox received more than USD 250 million in cash through the transaction, comprising USD 175 million from LNFA&rsquo;s trust account and USD 170 million in growth capital financing led by Monarch Alternative Capital LP and other participating investors. The company channeled the funding toward expansion initiatives in the cybersecurity space, invested in AI capabilities, and scaled its team. The combined entity was expected to generate over 90% of revenues from recurring platform subscriptions, housed more than 650 employees, and served almost 2,000 customers.
 
 
 In May 2023, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18437">
 ZeroFox launched &ldquo;FoxGPT&rdquo;
 </a>
 , a generative AI which leverages threat intelligence data from around the web to detect threats and vulnerabilities. The AI is designed to optimize cybersecurity workflows, and analyze and contextualize external threats.
 
 
 IDX (Identity Theft Guard Solutions) provides a proprietary digital privacy platform to deliver customized post-breach response services and identity protection.The acquisition of IDX was to provide ZeroFox with external threat protection and data breach response capabilities to address the full lifecycle of external cyber threats.
 
 
 ZeroFox 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12170">
 commenced trading
 </a>
 on the Nasdaq under the ticker &ldquo;ZFOX&rdquo; in August 2022. The company also estimated that it will achieve USD 150 million in revenue by the end of 2022 and also expects to be acquired in the future.
 
 
 In April 2023, ZeroFox 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17766">
 acquired threat intelligence firm LookingGlass
 </a>
 for ~USD 26 million. The acquisition of LookingGlass was expected to enhance the ZeroFox platform&rsquo;s visibility into external attack surface assets and vulnerabilities, as part of the company&rsquo;s strategy to provide customers a unified end to end external attack surface management platform.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 By December 2021, ZeroFox counted seven of the Fortune 10 and 128 of the Global 2000 companies among its customers. The company served 130 customers in more than 50 countries including in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, with 50 to 100 channel partners across the globe.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company expected a 14.5% YoY increase in revenue and USD 26 million in losses for FY2021 ending January 2022.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 SecurityScorecard offers a SaaS platform that monitors the cybersecurity posture of an organization and rates it by identifying security vulnerabilities on the digital assets. It expanded its presence in the cybersecurity space by acquiring digital forensics and incident response services company LIFARS, in February 2022. LIFARS provides solutions such as digital forensic investigations, incident response, data breach response, ransomware response, managed detection and response (MDR), and cyber resiliency services, to protect organizations from hackers and advanced persistent threat actors. The company offers remote cyber incident response and MDR services by deploying a response team called LISIRT.
 
 
 The acquisition of LIFARS and its cybersecurity team created a new digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) services practice within SecurityScorecard's Professional Services group, which complements SecurityScorecard&rsquo;s third-party risk management (TPRM) advisory services and cybersecurity intelligence services, and provides a 360-degree approach into security prevention and response. LIFARS&rsquo; in-house threat intelligence, data collection, and post-breach response capabilities were also to be integrated with SecurityScorecard&rsquo;s platform.
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s platform is used in industries such as insurance, financial services, healthcare, technology, and government. Notable customers include AXA, Cadence Bank, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Maximus, Nokia, Virgin Pulse, Horizon Media, and Great American Insurance Group.
 
 
 In 2021, SecurityScorecard recorded a 116% increase in net customer retention and over 100% growth in international sales.
 
 
 In SecurityScorecard&rsquo;s last funding round (Series E in March 2021), it raised USD 180 million at a valuation of nearly USD 1 billion. The round was led by investors such as Silver Lake Waterman, and the company expected to use the funds for global expansion and to launch new product lines and innovations.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 SAM Seamless offers a device-agnostic solution for the security of IoT devices for consumers and small and medium businesses (SMBs). The company&rsquo;s approach employs behavioral techniques and machine learning to detect and prevent threats to smart devices. Its SMB offerings include features to protect network routers, manage IoT devices in the network, implement content controls and other service quality features. SAM Seamless also offers its solution to network operators and gateway manufacturers to enable the security of the network devices provided to customers. For network operators, the company also offers white-label mobile applications which the former can offer to their users to manage security features.
 
 
 
 
 The company counts technology companies such as Liberty Global, CabelLabs, and Bezeq as its clients. As of May 2021, SAM Seamless protected 2 million networks covering 70 million devices globally. The company expects to grow this number to 10 million networks and 500 million devices, by the end of 2021.
 
 
 
 
 In May 2021, SAM Seamless raised USD 20 million in a Series B funding round led by Blackberry and Verizon Ventures. The company expects to use the funding to accelerate the growth of its product. More specifically, it aims to advance its offering by taking full advantage of 5G edge computing architecture to make faster security decisions for IoT devices. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Eclypsium proactively protects endpoints such as laptops, PCs, servers, network devices, and critical infrastructure against persistent threats. The platform checks firmware against millions of firmware hashes to identify baseline changes and outdated firmware while also exposing any tampering. It ensures secure integrity at the hardware and firmware level by performing health checks, patching, and providing real-time protection. It protects every endpoint component, including system Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) and basic input/output system (BIOS), processors and chipsets, Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) devices, server Baseboard Management Controller (BMC), networking components, peripheral devices, Trusted Platform Module, and Intel&rsquo;s Management Engine.
 
 
 Eclypsium for Endpoints is a cloud-based security solution that provides visibility into remote endpoints to ensure protection. It analyzes devices to proactively identify any risks within embedded firmware and hardware and remotely patches or updates endpoint devices to keep them secure. It uses IOCs, behavioral and static analysis, and compares baselines details using global firmware white list and reputation database, to identify known and unknown endpoint threats. It also generates alerts to notify endpoint operation or incident response teams when threats are detected. Eclypsium provides recommendations on vulnerability and risk mitigation with detailed mappings to advisory information such as CVSS scores, CISA, federal agency alerts, missing security features, and latest vendor firmware updates.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company serves global financial services firms, critical infrastructure providers, manufacturers, and the US federal government.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In September 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13542">
 raised USD 25 million
 </a>
 in Series B funding led by Ten Eleven Ventures, bringing the total funding raised to nearly USD 49 million. The funds were to be utilized to accelerate product development, supply chain security research, and increase sales.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Trinity Cyber provides automated threat mitigation and prevention to protect businesses from cyber threats. Trinity Cyber&rsquo;s product portfolio comprises services such as network detection and response (NDR), managed detection and response (MDR), intrusion prevention systems (IPS), threat hunting, threat intelligence, data loss prevention (DLP), and content disarm and reconstruction (CDR). The company provides threat hunting and 24/7 support, access to experts that extends Security Operations Center (SOC) capabilities, and a web-based customer portal that provides information on threats detected, attacker techniques, preventative actions taken, session metadata, and threat intelligence.
 
 
 Funding and Financials
 
 
 In November 2022, the company raised USD 26.3 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14623">
 debt 
 </a>
 financing round from Ron Gula and Intel.
 
</div>

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

<div>
 
 DataRobot provides an enterprise AI platform that can automate the building, deployment, and monitoring of advanced AI applications. Its unified AI platform offers developers the capability to build, govern, and operate models without extensive coding, accelerating model development and making machine learning more accessible.&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform offers several features, including training models with automatic performance evaluation, enhancing model interpretability and explainability, facilitating comprehension of predictions, deploying models to diverse targets such as cloud services, on-premises servers, and Edge devices, and governance and compliance features, encompassing access controls, audit logs, and version control to ensure alignment of machine-learning projects with organizational policies and regulatory standards. Moreover, the company provides consulting services through its AI professionals and service collaborators to assist clients in devising strategies and executing AI initiatives across various applications.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23738">
 November 2023
 </a>
 , DataRobot introduced various updates, including LLM cost and performance monitoring, a multi-provider comparison playground, GenAI accelerators for faster GenAI deployment tasks, and a unified AI registry to enhance governance and collaboration across generative and predictive AI assets.
 
 
 DataRobot has made several acquisitions to expand its business, including Boston Consulting Group&rsquo;s SOURCE AI technology (June 2020), Zepl, a cloud data science and analytics platform (May 2021), and Algorithmia, an MLOps platform designed for complex, high-volume model production (July 2021).&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 DataRobot provides services to 40% of the Fortune 50 companies, including Kroger, Nationwide, Lenovo, and PNC.
 
 
 DataRobot has formed several significant partnerships, including a strategic partnership with Boston Consulting Group (June 2020) to combine DataRobot's intellectual property with BCG&rsquo;s consulting services and with SAP to integrate core SAP software with DataRobot's advanced machine-learning capabilities (March 2023). The firm has also partnered with leading tech firms, including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, to integrate its solutions and expand the use cases of its GenAI solutions.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company's latest funding round was in July 2021, when it raised USD 300 million in a Series G funding round led by investors Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global. This round valued DataRobot at USD 6.3 billion post-money.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company aimed to use the funding to fuel platform innovation and enhance its global reach, including expanding its go-to-market team across North America, EMEA, and Asia-Pacific/Japan and strengthening its Augmented Intelligence platform.&nbsp;
 
</div>

<div>
 
 SambaNova Systems is an AI innovation company specializing in supplying hardware and integrated systems for running AI applications in data centers and cloud environments. It claims that its platform is the first to offer a completely integrated system designed specifically for AI, encompassing enterprise-grade chips, software, and models.&nbsp;
 
 
 Its two main products are DataScale and SambaNova Suite. DataScale is an integrated software and hardware system that utilizes the Reconfigurable Dataflow Architecture (RDA) and allows for the customization, development, and deployment of advanced large language models (LLMs), computer vision models, and models for scientific exploration. Its other key offering, the SambaNova Suite, is an integrated GenAI platform that allows users to create their own LLMs that can compete with GPT-4 and other models. Notably, customers maintain perpetual ownership of the adapted models. SambaNova Suite incorporates SambaNova's proprietary SN40L AI chip (manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co) and is claimed by the company to surpass the performance of NVIDIA's chips.&nbsp;
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21988">
 September 2023
 </a>
 , SambaNova Suite introduced new features, including Llama2 variants, a highly accurate multilingual model (BLOOM 176B), and improved document retrieval embeddings, resulting in reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) for AI models due to enhanced LLM inference efficiency. The firm also unveiled its 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21988">
 new chip, the SN40L
 </a>
 manufactured by TSMC, which will power its full-stack LLM platform, the SambaNova Suite.&nbsp;
 
 
 SambaNova Systems' unique business model involves building servers and AI software and leasing these to companies on a subscription basis rather than selling its chips. This approach allows clients to leverage advanced AI capabilities without the need for in-house machine learning expertise.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Notable customers include SoftBank, Accenture, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Analog Devices.
 
 
 In October 2021, SambaNova Systems partnered with Aicadium, a developer of AI-powered industrial computer vision solutions, to provide SambaNova System&rsquo;s AI solutions to businesses and institutions in Singapore.
 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In April 2021, the company raised USD 676 million in Series D funding, bringing its total funding to USD 1 billion with a valuation of ~USD 5 billion. This round included participation from investors such as Temasek, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., BlackRock, Intel Capital, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). The company planned to use the funding to increase its workforce by 40% by the end of 2021 and to drive business expansion.
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Anyscale, the company founded by the creators of Ray, is accelerating the development and productionization of AI applications, at any scale. Ray, the fastest growing open source project in distributed AI, lets developers instantly scale applications from a laptop to the cloud, without the cost or expertise of building complex infrastructure. By empowering developers of all skill levels to effortlessly develop and scale the end-to-end AI lifecycle on a single compute substrate and deploy the app into production, Anyscale is enabling organizations to bring AI products to market faster and at lower costs. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Addition, Anyscale is based in San Francisco, CA. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 AI21 Labs is a creator of generative artificial intelligence and massive language models, as well as tools for creating artificial intelligence systems with extraordinary understanding and generation of natural language. The company's tool captures real intelligence and rewrites writing to say exactly what is meant; it transforms the way people read and write, empowering them in the process; it is an artificial intelligence-based writing companion that understands context and meaning; and it helps people read more efficiently by providing summaries, allowing customers to understand, analyze, and visualize abstract knowledge structures.
 
</div>

Bria is a technology company specializing in providing tools to develop visual GenAI. Based in Tel Aviv, Bria provides an open platform to develop AI models that can convert text prompts to images or transform existing images, with an emphasis on model transparency, fair attribution, and copyright protections. Bria's models are built using licensed content from stock photography agencies to ensure commercial viability and proper compensation for artists.Bria offers flexible options for enterprises adopting visual GenAI, including access to pre-trained models through APIs or direct licensing of source code and model weights for further fine-tuning.In September 2023, Bria launched the BRIA 2.3 text-to-image foundation model, which the company described as ensuring "100% safe and ethically responsible AI for commercial use." Built on a latent diffusion architecture similar to Stable Diffusion XL, the model incorporates dual text encoders, a VAE, and a UNet backbone. Bria stated this architecture allows for easy retraining and fine-tuning with proprietary data. Key customers and partnershipsBria’s customers including leading firm in advertising, marketing and media including Publicis, McCann, Fox, and WPP.Bria has partnered with several stock photography agencies to develop its AI models, including Getty Images, Alamy, and Envato. These partnerships allow Bria to train its models exclusively on licensed content. The company also collaborates with boutique and smaller stock photo agencies through its Fair Diffusion program.Bria is part of the AWS Partner network and uses Amazon SageMaker to develop and train its models. The company's models are also available on NVIDIA Picasso for developers.&nbsp;

Scale AI is a company focused on developing platforms for training and validating data for AI applications, and claims to be the only full-stack GenAI platform for enterprises. Its product range includes Scale GenAI Platform, Scale Data Engine, and Scale Donovan.The Scale Generative AI Platform helps organizations create their GenAI models using their own data, while Scale Data Engine features tools for data collection, curation, labeling, and model evaluation and optimization, leveraging reinforced learning with human feedback (RLHF) to facilitate AI model construction.Finally, Scale Donovan is a specialized Federal AI platform that utilizes RLHF to provide rapid decision support for military operators, analysts, and decision-makers, helping them understand, plan, and act quickly in response to large volumes of diverse data,In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23675">November 2023 </a>, Scale AI introduced its AI Safety, Evaluations, and Analysis Lab (SEAL), which is dedicated to creating automated rating systems using LLMs, conducting studies on potential AI-related risks, and employing red-team techniques to ensure the safety and dependability of AI software.Scale AI stands out for its ability to manage the entire machine-learning lifecycle, providing an end-to-end solution for better AI data management, leading to more performant models and faster deployment​​​​.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s services are utilized across various sectors, such as retail and ecommerce, defense, logistics, autonomous vehicles, and robotics. Prominent Scale AI customers include the US Department of Defense, US Air Force, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI, Cohere, Anthropic, General Motors, Toyota Research Institute, Brex, Instacart, and Flexport.Notably, Scale AI partnered with OpenAI in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21280">August 2023 </a>to offer fine-tuning capabilities for OpenAI's GPT-3.5, enabling Scale's customers to utilize their proprietary data through the Scale Data Engine platform to customize GPT-3.5 for their specific business needs. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23978">November 2023 </a>, Scale AI partnered with Microsoft to provide its Platform on Microsoft Azure.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29658">May 2024</a>, Scale AI raised USD 1 billion in a Series F funding round&nbsp; led by Accel and featured participation from other key investors. The funds were utilized to support Scale's development into a leading data foundry for AI and to accelerate the creation of innovative data products.In April 2021, Scale AI raised USD 325 million in a Series E funding round. The funds were to be utilized to expand its team and product offerings.

Sports Tech

WSC Sports is an Israel-based technology company that has revolutionized the way sports highlights are created, distributed, and consumed. Their proprietary AI platform analyzes live sports broadcasts, identifies every event occurring in a game, and generates customized short-form video highlights in real-time. As of January 2023, WSC Sports powered the highlight technology for over 300 major sports media rights holders worldwide, including the NBA, ESPN, La Liga, Serie A, NASCAR, YouTubeTV, and many others.
The company's cutting-edge machine learning algorithms enable sports organizations to automate the creation and distribution of personalized video content at speed and scale. This automation saves countless hours of manual video editing while catering to fans' growing appetite for more tailored highlights across various platforms. In May 2024, WSC Sports launched next-generation AI tools to centralize video assets beyond just game highlights, such as crowd shots and press conferences, along with personalization capabilities to directly connect with fans through a proprietary video player.
WSC Sports has been at the forefront of innovation in the sports media industry, consistently developing new content solutions and technologies. In April 2023, the company received an Emmy Award for "AI-ML Curation of Sports Highlights," cementing its position as a leader in the field. Additionally, WSC Sports formed a generative AI division in May 2024 to explore future products, including instant commentary translation, automatic graphic creation, and personalized output through chatbots.

ScoreStream is a platform that provides real-time, crowd-sourced scores, photos, and videos for high school sports events. The company's technology facilitates fan-driven content, allowing real fans in the stands to contribute scores, photos, and videos of games. This approach enables comprehensive coverage of high school sports, including football, across all states in the US. ScoreStream's platform offers customizable team pages and a suite of online tools for partners, including real-time scoreboards, photo and video galleries. The company's system allows for scheduling games in advance, managing coverage from a desktop, and reporting live scores on-site through a mobile app. ScoreStream's technology powers scoreboard widgets, mobile apps, and on-air tickers simultaneously, providing a unified solution for sports coverage.

Trace is a pioneering sports technology company that provides an automated video recording and editing solution tailored for youth sports teams. Their cutting-edge system combines AI-powered cameras, wearable GPS sensors, and advanced software to seamlessly capture every moment on the field. Trace's innovative PlayerFocus AI technology tracks and follows each player, ensuring their actions remain in focus throughout the game.
The company's flagship offering is a subscription-based service that provides personalized video highlights for every player on the team. After the game, Trace's system automatically edits the footage, creating shareable clips that highlight each athlete's key moments, such as goals, passes, and defensive plays. These individual highlight reels are then delivered directly to the players and their families, eliminating the need for manual editing.
Trace's business model revolves around selling subscriptions to youth soccer, baseball, and softball clubs across the US. As of April 2022, their technology was being utilized by over 1,000 soccer clubs, catering to more than 1.4 million athletes. The company reported generating over USD 10 million in revenue in 2021, with projections of tripling that figure in 2022.
In April 2022, Trace announced a significant milestone, securing USD 47 million in a Series C funding round led by Pelion Venture Partners. This investment valued the company at USD 190 million post-money, a fivefold increase from its previous valuation. The funds were earmarked for expanding Trace's operations, enhancing its product offerings, and extending its reach into new sports verticals.
Key customers and partnerships
In March 2023, Trace entered into a two-year partnership with Club Champions League, a prominent youth soccer organization serving over 100,000 players across nine states and Washington, DC This collaboration signifies Trace's commitment to providing its innovative video solutions to a rapidly growing audience of young athletes and their families.

Kinduct is a cloud-based Athlete Management System designed for sports teams and organizations. It centralizes athlete data in a secure platform, enabling coaches, trainers, and medical staff to make informed decisions. Kinduct's platform provides tools for performance tracking, injury management, nutrition monitoring, and communication between athletes and coaches. It integrates with over 50 wearable devices and performance technologies, streamlining data collection and analysis.
Kinduct offers features such as customizable dashboards, form builders, and compliance tracking. Its mobile app allows athletes to view their daily training sessions, log progress, and sync health data. The platform has gained significant traction, with adoption by over 500 professional and elite sports teams across various leagues, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, and NCAA.
Kinduct's comprehensive approach to athlete management, combined with its extensive integration capabilities and user-friendly interface, has made it a popular choice among sports organizations seeking to optimize athlete performance and mitigate injury risks through data-driven insights.
Key customers and partnerships
Kinduct has established partnerships with several notable companies in the sports technology industry. In August 2023, Kinduct announced a strategic partnership with Teamworks, an enterprise SaaS company serving elite sports and tactical organizations globally. Under this partnership, Teamworks will transition Kinduct's existing athlete management system customers to its Operating System for Sports, while integrating Kinduct's movement analytics solutions into its offerings.
This collaboration aims to provide Kinduct's customers with seamless access to Teamworks' suite of products and facilitate the integration of Kinduct's advanced biomechanical tracking solutions with Teamworks' platform. The partnership is expected to accelerate the adoption of Kinduct's movement digitization analytics within the sports and tactical team market segments.

Dartfish is a Swiss company that has been providing video analysis solutions for over 20 years. Its core offerings include software tools for motion evaluation, live motion analysis, data integration, simulcam, and stromotion functionalities. The multi-device solutions allow users to import video sequences and analyze them on desktops or tablets. Dartfish's technology enables immediate video feedback on athletes' performance and movements, making it valuable for healthcare professionals, physiotherapists, rehabilitation specialists, and sports organizations.
The company's products find applications in various individual and team sports, helping coaches and trainers improve athletes' performance through video analysis. Dartfish solutions integrate multi-view capabilities, data overlays, and tools for adding coaching points and sharing analyses via web platforms. The company's expertise lies in delivering accurate video analysis with precise timing data integration.
In July 2016, Dartfish formed a partnership with TAG Heuer, a renowned Swiss watchmaker, to integrate its video analysis capabilities with TAG Heuer's Pocket Pro stopwatch. This innovative collaboration allowed coaches to remotely control the Dartfish Express app and overlay video recordings with accurate timing data from TAG Heuer's system.
Additionally, Dartfish entered into a strategic partnership with the Swiss Football Association (ASF) in 2015. The company provided a comprehensive video analysis solution, including its TeamPro software, Express and Note apps, and dartfish.tv platform, to support ASF's coaching education, talent identification, and reference video creation efforts.

A new generation of building blocks for emerging tech

Next-gen Semiconductors

Ayar Labs is a Silicon Valley-based company developing optical interconnect solutions for chip-to-chip communications. The company's core technology replaces traditional copper-based electrical interconnects with silicon photonics-based optical I/O, enabling significantly higher bandwidth, lower latency, and reduced power consumption in data transfer between chips. Ayar Labs' flagship products include the TeraPHY optical I/O chiplet and the SuperNova light source. The TeraPHY chiplet integrates alongside host processors to convert electrical signals to optical, allowing data transmission via fiber optics. As of March 2024, Ayar Labs demonstrated a 16 Tbps bi-directional bandwidth solution, capable of driving 256 optical carriers - a level of performance crucial for AI workloads. The company's technology aims to address bandwidth bottlenecks in various applications, including artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, data centers, and telecommunications. Ayar Labs utilizes a chiplet architecture, designed to be packaged with compute tiles from other chipmakers using open standards like Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCI-express). The company's optical I/O technology is manufactured by GlobalFoundries using its GF Fotonix platform.
Key customers and partnerships
Ayar Labs has secured strategic partnerships with several industry leaders. The company is collaborating with NVIDIA to develop next-generation AI infrastructure based on optical I/O technology. This partnership aims to address the increasing bandwidth demands of AI and machine learning workloads. Ayar Labs is also working with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to enhance future versions of HPE's Slingshot interconnect switching systems. The collaboration focuses on developing high-performance networking solutions and novel disaggregated system architectures. Additionally, Ayar Labs has partnered with Corning Incorporated to create an optical leadership solution by coupling Ayar Labs' TeraPHY optical I/O chiplets with Corning's glass waveguide module. Ericsson is also involved in this AI-driven solution as part of their technology exploration for future mobile systems. Furthermore, Ayar Labs is working with Teramount to showcase a concept for the next-generation TeraVERSE detachable connector, designed to meet the infrastructure demands of next-generation AI.

SiFive is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2015 that specializes in designing processor cores and chips based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. The company provides commercial RISC-V-based platforms and custom silicon solutions, offering a range of processor core IP, development boards, and SoCs. SiFive's technology enables system designers to quickly and easily build custom chips for various applications including data centers, networking, storage, and edge computing. The company's cores offer 30-40% better power efficiency and a smaller size compared to alternatives, allowing for more cores on a chip. SiFive's online platform simplifies the process of designing and testing chips and core IP, even for those new to silicon development. In September 2020, SiFive appointed Patrick Little as President and CEO to accelerate adoption of its technology for next-generation computing solutions. As of March 2022, SiFive had a post-money valuation between USD 1-10 billion.
Key customers and partnerships
SiFive has collaborated with several high-profile organizations. In 2022, NASA announced that SiFive's RISC-V-compatible CPU cores would power its new High-Performance Spaceflight Computer, expected to deliver a 100-fold improvement in performance over its predecessor. SiFive has also worked with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to create an open-source API for popular compilers, enabling applications to use the RISC-V Vector Extension for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. The company has partnerships with major technology firms, as evidenced by its involvement in initiatives supporting RISC-V International.

Syntiant Corp., founded in 2017 and headquartered in Irvine, California, is a leader in delivering end-to-end deep learning solutions for edge AI applications. The company specializes in developing ultra-low-power, high-performance neural decision processors that enable always-on voice, audio, sensor, and vision applications across various consumer and industrial use cases. Syntiant's technology combines deep learning with semiconductor design to produce Neural Decision Processors (NDPs) that can run multiple neural networks concurrently at extremely low power levels.
The company's flagship products include the NDP series, such as the NDP200, which is designed for always-on edge AI vision applications and can run multiple independent networks concurrently at powers less than 2mW. Syntiant's processors are capable of executing deep neural networks natively on various architectures, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and fully connected networks. The company's solutions typically offer more than 100x efficiency improvement and a 10x increase in throughput compared to current low-power MCU-based alternatives.
Syntiant's technology is applicable to a wide range of devices, including earbuds, wearables, smartphones, smart speakers, laptops, automobiles, and other IoT consumer and industrial applications. The company's processors enable edge devices to hear, speak, see, and feel, bringing cloud-free advanced machine learning solutions to the edge of the network. This allows for mission-critical and time-sensitive decisions to be made faster, more reliably, and with greater security.
As of March 2022, Syntiant had shipped over 20 million of its Neural Decision Processors. The company continues to innovate, with plans to introduce its third-generation Syntiant Core 3 architecture in the future.
Key customers and partnerships
Syntiant has established partnerships with several prominent companies in the technology industry. In July 2021, Syntiant announced a collaboration with Renesas Electronics Corporation for a voice-controlled multimodal solution combining Renesas' RZ/V Series MPUs and Syntiant's NDP120 Neural Decision Processor. This partnership aims to enable low-power contactless operation for image processing in vision AI-based IoT and edge systems.

TriEye is a Tel Aviv-based company pioneering cost-effective Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) sensing technology for mass-market applications. Founded in 2017, TriEye developed the world's first CMOS-based SWIR image sensing solutions, enabling high-definition SWIR imaging and accurate deterministic 3D sensing in all weather and lighting conditions. The company's core technology is based on a decade of nanophotonics research conducted at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
TriEye's flagship product is the SEDAR (Spectrum Enhanced Detection And Ranging) platform, which combines a high-definition SWIR camera with 3D sensing capabilities. SEDAR utilizes TriEye's Raven HD CMOS-based SWIR image sensor and UltraBlaze, an ultra-high-power, eye-safe, pulsed SWIR illuminator. This system provides both HD SWIR 2D images and a detailed deterministic 3D depth map, offering superior performance in challenging visibility conditions such as darkness, fog, and glare. SEDAR operates in the SWIR spectrum, allowing for improved eye safety, longer range, and better performance in adverse weather compared to near-infrared (NIR) systems.
The company's CMOS-based SWIR technology significantly reduces manufacturing costs compared to traditional InGaAs-based SWIR sensors, making it suitable for high-volume markets. TriEye's sensors offer higher resolution, smaller size, and lower power consumption than conventional SWIR technologies. As of August 2023, TriEye announced a breakthrough 1.3Mp 7um pixel array SWIR sensor developed in collaboration with Tower Semiconductor, demonstrating excellent response across the SWIR spectrum.

Astera Labs is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2017 in Santa Clara, California. The company specializes in designing advanced chip-based connectivity solutions for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Astera Labs' Intelligent Connectivity Platform comprises semiconductor-based, high-speed, mixed-signal connectivity products integrated with its COSMOS software suite. The company's product portfolio includes three main families: Aries retimers, Taurus active electrical cable (AEC) paddle board modules, and Leo CXL Memory Controllers.
Astera Labs' primary focus is on removing connectivity bottlenecks in data centers, particularly in AI server environments. The company's Aries Smart Retimer products, which help CPUs and GPUs scale their data I/O bandwidth, account for the majority of its revenue. These retimers are designed to address signal integrity challenges in PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 technologies, enabling efficient data transfer in high-performance computing environments.
In 2023, Astera Labs generated revenue of USD 115.8 million, representing a 44.9% increase from the previous year. While the company is not yet consistently profitable, it reported its first positive net income quarter in Q4 2023, demonstrating 21% EBITDA margins. Astera Labs operates with high gross margins of 77-80%, with its primary costs allocated to research and development, which accounts for approximately 39% of revenue.
Key customers and partnerships
Astera Labs collaborates with major players in the data center infrastructure industry, including NVIDIA, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and Intel. The company's products are designed to work with various CPU, GPU, accelerator, and memory solution providers, facilitating easier integration and accelerating the deployment of cloud and AI infrastructure.
Astera Labs sells its products primarily through distributors but also works directly with hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. The company has secured over 300 design wins since its inception, indicating strong adoption of its technologies across the industry.
In terms of partnerships, Astera Labs works closely with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) for the production of its chips, leveraging TSMC's manufacturing capabilities while focusing on design and innovation. This fabless model allows Astera Labs to reduce development time and continuously evolve its product offerings to meet the rapidly changing demands of the AI and cloud computing markets.

New data privacy regulations have opened up space for a new wave of compliance-focused startups.

Digital Privacy Tools

<div>
 
 Immuta provides automated data governance solutions for organizations and integrates with existing enterprise applications. The platform is used by leading companies in the industries of finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. Some of the platform features include assigning access rights, implementing purpose-specific controls, and performing encryption or redaction on data to keep sensitive information secure. By leveraging the platform&rsquo;s governance and security features and access controls, an organization can accelerate compliance with regulations such as GDPR. The company also has partnerships with compliance solution providers such as BigID to complement their privacy offerings.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Immuta has a long standing partnership with Databricks, a data infrastructure firm, and provides data security and access controls to users of Databricks Unity Catalog governance platform.
 
 
 During 2020, Immuta saw its global bookings grow by 115% year-over-year, with new clients from the financial services, health care, insurance, and consumer technology industries, including Aon, Credit Suisse, and Daimler.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Immuta reported that its employee headcount doubled during 2020.
 
 
 In June 2022, Immuta
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10999">
 
 raised USD 100 million
 </a>
 in a Series E funding round led by NightDragon, bringing the total funding raised to USD 267 million. The company expected to use the funding for product development, to expand its sales, marketing, and customer success teams, double its employee headcount of 250 within 2023, and pursue acquisitions to bolster its product offering.
 
 
 In May 2023, the company
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18369">
 
 announced a strategic investment
 </a>
 of undisclosed value from Databricks to strengthen integration between the two platforms.&nbsp;
 
 
 
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 Fortanix provides confidential computing and cryptographic solutions to secure data throughout its life cycle &mdash; at rest, in motion, and in use (on premises and the cloud). The platform enables organizations to comply with privacy regulations such as the GDPR and HIPAA. Fortanix&rsquo;s target market comprises companies with more than 1,000 employees.
 
 
 In June 2023, the company launched 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19735">
 a new search function for encrypted databases
 </a>
 that reportedly uses less computing power, and runs much faster than standard homomorphic search methods, while maintaining data privacy and compliance.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of September 2022, Fortanix served more than 125 global customers across multiple industries, including healthcare, FinTech, financial services, government, and retail. Notable customers include Adidas, Google, PayPal, GE Healthcare, the US Department of Justice, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In September 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13109">
 raised USD 90 million
 </a>
 in a Series C funding round led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. The funds were to be utilized to expand channel sales through marketing campaigns that include meeting with existing and potential channel partners and opening new offices in the Netherlands.
 
 
 Fortanix reported 522% growth over 2019&ndash;2021 and an increase in employee headcount by 70% YoY to more than 225. As of September 2022, the company was backed by more than 25 patents and had plans to increase its employee headcount by 50% over 2023.
 
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<div>
 
 Duality Technologies offers the Duality SecurePlus platform, a suite of privacy-enhanced data collaboration applications for businesses that leverage homomorphic encryption (HE) and data science to facilitate secure data sharing while complying with data privacy regulations. Duality SecurePlus keeps sensitive data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII) encrypted while running computations on file contents to generate detailed insights without exposing data.
 
 
 The company offers its solutions to regulated sectors such as financial services, healthcare, insurance, and government, and counts notable clients and partners including the Bank of Nova Scotia, National Institutes of Health, Intel, Oracle Systems, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The company was awarded a USD 14.5 million deal from the DARPA in February 2021 to develop a hardware accelerator for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) computations. As of October 2021, the company employed 35 people and intends to expand its team in the future.
 
 
 Duality partnered with Oracle in April 2021 to jointly provide privacy-preserving anti-money-laundering (AML) information-sharing solutions for financial institutions. The company also collaborated with Intel in June 2021 to enhance the performance of AI/ML applications for privacy-enhanced data collaboration.
 
 
 In October 2021, the company raised USD 30 million in a Series B funding round led by LG Technology Ventures. The company expects to use the funds to expand its go-to-market efforts, establish partnerships with technology vendors, and further develop new secure collaboration tools in privacy-preserving machine learning and privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs).
 
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<div>
 
 Opaque spun out from UC Berkeley&rsquo;s RISELab to provide a cloud-based platform for secure data analytics and machine learning on encrypted data. The company commercializes its open-source MC2 (Multiparty Collaboration and Competition) platform, which leverages two key technologies &ndash; secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification that allows users to work over data silos without compromising on data security and privacy. Opaque provides a secure distributed data analytics framework that uses Spark SQL to run analytic queries securely so that attackers can only view the encrypted data on the server-side of the cloud. Opaque uses advanced encryption to provide data compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
 
 
 In June 2023, the firm updated its platform with features for the
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19635">
 secure use of generative AI 
 </a>
 and large language models (LLMs), including optimized data clean rooms and broad support for AI operations within trusted execution environments (TEEs).
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Opaque primarily serves Global 2000 organizations including several of the largest banks, financial institutions, and healthcare institutions in North America. Notable customers include Ant Group, IBM, Scotiabank, and Ericsson.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11389?industryIds=34">
 raised USD 22 million
 </a>
 in a Series A funding round led by Walden Catalyst Ventures, bringing the total funding raised to USD 31.6 million. The funds were expected to be utilized to accelerate R&amp;D and double its employee headcount to 100 by the end of 2022.
 
</div>

Data Infrastructure & Analytics

Cloudera is a data infrastructure and analytics company that operates a hybrid data platform for modern data architectures. The Cloudera Data Platform provides a variety of capabilities related to and including data flows, stream processing, data engineering, data warehousing, operational databases, machine learning, and data hubs, and aims to provide a single platform for data management across multi-cloud and on-premise environments, with a focus on interoperability and cost-effectiveness. The Cloudera Shared Data Experience (SDX) enables unified security and governance across open and cloud-native storage formats​​​​​​​​​​.Cloudera initially began as a distributor and developer of the Hadoop data processing platform but has evolved to offer a range of proprietary data management products and services.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30050">June 2024</a>, the company acquired Verta, a machine-learning infrastructure company. Cloudera planned on enhancing its AI capabilities by integrating Verta's Operational AI platform, as well as retain its workforce, which could help the company further expand its AI capabilities.Key customers and partnershipsCloudera’s customer list spans multiple segments across financial services, telecommunications, the public sector, retail and consumer goods, insurance, manufacturing, and healthcare and life sciences, and as of November 2023, includes names such as Regions Bank, Zain, The New Yorker, Transamerica, Vodafone, and Rush University Medical Center.The company has partnered with numerous notable global companies to provide integrated data solutions and enhanced capabilities, including AWS, IBM, and Kyndryl, as of November 2023.Funding and financialsThe company went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in April 2017, raising USD 225 million at a valuation of ~USD 2.3 billion—significantly down from its previous valuation. In 2018, Cloudera merged with another Hadoop platform vendor, Hortonworks, in a deal worth USD 5.2 billion, and in 2021 agreed to be taken private in a deal valued at ~USD 5.3 billion by equity firms KKR and Clayton, Dublier, &amp; Rice (CD&amp;R).

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 DataRobot specializes in AI and machine learning, with a focus on automating various AI and data science tasks. The company's primary offering includes an AI platform designed to enhance business processes and decision-making. DataRobot has reportedly developed over 3.74 billion AI models as at November 2023 with product development involving 3.8 million person-hours of engineering work​​.
 
 
 The company's products are centered around automated machine learning and predictive data analytics. DataRobot holds numerous patents in predictive data analytics; strategic acquisitions such as Zepl and Algorithmia have expanded its capabilities​​​​.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 DataRobot's customer base spans multiple industries, including consulting, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecommunications, among others. As of November 2023, the company claimed to serve significant portions of prominent industry groups, including 40% of the Fortune 50 and leading institutions in banking, pharmaceuticals, and telecommunications, such as Freddie Mac, CVS, Valley Bank, and Flexiti.
 
 
 DataRobot's partnerships include collaborations with cloud platforms, such as Google Cloud, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, to expand its platform&rsquo;s AI capabilities and market reach. In addition, the company recently expanded its partnership with SBI Holdings in May 2023​​​​​​. Other technology partners and integrations as of November 2023 include SAP, Intel, Palantir, and Tableau.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 DataRobot's most recent funding round was a USD 300 million July 2021 Series G raised at a post-money valuation of USD 6.3 billion. Previous investors Altimeter Capital and Tiger Global led the round and the fresh funds were used to develop DataRobot&rsquo;s platform and to build out its go-to-market team.&nbsp;
 
 
 DataRobot reported annual recurring revenue (ARR) of over USD 100 million in 2021.
 
 
 
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<div>
 
 Striim is the only supplier of unified, real-time data streaming and integration for enterprise analytics and operations. Striim offers a self-managed or fully-managed (SaaS) platform that makes it easy to set up smart data pipelines to continuously ingest, process, and deliver high volumes of data from enterprise databases such as Oracle (using non-intrusive change data capture), log files, messaging systems, and sensors, to virtually any target such as Google BigQuery, Azure Synapse or Snowflake with sub-second latency enabling real-time operations and analytics and unleashing innovation.
 
 The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
 
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TileDB is the modern database that integrates all data modalities, code and compute in a single product.. As a database system, TileDB adapts its internal structure to optimize advanced applications across life sciences, geospatial research, generative AI, and other data science domains. TileDB is architected around multi-dimensional arrays, a powerful structure that adapts to capture any data modality — from vectors, tables and images, to ML models, 3D point clouds and population genomics datasets. TileDB provides an ecosystem of open-source tools, whereas its commercial product, TIleDB Cloud, offers a secure platform for distributed computations, interactive analysis, collaboration and integrations with a range of TileDB vertical solutions. TileDB was spun out of MIT and Intel Labs in May 2017 and is backed by numerous world class investors.

Platforms to make the most of cloud infrastructure

Cloud Optimization Tools

ScienceLogic is a company that specializes in providing comprehensive IT monitoring and management solutions.Its main product offers a unified platform for monitoring and managing complex IT environments, including cloud services, networks, applications, and infrastructure. ScienceLogic's features include real-time monitoring, performance analytics, event correlation, and predictive analytics to help organizations ensure the reliability and performance of their IT systems. The company's competitive advantage lies in its ability to offer a holistic view of IT operations through a single pane of glass. ScienceLogic's platform enables businesses to monitor and manage their IT infrastructure proactively. The platform's scalability and support for multi-cloud environments give organizations the flexibility to manage their IT resources effectively, regardless of their size or complexity.ScienceLogic employs a subscription-based sales model.Key customers and partnershipsScienceLogic's customer base includes organizations from large enterprises to service providers. Clients include Cisco, SingleDigits, Datacom, Kelloggs, Keybank, and AT&amp;T.The company has technology partnerships with many prominent cloud players, including AWS, Azure, VMware, Cisco, ServiceNow, and Atlassian. Science Logic’s ecosystem also consists of 400+ integrations.

Anodot is a cloud-based platform that provides AI-driven business monitoring and cloud cost management.Anodot’s autonomous monitoring solution identifies and provides recommendations on revenue-critical business metrics of a multi-cloud environment in real-time to better control cloud spend. The platform combines information from SaaS customers, features, engineering teams, and other areas into a single platform to provide holistic visibility for strategic and optimized business decisions.Anodot’s platform continuously learns service usage patterns to identify granular-level irregularities and notifies the engineering team for remediation. Further, it combines Kubernetes costs with non-containerized costs to provide an accurate view of cloud spend and to identify and eliminate idle costs at the node level.Anodot operates a direct sales modelKey customers and partnershipsAnodot’s customers span across multiple industries including gaming, AdTech, telecommunication, ecommerce, and FinTech. Its notable customers include T-Mobile, JP Morgan, UPS, NTT, Rivian, Payoneer, and Puma.Anodot collaborates with many technology partners to ensure compatibility and integration with platforms. Some of its key technology partners are AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Datadog, Snowflake, and Databricks.In June 2024, Anodot <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30567">partnered with Yārken</a> to integrate its AI-based cost management with Yārken's FinOps platform, offering a single interface to manage costs across on-premises, private cloud, and multi-cloud environments.

Immuta provides an automated platform that can be integrated with existing enterprise applications for data governance and security.Immuta’s data security platform integrates data discovery, security, and detection for a unified view of the data posture. It continuously scans cloud environments, allowing users to tag and classify data, creates policies for protection, and prioritizes and addresses risks to improve data security posture management. Further, users can write data policies in plain language, which are then automatically enforced in query time natively to accelerate compliance with regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA.Several notable features of the platform include automated, dynamic access controls, zero-trust architecture, encryption and redaction, and differential privacy.Immuata operates a direct sales model.Key customers and partnershipsImmuta is used by companies in the finance, healthcare, public, technology, media, and manufacturing sectors. Some notable customers are Mercedes Benz Group, Sony, Thomson Reuters, US Customs and Border Protection, ModMed, and Roche.Immuta has several technology alliances (Snowflake, Databricks, Starburst, and Okta) and cloud integrations (AWS, Google BigQuery, Microsoft Azure) to aid enterprises simplify its operations and derive value from data.

Upbound is a technology company offering a multi-cloud control plane that enables users to manage, operate, and extend their cloud-native environments across different cloud providers.The Upbound Cloud Platform provides unified visibility, centralized policy management, and consistent operations across various cloud environments. Upbound allows organizations to optimize resources, improve governance, and enhance security while avoiding vendor lock-in. With support for Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies, Upbound empowers users to build and scale applications seamlessly across different clouds.Upbound is available on a pay-as-you-go basis.Key customers and partnershipsUpbound’s customer base includes enterprises in various industries. Among the customers are BMW Group, American Family Insurance, US Customs and Border Protection, Plotly, Aptitude, and Millennium BCP.The company has technology partnerships with many prominent cloud players, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, VMware, Aviatrix, and Datadog.Upbound has no direct competitors due to its unique product.

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

Avaamo is a deep learning software company that specializes in conversational artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprises. Founded in 2014 by Ram Menon and Sriram Chakravarthy, Avaamo is headquartered in Los Altos, California. The company's AI-powered platform enables businesses to build, deploy and manage intelligent virtual assistants and chatbots across multiple channels.
Avaamo's technology leverages neural networks, natural language processing, and speech synthesis to create human-like conversational experiences. The platform allows organizations to automate customer support, streamline internal processes, and enhance user engagement across industries such as healthcare, banking, telecommunications, and insurance. Avaamo's solutions can understand context, maintain multi-turn conversations, and execute complex tasks.
Key features of Avaamo's platform include natural language understanding, dialogue management, integration capabilities with enterprise systems, analytics, and support for over 100 languages. The company offers both cloud-based and on-premise deployment options. Avaamo's technology processes millions of interactions daily across 40 countries.
Key customers and partnerships
Avaamo works with several Fortune 500 companies across various industries. In 2023, Aditya Birla Capital partnered with Avaamo to implement their next-generation universal intelligent virtual assistant.

Lilt is an AI-powered enterprise translation platform founded in 2015. The company's core technology is its Contextual AI Engine, which uses in-context learning and deep learning neural networks to provide predictive translation suggestions that improve over time. Lilt's platform combines this AI engine with human translators to deliver high-quality, efficient translations for marketing, legal, product, and other enterprise content. The system allows translators to accept, modify or reject AI-generated translations, enabling a human-in-the-loop approach that is 3-5x faster than traditional methods while reducing costs by up to 50%. As of March 2023, Lilt's Contextual AI Engine outperformed both Google Translate and GPT-4 on accuracy for many enterprise use cases. The company's platform supports around 40 languages and includes features like custom term bases, style guides, and integrations with business systems like Slack, WordPress, and Salesforce. In December 2023, Lilt expanded its capabilities to include multimodal translation of images, audio, PDFs and video files directly within its platform.
Key customers and partnerships
Lilt's client base includes major companies like Intel, ASICS, WalkMe, Canva, UiPath, and Juniper Networks. For example, ASICS Digital uses Lilt to translate approximately one million words annually across 12 languages for its RunKeeper app and other digital products. Intel reported reducing translation costs by 40% through using Lilt's AI-powered services. The company has also formed partnerships with government agencies.

Kyndi, founded in 2014, developed a Generative AI Answer Engine designed to revolutionize how business users find answers to complex queries. The company's platform leveraged natural language processing, search, and generative AI technologies to provide direct, accurate, and trustworthy information from enterprise content. Kyndi's solution aimed to eliminate hallucinations while offering transparency in results by allowing users to trace back to the sources of answers. The platform integrated embeddings, LLMs, Generative AI, and vector and semantic databases into a fully-integrated end-to-end solution.
In September 2023, Kyndi released version 6.0 of its Generative AI Answer Engine, introducing new features to address the need for more effective knowledge management and AI transparency. The update included a "Topics" feature that allowed content leaders to curate, validate, and manage knowledge bases in under one hour, and a "Citation" feature that presented end users with content source citations for enhanced AI explainability. Additionally, the platform incorporated end-user feedback mechanisms and query export capabilities to optimize system performance.
In January 2024, Qlik, a leading data integration and analytics company, acquired Kyndi's intellectual property and key technology assets. The acquisition aimed to enhance Qlik's capabilities in leveraging artificial intelligence for business outcomes, particularly in processing unstructured data. Following the acquisition, Kyndi's CEO and leading AI experts joined Qlik to continue advancing the technology within Qlik's ecosystem.

AI21 Labs, founded in 2017 by Amnon Shashua, Yoav Shoham, and Ori Goshen in Tel Aviv, Israel, is a leader in generative AI and large language models (LLMs). The company specializes in developing AI systems capable of understanding and generating human-like text. AI21 Labs' flagship product is AI21 Studio, a developer platform that enables businesses to create custom text-based applications using the company's proprietary language models, including the advanced Jurassic-2 model. The Jurassic-2 family of models is offered in three sizes: Large, Grande, and Jumbo, each with a separate instruction-tuned version. These models support multiple languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, and Dutch.
AI21 Labs also offers Wordtune, an AI-based writing assistant that understands context and meaning, allowing users to refine and generate text or summarize content quickly. In August 2023, the company introduced an upgraded version of Wordtune, transforming it into an all-in-one platform with multiple features for generative AI reading, writing, and knowledge control assistance. This enhanced version includes tools for longform editing, work-related templates, proactive AI suggestions, live outlines, and AI question answering.
The company's approach goes beyond standalone models, focusing on building AI systems that are easy to integrate and generate reliable, trustworthy, and accurate results with more refined control. AI21 Labs has also developed five task-specific APIs for common tasks such as paraphrasing, summarizing, text recommendations, grammatical error correction, and text segmentation. These specialized models are designed to be smaller, more accurate, and less prone to hallucinations compared to larger, general-purpose models.

The toolkit to build machine learning applications at scale

Machine Learning Infrastructure

SambaNova Systems provides AI hardware and integrated systems to run AI applications in data centers and the cloud. The company’s flagship solution, Dataflow-as-a-Service is a subscription-based hardware platform that provides pre-trained deep-learning models for production-ready deployments. It can be used to run natural language processing (NLP) models and process true-resolution images and 3D sensor data.The company also offers an integrated software and hardware system to train and deploy foundation models, deep learning, and AI-accelerated workloads. DataScale’s large on-chip and system memory enables it to handle large models and data that cannot be handled by graphics processing units (GPUs). DataScale is powered by a seven-nanometer Cardinal SN30 Reconfigurable Data Unit (RDU) which has also delivered a world record in GPT training that was up to 6x faster than DGX A100 AI systems (built on the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU). In September 2023, it launched its latest chip, the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21988">SN40L</a>, which powers its full-stack large language model (LLM) platform, the SambaNova Suite.The company also offers software to extract, optimize, and execute the optimal dataflow graph of models for training, inference, data analytics, and high-performance computing. In addition, it offers state-of-the-art open-source models as well as models pre-trained by SambaNova, including their GPT offering. These models can be fine-tuned on a company's data for greater accuracy.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2023, the company served customers in the financial services and insurance, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing and auto, oil, gas, and energy, retail and e-commerce, and public sectors. In May 2023, SambaNova collaborated with Together to develop BLOOMChat, a 176-billion-parameter multilingual chat LLM for commercial use cases. It was trained on 46 languages and developed by an international collaboration of more than 1,000 researchers.Funding and financialsIn April 2021, the company raised USD 676 million in a Series D funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 at a valuation of more than USD 5 billion. The funds were utilized to expand its customer base primarily in the data center market.

Anyscale provides an open-source Python framework called “Ray” that allows developers to build multi-cloud AI applications and run models on very large data sets. The platform enables model training using approaches such as reinforcement learning, model tuning, and model serving.The company also offers the Anyscale platform, which is a managed version of Ray that runs on AWS and requires less expertise than Ray to operate. It allows developers to build, tune, and train machine learning (ML) workloads and deploy them into production. Anyscale ML Workspace enables developers to leverage the same set of tools throughout the process such as VS Code and Jupyter. The platform also supports integration with third-party orchestration tools such as Airflow and Prefect. The company claims that the Anyscale platform has the ability to start up clusters 5x faster than Ray. It also allows automation capabilities that support integration with Anyscale’s managed Grafana and Ray dashboard, which also delivers a monitoring and observability stack.In addition, the company provides <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19041">Aviary </a>, an open-source, free, cloud-based infrastructure designed to assist developers to choose and integrate large language models (LLMs) into their application. Aviary offers a unified framework designed to deploy multiple LLMs, and allows developers to A/B test models to improve functionality while maximizing GPU utilization and reducing cloud costs. The product also offers libraries, tools, documentation, and sample code to aid developers to deploy LLMs into production. It also provides <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21932">Anyscale Endpoints</a>, which enables developers to integrate LLMs into their applications using APIs.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2022, Anyscale served more than 1,000 organizations globally. Notable customers include Amazon, Ant Group, Ricardo, Dow, Uber, and Visa. The company entered into a partnership with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/4353">NVIDIA</a> in September 2023, to enhance the performance and efficiency of LLM development on Ray and the Anyscale Platform.Funding and financialsIn August 2022, the company raised USD 99 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Addition and Intel Capital at a more than USD 1 billion valuation. The funds were utilized to build out its distributed AI-computing platform.

Verta provides AI/ML model management and operations software that helps enterprise data science teams to manage complex model-based products. It allows users to create a single searchable model catalog to track and govern AI/ML models, as well as deploy them into production across SaaS, on-premises, or virtual private cloud (VPC) environments. The company also offers AI portfolio management to monitor the performance of AI/ML applications throughout the entire ML lifecycle, capturing metrics and KPIs to evaluate and measure the ROI of the projects.In addition, the company provides an end-to-end platform to develop GenAI applications. It includes pre-built starter kits that offer suggestions on models, prompts, and datasets matching the use case, enabling quicker testing, evaluation, and refinement of model outputs. It also allows developers to simultaneously experiment with multiple models (proprietary and open-source), prompts, and techniques to improve the iteration process and compare metrics and results to select the optimal model.In June 2024, the company was <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30051">acquired by Cloudera</a>, a data infrastructure and analytics company for an undisclosed amount. Key customers and partnershipsThe company serves notable customers including Mercury Insurance, Gartner, LSEG, Scribd, and LeadCrunch.

Scale AI provides a platform called Data Engine that collects, curates, and annotates data to train and evaluate AI/ML models, either by automatically leveraging AI or through human annotators. The company also offers solutions to augment real data or generate fully synthetic data based on rare or dangerous real-world scenarios. Scale AI offers the ability to deploy annotated data via APIs or direct download. It also offers features to fix model failures and data quality issues by computing performance metrics on ingested model predictions.Scale AI also provides a full-stack platform to customize, build, test, and deploy enterprise-ready GenAI applications, including foundational models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. The platform also offers features to fine-tune models with enterprise data and its Data Engine.In addition, the company offers an AI safety lab called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23675">SEAL</a> (Safety, Evaluations, and Analysis Lab). SEAL focuses on developing automated rating systems based on LLMs, conducts research on potential AI harms, and utilizes red team methods to ensure the safety and reliability of AI software. Additionally, the lab helps enterprises and governments comply with AI standards and regulations.The company offers its data annotation services either as a fully-managed or a self-managed service, with pricing based on the type and volume of data (usage-based model).Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s notable customers include the US Department of Defense, US Air Force, Microsoft, Meta, Toyota, PayPal, Etsy, General Motors, and Pinterest.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21279">August 2023</a>, Scale AI formed a partnership with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/362567">OpenAI</a> to provide fine-tuning tools for the latter’s GPT-3.5 large language model, allowing its customers to develop tailored ML models for their unique business requirements. Moreover, the fine-tuned models will be reviewed by Scale’s human experts to ensure that it meets performance expectations and other safety and regulatory requirements.Funding and financialsIn May 2024, the company raised USD 1 billion in a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29644">Series F</a> funding round at a valuation of USD 13.8 billion. The fundraising was a mix of primary and secondary funding, led by Accel and featuring participation from prominent investors such as Amazon, Meta, Cisco, Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Y Combinator, and Tiger Global Management, among others. It had planned to use the fresh capital to progress on its journey of becoming the primary data foundry for AI and to foster the production of frontier data.

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

<div>
 
 Kyndi operates an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that can analyze large bodies of unstructured and long-form text. The company mainly serves customers in the pharmaceutical industry, defense, financial services, and manufacturing. In the pharma sector, its platform can be used in various stages from research and development (R&amp;D) to marketing. The AI platform is capable of identifying keywords, custom entities, and phrases to detect trends, find answers using natural language processing, provide data context and location, and can learn industry terminologies. It can be used to search through medical literature and reports to produce insights and develop dashboards to track various information from clinical studies.
 
</div>

UK-based Healx focuses on repurposing drugs for rare diseases by leveraging its AI platform Healnet, which uses natural language processing (NLP) to extract disease knowledge from published and proprietary data. Healx claims it can predict new treatments in three months and advance the drug to the clinical stage in 24 months. The company has also been working with various patient groups to collect data to be used for its AI software.The company has 16 active projects, three of which are about to enter Phase I clinical trials. Its pipeline consists of drug candidates targeting rare neuro-developmental diseases, rare oncology diseases, and rare metabolic diseases. It also claims its mission is to progress 50 rare disease therapies to the clinic by 2025.Key customers and partnershipsHealx has partnerships with the German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim, the Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF), and the Foundation for Angelman Syndrome Therapeutics. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4786">August 2021 </a>, it partnered with Ono Therapeutics to jointly identify new disease indications with high unmet needs.

VeriSIM Life is an AI-powered drug discovery company offering a machine learning-driven platform, BIOiSIM, which allows pharmaceutical companies and drug developers to conduct preclinical experiments using biosimulation models that reflect interactions between drugs and animals' biological systems. The platform can predict a potential drug’s response and clinical outcome without the need for actual animal testing, thereby reducing the cost and time spent on animal trials or even entirely eliminating them.The company is also engaged in developing novel therapeutics through its subsidiary PulmoSIM Therapeutics, which leverages the BIOiSIM platform. PulmoSIM has two drug candidates in its pipeline targeting pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), both of which are in their preclinical stages. VeriSIM Life acquired Spanish biotechnology firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10359">Molomics Biotech </a>in May 2022, to integrate VeriSIM’s platform with Molomics’ Human Collective Intelligence (HCI) technology, enhancing the company’s ability to make successful clinical trial predictions.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28167">April 2024</a>, VeriSIM Life launched its AtlasGEN Novel Drug Designer, a platform that focuses on combining generative chemical discovery and biological validation to increase efficiency in drug candidate selection. It is part of the BIOiSIM platform that uses a unique Translational Index to give insights into the AI analysis and the potential effectiveness and safety of created compounds.

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

<div>
 
 BrightEdge is an enterprise-level search engine optimization (SEO) platform that offers a variety of tools to carry out key SEO and content marketing functions including SEO audits, keyword research, competitor intelligence, customer intent signaling, and reporting on website traffic performance. A key feature of BrightEdge&rsquo;s solution is its ability to connect search signals from multiple channels including web, social media, and mobile within a single platform.
 
 
 In August 2021, the firm launched &ldquo;SearchIQ&rdquo;, which the firm claims is an industry first that utilizes deep learning and machine learning to analyze search signals and keyword rankings, providing firms with actionable insights that are expected to simplify and speed up marketing and product development efforts.&nbsp;
 
 
 In February 2022, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8676">
 acquired OnCrawl
 </a>
 , a technical SEO that crawls and audits websites to provides insights and predictions. In May 2022, BrightEdge claimed that together with OnCrawl it has created the industries first intelligent system for SEO, providing industry-specific insights across retail, banking, insurance, and real estate industries.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 By August 2023, the firm had 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21408">
 2,000+ customers
 </a>
 including 57 of the Fortune 100 companies including Loreal, Microsoft, and Marriott. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Movable Ink provides an AI-powered AdTech solution enabling marketers to connect with their data to create and activate personalized content for customer engagement. The firm's platform can connect to relevant customer data via 60+ marketing automation integrations where it uses AI to study a customer's individual attributes such as mobile behavior, preferred locations, and weather to provide contextual information which can be activated across multiple marketing channels including email, mobile and augmented reality. To bolster its AI capabilities, in February 2022, the firm acquired coherent path, a content engine that uses AI to map customer journeys and create personalized emails. Following this, the platform was integrated into Movable Ink’s platform and in June 2022 the firm launched ‘Da Vinci’, an AI-driven content personalization engine. 
 
 
 The firm claims that unlike other AI-based personalization solutions which focus on short-term next-best customer actions, Da Vinci is able to optimize the lifetime value of customer interactions. As a result, the firm claims that its users have experienced a 40% increase in campaign performance, a 40% reduction in production time and a 373% boost to ROI.   
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The firm solutions are used by global brands across retail, financial services, travel, and media. As of August 2022, its customers include JetBlue, Dunkin, Comcast, Hilton, Uber and Bloomingdales.
 
 
 The firm also has a partner exchange program where its solutions can be integrated with 60+ marketing automation solutions including customer data platforms (Amperity, Segment), mobile marketing (Attentive, Braze, Iterable), and ratings and review (Bazaarvoice, powerreviews) to extend the capabilities of its platform. The firm has also partnered with marketing agencies and consultancies including Tinuit, Accenture Interactive and BCG to offer clients strategy and other marketing support services. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The firm raised USD 55 million in series D funding led by Silver lake Waterman and received a pre-money valuation of USD 1.3 billion. The funds were earmarked for product development and to expand its employee count to more than 700 by 2023. The firm also stated that it has achieved an annual recurring revenue of USD 100+ million in 2021. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Iris.TV provides a video analytics and intelligence platform specialized for connected TV (CTV) and online video, enabling marketers, content publishers and media providers to structure, connect, and measure data to provide personalized video recommendations and targeted marketing campaigns. For marketers, Iris.TV provides machine learning (ML) powered solutions that can be used for targeted contextual ad placement across CTV and online video, as well tools to measure and verify ad performance without the need for 3rd party customer data. For publishers, Iris.TVs structured data can be leveraged to automate personalized streaming experiences for users and increase monetization opportunities in a privacy-preserving manner.    
 
 
 Key Customers and Partnerships 
 
 
 IRIS.TV’s solutions are used by media publishers that provide IRIS-enabled structured data (including Plex, Xumo, Weather Group), data partners (GumGum, Oracle advertising, Comscore), Demand-side ad platforms (MediaMath, Logiq), and Supply-side ad platforms (Magnite and Pubmatic).
 
 
 Iris.TV has partnered with a number of marketing automation firms specialized in video advertising including LiveRamp (data enablement platform), SpringServe (ad server platform for video advertising) and Publica (CTV advertising platform) to integrate its solutions and provide users with contextual data to improve cross-screen inventory targeting. 
 
 
 Funding & Financials 
 
 
 In April 2021, IRIS.TV raised USD 18 million in series B funding round led by Intel Capital. The funding was used to accelerate its product development. 
 
</div>

Technologies bringing about a new reality

Extended Reality

AdHawk Microsystems develops camera-free eye tracking solutions for extended reality (XR), gaming, research, and healthcare applications.The company’s MindLink eye-tracking glasses utilize ‘micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)’, miniature devices that handle mechanical functions, that can be integrated with AR/VR headsets to track eye movement. The glasses allow researchers to investigate wearers’ neurological and ocular health, behavior, and state of mind using eye movement data.The company claims that compared with using cameras, MEMS improve the speed, form factor, and energy efficiency of AR/VR headsets, while delivering resolution similar to research-grade systems that utilize cameras.In December 2023, the company announced the MindLink Air glasses, which provide eye-tracking features focused on improving task productivity and health and fitness. Further, users will be provided with personalized, longitudinal data they can use to adjust their daily routine to reduce mental fatigue. The company planned to make its solution commercially available sometime in 2024.

CY Vision is a manufacturer of 3D AR Head-Up Displays (HUDs) for automobiles. The company’s AR HUDs utilize real-time computational holography and integrates with driver-assist systems, cameras, GPS, LIDAR, and smartphones to display a wide range of information on the screen such as speed, lane markers, GPS directions, notable landmarks and establishments, hazards, signage, and driver-assist alerts, with the intention to create a more engaging and safer experience. The company states that its solution is 50% smaller than standard HUDs, performs under all weather conditions, with no color or edge distortion.As of January 2022, the company was working with BMW and other automobile manufacturers to commercially launch its technology in the future.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33443">September 2024</a>, the company partnered with Mojo Vision to develop next-generation car heads-up displays (HUDs), incorporating AR and 3D imaging geared towards reducing road accidents.

Inworld AI is a developer platform for creating dialog and behavior patterns in AI-powered non-playable characters (NPCs) that mimic the social nature of human interactions and express nuanced emotions within virtual worlds and enterprise applications.The company’s offerings include “Inworld Studio,” a no-code platform that enables writers, creators, and designers to calibrate elements of cognition and behavior for previously developed NPCs, such as goals, motivations, speech patterns, memories, knowledge, and voices using generative AI in the form of text-to-character prompts. Dialog patterns can be tested in the Inworld Arcade and Studio. The platform also features integrations with game engine Unity and Unreal to deploy characters into game environments and a software development kit (SDK) integration with Node.js. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29760">May 2024</a>, the company launched “Inworld Voice” which offers latency, rhythm, intonation, pitch variation, and pausing. Users can select from 58 AI-enhanced voices that mimic human speech patterns. Following this, the company added multilingual support for Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean for game localization (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32112">July 2024</a>).Games built using the platform include Origins, a neo-noir detective game, where players use microphones to question NPCs powered by Inworld AI and solve a case, among others. In January 2023, Inworld planned to launch Roblox as an Inworld integration to allow developers to add AI characters to their own experiences.Inworld AI generates revenue through pay-as-you-go pricing schemes, which charge customers based on API interaction usage.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17686">April 2023</a>, Inworld AI partnered with AR software provider Geenee AR to bring the company’s generative AI features in Inworld Studio to the Geenee AR platform.In September 2022, Inworld AI became a Unity Verified Solutions partner, which allowed developers to access Inworld AI through the Unity store. Furthermore, the company offered a grant of up to USD 1 million for creators to build experiences with AI characters.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20615">August 2023</a>, the company raised USD 50 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing the company’s valuation to over USD 500 million. Funds were utilized to bolster R&amp;D efforts, senior headcount expansions, infrastructure investments, and to launch an open-source version of its character engine.Previously, in August 2022, the company raised USD 50 million in a Series A funding round led by Section 32 and Intel Capital. The company was also part of the 2022 Disney Accelerator, Disney’s startup incubator.

Autonomous and connected technologies shaping the future of the auto industry

Auto Tech

<div>
 
 AEye develops artificial intelligence (AI)-powered LiDAR for various applications, including vehicle autonomy, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and robotic vision. The company&rsquo;s products include &ldquo;4SIGHT,&rdquo; a software-defined, solid-state LiDAR sensor for automotive applications. The company claims that 4SIGHT offers the industry&rsquo;s longest detection range with the ability to identify small obstacles at over 300m and a 128 degree horizontal field of view (FoV). 4SIGHT uses adaptive LiDAR sensors as opposed to traditional sensors that passively collect data. AEye&rsquo;s next gen product 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24047">
 &ldquo;4IGHT Flex,&rdquo;
 </a>
 is an ultra-compact, high-performance LiDAR for in-cabin autonomy and safety features. It comes with a 120 x 30-degree FoV, high resolution, and a detection range of up to 275 meters. The company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14502">
 launched a new 4Sight product line
 </a>
 in November 2022, which it claims was built on a high-performance adaptive LiDAR platform. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates?industryIds=70">
 March 2024
 </a>
 , AEye announced the launch of Apollo, the first product in the 4Sight Flex Lidar series. As of July 2023, AEye held 120 patents for its technology solutions.
 
 
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s business model also involves licensing software sensing platforms to automotive partners and outright sale of software-configured hardware products in partnership with system integrators in industrial markets.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company began has been producing and supplying its sensors since late 2021, in partnership with electronic solutions provider LITEON Technology Corporation 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29284">
 (May 2024),
 </a>
 electronics manufacturer Sanmina Corporation (July 2021), German automotive parts manufacturer Continental (October 2020), simulation software provider Ansys (January 2020), and other system integrators. Its customers include Nvidia (July 2020), Continental (August 2021), and autonomous trucking company TuSimple (July 2021).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 AEye generated revenue of USD 1.5 million and reported an operating loss of USD 87.8 million during the year ended December 2023. The company has been listed on Nasdaq since August 2021, via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), which valued the combined entity at USD 1.52 billion (May 2021).
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Israel-based TriEye offers complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based short-wave infrared (SWIR) sensing solutions pitched toward autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and biometric and industrial applications. Its product portfolio includes the &ldquo;SEDAR&rdquo; (Spectrum Enhanced Detection And Ranging) sensor that provides imaging and depth information for autonomous driving systems and ADAS. The company claims the sensor could potentially replace the sensing technologies used in vehicles currently (i.e., the combination of cameras, radar, and LiDAR) as the company brings down the cost of the technology. TriEye also claims to be the world's first CMOS-based SWIR sensor maker.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 TriEye&rsquo;s customer partnerships include automobile manufacturer Porsche (January 2020) and global automotive supplier DENSO (June 2021). In January 2022, the company partnered with Hitachi Astemo, a Tier-1 automotive supplier to incorporate SEDAR sensors in ADAS solutions.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 The company also entered partnerships with Continental Engineering Services, a provider of engineering services and components to the automotive industry, for the implementation of SWIR imaging systems in Driver Monitoring Systems (May 2021), and with 
 <a href="https://trieye.tech/blog/trimble_collaboration/">
 Trimble
 </a>
 , a provider of machine control technology for agriculture and construction, to explore the use of autonomous vision systems (June 2021). In June 2023, TriEye partnered with Coherent, a developer of semiconductor lasers, to launch a laser-illuminated SWIR imaging system for automotive and robotic applications.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials:
 
 
 In November 2021, TriEye raised USD 74 million in a Series B funding round co-led by M&amp;G Investments and Varana Capital to commercialize its product offerings primarily targeting automotive applications.
 
 
 
</div>

Beep develops software for autonomous shuttles for multi-passenger transportation. Its shuttles are capable of autonomous navigation but require an attendant on board. The company is said to be working toward developing vehicles with Level 4 autonomy (i.e., fully autonomous vehicles limited to specific locations and/or conditions).As of February 2024, the company was conducting testing of its autonomous shuttles for both the public and private sectors on public routes in several states, including Florida, California, and Georgia, and had conducted 17 deployments across six states.The company specifically emphasizes safety and awareness. Beep has taken part in a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)’s autonomous vehicle test initiative to promote awareness, provide hands-on training to first responders before service deployment, and conduct continuous community education.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24101">In November 2023, </a>Beep launched “Beep AutonomOS,” a software platform to integrate autonomous mobility services for public transit operators and mobility-as-a-service companies. This is offered on a SaaS basis.Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2022, the company partnered with Intel’s self-driving tech arm Mobileye and German e-mobility systems provider Benteler to build and deploy autonomous shuttles across the US by 2024 and to establish a manufacturing facility in the US for the purpose. Its other product collaborations include partnerships with French self-driving tech developer NAVYA, autonomous driving technology company Robotic Research, automotive supplier ZF, and self-driving software developer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21274">Oxa.</a>Its autonomous shuttles are pitched toward planned communities, campuses, and city centers. Its shuttles were deployed in partnership with parties such as Walnut Creek senior community in California <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32857">(August 2024),</a> Mississippi State University <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29515">(May 2024),</a> Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT; at Honalulu airport; <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29176">May 2024),</a> Florida State College at Jacksonville <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26901">(February 2024),</a> North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDT; at Cary's Fred G. Bond Metro Park in March 2023, and at University of North Carolina at Charlotte <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21639">in September 2023),</a> Treasure Island, California <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21204">(August 2023),</a> Cumberland Community Improvement District, Cobb County, Georgia <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20204">(July 2023),</a> Orlando City Council, Florida <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19263">(June 2023),</a> Contra Costa Transportation Authority (CCTA; at Ranch business park in San Ramon, California; <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17971">April 2023</a> and Rossmoor senior living community; <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32228">August 2024),</a> Zoo Miami, Florida (September 2022), Jacksonville Transportation Authority, Florida (March 2022), Mayo Clinic, Florida (for Covid-19 sample delivery; April 2020), Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming (program completed in December 2021), Peachtree Corners, Georgia (October 2021), Lake Nona, Florida (2019; expanded in July 2021), Tradition, Florida (November 2020), and City of Peoria, Arizona (February 2020). The company also has a May 2022 partnership with Israeli mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) provider Moovit to allow the latter’s passengers to hail Beep’s autonomous shuttles in Lake Nona.

Pushing the envelope in MedTech with emerging technologies

Next-gen Medical Devices

Exo is a medical imaging software and devices company that delivers ultrasound technology at the point of care. Exo's handheld device, “Iris,” was launched in September 2023 at USD 3,500 annually. The device combines imaging capabilities with real-time AI guidance leveraging patented pMUT-based technology, enabling caregivers to scan all major organs and guide procedures with ease. As of April 2024, Exo received FDA clearances for its AI tools for analyzing ultrasound images of the heart, lung, bladder, hip, and thyroid, with plans to double the number of clearances by 2025.&nbsp;In addition to the handheld device, Exo offers Exo Works, a point-of-care ultrasound workflow solution that streamlines documentation, review, billing, and quality assurance processes.&nbsp;In July 2022, Exo acquired Medo to enhance its AI capabilities and leverage Medo's expertise in automated image acquisition and interpretation.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsExo's ultrasound technology serves a diverse range of customers in the healthcare sector, including hospitals, clinics, and emergency medical services. In June 2023, Exo partnered with Sana Kliniken AG to expand Exo’s ultrasound platform to Germany. In June 2022, the company partnered with Henry Ford Health to provide caregivers access to its ultrasound technology.Exo’s notable customers include Geisinger and Wellstart MCG Health.

Proprio is a surgical technology company based in Seattle that has developed an innovative system called Paradigm to revolutionize the way surgeons perform complex procedures. Paradigm utilizes cutting-edge technologies such as light field imaging, computer vision, machine learning, robotics, and augmented reality to provide surgeons with real-time, three-dimensional visualizations of the surgical field.
The system captures high-definition images of the operating area and fuses them with preoperative 3D scans of the patient's anatomy. This allows surgeons to visualize key structures, including those that are difficult or impossible to see with the naked eye, in an immersive 3D environment. The generated images adapt to shifts in the anatomy, updating in real-time, eliminating the need for repeated intraoperative scans and reducing radiation exposure.
Paradigm has been primarily tested for spinal and cranial surgeries, which are among the most complex and revenue-generating procedures for hospitals. The system aims to increase surgical accuracy, reduce complications and revisions, decrease operating room time, and improve overall patient outcomes. In April 2023, Proprio received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Paradigm, paving the way for its commercial launch.
The company's technology also holds potential for surgical training and data collection. Paradigm can capture a wealth of data during procedures, enabling analysis and potential predictive capabilities to further enhance surgical techniques and outcomes.

OXOS Medical is a medical technology company that has developed an innovative handheld X-ray system called the Micro C. This device, which received FDA 510(k) clearance in 2021, is designed to capture both static and dynamic digital radiographic images of the extremities. The Micro C utilizes advanced image processing, computer vision, and an innovative X-ray tube architecture to deliver exceptional image quality while significantly reducing radiation exposure compared to traditional X-ray solutions like C-Arms.
One of the key advantages of the Micro C is its low radiation profile, providing up to 80% less radiation than conventional X-ray devices. This makes it a safer and more accessible option for various healthcare settings, including urgent care centers, sports teams, home care, and international mission operations. The device's compact and portable design allows for real-time diagnosis and imaging in virtually any environment.
OXOS Medical's technology is aimed at addressing the growing global shortage of radiology resources and the increasing demand for imaging services. The company's Micro C system connects directly to the OXOS Cloud Platform, enabling physicians to access radiographic studies from anywhere on any device. This cloud-based platform is fully HIPAA-compliant and can seamlessly integrate with existing radiology infrastructure or leverage OXOS' nationwide teleradiology service for rapid study interpretation.
In 2023, OXOS Medical acquired USD 23 million in Series A funding, bringing its total funding to USD 45 million. The company has gained traction across various sectors, including outpatient clinics, the military, the Veterans Administration, sports teams, hospitals, imaging centers, and bioskills labs. In April 2023, OXOS Medical was acquired by an undisclosed company.
Key customers and partnerships
OXOS Medical has established notable partnerships and customer relationships across various industries and sectors. The company has collaborated with the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). Through this partnership, OXOS Medical works closely with radiologist Dr. Beth Ripley, the Deputy Chief of the VA's Office of healthcare Innovation and Learning, to increase access to radiographic care for US veterans by deploying OXOS solutions in multiple care settings.

From counting steps to saving lives and beyond

Wearable Tech

Avegant is a venture-backed technology company specializing in next-generation display technology to enable augmented reality (AR) experiences. They develop light engines and optical solutions that integrate with head-mounted displays and smart glasses for an immersive AR experience. Avegant's AG-30L2 is the smallest 30° LCoS light engine in production, enabling compact form factors for AR glasses.
In January 2024, Avegant announced its breakthrough Spotlight display technology, an adaptive LED illumination architecture that achieves up to 90% illumination power savings and 10x local contrast compared to conventional LCoS displays. Spotlight is integrated with Avegant's existing light engines, allowing for efficient, full-color, high-resolution, polarized output.
Avegant collaborates with industry leaders like Applied Materials, Lumileds, Qualcomm, and Vuzix to develop advanced AR technologies. Their AG-30L2 light engine and Applied Materials' waveguides are being optimized for Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 platform to create lightweight AI smart glasses with brilliant displays. Additionally, Avegant partnered with Vuzix to develop optimized waveguide optical modules for future AI-enabled smart glasses, showcasing prototypes at Augmented World Expo 2024.

ProGlove is a technology company that develops wearable barcode scanners and industry analytics software solutions for supply chain operations. Their flagship products include the MARK series of wearable scanners and the Insight software platform. The MARK scanners feature innovative designs, allowing workers to scan barcodes hands-free by wearing the scanners on the back of their hands. This ergonomic approach enhances productivity, accuracy, and worker safety across various industries such as manufacturing, logistics, retail, and ecommerce.
ProGlove's scanners leverage advanced technologies like multi-range scanning and multi-code processing capabilities. They are designed to be lightweight, durable, and offer long battery life, catering to the demanding requirements of industrial environments. The company's Insight software platform complements the hardware by providing real-time analytics, process optimization insights, and workflow guidance to improve operational efficiency and worker guidance.
In addition to their core products, ProGlove has recently introduced LEO, a lightweight and cost-effective scanner, and the Hand Strap, a one-size-fits-all wearable, making their solutions accessible to small and medium-sized businesses. The company has also implemented features like Narrative Insights, which automates updates on key performance indicators, and firmware upgrades to extend battery life.
ProGlove has experienced substantial growth since its founding in 2014, garnering recognition as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. With a global presence and offices in Munich, Chicago, and Belgrade, the company serves renowned clients across various industries, including Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, BMW, DHL, XPO Logistics, and Gap.

OrCam Technologies is a global leader in personal, AI-driven assistive technology innovations. Their flagship product, OrCam MyEye, is a wearable device that assists individuals with visual impairments by providing instant text reading, facial recognition, product identification, and dynamic interactions. Launched in 2015, OrCam MyEye utilizes cutting-edge artificial intelligence, computer vision, and machine learning to foster independence for people who are blind, visually impaired, or experience reading challenges.
In November 2023, OrCam unveiled the OrCam Read 3, a groundbreaking, all-in-one solution for individuals with low vision, visual impairments, and reading difficulties. This versatile device functions as a handheld reading companion, a next-generation magnifier, and a stationary reader. With features like voice commands, gesture control, and AI-powered text summarization, the OrCam Read three redefines how users interact with printed and digital text.
Complementing their flagship products, OrCam introduced OrCam Hear in January 2024. This innovative hearing device employs voice biometrics to isolate and amplify specific speakers' voices while removing background noise, enabling hearing aid users to engage in conversations in noisy environments effectively.
Since its inception in 2010, OrCam has received numerous accolades, including TIME Magazine's Best Inventions of the Year 2021, Red Herring 100, CES Innovation Awards, and recognition from the National Industries for the Blind (NIB) for outstanding contributions to employment opportunities for individuals who are blind.

A decentralized version of the web powered by the blockchain

Web3 Ecosystem

Based in Israel, StarkWare Industries provides infrastructure solutions that address the scalability issues of the Ethereum blockchain via two platforms–StarkEx and StarkNet. These platforms use STARK (Scalable Transparent Arguments of Knowledge) proof technology and support a number of use cases including NFT minting, contract trading, automated market making, spot trading, payments, and DeFi pooling.StarkEx is a customizable app-specific scaling engine run on a cloud. It is a compression service that bundles and validates transactions with a cryptographic computation, which is sent in a STARK proof to the Ethereum blockchain for finality.StarkNet, launched in February 2022, is a permissionless decentralized ZK-rollup solution that works on top of the Ethereum blockchain. It allows developers to scale dApps by bundling transactions and producing STARK proofs off-chain and verifying the proofs on-chain in Ethereum. The company also reported that StarkEx dApps can migrate to StarkNet if developers choose to.Key customers and partnershipsThe company partnered with Herodotus to launch <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26480">Cairo Verifier </a>, a system that enables the verification of cryptographic proofs on its layer-2 network, StarkNet. Additionally, they collaborated to develop <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29348">Integrity Verifier </a>, a tool that will allow StarkNet to support layer-3 app chains, thereby enhancing its scalability and reducing transaction costs. StarkWare also partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/786111">Polygon </a>to develop and implement a new cryptographic proof system called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26924">Circle STARKs </a>, aimed at improving the rollup proving process on Ethereum.Funding and financialsStarkWare Industries raised USD 100 million in Series D funding in May 2022, co-led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue, at a valuation of USD 8 billion. The company aimed to utilize the fresh funds for product and business development, engineering, and to grow its ecosystem.

Based in Canada, StramingFast offers solutions to process and index blockchain data through two products: Firehose and Substreams. Firehose provides a files-based and streaming-first approach to processing blockchain data. It extracts data from blockchain nodes and processes it and then streams it to consumers of nodes running Firehose-enabled blockchain client software. Substreams is a blockchain indexing technology developed for the Graph Network that uses parallelization and a streaming-first approach.Funding and financialsIn June 2021, StreamingFast received a USD 60 million grant from The Graph Foundation to join the latter’s ecosystem as a core developer.

Based in Hong-Kong, Animoca Brands is a developer and publisher of blockchain-based games and traditional games based on both in-house and licensed intellectual property. It also operates as a venture capital company. Animoca’s blockchain games include REVV Motorsport, Phantom Galaxies, and Benji Bananas, which incorporate NFTs and other blockchain technologies.Animoca has also acquired multiple companies in the Web3 space. Key acquisitions include companies such as Pixowl (developer of The Sandbox metaverse) in August 2018 for USD 4.9 million, Quidd (NFT marketplace) in December 2020 for USD 8 million, Lympo (blockchain-based fitness company) in December 2020 for USD 1.4 million, and Grease Monkey Games (game studio) in February 2022, among others. Animoca Brands has also invested in more than 340 companies, including those developing Web3 applications such as blockchain game developer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/816035">Sky Mavis</a> and NFT marketplace <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/613285">OpenSea</a>.Moreover, the company had plans to go <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30905">public</a> in 2025 in a crypto-friendly region such as&nbsp; Hong Kong or the Middle East.Key customers and partnershipsThe company entered into a strategic partnership with Saudi’s NEOM Investment Fund in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23240">October 2023</a>. Through the partnership, it was to leverage its expertise, subsidiaries, partners, and investment portfolio and work closely with the NEOM Investment Fund to establish a Web3 hub inside NEOM to drive Web3 initiatives and innovation in the region and shape the future of digital property rights and the open metaverse.Moreover, Animoca Brands formed partnerships to boost its Mocaverse project, including with Ubisoft’s <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24288">Strategic Innovation Lab</a>. It also partnered with AWS and Polygon Labs partner to launch <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24059">MoonRealm Express Accelerator</a>, to accelerate progress in fields such as decentralized identity, social finance, and gaming finance, by offering support for growth, including Web3 masterclasses, builder-centric hackathons, and incubation of projects. Animoca also collaborated with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26122">Lightlink</a>, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 protocol, to provide gasless transactions for Web3 games.

Next-gen Displays

Nanosys is a leading innovator and supplier of quantum dot technology for advanced displays. Founded in 2001, the company develops and manufactures quantum dots - tiny semiconductor crystals that emit light when stimulated. Nanosys' quantum dots are used to enhance the color and brightness of LCD, LED, and OLED displays in products like televisions, monitors, and tablets. The company's flagship technology is its Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF), which contains red and green quantum dots that convert blue LED backlighting into pure white light, resulting in displays with more vibrant colors and higher brightness. As of 2021, Nanosys had shipped over 50 million units of quantum dot products. In addition to QDEF, Nanosys is developing next-generation technologies like electroluminescent quantum dots for NanoLED displays. In September 2023, Nanosys' quantum dot business was acquired by advanced materials manufacturer Shoei Chemical, though Nanosys continues to operate as a brand under Shoei.
Key customers and partnerships
Nanosys' quantum dot technology has been adopted by nine out of the top ten TV manufacturers globally. The company has partnered with 3 million and LMS Global to incorporate its quantum dots into display films. Nanosys announced that Hisense, TCL, Vizio and other major consumer electronics brands would be launching new display products using its xQDEF quantum dot technology. Nanosys has also collaborated with Bready Advanced Materials to produce air-stable, barrier-free quantum dot film components for displays.

Aledia, a French microLED developer, specializes in 3D nanowire LED technology. The company's core offering is based on GaN nanowires fabricated on large-area silicon wafers, initially implemented on 200mm wafers with plans to evolve toward 300mm wafers for high-volume production. Aledia's technology aims to shrink the cost per chip compared to conventional 2D LED technology. The company has developed two nanowire LED platforms. The first, which is being optimized for volume manufacturing, uses blue-emitting GaN nanowires on 8" silicon wafers with color conversion for green and red colors. This platform has demonstrated one of the smallest microLEDs (1.2µm in diameter) with up to 30% Wall Plug Efficiency (WPE). Aledia's second platform, still in R&D, allows direct emission in RGB with a controlled emission angle, targeting 6500ppi single-chip RGB arrays for AR applications. In December 2020, Aledia announced the production of its first nanowire microLED chips on 300mm silicon wafers at the CEA-Leti pilot line. The company's first product is a 160µm RGB single-chip LED for fine pitch videowalls and luxury TVs. Aledia plans to start LED production in its new facility by 2022, where it will also finalize its microdisplay production process. The company holds over 250 patent families related to its technology.

Avegant is a technology company specializing in developing advanced display solutions for augmented reality (AR). The company's primary focus is on creating innovative light engines and display technologies that enable compact, efficient, and high-performance AR experiences. Avegant's flagship product, the AG-30L2, is described as the smallest 30° LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) light engine in the market, designed to facilitate the development of glasses-like AR devices with true form factors.
In January 2024, Avegant introduced its breakthrough Spotlight display technology, which is the world's first adaptive LED illumination architecture for LCoS. This technology dynamically illuminates regions of an LCoS microdisplay, resulting in up to 90% illumination power savings and a 10x improvement in local contrast compared to conventional LCoS displays. Spotlight retains the advantages of small, mature light engines while delivering efficient, full-color, high-resolution, and polarized output.
Avegant's technology portfolio also includes light field display solutions, which aim to make head-mounted displays function more like human eyes. These displays create a 3D representation of images by stacking multiple focal planes, allowing for more natural focus and depth perception in AR experiences.
The company collaborates with industry leaders such as Applied Materials, Inc. and Lumileds to advance AR technologies. Avegant's solutions are designed to address key challenges in the AR industry, including power efficiency, contrast, and form factor, which are crucial for the development of consumer-ready AR smart glasses.
Key customers and partnerships
Avegant has established strategic partnerships with several prominent technology companies. In February 2024, Avegant announced a collaboration with Qualcomm and Applied Materials to deliver an AI Smart Glass Design powered by Snapdragon AR1. This partnership aims to bring together industry-leading AR technology providers to unlock a new wave of AR glass innovation. The collaboration integrates Avegant's AG-30L2 light engine with Applied Materials' high-efficiency waveguides and Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 Platform.
Additionally, Avegant works closely with Lumileds, leveraging their LED architecture to support the power-saving capabilities of the Spotlight display technology. The company also collaborates with Applied Materials on system-level co-optimization, combining Avegant's display advancements with Applied Materials' waveguide solutions to enhance consumer AR experiences.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Common Sense Machines (CSM) focuses on translating visual inputs into 3D simulations. The primary offering from CSM is an AI platform named "Cube," which is capable of transforming any input into game engine-ready 3D assets, facilitating the creation of 3D content. The platform allows users to upload 2D images and convert them into fully immersive 3D images. A key differentiator for CSM is its ability to turn photos and videos into 3D worlds, bridging the gap between 2D and 3D content creation​​.

Inworld is a no-code developer platform that enables the creation of AI characters for games, virtual worlds, metaverse, and brand experiences. The company’s characters are intended to mimic the personalities, memories, and behaviors of real humans, enabling more immersive interactions with non-player characters (NPCs) and computer-controlled inhabitants of virtual worlds. Inworld focuses on the personalities or “brains” of these AI characters as it aims to be compatible with any character models or visuals, integrating with various game engines to generate avatars. Inworld’s AI characters are suitable for several use cases, including:1) Gaming: For more immersive non-player characters, capable of unscripted interaction, contextual awareness, and human emotion2) Brands: To power virtual brand ambassadors, mascots, chatbots, and customer service assistants, allowing more engaging interactions with customers3) Training: Versatile AI teachers with customizable knowledge bases and a variety of teaching stylesUsers can input the character’s desired personality, knowledge, and behavior as text fields. Inworld also allows the fine-tuning of all its AI characters to ensure they remain on-brand and within the context of a game or virtual world, providing safety measures such as profanity, hate speech, and sexual content filters. The AI characters are powered by 20 distinct machine-learning models, including OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model (LLM) for speech content, alongside multimodal models, including an AI character engine and “contextual mesh” for character behavior, personality, expressions, gestures, and voice synthesis. In May 2024, it launched Inworld Voice, a new service that offers AI-generated, expressive voices designed primarily for use in video games, audiobooks, and voice assistants. It offers several features, including latency, rhythm, intonation, pitch variation, and pausing. In July 2024, the company introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32111">multilingual</a> support for Mandarin (simplified Chinese), Japanese, and Korean, allowing game creators to localize their games.The company was a part of the 2022 Disney Accelerator, Disney’s startup incubator.Key customers and partnershipsIn November 2023, Mictrosoft’s Xbox <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23541">partnered</a> with Inworld AI to develop AI dialogue and narrative tools for video games. In September 2022, the company partnered with Unity Verified, an integrated software solution, to make its solutions available in the Unity asset store after being verified as a game developer tool.In June 2024, Inworld partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30009">NVIDIA</a> to develop Covert Protocol, an application aimed at facilitating advanced social simulation capabilities within gaming environments.

AI21 is an Israel-based AI research lab developing large language models (LLMs). The firm also builds generative AI applications based on its LLMs, marketing them to businesses and consumers. Its consumer tool is “Wordtune,” a writing companion that offers paraphrasing, quality improvement, summarization, grammar reviews, and text segmentation. In August 2023, the company launched an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21417">upgraded version</a> of Wordtune, transforming the tool from a consumer-oriented tool into a comprehensive platform offering various features for GenAI assistance in reading, writing, and knowledge control and catering to professional users. Its features include1) Rewrite: A tool to paraphrase emails, articles, messages, and other written content2) Read and Summarize: A tool to summarize text and videos, including academic papers, YouTube videos, and magazine articles3) AI Writing: A tool that allows users to create and edit content for HR, marketing, other business tasks, as well as for personal use4) Grammar Checker: A tool to check grammar and correct spellings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, AI21’s Wordtune customers included millions of professionals from companies like Nike, Walmart, ebay, Fujifilm, Zoom, Google, Doordash, Airbnb, Medtronic, Primis, Adidas, NICE, Samsung, and Wix; over 350 companies have implemented Wordtune for their employees.Funding and financialsIn August 2023, AI21 Labs raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21424">USD 155 million</a> in a Series C funding round. Investors included Walden Catalyst, Pitango, SCB10X, b2venture, Samsung Next, and Amnon Shashua, the founder of Intel-owned Mobileye and a co-founder of AI21 Labs. Notable participants also included Google and NVIDIA. The funds were expected to be used to accelerate the growth of its text-based generative AI services for enterprises. In November 2023, the company announced an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24240">extension</a> of USD 53 million to this round, led by Intel Capital and Comcast Ventures. With the new funds, AI21 planned to promote its proprietary outlook of making AI purposes more specific, challenging the conventional "one size fits all" approach.

Using data and automation to achieve 24/7 production.

Smart Factory

<div>
 
 Based in India, Happiest Minds offers Internet of Things (IoT) solutions targeting various industries. Its IoT-based manufacturing solutions include digital strategy assessment to develop long-term roadmaps, digitizing product designs, real-time asset and operations monitoring through sensors and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, predictive maintenance and scheduling, and digitization of product inspection workflows. Happiest Minds&rsquo; AI-based anomaly detection, offered as a plug-and-play solution, is capable of learning with time. The company has operations in India, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, the UAE, and the Netherlands.
 
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Based in China, Geek+ develops AI-based advanced robotics solutions, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and related software targeting manufacturing and logistics operations. Geek+ robotic solutions include smart forklift robots (the F Series), AMRs (the M Series), smart sorting robots (the S Series), smart goods-to-person picking robots (the P Series), integrated storage and picking solutions (the X Series), smart tote-to-person picking robots (the RS Series), and collaborative picking robots (the A series).&nbsp;The company also offers several software solutions for smart manufacturing, including: 1) Robot Management System (RMS)ーa scheduling and task management platform that helps with activities like path planning, traffic management, and task allocation supporting both local and cloud deployments, 2) Intelligent Warehouse Execution System (WES)ーa platform that links factories and warehouses integrating picking, moving, sorting, and forklifting systems, 3) Data Platform (DP)ーa data analytics platform that stores and analyzes data generated by RMS, WES, and the robots to generate visual reports, facilitate simulation, and business intelligence analysis, and 4) Simulation Platform (SP)—a simulation platform for robot systems.The robots are offered on a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) basis, and software is offered as application programming interfaces (API) and software development kits (SDK).&nbsp;As of August 2024, Geek+ operated in over 40 countries with offices in the US, Germany, the UK, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Geek+ generated USD 150 million in revenue in 2021.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, Geek+ served over 1,000 companies, including Siemens, Dell, Yanfeng, Konica Minolta, and Inlaylink, which used the technology for manufacturing operations.&nbsp;The company entered several partnerships to expand its market presence, including Bosch Rexroth (March 2022) and Systemex Automation (July 2022) to strengthen its presence in North America, Korber Supply Chain to expand its presence in South America (July 2022), and Ferag APAC to expand its Asia-Pacific market <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27661">(March 2024).</a>

Distributed workforces require new solutions for office operations, HR, payment, and more.

Remote Work Infrastructure

<div>
 
 Centrical is an employee engagement platform which offers a gamut of employee-centric AI-backed tools, including&nbsp; personalized microlearning, continuous feedback, real-time performance management (KPI visibility) advanced gamification (rewarding employees with points, badges and redeemable coins for tasks completed), and employee engagement (pulse checks and micro-surveys). The company also offers AI-backed coaching through its MegAI chatbot, capable of improving employee knowledge retention on tasks and suggesting recommendations for improvement.
 
 
 The company generates revenue via subscriptions on a per-user basis.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of March 2021, the platform has 100,000 users across its 130 customers. Notable enterprises using the platform included Microsoft, Webhelp and SwissLife.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2021, the company raised USD 32 million in a funding round led by Intel Capital and the company&rsquo;s largest shareholder, JVP. Funds were earmarked to accelerate market engagement, enter new markets, and product development in the form of creating additional solutions for remote or hybrid teams. 
 
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Workboard offers objective and key results (OKR) software for large enterprises and startups to help align and track goals and outcomes across divisions. The company provides Trello-like Kanban boards for organizing tasks, due dates, and statuses.&nbsp; Workboard also offers GenAI-backed tools (launched in May 2023) to suggest key results based on OKRs, setting relationships between workstreams, publishing progress summaries and summarizing team ideas. The platform is also deeply integrated with Microsoft Teams with options to automate status updates, celebrate weekly results, automatically calculate progress toward targets and implement calendar agendas, among other features. Further, the platform integrates with Azure DevOps (auto updating the team’s key results) and Office 365 (create smart meeting agendas), alongside other third party applications (Jira, Slack, etc). Other services offered include OKR coaching including relevant courses and certifications and management programs.Key customers and partnershipsWorkboard stated that it had ‘hundreds’ of clients (May 2021), across a range of industries, notably including Comcast, Microsoft, Cisco and Workday, among others.Funding and financialsIn May 2021, WorkBoard raised USD 75 million in Series D funding led by SoftBank group, at a post-money valuation of USD 800 million. The fresh capital will be funneled toward scaling its team to increase its employee base to 400 in 2021 from&nbsp; 250 at the time of the raise. In addition, the platform intends to grow its geographic footprint with planned investments in Asia and Europe. The company has experienced revenue growth of 350% in 2018, 300% in 2019, and around 100% in 2020.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The innovative cost dynamics of serverless computing allow more customers onto the cloud without breaking the bank.

Serverless Computing

Anyscale provides a platform supporting the development of apps for serverless infrastructure. It primarily caters to developing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) apps which are scalable and distributed. Anyscale’s “Ray 1.0” open source project offers a serverless compute API with an ecosystem of libraries, enabling user apps to scale up and down based on demand, serverlessly.In August 2022, the company launched the second iteration of its “Ray” platform which offers a serverless compute API with an ecosystem of libraries that enables users to scale their apps up and down based on demand serverlessly. The new offering includes features such as 1) Ray AI runtime, which adds a unified runtime layer for ML applications 2) KubeRay, a toolkit for managing the execution of apps on Kubernetes and 3) new integrations with ML tools such as Weights &amp; Biases and Hugging Face.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2024, Anyscale served more than 10,000 organizations globally. Notable customers include Uber, LinkedIn, Shopify, Amazon, and Visa.The company entered a partnership with NVIDIA in September 2023 to enhance the performance and efficiency of LLM development on Ray and the Anyscale Platform.

RunPod offers a cloud computing platform that provides pay-per-second serverless GPU computing for AI and machine learning applications. Users can deploy container-based GPU instances for AI inference and model training using both public and private repositories. RunPod provides a choice between deploying via T3/T4 data centers or individual compute providers on a secure peer-to-peer system.Furthermore, the platform offers fully managed AI endpoints that are designed for a number of GenAI applications such as Dreambooth, Stable Diffusion, and Whisper. Users can automate workflows and manage compute jobs via a command line interface/GraphQL API and access multiple points for coding, optimizing, and running AI/ML workloads.

Generating, collecting, and analyzing enterprise data will never be the same.

Edge Computing

Syntiant offers edge-focused deep learning solutions via a combination of specialized processor architecture, an edge-optimized data platform, and a training pipeline for always-on edge AI applications. Syntiant’s “Neural Decision” neural network processors (NDPs) combine low power with high performance to support edge AI applications across a wide range of consumer and industrial use cases, such as earbuds, wearables, smartphones, smart speakers, laptops, automobiles, and internet-of-things (IoT).The company claims that its NDPs typically offer more than 100x efficiency improvement while providing a greater than 10x increase in throughput compared to other low-power MCU-based solutions. As of March 2022, the company reported that it had over 50 customer engagements.Key customers and partnershipsAs of March 2022, the company reported that it had over 50 customer engagements in smart electronic devices, automobiles, and IoT.Syntiant has partnered with several companies to launch industry-focused solutions. It partnered with Renesas Electronics to develop a voice-controlled multimodal solution for image processing in vision AI-based IoT and edge systems (July 2021), with CeramicSpeed to develop low-power autonomous sensors for Industrial IoT applications (January 2022) and with Eatron Technologies to deliver an AI-Ready battery management system (November 2022). Syntiant has also partnered with Tekro to grow its sales in South Korea (August 2021) .Funding and financialsIn March 2022, Syntiant <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9397">raised USD 55 million in new funding </a>to invest in enhancing software capabilities and accelerating deployment of the company’s third-generation Syntiant Core 3 architecture (which was expected to launch in 2023).

Videon is an edge computing company developing edge solutions for the live video streaming market.Formerly a DVD, set-top-box, and inflight entertainment technology company, Videon currently offers unified edge computing video-centric solutions including an on-chip video processing solution for ultra-low latency, high-resolution, and high-performance video streaming. It minimizes the complexity of transmitting live video from a source to an audience by enhancing processors (such as Qualcomm Snapdragon chips) to process the videos at the source itself.Videon specializes in both hardware and software solutions for live video streaming, offering devices like LiveEdge® Node and software with AI capabilities, enhancing live broadcasts and interactive streams. Its technology focuses on efficiency and adaptability, incorporating Docker for easy updates and supporting a wide range of video production needs​​.Key Customers and partnershipsThe company caters to a range of use cases for efficient video processing, such as live sports, TV news broadcasts, betting, auctions, emergency services, and drones, among others. As of June 2021, Videon’s technology was used in 19 countries, and the company claims its customers included major broadcasters and top sports leagues. Videon also has a partner ecosystem that includes leading global tech companies such as Akamai and AWS.Videon's network of technology partners includes prominent CDNs like Red5, CenturyLink, Scalstrm, Limelight Networks, Lumen, and Fastly. Various streaming platform partners integrate Videonsolutions, including YouTube, NGINX, MUX Video, Facebook, LiveX, and JW Player.In August 2023, Videon partnered with Zixi, the industry leader for enabling cost-efficient and highly scalable live broadcast-quality video, to integrate Zixi's technology into Videon's LiveEdge ecosystem, enabling the seamless delivery of broadcast-quality video with low latency over any IP network.Funding and financialsIn February 2022, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8200">Videon raised USD 9 million</a> in funding to invest in product development and innovation.

Additive manufacturing makes objects by systematically adding material via a CAD program

Additive Manufacturing

<div>
 
 Fabric8Labs develops 3D printer systems based on its proprietary electrochemical additive manufacturing (ECAM) technology, which uses water-based feedstock containing dissolved metal ions to build at the atomic level. These materials can be directly printed onto temperature-sensitive substrates like printed circuit boards (PCBs) and silicon. This enables micron-scale feature resolution, complex internal features, printing from high-purity materials like pure copper, and enabling scalability for mass manufacturing. This also makes Fabric8Labs&rsquo; solutions suitable for electronics, medical devices, communications systems, and semiconductor manufacturing.
 
 
 The company claims that its ECAM technology helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 90% compared with alternative additive technologies and traditional manufacturing.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In February 2023, Fabric8Labs 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16205?industryIds=71">
 raised USD 50 million
 </a>
 in Series B funding to scale the ECAM technology and to establish a pilot production facility in San Diego, which was reported to potentially increase the company&rsquo;s headcount by 3x over the following 12 to 18 months.
 
</div>

Based in the UK, AMFG offers a manufacturing execution system (MES) and workflow automation software for additive manufacturing (AM). Some of the use cases include rapid prototyping, spare parts, and serial production targeting automotive, industrial goods, consumer goods, and aerospace applications. The software includes several product modules including order management to automate and standardize order management workflows, centralized ordering platform, machine connectivity, post-processing and quality management, creating and managing digital inventory for AM applications, production planning, analytics, and reporting. AMFG operated in 30+ countries as of January 2024.Key customers and partnershipsAMFG has partnered with several companies to optimize and standardize AM workflow including Sigma Labs (March 2022) and EOS (November 2019). In September 2021, the company partnered with AM company Stratasys’ GrabCAD software partner program to integrate AMFG’s software with Stratasys FDM systems and GrabCAD software. In December 2020, AMFG partnered with HP to enable data streaming and connectivity for HP Multi Jet Fusion systems through AMFG’s software.In November 2023, AMFG partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24215">Dyndrite </a>to use its automated nesting system in AMFG's software for an optimized pre-production process.Funding and financialsIn November 2022, AMFG raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14799">USD 8.5 million </a>led by Intel Capital to scale the company’s AM processes and continue to expand business reach.

Proactive security solutions for the physical world

Smart Security Tech

Prism Skylabs offered a cloud-based visual merchandising and business intelligence solution for retailers. Their technology transformed video cameras into tools that provided insights into customer behavior, store performance, and merchandising effectiveness. Some key features included real-time and enhanced images viewable on mobile devices, powerful analytics tracking metrics like footpaths, dwell times, and product interactions, and cloud storage for data and visuals.
Prism Skylabs' platform enabled remote auditing, management, and optimization of brick-and-mortar stores. Retailers could conduct A/B testing of store designs, audit brand and merchandise displays remotely, and gain a comprehensive understanding of customer traffic patterns and product engagement. The solution condensed in-store activities into visual summaries and reports, providing instant visibility into any moment or period.
In August 2013, Prism Skylabs launched an integration with Axis Communications' network cameras, embedding their software directly on the camera hardware for a unified solution. This partnership allowed for seamless deployment of Prism Skylabs' capabilities in retail environments.
Key customers and partnerships
In August 2013, Rachel Shechtman, Founder of the retail concept STORY, highlighted the value Prism Skylabs provided in managing her business's unique needs and continuously improving the customer experience based on data-driven insights.
The 2013 integration with Axis Communications enabled Prism Skylabs' software to run natively on Axis's camera hardware, combining video analytics and business intelligence features with high-resolution surveillance cameras in a bundled offering for retailers.

ZeroEyes delivers an AI-based gun detection video analytics platform that integrates into existing security cameras. It identifies firearms and instantly shares images with the ZeroEyes Operations Center (ZOC), staffed by trained military and law enforcement veterans. If they validate the threat, alerts with visual details, gun type, and location are dispatched to first responders within 3-5 seconds. ZeroEyes' platform is recognized by the US Department of Homeland Security as a promising anti-terrorism technology and received the SAFETY Act Designation.
Founded by Navy SEALs and elite technologists in 2018 after the Parkland shooting, ZeroEyes aims to proactively mitigate gun-related violence. Its software analyzes over 3 billion images daily from security feeds and has protected thousands of buildings across 42 states for education, commercial, transit, and government clients as of June 2024. The company secured over USD 53 million in Series B funding in June 2024 to accelerate growth, R&D, and partnerships.
In 2023, ZeroEyes reported 300% year-over-year revenue growth, expanding through strategic partnerships and certifications. It launched a federal subsidiary, ZE Government Solutions, to cater to national security needs. Additionally, ZeroEyes established a Gun Violence Research Center in Q3 2023 to analyze incidents and inform safety decisions.
Key customers and partnerships
ZeroEyes' client base spans educational institutions, commercial entities, houses of worship, healthcare facilities, manufacturing plants, corporate campuses, retail stores, and government agencies, including the US Department of Defense.
It has partnered with entities like SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority), United Safety & Survivability Corporation, Asylon Robotics, Critical Response Group, and law enforcement agencies across multiple states for coordinated emergency response and security enhancements.
ZeroEyes has also collaborated with purchasing cooperatives like National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA) and TIPS US to streamline procurement for public sector organizations.

Powering digital transformation for businesses

Low-code Platforms

WSO2 is a leading provider of digital transformation technologies, offering a comprehensive suite of products for API management, integration, and identity and access management (IAM). Founded in 2005 in Sri Lanka, the company has since expanded globally, with offices across the US, UK, Brazil, Germany, Australia, United Arab Emirates, and India. WSO2's product portfolio includes the WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, WSO2 API Manager, WSO2 Identity Server, WSO2 Stream Processor, and Ballerina programming language. These solutions enable enterprises to drive their digital transformation rapidly, efficiently, and securely.
The company's flagship products cater to various aspects of digital transformation. The WSO2 API Manager is an open-source enterprise-grade solution for full lifecycle API management, while the WSO2 Enterprise Integrator serves as a powerful integration engine with low-code graphical design capabilities. WSO2 Identity Server provides modern identity and access management functionalities for customer-facing applications and workforce IAM requirements. WSO2 reported serving over 800 customers in more than 90 countries, including government agencies and global leaders in financial services, communications, healthcare, and technology. The company achieved 30% year-over-year growth in 2022, with double-digit growth in annual recurring revenue across its business units.
Key customers and partnerships
WSO2's customer base spans various industries, including banking and finance, ecommerce and retail, education, energy, IT and research, government, healthcare, telecom and communications, transportation, and travel and leisure. Notable clients include AT&T, Honda, and Axa. The company's products have been adopted by some of the world's largest corporations, universities, and governments. In 2010, eBay chose WSO2 software for its operations, handling more than a billion transactions daily by 2011. WSO2 had expanded its partner network to over 200 across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific, further strengthening its global presence and reach in the digital transformation market.

Zenity is a Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity company founded in 2021 that provides a security governance platform for low-code/no-code applications and enterprise AI copilots. The company's platform aims to help organizations secure and govern the growing use of low-code/no-code development tools and AI assistants within enterprises. Zenity's solution connects to various low-code/no-code platforms and continuously assesses the security state of applications and components built using these tools. It provides capabilities such as cross-platform inventory, business logic vulnerability discovery, suspicious activity detection, remediation guidance, and automated policy enforcement. Key features of Zenity's platform include application security posture management, AI security posture management, vulnerability management, software composition analysis, and secrets scanning. The company's technology is designed to address security risks in low-code/no-code applications like privilege escalation, data leakage, insecure authentication, misconfigurations, and oversharing. Zenity's platform is agent-less and compliant with SOC 2 Type two and GDPR standards.
Key customers and partnerships
Zenity works with several Fortune 500 enterprises to help them understand and secure applications built by business users across their low-code and AI copilot environments. In July 2024, the company received a strategic investment from M12, Microsoft's venture fund, which will allow Zenity to work closely with Microsoft on a joint go-to-market strategy to enhance security for mutual customers. Zenity has also partnered with large enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, to implement its security governance solution.

Automation in clinical diagnostics to improve speed and accuracy in patient diagnosis and treatment.

Clinical Decision Support Systems

SaVia Health provides a versatile, no-code software tool that allows clinicians to rapidly create and modify unified, integrated processes for any use case within electronic medical records (EMRs). This tool transforms paper-based care processes into digital workflows, embedding them directly into the EMR systems. By standardizing care along best practice guidelines, SaVia Health's technology helps avoid mistakes and achieve better patient outcomes.
The software originated within Intermountain healthcare in the early 2010s, where it was developed over seven years by a team led by David Edwards, SaVia Health's current Chief Technology Officer. After gaining significant traction and success within Intermountain healthcare, the decision was made to spin it out as an independent company, SaVia Health, in 2022.
SaVia Health's key product offering provides real-time clinical decision support to clinicians at the point of care, guiding them on the optimal steps to take for various conditions and use cases. This allows for seamless integration of the latest technologies and processes into existing clinical workflows. In December 2022, SaVia Health raised an USD 8.5 million seed funding round led by Intel Capital to further develop its self-authoring platform, expand its library of off-the-shelf applications, and drive sales efforts.

MDI Health is an AI-powered platform that automates the optimization of personalized medication treatment at scale. The company was founded in 2019 to combat the increasing number of deaths and costs associated with adverse drug events. MDI Health's end-to-end medication treatment platform empowers clinicians to provide comprehensive medication reviews in minutes instead of hours. The solution analyzes thousands of influencing factors to identify medication-related risks and provides recommendations to mitigate such risks in real-time. It ensures patients have the exact medications they need by checking for personalized medication-related risk events. MDI Health's technology enables healthcare organizations to prevent drug-related medical problems, which is the fourth leading cause of death in the US, with over 270,000 deaths each year as of 2023. The company received a SOC two Type II certification in 2021, assuring partners and patients that it manages their data with the highest standards of security and compliance.

Providing AI-driven market intelligence and workflow automation to give firms an edge

Capital Markets Tech

R3 is a leading provider of enterprise blockchain technology and services, focused on driving digital transformation in regulated industries such as financial services. Its flagship product, Corda, is an open-source, permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform built from the ground up to meet the stringent requirements of regulated markets.
Corda facilitates secure and confidential peer-to-peer transactions, enabling the tokenization of assets and the automation of workflows across different organizations. It is designed to be scalable, handling tens of thousands of transactions daily, and interoperable with other DLT platforms like Ethereum, bridging the gap between traditional finance and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Key applications of Corda encompass digital bonds, tokenized assets (e.g., gold), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), trade finance, payments, settlements, and reconciliations. As of 2023, Corda powers platforms like the SIX Swiss Exchange's digital asset exchange SDX, Spunta Banca (an interbank reconciliation system used by over 90% of Italian banks), and Wells Fargo's digital cash program for interbank transfers.
Key customers and partnerships
R3 boasts an extensive ecosystem comprising leading financial institutions, technology firms, regulators, and global systems integrators (GSIs) like Accenture, Deloitte, and IBM. Notable clients include HSBC, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Euroclear, Nasdaq, Allianz, Chubb, and the Italian Banking Association.
R3 actively collaborates with industry bodies like ISDA, Hyperledger Foundation, and GBBC, driving DLT standards. It has partnered with central banks worldwide, including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Reserve Bank of Australia, and Bank Negara Malaysia, to explore CBDCs and cross-border settlements using Corda.

Axoni is a New York-based technology firm that specializes in developing data synchronization solutions and financial market infrastructure for the global capital markets. Founded in 2017 by a team of distributed systems and financial markets veterans, the company offers its proprietary AxCore software that synchronizes data across enterprises. AxCore addresses decades-old coordination problems between large companies by guaranteeing real-time and accurate replication of data, reducing cost, risk, and errors when moving trade data and other critical information between financial institutions.
AxCore facilitates cleared stock loan transactions at OCC (Options Clearing Corporation), global credit derivatives in partnership with The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a global communications platform for primary issuance of corporate bonds in partnership with DirectBooks, global equity swaps in collaboration with a consortium of leading market participants, and a global derivatives platform scheduled for launch in 2023.
Key customers and partnerships
Since its founding in 2017, Axoni's client base has grown to include many of the world's leading market infrastructure companies, asset managers, hedge funds, and global banks in the US, Europe, and Asia. The company has established strategic partnerships with organizations like DTCC, Fidelity, and SBI Group, demonstrating the trust of industry incumbents. Axoni has also won competitive RFPs and pilots against other blockchain providers, showcasing its proven solutions.

Clean, congestion-free air travel gets liftoff

Passenger eVTOL Aircraft

<div>
 
 California-based Joby Aviation is focused on developing and commercializing eVTOL aircraft, designed to provide a safe, quiet, and environmentally friendly transportation option for urban areas. The company claims its eVTOL aircraft are designed to be 100x quieter and use 5x less energy than traditional helicopters and are capable of flying at speeds of up to 200 miles per hour and can travel up to 150 miles on a single charge. The company has also developed a charging infrastructure that enables its aircraft to be charged in less than an hour. Joby Aviation had plans to manufacture, own, and operate its own air taxi service beginning in 2024 with the Department of Defense followed by commercial passenger operations in 2025. As of May 2023, the company was developing a manufacturing facility in Marina, CA with offices and workshops in Santa Cruz, San Carlos, Washington, D.C., and Munich, Germany. In March 2024, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27288">
 acquired
 </a>
 a manufacturing facility in Dayton, Ohio to begin the production of aircraft parts later in 2024.&nbsp;
 
 
 Joby Aviation has achieved significant milestones in developing its eVTOL aircraft, with more than 1,000 test flights, and in 
 <a href="https://yqqqphhcg2hvaaua-test001.pj-initial.net/updates/19754">
 June 2023
 </a>
 , Joby received FAA permit to flight test electric air taxis. In 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/joby-aviation-welcomes-new-75m-investment-from-uber-as-it-acquires-uber-elevate-and-expands-partnership-301188822.html">
 December 2020
 </a>
 , Joby Aviation announced its plans to acquire Uber Elevate, with both parent companies agreeing to integrate their services into each other's apps, allowing seamless integration between ground and air travel for future customers.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Joby Aviation has secured many partnerships, the most high profile being with NASA, beginning in 2012, when the company was selected to collaborate with NASA on several groundbreaking electric flight projects, including the X-57 and LEAPTech. The company also works closely with Toyota (Joby Aviation&rsquo;s largest outside investor as of April 2023) on a regular basis, collaborating on a range of projects, including factory planning and layout, developing manufacturing processes, and designing products that are easy to manufacture. In addition, the company has established strong collaborations and relationships with Delta, Uber, and the US Government to help to de-risk its commercial strategy. In January 2024, Joby Aviation partnered with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25283">
 Clay Lacy
 </a>
 Aviation to set up an electric air taxi charger at the John Wayne Airport (SNA) in Orange County, California. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28864">
 April 2024
 </a>
 , The company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT), the Department of Economic Development (DED), and the Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) of Abu Dhabi to facilitate and scale air taxi services across Abu Dhabi.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Joby Aviation recorded an adjusted EBITDA loss of USD 299 million in 2022, primarily reflecting employee costs associated with the development, certification, and manufacturing of the aircraft. The company's R&amp;D costs of USD 296 million reflected continued certification activities and early manufacturing operations.
 
 
 In August 2021, Joby Aviation was listed on the NYSE (JOBY) through a SPAC deal, with its post-transaction valuation standing at USD 4.5 billion. In October 2022, Delta made an initial post-IPO equity investment of USD 60 million in Joby and committed to investing up to an additional USD 140 million as certain milestones are met. This investment ensures that Delta has an exclusive partnership with Joby for five years in both the US and UK and Joby's eVTOLs will be integrated into the Delta network as part of this partnership. In 
 <a href="https://yqqqphhcg2hvaaua-test001.pj-initial.net/updates/19785">
 June 2023
 </a>
 , Joby received USD 100 million investment from SK Telecom.
 
 
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Volocopter is a German aviation company that designs and produces eVTOL aircraft for passengers and cargo, as well as the physical and digital infrastructure that completes the eVTOL ecosystem. Its lineup of eVTOL aircraft consists of the VoloCity passenger electric air taxi, VoloRegion long-range passenger aircraft, and VoloDrone heavy-lift cargo drone. Volocopter was the first eVTOL company to receive Design Organisation Approval (DOA) from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The company had plans to launch commercial services in Paris by summer 2024 and has been working closely with the EASA to certify its aircraft. In addition, it has collaborated with local partners to define routes, conduct test flights, raise public awareness, and gain more supporters to advance air travel in the lower airspace.
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s first launch product, 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volocity/">
 VoloCity
 </a>
 air taxi, is an all-electric aircraft featuring two seats and 18 rotors that can travel up to 35 km at a maximum airspeed of 110 km/h. The initial flights of the VoloCity air taxi were to be manned by a pilot and one passenger, with the goal of eventually transitioning to a fully autonomous service for two passengers. Its 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/voloregion/">
 VoloRegion
 </a>
 aircraft (known as VoloConnect prior to October 2022) developed by the company is a fixed-wing passenger aircraft with longer-range capabilities. It is equipped with two propulsion fans and six electric motors and rotors. The aircraft's design allows it to carry up to four passengers and travel up to 100 km at a maximum airspeed of 250 km/h and a cruise speed of 180 km/h. The 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/volodrone/">
 VoloDrone
 </a>
 is an uncrewed, fully electric heavy-lift drone offering heavy-lift services to carry payload of up to 200 kg for a range of up to 40 kilometers. The aircraft can be tailored to numerous purposes such as logistics, public services, infrastructure, and shore to ship. 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/voloport/">
 VoloPort
 </a>
 
 are Vertiports used as boarding and disembarking points for vertically taking off and landing, which would also be used by other UAM aircraft that share the lower airspace. Its design requires minimal infrastructure, and it is cost-efficient, modular, and flexible. It can be adapted for use on the ground, at sea, or on a raised platform. The Company&rsquo;s 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/solutions/voloiq/">
 VoloIQ
 </a>
 service is a cloud-based platform that would manage everything from VoloCity air taxis to the company&rsquo;s urban integration efforts and the passenger app. The VoloIQ software can monitor weather as well as monitor and predict the need for maintenance on VoloCitys.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/neom-volocopter-jv-evtol-network/">
 December 2021
 </a>
 , Volocopter signed a joint venture with NEOM to design, implement, and operate the world&rsquo;s first bespoke public vertical mobility system in NEOM. In 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/volocopter-collaborates-with-microsoft-on-voloiq-aerospace-cloud-project/">
 May 2022
 </a>
 , the company announced a strategic collaboration with Microsoft to create an aerospace cloud system within Microsoft Azure, aimed at addressing the emerging cloud computing needs of eVTOLs, UAM, and autonomous aviation. 
 In 
 <a href="https://yqqqphhcg2hvaaua-test001.pj-initial.net/updates/19750">
 June 2023
 </a>
 , Volocopter collaborated with ADAC Luftrettung to develop next-generation eVTOL for emergency medical services.
 
 
 The company has also partnered with several corporations to expand its geographic reach such as 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/japan-series-e-regulatory-pathway/">
 Sumitomo Corporation
 </a>
 (a key strategic partner for entry into service in the Japanese market starting in 2025), 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/volocopter-and-geely-joint-venture-orders-150-aircraft/">
 Geely
 </a>
 (to bring UAM to China), 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/atlantia-aeroportodiroma-volocopter-bring-airtaxis-to-italy/">
 Atlantia, Aeroporti di Roma
 </a>
 (to bring electric air taxis to Italy), 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/volocopter-joins-osaka-roundtable-jal/">
 Japan Airlines
 </a>
 (conduct public test flights in2023), 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/volocopter-partners-with-urban-movement-labs-of-la/">
 Urban Movement Labs
 </a>
 (explore the application of Volocopter&rsquo;s UAM solutions in the Los Angeles area), and 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/malaysia-airports-skyports-and-volocopter-collaborate-to-conduct-feasibility-study-for-vertiport-deployment-in-malaysia/">
 Malaysia Airports
 </a>
 (to conduct a feasibility study for vertiport deployment in Malaysia).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest funding round in 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/series-e-second-signing/">
 November 2022
 </a>
 , Volocopter raised an additional USD 182  million in the second signing of its Series E funding round. The company&rsquo;s diverse investor base includes NEOM, GLy Capital Management of Hong Kong, and Sumitomo Corporation. This followed the initial signing of its Series E funding round in 
 <a href="https://www.volocopter.com/newsroom/series-e-financing-round/">
 March 2022
 </a>
 , which was led by South Korean investor WP Investment, at a pre-money valuation of USD 1.7 billion. Funds were to be used for aircraft certification and launching the first commercial routes.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 
</div>

A new generation for mobile connectivity with 5G and beyond

Next-gen Mobile Networks

Cellwize is a provider of cloud-native, multi-vendor Radio Access Network (RAN) automation and orchestration software solutions. Its flagship product, CHIME, is a platform that connects RAN, vRAN, and Open RAN systems to applications, enabling 5G and Open RAN readiness for mobile network operators (MNOs). CHIME leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for zero-touch 5G deployments, automating network optimization across 2G/3G/4G/5G networks, and delivering mobile network assurance capabilities.
By leveraging CHIME's open architecture and open API layer, MNOs can accelerate their 5G deployment by automating key business processes in the RAN domain. The platform allows operators to add self-created network applications on top of a multi-vendor RAN ecosystem with ease, delivering high quality of service, improved customer experience, accelerated time-to-market, and reduced costs. As of June 2022, Cellwize's solutions supported over 800 million subscribers globally across more than 40 MNO customers.
In June 2022, Cellwize was acquired by Qualcomm Technologies for approximately USD 350 million. The acquisition aimed to strengthen Qualcomm's ability to drive the development of modern 5G networks, accelerating Open RAN global adoption, cloud-based cellular infrastructure innovation, and 5G private network deployments.

Cohere Technologies, headquartered in San Jose, California, is a network software company that develops innovative solutions to enhance spectrum efficiency and user experience in mobile networks. The company's flagship product is the Universal Spectrum Multiplier (USM) software, which is designed to improve capacity in 4G and 5G networks using existing spectrum assets. Cohere's USM technology can be integrated directly with Radio Access Network (RAN) vendor equipment or deployed as an xApp in network environments.
In February 2024, Cohere and Vodafone completed a field test in Ciudad Real, Spain, where the USM software demonstrated the potential to increase 5G network capacity by up to 50%. The company's technology works by mapping the "snowglobe" of the radio frequency environment to boost cell site capacity. Cohere has also developed a Dynamic Network Alignment (DNA) solution, launched in February 2023, which calibrates networks in real-time without disruption or human intervention. This automated MU-MIMO beamforming solution supports various antenna configurations and existing radios, allowing carriers to add network capacity through spatial multiplexing without the need for new antenna installations.
Cohere's technology is compatible with both traditional and Open RAN architectures. In Open RAN environments, the USM and DNA solutions can run as xApps on a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC). The company has been working on integrating its technology with major equipment manufacturers and is exploring cloud-based deployments of its xApps.
In addition to its current focus on 4G and 5G technologies, Cohere is also developing Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) technology for future 6G wireless systems. The company's innovations have garnered attention in the industry, with its DNA solution being shortlisted for the Best Network Software Breakthrough at the 2023 Global Mobile Awards.
Key customers and partnerships
Cohere Technologies has been engaged in trials and demonstrations with several major telecommunications operators. Vodafone has been a prominent advocate for Cohere's technology, conducting field tests that have shown promising results. The company has also worked with Telstra in Australia and Bell Canada in test environments.
In February 2023, Bell Canada, through its investment arm Bell Ventures, provided funding to Cohere Technologies to support trials of the USM software on Bell's 5G network and evaluate OTFS for 6G applications. Cohere has also announced a partnership with Mavenir, a US developer of RAN software, to explore integration opportunities.
The company has collaborated with VMware, integrating its USM software with VMware's RIC platform in 2021 and completing a xApp integration in 2022. Additionally, Cohere participated in Deutsche Telekom's efforts to build a virtual RAN platform in 2020. As of February 2024, Cohere's CEO expressed confidence in achieving full integration with at least one RAN player within the year, signaling potential growth in its partnerships and commercial deployments.

Giving firms greater control over their SaaS stack

B2B SaaS Management Platforms

CloudFX is a strategic technology advisory firm and cloud platform provider founded in 2009 by Damian Crotty. The company offers solutions to help enterprises adopt and manage cloud technologies. CloudFX's flagship products are CloudSelect DMP (Digital Market Place) and CloudSelect BMP (Business Management Platform). These platforms enable multi-tenant cloud service brokerage, allowing organizations to configure, provision, manage and bill for cloud services from multiple vendors through a single interface. CloudSelect supports hybrid cloud and IT-as-a-Service models for corporate, government and enterprise customers. The platform is built on open source technologies and can integrate with legacy, physical, virtual, private and public cloud infrastructure.
CloudFX's solutions aim to provide visibility, cost optimization, and automation for organizations' cloud and SaaS environments. The company's technology leverages artificial intelligence and integrates with major enterprise systems to deliver analytics and insights. CloudFX focuses on helping customers transform their IT operations and leverage cloud technologies to drive business growth. The company has expanded globally from its Singapore headquarters to offices across Asia Pacific, North America and Europe.

Grip Security is a pioneer in SaaS identity risk management, providing innovative solutions to help enterprises address the security risks associated with widespread SaaS adoption. The company's SaaS Security Control Plane (SSCP) platform helps organizations discover, prioritize, secure, and orchestrate the mitigation and remediation of risks arising from the use of business-led SaaS applications. Grip Security's innovative approach leverages identity as the primary control point, enabling companies to secure all SaaS applications and embrace SaaS adoption securely.
Grip Security's platform delivers comprehensive visibility across enterprise SaaS applications, automatically discovering shadow applications and dormant accounts with ungoverned access to customer data and production environments. The award-winning SSCP platform provides a comprehensive solution to manage identity sprawl risks, allowing security teams to discover, prioritize, secure, and orchestrate remediation of these risks effectively.
Since its founding in 2021, Grip Security has experienced extraordinary growth. In August 2023, the company raised a USD 41 million Series B funding round led by Third Point Ventures, with participation from YL Ventures, Intel Capital, and The Syndicate Group, bringing its total funding to USD 66 million. Over the past year, Grip Security's bookings surged by over 400%, indicating strong market demand and customer trust. The company boasts an impressive client roster, across various industries.

Using real-time data to create dynamic virtual representations of the real world

Digital Twin

ParkourSC (formerly known as Cloudleaf) has developed a real-time supply chain operations platform for companies to seamlessly manage disruptions and challenges. The platform enables companies to real-time monitor their supply chain and make data-driven decisions. The company’s platforms provide four main features: 1) digital supply chain twin to provide predictive insights and assess potential issues, 2) embedded intelligence using AI and ML, 3) automation and collaboration within the entire supply chain, and 4) continuous realignment at all stages.&nbsp;Furthermore, the platform provides solutions for order and demand fulfillment, inventory performance, logistics and distribution, supply and demand planning, and quality and compliance.&nbsp;Furthermore, in June 2022, the company acquired smart operations platform and IoT network company Qopper to enhance the capabilities of ParkourSC’s platforms.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsThe company operates a B2B business model, providing its services mainly to the manufacturing and pharmaceutical industries. The company has partnered with several carriers and IoT and sensor providers to facilitate its platform. It has also partnered with cold-chain packaging companies including CSafe Global and Cold Chain Technologies to support its temperature-controlled supply chain operations.&nbsp;&nbsp;Funding and financialsThe company raised USD 26 million in March 2022 in a funding round led by JC2 Ventures, Cota Capital, and Sigmas Group. The funds were earmarked to support revenue growth, extend into the EMEA market, and increase staff in the US, India, and other regions. In March 2022, the company claimed it had achieved 300% growth and an ARR YoY in pharmaceutical and life sciences customers.

Elmodis is a developer of cloud-based software and hardware to remotely monitor and maintain electric assets such as industrial pumps, fans, and wind turbines. The solution uses motors as sensors to measure current and voltage and AI to calculate parameters in real time to determine the condition of the machine.&nbsp;As at June 2024, the company claimed to have reduced CO2 emissions by more than 2.9 million kg by optimizing customer operations.Key customers and partnershipsThe company operates a B2B business model, targeting companies in the utilities, manufacturing, energy, and electric transportation industries.&nbsp;The company’s key customers include Xylem, a developer of water solutions, which uses Elmodis’ digital twin platform to monitor its rotating assets. In September 2021, the company partnered with Singaporean company Durapower to develop containerized ESS systems.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn February 2021, the company raised an undisclosed amount in a funding round from Meidensha Corporation. The funds were allocated toward expanding its platform globally. Furthermore, the company raised USD 4.9 million in April 2017 in a funding round from Innovation Nest. The funds were used to advance its platform capabilities.&nbsp;

Reinventing how computers think based on biological neural networks

Neuromorphic Computing

Prophesee is a Paris-based company that has developed advanced neuromorphic vision systems using patented sensor design and AI algorithms. Founded in 2014, Prophesee's technology is inspired by human vision and mimics how the eye and brain work to reveal what was previously invisible using standard frame-based camera technology. At the core of Prophesee's innovation is its event-based vision approach, which is fundamentally different from traditional image sensors. Instead of capturing entire frames at fixed intervals, Prophesee's Metavision sensors have pixels that independently and asynchronously detect and transmit changes in the scene, resulting in a continuous stream of information with microsecond precision.
This event-based approach offers several key advantages, including ultra-low latency, high dynamic range (>120 dB), and significantly reduced power consumption and data processing requirements compared to conventional frame-based systems. Prophesee's technology enables high-speed vision capabilities of over 10,000 fps equivalent temporal precision while consuming less than 10mW of power. The company's neuromorphic vision systems have applications across various industries, including autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, IoT, security and surveillance, mobile devices, and augmented/virtual reality.
Prophesee has developed both hardware and software products. Its hardware offerings include event-based vision sensors and cameras, with the latest being the GenX320 Event-based Metavision sensor launched in October 2023. This 320x320 pixel sensor is designed for edge applications like AR/VR headsets, eye tracking, and IoT devices. On the software side, Prophesee offers the Metavision Intelligence Suite, which provides a comprehensive toolkit for developers to work with event-based vision data.
Key customers and partnerships
Prophesee has established partnerships with several major technology companies to accelerate the adoption of its neuromorphic vision technology. In 2022, Prophesee announced a collaboration with Sony to develop a next-generation HD vision sensor combining Sony's CMOS image sensor technology with Prophesee's Metavision sensing technology. The company also partnered with Qualcomm in March 2023 to integrate its event-based vision technology into Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile platforms, aiming to enhance smartphone camera performance, particularly in fast-moving scenes and low-light conditions.
In the industrial sector, Prophesee has formed commercial partnerships with leading machine vision suppliers such as Lucid, Framos, Imago, and Century Arks. The company has also collaborated with BrainChip to combine their technologies for high-performance and low-power edge AI vision applications. Additionally, Prophesee has worked with companies in the AR/VR space, including a partnership announced in 2023 with Ultraleap and TCL RayNeo to develop low-power tracking technology for AR glasses.

Syntiant is a deep learning chip technology company founded in 2017 and headquartered in Irvine, California. The company specializes in developing ultra-low-power, high-performance deep neural network processors called Neural Decision Processors (NDPs) for edge AI applications. Syntiant's technology combines deep learning with semiconductor design to enable AI functionality in battery-powered devices without relying on cloud connections.
Syntiant's NDPs are designed to execute deep neural networks natively on various topologies, including Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), and fully connected networks. The company's chips typically offer 100x efficiency improvement and a 10x increase in throughput compared to traditional low-power microcontroller-based solutions. This allows for larger networks at significantly lower power consumption, extending battery life and reducing infrastructure costs.
The company's product lineup includes the NDP100, NDP101, NDP200, and NDP115 processors. The NDP200, built on the Syntiant Core 2 architecture, provides 25 times the tensor throughput of the Syntiant Core 1 found in the NDP100. The latest NDP115, introduced at CES 2023, is designed for ultra-power and size-constrained applications, capable of running speech inferences at 280 microwatts.
Syntiant has achieved significant milestones in its short history. By January 2021, the company had shipped over 10 million of its NDP100 and NDP101 processors. This number increased to more than 20 million processors shipped by March 2022. As of May 2023, Syntiant has expanded its offerings to include hardware-agnostic deep learning computer vision models that can be deployed on various platforms, including the Renesas RZ/V2L microprocessor.
Key customers and partnerships
Syntiant's technology has found applications across various industries and devices. The company's Neural Decision Processors are being used in earbuds, wearables, smartphones, smart speakers, laptops, vehicles, and other IoT consumer and industrial use cases.
Syntiant has established partnerships with several prominent companies in the tech industry. In July 2021, Syntiant announced a collaboration with Renesas Electronics Corporation for a voice-controlled multimodal solution combining Renesas' RZ/V Series MPUs and Syntiant's NDP120 Neural Decision Processor. This partnership aims to enable low-power contactless operation for image processing in vision AI-based IoT and edge systems.
The company has also worked with Infineon Technologies, signing a smart microphone reference design agreement in 2018. This collaboration aimed to complement Syntiant's NDPs with Infineon's high-performance microphone technology.

Foundation Models

<div>
 
 SambaNova Systems provides AI hardware and integrated systems to run AI applications in data centers and the cloud. The company specializes in pre-trained deep-learning models for production-ready deployments.
 
 
 Its flagship offering, dataflow-as-a-serviceTM, overcomes the limitations of legacy technology to power the large complex foundation models that enable customers to discover new services and revenue streams and boost operational efficiency.
 
 
 In February,
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27353">
 SambaNova Systems
 </a>
 released a new large language model (LLM) Samba-1 composed of more than 50 top-grade AI models for customized enterprise usage.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In April 2021, SambaNova raised USD 676 million in Series D funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 to develop its solutions by improving the computational limits of AI hardware and software to face the competition.
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 AI21 is an Israel-based AI research lab developing large language models (LLMs). The firm also builds GenAI applications based on its LLMs, marketing them to businesses and consumers.&nbsp;
 
 
 AI21 launched its first AI model, &ldquo;Jurassic-1,&rdquo; in August 2021, offering two versions. The larger variant, Jurassic-1 Jumbo, contained 178 billion parameters&mdash;three billion more than OpenAI&rsquo;s 175-billion parameter GPT-3 model. Similar to GPT-3, Jurassic is able to write emails and articles, summarize text, compose poetry and recipes, create website layouts, and generate code.&nbsp;
 
 
 The firm concurrently launched AI21 Studio, a platform allowing users to train custom versions of Jurassic-1 and embed them into products via an API.&nbsp;
 
 
 In May 2022, AI21 confirmed it was working on a new AI system, called the &ldquo;modular reasoning knowledge and language&rdquo; or &ldquo;MRKL&rdquo; framework (pronounced &ldquo;miracle&rdquo;). MRKL augments LLMs, connecting to external sources and symbolic reasoning models to enable the generation of accurate historical information, news on current events, and dynamic information, such as weather, exchange rates, and Wikipedia information. This allows models to accurately answer math queries by calling a calculator and navigate more complex questions by breaking down queries into parts. An initial implementation of MRKL, Jurassic-X, is available on AI21 Studio, which allows users to connect LLMs to their own databases and navigate their data using natural language.
 
 
 In March 2023, the firm launched &ldquo;Jurassic-2,&rdquo; a successor to its initial language model. The new LLM differs from Jurassic-1 and most popular LLMs, in that it incorporates semantic reasoning into its text generation processes alongside statistical inference, enabling the model to more reliably and accurately respond to queries.
 
 
 AI21 says this was achieved by training Jurassic-2 in two phases: A traditional self-supervised phase using an extensive corpus of unstructured and unlabeled data and a second phase, involving a large volume of labeled data to teach the model to follow instructions. Jurassic-2 did not initially implement the MRKL framework, although AI21 confirmed it as an upcoming feature.
 
 
 The company claims that its foundation models are 30% more efficient than those of other providers and it also does not charge additional fees for the use of fine-tuned models.
 
 
 
 
 In March 2024,
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27995">
 AI21 launched Jamba,
 </a>
 a model that integrates the Mamba Structured State Space model (SSM) technology and transformer components. The company further introduced 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32879">
 Jamba 1.5 Mini and Jamba 1.5 Large
 </a>
 to offer high performance and efficiency for long-context language processing in August 2024. The models have a hybrid architecture combining Transformer and Mamba approaches, allowing for quality responses with large context windows.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of June 2023, AI21&rsquo;s customers include Latitude, Easyway, Verb, Tweet Hunter, and Harambee.
 
</div>

Redefining hospital care with the comfort of home

Hospital-at-Home

Biofourmis is a digital health company that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to enable personalized predictive care. Founded in 2015 by Kuldeep Singh Rajput, Maulik Majmudar, and Mark Niu, Biofourmis offers AI-driven solutions that collect and analyze over 120 biomarkers in real-time to identify shifts requiring proactive interventions. The company's platform monitors nearly 100,000 patients globally and has achieved a 70% reduction in 30-day hospital readmissions while reducing care costs by 38%. Biofourmis' technology combines passive inputs via continuous monitoring devices, active inputs from episodic monitoring devices, and patient feedback to get a complete picture of the patient's status. The company's device- and sensor-agnostic solutions use advanced FDA-approved analytics to dynamically monitor patients, establish personalized baselines, and reduce false positives. Biofourmis operates two main business lines: partnering with pharmaceutical companies to monitor patients taking certain medications and develop digital therapeutics, and providing "hospital-at-home" programs for urgent conditions and longer-term solutions for chronic diseases. In September 2023, Biofourmis expanded its Digital Clinical Trials solution, offering a technology-enabled platform to support trial decentralization, safety monitoring, and remote data collection. The AI-powered platform is configurable, potentially reducing study startup timelines from months to days.
Key customers and partnerships
Biofourmis has deployed its solutions with over 65 customers, including multi-year collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and health systems. The company partners with more than 50 global health systems, life science companies, and payers. Some notable partners include Mayo Clinic, Northwell Health, and Care New England. In February 2024, Biofourmis announced four new agreements with top-20 pharmaceutical companies, focusing on oncology therapies and expanding its portfolio in cardiovascular, pain, women's health, and immunology areas. In January 2023, Biofourmis entered a multi-year agreement with Orlando Health to support their Hospital-at-Home program. Additionally, in February 2023, the company announced a four-year collaboration with Augusta University Health to expand its Virtual Care at Home program.

SiPhox Health, founded in 2020 by MIT scientists Diedrik Vermeulen and Michael Dubrovsky, is pioneering advanced blood testing technology using silicon photonic chip technology. The company's goal is to make lab-grade health testing accessible in every home. SiPhox Health's flagship product, the SiPhox Home platform, is designed to offer a broad menu of protein and hormone tests from a finger-prick blood sample, delivering results in under five minutes. The device aims to be significantly lighter (1 lb. vs.. 500 lbs.) and cheaper (USD 300 vs.. USD 500k) than traditional lab equipment. The company is working toward FDA clearance for this platform.
While developing its at-home device, SiPhox Health currently offers a mail-in blood collection kit that measures 17 biomarkers for inflammation, metabolic, hormonal, and cardiovascular health. The company's testing approach focuses on miniaturizing all components onto silicon chips, inheriting the functionality, multiplexing capability, and sensitivity of traditional lab instruments. SiPhox Health's subscription-based model offers test kits for USD 95 with a monthly membership of USD 16, which includes access to continuous glucose monitors and personalized biohacking tools.
The company's technology leverages silicon photonics, a semiconductor technology that has transformed internet connectivity, to enable testing that is claimed to be 100 times smaller, faster, and cheaper than existing solutions. SiPhox Health's long-term vision includes developing wearable devices for continuous real-time monitoring of biomarkers, potentially revolutionizing how individuals track and manage their health.

Automation and robotics are finally creating solutions for the complexities of doorstep deliveries.

Last-mile Delivery Automation

<div>
 
 German startup Teraki offers software solutions for connected car, telematics, autonomous vehicle, and delivery droid applications. Its technology in droids uses AI-based real-time processing of sensor signals, machine learning, cameras, and LiDAR to perceive the environment. The robots can carry a payload of up to 22 lbs and operate for 8+ hours on a single charge. Its robots are capable of Level 4 autonomous navigation (i.e., capable of navigating without human interventions in specific conditions or environments). Teraki planned to achieve greater autonomy in the long run and have one human manage 10+ robots.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Teraki partnered with online food delivery company Foodora to deploy droids in Stockholm, Sweden 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9032">
 (March 2022)
 </a>
 and with Domino&rsquo;s Pizza to pilot autonomous deliveries in Berlin, Germany 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10816">
 (April 2022).
 </a>
 
 
 The company also has a product partnership with DriveU.auto to integrate its teleoperation and connectivity platform into its droids (May 2022). 
 
</div>

The tools that power remote work are define the next generation of enterprise software.

Remote Work Tools

Mural is a remote collaboration platform founded for workplace teams. The platform emphasizes visual collaboration for problem solving. Mural provides templates for brainstorming on project kick-offs, evaluation, and strategy. Mural integrates with popular third-party apps such as Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google apps, Slack, and others. It provides specialized services for its consultant network as a means of marketing its product.&nbsp;In March 2022, Mural acquired Luma Institute, a company that trains people to become cooperative problem solvers, to enhance collaboration and innovation design.&nbsp;Key customers and partnership&nbsp;According to the company, its client base includes 95% of the Global Fortune 100 companies as of June 2024 and includes big names such as IBM, Zapier, Intuit, GitHub, and Atlassian in its customer portfolio.&nbsp;In November 2023, Mural announced integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot to enable AI enhanced collaboration for enterprise teams.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4353">July 2021</a>, Mural raised USD 50 million in a Series C funding round co-led by existing investors Insight Partners and Tiger Global. The fresh funds were allocated toward platform development, including pipeline integrations with Microsoft Teams, Zoom Video Communications Inc., Webex by Cisco, and Atlassian. Furthermore, hiring and expanding the go-to-market efforts were also financed using the raised funds.&nbsp;

Providing a seamless consumer experience is one hope for bringing back brick and mortar retail, automated stores are being built to do just that.

Automated Stores

<div>
 
 Nexite is an Israel-based company that offers inventory monitoring and self-checkout solutions powered by its proprietary Bluetooth tag technology.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s proprietary Bluetooth technology NanoBT is a long-range, batteryless technology that enables streaming real-time data from shelf items. NanoBT tags are small enough to be stitched into products, use anti-theft technology, and are readable by smartphones. The company offers a connected merchandise platform that routes real-time data automatically from every product through fixed readers and processes it in the cloud to generate insights and digital solutions.
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s automated stocking and shelving solution, &ldquo;Live Shelves,&rdquo; provides live stocking alerts, generates insights related to consumer engagement (e.g., which shelves the customers engage with, what products catch the customer&rsquo;s eye), product positioning, merchandising, and item-level intelligence.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s self-checkout solution, Buy &amp; Go, is a mobile app-based contactless shopping solution. Customers can use the mobile app to scan products and complete the payment. The anti-theft alarm attached to the Bluetooth tags will be automatically disarmed when the payment is completed. Additionally, the company offers Pick &amp; Go, which allows customers to place online orders and pick the order from the stores. The company also offers a Return &amp; Go product that allows customers to drop off their returns at a designated location at the store. Subsequently, the products will be verified automatically and their alarms will be reactivated.
 
 
 As of 
 <a href="https://nexite.io/nexite-in-store-technology-patents/">
 November 2022
 </a>
 , the company held 14 patents in categories across data privacy, connected retail/consumer, anti-theft/security, network management, energy harvesting, and ecosystem.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In January 2023, Nexite partnered with FACTORY54, an Israeli fashion retailer, to launch its Connected Merchandise Solution across Factory 54&rsquo;s business.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In May 2022, Nexite raised USD 67 million in Series C funding led by Pitango Growth and Saban Ventures.
 
</div>

From fast food to fine dining, everything but the kitchen sink is suddenly just a tap away.

Online Food Delivery

Goldbelly is a New York-based online food delivery platform that facilitates cross-state delivery for specialty food makers and artisans. The company aims to make local specialty dishes accessible to customers across the country. The meals ordered through the company’s platform will be prepared and packaged by restaurant partners in the most suitable manner for delivery. The meals can either be in ready-to-reheat or meal kit forms. The items are shipped using FedEx or UPS.Goldbelly uses a team of “food explorers” that search the country for unique chefs and restaurants that can be onboarded to the company’s platform. Additionally, Goldbelly works with companies to ensure quality assurance, provide marketing support, handle online processing, offer customer service, and allow vendors to use its online dashboard to track their orders.For meal kit customers, Goldbelly provides an interactive, virtual cook-along zoom series titled GoldBelly Live, which can be accessed free of charge with the purchase of exclusive Goldbelly meal kits.As of May 2021, the company operated across 50 states, with 850 restaurant partners. It offered a selection of over 10,000 food items on the platform. Chefs on the platform include Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, Marcus Samuelsson, Stephanie Izard, Wolfgang Puck, and David Chang. Its key restaurant partners include New Orleans' Commander's Palace, Philadelphia's Zahav, San Francisco's Wayfare Tavern, NYC's Union Square Cafe, and Savannah's The Grey.In May 2021, the company raised USD 100 million in a Series C funding round led by growth equity firm Spectrum Equity with participation from existing investor Intel Capital. The funds were to be used to scale the technology and operations of the platform and accelerate the onboarding of new chef and restaurant partners. It will also be used to launch new content initiatives, building on the success of Goldbelly Live.

A foundational component to the next generation of digital entertainment.

Esports

<div>
 
 Game.tv is an artificial intelligence (AI) based esports tournament platform. The platforms’ core product — Tourney - automates the tournament management process. The platform is directly accessible through Discord, Twitter and Facebook platforms via plugins, which means that  communities within these platforms can run their tournaments directly on Game.tv. The platform is live in North America and parts of Asia. 
 
 
 Tourney runs around 300 tournaments per day as of December 2019. The platform is closing in on 200,000 tournaments as of September 2020. The company closed its Series A funding round led by Intel Capital in December 2019, where it raised USD 25 million for product development and growing its community base with the use of sponsorships and additional plugins. 
 
 
 In February 2021, the platform announced that it has approximately 11 million tournament registrations across 17 countries including the US, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan as of February 2021. The platform has over 300 games such as Garena Free Fire, Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, and Call of Duty: Mobile. Game. Tourney also hosts “women-only” weekly tournaments such as Free Fire Diva Scrim Wars. 
 
 
 
 
 
</div>

Hardware, software, and wearable devices to help prevent and manage the next pandemic.

Infectious Disease Tech

Landing AI is a company that offers a computer vision platform called LandingLens, designed to help manufacturers build, deploy, and scale AI-powered visual inspection solutions. LandingLens utilizes Domain-Specific Large Vision Models (LVMs), which are foundational models trained on a customer's proprietary dataset of images. These LVMs enable insights from unlabeled images, faster development for downstream vision tasks, and enhanced accuracy in completing computer vision tasks.
LandingLens provides an end-to-end platform for visual inspection, encompassing data labeling, model training, performance evaluation, and deployment. The platform includes features such as a digital Defect Book for consistent labeling, synthetic data generation, data management, and continuous monitoring and retraining capabilities. As of October 2020, LandingLens had demonstrated the ability to reduce the AI project development lifecycle by up to 67% and overall costs by up to 60%.
In April 2020, LandingAI's platform offered small data technology to enhance datasets with synthetic data generation and smart labeling, enabling practical value creation with limited data. The platform also provided data management beyond labeling and training, including tracking environment changes and easy retraining through a one-click process.

More important now than ever, telehealth will long outlast the pandemic that drove its growth.

Telehealth

<div>
 
 Biofourmis is a virtual care provider and digital therapeutics developer, offering remote patient monitoring and chronic care management services with a focus on specialty care. The firm's AI-powered remote patient monitoring platform, Care@Home, allows healthcare providers to track patient vitals, automate medication management, and send patient-specific notifications based on readings from wearable devices. As of February 2022, Biorfourmis had five virtual care programs covering heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, lipid management, and atrial fibrillation. Its solution also includes a GenAI-powered predictive analytics platform, Biovitals, that identifies clinical deterioration. 
 
 
 The firm operates a B2B2C business model targeting healthcare providers and health plans as well as operating a B2B model in partnership with pharmaceutical companies to develop digital therapeutics. 
 
 
 In August 2023, Biofourmis confirmed the departure of its CEO, Kuldeep Singh Rajput, one month after laying off 120 employees worldwide (48 in the US) to focus on accelerating growth in the US market. The company announced that it was conducting a search for a new CEO and had established an office of the CEO to oversee its regular operations. The office consisted of CMO Maulik Majmudar, CFO Renika Seghal, CTO Milan Shah, general counsel Daniel Song, and COO Jaydev Thakkar. Additionally, Ben Wanamaker, who previously served as Humana&rsquo;s VP of enterprise strategy, joined Biofourmis&rsquo; board of directors and oversee the new office of the CEO.&nbsp;
 
 
 In January 2024, Biofourmis launched an in-home service ecosystem. Through the offering, the company provided care providers with integrated care workflows for operational efficiencies, as well as access to in-home care services fulfilled by Biofourmis (including services such as nursing, wound care, phlebotomy, and physical and occupational therapy). The company noted that the in-home care services would be fulfilled by utilizing the company's network of local, regional and national healthcare partnerships.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In February 2024 Biofourmis partnered with GE Healthcare to improve patient care by offering effective home treatment options. The partnership aimed to use remote solutions developed by Biofourmis, along with GE Healthcare's patient monitoring systems, to facilitate an earlier discharge for patients and provide alternatives to hospital-based care. 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2022, the company raised an additional USD 20 million to its&nbsp;
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9971">
 Series D round, which took place in April 2022. 
 </a>
 The extension was led by Intel Capital. The funds were set aside to expand its virtual care offerings as well as its digital medicine initiatives, which include the development of digital companion therapeutics to support existing and currently-under-development therapies. 
 
</div>

A new industry proving that digital connectivity and mental health can co-exist.

Digital Wellness

<div>
 
 Centrical is a business-to-business (B2B) focused employee engagement and performance enhancing program developer. It leverages adaptive microlearning and advanced gamification techniques to deliver targeted content that the company claims can reduce absenteeism and improve productivity. It also tries to help employees achieve personalized health and learning goals, such as cycling or walking to work, or attaining some occupational license. The Centrical platform can be integrated with many enterprise application programs such SAP, Oracle, and Salesforce. In May 2020, Centrical integrated with Microsoft Teams to allow organizations on Teams to access Centrical. As of November 2020, the clients of Centrical included Adobe, Hilti, Singtel, Microsoft, Unilever, SwissLife, Telia, Verizon, and Novartis.
 
 
 In March 2023, the company launched AI Microlearning, an integration with OpenAI's ChatGPT which allowed content creators to auto-generate microlearning content including summaries, related questions, answers, and knowledge check quizzes. 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company last raised funding in
 March 2021, when it raised USD 32 million in a funding round co-led by Intel Capital and JVP, along with participation from other investors. The raised funds were set aside to accelerate Centrical's market engagement, expand its market presence, and enhance customer value creation. 
 
</div>

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