Salesforce Ventures

Artificial intelligence is helping sales teams manage relationships and optimize the customer lifecycle.

Sales Engagement Platforms

Demandbase is a B2B go-to-market (GTM) platform focused on account-based marketing (ABM) and sales engagement. Its core technology, Demandbase One, integrates AI-driven account intelligence, sales intelligence, and predictive analytics to improve sales prospecting and engagement. The platform provides solutions for identifying and prioritizing target accounts, personalizing interactions, orchestrating multichannel campaigns, and analyzing engagement. Key features include intent data, account-based advertising, and integration with popular CRM tools to streamline the sales process, improve targeting accuracy, and drive effective sales and marketing strategies.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35579">October 2024,</a> Demandbase launched an enhanced sales experience within Demandbase One to align sales and marketing teams with real-time insights and a customizable AI dashboard.In June 2020, Demandbase acquired Engagio, an ABM orchestration and analytics platform, combining two ABM vendors and positioning Demandbase as a comprehensive B2B go-to-market solution provider. In May 2021, Demandbase acquired InsideView, a sales and marketing intelligence platform. InsideView provides insight into account activity, complementing Demandbase's intent and in-market data.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the platform served more than 1,300 customers. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Highspot is a natively built, end-to-end sales enablement platform to help enterprise companies improve sales productivity and increase pipeline. The platform offers tools for managing sales content, executing sales plays and playbooks, engaging buyers, onboarding and training sales reps, and providing continuous coaching.&nbsp;Highspot has been active in strengthening its sales coaching, training, and enablement features through community-based engagement. In June 2022, the firm announced the launch of the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10854">“Strategic Enablement Framework,” </a>designed to help businesses achieve their strategic goals and new product capabilities. In November 2021, Highspot launched “Highspot Spark Community”, which is exclusively designed for members of the Highspot ecosystem, built to bring sales enablement leaders to share best practices, experiences, and capabilities within the platform. In September 2021, Highspot launched the “Highspot Marketplace”, an exchange where Highspot customers can gain access to content from more than 20 marketing, sales, enablement, and customer success partners, including Baker Communications, Challenger, Corporate Visions, and RAIN Group. In March 2024, the company introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28053">advanced AI-driven coaching capabilities </a>through Highspot Copilot, enabling personalized coaching, knowledge reinforcement, and actionable insights at scale within the sales enablement platform.In addition, Highspot is also a contributor to Sales Enablement PRO, claimed to be the world’s largest community of sales enablement professionals, with more than 13,000 members, as of February 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2021, the platform served more than 3 million users. Its customers include Twitter, General Motors, Nestlé, Aetna, DocuSign, Dow Jones, and Verizon Media, and it has a market presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.In November 2021,&nbsp; Highspot partnered with Gong, a revenue intelligence platform, to provide training courses, sales plays, analysis on buyer engagement, and replicating best practices. In August 2022, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12545?industryIds=27">partnered with natively integrated solution provider Salesloft, </a>to further streamline the client engagement process for sales teams.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Gong is a provider of conversational intelligence solutions designed to improve customer engagement for sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Its Reality platform leverages AI to analyze customer interactions and provide insights that improve sales strategies and coaching.Gong's core offerings include features such as call recording, transcription, and interaction analytics that help teams understand customer behavior and preferences. By capturing and analyzing every conversation, Gong enables sales professionals to identify key trends, buyer signals, and common objections.In addition to its conversational intelligence capabilities, Gong also provides sales intelligence solutions. These include tools for pipeline management, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11241">revenue forecasting,</a> and comprehensive analytics to support strategic decision-making. The platform has over 100 integrations (as of August 2024), including popular CRM platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics 365.In June 2021, Gong reported a post-money valuation of USD 7.25 billion. In 2022, the company reported an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of USD 200 million.&nbsp;In September 2020, the company acquired Vayo, an Israel-based data analytics startup, to strengthen its revenue intelligence solution. In June 2022, Gong acquired Yobs, a smart interviewing platform, to further expand its platform capabilities.&nbsp; &nbsp;Gong claims that its optimized speech-to-text transcription model achieves 85%–90% accuracy, significantly higher than the less than 75% accuracy of off-the-shelf models. Key customers and partnerships &nbsp;As of August 2024, the platform served 4,000+ companies, including Morningstar Inc., Paychex, LinkedIn, Shopify, Slack, SproutSocial, Twilio, and Zillow.In January 2020, the firm partnered with Sandler, a sales coaching solution provider, to empower sales professionals. A month later, the company partnered with sales engagement startup InsideOut to provide AI-powered sales playbooks with analytics. In November 2021, Gong expanded its partnership with sales coaching platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/245256">Highspot </a>to scale best practices across sales teams. In June 2022, the company partnered with sales intelligence solution providers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/379260">Apollo.io, </a>Clearbit, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/355913">Cognism </a>to strengthen its product capabilities. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30877">June 2024,</a> Gong partnered with sales intelligence platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/202987">6sense</a> to connect its sales engagement solution <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19832">Gong Engage</a> with 6sense Revenue AI for Sales to increase workflow efficiency.&nbsp;

Qualified is a sales pipeline generation platform for sales teams with a native Salesforce integration. The company was founded by former Salesforce CMO Kraig Swensrud and former Salesforce product SVP Sean Whiteley. The platform aims to identify the most valuable buyers visiting a company’s website and alert revenue teams to engage them in conversation via live chat, chatbots, voice calls, and screen sharing.&nbsp;Key products and features include:Piper the AI SDR: An AI-powered Sales Development Representative that engages visitors, answers questions, captures leads, and books meetings 24/7AI Conversations: Enables real-time sales conversations with website visitors, enhancing customer interaction and engagementAI Meetings: Facilitates easy scheduling of meetings between potential buyers and sales teams with just a few clicksAI Offers: Delivers personalized marketing offers to visitors, helping to convert valuable buyers instantlyAI Signals: Provides insights into account-based buying intent data, helping teams focus on the hottest leadsQualified claims to drive 5x more conversations, book 2x more meetings, and require 50% less effort from SDRs.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2024, Qualified’s clients include B2B brands such as Adobe, Bitly, SurveyMonkey, ThoughtSpot, VMware, Matterport, Poly, Sodexo, Talend, and Tech Data.

6sense is a B2B revenue technology company that specializes in AI-powered sales intelligence. Its technology, called Revenue AI, leverages advanced AI and machine learning to predict which accounts are <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465">"in market"</a> for a company's products by analyzing buyer intent data, account intelligence, and predictive analytics. The platform provides a comprehensive suite of solutions that includes account and contact intelligence, prioritization dashboards, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19832">AI Writer,</a> buyer intent data, and predictive analytics, all integrated within CRM and sales engagement tools.In March 2024, the company reported that it had surpassed the USD 200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).6sense has bolstered its in-house capabilities through the acquisition of ZenIQ (an account-based sales and marketing orchestration platform acquired in April 2018) and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5235">Fortella</a> (an AI-based B2B revenue intelligence platform acquired in August 2021). In October 2021, the company acquired Slintel, a B2B technographic data solution provider, to provide sales representatives with technology-related insights. In January 2022, 6sense acquired the lead generation and email automation platform Saleswhale.Key customers and partnershipsIn May 2022, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10113">partnered with Conversica, </a>a conversational intelligence platform, allowing Conversica AI assistants to gather real-time account insights (based on industry, client characteristics, and buyer stage), powered by 6sense’s proprietary technology, thereby empowering the sales, marketing, and customer success teams to deliver personalized client engagement. In June 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30877">partnered</a> with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/400474">Gong</a> to connect Gong Engage, an AI-powered sales engagement solution, to increase workflow efficiency by providing sellers with advanced predictive analytics and buyer intelligence.

Vivun is a sales intelligence platform that offers a software known as “Hero,” which allows sales reps to prioritize tasks and manage deals. The platform focuses on pre-sales and offers a scoring system that, coupled with AI, uses clustering techniques to predict the likelihood that a deal will close, and provides recommendations on how to close them. In addition, it records customer feedback and provides guidance on what products to develop to meet customer requirements.Vivun claims to increase team capacity by 3x, boost tech win rates by 15%, and reduce sales cycle time by 25%.Key customers and partnershipsVivun’s customer base ranges from global companies to startups. As of August 2024, the platform served Autodesk, Dell, Cloudera, Okta, Snowflake, Genesys, and UiPath.

Databook is an AI-powered sales platform designed to improve B2B sales strategies by providing real-time, data-driven insights. Its technology leverages AI to deliver <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465">Strategic Relationship Management (SRM) </a>that helps sales teams understand the unique needs of individual buyers and tailor their approach accordingly. Databook's key offerings include account planning, territory management, and sales engagement tools that automate and streamline sales workflows, enabling salespeople to create personalized, high-impact messages. The platform integrates with existing sales tools, such as DatabookGPT, and serves as an AI sales advisor, increasing productivity and pipeline generation while ensuring data accuracy and compliance with enterprise security standards. As of February 2022, Databook consists of global data assets of 44,000 public and private enterprises.&nbsp;The company claims to help achieve up to 300% more pipeline, 200% larger deals, and 150% faster cycle times.

Outreach is a sales execution platform designed to optimize and enhance sales processes across organizations. Its technology leverages AI and data-driven insights to improve sales performance, streamline workflows, and improve productivity. Its suite of solutions includesSales Engagement: Outreach provides tools to structure and automate sales outreach, ensuring that sales reps send timely, relevant messages to the right peopleDeal Management: The platform simplifies deal management by helping sales teams track deal progress, spot potential risks, and identify the best actions to maintain momentum and close dealsPipeline Management: Outreach offers comprehensive pipeline management features, including advanced forecasting and modeling capabilities to predict revenue needs and build more accurate forecastsConversation Intelligence: Powered by Kaia, a voice-based AI sales assistant, this feature analyzes sales conversations to provide actionable insights and coachingRep Coaching: Outreach supports real-time coaching by identifying skill gaps and providing feedback, which helps in enhancing the effectiveness of sales reps and aligning their activities with best practicesDeal Insights: The platform provides detailed insights into deal performance, helping sales teams understand why deals are won or lost and what actions are needed to increase success ratesMutual Action Plans: Outreach facilitates the creation of mutual action plans that align the sales team and the customer on the next steps, ensuring a clear path to closing dealsSales Forecasting: The platform uses AI to generate accurate sales forecasts, helping teams better plan and allocate resources based on predictive data and historical trends.The platform integrates with popular customer relationship management (CRM) platforms such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and LeanData. The company is deeply integrated with third-party apps to attract large enterprise customers and has a network of 1,200+ partners.&nbsp;Outreach's machine learning model claims to predict deal closure with 81% accuracy and recommends actions to keep deals on track by analyzing unique engagement signals from emails, calls, and meetings.The company also opted to bolster its product offering by acquiring revenue intelligence platform Canopy.io in October 2021. With this acquisition, Outreach strengthens its sales analytics and forecasting capabilities. Canopy.io will be the foundation of “Outreach Commit,” a new forecasting tool under Outreach’s suite of products. Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, the platform served more than 6,000 companies, including Zoom, Databricks, ELSEVIER, Okta, and Siemens.In March 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17465?industryIds=27">expanded its partnership with Snowflake, </a>a data platform, to introduce a new offering called “Outreach Data Sharing,” which enables organizations to connect Outreach's datasets with other enterprise data and improve sales cycle.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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 Calixa offers a bottom-up sales platform that enables the sales team to segment customers by using prior purchasing and product usage patterns it aggregates through CRMs and other third-party tools. This enables sales teams to take the correct actions when approaching customers to increase user value and adoption. In November 2021, the company announced the beta launch of direct support for the Modern Data Stack, a suite of tools used for data integration, which enables users to connect their data warehouse (Snowflake or BigQuery) to Calixa.
 
 
 Calixa operates a subscription model starting from USD 199 per month (100,000 users), and also offers a freemium package for startups.  
 
 
 In November 2021, the company raised USD 12 million in a Series A funding round, just eight months after Calixa raised USD 4.25 million in a seed round; both rounds were led by Kleiner Perkins. The company intends to use the most recent funds for hiring— Calixa has 12 employees (up ~50% since its seed round) and plans to expand the team to 18 by Q1 2022. 
 
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Founded in 2021, Logik.io offers a proprietary configuration engine that integrates with Salesforce CPQ (configure, price, quote) tools as well as other ecommerce solutions like ThreeKit, a product visualization platform. The platform assists sales teams in managing proposals, price quotes, subscriptions and contracts, and omnichannel selling. The company is led by CEO Christopher Shutts and Executive Chairman Godard Abel who previously co-founded BigMachines, a CPQ driven platform that was later sold to Oracle in 2013. Subsequently, Godard founded another CPQ company called Steelbrick, which was sold for USD 360 million to Salesforce in 2016.In December 2023, the company announced the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25092">beta launch of Cosmo AI, </a>which claims to be the first AI solution for CPQ and Commerce, featuring Cosmo FunctionAssist, a Gen AI rule-writing assistant for simplified configuration administration.Funding and financialsIn May 2023, the firm raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18990">USD 16 million in a Series A </a>funding round led by Emergence Capital. The round follows its USD 10 million seed funding round led by High Alpha in November 2021. The company intended to use the funds for product development as well as to support its go-to-market strategy in 2022.

Front is a comprehensive customer service platform designed to enhance service delivery and operational efficiency through AI-powered tools. The platform combines the familiarity of email with the capabilities of a help desk, providing a unified interface for managing customer interactions. It features an omnichannel inbox, live chat, team collaboration tools, and AI-driven chatbots that offer real-time assistance and automate routine tasks. Front’s no-code automation and integrations simplify workflow management, while its knowledge base and analytics tools support scalable, high-quality service.&nbsp;In October 2022, the company launched the Front Integration Partner Program to increase business value for partners and give customers access to a wider range of integrations. Through open APIs, it had 100+ integrations with software and communications companies such as Salesforce, HubSpot, ClickUp, Aircall, and Dialpad.&nbsp;The platform’s edge is that it brings together team collaboration tools and customer data to deliver prompt, accurate, and personalized responses. As a result, the firm claims that 75% of Front's monthly active consumers make daily use of the service and have reported noteworthy benefits. This includes Shopify, which claimed that its average monthly replies per chat lowered by at least 10%, while MNX Global Logistics claimed to have saved USD 200,000 in productivity and efficiency costs due to Front’s solutions.&nbsp;In October 2018, the company acquired scheduling provider Meetingbird to add calendar and meeting scheduling capabilities to its platform.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2024, the platform served 8,500+ customers in more than 100 countries, including five of the Fortune 25. Its customers include Shopify, Airbnb, Hulu, Lyft, and Mailchimp.

Data Infrastructure & Analytics

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 Domo is a cloud-based analytics platform that enables businesses to connect, transform, and visualize data from various sources. It provides a comprehensive solution for data management, analysis, and visualization, empowering organizations to make data-driven decisions. Domo's platform is designed to foster collaboration, efficient decision-making, and improved business outcomes through its user-friendly interface and powerful data manipulation capabilities.
 
 
 Domo's key offerings include data integration, data warehousing, business intelligence (BI), and intelligent applications. The platform leverages its Adrenaline engine and offers over 1,000 pre-built connectors to extract data from cloud applications, databases, spreadsheets, and other sources. This data is then stored in Domo's internal data warehouse or accessed through federated queries, enabling users to analyze and visualize it using Domo's extensive collection of visualization tools and dashboards.
 
 
 Domo&rsquo;s user experience is designed to be intuitive and accessible, fostering high adoption rates across organizations. Its user-friendly interface, seamless collaboration features, and mobile-first approach contribute to its widespread adoption and ease of use. Domo's platform is built for speed and scalability, allowing organizations to quickly access and analyze even large datasets without experiencing performance issues.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Domo serves over 2,300 customers across various industries, including major enterprises such as eBay, Walmart, Cisco, Citibank, HP, The National Geographic Society, Verizon, US Army, Vanguard, Microsoft, IBM, Thomson Reuters, Airbus, Orange, AT&amp;T, Caterpillar, Volvo Cars, and Comcast.
 
 
 The platform has been widely adopted by organizations seeking to leverage data for better decision-making, improved customer insights, and enhanced marketing analytics. Domo has formed strategic partnerships with companies like Regional One Health and Torchy's Tacos, enabling them to leverage Domo's capabilities for healthcare metrics and finance applications, respectively.
 
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 Snowflake offers a cloud-based data platform primarily for data management and analytics. The platform, engineered for cloud efficiency, is designed to facilitate a global &ldquo;Data Cloud,&rdquo; enabling organizations to explore, share, and utilize their data effectively. Snowflake's approach focuses on data accessibility and integration across cloud environments​​.
 
 
 In the analytics realm, Snowflake's services include data management tools targeted at enhancing customer data insights, and connecting with multiple solutions to transform data into an asset while mitigating the complexities associated with legacy systems​​. Snowflake reportedly processes over 2.6 billion data queries and manages more than 515 million data workloads daily (October 2022).
 
 
 Snowflake also offers a conversational analyst on its platform called &ldquo;
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32649">
 Cortex Analyst
 </a>
 &rdquo; to interact with structured data in Snowflake. It is built using Meta's Llama and Mistral models.
 
 
 The company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25030">
 acquired Samooha
 </a>
 , a data clean room and collaboration startup (whose flagship solution is built on Snowflake&rsquo;s data management platform) in December 2023 for an undisclosed sum. Samooha&rsquo;s technology was reportedly absorbed into Snowflake&rsquo;s existing clean room solutions, solidifying existing integrations, consolidating capabilities, and streamlining usage of Samooha&rsquo;s tools.
 
 
 In FY2024 (ending January 31, 2024), Snowflake generated revenue of USD 2.8 billion, a net loss of USD 838.0 million.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of July 2024, Snowflake served over 10,000 customers, which included 736 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies, who contributed ~42% of its 1H FY2025 revenue. Its notable customers included Okta, Western Union, Panoramic, Capital One, AMN Healthcare, Autodesk, Comcast, Tapestry, and Anthem, with representation across advertising, media and entertainment, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, public sector, retail and consumer goods, technology, and telecommunications.
 
 
 Snowflake's partnerships span technology partners and system integrators, facilitating the deployment and effectiveness of its platform for customers. Other notable partners as of November 2023 included Matillion, Tableau, Fivetran, DataRobot, Cisco, Zepl, Informatica, and Dropbox. These collaborations focus on enabling customers to derive meaningful insights from their data using Snowflake's flexible solutions​​. It also partnered with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30082">
 NVIDIA
 </a>
 to facilitate the development of custom AI data applications using NVIDIA's AI technology. The collaboration will involve the integration of&nbsp; NVIDIA AI Enterprise software into Snowflake's Cortex AI to enable organizations to seamlessly connect custom models to diverse business data and deliver highly accurate responses.
 
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Alation is a data intelligence platform founded in 2012 that enables organizations to catalog, discover, understand and govern their enterprise data assets. The company's flagship product, Alation Data Catalog, allows users to search and access data using natural language queries while providing context through metadata management. The platform automatically crawls and inventories data from various sources like data warehouses, lakes, and business intelligence systems, using machine learning to parse technical metadata, user permissions, and business descriptions. As of 2024, Alation's platform includes capabilities for data governance, lineage tracking, quality management, and collaboration features through dedicated apps. The company achieved over USD 100 million in annual recurring revenue by November 2022, with its data catalog solution starting at USD 60,000 for a 12-month subscription. In addition to its core catalog offering, Alation provides connectors for integrating data from various sources and a Data Governance App for creating and enforcing data management policies.
Key customers and partnerships
Alation serves over 570 enterprise customers across 32 countries as of 2023, including major corporations like Cisco, General Mills, Munich Re, Pfizer, Nasdaq, Salesforce, and eBay. The company counts more than 25% of Fortune 100 companies as clients, spanning industries such as finance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, retail, insurance, and technology. In the public sector, Alation's customers include the US Environmental Protection Agency and Australia's Department of Defense. In November 2022, Alation formed a strategic partnership with Databricks to jointly develop engineering, data science, and analytics applications leveraging both companies' platforms. The company also maintains technology partnerships with major cloud platforms and data warehouse providers, with a particular focus on the Snowflake and Databricks ecosystems.

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​​​​.DataRobot made several acquisitions to expand its business, including Boston Consulting Group’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 partnershipsDataRobot'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’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.

Starburst provides an analytics engine that enables organizations to access and analyze distributed data without moving it from its source location. The company's platform is built on Trino (formerly known as Presto), a distributed SQL query engine designed for running interactive analytics queries across various data sources. The platform allows users to query data across multiple databases, data lakes, and data warehouses simultaneously, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming data centralization. In February 2023, Starburst introduced Warp Speed, a smart indexing and caching solution that accelerates queries up to 7x faster by autonomously identifying and caching frequently used data. The company's software includes two main offerings: Starburst Enterprise for self-managed deployments and Starburst Galaxy, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution launched in 2021 that enables data lake and cross-cloud analytics. In February 2022, Starburst reported tripling its customer base and annual recurring revenue in the previous 12 months.
Key customers and partnerships
Starburst's platform is used by organizations including Zillow, Standard Chartered, Carrefour Brazil, Comcast, DoorDash, VMware, and Condé Nast. The platform helped Priceline reduce data storage costs by 5-10x while AssuranceIQ achieved a 10% increase in conversion rates. Starburst had established partnerships with major cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, Red Hat, and HPE. The company also partnered with Red Hat as one of the inaugural members of the Red Hat OpenShift Data Science ecosystem.

Databricks offers a unified, cloud-based data lakehouse, called Databricks Lakehouse Platform, for integrating, storing, processing, governing, and sharing data for business analytics and AI initiatives. It is built based on open-source frameworks, like Apache Spark, Delta Lake, and MLflow. The company offers the platform through a usage-based (pay-as-you-go) model, and is catered toward enterprises in many industries, including manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, communications, media and entertainment, public sector, and retail.The platform allows enterprises to share data, models, dashboards, and notebooks across different platforms and tools for data science, analytics, and AI through Delta Sharing, a product developed in partnership with the Linux Foundation. It also supports automatic data ingestion and extract, transform, and load (ETL) processing through a unified API. It also offers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30386">LakeFlow</a>, an offering to integrate and simplify the various aspects of data engineering, including data ingestion, transformation, and orchestration from various sources. In addition, Databricks SQL, a serverless data warehouse on Lakehouse Platform, allows enterprises to run SQL and BI applications to gain insights from stored data.Furthermore, Databricks offers managed services for MLflow, an open-source platform that provides features for the development, management, deployment, and monitoring of ML models. In addition, the <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/databricks-introduces-new-generative-ai-tools-investing-in-lakehouse-ai-301865232.html">Lakehouse AI</a> tools featured within the Lakehouse platform allow developers to build Gen-AI applications using foundational models to train their own custom models securely with its enterprise data.Databricks resorted to acquisitions to enhance its product suite. In July 2023, it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19683">acquired MosaicML</a>, an ML model development platform for GenAI applications, in a transaction valued at approximately USD 1.3 billion, to integrate MosaicML's platform within the Lakehouse platform, offering organizations a unified platform with tools to create and manage large language models (LLMs) and a wide range of AI use cases, including GenAI, using their own data. It also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23006">agreed to acquire Arcion</a>, a database replication platform, for ~USD 100 million in October 2023. After finalization, Databricks aimed to integrate Arcion’s technology into its existing platforms, including MosaicML. Furthermore, Databricks <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30204">acquired Tabular</a>, a data management company, for over USD 1 billion in June 2024. Post acquisition, both companies planned to collaborate to improve the interoperability of the Lakehouse platform working closely with the Delta Lake and Iceberg communities.In FY2023 (ending January 31, 2024), Databricks generated over USD 1.6 billion in revenue, primarily driven by its Databricks SQL product (data warehousing), which grew more than 200% YoY, reaching a run rate of over USD 250 million. The company also reported a customer retention rate of 131%, with an expansion rate of 140%, indicating that customers were purchasing more of Databricks' offerings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, Databricks had over 10,000 customers worldwide, which includes renowned companies like S&amp;P Global, Adobe, Toyota, Nasdaq, and NASA.Databricks partnered with no-code extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform Hevo Data (July 2022) to provide automated data integration into the lakehouse for mutual customers. This enabled customers to deploy ETL pipelines on Hevo Data within Databricks. It also partnered with NVIDIA (June 2024) to optimize data and AI workloads by integrating NVIDIA CUDA accelerated computing into its Data Intelligence Platform.

Monte Carlo offers a data observability platform that helps organizations monitor and ensure the reliability of their data assets. The platform uses machine learning to automatically detect and prevent data quality issues, known as data downtime - periods when data is missing, incomplete, or inaccurate. It monitors five key pillars of data observability: freshness, volume, schema, quality, and lineage. The platform connects securely to data warehouses, lakes, and BI tools, extracting only metadata, logs and statistics without storing actual data. Using ML-powered anomaly detection, Monte Carlo assigns importance scores to tables and automatically identifies abnormalities across the data stack. The platform includes automated monitoring, alerting, and root cause analysis capabilities along with field and table lineage tools to track data dependencies and identify sources of issues. As of 2023, data teams using Monte Carlo reported a 88% reduction in data downtime, with one company saving 44 hours per week previously spent troubleshooting data pipelines.

Airbyte is an open-source data integration platform providing a comprehensive selection of connectors and integrations—reportedly the largest in the industry—that enables businesses to move data from any data source to any destination or application. Airbyte can be deployed as a self-managed solution, in the cloud, or directly embedded into a customer’s own application. The platform offers features ranging from extract and load capabilities and no-code custom connector building to unstructured data movement for use with LLMs and AI. Applicable use cases include database replication, AI/ML, analytics, and embedded connectors for customer credential gathering.Airbyte claims its connectors can be built in any programming language and deployed within minutes on any platform. Hosted in Docker containers, a large number of the platform’s existing connectors are maintained or built by its 15,000+-strong (November 2023) open-source community.As of September 2024, the platform reportedly offered over 300 pre-built connectors. Airbyte also offers an API that enables the automation of data integration tasks, allowing software and data engineers to manage large deployments more efficiently. This integration with existing tools simplifies the management and monitoring of data pipelines​​​​​​.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Airbyte’s customers included organizations such as KORTX, Graniterock, Anecdote, Faros, PensionBee, Jeenie, and Vive Travel, with applications across marketing, sales, product development, engineering, finance, and operations. Over 40,000 organizations have reportedly used the Airbyte service as of November 2023.

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 dbt Labs provides an open source data transformation tool that uses analytics engineering. It is aimed at programmers with knowledge of SQL to develop models with SELECT statements, test and document each model, and install safely with Git-enabled version control. The software enables the user to develop faster, work from the same assumptions, deploy with confidence, and&nbsp; ensure low risk with governance and safety. The company also offers dbt Core, which is an open source software for analytics engineers, and dbt Cloud Enterprise for secure, reliable access to data. JetBlue and Domain are some of its clients.
 
 
 
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Distributed workforces require new solutions for office operations, HR, payment, and more.

Remote Work Infrastructure

Gusto (formerly known as ZenPayroll) is a cloud-based, all-in-one platform provider of payroll, benefits, time tracking, team management, and compliance services. Gusto has a history of continuously developing its platform outside of its core payroll function. The platform launched benefits in 2015 and added time tracking, payroll integration with accounting software, and HR and compliance management in 2018. It offers a digital wallet (launched in September 2020) that acts as a mini-bank for employees receiving their paychecks through Gusto.The platform also provides benefits such as health insurance and 401(k) retirement plans and makes parts of its service available via an API dubbed ‘Gusto Embedded Payroll’ (June 2021). This allows Gusto to offer its services through SaaS vertical companies that want to provide payroll support to their customers. The company rebranded as Gusto in 2015 and currently has offices in San Francisco, Denver, and New York.Gusto has acquired a series of companies over the years, with its most recent being that of Remote Team (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6242">October 2021</a>). Previously, the company acquired tax-software company Symmetry Software (July 2021), to build out its existing small business-focused software and Ardius (June 2021) to expand into automating its customers’ R&amp;D tax credit compliance.The company focuses on providing services for small businesses so that they can match the benefits that large companies are able to offer. Gusto’s monthly subscription pricing ranges from USD 6 and 9 per employee, with a base fee ranging from USD 40 to USD 60.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company served over 300,000 businesses in the US, processing ‘tens of billions’ of dollars in payroll and benefits.In October 2021, the company partnered with client engagement platform Ignition to roll out its People Advisory Accelerator program, allowing clients to fast track proposal creation and billing. Other partnerships include that with Workiz (a home service management software company) and JazzHR (March 2021).Funding and financialsThe company’s latest funding round was in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10416">May 2022</a>, where it raised ~USD 55 million in an extension round as part of its USD 175 million Series E round (announced in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4828">August 2021</a>).The round was led by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc and valued the company at USD 9.5 billion. External sources expected the company to utilize its funding to navigate adverse market conditions and gear up for a possible IPO in the future.

GoCo provides a suite of HR, payroll, and benefits solutions under one platform for small businesses. In Q4 2022 the company launched new features which included 1) a performance management module, allowing end-to-end performance reviews, feedback, and employee tracking, 2) messages feature to send targeted team announcements via SMS or email, 3) 50+ integrations in categories such as productivity and product management, time tracking, applicant tracking, communication, payroll, etc., 4) improved payroll options, offering integration with ADP Workforce Now and a new beta payroll option powered by Gusto, 5) enhanced UI and 6) visual reports.GoCo claims its platform stands out for its flexibility to support existing processes, policies, and providers, so SMBs don't have to change their workflows. Other notable product launches included the addition of 1) expense management features (February 2024), 2) engagement surveys, an AI-knowledge base, attendance management (November 2023) and 3) shift management scheduling (August 2023).In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16360">February 2023</a>, GoCo acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1265571">WFHomie</a>, a Canadian company that offers an employee experience and people analytics platform, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was part of its strategy to expand its offerings to include more products and services focused on improving employee experience and measuring engagement. The WFHomie team joined GoCo to work towards the development of more innovative products to create engaging and data-driven workplaces.The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions per employee, starting at USD 5.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company had over 400,000+ users across 10,000+ small and mid-sized US businesses using its platform.GoCo has established partnerships with insurance benefits providers such as OneDigital and PayneWest to provide its clients with a complementary solution. In addition, the platform syncs with existing payroll providers such as ADP, PayChex, and Paylocity.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14198">November 2022</a> GoCo raised USD 15 million in funding led by ATX Venture Partners, bringing the total recent investment to USD 27.5 million. Funds were earmarked to launch an expanded version of its platform in Q4 2022 with new features and enhancements, which includes 50+ new integrations, an improved user interface, visual reports, and insights.The company claims it surpassed USD 1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2017.

Simpplr is an intranet platform built for remote teams to engage and connect with colleagues. The platform provides employees with important organizational announcements, helps them find relevant documents faster, and keeps them socially connected to co-workers. Simpplr’s cloud-based platform is backed by AI, which the company uses to launch an auto-governance engine (November 2019), which ensures content is relevant and up-to-date and creates personalized employee news feeds.In addition, Simpplr uses “adaptive personalization” to publish content based on an employee’s role, department, and location. The platform integrates with popular enterprise tools such as Box, Google Drive, Slack, and Microsoft 365 from which content can be directly posted on the Simpplr interface. The platform operates a subscription pricing model.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22006">September 2023</a>, Simpplr acquired Socrates.ai, a GenAI-based virtual employee assistant, offering centralized HR and IT information through a conversational interface. The service was integrated into its platform, improving the employee experience.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company had over a million active users across 1,000+ enterprises, notably including Snowflake, Moderna, Eurostar, and The World Economic Forum.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18178">May 2023</a>, the company raised USD 70 million in Series D funding led by Sapphire Ventures, taking the company's total funding to over USD 131 million. The new funding was set to be invested in the future growth and innovation of the employee experience platform.

Darwinbox is a cloud-based human capital management (HCM) solution designed for enterprises to manage their talent. It offers various features to help companies attract, engage, and retain their employees including talent management, people analytics, employee engagement, rewards and recognition, time and attendance, core HR, recruitment and compensation management, among others. The platform allows companies to manage employee data, assess and reward performance, conduct pulse surveys, and automate HR processes such as recruitment and time tracking. The platform competes with a range of vendors, including SAP and Oracle. Other services offered include travel and expense management.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company served over 2.5 million employees across 900 enterprises, (up from 700+ enterprises in January 2023, and 200+ in late 2019). Some of its clients include Adani (multinational conglomerate), Zalora (online retailer), Mahindra (automotive manufacturer) and TVS (automotive company), among others.In October 2023, the company partnered with PwC UK to bring Darwinbox’s HR solutions to firms across the UK and EU markets. Previously, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15764">January 2023</a>, Darwinbox partnered with Microsoft to integrate its product with the Microsoft product ecosystem and co-innovate solutions to enhance employee experience. The partnership was expected to accelerate Darwinbox’s go-to-market efforts.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15511">January 2023</a>, Darwinbox raised ~USD 4.9 million from the State Bank of India (SBI) in an extended Series D round. The funds were allocated for marketing, capital expenditure, and general corporate purposes. Notably, the company reached unicorn status via its USD 72 million funding round in January 2022.During 2021, Darwinbox’s total revenue doubled and revenue from the Southeast Asia region (~20% of total revenue) tripled year-over-year.

Employment Hero offers human resource, Employer of Record (EoR), PEO, and benefits solutions for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Other services offeerd include 1) SmartMatch, which utilizes AI to suggest suitable candidates for hiring purposes, 2) “Swag”, an employment app for individuals to manage savings, wages and benefits at work while also being able to generate resumes using AI and 3) an employee learning management system (LMS). The company claims a 2.9x return on investment for companies using Employment Hero and 81% improved payroll efficiency.The company previously introduced localized versions of the platform in these markets with pre-built employment contracts and policies. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the company introduced “Global Teams,” which served as a professional employer organization (PEO) for remote teams.In April 2024, the company acquired professional services firm Employment Innovations to accelerate the development of its fully automated payroll solution. Previously, in February 2022, the company acquired KeyPay, a cloud-based payroll and workforce management solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition also included Pensionsync, a UK-based subsidiary of KeyPay that connects any payroll software to any pension provider. KeyPay is expected to operate independently and contribute to Employment Hero’s growth in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, and the UK.The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions per employee, ranging from USD 8-12 and optional extras (employee assistance and HR advisory), priced at USD 6-15.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company served over 2 million users across 300,000+ enterprises. Notable brands included Tedaisy Insurance Group, BESA and PPS.Funding and financialsIn its most recent funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23067">October 2023</a>), the company raised GBP 131 million (~USD 159 million) in a Series F growth funding round led by TCV. Fund were earmarked to 1) support its global expansion, particularly focused on strengthening its presence in the UK, 2) expanding local headcount to 180 team members by end 2024 and 3) to expedite the UK rollout of SmartMatch, its AI-driven recruitment solution.The company noted that it processes over USD 100 billion in payroll annually (April 2024), having had over 100% YoY growth since its inception in 2014. The company reached unicorn status in 2022, and invests USD 25 million into R&amp;D each year.

Culture Amp is a Melbourne-based employee engagement software company. The company provides subscription-based anonymous employee surveys to get a pulse on employee sentiment and track this over a period of time to determine employee turnover. Specifically, the company offers over 40+ science-backed and customizable survey templates. Overall, the company differentiates itself by offering science-backed offerings developed and reviewed by PhD holders in the company across the fields of psychology, machine learning and others.Other services offered include performance management (goal setting, 360 degree feedback, 1-on-1s) and employee development (individual growth plans, L&amp;D data, a skills coach) and third party app integrations (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Rippling, etc).&nbsp;In March 2024, the company acquired people analytics platform Orgnostic to allow its large datasets to be integrated with Culture Amp’s AI platform. Previously, in January 2019, the company acquired Zugata, a performance management system which complements Culture Amp’s core offering.&nbsp;&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsIts customer base includes large enterprises such as Sales Force, Slack, and Airbnb to name a few. As of April 2024, the company served over 25 million employees across 6,000 organizations, notably including McDonalds, Etsy, Canva and Intercom, among others.In August 2023, The company announced that it would leverage Google’s Vertex AI to train, model, and fine-tune its GenAI capabilities for summarizing employee survey comments into actionable insights. Additionally, Culture Amp also partnered with compensation management firm Pave to connect performance data to compensation decisions with greater transparency.Funding and financialsCulture Amp raised USD 100 million in July 2021 at a USD 1.5 billion valuation—doubling its value since 2019. The round was led by existing investors Sequoia Capital India and TDM Growth Partners. The fresh funds were to be funneled toward its dual data centers, scaling its business, and exploring potential M&amp;A opportunities.&nbsp;The company generated AUD 101 million in revenue for FY2022 (~USD 153 million), representing a 53% year-on-year (YoY) increase. Despite this, the company’s operating losses widened by 1.3x YoY to USD 39.6 million. Further, the company reported that it was not profitable, incurring USD 101.9 million in staffing costs.

Oyster offers a SaaS HR and benefits platform for enterprises. Its services include payroll, benefits, and onboarding. In addition, the company assists organizations in dealing with cross-border regulations and tax laws when hiring remotely.Notable product launches include 1) Oyster Embedded (November 2023), allowing third party organizations to access Oyster’s hiring, payroll and rewards software from within their own applications, 2) Oyster Pearl (September 2023), an AI-driven chatbot offering personalized responses to inquiries related to benefits, taxes, and other aspects of global employment, 3) Oyster for Impact (September 2021), a program that offers certified nonprofits and benefit corporations discounts on Oyster’s distributed HR tools, financially backed by PayPal Ventures and HR Tech Investments.As of April 2024, Oyster was able to run payroll in 120+ countries, and manage employee hires across 180+ countries. The company was also in the process of launching ‘Oyster Shell’, its misclassification insurance for extra protection when hiring global contractors using its platform.The platform generates revenue through monthly subscription per hired individual, with plans including: independent contractors (USD 29), payroll for employees (USD 50) and EoR (USD 499).Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, the company had over 1,100 clients. As of April 2024, the company offered integrations with over 65 companies, ranging from talent acquisition services, workplace tools, compliance services and benefits, among others.Funding and financialsIn its most recent funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9841">April 2022</a>), Oyster raised USD 150 million in Series C funding led by Georgian, valuing the company at over USD 1 billion (up from its previous valuation of USD 475 million valuation in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1329">June 2021</a>). The fresh funds were earmarked for platform development and to invest in the “People Ops” community.In 2021, Oyster’s revenue grew by over 20x and the number of employees on the platform increased by 17x. Notably, in the first quarter of 2022, Oyster attracted over 20,000 job applications for client vacancies.

<div>
 
 Airspeed, founded by Doug Camplejohn (ex-GM, Sales Cloud at Salesforce), offers an employee recognition platform through a family of apps&nbsp; and aims to provide solutions to improve workplace culture and connection.Airspeed&rsquo;s suite includes Intros, Celebrations, Shoutouts, Icebreakers, and Maps. Intros helps new hires get acquainted with their colleagues and connect with them. Celebrations allows team members to keep track of special dates and celebrate them together. Shoutouts is a tool to send kudos and recognize teammates for their achievements. Icebreakers automates the process of starting conversations and team-building activities during meetings. Finally, Maps allows team members to see where their colleagues are located on a map, which can be helpful for coordinating meetings or other activities.
 
 
 The company offers freemium plans, with paid plans ranging from USD 2-3 per user per month.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The platform&rsquo;s key customers include Oracle, Gusto, Uncommon Purpose, and Category Pirates.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18296">
 May 2023
 </a>
 , Airspeed raised USD 5 million in seed funding led by Greylock Partners and Venrock and a USD 2.5 million debt line from Western Technology Investment to scale the platform, grow the team, and invest in R&amp;D.
 
</div>

Foundation Models

Snowflake offers a cloud-based data platform primarily for data management and analytics. The platform, engineered for cloud efficiency, is designed to facilitate a global “Data Cloud,” enabling organizations to explore, share, and utilize their data effectively. Snowflake's approach focuses on data accessibility and integration across cloud environments​​.In April 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28792">introduced Arctic LLM, </a>an enterprise-grade AI model for generating database code. The model is freely available for research and commercial use under the Apache 2.0 license.The model processes data by breaking tasks into subtasks and delegating them to smaller, specialized models. Additionally, the model is built on a mixture of experts (MoE) architecture which allows it to activate only 17 billion out of its 480 billion parameters at a time, creating 128 separate expert models.The model is available in the Snowflake Cortex and other cloud platforms like Hugging Face, NVIDIA, and Microsoft Azure. It was planned to be available on AWS and Perplexity as of May 2024.In August 2024, the company launched<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32670"> Cortex Analyst</a> in public preview to provide a conversational interface to interact with structured data in Snowflake, using Meta's Llama and Mistral models. Funding and financialsSnowflake reported a product revenue of USD 1.1 billion in FY2022, marking a 106% YoY growth. Snowflake also reported 5,944 customers as of January 2023, with a net revenue retention rate of 178%. Among these, 184 customers contributed more than USD 1 million in trailing 12-month product revenue​​.

Cohere is a Canadian startup founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst, with backgrounds in natural language processing and prior experience at Google Brain. The firm specializes in the development and deployment of large language models (LLMs) for various applications across enterprise and business use cases. Its foundation model, Cohere Command, is a large natural language text generation model with 52.4 billion parameters, focused on task-oriented dialogue, creating summarization, copywriting, dialogue extraction, and question answering.Cohere also provides Cohere Embed, a model designed to generate vector embeddings that capture the essence of text, improving capabilities in search, content moderation, and intent recognition. These embeddings help empower Cohere's multilingual customizable models, which can be fine-tuned to cater to specific use cases and industries. Additionally, Cohere ensures secure deployment options, including private cloud solutions, for added data security and privacy. In November 2023, Cohere unveiled <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23446">Embed V3</a> with advanced capabilities in matching documents to queries, increasing the efficiency of retrieval augmented generation, and reducing the operational costs of LLM applications. In February 2024, the company introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26583">Aya,</a> an open-source LLM that supports 101 languages.According to Stanford University's HELM benchmarks, Cohere's Command model ranks among the highest-performing models available.In March 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27502"> Cohere released an advanced language model, “Command-R,</a>” for enterprises. The model offers improved performance on retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and tool usage, with longer context windows of up to 128,000 tokens.In April 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28198">the company released an advanced language model, Command R+</a>, for business applications. The model offers enhanced retrieval augmented generation (RAG) with citation, supports 10 business languages, and automates workflows. Additionally, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28463">Cohere also released Rerank 3,</a> a model designed to enhance enterprise search and RAG systems. In the same month, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28509">the company also introduced a private beta for Cohere Compass,</a> a foundation embedding model designed to allow multi-aspect data indexing and searching, and also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28789">launched a toolkit available for developers to build AI applications</a> faster, offering production-ready applications that can be deployed across cloud providers, with enhanced security and customization options.In May 2024, Cohere introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29350">Command R Fine-Tuning</a> for enhanced performance for business application workload and<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29761"> released Aya 23, </a>a multilingual language model capable of handling 23 languages,available in 8 billion and 35 billion parameters.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34141">In September 2024</a>, Cohere released updated versions of its APIs for its AI models Chat, Embed, Rerank, and Classify. These updates, collectively called “API V2,” introduced several upgrades to its existing models, including mandatory model version specification in API calls, consolidation of input parameters for Chat API, and improved tool integration capabilities.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsIn November 2021, Cohere partnered with Google Cloud to leverage its infrastructure support and TPUs for product development and deployment. Cohere also partnered with other major cloud providers like AWS and Oracle.In March 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27307"> Cohere partnered with consultancy firm Accenture</a> to integrate its Command model and retrieval augmented generation (RAG) capabilities to offer GenAI solutions for businesses.In April 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28932">Cohere partnered with Amazon </a>to incorporate Command R+ and Command R to Amazon's cloud platform, Bedrock.In June 2024, the company<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30492"> partnered with Borderless AI,</a> a provider of AI-powered HR solutions, to create tailored AI agents for HR tasks.The company entered into a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31052">strategic partnership with i-5O,</a> a provider of AI solutions for manufacturing, as part of Cohere's Startup Program and also partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31590">Fujitsu</a> in July 2024 to develop a Japanese LLM.In September 2024, Cohere <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33458">partnered with Nomura Research Institute (NRI)</a>, a Japanese consulting firm, to develop the NRI Financial AI Platform.

Anthropic is a developer of advanced foundation models to create AI products and services with an emphasis on AI safety and accountability.The company’s flagship product is a large language model (LLM) and virtual assistant called “Claude,” containing 175 billion parameters. It provides two versions of Claude: 1) Claude, its comprehensive model, and 2) Claude Instant, a faster and cost-effective alternative. Claude can edit, rewrite, summarize, and extract information from large volumes of text, answer questions across a broad range of topics, and automate simple tasks—all via a natural language conversation.Anthropic uses “constitutional training” to tune its Claude model, which is a method that utilizes a combination of reinforcement and supervised learning by leveraging feedback from trained and tuned AI models to ensure Claude behaves in the desired manner. The company aims to develop AIs that can help train new AI models, ensuring they are helpful, honest, harmless, and aligned with people’s interests. The company claims that it can handle complex multi-step instructions over large amounts of content with 100,000 token windows, compared to OpenAI’s 32,000.&nbsp;In November 2023, Anthropic u<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24270">pgraded its language model to release Claude 2.1</a>.Claude 2.1's new features primarily involve a more extensive context window (accommodating 200,000 tokens), heightened accuracy, and additional extensibility.In March 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27259">the company released multimodal model Claude 3 </a>to process and understand text and photographic inputs. Claude 3 can answer more questions, understand and process longer instructions, and be more accurate. The&nbsp; Claude 3 portfolio includes Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet, and Claude 3 Opus.In June 2024, Anthropic, a provider of GenAI models and applications, released <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30697">Claude 3.5 Sonnet,</a> the first model in claude 3.5 models series with USD 3 per million input tokens as well as USD 15 per million output tokens.&nbsp;The company also offers&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32668">prompt caching for its Claude API</a> allowing developers to cache frequently used context between API calls for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku models,&nbsp; <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33041">system prompts</a> for enhanced transparency, and&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36119">prompt improvement</a> features to improve developer productivity.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;In February 2023, Anthropic partnered with Google Cloud, securing a USD 300 million investment. The collaboration focuses on creating dependable AI systems, with Google Cloud contributing its machine-learning infrastructure expertise to bolster Anthropic's AI research initiatives. In May 2023, the firm partnered with Zoom to integrate Claude with Zoom’s platform, starting with Zoom Contact Center.&nbsp;&nbsp;From March 2024, Claude 3 Sonnet was aimed to be available in <a href="https://venturebeat.com/ai/amazon-adds-gpt-4-beating-claude-3-to-bedrock/">Amazon’s Bedrock</a>, with Opus and Haiku planned for future release. The models were also aimed to be available in Google’s <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/announcing-anthropics-claude-3-models-in-google-cloud-vertex-ai">Vertex AI</a>, with Sonnet available in public preview as of March 2024, and others set to release in future. The Claude 3 family of models was also made available on Amazon Bedrock in April 2024.In March 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27790">Anthropic partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Accenture</a> to assist organizations in deploying custom GenAI solutions responsibly while prioritizing data security and privacy. The partnership aimed to provide organizations with access to Anthropic's AI models via Amazon's Bedrock and Accenture’s GenAI switchboard for customizing AI applications. Furthermore, in July 2024, the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31454">partnership was expanded to provide fine-tuning services for Anthropic's Claude 3 Haiku, </a>a compact AI model using Amazon's managed service Bedrock. <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34142">In September 2024</a>, The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) approved Anthropic's USD 4 billion partnership with Amazon. The partnership enables Anthropic to utilize Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon's custom chips for building, training, and deploying AI models.&nbsp;In August 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32543">partnered with Deloitte,</a> a professional services firm, to integrate the Claude model family with Deloitte's industry experience to develop customized, enterprise-grade AI solutions.In October 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35590"> Anthropic partnered with Qodo,</a> an AI-driven software development platform, to introduce support for four new AI models including Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5. In November 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35783"> Anthropic partnered with Palantir and AWS&nbsp;</a>to deliver its Claude 3 and 3.5 AI models to US intelligence and defense agencies to leverage Claude through Palantir's AI Platform (AIP).

Runway develops tools and platforms that enable artists, designers, and creators to generate visual content, from visuals and animations to interactive experiences.Runway was one of the co-creators of the initial Stable Diffusion image generation model, which was developed in collaboration with the University of Munich and Stability AI. Runway’s flagship product is Gen-1, a video-to-video generation model that transforms videos into different styles. Users can upload a video from their device and submit a text or image prompt as a style reference, which the tool uses to generate a new video by overlaying the style on the uploaded footage. Gen-1 is available via Runway’s web platform and, as of April 2023, is also an iOS application. The company’s platform also offers a web-based video editor that incorporates Gen-1 and a range of other content creation and transformation tools based on its AI models. Some of its notable features are content creation from Text to Video, Text to Image, Video to Video, Image to Image, object removal from videos, slow motion generation, image animation, background removal, personalized AI training, and generative audio. In March 2023, Runway launched “Gen-2,” a text-to-video system that can generate new videos from simple text prompts or images, which it claims is one of the first commercially available text-to-video models. In November 2023, the company released an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23491">advanced upgrade</a> of Gen-2, focusing on improving the realness and sharpness of AI-generated videos. It went on to launch <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30528">its Gen-3 Alpha model</a> in June 2024 to enable users to generate high-quality video clips up to 10 seconds in length, with precise control over emotional expressions and camera movements, followed by a 7x faster, lower-priced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32219">Gen-3 Alpha Turbo</a> model in July 2024.In September 2024, runway announced the release of an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33673">API</a> that allows developers and organizations to integrate its GenAI models into third-party platforms, apps, and services. The company currently grants access to selected partners with the focus on feedback and improvement. As of September 2024, NVIDIA, Media Monks, Dolce &amp; Gabbana, Omnicom, Wieden+Kennedy, Media Monks, and Publicis Groupe were among the selected partners of the technology.Key customers and partnerships Individual content creators and enterprise users use runway solutions, including CBS, New Balance, Harbor Picture Company, and Publicis. As of December 2022, 10 million users were using Runway’s solutions, including visual effects and video editing teams of popular television programs like CBS’ “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and Hollywood films like “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Runway also has a partnership with major Hollywood studio <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33758">Lionsgate</a> to train a custom video model on Lionsgate's film catalog.

Hugging Face, a French-American firm, initially ventured into the development of chatbot applications before pivoting toward the development of a comprehensive platform for machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). Foundation models are central to Hugging Face's offerings which constitute an expansive open collection. Among these models are transformer-based solutions:1.BERT, created by Google, can be used for more accurate language understanding by capturing contextual relationships and dependencies in text data2.GPT-2, developed by OpenAI, can be used for natural language processing tasks, including text generation and comprehension tasks3.RoBERTa, created by researchers at Facebook AI, can be used for a wide range of natural language processing tasks, including text classification, language generation, and sentiment analysisAdditionally, Hugging Face offers multilingual models to further extend its utility to a global audience. The models are accessible through the Transformers library, facilitating model loading and fine-tuning pre-trained models on custom datasets, which is also accessible via an API.&nbsp;The company launched Watsonx.ai, a geospatial foundation model developed in collaboration with IBM, in August 2023. It's reportedly the platform's largest geospatial model and the first open-source AI foundation model with NASA. Trained on Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 satellite data, it claims to offer a 15% improvement in tasks like flood and burn scar mapping with minimal labeled data. It's adaptable for tasks like deforestation tracking and greenhouse gas monitoring.In April 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28611">Hugging Face introduced Idefics2, </a>a multimodal model to process text and image inputs and generate text responses. The model has 8 billion parameters, an open license, and improved OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities.In November 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35594">Hugging Face introduced SmolLM2</a>, a series of compact language models in sizes of 135 million, 360 million, and 1.7 billion parameters, available under the Apache 2.0 license and optimized for smartphones and Edge devices.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of August 2023, the platform served 10,000 customers across 50,000+ organizations on the platform.&nbsp;In April 2023, the company partnered with Snorkel AI, specializing in data-centric AI and machine-learning solutions to make foundation models accessible to enterprises for various use cases. As of August 2023, the company had collaborated with major cloud providers like NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft.<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23926">In November 2023 </a>, Dell Technologies collaborated with Hugging Face to enable on-site deployment of Gen AI models, addressing enterprise worries about cloud expenses and data protection. The partnership offers an AI model library, infrastructure options, custom deployment tools for Dell servers, and access to training resources, simplifying enterprise processes. In January 2024, Hugging Face entered a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25911">strategic partnership with Google Cloud </a>to allow developers working on Hugging Face to leverage Google Cloud's infrastructure.In February 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27067">Hugging Face partnered NVIDIA and ServiceNow, </a>a provider of workflow solutions, to introduce StarCoder2, a family of open-access LLM code generation.Funding and financials&nbsp;In August 2023, the company raised USD 235 million in a Series D funding round from Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Salesforce, and Sound Ventures, bringing its post-money valuation to USD 4.5 billion. It planned to use the funds to further expand its efforts in research, enterprise, and startups and is set to recruit new talent to support its growth.&nbsp;It was also reported that the company generated a revenue of USD 10 million in 2021 and maintained an annualized revenue ranging from USD 30 million to USD 50 million.&nbsp;

Based in France, Mistral AI is an open-source GenAI company that develops fine-tuned language models and provides businesses with foundational technologies to automate existing processes and develop new products.The company's flagship model, Mistral-7B, supports English text and code generation abilities and is positioned as a cost-effective alternative to larger LLMs, providing similar capabilities at a reduced compute cost. The company aspires to support the open GenAI community and emphasizes its commitment to achieving state-of-the-art performance with open models. Mistral's business model involves offering a free downloadable model while providing commercial offerings as white-box solutions, with both weights and code sources accessible, targeting enterprises with hosted solutions and dedicated deployments.Mistral-7B is available for customers through Amazon SageMaker JumpStart by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google's Vertex AI platform.In February 2024, Mistral AI introduced an LLM, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26995">Mistral Large,</a> for reasoning capabilities. It supports English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian languages. Moreover, in July 2024, the company released<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31944"> Mistral Large 2,</a> supporting a diverse range of languages and coding languages, with a 128,000-token context window and 123 billion parameters.In April 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28464"> the company released Mistral 8x22B,</a> an LLM built on a mixture of expert (MoE) architecture with 176 billion parameters. The model is available under a permissive Apache 2.0 license.In May 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29859">Mistral AI, released Codestral,</a> a model for coding with 22 billion parameters and programmed across 80 programming languages. It also released <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31619">Codestral Mamba</a> for faster and longer code generation, Mathstral for math-related reasoning and scientific discovery, a small language model named <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31742">Mistral NeMo</a> and in July 2024.In September 2024, the company<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33518"> released Pixtral 12 billion,</a> its first multimodal AI model with language and vision processing capabilities, followed by&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36166">Pixtral Large</a> with enhanced text and visual data processing in November 2024.In November 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35782">Mistral AI launched a content moderation API&nbsp;</a>that powers its Le Chat service. The API is designed to help users implement content moderation in their applications according to their safety standards.Key customers and partnershipsIn December 2023,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24901"> Mistral AI partnered with Google Cloud</a> to distribute its LLMs globally using Google's AI-optimized infrastructure for developers and businesses.In January 2024,<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25997"> the company partnered with Brave</a>, a provider of a browser-based AI chatbot named Leo, to introduce the updated Mistral AI's Mixtral 8x7B as the default LLM.Mistral AI formed several partnerships in February 2024 to introduce its foundation models to its partners' platform. These included<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26479"> Capgemini,</a> a provider of technology and consulting, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26907">Amazon</a>, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27045">Microsoft</a>, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27323">IBM </a>to integrate Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8x7B into Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft's Azure, and watsonx cloud platforms, repectively. In March 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27322">partnered with Snowflake, </a>a data management and analytics platform, to provide Mistral Large in the Snowflake data cloud.In April 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28106">Mistral partnered with Amazon </a>to introduce Mistral Large to Amazon Bedrock.In June 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30135">partnered with SAP </a>to offer access to its latest models.In July 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31053">partnered with Dassault Systemes </a>to expand the latter’s product portfolio and with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31359">BNP Paribas,</a> a global bank to provide its large language models (LLMs).

Writer AI offers "full-stack"&nbsp; large language models (LLMs) that enable businesses to integrate AI into content creation and business functions like marketing, sales, HR, and operations. Writer's platform includes customizable language models that can be fine-tuned for specific industries and use cases. The platform allows customers to connect the AI models to their own business data sources to improve research, fact-checking, and question-answering abilities.&nbsp;Its flagship model, Palmyra, comprises three models: Small (128 million parameters), Base (5 billion parameters), and Large (20 billion parameters) for tasks such as content generation, research, question answering, and data analysis.In July 2024, Writer introduced two new LLMs <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32211">named Palmyra-Med-70b and Palmyra-Fin-70b </a>for healthcare and financial services.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s notable customers include Intuit, United Healthcare, UiPath, Spotify, L'Oreal, Uber, and Accenture.&nbsp;

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

Snyk provides a platform for enterprises to secure their cloud-native and container applications which includes tools for developers that allow them to find vulnerabilities in their open-source and application codes used to develop cloud-native applications.Snyk intends to break even by 2024 and go public in the future.In June 2023, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19216">acquired cloud application observability platform Enso </a>for an undisclosed sum. Snyk planned to integrate Enso into its developer security platform, giving developers full visibility of their applications throughout the development lifecycle.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, Snyk was used by 2,000+ customers worldwide today, including industry leaders such as Asurion, Google, Intuit, MongoDB, New Relic, Revolut and Salesforce.Funding and financialsIn January 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15958">secured an undisclosed amount </a>from ServiceNow. The funds were utilized to enhance its developer security platform.In 2022, Snyk achieved a 100% YoY increase in revenue and an over 130% increase in net revenue retention. It also reported that it tripled in size and its employee headcount rose from 400 to 1,200.

<div>
 
 PerimeterX offers security for websites and mobile applications. The company&rsquo;s solutions include 1) Bot Defender (protects web applications, mobile applications, and APIs from automated attacks), 2) Code Defender (protects websites from digital skimming, formjacking, and magecart attacks), and 3) Page Defender (blocks unwanted coupon extensions and ad injections in online shopping). The company uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to detect real-time automated attacks. PerimeterX&rsquo;s solutions are used by companies in industries such as e-commerce, financial services, food delivery services, travel, hospitality, and media.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 During the financial year ended January 2020, the company provided security for ecommerce transactions worth over USD 100 billion and processed over 2 billion login requests per day. During this financial year, the company recorded revenue growth of 86%, and its customer base expanded 60%. In November 2020, PerimeterX was ranked 49th in Deloitte&rsquo;s &ldquo;Technology Fast 500&rdquo; list which tracks the fastest growing technology companies in North America. PerimeterX recorded revenue growth of 3,637% between 2016 to 2019. The company also reports having added 50 new customers during its financial year ended January 2021. As of March 2021, the company employed 195 staff.
 
 
 
 
 In March 2021, PerimeterX raised USD 57 million in an extended Series D led by AllianceBernstein to expand its geographical footprint and grow its team.
 
 
 
</div>

Founded by former Microsoft staffers, Wiz offers a platform for enterprises to protect their cloud infrastructure. Users can assess a company's entire cloud stack in either a public cloud or on-premises to identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and identity issues. Once integrated with a company’s cloud environment, Wiz’s platform scans the entire cloud stack, including virtual machines (VMs) and containers, regardless of online status. Wiz’s platform does not require organizations to deploy an agent, and supports public cloud providers such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.In October 2024, Wiz extended its runtime sensor to AWS Fargate and Azure Container Apps, aiming to provide end-to-end visibility and security across serverless workloads. This integration enables real-time threat detection, response, and runtime hunting, even without direct host access, supporting unique serverless challenges like ephemeral task lifecycles and restricted infrastructure visibility.&nbsp;The company’s product portfolio spans the entire cloud security stack, ranging from cloud security posture management (CSPM), cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM), and cloud compliance platforms to cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPP), supply chain security, cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP), and data security posture management (DSPM).In December 2023, Wiz acquired developer collaboration platform Raftt to bolster its offerings for cloud and Kubernetes developers. The company was reportedly in talks to acquire Israeli cloud detection and response platform Gem Security in March 2024, with plans to integrate the firm’s technology into its own platform. The company also confirmed it was in talks to acquire fellow cloud security player Lacework as of April 2024, with the deal expected to close by the end of 2025.Wiz reported USD 350 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for 2023.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Wiz claims its solutions were utilized by 40% of Fortune 100 companies. Notable customers included Morgan Stanley, Asos, BMW, DocuSign, Slack, FOX, LMH, AON, Linde, Colgate-Palmolive, Rubrik, and Priceline.&nbsp; In March 2023 , Wiz partnered with threat detection and response company SentinelOne to provide end-to-end cloud security solutions by leveraging each company’s platform. With their combined capabilities, the joint solution was claimed to detect and remediate cybersecurity threats faster than stand-alone platforms.&nbsp;Wiz announced an integration with Apiiro, an application security posture management platform (ASPM), in December 2023 to offer unified cloud and cloud security to its customers.

<div>
 
 Laminar is led by its co-founders Amit Shaked (CEO) and Oran Avraham (CTO), who are both veterans of Unit 8200&mdash;an intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces. Laminar delivers an agentless cloud-native data protection platform for applications and services built and run on public clouds such as Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS.
 
 
 The platform is specifically built for CISOs and data protection teams, allowing them to proactively discover shadow data stores, classify sensitive data, and secure data to improve their security risk posture. The platform also helps users to detect and remediate data leakages in real time without interrupting the data flow. It allows continuous monitoring of managed and unmanaged data stores and data egress channels. The company revealed that its product has been tested by hundreds of CISOs and it planned to mark its commercial debut in early 2022.
 
 
 In November 2021, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6765">
 raised USD 32 million
 </a>
 in a Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. The company was to utilize the funds to build out its engineering and go-to-market teams as well as establish a new data security research team. In June 2022, Laminar 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10905">
 secured a USD 30 million extension
 </a>
 to its Series A funding round from Tiger Global Management and Salesforce Ventures. The company expected to utilize the funds to build out its engineering and go-to-market teams, and establish a new data security research team.
 
</div>

Protect AI offers a platform for developers to protect their AI applications and machine learning (ML) systems throughout the development life cycle, securing AI and ML against code vulnerabilities, data breaches, and external attackers. The company was founded in 2022 by former employees of Oracle, to which they had previously sold an AI development platform, DatasScience.com.The company’s flagship platform, AI Radar, offers comprehensive real-time visibility of supply chain assets used in AI model development, such as open-source code libraries, foundation models, and third-party training data, and creates an audit trail of all components. The platform also conducts continuous security checks and automatically applies remediation actions.AI Radar uses integrated scanning tools to monitor LLMs and other ML models and integrates with an organization's existing application security platforms and continuous integration/continuous deployment tooling. The platform is vendor-agnostic and aims to offer a single pane of glass across all AI/ML development conducted by an organization.Funding and financialsProtect AI raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20486">USD 35 million in a Series A funding round </a>held in July 2023, led by Evolution Equity Partners. Proceeds were allocated to invest in R&amp;D, focusing on enhancing the capabilities of Protect AI’s platform, as well as identifying new threats to AI/ML app development, and to fund open-source projects.Unique:

Averlon offers an AI-powered cloud security platform that helps enterprises identify and mitigate critical security threats. The platform uses a combination of predictive and generative AI to assess vulnerabilities and map out potential attack vectors in cloud environments. Unlike traditional security tools that overwhelm teams with alerts, Averlon's platform specifically pinpoints cloud security issues that can lead to real-world attacks. The platform provides comprehensive visibility of cloud assets, including network access, connectivity, software, and policies, while continuously analyzing vulnerabilities to predict and neutralize attacks.
The platform enables customers to seamlessly integrate their cloud environment and gain clear visibility of their security risks within minutes of installation. Through its attack chain analysis capability, security teams can narrow the scope of investigations and determine impact more efficiently, allowing for faster incident containment and recovery. As of 2023, large enterprises were receiving over 15,000 alerts monthly, equivalent to approximately 93 alerts per working hour, making risk assessment and prioritization challenging. Averlon's platform addresses this by focusing on root causes and suggesting precise fixes.
Key customers and partnerships
UiPath is among Averlon's key customers, with their CISO Scott Roberts noting that the platform has saved critical time in zero-day incident response to issues such as the libWebp vulnerability (CVE-2023-4863). According to Roberts, the platform was expected to save their security engineers hundreds of hours per month.

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

Remote Work Tools

<div>
 
 Qatalog is a UK-based provider of a virtual workspace for remote teams. The platform combines the functionality of popular SaaS productivity tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Jira, and Asana, into one space.
 
 
 Qatalog bundles the core offerings of these tools and organizes them for teams and individuals within an organization.
 
 
 The company identifies distributed teams and organizations with more than 50 employees to be its target customers.
 
 
 The company exited stealth with a USD 15 million Series A funding round led by Atomico. The round includes participation from Salesforce Ventures, Mosaic Ventures, and other individual investors. The platform is currently in closed beta. The company will use the funds to expand its product and engineering teams for platform development and execute its go-to-market 
 
 
 strategy.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Originally started as a project management tool called dapulse in 2012, Monday.com (renamed in 2017), is an Israeli workplace collaboration platform that provides project management tools. It provides a flexible and visual interface for project management, task tracking, team collaboration, CRM, software development, and more.,&nbsp;
 
 
 Monday.com's core offering is its highly customizable platform where teams can build their own applications and workflows using a low-code/no-code approach. The platform integrates with over 50 popular work apps and offers powerful automation capabilities.
 
 
 In addition to general work management, monday.com provides dedicated solutions for several use cases such as, Project Management, CRM &amp; Sales, Marketing &amp; Creative Work, Software Development, and Remote Team Collaboration.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16781">
 March 2023
 </a>
 , Monday established a new regional headquarters in Sydney to further expand its presence in the Asia-Pacific region, having entered the region with a new office in Japan in&nbsp; 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13714">
 October 2022.
 </a>
 The company also set up headquarters in Europe in 
 <a href="https://ir.monday.com/news-and-events/news-releases/news-details/2022/monday.com-Expands-Into-New-London-Office-as-EMEA-Presence-Grows/default.aspx">
 April 2022.
 </a>
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of 2024, monday.com has over 225,000 customers across 200 countries, including brands like Coca-Cola, Universal Studios, Spotify and NASA.
 
 
 To increase its local base, Monday established partnerships with well-known Japanese firms such as Hitachi Solutions, NTT DATA Global Solutions Corporation, Gaprise, and TalentA Corp.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2021, monday.com raised USD 574 million through its Nasdaq IPO y and was valued at nearly USD 7.5 billion.
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s FY2023 revenue was USD 729.7 million, an increase of 41% year-over-year (YoY), and reported an operating loss of USD 38.6 million in FY2023 (vs. the loss of USD 152.0 million in the previous year).&nbsp; As of Q1 FY2024, the company guided FY2024 full-year revenue to USD 207 million&ndash;211 million. The FY2024 non-GAAP operating loss was guided to USD 58 million&ndash;64 million, with a negative margin of 6%&ndash;7%.
 
 
 &nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

Ovice is a virtual workplace designed to enhance communication and collaboration among remote teams. The company was initially named as Nimaru Technology co. Ltd and changed into oVice in December 2020. It offers a range of features, including avatar-based interaction, meeting and chat tools, customization and security options, real-time status updates, integration with web services, and recording and transcription capabilities. These features help to create a more interactive online work environment where team members can visually express their individuality and communicate effectively. Additionally, it is accessible from various devices.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsIn December 2021, oVice partnered with Zoom to allow its users to access Zoom meetings without having to move from one platform to another.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12770">August 2022</a>, oVice raised 45 billion yen (approx.USD 32.5 million) in a series B funding round led by multiple investors whose names remained undisclosed. The funds were allocated for overseas expansion, marketing, and PR activities, to introduce new solutions to streamline remote and hybrid work and facilitate employee onboarding, ​​team management, and online collaboration.

Miro is a visual collaboration platform that enables distributed teams to brainstorm, plan, and design their vision in real-time. Miro provides an online workspace, along with a virtual canvas where teams can create anything from customer journey maps to full product roadmaps. It serves over 60 million users worldwide, including 99% of Fortune 100 companies.Miro's core offering is its online digital whiteboard and virtual collaboration workspace. Its key features and capabilities are, infinite canvas; real-time collaboration tools; robust library of templates, wireframing, design sprints; mind mapping and diagramming tools; smart Meetings capabilities with voting, timers, and facilitation aids; integrations with 100+ apps like Jira, Trello, Slack, Google Drive, and moreTeams use Miro for UX design, marketing, product management, engineering, consulting, agile coaching, sales, and beyond. Its digital workspace consolidates communication and standardizes collaboration across the enterprise. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34583">October 2024,</a> Miro launched The Innovation Workspace, an AI-powered platform to improve idea creation and innovation. &nbsp;In May 2024, Miro acquired Cardinal, an AI powered backlog. In November 2023, Mimro acquired Freehand, a visual collaboration platform, to build stronger products and drive better outcomes for customers.Key Partnerships and CustomersNotable Miro customers span industries like technology (Cisco, VMware, Okta), consulting (Accenture, Deloitte), consumer products (Walmart), and automotive (Volvo).&nbsp;In June 2023, Miro partnered with Indeed to transform the ways job seekers showcase their skills. And in January 2022, Miro partnered with Avocor, an interactive display and video conferencing company, to explore the joint development of an optimized user experience on Avocor Devices&nbsp;

LinearB is a project management tool for software development teams. It allows software development teams to bring all their data from third-party tools (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket) into one platform. LinearB integrates with Jira, Clubhouse, and Slack to provide development teams with a holistic view of projects at various stages, in progress, at risk of being delayed, and completed.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsLinearB’s customer base includes the likes of Clickup, Drata, Expedia, and Ikea.Funding and financialsIn its latest funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10093">May 2022</a>), LinearB raised USD 50 million in Series B funding led by Tribe Capital. The fresh funds were used to further develop its platform and expand its engineering team. Part of the funds were also used to invest in the customer success, sales, and marketing teams for its go-to-market efforts.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/954">March 2021</a>, the company raised USD 16 million in a Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures, with participation from existing investors. The funds were used for product development.

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

Telehealth

Kyruus is a company that helps healthcare organizations connect with patients. The company has a search and scheduling platform that allows health systems, hospitals, and medical groups to consult with patients. The foundation of the platform is made from provider data management, which allows providers to access system-wide information. The company provides tools such as its modern provider search, scheduling, and payer syndication solutions. The company also provides data management facilities to ensure patients using the search feature identify the right care providers.&nbsp;In <a href="https://kyruushealth.com/kyruus-completes-acquisition-of-healthsparq-paving-way-for-seamless-cross-channel-care-navigation/">April 2021</a>, Kyruus acquired HealthSparq, which allowed it to connect to payer and provider access channels. Its customer base includes Banner Health, Baptist Health, Baystate Health, Emory Healthcare, ColumbiaDoctors, Geisinger, Hartfield Medical Group, and Prisma Health.In <a href="https://kyruushealth.com/kyruus-announces-acquisition-of-leading-digital-patient-engagement-company-epion-health/">September 2022</a>, the company acquired Epion Health for an undisclosed sum . The acquisition was carried out to create an all-inclusive patient access and customer engagement solution for healthcare providers and organizations.The combined entity will provide solutions that cover the entirety of a patient’s journey including patient access, care coordination, online scheduling, payment collection, and digital engagement solutions. Providers on Epion Health’s platform will also gain access to Kryuus’ patient engagement tools while Kryuss will integrate Epison’s features such as its telehealth solutions. When combined, Kyruus and Epion Health will support over 500 health systems and medical groups.Key customers and partnershipsAs of <a href="https://kyruushealth.com/">July 2024</a>, its search tool covered over 425,000 providers, 1,000+ hospitals, 500+ medical groups, and more than <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kyruus-health-expands-national-provider-network-to-include-virtual-behavioral-health-services-to-address-mental-health-needs-in-the-united-states-302145164.html">150</a> million health plan members.In <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/xo-health-powers-provider-search-and-improved-transparency-with-kyruus-health-302198260.html">July 2024</a>, the company partnered with XO Health, a healthcare services organization for self-insured employers, to provide XO Health's members with a seamless digital experience. Through the partnership, XO Health's customers will be able to access "Kyruus Connect for Payers" for features such as provider searches, cost transparency, quality scores, primary care selection, augmented provider data, appointment scheduling, and telehealth integration.In <a href="https://hitconsultant.net/2024/04/04/kyruus-health-google-cloud-partner-to-simplify-access-to-care-for-millions/">April 2024</a>, Kyruus partnered with Google Cloud to add its Kyruus Connect for Payers solutions to the Google Cloud Marketplace.

ixlayer is a health technology company that provides a cloud-based platform for diagnostic laboratory testing. Founded in 2018, ixlayer initially focused on remote lab testing for <a href="https://ixlayer.com/inc-5000/">Alzheimer's patients</a> but expanded to offer white-labeled, at-home, and on-site health tests. The company's platform connects the entire ecosystem of diagnostic services, enabling healthcare organizations to deploy at-home testing initiatives quickly and easily. ixlayer's <a href="https://ixlayer.com/retail-pharmacies/">solution</a> covers diagnostic kits, diagnostic lab testing services, and reporting of results. It also offers digital tools for patient education, contextualized lab results, remote program monitoring, and personalized calls to action for medication adherence protocols and diagnostic testing regimens.ixlayer's platform powers diagnostic tests annually and serves as the backbone for <a href="https://www.darkdaily.com/?p=46477#:~:text=%E2%80%9CFounded%20in%202018%2C%20ixlayer%20initially,%2C%E2%80%9D%20the%20news%20release%20notes.">thousands of health testing programs</a>. The company's tests are processed in independent, <a href="https://ixlayer.com/how-we-help/">CLIA-certified labs</a> and cover a wide range of health areas, including men's and women's wellness, sexually transmitted diseases, and chronic condition management.&nbsp;The company has experienced significant growth, with a 100% increase in YoY revenue growth reported in <a href="https://ixlayer.com/inc-5000/">August 2023</a>, leading to its inclusion in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America.Key customers and partnershipsAs of <a href="https://ixlayer.com/">August 2024</a>, the company had facilitated over 1,100 nationwide programs and enabled over 4 million patient care journeys.&nbsp;Ixlayer’s notable customers include the <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-us-coast-guard-selects-ixlayer-to-provide-covid-19-testing-platform-301179288.html">US Coast Guard</a>, <a href="https://ixlayer.com/ixlayer-raises-75-million-to-transform-telehealth-withlaboratory-testing-platform-announcement/">Stanford Health</a>, <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ixlayer-announces-new-investment-to-accelerate-digital-health-innovation-and-telehealth-infrastructure-capabilities-for-enterprise-customers-301376146.html">Salesforce</a>, and multiple national health plans.In <a href="https://ixlayer.com/ixlayer-joins-the-innovators-network-at-the-american-heart-association-center-for-health-technology-innovation/">January 2024</a>, ixlayer joined the Innovators' Network at the American Heart Association Center for Health Technology &amp; Innovation, furthering its mission to increase access to at-home diagnostic testing, particularly in cardiovascular health. This partnership allows ixlayer to leverage the Association's digital guidelines and best-in-class science to develop innovative digital healthcare technologies.In <a href="https://ixlayer.com/ixlayer-empowers-brightinsight-curavit-and-medable-with-convenient-patient-health-testing-services/">March 2023</a>, the company formed a partnership with Curavit Clinical Research and Medable, Inc. to support decentralized clinical trials. The collaborations aimed to improve patient engagement, treatment selection, and persistence in clinical research and drug therapies.In <a href="https://brightinsight.com/press-releases/brightinsight-welcomes-ixlayer-to-the-brightinsight-ecosystem-to-streamline-diagnosis-and-improve-therapy-matching">February 2023</a>, ixlayer joined the BrightInsight Ecosystem, partnering to integrate diagnostic testing into drug companion apps.&nbsp;In <a href="https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/health-tech-startup-ixlayer-partners-cvs-health-home-tests">October 2022</a>, ixlayer became the platform for CVS Health home tests, initially offering kits for vitamin D, Lyme disease, sexually transmitted infections, and thyroid function.&nbsp;

New York-based Unite Us is a healthcare coordination and community management platform that connects community organizations, healthcare providers, state and local governments, and foundations to screen individuals for co-occurring needs, make electronic referrals, share information, and create and monitor patient care plans.&nbsp;As part of its ongoing mission to help healthcare providers recognize patients with unmet social needs and strengthen community-based partnerships, Unite Us acquired a health data analytics platform, Carrot Health, in <a href="https://uniteus.com/press/carrot-health/">August 2021</a>.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://www.vhchealth.org/news-publications/press-releases/2023/vhc-health-partners-with-unite-us/">May 2023</a>, the company partnered with the Virginia Hospital Center, a health system providing care services across the Washington Metropolitan Area, to meet unaddressed health needs of patients within the area. Through the partnership, users and patients were connected with community-based resources through Unite Us’ Virginia-based network. Community-based resources that are part of the network included community health centers, free health clinics, and nonprofit organizations.As of <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/over-1000-innovative-customers-partner-with-unite-us-on-a-joint-mission-to-improve-health-in-communities-301990754.html">November 2023</a>, the company had surpassed working with 1,000 organizations and healthcare providers, providing 1 million services on its platform. The company worked with organizations such as Lexington Medical Center, Center for Employment Opportunities, Georgia Department of Veteran Service, Coordinated Behavioral Health Services, and Care Partner Network.

Texas-based Wheel enables healthcare providers to have access to clinical staff, white-label primary care and behavioral health facilities, healthcare technology, and laboratory services. The company works with both healthcare companies and individual clinicians to provide its white-label services while additionally providing clinician matchmaking services.&nbsp;In <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wheel-acquires-goodrx-care-backend-technology-to-strengthen-its-virtual-first-care-platform-301675151.html">November 2022</a>, the company entered into an agreement with telehealth provider GoodRx to purchase its electronic health record, clinical management tools, and patient experience software facilities for USD 19.5 million in a cash deal. Upon closure of this deal, Wheel integrated these facilities into its telehealth platform offerings, while GoodRx continued to carry out its operations. Additionally, 20 employees of GoodRx received offers to join Wheel’s team.In <a href="https://www.wheel.com/companies-blog/wheel-launches-horizon-platform-powered-by-ai-and-condition-specific-care-programs">June 2024</a>, the company launched Horizon, an AI-driven platform designed to help health plans, digital health providers, and life sciences companies scale their virtual care programs across the country. Horizon integrates a data-first EHR, Wheel's national clinical network, and various partners to form a comprehensive virtual care platform. Key features of Horizon include Predictive Care Pathways, open connectivity infrastructure for seamless integration with existing care delivery systems, and customizable patient care programs based on evidence and clinical insights. Care programs can be tailored to address specific health conditions or populations.The company claimed that, as of <a href="https://www.wheel.com/">July 2024</a>, it covered over 4.5 million lives.Key customers and partnershipsMost recently, in <a href="https://investors.owletcare.com/news/news-details/2024/Owlet-Forges-Groundbreaking-Partnership-with-Wheel-to-Launch-Virtual-TeleHealth-Services-Platform/default.aspx">April 2024</a>, Wheel partnered with infant technology company Owlet to allow Wheel's clinical staff to prescribe Owlet's FDA-approved, wire-free exclusive product, BabySat, an infant pulse oximetry sock. Through the partnership, Wheel would manage the BabySat virtual telehealth services platform. Additionally, caregivers could obtain prescriptions for BabySat and the device directly through Wheel's portal or its clinicians. Wheel then worked with medical equipment suppliers who can bill insurers for the product, thus easing caregivers' burden.In <a href="https://medcitynews.com/2024/03/cost-plus-drugs-talkspace-health-gorilla-join-wheels-virtual-care-ecosystem/#:~:text=Wheel%2C%20a%20virtual%20care%20platform,Health%20Gorilla%2C%20it%20announced%20Thursday.">March 2024</a>, Wheel partnered with prescription drug provider Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and data sharing platform provider Health Gorilla to expand its integrated virtual healthcare ecosystem. Through these partnerships, Wheel’s customers could receive home delivery of prescription drugs through Cost Plus Drugs and access lab and diagnostic services through Health Gorilla.In <a href="https://hitconsultant.net/2024/02/21/talkspace-wheel-partner-for-holistic-virtual-healthcare-addressing-mental-physical-needs/">February 2024</a>, Wheel partnered with Talkspace, an online behavioral health company, to improve access to medical and mental health services virtually across the US. Through the partnership, patients were able to easily connect with healthcare providers through Wheel’s platform, and match them with a dedicated therapist through the Talkspace platform.

New York-based Fabric, previously known as Florence, is a technology service provider that offers virtual and in-person healthcare providers a clinical workflow automation platform for optimizing their operations. The platform allows patients to track their healthcare journeys, schedule both virtual and in-person appointments, initiate self-patient discharge procedures, update their clinical information, and manage prescription fulfillment.Fabric ’s platform ties in with major EHR platforms, such as EPIC, Cerner, and athenahealth, allowing real-time updating of patient records. The company provides its platform across several states and operates on a B2B2C basis, working with healthcare providers and emergency departments such as Luminis Health in Maryland.In <a href="https://www.fabrichealth.com/press/fabric-acquires-telehealth-platform-zipnosis-from-bright-health">May 2023</a>, Fabric acquired Bright Health’s asynchronous platform, Zipnosis, for an undisclosed cash transaction. The acquisition was carried out to broaden both company's product offerings and increase market reach by combining Zipnosis’ synchronous and asynchronous offerings with Fabric’s clinical workflow automation platform. The acquisition also enabled Fabric to access Zipnosis’ established network of over 50 health institutions. Zipnosis will continue to operate independently; however, Fabric planned to invest in Zipnosis in addition to absorbing Zipnosis’ employees under its brand.In <a href="https://www.fabrichealth.com/press/fabric-acquires-gyant">January 2024</a>, Fabric acquired conversational AI startup GYANT for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition was carried out to expand Fabric's offering by incorporating GYANT's conversational AI care assistant and patient engagement suite, enabling healthcare users to automate tasks such as patient navigation and scheduling. The acquisition also included GYANT's entire team, increasing Fabric's headcount to 130. GYANT's co-founder Stefan Behrens joined Fabric's executive team, serving as chief strategy officer.In <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fabric-acquires-memd-expanding-virtual-care-services-to-30-000-employers-and-5-million-members-302185197.html">July 2024</a>, Fabric acquired MeMD, a telehealth platform, from Walmart for an undisclosed sum. As of June 2024, MeMD provided its virtual behavioral, urgent, and primary care services to 30,000 corporate, institutional, and health plan partners and 5 million members. Following the acquisition, Fabric planned to broaden its services for employer and payer customers and enhance its behavioral health strategy. It also planned to integrate its clinical intelligence and automation services into MeMD.Key customers and partnershipsAs of <a href="https://www.fabrichealth.com/press/fabric-secures-60m-series">February 2024</a>, the company noted that it had completed over 12 million patient interactions while streamlining processes for over 3,500 clinicians.As of <a href="https://www.fabrichealth.com/press/fabric-secures-60m-series">February 2024</a>, the company noted that it had 70 leading enterprise health customers on its platform which included healthcare providers such as Luminis Health, OSF HealthCare, MUSC Health, and Intermountain.

Modern tools to train and motivate staff, and bridge emerging skill gaps.

EdTech: Corporate Learning

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 Founded in 2015 by Andrew Barnes, Vu Tran, Chris Eigeland, and Chris Hood, Australian firm Go1 aggregates and curates learning content for businesses. The platform&rsquo;s library hosts about 150,000 pieces of content from around 1,000 sources including Pearson, EdX, Coursera, Skillsoft, Blinkist, Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing. Content providers receive royalties based on the consumption of their content. Go1 also offers curated bundles of content called &ldquo;playlists&rdquo; created by the platform or by customers. 
 In February 2024, Go1 launched Go1 AI, a suite of AI-powered personalized learning capabilities that helps L&amp;D administrators discover and recommend the best content for each learner from their library.
 
 
 
 
 The company aims to provide businesses with a single platform to access materials from different publishers and creators without requiring multiple subscriptions. It also seeks to integrate into businesses&rsquo; existing education or training platforms whether it be SAP, Workday, Salesforce or a Microsoft-based platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In February 2022, the company acquired Education Changemakers, an Australian educational consultant firm that provides professional learning workshops and personalized support for teachers and administrators. More recently, in April 2022, Go1 acquired Switzerland-based Coorpacademy, a learning experience platform, to extend its French and German language content. In January 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15775">
 acquired Anders Pink,
 </a>
 a content curation provider, to further strengthen its content aggregation and content curation tools. In May 2023, the firm 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18388">
 acquired Blinkist,
 </a>
 a mobile learning app, to strengthen the company&rsquo;s mobile learning capabilities and expand its presence in the corporate learning market.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of June 2022, the platform served 5 million+ users across more than 1,600 businesses. As of July 2021, the company&rsquo;s user base reportedly has grown by more than 300% over the past year.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In August 2021, Go1 announced a collaborative investment of AUD 330,000 (USD 244,500) in Noa, a Dublin-based audio journalism platform. The partnership will allow Go1 to add Noa&rsquo;s content to its existing content library so users can stay updated on relevant news from trusted sources while learning. The company also partnered with Adobe to provide users of Adobe Captivate Prime LMS access to Go1's online library within a content marketplace. In September 2021, the company partnered with Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning to provide Go1 users with access to Harvard ManageMentor to build skills in leadership and management. The company deepened its partnership with LMS365 in November 2021 to allow joint customers to push curated content playlists directly from Go1 into LMS365 catalogs.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2022, Go1 raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10923">
 USD 100 million (~AUD 139 million)
 </a>
 in a funding round that values the company at USD 2 billion. The round follows its 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4397">
 USD 200 million Series D
 </a>
 funding round raised in July 2021. The most recent funds will be allocated toward platform development, mainly focusing on new content and resources. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Founded in 2015 by Rachel Carlson and Brittany Stich, Guild Education partners with businesses, non-profits, and universities to offer education as a benefit in the form of online classes, programs, and degrees from more than 80 universities and more than a dozen community colleges. Companies may provide their employees with partial or full tuition support to upskill or earn a degree. Guild works with employers to select programs that are most relevant to its employees, earning a percentage of the fees paid to the universities. The universities then save the expense and effort involved in marketing and recruitment. The company also provides its own support and mentoring services to help students plan, apply for, and finish their programs. As of November 2019, about 400,000 working adults joined the program–around 3%-5% of employees at partner companies. As of May 2020, the Guild Education platform offered more than 1,600 online degree programs.
 
 
 In June 2021, the company announced the formation of a new Advisory Board of diverse business education leaders to generate insights and better serve all stakeholders.
 
 
 In May 2020, Guild Education launched Next Chapter, a program that replaces outplacement services by using algorithms to match employees with new roles in fields that are hiring and recommend programs for retraining. The company also acquired Entangled Group, an educational technology (EdTech) consulting and venture studio that also served as an initial investor in Guild Education. Entangled Group's portfolio of 21 EdTech companies will be managed independently of Guild Education.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In February 2021, the company partnered with 2U, Inc., a developer of digital educational offerings in partnership with colleges and universities, to make 2U’s portfolio of more than 500 digital programs (including online degree programs, online short courses, and boot camps) available on the Guild Education platform. In March 2021, Ancora Corporate Training, a part of Ancora Education, an operator of private, post-secondary schools across the US, partnered with Guild Education by joining the Guild Education Learning Marketplace. In February 2022, the company partnered with UCHealth to launch the UCHealth Ascend Career Program, an educational and upskilling program investing up to USD 50 million for UCHealth employees. 
 More recently, In June 2022, Guild Education partnered with Snowflake, a cloud computing–based data warehousing firm, to deploy Snowflake’s new cybersecurity workload solution to strengthen its data security. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2022, Guild Education reportedly raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10883">
 USD 175 million in a Series F 
 </a>
 funding round led by Wellington Management. It planned to use the funds to expand into in-demand markets such as healthcare, childcare solutions, and career assessments. The company’s valuation rose to USD 4.4 billion from USD 3.75 billion a year ago. The company also reported that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) was more than USD 100 million in FY2020.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Founded by Tony Blair&rsquo;s son Euan Blair as WhiteHat in 2016, Multiverse (formerly Whitehat until January 2021) is a talent accelerator offering an apprentice training, networking, and matching platform. The company matches non-graduate talent with apprenticeship opportunities in professional services and digital roles in UK companies. In partnership with content providers, the company delivers job-relevant training on a one-on-one basis using technology-based tools over the course of an apprenticeship as an alternative to university education. Participants also join an online and offline community of other apprentices. In addition, WhiteHat upskills existing employees to bridge skill gaps.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28431">
 April 2024
 </a>
 , Multiverse acquired Searchlight, a provider of AI-powered recruiting and assessment solutions, to use Searchlight's technology to develop new AI products to enhance its professional training services.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In March 2021, Multiverse partnered with New College of the Humanities (NCH) to launch a degree-level apprenticeship. The Advanced Data Fellowship allows apprentices to develop their data analysis and data science skills to add value at their workplace. In June 2022, the company reported that it had trained more than 8,000 apprentices via partnerships with 500 companies.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In June 2022, the company raised GBP 176 million (USD 220 million) in a Series D funding round co-led by StepStone Group, and previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst, with a valuation of USD 1.7 billion. It planned to use the funds to scale its US expansion.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15520">
 FY2022,
 </a>
 Multiverse reported a YoY revenue growth of 3x to GBP 27.3 million. The UK operations accounted for 95% of the total revenue and the US operations contributed the balance. The company reported its 6th consecutive year of losses, with net losses rising 30% YoY to GBP 14.2 million due to a rise in administrative spending.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Founded by Alexi Robichaux and Eduardo Medina in 2013, BetterUp is a mobile-first coaching, counseling, and mentorship platform that pairs employees with a dedicated coach to cultivate leadership behaviors that support personal growth, professional development, and holistic wellbeing. The platform, which combines coaching with AI technology and behavioral science, offers interactive professional development content, analytics, and real-time insights to track employee progress. BetterUp is reportedly the world&rsquo;s largest coaching network, with more than 3,000 coaches serving 380+ enterprise businesses in 60 languages across 70+ countries as of July 2023. 
 
 
 In March 2021, BetterUp introduced BetterUp Care, a comprehensive mental fitness program for enterprises that provides access to coaching with behavioral health specialists, curated content, on-demand support, parenting specialists, nutrition specialists, sleep specialists, group coaching, and digital learning, aiming to assist employees in problem-solving and adapting to change. As part of its increased focus on mental health, the company appointed Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, as Chief Impact Officer.
 
 
 In September 2021, BetterUp made two strategic acquisitions: Motive, an AI-based software company, and Impraise, a workforce collaboration solution provider. Motive offers proprietary AI-based technology including an Emotion API that identifies emotions in language by applying machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to multi-channel data. This acquisition will allow BetterUp to leverage Motive's AI technology and develop its leadership platform. The acquisition of Impraise will allow BetterUp to accelerate efforts to scale its operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and strengthen its research and development capabilities. Amsterdam-based Impraise will be BetterUp&rsquo;s third outpost in Europe in addition to its offices in Munich and London. Both Motive and Impraise serve a wide range of customers globally, including Skyscanner, eBay, Achmea, Sony, and CERN, some of which will be given access to BetterUp&rsquo;s corporate learning solutions.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships 
 
 
 In March 2022, BetterUp and Walmart announced a new partnership to offer &quot;BetterUp for Caregivers,&quot; a curated subscription and community offering exclusively available through The Wellness Hub on Walmart.com. BetterUp and Salesforce have been partners since 2017, and in April 2023, announced the integration of BetterUp's Sales Performance solution with Salesforce's Sales Cloud platform, to offer customers access to specialized sales coaching provided by BetterUp. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In October 2021, BetterUp raised USD 300 million in a Series E funding round led by 
 Wellington Management, ICONIQ Growth, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its post-money valuation to USD 4.7 billion. It planned to use the funds for further product development, and for international expansion. The round follows its 
 USD 125 million Series D funding round in March 2021. 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 WorkRamp is an enterprise learning platform that helps organizations create their own training content to educate their workforce and partners. The company is seeking to disrupt the traditional learning management system (LMS) market with its micro-learning platform. The WorkRamp platform distinguishes itself by empowering users to create their own training content. The platform also integrates with third-party providers for content creation and distribution. As of March 2022, WorkRamp hosted one million courses for its 300+ customers.
 
 
 In February 2021, WorkRamp launched WorkRamp.org to partner with nonprofits and schools to provide learning opportunities to underserved communities through free and discounted access to the WorkRamp LMS; and the provision of WorkRamp employees as volunteers and consultants; as well as plans to build a WorkRamp.org Fund to support local schools and non-profit educational institutions and provide instructional design services to help organizations create diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. In March 2021, the company launched The WorkRamp Marketplace, containing a library of customizable content. WorkRamp also added new features including synced guide progress across all learning paths to avoid repetition, advanced user management functionality, and a choice of grading options. More recently, in September 2022, the firm launched &quot;WorkRamp Content'' powered by content aggregator platform Go1 to provide users with access to a library of off-the-shelf content resources that can be curated to complement the organization's learning strategy for employee development and retention. 
 In March 2023, the company launched a learning cloud to help employers further streamline learning.
 
 
 In May 2022, the company acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10551">
 The Enablement Squad,
 </a>
 which claims to be the largest online community for enablement professionals, for an undisclosed amount, supporting WorkRamp&rsquo;s objective of investing in community building for its customers and training community members.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In July 2021, WorkRamp partnered with BambooHR, an HR platform for small and medium-sized enterprises, allowing WorkRamp users to sync employee data in BambooHR to automate and streamline onboarding and training programs.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2022, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9314">
 USD 40 million in a Series C funding 
 </a>
 round co-led by Salesforce Ventures, Slack Fund, and Susa Ventures, and will use the funds for product development as well as to build customer success programs and expand the team. The company also reported that its revenue tripled YoY. 
 
</div>

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

GoCardless is a British company offering an open banking platform for merchants to collect recurring and one-off payments directly from customer bank accounts. The platform also offers a global bank debit network, enabling merchants to access multiple markets through its platform (more than 30 countries as of February 2022). The platform can be integrated by merchants through a RESTful API (for simple integration), a pre-built payment page (embedded to client’s website), or a payment link (using GoCardless straight away).With regards to recurring payments, the company claims that its platform reduces payment costs by 56% and time to receive payments by 47%, compared to industry alternatives. In addition to settling payments, the platform also offers “Verified Mandates”, to verify new customers without hindering the checkout experience, and “Success+,” a machine learning-based payment intelligence tool. The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11214?industryIds=53">expanded its operations to Germany </a>in June 2022, by launching “Instant Bank Pay” (for merchants to accept on-off payments) and Verified Mandates.In March 2024, GoCardless <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27639">entered an agreement</a> to acquire Sentenial Ltd, which operates globally under the Nuapay brand, from EML Payments Limited for an undisclosed amount. Through this acquisition, GoCardless planned to leverage Nuapay's account-to-account payment services and open banking expertise to expedite the rollout of new disbursement capabilities and offer new payment verticals, such as payroll, financial services, utilities, insurance, gaming, and gambling. GoCardless <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11419?industryIds=53">acquired Latvian open banking data provider Nordigen </a>in July 2022, to access Nordigen’s APIs, which connect to over 2,300 banks in Europe, across 31 countries. Through this, GoCardless can open up access to open banking account information services (AIS), and deliver data products for several use cases including credit assessments and customer engagement. The company also expanded its operations to France in September 2022, by launching its Verified Mandates in the country.However, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19342">GoCardless reportedly laid off </a>around 17% of its staff in June 2023, in an attempt to reduce 15% of its cost base.Key customers and partnershipsThe platform reportedly processed over USD 35 billion in payments annually and had over 85,000 business users as of March 2024.In 2021, the company entered several partnerships with companies including Epson (printer manufacturer), <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5404">Gr4vy </a>, and Pennylane and Fiski (accounting platforms).Moreover, in December 2021, leading buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/sectors/financial-services/updates/7341">Klarna selected GoCardless </a>to roll out Klarna’s “Pay in 4” offering and its financing solution offering in the US, using GoCardless’s open banking infrastructure and global bank debit network. The partnership was in line with GoCardless’ plans to expand its presence in the US — a market it entered in 2019 — as it doubled its headcount in 2021, and plans to expand the team by 125% in 2022.Funding and financialsGoCardless <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8344">raised USD 312 million in Series G </a>funding in February 2022, at a valuation of USD 2.1 billion (more than double its USD 970 million valuation in December 2020), to invest in product and geographical expansions.

Blend provides a lending-as-a-service (LaaS) platform to help banks and other financial institutions build out their own lending platforms. Its platform offers a range of LaaS solutions including mortgage infrastructure and consumer loan infrastructure (personal loans, credit cards, vehicle loans, etc.). Blend provides the tools for lenders to integrate and connect their own loan origination systems (LOS), core banking, and other systems to third-party service providers for credit, data verification, and other such services through pre-built integration and application programming interfaces (APIs).&nbsp;In March 2021, Blend&nbsp;<a href="https://coverager.com/blend-to-acquire-title365-from-mr-cooper-group/">acquired Title365</a>, a provider of title insurance and settlement services, for USD 422 million. The acquisition aimed to integrate Title365's operational expertise into Blend's cloud-based platform.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2024, the company served 39 customers among the top 100 institutions by Federal Reserve assets and 24 customers among the top 100 non-bank mortgage lenders by loan volume. The company processed USD 1.7 trillion in loan applications across its platform in 2022.&nbsp;In November 2024, Blend&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241105931285/en/Blend-and-Covered-Insurance-Announce-New-Strategic-Partnership-to-Streamline-Home-Insurance-Shopping">partnered with Covered Insurance Solutions,</a> a provider of embedded insurance solutions, to integrate its insurance marketplace directly into Blend's mortgage application workflow, providing access to over 50 insurance carriers across all 50 states.&nbsp;Blend enables customers to process more than USD 4 billion in mortgages and loans per day—USD 1.4 trillion in 2020 overall.

Based in Australia, Airwallex is a FinTech payment platform that enables enterprises to build cross-border payment and fund transfer systems, using application programming interfaces (APIs). Through the platform, enterprises can embed a range of services, including online payments, treasury, foreign currency transactions, managing foreign currency risks, and card issuing and management. Over the last few years, the company has been adding a range of products to its platform, with some notable additions in 2020 such as multi-currency debit cards with Visa, a bank feed integration, and a small and medium businesses (SMB) rewards program.Airwallex enables enterprises to transfer funds internationally in over 60 currencies, as of September 2024. The company holds electronic money institution (EMI) licenses in its core markets, including the UK, the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5151">US</a>, Australia, the European single market, and Hong Kong. It also secured a money services business (MSB) license from Bank Negara <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5253">Malaysia in September 2021</a>, which it believes will complement its team in Singapore to expand Airwallex’s operations in Southeast Asia. Its Asia Pacific expansion was further bolstered by expanding into New Zealand in June 2022. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16896?industryIds=53">obtained a payment business license</a> in China in March 2023, through the acquisition of Guangzhou Shang Wu Tong Network Technology Co Ltd.As of September 2024, the company had a workforce of over 1,500 employees with operational presence in 11 countries including the US, UK, Australia, India and China. It also secured the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31773">Australian Financial Services Licence</a> (AFSL) from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) in July 2024 to offer retail investment products in Australia. In May 2023, the company<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18435"> launched operations in Israel</a>, with the intention of further expanding its presence across the EMEA in 2023.Airwallex reported a 73% YoY growth in annual payment processing volume to surpass USD 100 billion and recorded an annual revenue run rate of USD 500 million in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/15/fintech-firm-airwallex-nears-500m-arr-plans-to-be-ipo-ready-by-2026.html">August 2024</a>, supported by growth in volumes across all its offerings, including payments, foreign exchange, payouts, and issuing. The company also intends to go public by 2026.Key customers and partnershipsAirwallex served <a href="https://www.airwallex.com/newsroom/airwallex-processing-volume-surges-past-usd100-billion#:~:text=Proudly%20founded%20in%20Melbourne%2C%20Airwallex%20supports%20over%20100%2C000%20businesses%20globally%20and%20is%20trusted%20by%20brands%20such%20as%20Brex%2C%20Rippling%2C%20Navan%2C%20Qantas%2C%20SHEIN%20and%20many%20more">over 100,000 global companies</a> as of August 2024 including brands such as Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN, among others.In June 2024, Airwallex <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31001">partnered with</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/287424">QuickBooks</a>, a financial reporting software platform, to provide multi-currency reporting with automated transaction syncing. In February 2024, Airwallex entered into a multi-year partnership with McLaren Formula 1 team, to offer multi-currency payment options to meet its supply chain payments for all Grands Prix. Airwallex also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18874">partnered with</a> open banking platform <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/456059">TrueLayer</a> in May 2023, to mutually improve cross-border, multi-currency open banking payments, by leveraging TrueLayer’s real-time, account-to-account (A2A) payments infrastructure. The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15739?industryIds=53">partnered with Amex</a> in January 2023, to enable customers to accept payments through Amex cards. Airwallex noted that it offered over 60 payment methods for its customers, upon the inclusion of Amex cards.In May 2022, it joined software developer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10665">HubSpot’s App Accelerator program</a> to provide HubSpot users with access to Airwallex’s global financial infrastructure. Airwallex <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14169">subsequently partnered</a> with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1201250">Atome</a> in November 2022, to enable Airwallex merchants to offer payment by installments to their customers.

Flutterwave, based in Nigeria and the USA, offers payment infrastructure for enterprises across the globe to enable cross-border transactions with Africa through payment applications created via a single API. Its solutions include a range of payment services such as checkout, card issuing and management (including “Flutterwave Barter”), stores, and invoices for websites and apps. The platform enables transactions in over 150 currencies, and a range of payment methods, including cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers. Flutterwave subsequently added Google Pay as a payment method for its merchants in Africa, in September 2022. The company expanded its platform beyond payments in March 2022, by rolling out a series of new products, including BNPL, merchant lending, and business incorporation infrastructure. As of February 2022, the company’s infrastructure catered to 34 African countries (excluding North Africa), including Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Subsequently, in February 2023, Flutterwave received its payment services provider (PSP) and payment facilitator <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16372">licenses in Egypt </a>and expanded its operations in North Africa. The company also received the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12805?industryIds=53">Switching and Processing License </a>from the Central Bank of Nigeria in September 2022; however, in July 2022 Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) directed all financial institutions to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11968?industryIds=53">cease doing business </a>with Flutterwave stating the company is not licensed to operate in the country.Flutterwave also entered into a five year strategic technology agreement with Microsoft in June 2023, to build its next-gen platform on Microsoft Azure cloud. This supports scaling the transactions processed through Flutterwave. Key customers and partnershipsFlutterwave noted that its platform is used by over 900,000 businesses, including Uber, Bookings.com, and Facebook.The company has expanded its operations and products through partnerships, including one with cross-border payment infrastructure company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/76548">Currencycloud </a>in September 2021, to accelerate the launch of its payment network in Europe and the US. During the year, it also partnered with ecommerce fraud prevention company Forter (in April), and connected African businesses with over 377 million PayPal users globally (in March). In June 2023, it chose open banking infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/305032">Token </a>to power Flutterwave’s “Pay by Bank” transfer capabilities. In 2019, the company collaborated with Visa to launch “Flutterwave Barter” as well as with Alipay to offer digital payment between Africa and China. Funding and financials Flutterwave had processed over 200 million transactions worth over USD 16 billion from its 2016 inception through February 2022. The company noted that its revenue rose at a CAGR of 225% over 2018-20, and was supported by the pandemic-led heightened demand for online payments. <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8510">In February 2022, </a>Flutterwave raised USD 250 million in Series D funding, at a USD 3 billion valuation. The company intends to utilize the funds to accelerate customer acquisition in its existing markets, enter into M&amp;A deals, and for further product development including developing complementary products.

Balance, formed by former PayPal executives Bar Geron and Yoni Shuster, offers payment infrastructure to build digital checkout experiences as well as vendor payment automation and reconciliation, for business-to-business (B2B) organizations. The platform enables merchants to offer business customers an array of payment options such as real-time payments, paying with net terms, recurring payments, and payments after delivery.Balance is built on top of Stripe’s infrastructure, and accepts a range of payment methods, including card, wire, check, and automated clearing house (ACH) payments. However, Balance’s infrastructure goes beyond payments, and evaluates the risk of customers, merchants, and payment terms selected.The company also offers buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) solutions to its users, for which it charges a factoring fee. Balance operates through its offices in Tel Aviv (Israel) and New York.Key customers and partnerships Balance’s customers range from startups to large listed enterprises, across a range of industries such as steel, freight, construction, medical supply, etc. and even included ecommerce businesses such as BigCommerce (B2B edition) and Magento. As of July 2022, the company had over 300 enterprise and marketplace users.In November 2022, Balance noted that its customer base had grown by 10x since its launch (February 2021). Funding and financialsBalance received <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14885?industryIds=53">a USD 350 million credit facility </a>in November 2022, from Viola Credit, shortly after raising <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11872?industryIds=53">USD 56 million in Series B funding </a>in July. The funds raised during the year were earmarked for increasing the company’s financing capabilities, scaling its net terms product, customer acquisitions, and recruitment.

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

Demandbase is an account-based marketing (ABM) platform that provides a complete suite of services to discover and execute B2B marketing campaigns. The firm’s “Demandbase One” platform allows marketing and sales teams to 1) discover potential accounts, 2) engage with potential clients by delivering personalized marketing campaigns across multiple channels, and 3) provide visibility for teams to view marketing and sales activity in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The firm also has advertising, data, and sales intelligence cloud solutions that allow B2B marketers to conduct intent-based advertising and segmented advertising.In March 2021, the company announced that it had redefined its platform as an account-based experience (ABX), the next development in ABM, which expanded its predictive analytics capabilities. In July 2022, Demandbase took this a step further and launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11712">unified sales intelligence and ABM platform</a> which can be directly integrated with CRM. The firm claims that is the first of its kind, enabling firms to replace ABM, sales intelligence, and advertising with a single platform. A study by Gartner in April 2022 found that Demandbase’s customers achieved a 367% ROI over three years with a payback of less than six months.As part of its strategies to become an all-in-one marketing platform, Demandbase has made a series of acquisitions. The most recent ones were in May 2021, when it acquired InsideView (an ABM platform that directly connects to CRM tools) and DemandMatrix (a database providing relevant business intelligence on B2B accounts) for undisclosed amounts. In addition, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11025">launched D2 Labs</a> in June 2022 enabling users to access to Demandbase’s data science team, can help B2B users gather customer raw data as well as specialty data sets. These efforts culminated in the launch of a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11712">unified sales intelligence and ABM platform</a> which Demandbase claims to be the first of its kind, enabling firms to replace ABM, sales intelligence, and advertising with a single platform. Building on its revamped platform, in October 2022 the firm added <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13556">people-based advertising features</a> to its platform and claims it results in a a 50% account lift and a click-through rate (CTR) of 33%. In December 2022, Demandbase launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15020">free edition of its Account ID solution</a> which it claims to be an industry first. In January 2023, the firm launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15988">Intent</a>, a B2B dataset that gives non-users of its Demandbase One platform access to customer data signals. In June 2023, the firm launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19080">AI-powered buying groups</a> which it claims are industry-first, utilizing generative AI to streamline customer engagement further.Key customers and partnershipsThe firm reportedly experienced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8616">strong customer growth globally in 2021</a>, and recorded a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9975">doubling of the company and contact data</a> on its platform. By September 2021, Demandbases’s clients included Coupa, Panasonic, DocuSign, and Siemens.In September 2022, the firm further expanded its data access via a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13027">partnership with Snowflake</a>, a cloud-based data and analytics platform, where Joint customers can gain access to larger data sets and access more than 55 million accounts worldwide with 113+ million contacts. In February 2023, the firm integrated the ChatGPT model to its Bloomreach Engagement platform, to enhance the platform's existing AI/ML capabilities and provide a more comprehensive solution for users looking to optimize their customer engagement strategies.In March 2022 the firm also entered into a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9047">partnership with Amazon</a>, becoming the first ABM platform to be available on the AWS marketplace.

Bloomreach is a marketing cloud, specialized for both B2B and B2C retail and ecommerce brands. The features of its experience cloud include, 1) a customer data platform (CDP), 2) search engine optimization (SEO) tools, 3) content discovery &amp; management system, and 4) customer insights and personalization tools. With the firm's acquisition of its strategic partner, Exponea, in January 2021, the firm added multichannel campaign automation capabilities to its platform, which include email, SMS, Whatsapp and mobile &amp; web notifications. With this acquisition, Bloomreach claims to offer the only end-to-end marketing cloud solution specialized for ecommerce.&nbsp;&nbsp;In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36462">November 2024,</a>Bloomreach added new features to the Discovery platform to enhance efficiency. Previously&nbsp;in November 2022, the firm introduced a new&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14890">marketing automation network</a> to enable users to manage multiple marketing requirements including for separate brands, divisions, regions, client accounts, and distributors at scale. In September 2023, the company released&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21612">Act-On AI Predictive Lead Score,</a> a feature that helps marketers prioritize leads with a higher propensity to convert.In January 2024, the firm acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25825">Radiance Commerce, </a>a firm specializing in conversational commerce through GenAI,&nbsp; to enhance Clarity's ecommerce capabilities and make the solution accessible to businesses worldwide.The firm’s platform can also be integrated with leading ecommerce platforms and ERP systems, including Shopify, Bigcommerce, Salesforce, and SAP to extend its capabilities. In October 2022, the firm introduced plug-and-play integrations with leading front-end eCommerce sites while also providing access to 50+ out-of-the-box plug-and-play campaign solutions, enabling users to execute personalized marketing campaigns across 13 channels. In addition, the firm also offers a range of professional services, including SEO analysis and optimization.The firm surpassed <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15833">USD 150 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR)</a> by the end of 2022 driven by growth in its solutions for ecommerce brands.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of end 2021, the firm's platform was used by 1,100+ brands, powering 25% of all US &amp; UK ecommerce experiences amounting to more than USD 200 billion worth of digital transactions. Its users include Puma, Staples, Bosch, Staples, and Neiman Marcus.&nbsp;In June 2023, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19370">partnered with Contentsquare,</a> a digital experience intelligence and analytics platform, to help marketers build targeted campaigns for customers driven by data insights. In December 2023, the firm partnered with<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24763"> Spryker,</a> a composable commerce platform provider, to improve digital and marketplace experiences in ecommerce. In April 2024, the firm<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28371"> partnered with Google Cloud</a> to boost Bloomreach Discovery, an AI-driven search and merchandising tool for ecommerce businesses; and expanded its partnership with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28589">Boohoo Group,</a> an online fashion group, to improve Boohoo's search and merchandising capabilities using Bloomreach's AI technology. In June 2024, Bloomreach partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30565">SCAYLE, </a>an ecommerce platform, to enhance the omnichannel customer journey.

6sense is an account-based marketing (ABM) platform specializing in B2B marketing that gathers predictive buying patterns using AI, big data, and machine learning tools. The platform can uncover insights on consumer behavior to create personalized ad campaigns across multiple channels including websites, email, social media, and chatbots. In June 2023, the firm introduced <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19218">AI Writer,</a> a new feature within 6sense Conversational Email that adds GPT-4 generative AI model capabilities aimed at improving the effectiveness of email outreach and marketing.&nbsp;6sense has made a number of acquisitions including Saleswhale, a lead generation and email automation company (January 2022); Fortella, an AI-based B2B revenue intelligence platform (August 2021); and Slintel, a B2B technographic data (technology-related insights) provider for marketing lead generation and predicting buyer intent (August 2021). With the acquisition of Slintel, 6sense claimed to provide the most comprehensive B2B ABM platform in the market, providing marketing and sales teams with a more comprehensive picture of buyer insights. In June 2022, 6sense added marketing consultancy services with the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11044">acquisition of Granite Media</a>. In October 2023, the firm introduced content creation tools including a conversational email solution which it enhanced with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19218">generative AI features </a>in June 2023.&nbsp;6sense’s comprehensive platform gives it an edge over its peers which is reflected in its customers’ performance; they have, on average, experienced a 2x increase in deal values and a 10% increase in win rates. In 1H FY2023, 6Sense reported a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13068">doubling of its revenue</a> and more than 150% growth in customer base &amp; workforce. According to a Forrester study in 2022, users of 6Sense revenue AI achieved an ROI of 454% over three years.&nbsp;&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsBy October 2021, the firm’s customers included Dell, Cumulus, Udemy, and Thomson Reuters.The firm has entered into a number of partnerships including with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12678">On24</a> (a Webinar and event management platform), and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15298">Integrate</a> (a Demand acceleration platform) to extend its B2B data access and analytics capabilities.

Founded in Israel, AppsFlyer specializes in mobile app attribution analytics. The platform has a number of features for identifying and attributing customer activity across multiple touchpoints including mobile, tablet, TV, and web. It also has a suite of analytical tools to measure the impact of marketing campaigns on app activity. In addition, AppsFlyer also has a customer experience platform to create personalized customer journeys and marketing analytics tools for real-time performance measurement.&nbsp;In June 2022, Appsflyer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10970">launched a data clean room</a> for app developers to collaborate with marketers in a privacy-preserving manner. In March 2023, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17113">launched ROI360,</a> an end-to-end revenue intelligence platform, to optimize marketing campaigns. In May 2023, the firm unveiled <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18334">new solutions to support ChatGPT plugins,</a> focusing on enhancing measurement, analytics, and privacy. During the same month, Appsflyer unveiled a PC and<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18876"> console measurement solution </a>for game firms. In January 2024, Appsflyer unveiled <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25513">Creative Optimization, </a>which provides critical insights into marketing creative assets and guidance on how to improve their impact.AppsFlyer claims to have an independent, unbiased, and privacy-first approach that provides an edge over its peers. This is reflected in the wide client portfolio as well as a large number of technology partners (9,000 by October 2021).In November 2023, the firm acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23662">Devtodev,</a> an analytics company primarily serving app and game developers, to enhance clean room data collaboration marketplace. In December 2023, AppsFlyer acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24675">oolo,</a> a provider of AI-powered decision-making tools, to increase the efficiency of its decision-making tools for businesses.By January 2020, the firm has reported having exceeded USD 200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR).&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;By October 2021, more than 12,000 brands were using AppsFlyer’s platform including Domino’s, Nike, eBay, HBO, and Pizzahut.

Typeface is a GenAI platform designed for enterprises that focuses on enhancing personalized content creation across various departments, particularly in marketing. Its technology integrates multimodal AI models to generate text, visuals, video, and audio tailored to specific brands, audiences, and platforms. The platform includes products like Arc, a content workflow tool for campaign creation; Hub, a multimodal content hub for personalization; Copilot, which accelerates content production; Blend for scalable personalization; Connect for data integration; and Safe for ensuring responsible AI use. It supports use cases like email marketing, ad campaigns, SEO, ecommerce, and talent outreach.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33617">September 2024,</a> the company acquired Treat, a company that uses AI to create personalized photo products, and Narrato, an AI-powered content creation and management platform, to help build its visual and text capabilities and further develop its portfolio.Key customers and partnershipsIn August 2023, Typeface announced a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21422">collaborative solution </a>with marketing technology company GrowthLoop and Google Cloud’s BigQuery and foundation models to allow marketers to personalize GenAI-based end-to-end campaign creation. In June 2023, the company partnered with Salesforce to integrate its brand-personalized GenAI capabilities with Salesforce Marketing GPT.

Educational technology plays a pivotal role in driving and enabling the revolution in post-secondary learning

Higher EdTech

Mainstay, formerly known as AdmitHub, is a leading provider of AI-powered chatbots for higher education institutions. The company's platform utilizes behaviorally intelligent chatbots to engage with students through text messaging, providing personalized support and guidance throughout their educational journey. Mainstay's technology aims to improve student outcomes by sending timely reminders, answering questions, and offering encouragement. The chatbots use Natural Language Processing to understand and respond to student inquiries in a conversational manner, even interpreting slang, misspellings, and emojis. As of 2022, Mainstay had served over 5 million students across the US. The company's chatbots have been shown to reduce summer melt, increase enrollment, and improve completion rates for key enrollment tasks.
Key customers and partnerships
Mainstay has partnered with numerous colleges and universities across the US. Notable clients include Georgia State University, where the chatbot "Pounce" was implemented in 2016 as part of a randomized controlled trial. The trial showed a 3.3% increase in enrollment and a 21.4% reduction in summer melt for students who interacted with Pounce. Other institutions using Mainstay's technology include Valdosta State University, Dallas College, and Kean University. In 2019, Mainstay collaborated with Reach Higher, former First Lady Michelle Obama's initiative to promote higher education, to develop an AI chatbot for the program. The company has also worked with the Washington Student Achievement Council to create "Otterbot," a texting service supporting high school seniors with College Bound Scholarships in Washington state.

Niche is a platform that connects students and families with colleges and schools, providing comprehensive information to assist in making key life decisions such as where to live and study. The company offers rankings and profiles for over 50,000 cities and towns across America, as well as detailed information on schools. Niche's annual Best Places to Live in America rankings, which began in 2015, have become a widely used resource, serving over 70 million people annually. The rankings cover nearly 230 cities and over 18,000 places, considering factors such as affordability, housing market, neighborhood diversity, public schools, walkability, and more. Niche utilizes data from various sources, including the US Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and CDC, combined with millions of resident reviews to create its rankings. In addition to national rankings, Niche offers state, metro area, and county-specific lists, as well as specialized rankings for categories like Best for Families, Young Professionals, Homebuyers, and Retirees. The company also provides K-12 school rankings to help families research educational options within specific cities.
Key customers and partnerships
Niche's primary audience consists of students, families, and individuals seeking information about places to live and educational institutions. In March 2024, the company reported that it helps over 70 million people annually find schools and places to live. Niche has partnered with Homes.com to offer users access to a localized home search experience directly within its rankings platform. This collaboration enhances the user experience by providing additional resources for those looking to relocate or purchase homes in areas they are researching on Niche.

Multiverse is an edtech company founded in 2016 by Euan Blair, son of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The company provides professional apprenticeships as an alternative to university education and corporate training. Multiverse matches talented individuals with apprenticeship opportunities at top companies, offering paid, tuition-free programs in areas such as software engineering, digital marketing, and data analytics. These apprenticeships typically last 12-15 months and combine on-the-job training with education.
Multiverse's platform connects apprentices with over 500 partner organizations globally, including major companies like Cisco, Verizon, Google, and Morgan Stanley. The company employs coaches to support apprentices throughout their programs and provide personalized guidance. Multiverse generates revenue by charging employers recruitment fees and training costs. As of April 2023, Multiverse had worked with over 10,000 apprentices globally. The company reported that its programs have created USD 669 million in cost-saving or revenue-generating activities for client companies.
In June 2022, Multiverse raised USD 220 million in Series D funding at a USD 1.7 billion valuation, making it the UK's first edtech unicorn. However, the company has faced financial challenges, reporting a pre-tax loss of GBP 40.5 million for the year ending March 2023, its seventh consecutive year of losses. In October 2023, Multiverse announced a shift in strategy, moving away from school-leaver apprenticeships to focus more on upskilling existing employees at corporate clients. This pivot resulted in over 40 job cuts in its early talent division over a 12-month period.

Class is a virtual classroom software developed by Class Technologies Inc., a company founded by education software pioneer Michael Chasen. Built on top of Zoom and Microsoft Teams platforms, Class adds teaching and learning tools that enable instructors to perform many activities typically done in a physical classroom. The software is designed to increase student engagement and facilitate active learning in online and hybrid educational settings for K-12, higher education, and corporate training.
Class offers features like enhanced breakout rooms, instructional whiteboards, polling, quizzes, and the ability to launch assignments during live sessions. It also provides engagement analytics and a centralized environment for managing instruction. The software aims to create an active, collaborative virtual learning experience by maintaining learner focus through its unique layout, which keeps the instructor visible at all times. Class collects feedback on student participation and allows instructors to see non-verbal cues and track student attention.
In July 2023, Class Technologies announced Class 2.0, introducing a simplified user interface, new collaborative features for real-time document editing, enhanced Learning Management System (LMS) integrations, and improved stability. The company also plans to introduce an AI Teaching Assistant powered by ChatGPT later in the year to improve learning engagement and outcomes.
Key customers and partnerships
Class serves over 10 million users from more than 1,500 educational institutions, corporations, and government agencies worldwide as of April 2024. The company has partnered with Microsoft to launch Class for Microsoft Teams, integrating with Microsoft 365. Class has also collaborated with Blackboard, incorporating key features from Blackboard Collaborate to facilitate customer transition to its platform.

OpenClassrooms is a global online education platform founded in 2013 by Pierre Dubuc and Mathieu Nebra. The company offers over 350 competency-based training programs leading to nationally accredited bachelor's and master's level diplomas in high-demand fields such as web and mobile development, UX design, data science, digital marketing, and instructional design. OpenClassrooms' mission is to make education accessible at scale, with a focus on helping students obtain jobs and advance their careers. The platform utilizes a project-based learning approach, with 80-90% of learning done through practical projects. Students receive individual mentorship and support throughout their programs. OpenClassrooms has developed its own degree-awarding powers, which serves as a differentiator and quality signal in the market. The company creates 99% of its course content in-house to maintain high quality and agility. As of 2021, OpenClassrooms had over 2.5 million students from 126 countries using its platform. The company offers both free courses and premium paid programs. For 70% of students, program fees are covered by employers, governments, or apprenticeship schemes. OpenClassrooms provides a job guarantee, offering tuition refunds to graduates who don't find employment within six months.
Key customers and partnerships
OpenClassrooms works with major corporations to provide employee training and apprenticeship programs. In November 2022, the company launched an apprenticeship program with pharmaceutical company Merck to upskill employees in tech fields like data analytics and digital marketing. OpenClassrooms has partnerships with academic institutions and companies to offer co-branded programs. The platform also collaborates with coding bootcamp and university partners to provide blended online/in-person learning options. OpenClassrooms is part of the OneTen coalition, which aims to advance one million Black individuals without four-year degrees into family-sustaining careers.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Anthropic is a generative AI company building natural language chatbots with a focus on AI safety research.The company’s flagship product is a large language model and virtual assistant called “Claude.” Claude can edit, rewrite, summarize, and extract information from large volumes of text, answer questions across a broad range of topics, and automate simple tasks—all via a natural language conversation. Claude is useful in the following areas:1) Customer service: Handles simple customer queries and workflows and hands off customers to human agents2) Legal: Extracts information from legal documents3) Coaching: Guides users through personal growth or career development tasks4) Search: Allows web search and private search via natural language queries5) Back-office: Classifies, summarizes, and organizes information from multiple sources6) Sales: Acts as a sales representative that is capable of answering customer questions while remaining on-brandAnthropic uses “constitutional training” to tune its Claude model, which is a method that utilizes a combination of reinforcement and supervised learning by leveraging feedback from trained and tuned AI models to ensure Claude behaves in the desired manner. The company aims to develop AIs that can help train new AI models, ensuring they are helpful, honest, and harmless, and aligned with people’s interests.Claude chatbot is based on&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27259">Claude 3</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/37269">3.5 models</a> with multimodal capabilities. In September 2023, Anthropic launched a paid version of Claude. The new offering, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21660">Claude Pro,</a> was available in the US, UK, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29378">Europe</a> in private beta.In April 2024, the company launched an iOS app and a paid plan targeting businesses, particularly those in regulated sectors such as healthcare, finance, and legal. Named as Team, the plan is priced at USD 30 per user per month, with a minimum of five seats. In September it launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33272">Claude Enterprise,</a> a subscription plan aimed at enterprise customers. In May 2024, the company introduced a new feature termed <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30005">Tool Use</a> for its AI assistant Claude, to autonomously interact with external data sources, APIs, and tools. It also launched several new features including a&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35506">desktop app,</a> dictation feature, and&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35290">JavaScript&nbsp;</a>code analysis tool in October 2024, followed by the&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36578">‘styles'</a> feature to customize responses and&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36536">Model Context Protocol (MCP)</a> to connect Claude to data systems in November 2024.&nbsp; Key customers and partnershipsIn February 2023, Anthropic selected Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider. In May 2023, the company partnered with Zoom to integrate Claude into Zoom’s platform, starting with Zoom Contact Center.&nbsp;

Runway is a developer of tools and platforms that enable artists, designers, and creators to generate unique and compelling content, ranging from visuals and animations to interactive experiences.Runway was one of the co-creators of the initial Stable Diffusion image generation model in collaboration with the University of Munich and Stability AI.Runway’s flagship product is “Gen-1,” a video-to-video generation model that transforms videos into different styles. Users can upload a video from their device and submit a text or image prompt as a style reference, which the tool uses to generate a new video by overlaying the style on the uploaded footage. Gen-1 is available via Runway’s web platform, and, as of April 2023, is an iOS application, too.The company’s platform also offers a web-based video editor that incorporates Gen-1 and a range of other content creation and transformation tools based on its AI models. These include:1) Text-to-image: Creates images from text prompts, offers a variety of settings to fine-tune the output2) Image-to-image: Transforms images into different styles through text prompts3) Frame Interpolation: Allows smooth transitions between images4) Generative Audio: Adds dialogue and voice-overs to videos with text-to-speech, lip sync, and custom voices5) Upscale Image: Increases the resolution of an image up to 4K6) AI Training: Provides AI-powered tools and training for creating and customizing images and videos7) Video Inpainting: Removes objects from video footage8) Green Screen: Allows users to instantly remove video backgrounds and replace them with any desired images9)&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35164">Act-One:</a> Allows users to capture facial expressions using smartphone cameras and replicate them on AI-generated video charactersIn March 2023, Runway launched “Gen-2,” a text-to-video system that can generate entirely new video from simple text prompts or images, which it claims is one of the first commercially available text-to-video models. In November 2023, the company released an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23491">advanced upgrade</a> of Gen-2, focusing on improving the realness and sharpness of AI-generated videos. In June 2024, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30528">Gen-3 Alpha</a> was launched followed by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32219">Gen-3 Alpha Turbo</a> in July 2024.Runway’s video and image generation tools are built on diffusion models.In February 2024, the company launched Runway Studios, an entertainment division that serves as a production partner for corporate clients. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33673">September 2024</a>, Runway announced an API that allows developers and organizations to integrate its GenAI models into third-party platforms, apps, and services.Key customers and partnershipsRunway solutions are used by individual content creators and also enterprise users, including CBS, New Balance, Harbor Picture Company, and Publicis. As of December 2022, the firm's solutions have been used by 10 million users, including the visual effects and video editing teams of popular television programs such as CBS’ Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Hollywood films like Everything Everywhere All at Once. Runway also has a partnership with major Hollywood studio <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33758">Lionsgate</a> to train a custom video model on Lionsgate's film catalog.

<div>
 
 Hugging Face is a data science and machine learning platform that originally started as a chatbot for teenagers. The company has since evolved into a hub for AI development, providing an open-source environment where developers can host, train, and manage AI models. Hugging Face is known for its GitHub-like platform that supports the collaborative development of AI technologies, enabling users to share and improve upon machine learning models and datasets​. Additionally, Hugging Face offers multilingual models to further extend its utility to a global audience. The models are accessible through the Transformers library, facilitating model loading and fine-tuning pre-trained models on custom datasets, which is also accessible via an API.&nbsp;
 
 
 In April 2023, the company launched HuggingChat, a chatbot that can handle various tasks like writing code, drafting emails, and composing lyrics. In February 2024, the company launched Hugging Chat Assistants, a tool that allows users to create their own versions of chatbots. These chatbots can be personalized with a specific name, avatar, and description, and can operate using various open source LLMs like Meta's Llama 2, Mistral's Mixtral, and Cohere&rsquo;s 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28466">
 Command R+,
 </a>
 allowing users to choose the model best suited to their needs.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In August 2023, the company raised USD 235 million in a Series D funding round from Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, IBM, Salesforce, and Sound Ventures, bringing its post-money valuation to USD 4.5 billion. It planned to use the funds to further expand its efforts in research, enterprise, and startups and is set to recruit new talent to support its growth. 
 
 
 
</div>

Based in France, Mistral AI is an open-source GenAI company that develops fine-tuned language models and provides businesses with foundational technologies to automate existing processes and develop new products.In February 2024, the company introduced a chat assistant service named “Le Chat.” The chatbot is available for three models: Mistral Small, Mistral Large, and a prototype model named “Mistral Next.” The chatbot does not have access to the web. As of February 2024, Le Chat was accessible for free and the company planned to launch a paid version for enterprise clients. In November 2024, the company introduced several&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36196">new features</a> in beta, including&nbsp;web search with citations, a Canvas interface for content creation and editing, document and image analysis powered by Pixtral Large, image generation through Black Forest Labs, and automated workflow agents. Users can process complex PDF documents, generate images, and automate repetitive workflows like receipt scanning and invoice processing through the platform.

You.com is a multimodal search engine named “YouChat,” which can provide detailed answers to questions with citations, relevant web findings, and media data. YouChat is offered for free, while “YouPro” is a paid version named. Enterprise plans are also available.&nbsp;The platform is equipped with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25958">“AI Modes,”</a> which include various functionalities named Smart, Genius, Create, and Research, to offer varying levels of depth and sourcing to any queries. The Smart Mode, available for free users, can complete tasks, generate content, and access news and live web results. The other modes are only available through the paid version and allows to perform advanced tasks like multistep computations, data visualizations, file uploads, generate images, and conduct thorough research. The Pro version also offers the ability to choose between several foundation models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Claude Instant, Claude 2, Gemini Pro, and Zephyr.&nbsp; In November 2023, You.com launched a new product known as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23932">YOU API</a> to provide real-time access to internet data. The primary features of the YOU API included real-time web search, multilingual responses, extended snippets for AI, and usage rights for AI inference and data citation, addressing common challenges faced by LLMs and AI chatbots, such as hallucinations, source citation issues, and outdated information. It also offers a feature called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29912">Custom Assistants</a> that allows customizable AI assistance for specific inquiries, eliminating the need for lengthy instruction.&nbsp; Key customers and partnershipsThe company has partnered with MacOS browser SigmaOS (November 2022) and web browser Vivaldi (December 2022), which made the You.com platform their default browsers.&nbsp; Funding and financialsIn July 2022, You.com raised USD 25 million in a Series A funding round led by Radical Ventures. The funds were slated to develop premium features for the platform and collaborate with third parties.&nbsp;

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

Digital Privacy Tools

BigID provides a platform that leverages advanced machine learning tools to help enterprises protect their data and comply with regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, etc. on a large scale. The company launched its patented Discovery-in-Depth technology during January 2020 to automatically discover different types and sources of data across an enterprise’s entire IT infrastructure. It expanded this technology in August 2020 by launching Hyperscan, a machine-learning-based scanning solution for large volumes of data that minimizes scanning time by 95%. The company also provides <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13382">native data deletion features</a> that allow organizations to delete personal and sensitive data across their data stores effectively. The feature allows organizations to purge duplicate and redundant data, minimize data before a cloud migration, initiate data deletion workflows based on data retention policies, and automatically address policy violations.In March 2023, BigID <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17433">released a native data privacy suite</a> that allows enterprises to automate California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) compliance requirements across data inventory and mapping, privacy impact assessment, self-service privacy rights portal, automated DSAR fulfillment, and regulatory reporting by leveraging holistic privacy management.In April of the same year<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18004"> launched “BigAI”</a>, a large language model (LLM) designed to scan and classify data, leveraging machine learning and generative AI to organize data into tables, columns, and categories. The BigAI platform also includes a generative AI chatbot named “BigChat”, which provides data compliance advice through conversational Q&amp;A. The company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24136">launched</a> a new AI-powered tool in November 2023 designed to automatically generate remediation instructions for data security and reduce the burden on security teams.Additionally, it provides solutions concerning data subject rights management, consent management, privacy data protection impact assessments, third-party risk management, incident response, reporting, and monitoring.Key customers and partnershipsBigID has partnerships with companies such as TrustArc and IBM, among others, to deliver comprehensive compliance solutions.In April 2023, BigID announced a technology partnership with French tech company Thales to integrate its data discovery and classification capabilities with Thales’ CipherTrust encryption platform to identify and anonymize sensitive data for business use while maintaining individual privacy. In the same month, BigID collaborated with SPHERE to develop an identity hygiene risk management solution. In June 2023 the company announced an integration with Databricks to automate data discovery, classification, and governance.

Odaseva provides a platform that enables organizations to automate compliance measures with regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, etc. in their Salesforce platforms. The platform allows for subject rights management, anonymization, and other data management features.Key customers and partnershipsThe company surpassed 100 million users in November 2022 and counted Accor, Schneider Electric, and Michelin as customers as of June 2024.

Drata is a security and compliance automation platform that allows enterprises to proactively monitor and collect evidence of a company’s security controls and confirm audit-readiness. Drata’s platform supports 20+ frameworks that include CCPA, GDPR, SOC 2, and HIPAA. The platform also allows users to create and monitor custom frameworks with pre-made templates and claims to be able to continuously help businesses comply as they scale.Drata launched a third-party risk management (TPRM) offering in December 2023, allowing customers to identify, evaluate, and monitor third-party tasks via a centralized and integrated platform.Key customers and partners&nbsp;As of September 2024, the company served over 2 million users across 4,500 customers, including companies like Lemonade, Superhuman, Airbase, Notion, and Alteryx.

Theta Lake provides a solution that integrates with major video conferencing platforms (such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex) and uses patented AI technology to monitor calls on the platform to detect regulatory and other compliance risks across what is said and shown in these calls. The platform supports sector-specific regulations such as the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MIFID) and privacy regulations such as GDPR. The company also provides solutions for archiving video and audio recordings in compliance with the above regulations. In February 2021, the company announced an expansion into the UK.Key customers and partnershipsThe company also counted more than 50 customers (75% in financial services) such as Wells Fargo, TD Securities, Advisor Group, Longview Partners, Attivo Group, Reeves Independent, and Tupicoffs. The company has more than 40 integrations with collaboration and unified communications platforms such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

New technology allows individuals and organizations to become carbon intelligent

Carbon Management Software

Measurabl offers a SaaS-based Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) data management solution for the commercial real estate industry. Measurable automates ESG data collection from a variety of sources including utility data, emission data, etc. and produces customized ESG reports on demand for real estate operators. As of February 2024, Measurabl’s Pro package, which is recommended for real estate operators or investors with a portfolio of a minimum of 30 buildings, is priced at USD 45 per month per building. <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13246">In September 2021 </a>, Measurabl launched ESG Advisory Services to the suite of its professional services, to support companies with ESG reporting. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates">July 2024</a>, the company also launched Measurabl Navigate, a next-generation real estate sustainability platform.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Measurabl reported that the floor area of the buildings that use its services totals 17 billion square feet (valued in excess of USD 2 trillion) across 93+ countries. The company partnered with real estate companies, such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8433">RealPage </a>and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8045">Manulife Investment Management </a>to provide visualization of real estate ESG data. In August 2023, the company also partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21343">Voya Investment Management </a>to provide property-driven ESG insights on all commercial real estate loans issued. The company’s high-profile customers include Salesforce, Boston Properties, Tishman Speyer, Credit Suisse, BlackRock and Brookfield.In April 2022, Measurabl <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9887">acquired </a>Hatch Data, a smart building platform provider, to expand its ESG data solution and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12763">WegoWise </a>to gain access to the latter's proprietary utility automation infrastructure in September 2022.Funding and financialsThe company’s most recent funding was in May 2023, when it raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18997">USD 93 million </a>in a Series D funding round co-led by Energy Impact Partners and Sway Ventures. Previously in September 2021, the company raised USD 50 million in a Series C funding round led by Energy Impact Partners. The company used the proceeds to speed up its platform expansion and support the launch of new services.

<div>
 
 UK-based Circulor provides a blockchain-based SaaS solution for businesses to trace the sustainability of their raw materials across the supply chain. Specific use cases include tracking the use of recycled materials along the supply chain and ensuring that raw materials are sourced from verified suppliers.&nbsp;
 
 
 Circulor collects information on material flows and verifies that they follow the rules pre-defined by businesses. These may include information such as elapsed time, mass balance calculations, responsible sourcing standards, or energy use. After collecting and verifying the information, Circulor records the findings on a distributed ledger, which can then be accessed by any party that has permission.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company had onboarded several high-profile customers, including automakers Mercedes and Volvo, which use Circulor to trace the sustainability of their electric vehicle battery materials. Other known customers include 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6254">
 Urbix
 </a>
 (a battery-grade graphite processor), 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6449">
 North Coal
 </a>
 (a Canadian steel maker), 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8199">
 Element 25
 </a>
 (an Australian producer of manganese products) and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10553">
 BlackEarth
 </a>
 (an Australian producer of graphite products).&nbsp;
 
 
 In January 2023, Circulor partnered with StoreDot to track the origin and CO2 emissions of raw materials used in battery cells, enhancing transparency and supporting regulatory compliance. In February 2023, Circulor collaborated with Sociedad Qu&iacute;mica y Minera (SQM) to provide traceability for lithium, enabling downstream automakers like Volvo Cars to access information from source to final product and track emissions. In March 2023, Circulor partnered with Deloitte to assist organizations in implementing supply chain transparency, monitoring environmental and human impacts, promoting responsible sourcing, and enabling circular economy business models. The company entered into a similar collaboration with KPMG in May 2023. In January 2024, Circulor partnered with Automotive Cells Company (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25640">
 ACC
 </a>
 ) to assess the carbon emissions of EV battery cells.
 
 
 Funding and Financials&nbsp;
 
 
 Circulor&rsquo;s most recent funding round was in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11455">
 June 2022
 </a>
 , when it raised USD 25 million in a Series B funding round led by Westly Group. Previously in June 2021 the company raised USD 14 million in a Series A funding round led by The Westly Group to drive innovation and extend its presence in North America and Asia. Prior to this, in July and December 2020 and March 2021, Circulor raised undisclosed amounts from InMotion Ventures, Volvo, Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures, SYSTEMIQ, and Plug and Play
 
</div>

UK-based Sylvera provides ratings for carbon offsetting projects using machine learning to analyze data, including satellite images, to look at historical land use and assess how a carbon offsetting project is performing against the benchmark set by its developers. It then assigns a rating to the project based on criteria such as raw carbon performance, additionality, permanence, co-benefits, and risk.Sylvera offers two core services, a web platform and an API. The web platform presents project performance and quality ratings using interactive map-based tools to enable real-time and granular data interrogation. The API serves this data for presentation and analysis on other platforms. Project developers can subscribe to the web platform for a fixed monthly subscription fee while the API pricing is customized.Sylvera launched its carbon offset rating platform in May 2021. As of February 2023, Sylvera had rated around 115 offsetting projects. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29129">May 2024 </a>, the company launched Project Catalog and Screenings, a new tool to identify high quality carbon projects.Key customers and partnershipsIn August 2023, the company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21162">Oka </a>, a carbon insurance company, to integrate carbon intelligence across the carbon credit insurance industry. In December 2023, Sylvera partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24564">AirCarbon </a>Exchange, a Singapore-based voluntary carbon market to launch Sylvera A-rated nature contracts in Singapore. In addition, the company also collaborated with Singapore-based carbon marketplaces, such as Climate Impact X and Ureca. In January 2024, Sylvera partnered with Tasman Environmental Markets ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26116">TEM </a>), to enhance the latter’s due diligence process for carbon projects through Sylvera’s project ratings, co-benefits, and impact data. In July 2024, the company partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31215">CDR.fyi</a>, a data platform for engineered and hybrid CO2 removal projects, to access their carbon removal dataset to improve data visibility and accessibility. Some of the company's high-profile customers include S&amp;P Global, Salesforce, BCG, Mitsubishi, Bain and Company and Equinor.Funding and FinancialsIn August 2023, Sylvera was awarded an undisclosed grant by <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21453">Innovate UK </a>to fund the monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of carbon removal in peatlands in the UK. The company’s most recent funding round was in July 2023, when it raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20402">USD 57 million </a>in a Series B funding round led by Balderton Capital. The funds were utilized to open a New York office and to build up a local team to provide services to the US financial services companies and asset management industry. Previously in January 2022, Sylvera raised USD 32.6 million in a Series A funding round co-led by Index Ventures and Insight Partners.

Asuene is a Japanese climate tech company that provides a cloud-based carbon accounting platform for enterprises. Founded in October 2019, Asuene's flagship service, Asuzero, enables businesses to measure, report, and reduce carbon emissions throughout their supply chain. The platform visualizes greenhouse gas emissions for Scope 1, 2, and three in alignment with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. As of November 2023, Asuene served over 4,000 clients, primarily in Japan. The company offers a comprehensive suite of services including sustainability transformation consulting, assistance for global initiatives like TCFD, CDP, and SBTi, and support for carbon credit solutions. In addition to carbon accounting, Asuene provides an ESG evaluation service called ""ESG Cloud Rating (EC R)"" for sustainable supply chain procurement. The company has expanded its global presence by establishing subsidiaries in Singapore (November 2022) and the US (November 2023). Asuene aims to become Asia's leading climate tech company and contribute to global efforts to achieve net-zero emissions.
Key customers and partnerships
Asuene has formed strategic partnerships to enhance its offerings and expand its reach. In July 2023, Asuene's Singapore subsidiary partnered with telecommunications company KDDI Asia Pacific to provide CO2 emissions visualization and reduction services to KDDI's customers in Southeast Asia and other APAC nations. This collaboration combines KDDI's advanced IoT solution for monitoring electricity usage with Asuzero's decarbonization solutions. In October 2023, Asuene joined forces with SBI Holdings to establish a new company focused on brokering carbon credit trading, coinciding with the Tokyo Stock Exchange's launch of a carbon credit trading platform. These partnerships reflect Asuene's commitment to supporting businesses in their sustainability efforts across various sectors and regions.

Creating affordable content for the digital age

Content Creation Tools

Vidyard is a video platform that helps businesses create, host, and share videos to enhance sales, marketing, and corporate communication workflows. The platform provides tools for video creation, hosting, personalization, and analytics. It also lets users record videos using webcams, screens, or both, and share them with prospects, customers, and colleagues.&nbsp;Vidyard's core offerings include video messaging, video hosting, and AI-powered video creation capabilities. The video messaging feature allows users to record and send personalized videos to boost response rates and generate more pipelines. For hosting, Vidyard provides a customizable video player that can be embedded in websites and blogs. The platform also offers analytics features that provide insights into video performance, viewer behavior, and engagement metrics. In April 2024, Vidyard&nbsp;<a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240416565871/en/Vidyard-Unveils-Industry-First-Hyper-Realistic-Personalized-AI-Avatars-to-Scale-Sales-and-Marketing-Video-Communications">launched AI Avatars</a>, which leverages AI to generate videos from text prompts that look and sound like the user, allowing for scalable and personalized video creation.As of September 2024, Vidyard integrated with 48 platforms including notable CRM and sales engagement tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach.Key customers and partnershipsAs of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vidyard.com/press-releases/vidyards-customer-base-surpasses-250000-companies-as-business-adoption-of-video-messaging-accelerates/">February 2022</a>, Vidyard served more than 12.5 million users across notable companies including Microsoft, LinkedIn, HubSpot, S&amp;P Global, Salesforce, and others. The platform also&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vidyard.com/press-releases/vidyards-customer-base-surpasses-250000-companies-as-business-adoption-of-video-messaging-accelerates/#:~:text=As%20Vidyard%20continues%20to%20accelerate%20coming%20out%20of%20the%20pandemic%20and%20the%20global%20reopening%20of%20the%20economy%2C%20the%20company%20saw%20its%20customer%20base%20expand%20by%20more%20than%20300%25%20annually.%20The%20company%20now%20sees%20a%20record%20number%20of%20daily%20user%20sign%2Dups%20of%20more%20than%204%2C500%20people%20per%20day%2C%20a%2060%25%20increase%20year%20over%20year">reported</a> more than 300% annual growth in users and recorded a 60% YoY growth in daily user sign-ups to more than 4,500 users per day, as of the same time.The company also has an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vidyard.com/partners-directory/">agency partner program</a> to help its customers transition to virtual sales, implement Vidyard, or create videos. Its notable partners include Digital 22, Impact, Six and Flow, Revenue River, Smart Bug, and Next Sales, among others.&nbsp;&nbsp;

German-based Contentful is a content management platform that enables organizations to create, manage, and distribute digital content across multiple channels. Its flagship product, Contentful Studio, is a visual interface that enables users to build and manage web experiences through an intuitive drag-and-drop canvas environment. The system offers immediate component rendering and includes three main component categories: basic out-of-the-box elements, structural layout components, and custom design system components imported via the Experiences SDK, along with the ability to save and reuse component combinations as patterns. The platform features advanced capabilities including responsive design through a breakpoint switcher, content integration with manual entry and content binding options, and localization support for multilingual content management.&nbsp;As of October 2024, the platform had over 100 integrations and plug-ins, including cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure; marketing tools such as HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Google Analytics; and development and productivity platforms like GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps, among others.In August 2024, Contentful<a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/08/contentful-acquires-berlin-based-ninetailed-to-accelerate-ai-driven-content-management/"> acquired Nine Tailed,</a> a content personalization and experimentation company, to enhance its product personalization capabilities for marketing and design.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2024, nearly 30% of Fortune 500 companies use Contentful's platform including Spotify, Urban Outfitters, Jack in the Box, Chanel, Mailchimp, Atlassian, Mozilla, and Leroy Merlin.In 2023, the company established&nbsp;<a href="https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/CRM-Across-the-Wire/Contentful-Partners-with-BigCommerce-and-WPP-160122.aspx">partnerships with SAP, BigCommerce</a> for e-commerce solutions, and WPP for delivering composable content solutions.&nbsp;

Threekit is a visual commerce company specializing in enhancing the e-commerce experience for brands with large product catalogs. In June 2024, the company launched its flagship product,<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/threekit-launches-visual-discovery-ai-to-help-buyers-navigate-your-catalog-and-transform-the-ecommerce-buying-experience-302177097.html"> Visual Discovery AI,</a> which interprets shopper needs and intent, providing real-time personalized product recommendations. The platform offers features such as guided buying, which assists customers through technical product purchases using visual prompts, and a "Shop the Look" function for multi-purchase behavior by presenting products in bundles. Threekit's other offerings include 1)&nbsp;Product Configurator, which enables real-time visual configuration that shows the product as buyers build and includes features such as a codeless rules engine; product bundling; order tracking; scene, model, image, and material storage for 3D asset management; and a materials library and&nbsp;2) Visual Solutions, which enables 3D configuration, virtual photography, space planning, and augmented reality.As of September 2024, the company's solutions integrate with various sales channels, such as Salesforce, Magento, BigCommerce, Oracle-Commerce-Cloud, Commercetools,&nbsp; Google-ad, Red, Sap, Inriver, Logik-io, and Autodesk.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Threekit’s notable customers included HP, Steelcase, Duluth Trading, Fortune Brands, Starbucks Coffee, Nikon, LVMH, Jacuzzi, Sloan, and Ralph Lauren, among others.In September 2023, the company formed a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paradigm-announces-threekit-partnership-301931938.html">partnership with Paradigm,</a> a software provider for the building industry, to combine Threekit's immersive 3D platform with Paradigm's configuration, pricing, and quoting technology to create a configuration and visualization experience for window and door sales.&nbsp;

Typeface is a generative AI platform that enables enterprises to create personalized, on-brand content across various mediums, including text, images, and videos. The company's core offering, Typeface Blend, is an Affinity AI technology that self-learns and customizes content to align with each enterprise's unique voice, brand elements, and digital assets. Typeface provides self-serve solutions for complete lifecycle content development, empowering employees to craft captivating content with ease, speed, and brand authenticity.Typeface's platform offers a multimodal content hub called Graph, where users can upload visual assets, style guides, messaging, and other brand elements. The Blend technology then customizes AI-generated content based on these assets, ensuring brand consistency across various use cases, such as rapid ideation, cross-team collaboration, and personalized product campaigns. Additionally, Typeface provides self-serve workflows, templates, and enterprise-grade security and compliance features.In May 2023, Typeface unveiled new capabilities like Image Studio for high-resolution product photography, video-to-text conversion, and selective image editing and regeneration. The company has gained strong customer traction across diverse industries, including digital-native brands and Fortune 500 companies, demonstrating its ability to rapidly personalize content at scale while maintaining brand integrity.In January 2024, Typeface announced the acquisition of TensorTour, integrating advanced AI algorithms, domain-specific models, and expertise in multimedia AI content creation. This strategic move aimed to accelerate Typeface's multimodal AI roadmap and invest in specialized enterprise workflows for video, audio, and 3D content.Key customers and partnershipsTypeface has established notable partnerships with industry leaders to extend its reach and integration capabilities. In June 2023, the company announced collaborations with Salesforce and Google Cloud, enabling customers of Salesforce Marketing GPT, Google Cloud, and Google Workspace to create highly customized content within their existing workflows. Additionally, Typeface partnered with ActionIQ, a leading enterprise customer data platform, to merge audience insights with Typeface's personalized AI content engine, facilitating tailored content across all ActionIQ audience segments.Prominent customers leveraging Typeface's solutions include LG Electronics, where the company's SVP of Digital Commerce &amp; Marketing Solutions praised Typeface's ability to generate personalized, on-brand images spanning multiple markets, significantly reducing production time and enabling a unified brand approach across business units.

Automation to improve business efficiency

Workflow Automation Platforms

Workato offers a cloud-based platform that enables citizen and professional developers to integrate a range of data and apps and create end-to-end automations across several business functions, including finance, HR, sales, IT, and marketing. The platform suite of solutions includes robotic process automation (RPA), integration platform-as-a-service, business process automation, and chatbots. Users can publish APIs, build data integrations, and create customized apps and bots from scratch via the platform's low-code interface or use over 500,000 community-built automation templates (called “recipes”).Moreover, the platform enables users to build tailored solutions for each business function, including automations for 1) accounting teams: Wuote-to-cash, accounts payable, and reporting, 2) sales and marketing teams: Campaign operations and lead management, 3) HR teams: Talent acquisition, onboarding, and collaboration, and 4) IT teams: Incident management and end-user support.The platform also provides software infrastructure, named “Common Workato Runtime” (CWR), which handles capacity planning, load balancing, fault-tolerance, and run-time optimization. In September 2023, the company launched “Workflow Apps,” a no-code tool that enables users to build end-to-end workflow automation applications.In November 2021, the company acquired RailsData, an Indian integration platform, for an undisclosed amount. Workato leveraged the company’s technology to power its own automation solutions and enable large customers to deploy services via application programming interfaces (APIs).Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, served over 17,000 businesses across a number of industries, including financial services, retail, logistics, and healthcare. Its clientele includes large enterprise clients, such as Atlassian, AT&amp;T, Adobe, Autodesk, Box, Stitch Fix, GitLab, NYU, Nokia, and Broadcom.The company also offers integrations with over 1,000 third-party applications and databases (as of December 2023), including Salesforce, Slack, Marketo, NetSuite, ServiceNow, and Workday.The company also partners with a number of systems integrators and technology service providers such as Trianz, Cognizant, Cloud9 Consulting, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32627">Reltio,</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32626">Deloitte.</a>In June 2023, the company partnered with OpenAI, to integrate the company’s large language model (LLM) technology with its automation platform, and develop a new GenAI-driven solution. Named AI@Work, the solution will feature a number of tools including: 1) Workato Copilot, which enables users to convert natural language prompts into powerful Workato recipes, 2) Workato AI Connect, which enables users to create personalized content, and 3) WorkbotGPT, which enables users to interact with enterprise applications such as Slack and Microsoft Teams in a conversational manner.

Automation Anywhere offers a cloud-based platform that enables citizen and professional developers to orchestrate processes and create end-to-end automations across the finance, HR, and customer service business functions. Named the “Automation Success Platform,” it provides a suite of solutions including: 1) A GenAI-powered co-pilot solution that converts natural language prompts to automations; 2) A no-code process composing interface; 3) A document processing solution that enables users to extract and embed document data into workflows; and 4) Robotic process automation (RPA) bot-building tools.The platform’s function-specific solutions include procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, and tax automation solutions for accounting teams, order management, and complaint resolution solutions for sales teams, and vendor onboarding and procurement solutions for operations teams.The platform also offers an API-as-a-service solution that offers low-latency APIs as pre-built packages to enable developers to integrate automations across multiple third-party applications. Users can also transform APIs into no-code automation building blocks to build automations at scale and reuse assets when required. As of October 2023, the company also offered over 1,200 of pre-built connectors to enterprise workflow apps, such as MuleSoft, Salesforce, Workato, ServiceNow, Boomi, Alteryx, and Pipefy.Automation Anywhere leverages custom GenAI automation models trained on anonymized metadata from millions of automations as a foundation for many of its products. Named the “Responsible AI Layer,” the company integrates this layer into its tools to add a range of use cases, such as email triage and routing for customer service teams, anti-money laundering alerts and reporting for banks, and after-visit summaries for patients in healthcare. In June 2024, it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30479">launched the “AI + Automation Enterprise System,”</a> which aimed to infuse GenAI technology across a range of its workflow automation products. It includes a low-code development studio, which enables users to create and manage custom AI Agents that can make informed decisions and perform automated actions across enterprise systems. The system is powered by the company’s new GenAI process models that are trained on metadata from over 300 million process automations running on the platform.Moreover, the company has also expanded its offerings through acquisitions. The company acquired Cathyos Labs, an Indian product engineering company, and KlevOps, a French RPA startup, in 2019. Automation Anywhere leveraged the acquisition of Cathyos to add to its engineering team, increase product development, and support its expansion in Asia, and KlevOps to expand its RPA solutions. The company went on to acquire FortressIQ, a process mining company, in December 2021, to offer process discovery, intelligence, and optimization solutions to its customers. &nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAutomation Anywhere has an extensive partner ecosystem with a range of companies that include Google, Oracle, Salesforce, and Microsoft, among many others. In June 2023, the company expanded its partnership with Google to use Google Cloud's large language models (LLMs) via Vertex AI to support the development and launch of new GenAI features on the Automation Success Platform. In December 2023, It <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24821">entered with a multi-year strategic partnership with AWS</a> to enhance its capabilities in AI applications and intelligent automation and develop industry-specific automation solutions. It went on to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30347">expand its partnerships with AWS and Microsoft</a> in June 2024 to integrate Q, Amazon’s GenAI assistant, and Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service into its platform. The integrations enabled the company to enhance the capabilities of virtual AI agents created via the Automation Anywhere platform, enabling users to automate more complex tasks. Users can leverage Amazon Q to program agents to answer queries, provide summaries, generate content, and complete tasks based on enterprise data. Moreover, the integration of OpenAI enables the company to leverage Azure AI Document Intelligence, enabling customers to process unstructured documents. In November 2024,&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36090">the company partnered with PwC India</a> to deliver AI-driven automation solutions to Indian businesses across the financial services, retail, manufacturing, telecom, media, and healthcare industries.As of October 2023, the company served a range of enterprise customers across more than 90 countries in the healthcare, financial services, insurance, and manufacturing sectors. These include the NHS, Dell, Merck, Granite, Eastman, and Tata/Sky.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<div>
 
 Based in Israel, monday.com offers a cloud-based no-code platform that provides tailored solutions across multiple business functions, such as sales, HR, product development, operations, and IT, to automate and integrate workflows and apps. The main products offered by the company include &ldquo;monday work management,&rdquo; which incorporates task management functionalities to teams to plan, coordinate, and collaborate on projects, and &ldquo;monday dev,&rdquo; which enables development teams to manage sprints, track bugs, and plan development roadmaps.
 
 
 The platform offers tailored solutions for each business function including: 1) Content and design requests, track campaigns, and manage content calendars for marketing teams, 2) recruitment and onboarding process automation for HR teams, and 3) lead management and customer onboarding automation for sales teams. Users can centralize their work, processes, tools, and files into a single operating system and connect internal teams to build automations and enable effective collaboration.&nbsp;
 
 
 In August 2022, the company went on to
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12038">
 launch &ldquo;monday sales CRM,&rdquo;
 </a>
 a customer relationship management (CRM) platform built on its no-code framework. The solution enables users to automate business processes, sync and track emails, set team goals, and manage sales and operations with one centralized solution.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of November 2023, it is used by 186,000+ customers across 200+ countries. Its customers included large enterprises, such as Peloton, EA, BBC Studios, Hulu, Canva, and Zippo. In October 2022, the company expanded its operations in Asia by 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13716?industryIds=14">
 opening a new office in Japan
 </a>
 and entering partnerships with Japanese firms, such as Hitachi Solutions, NTT DATA Global Solutions Corporation, Gaprise, and TalentA Corp to increase its local base.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 As of November 2023, the platform offered over 200 integrations with multiple third-party apps, including CRMs (Salesforce, Zendesk), marketing platforms (HubSpot, Facebook Ads), and project management tools (Asana, Trello).&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In 2023, the company&rsquo;s revenue totaled USD 729.7 million (up 41% YoY). However, it was yet to turn a profit with an operating loss of USD 38.6 million. The company estimated annual revenue to be between USD 942 million&ndash;948 million in 2024, implying YoY growth of 29%&ndash;30%.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Danish company Leapwork offers a no code workflow automation platform that uses robotic process automation to design, manage, and scale workflows. The company&rsquo;s design &lsquo;language&rsquo; uses flowcharts to graphically represent steps in a workflow and allows users to record processes, validate steps, and input data where needed. The platform also allows users to build web apps, desktop apps, and mobile web and virtual desktop solutions to automate workflows. Moreover, Leapwork&rsquo;s automation solutions can be integrated with a range of third party technologies including SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow, among others. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company offers its services to a range of industries including financial institutions, logistics, healthcare, and retail, among others. As of August 2021, around 40% of its customers were part of the banking, insurance, and finance sector, and included companies such as PayPal, Mercedes Benz, BNP Paribas, and Accenture.
 
 
 The company reportedly doubled the number of customers year-over-year (YoY) since 2017 to over 300 customers as of August 2021 of whom around half were North American. The company claims that, with the use of their technology, businesses can achieve a 10x quicker time to market, 97% productivity gains, and a 90% reduction in application errors. As of August 2021, the company operates nine offices throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, Leapwork raised USD 62 million in Series B financing led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures, at a USD 312 million valuation. The company intends to use these funds to recruit new full-time employees in key markets, invest in global expansion, and open tech hubs to advance product development efforts.
 
</div>

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

Squirro is a Swiss augmented intelligence solutions provider founded in 2012. The company specializes in developing enterprise-grade AI-powered solutions that help organizations leverage their data to gain actionable insights and make better-informed decisions. Squirro's core offering is its Insight Engine, which combines natural language processing, machine learning, and cognitive search capabilities to analyze unstructured data from various sources. The company's solutions are primarily used in industries such as financial services, insurance, telecommunications, and manufacturing.
Squirro's technology allows businesses to extract meaningful insights from their data, enabling them to improve client relations, optimize decision-making, and identify new opportunities. The company's platform can integrate with existing enterprise systems like CRM and ERP, making it easier for organizations to implement and utilize Squirro's solutions within their existing workflows. In March 2023, Squirro launched an enterprise-ready generative AI solution that combines large language models (LLMs) with its Composite AI and Insight Engine technology, providing more accurate and context-aware results based on an organization's own data.
Key customers and partnerships
Squirro has established partnerships with several notable organizations to expand its reach and enhance its offerings. In April 2022, the company partnered with FPT Software, a Vietnamese IT firm, to offer end-to-end augmented intelligence solutions to customers across various industries. This collaboration aimed to strengthen Squirro's global positioning and expand its go-to-market capabilities.
Squirro's customer base includes prominent financial institutions such as Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of England, ING, and Candriam. Other notable clients include Henkel, Armacell, and Ansys. In November 2022, Squirro announced a strategic global partnership with the Semantic Web Company, creating a comprehensive Composite AI offering that combines machine learning, natural language processing, and knowledge graph technology.

Unbabel, founded in 2013, is a language operations platform that combines artificial intelligence with human expertise to provide fast, efficient, and high-quality translation services. The company's proprietary technology, the Unbabel Language Engine, blends advanced machine learning algorithms with a network of human editors to translate content across various formats, including websites, newsletters, apps, and marketing materials. Unbabel's solution allows businesses to communicate with customers in multiple languages, enabling global expansion and multilingual customer support at scale. The platform seamlessly integrates with existing workflows and popular applications, minimizing disruption to clients' operations. Unbabel's approach addresses the growing demand for efficient and reliable translation services in an increasingly globalized business environment, particularly for content types previously considered challenging to translate, such as emails and chat conversations. In October 2023, Unbabel reported having clients in 190 countries across 22 industries.

Cohere is a Toronto-based artificial intelligence company founded in 2019 by Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, and Nick Frosst. The company specializes in developing large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) tools for enterprise use. Cohere's technology enables businesses to generate text, analyze content, moderate discussions, and perform various language-related tasks through its API. The company's models are trained on vast amounts of data, including web pages and discussion boards, allowing them to understand and generate human-like text responses.
Cohere's product offerings include Command, a text generation module trained to answer business-related queries, and Embed, a contextual embedding model for extracting insights from unstructured data. The company also provides tools for content moderation, semantic search, and chatbots. Cohere differentiates itself by focusing on enterprise customers and emphasizing data privacy and security. Unlike some competitors, Cohere does not offer a consumer-facing chatbot, instead concentrating on providing AI solutions that can be integrated into businesses' existing systems.
The company has experienced rapid growth since its inception. As of March 2024, Cohere reported an annualized revenue of USD 35 million, up from USD 13 million the previous year. In June 2023, Cohere raised USD 270 million in a Series C funding round, and in July 2024, the company secured an additional USD 500 million in financing, valuing the company at USD 5.5 billion. Cohere has expanded its operations beyond Toronto, with offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
Key customers and partnerships
Cohere has formed strategic partnerships with several major technology companies. In June 2023, Oracle announced a partnership with Cohere to develop generative AI services for organizations. The company also has partnerships with cloud providers, making its models available on multiple platforms including Amazon's SageMaker, Google Cloud, and Microsoft's Azure.
In February 2022, Cohere entered into a partnership with Google Cloud to use its supercomputing infrastructure. The company has also collaborated with Mila, the world's largest non-profit deep learning research institute, to expand research and accelerate accessibility to cutting-edge NLP tools. This partnership aims to develop the next generation of NLP toolkits and talent.

Hugging Face is an artificial intelligence company and open-source platform focused on natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning. Founded in 2016, the company has evolved from its origins as a chatbot app for teenagers to become a hub for AI models, datasets, and tools. Hugging Face's core offering is the Transformers library, which provides access to state-of-the-art pre-trained models for tasks such as text classification, translation, summarization, and question answering. The platform hosts over 200,000 models and 100,000 datasets, making it a central repository for the AI community.
Hugging Face's mission is to democratize artificial intelligence by making advanced models and tools accessible to developers, researchers, and companies. The platform supports multiple deep learning frameworks including PyTorch, TensorFlow, and JAX, allowing users to easily switch between them. In addition to NLP, Hugging Face has expanded to support computer vision, audio processing, and multimodal AI tasks. The company offers both open-source libraries and commercial services, including Inference Endpoints for deploying models to production environments.
Key customers and partnerships
Hugging Face's technology is used by thousands of organizations across various industries. Notable users include Google, which utilizes Hugging Face models to improve its Bing search engine's natural language understanding capabilities. Other major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Intel have integrated Hugging Face's tools into their AI workflows. The platform has also gained traction in sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, with companies like Pfizer, Roche, and Bloomberg leveraging Hugging Face's models and infrastructure.
In 2023, Hugging Face announced an expanded collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate the adoption of generative AI. This partnership aims to simplify the process of training, fine-tuning, and deploying Hugging Face models using Amazon SageMaker and other AWS services. The collaboration includes initiatives such as a North American roadshow featuring workshops and developer sessions to promote the use of open-source AI models in conjunction with AWS infrastructure.

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

Docker is an open-source software platform designed for constructing applications using containers, which are compact and efficient execution environments. Docker offers a range of developer tools that allow users to create, evaluate, and deploy AI applications.&nbsp;Among its product offerings are:&nbsp;1) Docker Desktop: A containerization software for developers providing a toolkit to build, share, and run applications2) Docker Hub: A container registry catering to developers, enabling them to discover, utilize, and distribute their container images3) Docker Scout: A tool for software supply chain management providing actionable insights and improvements for development workflows.4) Docker Build Cloud: Offers cloud-based services for developers and DevOps teams to build applications faster and more securely.&nbsp;&nbsp;In October 2023, Docker unveiled a new GenAI Stack, a comprehensive solution that simplifies AI development using containerization. This stack combines advanced GenAI technologies and tools, partnering with Neo4j, LangChain, and Llama, to address various use cases, including support agent bots with RAG capabilities, Python coding assistance, and content generation.Docker simultaneously introduced Docker AI, a generative bot designed to assist users in working with Docker. This AI is trained on Docker's Compose files and an extensive library of errors associated with Docker's products and tools. Its purpose is to seamlessly integrate into the developer workflow, aiding developers in resolving issues and bugs effectively.Among its strategic acquisitions to enhance its product offerings are AtomicJar (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24816">December 2023</a>), Mutagen (June 2023), Infinit International (2016), and several others from 2014 to 2015​​​​​​​​.Docker acquired AtomicJar to address the challenges of using representations of testing components instead of the actual software.The platform is offered through a SaaS subscription model with packages ranging from free subscriptions for personal users up to USD 24 per user per month for businesses&nbsp;(December 2024).&nbsp; Key customers and partnershipsDocker claims that its customer base features more than 70% of Fortune 100 companies, with notable clients such as Adobe, AT&amp;T, Yale, and Virginia Tech.&nbsp;As of November 2024, Docker had ~79,000 customers and 20+ million developers in its portfolio.Key partnerships include its collaboration with AWS to introduce deep integrations between Docker's developer tools AWS' container services to improve container workflows (July 2020) and with RedHat to improve interoperability between Docker's hosted services and Red Hat-certified container hosts and services (April 2014).

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&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35904">November 2024</a>, the company launched an Enterprise AI suite to develop and deliver customizable GenAI applications and agents. DataRobot introduced its real-time intervention functionality for GenAI solutions in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29077">May 2024</a>, to detect and prevent unexpected AI behaviors. The service is available on-premise, in the cloud, and hybrid.In&nbsp;<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’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 partnershipsDataRobot provides services to 40% of the Fortune 50 companies, including Kroger, Nationwide, Lenovo, and PNC.DataRobot has formed several significant partnerships,&nbsp;including a product partnership with Teradata&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31593">(July 2024)</a> to integrate Teradata VantageCloud and ClearScape Analytics with DataRobot's AI platform, strategic partnership 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.

Databricks, a data and AI company established by the original developers behind prominent Big Data solutions such as Delta Lake, Apache Spark, and MLflow, and provides organizations with AI and data analytics tools for efficient management of their data.&nbsp;Databricks' primary product is the Databricks Lakehouse platform, a unified data intelligence platform that merges a data warehouse and data lake to provide developers with efficient access to data and enables enterprise customers to create their AI models—similar to a ChatGPT-style AI system—using only their internal data.&nbsp;Databricks Unity Catalog, part of the Databricks Lakehouse Platform, provides unified governance for structured and unstructured data, machine-learning models, notebooks, dashboards, and files across various environments, offering automated monitoring, proactive alerts, and seamless data sharing through Delta Sharing integration. Furthermore, Databricks offers an open architecture that streamlines the AI development process, allowing the integration of various LLMs such as Llama 2, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic, enabling customization with enterprise data for tailored model creation. In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28436">April 2024</a>, Databricks introduced its Data Intelligence platform for energy to use AI technology to process large data for energy companies. Following this, the company added synthetic data capabilities for AI agent evaluation in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/37008">December 2024</a>.Notably, Lakehouse leverages NVIDIA technology for accelerated data processing and AI model generation. Databricks also offers industry-specific solutions like Databricks Lakehouse for Healthcare, Financial Services, Retail, and Manufacturing.Databricks has expanded its offerings through multiple acquisitions, including MosaicML (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19683">July 2023</a>), Arcion (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23041">October 2023</a>), Okera (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18197">May 2023</a>), and Datajoy (October 2022).&nbsp; Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2024, Databricks served a global customer base of more than 10,000 organisations, including Comcast, Conde, DuPont, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce, Shell, and Tata Steel.Databricks collaborates with over 1,200 global cloud, ISV, and consulting partners to deliver data, analytics, and AI solutions, supporting customers in scaling their projects.Notable partnerships include collaboration with AWS in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34884">October 2024</a> to leverage AWS Trainium chips as the preferred AI chip to power Databricks' Mosaic AI model training and serving capabilities.&nbsp;Databricks also partnered with Karini AI in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33687">September 2024</a> to accelerate GenAI deployment for enterprises.&nbsp;

Together AI is a cloud-based platform for creating open-source generative AI and infrastructure for AI model development. The company advances AI by providing innovative open-source research, models, and datasets. Its decentralized cloud services enable developers and researchers to train, refine, and deploy generative AI models across organizations of all sizes.The company's flagship platform, Together API, facilitates the training, fine-tuning, and inference of open-source large language models (LLMs) and custom models. Customers can integrate leading open-source LLMs like Llama-2, Falcon, Vicuna, and Mistral/Mixtral, or bring their own models.Its product offering includes Together Inference, an inference stack to run open source models, Together Finetuning, a platform to customize open-source models with private data, Together custom models, to build models from scratch, and Together GPU clusters which offers compute clusters for training and fine-tuning.The company also offers consulting services to design customized AI models for specific use cases. Together AI's research initiatives include RedPajama for open-source chat models and Evo, a biological foundational model for understanding and generating genomic sequences.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/37169">December 2024</a>, the company acquired development environment infrastructure provider CodeSandbox. The company aimed to integrate CodeSandbox's technology into its Together Inference Platform, creating the first platform with built-in code interpretation.Key customers and partnershipsTogether AI's customers include AI startups like Nexusflow.ai, Voyage.ai, and Pika Labs, as well as enterprises from various industries.The company has notable partnerships with Snowflake, to bring Arctic LLM to Enterprise customers, and Meta, to release Meta Llama 3 for inference and fine-tuning.&nbsp;

Powering digital transformation for businesses

Low-code Platforms

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a web-based automation platform that allows users to create simple conditional statements, called applets, to connect and integrate various web services, apps, and smart devices. Founded in 2010 and launched publicly in 2011, IFTTT has grown to support over 600 different services and applications, including popular platforms like Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Dropbox. The platform enables users to automate tasks and create new functionalities without requiring coding knowledge.
IFTTT's core functionality revolves around creating applets that consist of a trigger ("If This") and an action ("Then That"). For example, an applet could be set up to automatically save email attachments to Dropbox or turn on smart lights when the user arrives home. The platform offers both pre-made applets that users can easily activate and the ability to create custom applets tailored to specific needs. IFTTT is available as a website and mobile app for iOS and Android devices, allowing users to manage their automations from anywhere.
In addition to personal use, IFTTT has applications for businesses, helping to streamline workflows, automate social media activities, and improve productivity. The platform offers different pricing tiers, including a free plan with limited features and paid plans starting at USD 3.49 per month for more advanced capabilities. As of 2023, IFTTT has over 20 million registered users and integrates with more than 700 services.

Genesis Global offers a low-code application development platform specifically designed for financial markets organizations. Founded in 2012, the company's platform enables financial institutions to accelerate software innovation and overcome technology challenges. Genesis' solution allows firms to automate spreadsheet processes, enhance existing systems, replace legacy technology, and build new applications. The platform is built with flexibility and performance at its core, providing developers with frameworks, integrations, and components to create high-performance, resilient, and secure applications. Genesis estimates that its platform reduces coding time and effort by 80%, allowing clients to bring products to market five times faster. The company's technology is used by leading financial institutions for various purposes, including developing new software applications, enhancing legacy systems, and replacing manual processes with enterprise-quality solutions. In March 2023, Genesis was recognized with a TabbFORUM NOVA Award for its innovative contributions to financial services technology.
Key customers and partnerships
Genesis Global has formed strategic partnerships with several companies in the financial services sector. In November 2022, the company announced collaborations with Chenoa Information Systems, Flylance, Future Workforce, Luxoft, Velocity Investment Solutions, and Wissen Technology. These partnerships aim to develop and deploy new applications throughout the financial industry, leveraging the partners' expertise in areas such as process automation, digital transformation, AI, Big Data, and legacy system upgrades. Genesis has also worked with major financial institutions to deliver trading platforms, as evidenced by its projects for Octaura and Neptune Networks. The company's platform has gained traction among banks, asset managers, and other financial firms seeking to compete for market share, reduce legacy system costs, and comply with changing regulations.

Yellow.ai is a global leader in conversational artificial intelligence (AI), providing autonomous, human-like experiences for customers and employees to accelerate enterprise growth. The company's Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP) leverages generative AI and proprietary multi-large language models (LLMs) to enable enterprises to develop tailored solutions for various industries. Yellow.ai's platform supports over 135 languages across more than 35 channels, handling 12 billion conversations annually.
The company's AI-powered dynamic agents can self-serve up to 90% of customer queries, improving ecommerce customer interactions by raising customer journey completion rates by 50% and increasing customer satisfaction scores by 40%. Yellow.ai's technology includes features like DynamicNLP, which allows for zero-setup deployment, and the lifecycle Optimizer, which crafts personalized user journeys using generative AI. In April 2023, Yellow.ai introduced the Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP) powered by generative AI, followed by the launch of YellowG, a groundbreaking multi-LLM using generative AI and Enterprise GPT.
Yellow.ai's solutions span across Conversational Service Cloud, Conversational Commerce Cloud, and Conversational EX Cloud. The company's growth has been significant, with a reported 80% increase in annual recurring revenue globally. As of November 2023, Yellow.ai experienced tenfold growth in North America over two years, with the region's revenue share surging even as the company doubled in revenue year-over-year globally.

HR Tech

GoCo is a cloud-based, flexible software solution for HR, benefits, and payroll designed for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, GoCo aims to modernize and automate HR tasks to empower HR professionals and improve workplace experiences. The platform offers a range of features including employee onboarding, benefits administration, time tracking, performance management, compliance support, and payroll synchronization.
GoCo's core functionality revolves around its Magic Docs feature, which allows for the creation, distribution, and digital signing of HR-related documents. The platform also provides extensive workflow automation capabilities, enabling businesses to streamline complex HR processes and reduce manual effort. GoCo's integrated benefits administration offers comprehensive management of employee benefits directly within the platform, making it easier for SMBs to handle this complex aspect of HR.
The software is designed to be flexible enough to support existing processes, policies, and providers, allowing SMBs to adopt a modern HR system without drastically changing their operations. GoCo's employee self-service portal enables staff to manage their personal information, request time off, and complete various HR-related tasks, reducing the administrative burden on HR departments.
Key customers and partnerships
GoCo integrates with various popular payroll and accounting software solutions, including QuickBooks and Xero, to enhance its functionality. The platform also offers integration with Slack for improved communication and updates within HR workflows. GoCo's API enables further customization and integration with other systems, catering to more specific business needs.

Simpplr is a provider of employee experience software that aims to connect and align employees within organizations. The company's flagship product, Simpplr One, is a comprehensive platform that brings together various tools and resources employees need to perform their best work from any location. This solution addresses the challenges posed by disjointed and fragmented tools that often hinder employee productivity and engagement. Simpplr's technology facilitates effective internal communication, measures employee alignment and sentiment in real-time, and promotes a more positive work environment. The platform is designed to be user-friendly for both end-users and IT teams, offering simple yet powerful features. Simpplr's approach, which they call Live EX, helps companies communicate more effectively in a distributed work environment. The software is particularly beneficial for organizations seeking to increase employee engagement, retention, and overall business performance. As of March 2022, Simpplr's client base included notable brands such as DocuSign, Eurostar, and AAA.
Key customers and partnerships
Simpplr's customer base spans various industries, with the company serving prominent organizations such as DocuSign, Eurostar, and AAA as of March 2022. The company has also established partnerships with industry leaders and thought leaders in the employee experience sector. In October 2022, Simpplr organized its second annual conference, Cohesion 2022, which brought together employee experience professionals, executives, and industry experts to discuss best practices and innovative strategies in the field. This event provided a platform for networking and knowledge sharing among peers in the employee experience industry.

BetterUp, founded in 2013, is a human transformation company that provides virtual professional coaching and mental fitness services to enterprises. The company offers a platform that combines coaching, AI technology, and behavioral science to drive personal and professional growth. BetterUp's services include one-on-one coaching, group coaching, and on-demand resources covering topics such as leadership development, mental health, nutrition, sleep, and diversity and inclusion.
The company utilizes a network of over 4,000 coaches providing support in 64 languages across more than 70 countries. BetterUp's platform incorporates AI-driven insights and personalized learning paths to deliver scalable development solutions. The company's products include BetterUp Lead for leadership development, BetterUp Manage for skill development using AI, and BetterUp Care for employee well-being and mental health.
BetterUp has developed partnerships to expand its reach, including integrations with Microsoft Viva and Degreed's Learning Experience Platform. The company has also launched specialized offerings like BetterUp Sales Performance on Salesforce AppExchange to improve sales team effectiveness. As of October 2021, BetterUp was valued at USD 4.7 billion and had raised USD 300 million in funding.
Key customers and partnerships
BetterUp works with over 600 organizations, including major corporations such as NASA, Google, Chevron, Hilton, Salesforce, and Warner Media. BetterUp has partnered with Salesforce since 2017, providing coaching to over 70,000 Salesforce employees worldwide. BetterUp has also formed partnerships with Microsoft to integrate its services into Microsoft Viva, and with Degreed to offer coaching through their learning platform.
In 2023, BetterUp announced a collaboration with renowned researcher and author Brené Brown to launch the Daring Leadership Institute, which aims to develop courageous leaders and foster organizational cultures that embrace change. The US Air Force awarded BetterUp a USD 99 million contract in September 2023 for leadership coaching services, demonstrating the company's expansion into government sectors.

Giving firms greater control over their SaaS stack

B2B SaaS Management Platforms

Zylo is a leading enterprise SaaS management and optimization platform that helps organizations gain visibility and control over their rapidly growing SaaS portfolios. The company's platform leverages AI to analyze an organization's SaaS spend and usage in real-time, creating a comprehensive system of record. It provides insights into license utilization, overlaps, and potential cost savings opportunities, enabling IT, finance, and procurement teams to make data-driven decisions.
As of August 2022, Zylo had over 30 million SaaS licenses and USD 25 billion in SaaS spend under management. The platform's key features include discovery of an organization's entire SaaS footprint, tracking of spend, usage, and adoption trends, analysis of user activity and license utilization, and departmental visibility into adoption. Zylo's platform empowers organizations to optimize SaaS renewals, eliminate waste, and drive cost savings while improving employee productivity.
Prominent customers leveraging Zylo's solutions include Adobe, Atlassian, Coupa, DoorDash, Intuit, Slack, Salesforce, and Yahoo. In March 2023, Zylo launched App Overview, a feature that centralizes app spend, usage, adoption trends, and insights on a single screen, enabling quick identification of underutilized licenses and redundant applications.

AppOmni is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) security management company founded in 2018. Its platform offers a comprehensive security framework that enables customers to identify, protect, and monitor risks across their entire SaaS ecosystem. The solution performs in-depth scans of application programming interfaces (APIs), security controls, and configuration settings to assess the current state of SaaS deployments against best practices and business requirements.
AppOmni's platform provides centralized visibility into data access across SaaS applications, allowing organizations to establish and enforce rules for data sharing, user activity, and third-party integrations. It secures sensitive data from unauthorized access, loss, and compromise. As of June 2022, AppOmni protected over 78 million users and secured more than 230 million exposed data records across a wide range of SaaS platforms, including Box, Confluence, Fastly, GitHub, Google Workspace, Jira, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Workday, and Zoom.
In April 2022, AppOmni introduced the AppOmni Developer Platform, enabling customers to extend its security capabilities to custom applications and any SaaS application, whether purchased from a vendor or built in-house. The company has achieved strong triple-digit annual recurring revenue growth and a near 100% customer retention rate since its inception.
In December 2023, AppOmni was named the Global Company of the Year by Frost & Sullivan for its comprehensive SaaS security posture management (SSPM) solutions, which address the industry's most pressing security gaps through automated application discovery, identity governance, control, and visibility into SaaS applications.

G2 is a leading software review platform that leverages artificial intelligence to transform revenue and customer-facing teams. The company's Reality Platform automatically captures customer interactions and utilizes that data to help teams improve business performance. G2's platform provides insights at scale, empowering companies to determine the best actions for achieving successful outcomes. As of February 2022, G2 earned the #1 spot on both the Best Software Products and Highest Satisfaction Products lists. The platform distinguishes itself through its ability to automatically capture customer interactions, derive valuable data-driven insights, and deliver optimal results for sales, customer service, marketing, and other customer-facing roles across diverse industries.
In March 2024, G2 announced surpassing 2 million authentic user reviews on its platform. This milestone underscores the company's rapid growth and success in establishing itself as the world's largest software marketplace, consistently attracting over 60 million visitors annually. Over the years, G2 has witnessed substantial expansion across various regions, with North America remaining its core market while witnessing explosive review growth in the Asia-Pacific region as well.

Tools that streamline software development

DevOps Toolchain

Sauce Labs is a cloud-based automated testing platform that enables developers and quality assurance teams to test web and mobile applications across multiple browsers, operating systems, and devices. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Sauce Labs offers a comprehensive suite of testing tools including cross-browser testing, mobile testing, and live web testing. The company's platform supports over 800 browser, operating system, and device combinations, allowing users to run automated and manual tests at scale.
Sauce Labs' core offerings include a Selenium-based automated testing infrastructure, real device cloud for mobile app testing, and visual testing capabilities. The platform integrates with popular development tools and supports various programming languages and frameworks, enabling seamless incorporation into existing CI/CD pipelines. In recent years, Sauce Labs has expanded its capabilities through strategic acquisitions, including AutonomIQ for AI-powered low-code test automation in 2021.
The company's technology leverages a microservices architecture that scales based on testing requirements, allowing for parallel test execution to reduce overall testing time. Sauce Labs also provides detailed analytics and error reporting to help teams identify and resolve issues quickly. In 2023, the company introduced Sauce Orchestrate, which claims to execute mobile app and cross-browser tests up to 70% faster than traditional methods.
Key customers and partnerships
Sauce Labs serves over 3,200 enterprise customers across various industries, including notable names such as Walmart, VISA, and Alaska Airlines. The company has a strong presence in the US but also operates in over 150 countries worldwide.
In terms of partnerships, Sauce Labs collaborates with major technology companies to enhance its offerings. For example, in April 2021, Sauce Labs announced a technology partnership with Deque Systems to integrate accessibility testing capabilities into its platform. This partnership allows Sauce Labs customers to incorporate automated accessibility testing into their quality assurance processes, leveraging Deque's axe suite of tools.

CodeSee is a San Francisco-based software company founded in 2019 that develops tools to enhance codebase visibility and understanding for developers. The company's core product is a code visualization platform that generates interactive diagrams of codebases, helping developers navigate complex software architectures. CodeSee Maps, the platform's main feature, creates auto-generated, self-updating code diagrams that sync as codebases evolve, allowing users to see how files and folders are connected and how code changes fit into the larger architecture.In August 2022, CodeSee launched CodeSee Enterprise, a platform designed to streamline enterprise software projects. This tool generates diagrams that visualize dependencies between software components, making it easier for developers to identify how different parts of an application interact. CodeSee Enterprise also includes features to assist with code reviews, highlighting specific files affected by changes and pointing out dependencies. The platform supports multiple programming languages, including C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Blazor, Java, JavaScript, Go, Python, and TypeScript.In July 2023, CodeSee introduced a generative AI capability to its platform, allowing users to explore codebases using natural language queries. This feature provides text-based answers accompanied by code maps showing connections between different parts of the codebase based on the user's question. The company partnered with Microsoft and OpenAI to develop this functionality.

LinearB is a software engineering intelligence platform that helps engineering teams improve their operational efficiency and align their development efforts with business goals. The platform correlates data from various project management, Git, deployment, and incident management tools to provide comprehensive workflow metrics. LinearB's core offering includes analytics for engineering leaders and workflow optimization tools for developers. The platform tracks metrics like cycle time, deployment frequency, mean time to restore, and change failure rates to establish a baseline for developer productivity.
LinearB's software delivery management platform integrates with tools like GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jira, Slack, Jenkins, and CircleCI. It offers features such as pipeline metrics, resource allocation solutions, and enterprise-grade DORA metrics tracking. The platform also includes gitStream, a solution for implementing policy-as-code through programmable workflow automation. In May 2023, LinearB expanded its support to GitLab, Bitbucket, and Microsoft Azure users, and introduced new integrations with SonarCloud, Jit, Dependabot, and Swimm.
In June 2024, LinearB launched its Software Engineering Intelligence+ (SEI+) platform, which incorporates fully integrated workflow automations through a marketplace experience. This update aims to streamline software delivery and improve developer productivity by offering various Gen AI, Developer Experience, and Platform Engineering solutions. LinearB estimates that its platform will automate over 4 million pull requests for its customers and save more than 500,000 human hours in the year following the launch.

Empowering efficiency, visibility and collaboration throughout supply networks

Supply Chain Tech

Resilinc offers a suite of supply chain risk management solutions to help organizations build resilient and agile supply chains. The company’s key product offerings include software solutions for supply chain visibility, risk assessment and monitoring, supplier intelligence, and incident response and recovery.As of October 2023, the company claimed that it was equipped with a database of proprietary data collected directly from suppliers over the last 12 years, including part-origin intelligence for over four million parts and raw materials across 20 industries. The company also claimed it had a mapped supplier network of over 800,000 global suppliers. Through this, the platform delivers historical data-backed insights and provides connectivity to a collaborative network of suppliers. The company also supplements this by providing AI-powered predictive solutions to predict delivery delays, price movements, and supply constraints for raw materials and commodities before they happen to enable users to make informed decisions quickly, strengthening their supply chain resilience.The company caters to the aerospace, defense, government, automotive and industrial, healthcare and life sciences, and high-tech and semiconductor sectors.In September 2024, Resilinc <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34150">introduced</a> The Resilinc Academy, a new educational platform offering self-paced, interactive training on supply chain risk, resiliency, and product usage.It offers two main courses: A broad curriculum covering supply chain risk and resiliency management concepts and in-depth courses on Resilinc's core products. The platform is accessible to Resilinc's customers and partners.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2023, the company offered its services to over 100,000 organizations, spread across over 25 industries and over 130 countries. The clientele included 50% of the top biotech, life sciences, and pharmaceutical companies; 40% of the top electronics manufacturing services and semiconductor companies; and 60% of the top light and heavy industrial manufacturers.In April 2024, Resilinc entered a strategic partnership with o9 Solutions to integrate its supply chain risk data and mapping with o9’s impact and mitigation analytics. This allowed joint clients to identify risks early, simulate various scenarios, and make data-driven decisions.

Circulor offers a blockchain-based solution that enables companies to gain visibility into their supply chains, thereby helping track materials, emissions, and compliance. The company’s product offerings can be divided into three core areas: traceability, sustainability, and risk management. Traceability products track the origin and flow of raw materials through production processes within manufacturing and recycling supply chains. This granular, real-time data enables the tracking of emissions and associated ESG data, enabling responsible sourcing, sustainability, and circularity​​.Its sustainability products enable clients to dynamically measure their attributes and inherited emissions at each stage of the supply chain, enhancing current life cycle assessment approaches. This allows businesses to define their ESG KPIs, measure and compare the sustainability credentials of their suppliers, and benchmark against overall ESG targets​​.In the area of risk management, Circulor’s products augment traceability data with data from third-party sources to investigate supply chain participants and identify potential risks. This includes identifying anomalies and deviations across the supply chain and flagging them to the responsible organization and downstream participants for corrective action with a full audit trail on the blockchain​​.Key customers and partnershipsThe company offers its platform and solutions to leading companies including Sky, Boeing, Polestar, Volvo, Polstar, Posco Chemical, and Finnish Mineral Group .In October 2024, Circulor&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34313">partnered</a> with Rockwell Automation, an industrial automation company, to improve supply chain transparency. The collaboration aims to offer advanced traceability solutions for manufacturers in auto, tire, and battery industries. Earlier, In January 2024, Circulor partnered with Automotive Cells Co (ACC), a European battery maker, to trace supply chains' sustainability and carbon emissions. As part of the collaboration, Circulor and ACC was to track the origins and carbon emissions of the raw materials used in ACC's electric vehicle battery cells. This partnership intended to validate their supply chain operations, ensuring they are sustainable and responsible. This initiative was taken in anticipation of Europe's planned "battery passport" that will require transparency about the environmental impact of batteries sold within the region.Funding and financialsThe company raised USD 25.0 million in Series B funding in June 2022 led by the Westly Group. The investor pool included new and existing investors, including corporate venture capital funds from Volvo Cars, BHP, and Salesforce. The proceeds were used for geographic expansion, primarily focusing on the North American market.&nbsp;

Altana AI develops the “Altana Atlas,” a dynamic and intelligent map of the global supply chain that aims to provide businesses, governments, and logistics providers with insight and control over their supply networks.The Altana Atlas uses AI and data from a vast network of public and private supply chains to offer services such as trade compliance automation, national security threat detection, forced labor elimination, environmental impact measurement, real-time risk and opportunity identification, and internal/external collaboration. The platform provides multi-tier visibility to supply networks, facilitates decision-making, and enhances network collaboration. It also enables traceability across the supply chain by providing visibility on how products are transformed from raw materials to finished goods at every node of the supply chain. The platform also facilitates global trade through automated customs classification and AI-powered trade facilitation.In 2022, the company claimed that it was growing at 12x–15x and that it planned to expand its workforce to 110 by the end of 2022. Also, in July 2024 the company was valued at <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32049">USD 1 billion</a>.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2023, the company’s customers included Boston Scientific, PROLOGIS, MAERSK, HM Government, LLOYD’S, US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Defense, and L.L. Bean.In February 2022, the company partnered with Chain.io to help governments and the private sector improve cross-border trade. The collaboration was expected to assist customs authorities, global logistics providers, and shippers worldwide to fast-track safe and compliant shipments, automate customs classification, and identify high-risk shipments that require inspections. Also, in November 2023, the company partnered with Dataminr to develop a dynamic, AI-driven system that flags and analyzes potential global supply chain risks such as natural disasters, public health threats, and geopolitical events.

The toolkit to build machine learning applications at scale

Machine Learning Infrastructure

Docker is an open-source platform that enables users to build, test, and deploy AI applications. The platform packages and runs AI applications into containers that comprise components such as the libraries, system tools, and code. Docker helps to train and run ML models on different operating systems and streamlines the containerization and implementation process to deploy ML models into production. The company also offers an open-source desktop application that allows developers to create applications and test code and an app store that allows developers to download application components which are packaged as containers.The platform is available under a SaaS subscription model starting from USD 5 per user per month and includes a free plan with limited features. In addition, it offers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25894">Docker Build Cloud</a>, a service that allows development teams to complete their image builds in the cloud, starting at USD 5 per seat/month for 200 build minutes. It utilizes smart caching and predictive technology to improve build speeds by up to 39x.In June 2023, Docker acquired Mutagen IO, the developer of the open-source Mutagen file synchronization and networking technologies. Mutagen’s technologies, when combined with Docker’s existing developer tools, enable developers with local and remote containerized development. In addition, Docker acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24816">AtomicJars</a>, an early-stage startup that has built a commercial container testing platform. Through the acquisition, Docker aimed to strengthen its position in the market and expand its offerings to developers working on projects before they go into production.The company launched Docker Build Cloud, a service that allows development teams to complete their image builds in the cloud, with build speed improvements of up to 39x. These speedups are achieved through smart caching and predictive technology. Additionally, the system provides transparency around cache utilization, with the potential option of selecting different cache sizes. Other planned features include the ability to track time savings made from remote builds as well as integrated functionality with other Docker products for enhanced security and efficiency.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2024, the platform was used by more than 20 million developers, with notable customers such as Adobe, Netflix, PayPal, Stripe, Splunk, Verizon, and Target. As of March 2023, the company served more than 70,000 commercial customers, including more than 79% of the Fortune 100 and a majority of the top technology companies, banks, retailers, media, and healthcare companies.Funding and financialsIn March 2022, the company raised USD 105 million in a Series C funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures at a valuation of USD 2.1 billion. The funds were utilized to accelerate investments in its product and go-to-market initiatives, such as increasing investments in developer productivity, trusted content, and ecosystem partnerships and investing in new channels and geographies.In March 2023, Docker reported that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) increased more than 30x in the past three years.

Databricks offers a range of data infrastructure and data analytics solutions such as data lakes, data warehouses, data governance, and more, which are also being used for processing data across machine learning applications.Databrick’s offers a managed service for MLFlow, an open-source platform that provides features for development, management, deployment, and monitoring of ML models. MLFlow also includes a centralized model registry to store and collaborate on ML models, along with features for version control and integration with enterprise CI/CD pipelines. MLFlow supports deployment using Apache Spark for local machines, along with cloud deployment via Microsoft Azure ML and Amazon Sagemaker. MLFlow was initially built by Databricks, but it is now open-sourced and managed by the Linux Foundation.In addition, the Lakehouse AI tools featured within the Lakehouse platform allow developers to build Gen-AI applications using foundational models to train their own custom models securely with its enterprise data.In July 2023, Darabricks <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19683">acquired MosaicML </a>, an ML model development platform for generative AI applications, in a transaction valued at approximately USD 1.3 billion, inclusive of retention packages. The acquisition will integrate MosaicML's platform within the Databricks' Lakehouse platform, offering organizations a unified platform with tools to create and manage large language models (LLMs) and a wide range of AI use cases including generative AI using their own data.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2023, Databricks had a customer base exceeding 10,000 worldwide, which includes renowned companies like S&amp;P Global, Adobe, Toyota, Nasdaq, and NASA.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32463">August 2024</a>, Databricks partnered with Lenovo to enable easier AI adoption among Lenovo’s customers by leveraging the Databricks’ data management capabilities.&nbsp;Earlier in October 2022, Databricks partnered with the no-code extract, transform, and load (ETL) platform Hevo Data to provide automated data integration into the lakehouse for mutual customers. This enabled customers to deploy ETL pipelines on Hevo Data within Databricks.It also partnered with Credo AI, an AI governance platform (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25683">in January 2024</a>), to integrate the latter’s governance platform to assist organizations in tracking and managing AI risks and complying with emerging regulations. The company also has several collaborations with NVIDIA, including the integration of NVIDIA CUDA accelerated computing into Databricks' Data Intelligence Platform, and developing native support for NVIDIA-accelerated computing in its next-generation query engine, Photon, which will lead to faster and more efficient data management.Funding and financialsIn September 2023, the company raised more than USD 50 million in a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21866">Series I</a> funding round at a USD 43 billion valuation. The round was led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Capital One Ventures, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, and NVIDIA. The funds were to be used to support the continued growth of Databricks and its unified data and AI platform.In 2Q 2023 (ending on July 31, 2023), Databricks reported to have exceeded USD 1.5 billion in revenue run rate (a 50% YoY increase), while achieving a non-GAAP subscription gross margin of 85%.

Hugging Face, a French-American firm, offers an open-source and ML platform that allows developers and ML practitioners to collaborate and develop entire AI/ML models from training to deployment.Hugging Face offers a range of tools for data science hosting and development. These include a platform akin to GitHub for AI code repositories, models, and datasets, along with web applications for demonstrating AI-powered applications. Additionally, it provides libraries for tasks such as dataset processing and model evaluation. It has an enterprise version of the platform that supports both software-as-a-service and on-premises deployments.The company's paid features encompass AutoTrain, which streamlines and automates the process of training AI models; Inference API, which enables developers to host models without the need to manage underlying infrastructure; and Infinity, which is aimed at enhancing the processing speed of in-production models with data.In addition, it also offers pre-trained NLP models like BERT, GPT-2, and GPT-3 in its repository, known as the "Model Hub," which serves as a platform for sharing, downloading, and fine-tuning pre-trained models, fostering collaboration and reusability in NLP applications.Hugging Face acquired Seattle-based data storage startup, XetHub in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32483">August 2024</a> to integrate XetHub's technologies into the Hugging Face hub.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33399">September 2024</a>, the company launched LightEval, a new lightweight evaluation suite to assess large language models (LLMs). LightEval provides a customizable evaluation suite that works with Hugging Face tools like Datatrove and Nanotron. It supports evaluation on various devices, including CPUs, GPUs, and TPUs, and can scale for both small and large deployments. Following this, in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/37250https://sp-edge.com/updates/37250">December 2024</a>, the company introduced Hugging Face Generative AI Services (HUGS), a new tool for deploying and scaling GenAI applications using open-source models.&nbsp;In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34633">October 2024</a>, Hugging Face launched Gradio 5 to develop AI-powered web apps and improve AI adoption of ML technologies.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Hugging Face serves over 10,000 customers across 50,000+ organizations. Its revenue mainly stems from consulting contracts with major AI companies like NVIDIA, Amazon, and Microsoft.Hugging Face entered a strategic partnership with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/314571">Google Cloud</a> to allow developers working on Hugging Face to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25911">leverage Google Cloud's infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/203208">Amazon</a> to make its platform available on the AWS marketplace. It also partnered with SafeCoder, a code assistant solution, to incorporate it within the Hugging Face platform to help customers develop new codes as well as improve existing code while preserving code privacy. In addition, it partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/431594">Graphcore</a> to release 10 new transformer models designed for Graphcore's IPUs.

Harnessing tech to provide exceptional customer experiences

Customer Service Platforms

Guru is an AI-powered enterprise search, intranet, and wiki platform that helps companies improve employee productivity and efficiency. The software connects disparate sources of knowledge across an organization's tools and applications, allowing employees to search and access information directly from their workflow. Guru's platform combines enterprise search capabilities with a knowledge management system, enabling teams to capture, organize, and share company knowledge in a centralized location.
The core functionality of Guru revolves around its ability to integrate with various business applications such as Confluence, HubSpot, JIRA, Salesforce, SharePoint, Slack, and Zendesk. This integration allows employees to search across all connected apps, documents, and chats to find instant answers to their questions. Guru uses artificial intelligence to understand the context of queries and deliver relevant information in natural language, along with sources used to generate the answer.
Guru's wiki software facilitates the creation of a robust knowledge base, serving as a single source of truth for workplace information. Employees can easily capture and format knowledge using Guru's AI-powered writing assistant. The platform also includes verification features to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of content, with experts reviewing and approving information before it's published.
Additionally, Guru offers an AI-powered intranet that serves as a company-wide homebase accessible from any application. This intranet includes customizable homepages, personalized content recommendations, and tools for internal communications and employee engagement. Guru's platform adheres to strict security and privacy policies, ensuring that sensitive information is protected and only accessible to authorized personnel.
Key customers and partnerships
Guru caters to companies of various sizes, from startups to large enterprises, across multiple industries. The platform is designed to serve teams in roles such as IT, operations, human resources, and customer support.
Guru has integrations with a wide range of popular business software tools, including accounting software, applicant tracking systems, collaboration tools, helpdesk systems, file storage solutions, CRM software, HR and payroll systems, and workplace communication tools. These partnerships and integrations allow Guru to offer a comprehensive solution that fits seamlessly into existing workflows and tech stacks.

Talkdesk is a leading cloud-based contact center software provider founded in 2011. The company offers an end-to-end solution designed to help businesses improve customer experiences and agent productivity. Talkdesk's platform combines enterprise scalability with consumer simplicity, delivering advantages in speed, agility, reliability, and security.
Talkdesk's core offering is the CX Cloud, an AI-powered contact center solution that supports omnichannel interactions across voice, email, chat, SMS, and social media. Key features include intelligent call routing, interactive voice response (IVR), workforce management, quality management, real-time and historical reporting, and integrations with popular CRM systems. The platform leverages artificial intelligence throughout, including for agent assistance, sentiment analysis, and automated quality management.
In 2022, Talkdesk introduced industry-specific solutions called Talkdesk Industry Experience Clouds. These are purpose-built contact center platforms for sectors like retail, financial services, and healthcare. They come pre-configured with industry-specific workflows, AI models, and integrations to accelerate deployment and ROI for companies in those verticals.
Talkdesk places a strong emphasis on ease of use and rapid deployment. The company claims its solutions can be set up in minutes rather than months. The platform is designed to be intuitive for agents, supervisors, and administrators alike. Talkdesk also offers extensive customization options and open APIs for businesses that need to tailor the solution to their specific needs.
Key customers and partnerships
Talkdesk serves customers across various industries, ranging from small businesses to large enterprises. The company states it has "thousands" of customers worldwide, including Fortune 500 enterprises. Talkdesk has over 60 pre-built integrations with platforms like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, and Zendesk. In July 2022, Talkdesk announced a partnership with Cognizant to bring its Industry Experience Clouds to more enterprises globally and provide implementation support.

Replicant is a San Francisco-based company that develops call center automation software using artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. The company's core product is a "thinking machine" that uses advanced AI models to accurately translate customer intent 94% of the time. Replicant's system integrates with existing customer relationship management software to recognize customers based on their order histories and past interactions. It can capture, transcribe, and make customer conversations searchable, while engaging with customers through voice, SMS, and web channels. The technology is designed to automate mundane customer service interactions, allowing human agents to focus on more complex issues. Replicant's AI is contextually aware, drawing upon knowledge from prior conversations and customer data. The system has been trained to wait a few extra seconds for a person to finish speaking, accommodating older populations and those with speech delays. The company offers enterprise customers the ability to choose data retention windows, typically ranging from six months to two years. For cases involving sensitive information, Replicant provides a service called "highly confidential turn" to redact sensitive data from its database and logs.

Ensuring the right people access the right resources at the right time

Identity & Access Management

<div>
 
 Onfido provides identity verification solutions designed to support businesses in establishing trust with their customers during onboarding and beyond. The company's core offering, the Real Identity Platform, is an end-to-end solution that combines a suite of products for identity verification, fraud detection, and compliance management.
 
 
 Its Verification Suite employs technologies such as document and biometric verification, trusted data sources, and fraud detection signals to validate user identities accurately. This suite is complemented by Smart Capture SDKs, which enable seamless integration of capture experiences into web and mobile applications, ensuring a user-friendly and accessible identity verification process.
 
 
 Onfido's platform is powered by Atlas AI, an AI engine that delivers near real-time identity verification results, reducing manual effort and increasing automation at the onboarding stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform allows Onfido's clients to remain compliant with KYC and AML regulations worldwide while effectively preventing fraud and minimizing costs associated with manual review processes.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of September 2022, Onfido supported over 2,500 identification documents across 195 countries.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In April 2020, Onfido raised USD 100 million in a funding round led by TPG Growth. The funds were raised to further invest in machine learning technology, consolidate existing markets and move into new ones.
 
 
 
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1Password is a password management software company founded in 2005 as AgileBits. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, 1Password offers password manager applications for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, and web browsers. The company's core product allows users to store and manage passwords, credit card information, secure notes, and other sensitive data in encrypted vaults.1Password uses AES 256-bit encryption and a zero-knowledge architecture to secure user data. Key features include password generation, autofill capabilities, multi-factor authentication support, and Watchtower – a tool that alerts users to weak or compromised passwords. The company also offers unique features like Travel Mode, which allows users to temporarily remove sensitive data from devices when crossing borders.As of 2024, 1Password reported over 150,000 business customers and millions of individual users. The company does not offer a free version of its product; instead, it focuses on paid subscription plans for individuals, families, and businesses. 1Password's individual plan costs USD 35.88 per year, while its family plan for up to five users is priced at USD 59.88 annually.Key customers and partnerships1Password has partnered with companies like Privacy.com to offer virtual payment card creation within its apps. The company has also integrated with Fastmail to provide masked email functionality. In 2024, 1Password announced a partnership with CrowdStrike to offer bundled security solutions for businesses. 1Password's business customers include Salesforce, IBM, Slack, GitLab, Under Armour, and Intercom.

<div>
 
 Cerby provides a comprehensive access management platform for nonstandard applications that lack support for common identity and security standards like single sign-on (SSO) and automated employee onboarding/offboarding protocols. By extending the capabilities of identity providers like Okta and Azure AD, Cerby manages access for any application, regardless of its standard support. Its solution automates tasks such as offboarding, two-factor authentication (2FA) enrollment, and password rotation, offering visibility and control over employee-onboarded applications. The patent-pending access orchestration engine enables passwordless authentication and detects rogue applications, guiding users to more secure alternatives.
 
 
 Cerby's technology combines robotic process automation (RPA), application APIs, and integrations with identity providers to automate security hygiene tasks and manage access for applications lacking modern identity protocols. This approach eliminates the need for manual tools like enterprise password managers, improving an organization's overall security posture.&nbsp;
 
 
 By leveraging identity providers such as Okta, Azure AD, and SailPoint, Cerby automates everyday security tasks based on SSO and lifecycle management cues, protecting any application regardless of standard support.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Its platform has enabled customers such as L'Or&eacute;al, Fox, Colgate-Palmolive, Dentsu, and Televisa to secure nonstandard applications and streamline access management processes. As of August 2023, Cerby had 26 active customers.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2023, Cerby raised USD 17 million in a Series A funding round led by Two Sigma Ventures with participation from Ridge Ventures, Founders Fund, Bowery Capital, AV8, Salesforce Ventures, Tau Ventures, Okta Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Carbon Black co-founder Ben Johnson.
 
 
 
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Now anyone can become a software developer.

No-code Software

Skuid is a no-code business application platform that integrates with multiple databases and different data sources. Users can connect to different data sources, and create complex applications. The company had more than 5 million users across 32 countries as of April 2019. Its enterprise customers include Fujitsu, Berklee College of Music, and United Capital, among others.

Airtable is a no-code platform that blends traditional spreadsheets with databases, with options of adding widgets and other features to the spreadsheet. The platform can be used to build a variety of applications for different activities in an enterprise such as sales and marketing, content marketing, project management, and portfolio management. Users have access to a number of tools that add additional functionality to applications such as pre-built layouts and a number of integrations with third-party apps such as Zendesk, Jira, Slack, and Salesforce.In September 2020, the company added low-code capabilities to the platform, which allows users to build apps using JavaScript as well as new automation and syncing fevatures. It also launched the Airtable app store marketplace where users can share their apps with other users. <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19720">In June 2023, </a>the company launched a beta program expanding access to Airtable AI, enabling ent, erprises to develop and deploy generative AI applications for business workflows.Airtable acquired a smaller no-code <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4875">data visualization platform, Bayes </a>, for an undisclosed sum in August 2021, marking its first acquisition since inception, to offn er Airtable users access to more insights, data visualizations, and reporting features. In January 2024, the company acquired Airplane, a workflow building platform, and Balsa, a software project tracking tool, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition enabled Airtable to onboard the engineering teams of both companies into its own product development team and leverage their domain expertise to further develop its platform.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, the company served over 450,000 organizations including Expedia, Netflix, Autodesk, West Elm, and Shopify.The company also had a network of over 60 service partners that provide potential customers with product knowledge, vertical and functional expertise, and implementation services. The network included a number of consulting companies and technology integrators such as Slalom, Pickaxe, Ethos, and Airdrop.Funding and FinancialsAirtable <a href="https://sp-edge.com/sectors/work/updates/7328">raised USD 735 million in Series F funding </a>in December 2021, at a USD 11.8 billion (post-money) valuation led by XN. The funds were earmarked for investment in product development, customer growth, and increased support for enterprise teams across several industries.

Remote learning is driving an education technology revolution.

EdTech: K-12

<div>
 
 Founded by Philip Cutler and Roberto Cipriani, Paper is an educational support system that works with K-12 schools in the US and Canada to provide unlimited, round-the-clock, personalized tutoring support to help schools achieve their strategic goals around student equity, personalized learning, and teacher bandwidth. Paper&rsquo;s tutors are trained in the Socratic approach to academic support and help students with homework, writing, and studying. Paper offers academic support at scale, serving all students equitably and at a fixed cost. Paper offered its on-demand, one-on-one academic support in four languages across more than 200 academic subject areas as of May 2021. As of June 2021, the company had a user base of more than one million students (up from 50,000 in 2020), a tutor base of 1,000, and 100 school districts used its system.
 
 
 In February 2023, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16706">
 acquired MajorClarity,
 </a>
 a career and college readiness (CCR) tool, to offer a comprehensive CCR solution regardless of the student's preferred path after graduating from high school.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Paper raised USD 11 million in its last funding round in December 2020. In June 2021, the company raised CAD 123 million (USD 100 million) in Series C funding to scale its software to support more school districts.
 
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<div>
 
 Formerly named ClassEDU, Class Technologies is the creator of Class, a suite of tools for teachers that allows them to create a more engaging learning experience on Zoom and make the virtual classroom feel more like a real classroom. The company’s co-founder and CEO is Michael Chasen, former co-founder and CEO of Blackboard. 
 
 
 Class software features include instruction tools and management tools. Instruction tools include the ability to launch live assignments, quizzes, and tests for completion in real-time and polls. The product also allows teachers and students to talk privately without leaving the Zoom call. Management tools include attendance trackers, the ability to monitor how long students speak, how engaged they are, and the ability to integrate learning management systems with Zoom. Teachers are also able to determine whether students have other browser windows open besides Zoom during a test.
 
 
 Class was launched for Apple’s MacOS desktop operating system in September 2020 and was made available for Chromebooks, iPhone, Android, and Windows devices in June 2021. The product will be marketed to schools at an annual subscription ranging from USD 10,000-USD 65,000, based on the number of students per class. As of April 2021, Class had more than 125 paying customers, of which 10% were corporations, and the remainder split evenly between K-12 and higher education institutions. More than 7,500 K-12 and higher education institutions and corporations have expressed interest in the product since its launch, which is being used in the US and more than 20 countries globally as of July 2021.
 
 
 In May 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10594">
 acquired Collaborate,
 </a>
 Blackboard’s virtual class tool, for USD 210 million, to strengthen its suite of products.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In June 2022, the company partnered with Open LMS, an e-learning solution provider, to further promote hybrid learning.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4563">
 USD 105 million in Series B
 </a>
 funding to be allocated for domestic growth and expansion into new global markets.
 
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Retail investors demanding sophisticated passive investment strategies are looking for an edge.

Retail Trading Infrastructure

Ellevest is a hybrid investment management platform that specifically targets women, with an algorithm that takes into account gender-specific factors such as career breaks, longer life expectancy, and income differences.Ellevest offers a single plan at USD 12 per month. This plan includes investing and educational resources as well as up to 50% off all financial planning sessions. Unlike some investing companies that charge separate advisory fees based on a percentage of invested assets, Ellevest incorporates investment advice into the plan fee. For clients with USD 1 million or more to invest, Ellevest provides Private Wealth Management services with fees based on total assets under management, covering both financial planning and investment management. The company's investment portfolios incur fund fees or expense ratios, which are built into the purchase price of investments. For Ellevest core (non-Impact) portfolios, ETF fund fees range from 0.05% to 0.10% per year, while Ellevest Impact Portfolios have ETF and mutual fund fees ranging from 0.13% to 0.19% per year.Ellevest reported assets under management (AUM) of USD 2 billion as of March 2024.

Robinhood offers US citizens and permanent residents an online platform for commission-free, real-time trading of stocks, ETFs, options, gold, and cryptocurrency, with no minimum account balances or inactivity fees. The platform also allows users to invest in fractional shares and offers custodial crypto services through its&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25086">Crypto app</a>. Users can invest in over 5,000 US equities and ETFs, as well as over 650 global stocks through American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). Further, its smart order router incentivizes market makers to compete for order flow based on the amount of price improvement obtained. Robinhood launched&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32008">joint investment accounts</a> in July 2024, that allows users to manage investments together.&nbsp;The platform’s monetization strategies include rebates from market makers and trading venues on orders placed by users; lending stocks purchased on margin; and a range of smaller revenue streams, including regulatory trading fees and proxy service revenue. Its cash management services generate revenue through interchange fees on transactions made through its debit cards and fees from program banks for sweeping funds into them. Further, Robinhood Gold users pay a monthly fee of USD 5 for trading gold through the service, as well as the annual interest of 2.5% on margin amounts over USD 1,000.&nbsp;In July 2024, Robinhood&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31022">acquired</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1798600">Pluto Capital Inc.</a>, an AI-powered investment research platform, for an undisclosed sum to enhance Robinhood's platform AI capabilities. The company also&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30252">acquired</a> London-based&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/104148">Bitstamp</a>, a cryptocurrency exchange, for USD 200 million in June 2024. Through this acquisition, Robinhood planned to leverage Bitstamp’s network of institutional clients across the EU, UK, US, and Asia to expand its crypto offerings globally. In June 2023, Robinhood&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19654">announced plans to acquire X1 Inc</a>, a platform that offers no-fee credit cards with rewards, for USD 95.0 million cash settlement. Through this acquisition, the company intended to broaden its product offerings by providing a no-fee credit card that includes no annual fees, late fees, or foreign transaction fees. Robinhood&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9819?industryIds=28">planned to acquire&nbsp;</a>Ziglo in April 2022, a London-based cryptocurrency trading platform in the UK. The company will tap into Ziglo’s UK Financial Conduct Authority-approved cryptocurrency, providing UK customers access to 11 cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin. Robinhood acquired investor relations platform Say Technologies in a USD 140 million cash deal in August 2021. Through this acquisition, it planned to introduce new products to improve shareholder access while continuing to provide Say’s proxy voting service and Q&amp;A platform.In February 2024, Robinhood launched its commission-free trading&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27704">platform in the UK</a>. The platform allows users to trade US stocks (but not stocks of companies listed elsewhere) without commission or FX fees and offers 5% interest on uninvested cash.In June 2024, Robinhood agreed to acquire Bitstamp Ltd., a global cryptocurrency exchange, for approximately USD 200 million in cash. This acquisition was expected to accelerate Robinhood Crypto's global expansion, introduce its first institutional business, and enhance its crypto offerings. A month after, the company acquired Pluto Capital Inc., an AI-powered investment research platform that provides customized investment strategies. The acquisition aimed to integrate AI-driven capabilities into Robinhood's platform, with Pluto's founder and CEO, Jacob Sansbury, joining Robinhood to support the integration.Robinhood&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27225">reported</a> USD 1.9 billion in total net revenue for FY2023 (up 37% YoY), compared to total net revenue of USD 1.3 billion recorded a year ago. The company reported adjusted EBITDA of USD 536 million for FY2023 (translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 27%), compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of USD 94 million recorded in FY2022 (translating to an adjusted EBITDA margin of -7%).&nbsp;As of August 2024, Robinhood had nearly 24.3 million funded customers and assets under custody close to USD 144 billion.Key customers and partnershipsRobinhood also offers cash management services, through which it offers a Mastercard debit card in partnership with Sutton Bank. Users also earn 0.30% annual percentage yield (APY) on their uninvested cash through Robinhood’s partnerships with seven program banks, including Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and Wells Fargo. Uninvested cash that is not swept into program banks is deposited into interest-bearing accounts.&nbsp;In February 2024, Robinhood&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27216">partnered</a> with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/300763">Consensys</a>, to integrate Robinhood Connect with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1218628">MetaMask</a>, a self-custodial Web3 wallet. Through this collaboration, Robinhood plans to allow users to purchase cryptocurrency through MetaMask's Buy Crypto feature, leveraging Robinhood's low-cost order engine. In September 2022, the company announced a partnership with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/786111">Polygon</a>, a layer-2 scaling solution based on Ethereum’s blockchain. Through this partnership, Robinhood launched the beta version of its non-custodial crypto wallet for 10,000 users on its waitlist.

Giving creators the power of content monetization and audience engagement.

Creator Economy

<div>
 
 Hopin is a comprehensive suite of audience engagement tools designed to connect people, build communities, and empower businesses. Within its suite of products are StreamYard (acquired in December 2020), which facilitates the creation of professional live streams and podcasts; Streamable (
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20792">
 acquired
 </a>
 in March 2021), designed for video hosting and sharing; and Superwave, a beta version of a community engagement platform. The platform had amassed over 3.6 million video creators, as of March 2021.
 
 
 Following a period of acquisition-driven growth, Hopin laid off 138 employees (12% of employees) in February 2022 and 242 (29%) more in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20799">
 July 2022
 </a>
 due to adverse macroeconomic conditions. The majority of these layoffs stemmed from employees who primarily supported its events business, which was considered the core of its operations and was seen as a response to the company's overestimation of post-pandemic market demand. Then, in August 2023, the company announced the sale of its 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20800">
 Events and Session business units
 </a>
 to 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1017">
 RingCentral
 </a>
 for an undisclosed sum. Events encompassed Hopin&rsquo;s event management platform for virtual and hybrid events, while Session offered tools for interactive engagement during events. The decision to sell was driven by the resumption of in-person events and heightened competition, reflecting a broader shift in the industry.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, Hopin raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20793">
 USD 450 million in a Series D
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Arena Holdings and Altimeter Capital, bringing its post-money valuation to USD 7.75 billion. The fresh funds were expected to have been funneled toward platform development, which includes the introduction of new product suites related to collaboration and digital marketing, and to scale the platform by accelerating growth.
 
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<div>
 
 Community offers a message-based service where celebrities, influencers, and musicians can directly engage with their fans via text messages, photos, videos, and voice messages. Initially launched as Shimmur in 2017, the business had raised roughly USD 7 million during 2015-2017. However, it did not succeed, leading to the relaunch of Shimmur as Community in 2018, with the support of Hollywood talent manager Guy Oseary and famous actor and venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher. 
 
 
 Community was launched in July 2019 and has multiple celebrities, politicians, and artists (&ldquo;community leaders&rdquo;), such as Jennifer Lopez, Barack Obama, Kerry Washington, the Jonas Brothers, and Jake Paul using the platform to communicate with fans privately. Community leaders will be given a phone number which they can use to communicate directly to one or many fans based in North America without advertisements or algorithms. The platform&rsquo;s pricing is based on audience size, where community leaders pay a monthly fee ranging from less than USD 100 to several thousand. Community leaders can monetize by using the platform to sell merchandise bundles, rally the fanbase, and leverage the direct communication tool to promote shows and projects.
 
 
 By January 2020, the company had amassed around 500 community leaders, of which 25% were prominent celebrities with large audiences, and the rest were creators, athletes, authors, entertainers, and public figures, with over 200 million Community texts sent. As of August 2020, the company claims that the number of community leaders has increased to 2,000, exchanging 2 million texts daily (celebrity and fans collectively), and as of September 2020, it has almost 20 million members on its platform. However, in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11278">
 June 2022
 </a>
 , the company reportedly laid off ~40 employees due to adverse market conditions.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its last funding round (April 2021), the company raised USD 40 million from Salesforce Ventures. 
 
</div>

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

Gusto (formerly known as ZenPayroll) offers cloud-based payroll, benefits, and HR management services targeting SMBs. The platform provides wellness offerings such as smart paycheck management, payroll-deducted savings accounts, and budgeting tools that can help improve employees' financial well-being. It also provides healthcare benefits such as health insurance coverage including medical, dental, and vision, along with its financial wellness offerings.The platform also offers a payroll system that automates the calculation, filing, and payment of federal, state, and local taxes. It handles various pay rates, schedules, and deductions, ensuring accurate and timely compensation for employees and contractors. It also handles the distribution of digital paystubs, W-2s, and 1099 forms.Gusto operates on a subscription-based pricing model, with a base subscription fee ranging from USD 40 to USD 180 per month for a user and additional fees ranging from USD 6 to USD 22 per employee, per month based on its bundled wellness offerings.Key customers and partnershipsAs of February 2024, Gusto serves over 300,000 businesses across various industries including The Salty Donut, Hornstein Platt and Associates LLC, Cirro LLC, Use All Five, and Amplio Digital LLC.In February 2024, Gusto partnered with Nav, a B2B credit and loan financing platform, to address the cash flow challenges faced by SMBs. Through this partnership, Gusto will leverage Nav's platform, which provides cash flow and credit insights, along with suggested financing options. It aims to help its SMB users overcome cash flow challenges by providing access to Nav's network of over 160 financing options, including loans, credit cards, banking services, and more.Gusto has also formed strategic partnerships with various software providers to enhance its integration capabilities. For instance, it integrates with popular accounting platforms such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/287424">QuickBooks</a>, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/7261">Xero</a>, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/2617">FreshBooks</a>, allowing seamless data synchronization and reducing manual data entry. The platform also integrates with time tracking tools such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/382095">Deputy</a>, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/301239">Homebase</a>, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/287424">QuickBooks</a> Time, allowing for efficient hour tracking and payroll processing.

Candidly (formerly FutureFuel.io) provides&nbsp;a debt management platform for employers&nbsp;to help manage student loan debt of its staff. The platform facilitates employer contribution towards student loan payments, allows the aggregation of multiple loans, provides tools to optimize federal programs to save money and a marketplace for users to find cheaper refinancing options for their student loan debt. It also offers “<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35499">Onward</a>,” a debt optimization solution available to workplace financial solution providers like 401(k) and 403(b) recordkeepers, as well as retirement plan advisors. Onward, an API-only offering, provides real-time, tailored decision support, which can be combined with actionable steps to help users reduce consumer debt and redirect those savings into interest-earning deposits.In April 2020, the company launched a free tool to optimize the benefits of student loan repayment relief offered by the US government as part of its Covid-19 relief efforts. The company also partners with more than 450 brands to offer up to 30% cashback on purchases by users of FutureFuel, the cashback is set off against outstanding student loan debt.Candidly has reported a 10x YoY revenue growth and a 3,600% YoY increase in transactional payments through its platform for 2022.Key customers and partnershipsAs of March 2023, Candidly integrated with notable companies such as Guild, Empower, Lincoln Financial Group, Vanguard, UBS, Fiserv, and others to serve over 35 million employees in the US.In March 2024, Candidly <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27833">partnered with intellicents</a> to offer student debt solutions to plan sponsors and participants.

Technologies bringing about a new reality

Extended Reality

Scandit, a Switzerland-based company, provides data capture solutions for various industries. The company launched MatrixScan Find in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20156">July 2023 </a>, an AR overlay tool for smart devices that assists both retail employees and customers in finding items on shelves. This tool is part of the Smart Data Capture platform, which allows users to capture inventory data using smart devices. It features a pre-existing user interface that incorporates AR functionalities into native apps.MatrixScan Find can locate, track, and decode multiple barcodes simultaneously. It integrates seamlessly with Scandit's barcode scanner application for mobile devices. The product is primarily aimed at individuals involved in retail logistics and delivery but can also be made available to customers through retailer-specific apps. It is compatible with iOS and certain Android devices.Scandit also offers MatrixScan Count, a tool that allows for quick, intuitive, and error-free scanning of multiple barcodes. This product can be used for tasks like goods reception and inventory counting. The built-in interface eliminates the need for extensive development and user testing. The AR overlay provides real-time information and guidance at all stages of the workflow. Its interface is designed to be easily understandable, even for users who are unfamiliar with the technology.The data capture engine of Scandit can be installed on any device that has a camera, such as smartphones, drones, robots, and smart glasses. The primary use of this tool by retailers is for cashierless checkouts, where customers can scan a product's barcode and pay through the app. In addition to self-checkouts, the application also aids in inventory management, delivery confirmation, and asset tracking.Apart from retail, Scandit extends its services to various sectors, including transportation and logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing. It uses its computer vision technology to automate processes, provide insights, and enhance customer engagement and workforce productivity.Additionally, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33474">August 2024</a> Scandit acquired shelf audit automation technology assets from MarketLab. The acquisition aimed to strengthen Scandit's retail shelf management and analytics solution, ShelfView. Key customers and partnershipsAs of March 2024, Scandit’s customer portfolio included over 2,000 customers including 7-Eleven, Alaska Airlines, Carrefour, DPD, and Toyota. As per the company, the app was active in “more than 100 million mobile devices, making billions of scans per year” as of March 2021.Funding and financialsIn February 2022, Scandit raised an oversubscribed Series D funding round of USD 150 million led by Warburg Pincus, garnering a valuation of over USD 1 billion. The company had plans to use the funding to expand its global team and geographic footprint, with a focus on the APAC region— specifically, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. The investment was to also support the company’s R&amp;D efforts in AI/ML and autonomous data capture toward better decision-making and more effective core business processes.Competitors: None (Scandit’s presence in providing data capture solutions for AR inventory identification is unique.)

TechSee offers technology for enterprises to provide real-time AR remote virtual assistance to technicians (for field services) or visual engagement to customers via smartphones and tablets. The technology supports the remote assistance of in-house representatives to troubleshoot network devices, smart home products, and other appliances.In February 2023, the company launched its ‘Open Integration Platform’, allowing firms to add AR and AI to their customer experience without moving away from their current production platforms. Previously, TechSee launched “EVE Cortex,” an interactive AR self-service platform for consumer and enterprise applications, the first scalable visual AI assistant in the industry. It can be used to guide customers through product unboxings and registration, warranty activation, and troubleshooting other issues.Its call center solution ‘TechSee Live’ lets agents see the customer’s view through their phone, allowing them to provide resolutions. It can also be used by technicians to build a visual library of predefined resolutions and customized self-service flows. The platform uses AI, computer vision, and optical character recognition to automatically identify components, ports, cables, serial numbers, barcodes, and LED indicators in suggesting recommendations. TechSee Live integrates with platforms such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow, SAP, and Oracle Service Cloud. It also comes with a software development kit (for screen sharing) and several open APIs.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2020, TechSee served more than 100,000 users across “hundreds” of organizations including Verizon, Vodafone, Hitachi, and Accenture.Notable partnerships include that with Oracle’s Field Service platform, providing agents and technicians with AR guidance on their mobile devices over a patented, instant video stream (October 2022).Funding and financialsTechSee raised USD 30 million in Series C funding in October 2020 co-led by OurCrowd, Salesforce Ventures, and TELUS Ventures with participation from Scale Venture Partners and Planven Entrepreneur Ventures. The funds were allocated to support its expansion into new markets as well as sales and marketing. It also planned to double its employee base of 80 by October 2021.

Technologies that automate and optimize building operations using data-driven insights.

Smart Building Technology

Measurabl is a real estate-focused environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data technology provider. Its data management platform enables commercial, residential, and corporate real estate owners and asset managers to measure, manage, and report ESG data. This helps them assess and mitigate exposure to physical climate risk, comply with regulations, act on building decarbonization, and support sustainable finance opportunities. As of May 2023, Measurabl's platform covered more than 16 billion square feet of real estate, representing over USD 2 trillion in asset value across 93 countries.
Measurabl's platform automates the collection of data such as electricity, water, fuel, district, and waste from utilities. It maintains social and governance documents alongside environmental data, providing a comprehensive view of ESG performance. The platform allows real estate tenants, owners, and investors to optimize ESG performance and meet reporting requirements.
In September 2021, Measurabl acquired utility data automation and residential real estate software platform WegoWise, as well as decarbonization-focused smart building platform provider Hatch Data, to consolidate ESG tools and services into its platform. In May 2023, the company raised USD 93 million in Series D funding to further enhance its technologies, expand internationally, and integrate its products.

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