HearstLab is an early-stage venture fund focused on women-led startups innovating across the enterprise technology, data analytics, health, fintech, transportation and media spaces. To date, HearstLab has invested in over 56 companies at the Seed and Series A stages, with four successful exits. The firm often participates as a co-investor and in follow-on rounds.  HearstLab is a venture arm of the Hearst Corporation (''Hearst'') and provides one year of services in addition to cash investments. With access to Hearst's resources across 360+ businesses, HearstLab’s breadth of services includes providing assistance with commercial deals, privacy and security, legal services, marketing support and raising capital. Portfolio companies also benefit from the strategic guidance and resource support of HearstLab Scouts, women leaders across Hearst who share their networks and expertise. HearstLab has a full-time dedicated team assisting with UI/UX, DevOps engineering, data security, data science, brand storytelling, financial modeling and business development.

HearstLab

Kubera Venture Capital is an early stage investor investing in AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science powering Digital Transformation.

Kubera Venture Capital

North Coast Ventures (formerly North Coast Angel Fund) is comprised of four contributed capital funds with a focus on early-stage technology investments. Our membership consists of a number of Ohio's leading investors, entrepreneurs, and business leaders who are dedicated to accelerating early-stage ventures. North Coast Ventures members play an active role by generating deal flow, serving on due diligence teams, working with portfolio companies, or serving on the Investment Screening and Executive Committees. Through this involvement, our goal is to provide a supportive environment for our portfolio companies and ultimately enhance the performance of our Fund. Northeast Ohio has a long tradition of active and successful angel investing, but until recently, the success of this crucial form of funding has hinged on the efforts of a relatively small number of individual investors. As the region’s first professionally managed angel fund, North Coast Angel Fund works to improve the early-stage funding environment for both entrepreneurs and investors.

North Coast Ventures

Keyhorse, as an initiative of KSTC, is an early stage venture capital firm focused on supporting a thriving community of Kentucky companies built by founders who are willing to go the distance. We believe entrepreneurs are vital to our community's growth, and we work to support them in achieving their vision.

Keyhorse Capital (KSTC)

How Women Invest is a venture capital firm that focuses on identifying high potential women-led companies by leveraging its professional network of over 13,000 professional women. It offers starter fuel and mentoring to propel these fearless women to victory. The firm was founded in 2020 with a vision of a future where women-led companies have access to capital, mentorship, and a deep network of industry experts required to successfully catapult their businesses. How Women Invest is based in San Francisco, California.  ​

How Women Invest

Fireroad is a full-stack investment firm that offers venture capital and growth investments to startups. The firm prefers to invest in the technology industry.

Fireroad Ventures

Narratize

Narratize is an AI-Powered Storytelling Platform where innovators create high-impact stories in 20 minutes or less. With Narratize, everyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises can transform scientific, technical, and medical insights into compelling content that accelerates time-to-market using proven story patterns.

Narratizeis an AI-powered storytelling platform designed to help innovators (product development, R&amp;D, technology, marketing, and commercial operations) communicate their ideas. Leveraging large language models (LLMs) and a patent-pending methodology, the platform aims to help companies in the scientific, technical, and medical industries to generate content. The platform offers a range of products and services, including technical use cases, long-form articles, white papers, and custom use cases written by PhD-level authors. It facilitates collaboration across teams, integrates with proprietary knowledge bases, and supports industry-specific embedding.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Narratize AI

More than just a chatbot: How Waymark and Narratize use AI to strengthen marketing and STEM storytelling

Narratizeis an AI-powered storytelling platform designed to help innovators (product development, R&amp;D, technology, marketing, and commercial operations) communicate their ideas. Leveraging large language models (LLMs) and a patent-pending methodology, the platform aims to help companies in the scientific, technical, and medical industries to generate content. The platform offers a range of products and services, including technical use cases, long-form articles, white papers, and custom use cases written by PhD-level authors. It facilitates collaboration across teams, integrates with proprietary knowledge bases, and supports industry-specific embedding.The company claims that its platform can achieve up to a 60x return on investment (ROI) in terms of time spent writing.Key customers and partnershipsThe Narratize platform was launched publicly in early 2023 following successful pilots with NASA and Boeing​​. As of March 2023, the company was working with other brands like Dupont, Hershey, and Unilever as well.

DeckRobot is a platform compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint that leverages AI to transform raw slides into enterprise-ready presentations. DeckRobot AI transforms draft slides into professional, on-brand slides by adapting graphics from a vast library of slide examples. Users can apply an unlimited number of styles to any slide deck, including old documents, client materials, or web-sourced slides.DeckRobot offers enhancements for individual slides, such as adding approved icons and images, object alignment, slide resizing, and text validation through AI checks. DeckRobot's plugin acts as a time-saving tool for PowerPoint users, reducing manual work and potentially saving up to 80% of working time. The plugin emphasizes creating visually appealing presentations that adhere to company brand guidelines while maintaining content quality.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company reportedly worked with 70% of the largest consulting and audit companies.

DeckRobot

Based in Italy, Contents.com is a generative AI-powered multimedia creation tool directed at marketing teams, bloggers, publishers, web agencies, ecommerce sites, and large corporations looking to scale content output. The company operates as a SaaS platform that provides tools to support the entire content creation workflow, combining AI-generated output with manual finishing. Contents.com’s features include:1) Industry trends: Uses AI to provide an overview of popular content trends during a specified time period2) AI Chat: A natural language chatbot that can answer questions on any topic or be used to generate content ideas3) AI Writer: Generates content based on a selected template, including blog posts, social media posts, product descriptions, marketing emails, search engine optimized content, and summarized and rephrased content4) AI Art: Generates images based on text inputs, a selected style, and destination content type5) Text to Audio: Converts text documents into audio, with several AI voices available for selection and generates text transcripts from audio input6) AI Translation: Translates content into 25+ languages (January 2024) and offers human translation7) Professional writing services: Completion and review of AI-generated content or fully outsourced content creation by human writersContents.com also offers a customizable enterprise solution, enabling large organizations to automate their content creation processes.The firm claims that its solution can generate content 10x faster.In April 2023, Contents.com acquired Scribeur, its main French competitor, expanding its customer base to include major French and European brands. In the same month, the firm also acquired translation company Traduzione.it. In addition, in May 2023, the company acquired Scribox, an Italian content marketing marketplace, to leverage Scribox's expertise in custom content creation, SEO, and social media marketing.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2023, Contents.com’s users included Allianz, Billboard, IKEA, Oppo, and Accenture.

Contents.com

Estonia-based Alpha3D utilizes GenAI technologies to allow users to automatically convert text prompts or 2D images of real-world objects into interactive 3D digital assets. The platform aims at simplifying the 3D model creation process, making it more accessible and scalable for users regardless of their 3D-modeling knowledge. Alpha3D's technology has potential applications in various domains, such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), virtual try-on (VTO), gaming, the metaverse, and even non-fungible tokens (NFTs), allowing a wide range of digital interactions and experiences​.The platform claims to automatically generate 3D content 10x faster and up to 100x cheaper than traditional methods, without requiring 3D modeling expertise.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2023, Alpha3D had managed to garner a user base of nearly 100,000 platform users, including Viva Technology, Threedium, Wanna, PwC, and FARFETCH.In June 2023, the company partnered with Tryme, a company specializing in custom software solutions, to advance the creation of AI-generated 3D models for eyewear by combining Alpha3D's rapid 2D-to-3D conversion with TRYME's virtual try-on platform.

Alpha3D

OASIS is a human-centric AI research lab that offers photorealistic AI avatars for remote work. Users can enter text, record audio, or write directly on the screen, and the AI will rewrite based on specified preferences or settings, allowing users to generate rewritten content for various purposes, such as improving clarity, style, or readability. The cross-platform app allows users to use the AI avatar when using a camera, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime, and WhatsApp.

OASIS

Canada-based Maket specializes in utilizing GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans, aiding architects, designers, and developers in efficiently creating various design iterations​. Additionally, Maket offers a suite of tools, including a virtual assistant for informed desig-making, assistance with navigating zoning codes, and regulatory compliance checks. The platform is also integrated with Rhino, Autodesk Autocad, and Autodesk Revit.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;In April 2022, Maket formed a strategic partnership with <a href="https://mila.quebec/en/mila-and-maket-announce-a-new-partnership-to-leverage-ai-for-generative-architecture/#:~:text=MONTREAL%20%E2%80%93%20April%2020%2C%202022,architecture%2C%20engineering%20and%20construction">Mila</a>, a deep-learning research institute, to advance AI-powered architectural planning​.Key competitors: None comparable (Maket is the only design startup we have identified that uses GenAI to automate the design of residential floor plans.)

Maket

Companies that offer solutions to generate text from a prompt, where output is independent of previous interactions, such as specialized content creation tools

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit images and GIFs, including techniques such as inpainting, outpainting, upscaling, and stylizing

Companies that generate or synthesize voice and audio, including voice cloning, text-to-speech, and language translation

Companies that specialize in generating 3D content, including the creation of game assets (virtual worlds, non-playable characters), product visualization, and other 3D models

Companies that offer solutions to create and edit video content, including scene generation, background replacement, stylizing, and frame interpolation

Companies that offer solutions to generate contextually relevant text responses across multiple conversational exchanges, such as natural language chatbots

Generative AI applications are built on foundation models that are trained using advanced ML models

The technology allows the creation of digital avatars and virtual games

All companies within the space offer a product or service based on generative AI

The technology allows the creation of personalized content

Some applications leverage NLP to train models to process and respond to language-based prompts

Generative AI applications are built on in-house or third-party foundation models

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 AI-based storytelling platform, Narratize, secured USD 2 million in seed funding from Kubera Venture Capital, HearstLab, and others. The funds are planned for accelerated development of their AI platform. Launched in March 2022, Narratize aids effective communication of ideas, particularly catering to scientific, technical, and medical industries, and expedites market time for innovative products and initiatives.
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Narratize AI

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