O'Shaughnessy Ventures is a creative investment firm that empowers and inspires creators to bring their ideas to life.

O'Shaughnessy Ventures

BDMI is a venture capital firm headquartered in New York focused on innovative digital media technologies, products, and distribution channels in North America, Europe and Israel.   BDMI concentrates on early stage investments in the digital media landscape. The company focuses predominantly on Series A and B investments, but also has a seed fund that includes about 20 companies. The initial investment range is from $500k to $3m. We look for opportunities where we can accelerate growth through BDMI’s financial and management resources and close connectivity with one or more Bertelsmann divisions.   With consolidated revenues of over $25 billion, Bertelsmann is an international media company encompassing television (RTL Group), book publishing (Penguin Random House), magazine publishing (Gruner + Jahr), music (BMG) and media services (Arvato) in more than 60 countries. Due to the vast resources of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, BDMI is an investor that provides not only capital, but can also support startups by using its network of diverse contacts at Bertelsmann and in the broader media world.

BDMI

Betaworks Ventures is a product-focused, seed-stage venture capital fund, having invested in more than 150 companies. We invest in new consumer behaviors and trends powered by frontier technologies, and are often amongst the first institutional investors to invest.

Betaworks

Notation Capital is a pre-seed venture capital firm that work with technical founding teams. Notation Capital focus on early-stage technical teams, often pre-market or even pre-product, primarily in New York, and provide capital and support to help go-to-market and scale the company.

Notation Capital

Charge Ventures

Long Journey Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on early and new investments. It was founded in 2019 and is based in San Francisco, California, USA.

Long Journey Ventures

Twelve Below operates as a venture capital firm.

Twelve Below

Wand App

Wand is a co-creative, AI-driven tool that allows artists the manual control and customization they need to realize their ideas.

Wand is a creative tool that allows artists to manually customize and visualize their ideas, bridging the gap between AI-generated content and the artist's specific vision. The tool allows artists to teach a personal AI their unique style, ensuring consistent results that match their aesthetic preferences. It works on a free-form art board for iterative work. What makes Wand unique is its compatibility with mobile, tablet and desktop devices, enhancing the editing experience and enabling fluid artistic expression. Wand was being tested with a small group of beta testers as of August 2023, with plans for a public launch in the coming months.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Wand

Wand is a creative tool that allows artists to manually customize and visualize their ideas, bridging the gap between AI-generated content and the artist's specific vision. The tool allows artists to teach a personal AI their unique style, ensuring consistent results that match their aesthetic preferences. It works on a free-form art board for iterative work. What makes Wand unique is its compatibility with mobile, tablet and desktop devices, enhancing the editing experience and enabling fluid artistic expression. Wand was being tested with a small group of beta testers as of August 2023, with plans for a public launch in the coming months.

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

AI-powered creative tool, Wand.app, secured $4.2 million in seed funding from investors including O'Shaughnessy Ventures and Betaworks. The funds will be used to develop collaborative team features and expand the creative tool to desktop. Wand is currently being tested with a small group of beta testers and is planning to launch publicly in the coming months.

Wand

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