Sequoia is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. The firm helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. It spurs them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The firm seeks to invest in all sectors with a focus on energy, financials and financial services, healthcare and healthcare services, Internet, mobile, outsourcing, and technology.

Sequoia Capital

Andreessen Horowitz is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in seed, start-ups, early, mid-stage, growth, and late-stage. It prefers to invest in the social media business and technology sector with a focus on software, back-end infrastructure, the infrastructure of the Internet, cloud computing, enterprise software and services, consumer, business Internet, mobile-Internet, consumer Internet, cloud computing, data storage, social network browsers data-storage, consumer electronics, networking functions, software related biology, biotech, and medicine companies at the intersection of computer science and life sciences with a focus on digital therapeutics, cloud technology in biology, and computational medicine.

Andreessen Horowitz

Ludlow operates differently because we’re a different kind of VC. We believe in VC without ego. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, avoiding the puffery and posturing that has given venture capital a bad name. We fund the dreams of entrepreneurs and startups, becoming close friends with all of the teams we invest in.  Truly great companies are built on trust and friendship (and rainbows and luck). VC is a customer service business. Whether it’s testing product, leveraging our network, or forcing people to download your app, we’re here to help. You make our dream jobs possible and we’re forever thankful for that. Check out some of our other projects - www.carpool.vc and www.computer.show

Ludlow Ventures

TheTwentyMinuteVC is a twenty-minute VC podcast about finance, business development, and investment.

The Twenty Minute VC

Chapter One Ventures is an early-stage seed fund created by Jeff Morris Jr.

Chapter One Ventures

Adjacent

Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in early-stage, growth, and incubation companies. The firm continues that legacy, investing in founders with bold ideas that span industries and continents, partnering with them from inception to IPO and beyond to maximize the potential of their ideas. They also focus on early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies. It also invests in the digital, life sciences, and healthcare industries.

Kleiner Perkins

SV Angel is a service organization, investing in founders who share these values. They support entrepreneurs in building lasting companies by assisting at key inflection points and leveraging networks to help them propel their businesses forward.

SV Angel

Index Ventures is a venture capital firm which helps entrepreneurs turn bold ideas into global businesses.

Index Ventures

Adobe Ventures invests in early-stage technology companies that align with Adobe's strategic interests. They support startups in fields like AI, machine learning, digital media, and enterprise solutions. The fund seeks companies with strong leadership, innovative technologies, and scalable business models to foster growth and synergy with Adobe’s products.

Adobe Ventures

HubSpot Ventures invests in early and growth-stage software companies with the potential to deliver unique value to HubSpot’s customer base. We help those companies scale by actively supporting their success in our ecosystem and by providing guidance from our leaders. We back remarkable teams who are building differentiated products in large markets and who share in our mission to help organizations grow better.

HubSpot Ventures

Captions

Captions is an AI-powered creative studio developing a video creation and editing platform for content creation. It offers software solutions to enhance video production, including automatic subtitle generation, eye contact correction, language dubbing, and video clip extraction to simplify the creative process.

Captions is a developer of an AI-enabled platform for video content creation. It offers a suite of tools allowing users to produce studio-grade videos including digital avatars, intelligent video editing capabilities, instant dubbing, audio correction, and automated captioning. A standout feature of Captions' platform is AI Creator, a proprietary tool that generates engaging "talking videos" entirely through AI. This solution has found widespread application among small businesses, enabling them to create organic social media posts and advertisements. It also offers AI Edit, a one-tap video editing solution, and Lipdub, a model that generates natural lip movements and body language.

Exploring the limitless possibilities of AI

Generative AI Applications

Captions Raises Series C to Invest $100M in Pioneering AI Video Research in New York City

Captions is a developer of an AI-enabled platform for video content creation. It offers a suite of tools allowing users to produce studio-grade videos including digital avatars, intelligent video editing capabilities, instant dubbing, audio correction, and automated captioning. A standout feature of Captions' platform is AI Creator, a proprietary tool that generates engaging "talking videos" entirely through AI. This solution has found widespread application among small businesses, enabling them to create organic social media posts and advertisements. It also offers AI Edit, a one-tap video editing solution, and Lipdub, a model that generates natural lip movements and body language.In November 2024, Captions&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36651">acquired</a> AI-powered digital canvas platform AlpacaML, to enhance its capabilities in generative video technology.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsThe company had over 10 million downloads for its mobile app alone as of July 2024.&nbsp;

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

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

<div>
 AI video firm Captions has acquired AlpacaML, a platform harnessing AI for digital design. This acquisition aims to boost Captions' generative video tech abilities as AlpacaML excels in quickly converting initial sketches into final drafts to help creatives.
 The acquisition leads to AlpacaML's CEO, William Buchwalter becoming a research engineer at Captions whilst all Alpaca's six workers have been given roles in Captions' product engineering division. Additionally, ex-DeepMind analyst Drew Jaegle has been appointed as Captions' AI head to steer their growing AI research unit.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 This acquisition marks Captions' first-ever acquisition. Over the past year, Captions has reportedly expanded its user base to over 10 million global creators who have produced over 3 million videos. The company's workforce also grew from 15 to 60 employees. Earlier in July 2024, Captions raised <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/31321"> USD 60 million </a> in Series C funding, bringing its total capital to over USD 100 million and valuing the company at USD 500 million.

Captions

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