Tiger Global Management

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

Stripe provides the infrastructure for businesses to build online and app-based payment services using application programming interfaces (APIs). Stripe also offers point-of-sale hardware (in competition with Square and Zettle) through its “Stripe Reader,”(launched in June 2021), a standalone card scanner. Reader can be integrated with Stripe’s Terminal and the rest of the Stripe ecosystem, thereby allowing users to offer an omnichannel payment solution.Stripe also offers commercial card issuing infrastructure, “Stripe Issuing,” for which it charges interchange fees from transactions. The company expanded Stripe Issuing and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19091">added charge card features in June 2023 </a>, enabling end-customers to spend on credit terms rather than exclusively through pre-funded accounts.The company has grown through multiple acquisitions. It expanded its operations to Nigeria in October 2020 by acquiring Lagos-based payment integration service infrastructure provider, Paystack. In May 2021, Stripe acquired Bouncer, a technology provider that authenticates cards to reduce fraud in online transactions, and in October 2021 the company acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6113">Indian company Recko </a>.Stripe is present across the globe serving nearly 50 countries (as of October 2022), across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.Stripe expanded its platform solutions, by launching “ <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3563">Stripe Tax </a>” and “ <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3564">Stripe Identity </a>”. Stripe Tax automates the calculation and collection of multiple types of taxes for transactions made through the platform, and came on the heels of Stripe acquiring TaxJar, a sales tax software provider, in April 2021. Stripe Identity is a low-code/no-code verification tool for online businesses to prevent fraud, account takeovers, and bad actors. It also launched “ <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10153">Financial Connections </a>” in May 2022, for enterprises to connect directly with end customer bank accounts to verify accounts, check balances, and confirm ownership, and “ <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10666?industryIds=53">App Marketplace” </a>to provide access to third-party apps.In October 2021, Stripe also announced that it plans to offer infrastructure for merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments by forming a new crypto team to build out Web3 (highly decentralized web networks) payment solutions.Key customers and partnershipsIn November 2023, Stripe <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23364">expanded its partnership with JCB International Co., Ltd. </a>(the international operations subsidiary of JCB Co., Ltd) to support its international expansion plans by leveraging JCB’s card network to facilitate merchant payments across European countries, Singapore, and Hong Kong. As of January 2022, Stripe’s enterprise customers included Shopify, Google, Peloton, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7819?industryIds=53">Ford </a>, and Amazon, among others. Stripe also enhanced its platform functionality and reach by partnering with leading global financial service companies and payment networks. In December 2020, it expanded the partnership with Goldman Sachs to add more functionality to “Stripe Treasury” (solution to embed financial services to marketplaces) in the US. Stripe also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5215">partnered with China’s UnionPay </a>International in August 2021, to complement its Alipay and WeChat pay integrations. This enables Stripe merchants in several markets to accept payments from Chinese customers residing in and outside the mainland.Stripe has also partnered with leading buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) solutions providers, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6217">Klarna </a>and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10799">Affirm </a>, to allow merchants using Stripe to offer its US and European customers an option to pay in installments.Funding and financialsStripe reportedly processed transactions worth more than USD 817 billion in 2022, up 26% YoY, with more than 100 companies handling over USD 1 billion in payments annually. Moreover, as of February 2021, Stripe handled over 250 million API requests per day in more than 135 currencies across over 35 countries. The company also reported that around 90% of US adults had purchased products from businesses using Stripe.Stripe reduced its internal valuation to USD 63 billion in January 2023 (from USD 95 billion during its March 2021 funding round), following laying off around 14% of its workforce in November 2022. The company noted that the layoff was owing to Stripe being overly optimistic about the internet economy’s growth in 2022 and 2023. In January 2023, the company also reportedly set itself a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15977?industryIds=53">12-month deadline to go public </a>, either through a direct listing or a private market transaction (offering a secondary market exit for employees).The company subsequently <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17162?industryIds=53">raised USD 6.5 billion </a>in Series I funding, in March 2023, at a USD 50 billion valuation. The funds were nor earmarked for running business operations, and instead should be put toward offering liquidity to employees (current and former) and address employee withholding tax obligations related to equity awards.

Chargebee, based in the US and India, provides an infrastructure platform for enterprises to develop FinTechs to manage their billing, subscription, invoicing, and payments. Users can customize the pricing structures, products, and subscription lifecycle using over 480 recurring billing scenarios offered by the platform. Chargebee supported 23 payment gateways as of October 2020, including Stripe, Braintree, and PayPal. It was also available in over 120 currencies and in multiple languages. Chargebee also has offices in Amsterdam, Salt Lake City, and Sydney, and has a user base of more than 2,500 customers in over 160 countries as of October 2020. Its large enterprise customers include Fujitsu, Envoy, and Linux Academy. Notably, the company does not charge its customers until they reach USD 50,000 in revenue and claims that it processes over USD 3 billion in revenue annually. Chargebee’s ARR reportedly grew by more than 100% over the 12 months leading to January 2022, and during the period it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5855">acquired RevLock </a>(October 2021; to enable its users to automate revenue recognition) and Brightback (January 2022; to maximize revenue growth capabilities for its users). It <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8725">subsequently acquired Numberz </a>in February 2022, to launch ‘Chargebee Receivables’ (to let users automate the entire receivables process from purchase to payments).In February 2022, the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8189">company raised USD 250 million </a>in funding, at a USD 3.5 billion valuation (more than 2.5x its valuation in April 2021), to be invested in product innovation, global expansion, and to set up strategic corporate growth initiatives.

Israeli company, Rapyd, provides FinTech infrastructure for businesses to embed online payment mechanisms using application programming interfaces (APIs). It primarily caters to ecommerce platforms, labor and goods marketplaces, and lenders and financial services providers.Rapyd launched “Virtual Accounts” in May 2022, which function similar to local banking accounts in enabling cross-border payments through local bank transfers. The Virtual Accounts do not have the typical transaction fees and operational costs of local bank accounts, and can be integrated with Rapyd’s other solutions (disbursement, payment acceptance, and wallets). At the time of launch, Virtual Accounts supported bank transfers from over 40 countries and 25 currencies. Rapyd announced two major acquisitions in 2021, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7276">Neat </a>, a Hong Kong-based cross-border trade enablement platform for SMBs (in December) and Icelandic omnichannel payment services provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3930">Valitor </a>(in July; for USD 100 million). The company subsequently <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20618">acquired a part of PayU </a>in August 2023 for USD 610 million; the deal is subject to regulatory clearance, and PayU will retain its operations in India, Turkey, and Southeast Asia, reportedly three primary regions for the business.Post-acquisition, Rapyd had 41 licensed or regulated countries it operates from, which enhances its ability to offer card-acquiring solutions across Europe and Latin America. At the time time, Rapyd’s payment network supported over 1,200 payment methods supported by 18 settlement hubs Key customers and partnerships Rapyd noted that its customer base in August 2021, comprised around 12,000 small and medium-sized businesses and about 650 large enterprises including large multinationals such as Uber and Ikea.Additionally the leading payment infrastructure provider, Stripe, is a key investor in Rapyd. In July 2022, Rapyd also partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11967?industryIds=53">Rakuten Viber, </a>the operator of messaging and voice-based communication platform Viber, to offer in-app payment transactions to the Viber app. Funding and financials In Q4 2020, Rapyd reportedly generated USD 23 million in revenue, up 241% year-over-year (YoY). The company expected the total payment value handled by the platform to exceed USD 20 billion in 2021, incidentally around 4x the value handled in 2020. The company raised multiple funding rounds in 2021, starting with a USD 300 million Series D funding round in January, followed by an undisclosed amount of funding in April, as well as a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4660">USD 300 million Series E </a>round in August. The funds earmarked for product developments, expanding its international presence, recruitment, and exploring strategic acquisitions. The company was valued at around USD 15 billion in March 2022 - during secondary dealings - from USD 2.5 billion in January 2021, reportedly making it the highest valued private tech company in Israel at the time.

Based in Germany, Mambu offers infrastructure for banks, FinTech startups, financial institutions, and telcos, to embed banking services to their FinTechs. The platform offers over 6,000 financial products including personal lending, digital wallets, and current accounts. Mambu is deployed on the cloud and allows businesses to use integrations to streamline and automate banking services. The platform can also be used to replace legacy banking FinTechs in addition to building new ones. For instance, in April 2021, Mambu’s infrastructure was used to rebuild Tandem Bank’s banking platform.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2021, the platform had over 200 enterprise customers, more than 53 million end users, and handled around 130 million API calls daily. Moreover, Mambu had around USD 12 billion in portfolios under management as of March 2021. Its customers include large enterprises such as Western Union, Raiffeisen Bank, ABN AMRO, OakNorth, Orange, and Santander, among others. Mambu noted that its presence spans across more than 65 countries in six continents including operations in the US, Japan, Brazil, Malaysia, and the UK.In February 2021, Mambu partnered with the FinTech software development company TruNorth to create a cost-effective way for regional banks, credit unions, and community banks to digitize their operations. In July 2022, Mambu <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11476?industryIds=53">partnered with Visa </a>to develop an integration with Visa DPS, a debit transaction processor, to provide its customers the ability to offer new card products and services.Funding and financialsThe company raised a total of EUR 345 million (USD 391 million) in two rounds of funding in 2021 (EUR 235 million in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7277">Series E funding in December </a>and EUR 110 million in January). The company’s valuation reached EUR 4.9 billion (USD 5.5 billion) in December, more than double its valuation in January (EUR 1.7 billion). The funds were earmarked to be invested in accelerating innovation of Mambu’s platform, building on strategic partnerships, as well as expanding its global footprint and customer success.

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 British company Checkout.com offers a cloud-based payment infrastructure for businesses to accept and process local and cross-border online payments with embedded transaction insights and fraud prevention (dubbed Fraud Detection Pro). Checkout.com also provides a hosted payment page that collects customer information, processes payment requests, and handles authentication, on behalf of its users.&nbsp;
 
 
 The modular platform infrastructure allows users to choose only the payment elements and integrations they need and embed it into websites and mobile apps (Android and iOS). Checkout.com is also integrated with a range of ecommerce website building platforms such as 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/30109">
 Shopify
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/53916">
 BigCommerce
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 In March 2023, ​​Checkout.com 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17243?industryIds=53">
 launched a card issuing infrastructure
 </a>
 (physical, virtual, and on-off cards), &ldquo;Checkout Issuing.&rdquo; Checkout claims that its cards rely less on third-party integrations, compared to similar market offerings, thereby offering users greater flexibility. The company further noted that enterprises issuing cards using the platform can also earn a portion of the interchange fees. The company subsequently launched a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20105">
 proprietary AI-based selfie biometric solution
 </a>
 , known as Identity Verification, in July 2023, for customer onboarding and digital payments.&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform can process transactions in more than 150 currencies and has nearly 20 settlement currencies. It supports global debit and credit cards, digital wallets, domestic cards, and local payment methods. As of August 2021, the company operated through 17 global offices across the US, France, Brazil, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Hong Kong with plans to expand to India and the Philippines in the future. The company also 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18827">
 received a Retail Payment Services license
 </a>
 from the Central Bank of the UAE in May 2023, incidentally making it the first global payments provider to obtain an acquiring license in the country.
 
 
 Checkout.com has acquired several smaller firms to boost its cross-border and multi-currency offering including Pin Payments and ProcessOut, both in 2020. In May 2022, the company announced its intent to 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10391?industryIds=53">
 acquire ubble,
 </a>
 a French provider of remote identity verification solutions, to expand its current suite of financial products to help merchants better manage the financial risks involved in accepting and sending payments to and from their customers.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The UK-based company reported having thousands of customers as of August 2021&mdash;primarily large enterprises including Bloomingdales, Pizza Hut, Swarovski, Curve, Wise, Getty Images, and Klarna&mdash;across a range of industries.&nbsp;
 As of March 2024, the platform was servicing global brands such as Sony, SHEIN, Wise, Patreon, and GE HealthCare.
 
 
 In May 2024, Checkout.com 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29104">
 partnered with
 </a>
 Mastercard to enhance virtual cards to make B2B payments for online travel agents and other travel businesses. In March 2024, Checkout.com 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27688">
 partnered with Bolt
 </a>
 , a one-click online payment facilitator, to integrate their offerings and enhance cart conversions with ecommerce merchant partners. 
 In February 2024, Checkout.com 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26818">
 partnered
 </a>
 with Visa and UAE-based 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1401902">
 Stake
 </a>
 , a digital real estate investment platform, to launch a cross-border account funding solution within the GCC region.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In January 2022, the company noted that the volume of transactions handled by its infrastructure had tripled over the past year (for the third year in a row) and that it had opened new offices in six countries across four continents. Notably, The company has reportedly been profitable since 2012 (within one year of being founded).&nbsp;
 
 
 The company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7755?industryIds=53">
 raised USD 1 billion in Series D
 </a>
 funding in January 2022 (a year after raising USD 450 million Series C funding) at a valuation of USD 40 billion (more than double the USD 15 billion valuation in January 2021). The funds were earmarked for strengthening the company&rsquo;s balance sheet and to be invested in expanding its presence in the US, product development to launch more marketplace solutions, and develop Web3 solutions.
 
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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). The company’s platform was used by over 285 financial institutions as of January 2021 including the largest bank retail mortgage provider in the US, Wells Fargo with around 75% of its loan originations routed through digital apps powered by Blend. Blend enables customers to process more than USD 4 billion in mortgages and loans per day—USD 1.4 trillion in 2020 overall. Blend also added 200 new employees in 2020, expanding its workforce by over 60% during the year. The company raised USD 300 million in Series G funding in January 2021 at a valuation of USD 3.3 billion. The funds were earmarked for further development of its products and services. In April 2021, Blend confidentially filed with the SEC for an IPO, and was yet to disclose the proposed number of shares and price range of the issue.

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.

London-based Codat provides an API-based integrated offering to share business data. The platform offers real-time data connectivity by allowing software providers and financial institutions to build integrated products for their small business customers. It facilitates automatic reconciliation, business dashboarding, loan decisioning, and various other use cases by integrating data across small business systems within banking, digital lending, spend management, payments and point-of-sale, and cross-border payments providers.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of June 2022, Codat had over 200 clients, including the world's largest banks and FinTechs such as Brex, Jeeves, Pipe, and Clover, and ongoing partnerships with J.P. Morgan, Shopify, and Plaid.Funding and financialsIn June 2022, Codat raised USD 100 million in Series C funding led by JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners. The funds were earmarked to support the development of infrastructure and data-sharing capabilities across small businesses and business systems.

TrueLayer is a UK-based company offering an open banking platform to connect developers to banks’ application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing them to access customer banking details and integrate banking features within apps or websites. The platform was available in the UK, Europe, and Australia, with more than half of the UK’s open banking traffic directed through its platform as of September 2020.In 2018, TrueLayer emerged as one of the first UK companies to be authorized and registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide account information and payment initiation services under Open Banking and PSD2 (European regulation for electronic payments).TrueLayer offers a payments API (including payment links for email, text messages and QR codes), data API, identity verification, and a direct pay solution for apps. TrueLayer’s verification API, launched in June 2021, combined open banking with machine learning, to improve the customer onboarding process. It claims its verification API is faster and more effective (success rate of over 20% higher than credit bureaus) than traditional verification processes.Key customers and partnershipsThe company reportedly doubled its customer base year-to-date September 2021, with payment volumes growing 400% and payments up 800%.In September 2024, TrueLayer&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33492">expanded its partnership</a> with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/57000">Stripe</a>, to power Stripe's Pay by Bank feature in the UK. In January 2024, TrueLayer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26170">integrated its product suite </a>including Payments, Payouts and Signup+ with Worldline Payment Orchestration, to expand product reach across enterprise merchants in the UK and across Europe including key markets such as Germany, France, Finland and the Netherlands.In June 2022, cross-border payment infrastructure provider <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/750327">Thunes </a><a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10829">partnered with TrueLayer </a>, to integrate TrueLayer onto its platform and allow British and European customers to enable cross-border open banking payments. It <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18874">also partnered </a>with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/359227">Airwallex </a>in May 2023 to mutually improve cross-border, multi-currency open banking payments, by leveraging Airwallex’s localized infrastructure for global payments.Bybit, a crypto derivatives trading platform, partnered with TrueLayer in September 2022, to enable fiat deposits across Europe.Funding and financialsThe company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5582">raised USD 130 in funding </a>led by Tiger Global Management in September 2021, at a valuation of over USD 1 billion. The funding comes just five months after TrueLayer raised USD 70 million in Series D funding in April, and will be used to expand TrueLayer’s payments network and customer base. Meanwhile, the company’s revenue for 2020 reportedly totaled less than GBP 5 million (USD 7.1 million).

Based in Estonia, Veriff offers an enterprise identity verification platform to reduce online identity fraud. It uses an AI-powered, video-based approach to automate and quicken the verification process, primarily by analyzing a variety of government-issued IDs across the globe. The platform was used by a range of industries including mobility, crypto, and financial services.As of September 2022, Veriff confirmed IDs from over 10,200 ID documents, across 190 countries (including the US and the UK), in 45 languages. However, in February 2023, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16805">Veriff agreed to pay USD 4 million </a>to settle a class action lawsuit filed against it under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Veriff allegedly failed to comply with BIPA, in relation to obtaining consent before collecting facial geometry scans for identity verification. Key customers and partnerships The company joined the Visa Fintech Partner Connect, a program that helps financial institutions connect with tech providers, in September 2021, to expand the market for its identity verification platform by tapping into Visa’s network of issuing clients. Veriff partnered with mobile app developer Shockoe, in September 2022, to help businesses creating mobile apps embed fraud prevention to help them stop bad actors when converting and onboarding customers. Funding and financialsIn 2021, the company saw rapid growth with volumes reportedly growing by 8x globally (20x in the US), driven by the financial services sector volumes rising 10x. Veriff further noted that its customer base has grown by 150% YoY.Veriff <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8060?industryIds=53">raised USD 100 million </a>in Series C funding in January 2022, co-led by Tiger Global and Alkeon, at a USD 1.5 billion valuation (reportedly making it Estonia’s sixth unicorn). The funds were earmarked for R&amp;D investments and recruitment.

Based in the UK, Weavr, formerly known as Open Payments Cloud, was spun out of payment provider Ixaris in 2019. Weavr offers the infrastructure for enterprises to embed banking services across various industries, including education, fitness, logistics, etc. Weavr’s “Meta” platform combines multiple banking and payments partners in one platform through application programming interfaces (APIs). Using the APIs, enterprises can embed virtual banking services such as card payments, fund transfers, and international banking accounts.Weavr expanded its operations to Singapore in November 2022, as part of its global expansion plans.Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2021, Weavr’s customers included Finway, Thanks Ben, and MySkillCamp, among others.In October 2019, Weavr partnered with payment service providers Global Processing Services (GPS), Paynetics, and iDenfy to enable developers to create and run sophisticated and streamlined payment experiences for their European customers through Weavr.Funding and financialsWeavr <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8647?industryIds=53">raised USD 40 million </a>in Series A funding in February 2022, led by Tiger Global, less than a year after <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4166">raising GBP 4 million (USD 5.5 million) </a>in seed funding in July. The funds were earmarked for business development and recruitment to support Weavr’s expansion to the US market, while also supporting its continued expansion in the UK and Europe.

Monnai offers an API-based platform for FinTechs to access data from credit bureaus, as well as alternate data and standardized personal identification data providers, to enhance their onboarding/know-your customer (KYC), trust and fraud risk, credit decisioning, and debt collection offerings. The platform is reportedly built with an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) component, which can interpret historic biases, identify features with positive and negative attributions to model behavior, retroactive model comparisons, and continue model evaluations.Monnai leverages over 350 insights (as of September 2022) across identity, digital, communication, device, and payment data partner ecosystems. It further claims that users will have access to behavior data from more than 5 billion consumers. The platform is designed to be a global infrastructure platform and has data and aggregation infrastructure spanning over 40 countries. Key customers and partnershipsMonnai is used by FinTechs across several verticals - such as lending, payment, BNPL, and embedded finance - spanning across India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, as of September 2022.Funding and financialsMonnai <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16981?industryIds=53">raised USD 6.5 million in Series A funding </a>in March 2023, led by Tiger Global, less than six months after the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13447?industryIds=53">raised USD 3.2 million in seed </a>funding. The funds were earmarked for investment in business development and further developing its proprietary analytics and data ingestion capabilities.

Data Infrastructure & Analytics

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.

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.

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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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Dataiku provides a platform for data science and machine learning. The platform connects to various data sources and allows enterprises to collaborate, cleanse, and prepare data, as well as obtain visual representations of a project’s data pipeline. It includes 100 built-in data transformers for common data manipulations and provides tools to parse and enrich specialized data types (such as geospatial data, time series, images, and text) with additional metadata.&nbsp; The platform also allows users to explore data and create statistical analyses, charts, and dashboards to share insights.The company also supports AI and machine learning through Dataiku AutoML, which provides access to algorithms from leading frameworks for prediction, clustering, time series forecasting, causal ML, and computer vision tasks. It also integrates with GenAI services, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to create tailored applications for various business needs. Dataiku also offers an <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32596">LLM Mesh ecosystem</a> to allow secure access to thousands of LLM gateways, allowing enterprises to adopt a multi-LLM strategy for building and deploying GenAI-driven solutions at scale.Dataiku’s platform caters to enterprises in multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, logistics, retail, utilities, and media. The company offers its platform as a subscription-based SaaS model.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Dataiku served over 600 companies, including more than 150 of the world’s largest enterprises. Its notable customers include General Electric, Sephora, NHS, BNP Paribas, Toyota, LVMH, Standard Chartered, and Moderna.

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 TigerGraph is a graph analytics software company with an AI platform that allows large amounts of data to be loaded and analyzed in a short time span. Its products include TigerGraph DB, which is for scalable graph database and analytics; TigerGraph Cloud for graph database-as-a-service; and GraphStudio is an easy to use application with all phases of graph data analytics. The software is advertised to increase revenue, manage risk, and improve operations in the advertising, media and entertainment, healthcare and life sciences industries. Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, and Xbox are among its customers. TigerGraph has offices in 14 countries worldwide.
 
 
 
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VAST Data engages in developing data infrastructure technologies, with a focus on applications in AI. VAST Data offers a range of products for AI and deep learning, including VAST DataStore for scalable unstructured data storage, VAST DataSpace for global cloud data access, VAST DataBase, which combines database, data warehouse, and data lake features, and the upcoming solution, VAST DataEngine, for advanced data computing​​​​​​.The company's approach emphasizes innovation in storage solutions for AI applications with an aim to streamline traditional data management techniques through its technology and services. The company's primary offering, VAST Data Platform, was introduced in 2019, with the first module announced being the VAST DataStore, a scalable unstructured data storage solution, designed to eliminate tiered storage.VAST DataSpace, launched in 2023, offers global data access across various cloud platforms and allows data computation from public, private, or edge cloud platforms, while VAST DataBase combines the features of a traditional database, a data warehouse, and a data lake, offering transactional and analytical performance at large scales. It's built for rapid data capture and quick queries.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, VAST Data claimed the following notable organizations among its customer base; this included global businesses like Pixar, CoreWeave, Lambda, Zoom, Verizon, NASA, and the US Department of Defense.The company also partnered with certain data infrastructure solution vendors and other technology partners as of November 2023, such as Splunk, Run:AI, Veeam, NVIDIA, and Lenovo, to expand its product’s reach and reliability. Its recent <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26610">partnership</a> with Run:ai to create a comprehensive solution integrating AI functionality, including computing, storage, and data management for large-scale initiatives.

Imply is a data infrastructure company that focuses on real-time analytics applications, specifically known for its solutions for Apache Druid, a popular database for real-time analytics. Imply's products include the fully-managed DBaaS (Imply Polaris), hybrid-managed software (Imply Enterprise Hybrid), and self-managed software (Imply Enterprise).&nbsp;Imply provides a comprehensive package that includes a cloud-native service, up-to-date Druid distribution, visualization UI, management, and performance monitoring software, as well as 24/7 support and professional services. Key features include sub-second query responses at any scale, high concurrency with lower costs, and simplified data operations. Imply's solutions cater to both real-time and historical data insights and claim significant cost savings for users.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsImply's customers included notable companies, such as Sift which used Imply for fraud detection and real-time data ingestion, and GameAnalytics, leveraging Imply for mobile gaming analytics. Another key customer was Reddit, utilizing Imply’s technology for ad monetization. Other customers included Confluent, Target, Netflix, Atlassian, Poshmark, and PayTM. Imply also partnered with Paytm, assisting in building a petabyte-scale analytics application, resulting in significant infrastructure savings.The company's partner ecosystem includes industry-leading technology companies, cloud platforms, consulting firms, and systems integrators, emphasizing a collaborative approach to delivering value in big data analytics. As of November 2023, a key partner of Imply was Amazon Web Services (AWS); the company was also part of the AWS independent software vendor (ISV) partner network.

Collibra, a Belgium-based data integration and observability company, specializes in helping companies manage their data assets, offering solutions for data and analytics governance, cloud data migration, and compliance management. Collibra's differentiator lies in its comprehensive approach to handling data intelligence, ensuring clients have robust solutions for managing their data assets effectively​​.The company’s Data Intelligence Platform comprises the following components: 1) AI Governance, a feature that ensures the use of ethical, compliant, and high-quality data in AI and machine-learning applications; 2) Data Catalog, which helps users find and understand data across all sources and tools; 3) Data Governance, a tool that automates workflows and policies based on requirements; 4) Data Quality and Observability, a predictive, no-code toolset to help proactively detect and resolve data quality issues; 5) Data Lineage, to map data flows of across business and technical uses; 6) Protect, focused on data access governance; and 7) Data Privacy, providing automation and insights to accelerate privacy operations and manage policies.Key customers and partnershipsThe platform serves a variety of industries, including energy and utilities, insurance, retail, and finance. Collibra claims to have served over 700 customers as of September 2024. These include analytics company Equifax, Cox Automotive, Loreal, Crédit Agricole Assurances, Northern Trust, and Cambia Health Solutions.The company has forged strategic partnerships to enhance its service offerings. Notable partnerships include those with SAP, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Databricks, Google Cloud, Microsoft, Snowflake, and Tableau, focused on integrating Collibra's platform with these partners' technologies, as well as service partners, including Deloitte, Accenture, and Infosys​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

Census is a data integration and analytics company specializing in reverse extract, transform, load, (ETL) technology. The company is developing a “data activation” platform that transforms data warehouses into hubs for business and marketing operations by connecting unified product and customer data to various SaaS applications, enabling decision-making based on actionable data without the need for custom scripts or engineering support.The Census platform offers connectors for a broad range of data warehouse applications, such as Google BigQuery, dbt Labs, Elasticsearch, Greenplum, MySQL, and Snowflake for input, and supports a variety of SaaS applications ranging from Salesforce and Zendesk to Google and Facebook Ads, Shopify, and Slack. Notable features of the platform include scheduled and continuous data sync, configuration via GitLink, a visual data mapper, and customer notifications.&nbsp;&nbsp;In July 2024, the company acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31774">Fulcrum</a>, an AI-driven automation platform for enhancing document processing and integration, for an undisclosed amount. Following the acquisition, Census aimed to integrate Fulcrum's technology into its platform to improve areas such as no-code tooling, powerful modeling capabilities, trust and governance features, and AI-first personalization for marketing teams.Key customers and partnershipsCensus’ customers included names from a variety of segments and industries, such as Figma, Notion, Canva, Dockers, and Loom. These customers mainly utilize Census in marketing and sales use cases, while data teams also engage with the platform for support functions.As of November 2023, in terms of partnerships, Census engaged in collaborations with multiple notable firms, including Google, Snowflake, AWS, Fivetran, Mammoth Growth, Poplin Data, and SpringML, to expand its product capabilities and support deployment.

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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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Ascend.io provides a data pipeline automation platform that enables organizations to build, automate, and manage intelligent data pipelines. The platform unifies core data engineering capabilities including data ingestion, transformation, delivery, orchestration, and observability into a single solution. Its DataAware technology automatically detects and propagates changes across data ecosystems while ensuring data accuracy and integrity. The platform can reduce up to 91% of repetitive data engineering tasks, decrease data software costs by 68%, and lower ETL cloud consumption bills by up to 30%. Ascend.io operates natively on data lakes and warehouses, supporting major cloud platforms including Snowflake, Google BigQuery, and Databricks. In March 2023, the company expanded its capabilities by introducing Ascend for Data Mesh, allowing organizations to manage data across multiple cloud platforms from a single console. The platform features pipeline-specific dataset partitioning that segments data into meaningful chunks for faster processing. In September 2023, Ascend.io launched its cloud-based data engineering platform in Europe, enabling European data teams to build automated data pipelines while meeting data sovereignty requirements.

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 Rivery is an intuitive data integration platform that aggregates and transforms all internal and external data sources in a single cloud-based solution. As a flexible code-free solution, Rivery empowers business intelligence and data teams to focus on analysis and insights, while leaving data pipeline maintenance solely to us. With Rivery, users can automate every ELT process for cloud data warehouses, including Redshift, BigQuery, Azure, or Snowflake.
 
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Making banking work, without the paperwork

Neobanks

Avant provides personal loans and credit cards to consumers via a web portal. The company focuses on providing loans to underserved segments of the market, which include customers with ‘fair’ or ‘bad’ credit scores who are typically not able to gain access to loans and other forms of credit from traditional financial institutions. Applications for loans are completed online to make the process more accessible and convenient to individuals. The company does not have its own banking license; instead, the company uses its credit products under the license of WebBank. It operates in the US, Canada, and the UK.&nbsp;The company expanded its offering to launch digital banking solutions in December 2021 which include Avant Banking’s offerings include spending accounts (with no minimum balance required), debit cards, and ACH transfers, under the banking license of Evolve Bank &amp; Trust. Avant also allows users with direct deposits to access payday funds up to two days early, along with virtual cards that can be added to Apple Wallet or Google Pay. Avant does not charge fees for account maintenance or foreign transactions.Avant requires a minimum annual income of USD 20,000 to gain approval for a loan. The company’s clientele largely comprises middle-class individuals with annual household incomes in the range of&nbsp; USD 40,000-100,000. Loans approved by the company range between USD 2,000-35,000, with monthly repayment plans of 2-5 years. Given the high-risk nature of the company’s clientele, interest rates charged on loans tend to be on the higher side, with the lowest rate starting at 9.95% APR (Annual Percentage Rate). The company also provides credit cards with credit limits between USD 300 and USD 3,000.The company also uses an in-house formula for calculating credit risk, which the company claims has been more useful than traditional credit scoring methods such as FICO credit scores which are based on a limited number of variables. The company’s formula uses machine learning algorithms and other big data techniques to gather additional data and analyzes about 10,000 variables to determine an individual’s credit score; it also claims that it can predict the likelihood of a customer defaulting on a loan with 57% better accuracy than FICO scores alone.&nbsp;In April 2021, the company acquired Zero Financial, a mobile banking developer, along with its Neobank operations (Level). The acquisition was intended to aid Avant in expanding its product portfolio to provide digital banking solutions to its customers. Key customers and partnerships As of December 2022, the company served over three million customers and had issued more than one million credit cards. Funding and financials Avant secured <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15154">USD 250 million in corporate debt and redeemable preferred equity</a> from Ares Management’s Alternative Credit funds in December 2022. It had planned to use the fresh funds to expand its credit portfolio and platform. The company generated a total revenue of USD 265 million in 2020. As of December 2022, the company was reported to have provided around USD 9 billion worth of loans.

Brazil-based Nubank offers banking products and services via a web portal and a mobile app, with the application process being done entirely online. The company serves both B2C and B2B segments and operates in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.&nbsp;The company initially entered the neobanking space in 2014 by offering credit cards and focused on providing it at low interest rates, compared to established banks. Since then, the company has grown to offer the full spectrum of banking services, which includes checking accounts, debit cards (with ATM access), credit cards, and loans, following the receipt of its own banking license in Brazil in 2017. Checking accounts and debit cards are offered free of charge, and the company therefore solely generates income from these accounts from ATM and interchange fees.In addition to its banking products, the company also offers life and mobile insurance products and Peer to Peer (P2P) payment options via Pix (a payment platform introduced by Brazil’s Central Bank). The company also offers in-app shopping at retailers such as AliExpress, Dafiti, and Magalu, as well as a rewards program that enables customers to earn and redeem points at selected merchants.Nubank also caters to businesses offering digital business accounts and credit cards (virtual and physical cards). The business account enables customers to automate payments as well as earn points on credit card purchases. The credit cards are also compatible with digital wallets such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay. The company also offers a payment solution via its app called NuTap, which allows businesses to accept contactless credit and debit payments.Nubank also provides a trading app–NuInvest–through which its Brazilian customers can trade stocks and cryptocurrency, with the company charging ~0.02% per transaction. In addition, it launched its loyalty program, backed by its native cryptocurrency Nucoin, to customers in Brazil <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16847">in March 2023</a>. Members will receive a fixed amount of Nucoins for every BRL spent with their debit or credit card as well as on any cryptocurrency purchases through its app. The Nucoins can be converted into cash or frozen and used to advance in the loyalty program and gain access to future incentives such as coinback rewards and lottery tickets. Moreover, Nubank was selected by the Central Bank of Brazil in August 2023, to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21164">test Drex</a>, a central bank digital currency (CBDC); the pilot phase is expected to be complete by the end of 2024.Moreover, Nubank has expanded its footprint to Mexico and Colombia. In Mexico, the company provides savings accounts, credit cards, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21583">personal loans</a>. It has also applied for a banking license in Mexico to further broaden its services, including investments, payroll portability, and accounts with higher deposit limits. In Colombia, it only offers credit cards. However, it obtained <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25297">regulatory approval</a> to operate as a financing company in January 2024, which allows the company to expand its services to provide savings accounts and other financial offerings.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30850">June 2024</a>, Nubank acquired Hyperplane, a Silicon Valley-based data intelligence company building foundation models for banks, for an undisclosed sum. It planned to utilize Hyperplane's AI and data analytics capabilities to train and develop deep-learning models on first-party data to generate insights and enhance its decision-making processes.In December 2021, Nubank was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the trading symbol NJ, raising nearly USD 2.6 billion, at a valuation of USD 41.5 billion, making it the most valuable listed financial institution in South America.&nbsp;In 2023, the company reported a total revenue of USD 8 billion, marking a 66.67% YoY increase. It also recorded a net profit of USD 1 billion, a significant improvement from the previous year’s loss of USD 364.6 million.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2024, the company served more than 93.9 million customers, with the majority located in Brazil.The company partnered with Brazilian lending platform Creditas (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5565">in September 2021</a>) to allow its customers gain access to the latter’s platform to obtain loans, and EBANX (in July 2023) to launch a new alternative payment service for international purchases called NuPay. In addition, it collaborated with insurance provider Chubb to offer <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19597">life</a> and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20948">home</a> insurance offerings on its platform.

Chime provides banking services to its customers via a web portal and a mobile app. The company provides no-fee mobile banking solutions, and offers savings accounts, checking accounts, and debit cards (with ATM access) to its customers. The company does not provide loans and does not charge monthly, foreign exchange, or overdraft fees (for transactions up to USD 200), and therefore primarily generates its revenue from interchange and ATM fees. The company claims that accounts can be created in as little as two minutes, and uses video identification to verify an individual’s identity. The company does not impose minimum balance requirements and mainly focuses on serving individuals who earn between USD 30,000-75,000 per year.&nbsp;In June 2020, the company entered the credit card space by launching ‘CreditBuilder’. Despite being introduced as a credit card, the card has similar functionality to a debit card, which allows users to transfer funds from their checking accounts, and spend up to the transferred amount where Visa is accepted, reducing the tendency to overspend. At month’s end, CreditBuilder automatically pays off the credit card balance using the transferred funds and reports the payment to credit bureaus. The CreditBuilder card is primarily targeted at millennials and Gen Z customers, to aid in developing and building up their credit history.&nbsp;In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30853">June 2024</a>, Chime acquired enterprise employee rewards company Salt Labs for an undisclosed sum. Following the transaction, it planned to launch a new division called “Chime Enterprise,” which will include Salt's products and focus on expansion through employer channels. This move will grant Chime an additional revenue stream and access to Salt’s enterprise clients to promote Chime MyPay, its earned wage access platform.&nbsp;In January 2022, Reuters reported that Chime was to go public led by investment bank Goldman Sachs. Reports say that the company could aim for a valuation of almost USD 40 billion, which could be launched as early as Spring 2022. However, the company paused its IPO aspirations following the downturn in the IPO market.The company claims that revenue and transaction volumes witnessed threefold growth between January and September 2020, owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the same period, the company also stated that it was able to become profitable on an EBITDA basis.Key customers and partnershipsChime stands as the largest Neobank in the digital banking space in the US, with&nbsp; 12 million customers&nbsp; (reported as of February 2021). The company does not own its own banking license and provides its services under the licenses of Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank.

Current offers banking services to individuals via a mobile app. The company was initially launched in 2015 to cater to the teen segment but has since branched out to offer personal checking accounts and savings accounts to the broader population. The company’s customer base and the product focus, however, remain skewed towards younger demographics, with its average customer age standing at 27, as of April 2021.The company offers checking accounts, incorporating features such as the removal of minimum balance requirements, faster direct deposits, instant spending notifications, banking insights, and free ATM transactions. The company also provides savings accounts, offering a 4.0% Annual Percentage Yield (APY), which the company claims is 60x higher than the national average, and are paid on funds of up to USD 6,000. The savings feature also pays interest on a daily basis. In addition, the platform also provides fee-free overdraft facilities, a prepaid credit card that helps build credit scores, as well as fee-free access to a network of 40,000 ATMs. Current also caters to families and provides teen banking facilities, providing debit cards for teens, while also enabling parents to maintain control and visibility over these accounts.In 2020, the company launched a points reward program for debit card users, in a bid to differentiate itself from its competitors. Under the program, debit card holders would be entitled to generate up to 15x points on debit card purchases at over 14,000 retailers in the US, which can be redeemed for cash at a rate of 100 points per dollar. In addition, it allows customers to trade and invest in cryptocurrencies through its app without any trading fees.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2022, the company had more than 4 million customers.The company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21246">partnered with Cross River Bank</a> (in August 2023) to introduce a credit card that helps individuals build credit. The card is issued by Cross River on the Visa network.Funding and financialsIn April 2021, the company raised USD 220 million in Series D funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, at a valuation of USD 2.2 billion. This reflected a 3x jump of the valuation (USD 750 million) it recorded in the previous funding round in November 2020. The company expects to use the funding to double its workforce over the next 18 months and increase its product offering.

Brex offers banking and credit products to startups and large enterprise customers through a web portal and mobile app. The company used to offer its services to SMEs, which was discontinued in June 2022.&nbsp;Brex offers cash accounts, Mastercard credit cards, and business solutions for expense management and invoice payment, which are bundled with its Brex Premium package. The platform is monetized on a subscription basis with a monthly fee of USD 12 for Brex Premium as well as interchange fees on transactions made through its credit cards. It also charges commissions of 1%–1.5% on revenue for ecommerce companies that opt to gain instant access to revenue. In addition, Brex offers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30612">checking, treasury, and vault accounts</a> (the account safeguards capital across multiple FDIC-insured banks) tailored specifically for startups.It also offers additional value added services such as automatic reconciliation through its integrations with accounting software such as QuickBooks, Sage, and SAP, and develop customized workflows through APIs, available to all customers at no extra charge. It also offers travel booking services called Brex Travel. Brex’s Pro access product allows accountants, advisors, and bookkeepers to collaborate with their clients on their Brex accounts. In addition, Brex offers e-commerce businesses on selected sales platforms (Amazon, Square, Stripe, PayPal, and Shopify) to gain instant access to revenue, and it also offers venture debt to early-stage startups.&nbsp;&nbsp;Brex made several acquisitions to expand its product portfolio, beginning with startups Neji, Compose Labs, and Landria in March 2020. Neji, a blockchain startup, was to bolster Brex’s cybersecurity position as it grows; video experience platform Compose Labs will improve the quality and scope of Brex’s ecommerce underwriting data; and Landria, a database management platform for business SaaS tools, will help improve Brex’s core technology infrastructure. It also acquired New York and Israel-based API developer Weav for USD 50 million in August 2021, intending to leverage Weav’s universal API for commerce platforms to expand its offerings in lending, visualization, and insights. The acquisition followed Brex’s initial tie-up with Weav to launch instant payouts for Shopify sellers in March 2021. Following the acquisition, Brex planned to develop and recruit for an “innovation hub” in Israel, which was expected to be led by Nadav Lidor (CEO, Weav).Key customers and partnershipsBrex partners with several banks including Emigrant Bank, Bank of the West, and Radius Bank to offer cash accounts and Mastercard credit cards.

London-based Revolut offers digital banking and lending products to both B2C and B2B segments via a web portal and mobile app. The company holds its own banking license to operate in the UK, Brazil and the European Union.Within its B2C segment, the company offers its products under four tiers. The standard package, which is offered free of charge, enables users to open bank accounts (including joint-accounts), access personal financial management (PFM) tools, make international money transfers and payments, as well as set up bill splitting and recurring payments. The cost for packages with additional features stands between GBP 3.99 to GBP 14.99 per month (for UK customers) and includes features such as insurance, faster money transfers, and disposable virtual debit cards. In addition, Revolut launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15855">a top-tier subscription plan called Ultra</a>, priced at GBP 45 per month. This includes a variety of perks such as those centered around travel and investing. The company also expanded into the InsurTech product vertical by launching a new standalone pet insurance product.Business accounts are offered free of charge with additional features (such as multi-currency accounts, debit/credit cards, and financial management tools) being available at GBP 25-100 per month. Revolut also provides hardware for in-person payments in the UK and Ireland through its <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11502">Revolut card reader.</a> It charges GBP/EUR 0.02 + 0.8% per transaction and a one-off cost or customized pricing for high-volume businesses. It also launched an online checkout payment feature (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12934">Revolut Pay</a>) for businesses, which can be set up on merchant websites and mobile checkout pages via plug-ins or APIs. The company also acquired Nobly POS (Nobly) in November 2021, a technology provider for the hospitality industry, to strengthen its business offering.It also launched a dedicated income, payment, and expense management account–<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13211">Revolut Pro</a>–aimed at freelancers and the self-employed. The account does not charge any monthly fees nor does it require any minimum monthly balance or deposits. In addition to business account features, it also provides a dedicated International Bank Account Number (IBAN) and a 1% cashback debit card to customers. The account can also be used for accepting payments either in-person using the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11502">Revolut Reader</a> or online with QR codes. In addition, Revolut also offers a streamlined version of its app–<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14797">Revolut Lite</a>–for customers in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, offering cross-border money transfers for free. Moreover, as an alternative to SWIFT payments, Revolut launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22016">RevTags</a> for business customers and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25792">Mobile Wallets</a> for retail individuals, offering a free cross-border payment solution.Revolut also offers a stock trading platform (launched in January 2022) to its US customers, where users can trade over 1,100 securities on the NYSE and NASDAQ, including ETFs and full and fractional shares, at zero commission. It rolled out the platform to EEA customers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18513">in May 2023</a>, providing access to over 150 ETFs and European listed stocks. Furthermore, Revolut launched a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19814">robo-advisory platform</a> in the US (in June 2023) and for <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26846">EEA customers</a> (in February 2024), allowing them to automate their investments by selecting from five diverse portfolios based on their risk tolerance. It charges an annual fee of 0.25%, and customers can start investing with a monthly minimum of USD 0.25.In addition, it offers cryptocurrency trading services for customers in Singapore and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12407">the European Economic Area</a> (through a regulatory approval received from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission). It also received <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13362?industryIds=59">full registration from the UK FCA</a> to offer cryptocurrency trading services in September 2022. Customers can trade over 100 individual cryptocurrencies or buy collections, which are tokens grouped based on the underlying technology and use case for each token. In addition, customers can stake their tokens within the app (limited to UK and EEA customers) and also use the Revolut Card to make payments in cryptocurrency for ecommerce and in-person purchases. Revolut had also planned to launch its own token–RevCoin, as part of its rewards program. However, it temporarily paused the launch of it in January 2023, owing to the downturn in the crypto markets. Additionally, Revolut used to offer crypto investments in the US but suspended it owing to an uncertain and stricter regulatory environment in September 2023.As of May 2024, the company operated in Australia, Brazil, the European Economic Area (EEA), Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. The company also had plans to launch its services in India. Additionally, the company offers Revolut Lite in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Chile, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Macao SAR, North Macedonia, Oman, Qatar, the Republic of Moldova, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.In 2023, Revolut recorded revenue of USD 2 billion (GBP 1.57 billion), while its net profit was USD 350 million (GBP 275 million).Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2023, the company served ~35 million retail customers across 38 countries. The UK remains Revolut’s largest market, with over 6.8 million customers, followed by Romania (2.8 million customers), Poland (2.5 million) and France (2.2 million).The company partnered with payments infrastructure provider Stripe to facilitate payments across Europe and the UK, and with Visa to enable instant card transfers for Revolut Business customers across 78 countries in over 50 currencies using only a card number through Visa Direct. The company also collaborated with Upvest, a FinTech infrastructure provider, to launch a trading platform for its customers in the EEA. Upvest was responsible for the brokerage, settlement, and custody infrastructure, as well as obtaining regulatory permissions through its German licenses. Revolut also offers auto insurance in Ireland in partnership with AIG. In addition, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32078">Revolut partnered with Paysafe</a> to provide UK customers with cash deposit services, enabling them to deposit cash at over 12,000 locations through the Revolut app.

San Francisco and Bangalore-based Zolve is a cross-border neobank that provides incoming immigrants to the US with bank accounts, via a web portal and a mobile app.The company provides high-limit credit cards (up to USD 5,000), and debit cards based on their home country credit score, and does not require social security numbers of US credit history while they are still in their home countries. The app also facilitates direct deposits and mobile payments. The company also does not charge upfront fees, such as application fees, credit card fees, or monthly bank account fees, and also does not impose minimum balance requirements.Zolve offers credit cards under three different plans: 1) Zolve Classic, 2) Zolve Signature, and 3) Zolve Black. Zolve Classic is a free plan with 1% cash back and USD 1,000 worth of accidental death coverage, while Zolve Signature and Zolve Black cost USD 9.99 and USD 29.99 per month, respectively. Furthermore, the two plans offer higher cashback return and offer additional perks such as travel coverages.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2023, the company had amassed over 500,000 customers from countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, India, and the UK, and claimed that its customer retention rate over the past 12 months exceeded 86%.Moreover, Zolve <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21136">partnered with Gigs</a>, a telecom-as-a-service platform, to introduce Zolve Connect in August 2023, allowing its customers to activate phone plans offered by AT&amp;T or T-Mobile via the Zolve app and website.Fundings and financialsIn October 2023, the company secured a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22649">debt facility</a> of USD 100 million from Community Investment Management (CIM). It aimed to use the fresh funds to provide credit products and expand its operations to the UK, Canada, and Australia. As of the same date, it reported to have processed more than USD 600 million in transactions.

Based in Canada, Float is a FinTech company offering corporate cards and high-yield accounts along with a business expense management platform via a mobile app and online platform. It offers its products through a subscription-based model, which includes a free tier.The corporate credit cards allow spending in both USD and CAD and provide limits up to CAD 1 million that require no guarantees. In addition, businesses can issue employee cards for different purposes as well as set card controls. The company’s high-yield accounts provide 4% interest on cash balances, along with 1% cashback on corporate card spend.Key customers and partnershipsFloat does not possess its own banking license and offers its services in partnership with People’s Trust and Thread Bank.Funding and financialsIn February 2024, Float secured a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26785">credit facility </a>of CAD 50 million (~USD 37 million) from Silicon Valley Bank. It had planned to use the funds to strengthen its Visa-issued corporate credit cards.

<div>
 
 Dave provides banking products via a mobile app. The company was initially founded to offer micro-lending products such as overdraft protection but has since branched out to offer other banking services. The company does not charge overdraft fees (for amounts up to USD 500), minimum balance fees, or ATM fees. It also offers credit in the form of cash advances for amounts up to USD 100. In addition, the company has partnered with LevelCredit, a credit builder, to enable customers to improve their credit scores by reporting rent payments directly to credit bureaus. The app also provides Personal Finance Management (PFM) tools that help customers monitor their spending habits and create budgets for future expenses.&nbsp;
 
 
 In 2020, the company launched Dave Banking, a spending account that includes a debit card with no monthly fees. Dave offers its spending account free of charge. Customers also have the option to connect their external bank accounts to the Dave app at a cost of USD 1 per month. Aside from its banking products, the app provides a &ldquo;Side Hustle&rdquo; facility, which enables existing customers to find new employment opportunities outside full-time employment.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company served around 10.8 million customers (up 24% YoY).
 
 
 In February 2024, the company joined the American Fintech Council to advance innovation in FinTech, with an emphasis on developing inclusive digital banking products and services for customers who are not well-served by traditional banks.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 &nbsp;In June 2021, the company announced plans to go public via a merger with a Special-Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) at a post-money valuation of USD 4 billion and expected to raise cash proceeds of over USD 375 million. The merger was finalized in January 2022.&nbsp;
 
 
 In 2023, Dave reported a revenue of USD 259 million (up 26.4% YoY), while its net loss fell to USD 48.5 million compared with USD 128.9 million in the prior year.
 
</div>

Based in Brazil, Nomad is a digital bank that offers US bank accounts to Brazilians. It also provides currency exchange services and an investing platform.Its USD-denominated personal checking accounts (inclusive of a debit card) are FDIC-insured (up to USD 250,000 per depositor) and allow users to make local and international transactions in store or digitally. It also allows users to send and receive dollars from any account and perform currency exchanges at the official rate plus a lower IOF (financials operations tax) rate. Moreover, its debit card can be linked with digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and customers can make unlimited no-fee withdrawals from Allpoint’s ATMs network. Nomad does not charge account opening fees or maintenance fees, and it also does not impose minimum balance requirements. Customers can open an account using either a Brazilian ID card, drivers license, or passport.Nomad also offers an investment platform with funds up to USD 500,000 insured by SIPC, with customers able to invest in US equities, ETFs, and REITs with just USD 1. In addition, Nomad provides additional benefits via its app. Its “Shop” feature provides discounts, cashbacks, and access to VIP lounges at international airports, and its loyalty program, Nomad Pass, rewards points to customers converting currency.Key customers and partnershipsAs of 2023, customers had opened over one million accounts with Nomad.The bank does not have its own banking license in the US and provides its banking products in partnership with Evolve Bank &amp; Trust and Banco Ourinvest S.A., while investment services are provided in partnership with DriveWealth.Fundings and financialsIn September 2023, Nomad raised USD 61 million in a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22121">Series B extension</a> round led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from Stripes, Monashees, Spark Capital, and Propel, among others. It had planned to use the fresh funds to develop the company's investing platform as well as launch new products, including credit cards.As of 2023, the company had over BRL 2 billion (USD 0.4 billion) worth of assets under its custody and processed over BRL 1 billion (USD 2 billion) in credit card transactions and BRL 5 billion (USD 1 billion) in international transfers.

A decentralized version of the web powered by the blockchain

Web3 Ecosystem

Magic Labs is a wallet-as-a-service provider. It enables companies to easily incorporate non-custodial wallets to their dApps to onboard customers. Its SDK is implemented in a vendor’s code base and allows non-custodial wallets to be instantly created by customers using their existing email, social, SMS, or federated logins. The company offers both plug-and-play wallets as well as white-label wallets. These wallets include features such as NFT checkout and minting and fiat on-ramps via credit, debit, and bank transfers, with 20+ user authentication methods.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s notable customers include some of the Fortune 500 companies in the retail, music, fashion, and gaming space, such as Mattel, Macy’s, and Xsolla. As of May 2023, its platform was being used by 130,000+ developers and had facilitated the creation of more than 20 million unique wallets.Funding and financialsThe company raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18985">USD 52 million in a strategic funding </a>round in May 2023, led by PayPal Ventures. It had planned to use the fresh funds to develop more product features and for geographical expansion across the EU and Asia-Pacific regions.

QuickNode offers APIs, dedicated nodes, and analytics tools that allow users to build, launch, and scale decentralized applications and integrate with infrastructure across several blockchains. As of July 2022, the platform supported 19 blockchain networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, xDai, Polygon, Polygon zkEVM, and BNB Chain.The company is a Y Combinator graduate and has a global presence across four continents where the company’s low-latency infrastructure is located. Its customers include Web3-related companies such as OpenSea and Coinbase and even traditional organizations such as Adobe and PayPal. The company also reported that as of July 2022, over 50% of the projects within the Solana network were powered by its tools.QuickNode acquired NFT analytics platform and API provider icy.tools in May 2022. The company aimed to integrate the icy.tools API into its existing platform to offer its NFT customers analytics, pricing data, and node infrastructure in a multichain environment.Funding and financialsIn January 2023, QuickNode raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15880?industryIds=144">USD 60 million in a Series B </a>funding round at a valuation of USD 800 million. The round was led by 10T Holdings with participation from Tiger Global, Seven Seven Six, and Protocol Labs, among others. It aimed to utilize the funds to accelerate its global expansion and help developers transition from Web2 to Web3 by providing them with education and tools.The company reported that its revenue grew more than 300% over the past year (as of January 2023), while its user base also increased more than 400% to over 50,000 developers. It also claimed that the platform handled over 200 billion API requests monthly.

Forte provides a platform for developers to incorporate technologies such as wallets, NFT minting and trading, payment rails, and cross-chain interoperability to incorporate blockchain-based token economics and other features in video games. The platform also has built-in compliance capabilities such as anti-money laundering, intellectual property protection, and tax planning.In January 2022, Forte acquired the technology platform and associated staff of mobile gaming studio N3TWORK for an undisclosed sum. Through the acquisition of the platform, Forte planned to build a scalable platform to accelerate the development of blockchain games. Furthermore, as part of the transaction, N3TWORK’s newly established games team–N3TWORK Studios, will utilize Forte’s blockchain solutions to develop its own web3 titles such as Legendary Heroes Unchained and Triumph.Forte participated in a USD 150 million web3 fund launched by Solana Ventures (the capital arm of <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/627394">Solana Labs </a>) in December 2021. The fund was mainly set up to assist Web3 game developers.Key customers and partnershipsIn December 2021, Forte and mobile game developer–Zynga, announced a new partnership, where the latter aimed to develop Web3 games based on its intellectual property using Forte’s platform. As of January 2022, Forte reported it had partnered with over 40 game developers to build Web3 games.Forte also formed a partnership with SuperLayer, a startup venture studio, to fund incubated companies and branch out to other Web3 verticals. The company will also serve as SuperLayer's preferred crypto payment and liquidity services provider for projects.Funding and financialsIn November 2021, Forte raised USD 725 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Sea Capital and Kora Management. The company planned to channel the funds toward developing its platform and expedite the onboarding of new game and content publishers.

Braintrust is a decentralized web3 talent network that connects skilled, vetted knowledge workers with companies seeking talent. The company’s business model allows talent to retain 100% of their earnings and claims to enable organizations to hire skilled personnel at a fraction of the cost of traditional staffing firms.Braintrust is built on the Ethereum blockchain and has its own native token (BTRST), through which it aims to incentivize the community for building the decentralized network, inviting and vetting talent, and referring clients. The token can be also used by members to engage in the governing process of the network.Key customers and partnershipsThe company claimed it had over 700,000 members on its platform as of December 2021 and was used by 474 enterprise clients including Fortune 1,000 companies such as Deloitte, Intel, Nestlé, Porsche, Goldman Sachs, and Nike.Funding and FinancialsBraintrust raised USD 100 million through a private token sale of BTRST led by Coatue with participation from Tiger Global Management, True Ventures, and Blockchange Ventures in December 2021. It aimed to use the new capital to expand the network and fund community grant programs.Braintrust reported that in the 18 months up to December 2021, its gross services volume (GSV) grew from USD 1.2 million to USD 28.2 million.

Blockdaemon is a blockchain infrastructure company providing node management services. It offers node-as-a-service for developers to connect to several blockchain networks through its Ubiquity API without requiring them to own and manage nodes in-house. The company also provides access to native blockchain APIs, which allows developers to explore a network in detail, along with node infrastructure for blockchain networks and validators to stake and scale operations. Blockdaemon supports more than 40 blockchain networks globally through cloud and bare metal servers.The company also provides RPC archival nodes for zkSync, a layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum. These nodes are designed to improve the stability, security, and resilience of the zkSync network by providing better infrastructure services.In July 2022, Blockdaemon acquired Sepior, a data and digital asset security company focused on institutional-grade cryptographic key management and protection services, for an undisclosed sum. Through the acquisition, Blockdaemon aimed to improve its staking services by providing institutional customers the option of custodial and non-custodial wallet solutions for digital assets.Funding and financialsIn January 2022, Blockdaemon raised USD 207 million in Series C funding co-led by Sapphire and Tiger Global at a post-money valuation of USD 3.25 billion. It aimed to use the new capital to complete its node-stack product suite and for strategic acquisitions. The company had also planned to use the funds to launch its own DeFi fund to make structured investments in the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.

Based in India, Polygon (formerly known as Matic), provides a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Polygon also offers a software development kit (SDK) for developers to deploy their own Ethereum-connected blockchains.Polygon offers the sidechain Polygon PoS for developers to run their dApps and connect to the Ethereum blockchain. Polygon PoS uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to validate transactions and has the potential to execute ~65,000 transactions per second, at a cost of roughly USD 0.002 per transaction (as of August 2022). Its native token is MATIC, which is used to transact and participate in the network.Polygon Edge is a modular and extensible framework for building Ethereum-compatible blockchains and sidechains using scaling technologies such as plasma, zero-knowledge (zk) rollups, and optimistic rollups based on user-specific requirements. These blockchains can be built with either proof-of-authority or proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. The company also introduced Polygon Supernets, a dedicated network of validators, third-party implementation services, design, and tooling that allows developers to fast-track the development of their own blockchain by reducing costs associated with the servers needed to run them.Polygon also launched Agglayer–an interoperability protocol–that allows developers to connect any layer-1 or layer-2 blockchains to it to build a network that feels like a single chain with unified liquidity and unlimited scalability. In addition, it developed a zkEVM, which allowed developers to move their smart contracts from Ethereum to Polygon without having to reprogram them in a different language.The company also offers privacy solutions (Polygon ID) for users to access Web3 applications anonymously. The company also offers customizable ‘.polygon’ domains for users that facilitates easier transactions and access to dApps. Furthermore, it launched The Value Prop, an open database containing catalogs to over 300 Web3 apps and use cases, with the goal of improving Web3 technology acceptance and usability.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30200">June 2024</a>, the company acquired Toposware, a blockchain research and engineering company, for an undisclosed amount. Through the acquisition, it aimed to enhance its focus on ZK rollups.Key customers and partnershipsAs of October 2022, the number of dApps on Polygon had increased to more than 53,000, while the number of users on its network had reached over 15.2 million (January 2024).Polygon has made many strategic partnerships with other Web3 companies to improve the usability and adoption of its platform, as well as to increase adoption of Web3 and blockchain technologies. It <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16704">partnered with Eclipse</a>, a customizable layer-2 rollup provider, to launch Polygon SVM (Sealevel virtual machine), the first Solana-equivalent layer-2 scaling solution. It also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21860">partnered with Astar Network</a> to launch a zk EVM-scaling solution to enhance the interoperability of its network with Ethereum-based chains.In addition, it collaborated with Meroku, a decentralized app store protocol, to launch ‘dApp Store Kit,’ an open-source software development stack that allows anyone to build and launch their own EVM-compatible dApp store. The company followed up by launching its own <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18059">dApp store in April 2023</a> in partnership with W3W.ai.Polygon also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14802">collaborated with Thirdverse</a>, a blockchain based gaming developer, to launch Japanese IP-based games on its network, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18662">Horizon Blockchain Games</a> to promote the development of Polygon Supernets using the latter’s SDK, Sequence. Moreover, it partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/600556">NEAR</a> to create <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23671">zkWASM</a>, a zero-knowledge (zk) prover for WASM blockchains, with the aim of improving interoperability across the Web3 ecosystem, enhance the secure bridging between NEAR and Ethereum, and offer WASM chains access to Ethereum’s liquidity. Polygon also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30908">collaborated with NodeKit</a>, a platform enabling synchronous communication between blockchains, to integrate its composability layer with Polygon's CDK rollups and AggLayer technology.

Aptos is an open-source layer-1 blockchain that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to validate transactions. It is developed by Aptos Labs, which comprises former developers of <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/5">Meta’s</a> discontinued blockchain network–Diem. The platform’s mainnet was launched in October 2022, and Aptos Labs claims that the blockchain can execute around 130,000 transactions per second using its parallel execution engine-Block STM. In addition, the platform provides tools such as SDKs, CLIs, and APIs for developers to create dApps on its blockchain.In addition, the company offers a web-based cross-platform self-custodial wallet called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31181">Aptos Connect</a>. The wallet enables users to create and manage Aptos blockchain accounts using their existing social login credentials, such as Google or Apple ID, without remembering private keys or mnemonics. It utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to securely tether social logins with blockchain accounts while masking the user's identity and the identity of the login provider.Key customers and partnershipsThe company has partnered with Google Cloud as an infrastructure provider for its ecosystem, with the latter also launching a validator node in November 2022 with data indexing features to help developers using the blockchain. In addition, the two companies had conducted an accelerator program to support Web3 startups and builders on its network. The latest collaboration between the companies was in March 2024, to launch <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27634">Aptos GameStack</a>, a Web3 game development platform that incorporates Google Cloud’s solutions such as data, analytics, and AI/machine learning.Moreover, Aptos <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20875">partnered with Microsoft</a> to utilizes Azure OpenAI Service to launch Aptos Assistant, which seeks to address any complexities or challenges that users might encounter when onboarding to the Aptos blockchain, and to aid developers to build smart contracts and dApps on the blockchain by directing them toward relevant and accessible resources.Aptos also partnered with MoonPay to integrate the latter’s fiat on-ramp feature to its native wallet Petra. This allows users to buy APT (the network’s native token) using any major payment method, including Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay. In addition, it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14786">collaborated with gaming studio Npixel</a> to bring blockchain games to its platform and will host the latter’s Web3 gaming universe, Metapixel.

Based in Canada, LayerZero Labs develops omnichain interoperability protocols (called LayerZero) to connect different blockchains that allow dApps to exist on multiple chains. The LayerZero protocol works by using on-chain nodes and non-upgradable smart contracts, with users only required to pay for transaction fees on the source chain. The protocol connects over 30 mainnet blockchains including EVM-compatible chains such as Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon. In December 2023, the company introduced its v2 iteration, launching over 40 testnets for the blockchain networks it supports. The upgraded release aims to streamline third-party development, enhance security, and improve throughput.The company also offers a cross-chain liquidity transfer protocol Stargate, which is built on top of the LayerZero protocol.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsNotable customers using its technology include PancakeSwap, Sushiswap, and Uniswap.In July 2022, LayerZero Labs collaborated with Singapore-based GameFi company Ethlas to enable the latter’s metaverse platform to be accessed by users in other blockchains such as Ethereum, while enabling users to move tokens (money) across the different networks. It also entered into a strategic&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21768">partnership with Google Cloud</a> in September 2023, with the latter serving as an outside verifier to attest to the reliability of the information transmitted on its protocol.&nbsp;In October 2024, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34401">partnered with EigenLayer</a> to launch the open-source CryptoEconomic Decentralized Verifier Networks (DVNs) Framework, enabling users to create DVNs on EigenLayer using various tokens. The framework enhances blockchain interoperability by allowing verifiers to stake assets like ZRO, EIGEN, and ETH to secure cross-chain message verification.As of April 2023, LayerZero Labs had processed over USD 6 billion in transactional volume.

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

NEAR Protocol is an open-source layer-1 blockchain launched in October 2020. The blockchain uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to validate transactions. Its native token is NEAR, which can be used to pay for transactions and storage on the blockchain, while also allowing token holders to participate in the platform’s governance process. In August 2024, NEAR launched a significant upgrade called "<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32890">Nightshade 2.0</a>" to enhance scalability and usability. This update is a major step in integrating sharding into NEAR's core architecture, which divides the blockchain into smaller segments, allowing the network to process more transactions at a lower cost. Validators no longer need to store shard states locally; instead, they retrieve "state witnesses" from the network to validate changes. This improves shard performance and boosts the network’s ability to support more shards.NEAR allows users to sign up for a wallet (account) using unique human-readable names (e.g., johndoe.near, in comparison to cryptographic and randomly generated private keys, which is a characteristic of chains such as Ethereum), which in turn enables easy sign-ins for dApps for users and improves the overall usability of the blockchain. The platform also allows developers to prepay gas fees for first-time users, allowing the latter to interact with a dApp for free. NEAR also offers the Rainbow Bridge, which allows users to transfer ERC-20 and NEAR tokens or any other digital asset between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchain. In addition, the platform provides tools such as SDKs, CLIs, and APIs for developers to create dApps on its blockchain. In addition, NEAR allocates 30% of the transaction fees to developers to encourage them to build applications on its platform, with the remainder being burnt.The protocol also incorporates <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32771">Chain Signatures</a>, a technology that allows smart contracts to sign transactions across multiple blockchains without relying on cross-chain bridges. This aims to simplify multichain dApp development by reducing the need for multiple wallets and manual bridging, as well as enhancing user experience and increasing asset liquidity and utility across blockchains.As of July 2022, NEAR had 100 validators on its blockchain, which it expected to increase in proportion to the number of transactions. The platform uses an auction system to select and determine the seat price for its validators every epoch (time interval of 12 hours). The platform claims to be able to scale infinitely by adding more validators owing to its underlying architecture.Key customers and partnershipsIn June 2021, NEAR joined ICON’s Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP), which seeks to improve cross-chain communication. The partnership allowed data to be transferred between the NEAR blockchain and other BTP partners such as Polkadot and Harmon. Moreover, NEAR partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23393">Nym Technologies </a>to integrate end-to-end encryption and privacy safeguards into the NEAR blockchain ecosystem.In addition, NEAR partnered with Ardana, a stablecoin and decentralized exchange (DEX) liquidity pool built on the Cardano blockchain in November 2021, to build a bridge to support integrations and token transfers between the NEAR and Cardano blockchains. It had also planned to enable cross-chain smart contract functionality and allow the NEAR token to be used as collateral on Ardana to mint stablecoins in the future.

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

Remote Work Tools

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

Air is a creative operations platform designed for creative teams to streamline their workflows and collaborate more effectively. It offers a comprehensive solution that goes beyond basic cloud storage systems, catering specifically to the needs of the creative process. Air allows users to collect content, approve assets, share versions for feedback, and organize their work seamlessly, eliminating the need for additional organizational efforts.Air provides a centralized hub for content collaboration, approval, and versioning. Air's technology streamlines various aspects of the creative workflow, including content collection, asset approval, version control, and feedback sharing. Unlike traditional cloud storage solutions, Air's platform is tailored to the specific requirements of creative teams, enabling them to work more efficiently and effectively.Key customers and PartnershipsThe company’s customer base includes notable firms such as Native, Together, Spindrift, and Univision.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8139">January 2022</a>, Air raised USD 10 million in an “Operator Round” led by Headline with participation from Tiger Global, Lere Hippeau, and 50+ strategic founders and marketing executives including Peter Rahal (Co-Founder, RXBAR), Kipp Bodnar (CMO, HubSpot), and Joe Thomas (CEO, Loom), valuing the company at USD 110 million. The funds were used to accelerate Air’s go-to-market activities and growth.

Headquartered in Berlin, Pitch is a presentation software designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of creating and delivering presentations for teams. It offers over 100 customizable templates crafted by experts, allowing users to start with an AI-generated draft and easily adapt slides to their brand. Pitch supports real-time collaboration, smart editing features, and seamless integration with various apps and libraries. Users can share presentations via live links, track engagement, and utilize advanced features like video embeds, animations, and analytics.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/959">May 2021</a>, Pitch announced that it raised USD 85 million in a Series B funding round led by Lakestar and Tiger Global. The round included participation from existing investors Index Ventures and Thrive Capital. The round comes just seven months after its public launch and values Pitch at USD 600 million. The fresh funding was funneled toward talent acquisition, technology and product development, and expanding its business reach.&nbsp;

Lucid is a provider of a visual collaboration software that enables teams to align on ideas, clarify complex problems, and bring their vision to reality through its suite of products - Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and Lucidscale.Lucidchart is an intelligent diagramming application that empowers teams to visualize data, map out processes, and document technical systems through features like data linking, automation, layers, and customizable templates.Lucidspark is a virtual whiteboard tool designed for remote and hybrid teams to brainstorm ideas, collaborate in real-time, and streamline ideation through AI-powered features like idea generation and organization.Lucidscale allows organizations to visualize and optimize their cloud environments by providing visibility into security protocols and data flows across platforms like AWS and Microsoft Azure.In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34267">October 2024</a>, Lucid Software expanded its&nbsp; visual collaboration suite for agile workflows to increase efficiency. These new features are designed to help teams respond to change, make faster decisions, and deliver value more effectively.&nbsp;Previously, in&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32343">August 2024,</a> Lucid launched Enterprise Shield which provided an additional layer of fortified security and granular control that organizations can utilize.Key customers and partnershipsLucid Software's products are utilized by leading enterprises across various industries, including Google, GE, NBC Universal, and T-Mobile.In July 2023, Lucid partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1160292">Headroom</a>, a startup offering embedded AI-powered video conferencing technology, to enhance the workplace collaboration experience by allowing Lucid users to hold Headroom virtual meetings directly inside the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite.Furthermore, in September 2022, Lucid partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/52870">CloudApp</a>, a visual communication platform, to better enable asynchronous collaboration across the Lucid Visual Collaboration Suite.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3644">June 2021</a>, the company raised USD 500 million in a secondary investment that valued the company at USD 3 billion, tripling its previous valuation. The investment round included participation from existing investors Spectrum Equity and ICONIQ Capital, and new investors Alkeon Capital, Tiger Global, and STEADFAST Capital Ventures.The financing follows its USD 52 million Series D round in April 2020. The significant funding and jump in valuation can be attributed to the company’s record-breaking bookings reported in April 2021, which increased by 100% YoY. It had already surpassed the USD 100 million ARR threshold in Q1 2020, with one-third of its revenue coming from outside the US.&nbsp;

Almanac is a platform that allows remote teams to collaborate more efficiently with increased structure, transparency, and fewer meetings. It is an all-in-one async platform where teams can write, approve, organize, and track documents across various use cases like documenting knowledge, collaborating with teammates, or managing projects.The platform aims to provide more organization and less reliance on synchronous meetings for distributed teams working remotely on the internet. Users can leverage Almanac's features to create, edit, and share documents in a centralized workspace, streamlining collaboration and information sharing across their organization.Key customers and partnershipsAlmanac’s customer base includes notable companies such as Cisco, ByteDance, Andela, and Indeed.&nbsp;Funding and FinancialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5608">September 2021</a>, Almanac raised USD 34 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global. The round follows its USD 9 million seed round in May 2020 and the fresh funds were funneled toward product development and offering support and services to its existing users.

ClickUp is an all-in-one task manager and productivity suite. The platform features a range of project management tools to help 1) visualize and customize project workflows, 2) collaborate and review work in real time, and 3) track project progress. ClickUp offers 15+ customizable workflow views, 35+ in-house apps (ClickApps), and a visual database of relationships between tasks, documents and integrations. It also provides features for proofing and annotation, whiteboarding, time tracking, document creation, knowledge organization, goal setting and communication.Having integrated with more than 1,000 diverse workplace tools, including Google Drive, Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, GitHub, and Zendesk, among others, the platform enables teams to import, sync, and manage projects in one place. It aims to improve productivity by reducing the number of tools used by customers. The company offers a free plan, in addition to a paid plan for USD 5 per month. As of April 2022, Its customer base consists of more than 800,000 teams globally, including Google, Nike, Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb.ClickUp acquired Slapdash ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9974">April 2022 </a>), a task manager and productivity suite, marking its first acquisition. Slapdash integrates with more than 40 business applications, including Slack, Google Drive, and Salesforce, to give users higher control to search for information with custom commands, providing them with highly contextual search results. The acquisition aims to improve the efficiency and accessibility of company knowledge for ClickUp users, by enabling users to search and action across several different platforms from a centralized location. In January 2024, Clickup acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26097">Hypercal </a>, a UK-based calendar app to connect it to its native calendar functionality and infuse new AI-powered features into its productivity suite.In May 2023, the company launched ClickUp AI, which grants users multiple AI commands and role-specific prompts including the ability to improve written content and summarization features. In January 2024, Clickup launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26098">ClickUp Brain </a>, a novel AI offering that includes a knowledge manager, a project manager, and an AI Write that aims to streamline organizational workflow by reducing unnecessary work.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33680">September 2024</a>, the company launched ClickUp Chat, a new AI-powered communication tool integrated into its existing platform.Previously in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30184">June 2024</a>, ClickUp introduced a&nbsp; Knowledge Management tool, which unifies a Wiki-like editor with an AI system that can compile data from different platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Confluence.In July 2023, ClickUp expanded its investment in Europe with localized data hosting in its European data center, allowing customers subscribed to its Enterprise plan the option to host their data in ClickUp’s European region at no additional cost. Previously, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19861">June 2023 </a>, ClickUp laid off 10% of its workforce, or ~90 people, from various divisions, including software engineering and customer support, moving some of its support roles to lower-cost regions. The decision was also made to prepare for a potential public listing and increase efficiency amid a market slowdown.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2022, Its customer base consists of more than 800,000 teams globally, including Google, Nike, Uber, Netflix, and Airbnb.

Superhuman is an email client app designed to boost productivity for teams and individuals. The app uses advanced AI technology to automate various tasks, such as email composition, organization, and management. Key features include the ability to write emails effortlessly using natural language processing, automatic email triage and organization, and the ability to communicate with the app using voice commands. Users can tailor the app's settings and features to their specific needs and preferences. The app is currently available only for macOS and iOS users.&nbsp;In May 2022 it expanded its product integration to include Microsoft Outlook in addition to Gmail It also planned to integrate with third-party tools such as Grammarly, Hubspot, and Salesforce.In February 2024, Superhuman introduced AI-powered drafts for instant email replies, further enhancing its productivity features.Superhuman claims to save teams more than 10 million hours annually through its efficient email management capabilities.Funding and financialsSuperhuman raised USD 75 million in a Series C funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4699">August 2021</a>. The funds were used for product development and bringing the software to Outlook and Android users. It also planned to ramp up hiring across the team to reach a headcount of more than 200 (currently 85) by the end of 2022.&nbsp;

Grain’s software allows users to record, highlight, transcribe, and share online meeting content from tools such as Zoom in an effective manner. It automatically records and transcribes meetings, allowing users to create shareable video clips from highlighted transcript sections. Grain leverages AI to generate customizable meeting notes and answer questions about the transcript. It supports coaching and collaboration through comments and training content creation. The platform offers deal analytics and insights, tracking key account activities and integrating with tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and Slack. &nbsp;The company’s products focus on distributed teams, sales, product and user research, and hiring teams.In April 2022, the company acquired Ping Pong, a video messaging platform.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9759">April 2022</a>, Grain raised USD 16 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management. The funds were raised to expand operations and develop its ​​video meeting system of record for content, which allows employees to collaborate around insights, topics, relationships, or teams.

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

Attentive (also known as Attentive Mobile) is a mobile marketing automation tool that allows firms to study customer behavior on popular ecommerce sites such as Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce in real time and send personalized text messages to drive consumer sales. Attentive’s audience manager and business intelligence platform allows firms to create custom marketing campaigns and track performance over time. The platform can also integrate with leading email marketing solutions such as Salesforce and Mailchimp to extend its value. In June 2022, it <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11071">launched Attentive Concierge</a>, a product which it claims can recreate the in-store experience, enabling marketers to execute highly personalized SMS conversations at scale.In March 2023, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17381">launched Attentive AI,</a> a learning engine, to further optimize marketing campaigns. Attentive is the largest text messaging service provider for Shopify and had more than 8,000 customers (by March 2023) in the ecommerce, retail, food and beverage, entertainment, and media and publishing industries. In July 2024, Attentive introduced a tool called <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/31633">AI Pro,</a> which offers various features to enhance marketing strategies with AI technology.Attentive’s strength lies in its building of a “mobile-first” ecommerce strategy that has seen accelerated growth in 2020–2021 owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, as consumers have been increasingly turning to their mobiles for shopping, where SMS marketing is a natural fit. According to Attentive, its text messaging service can on average account for 18.5% of total online revenue for ecommerce brands.&nbsp;In June 2021, the company acquired Tone, a text messaging firm that specializes in using AI-enhanced text messages sent by human agents. That same month, it also acquired Privy, an email marketing platform targeted at small businesses.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of March 2023, the platform had served 8,000+ customers.In September 2024,&nbsp;Attentive partnered with&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34075">Thanx,</a> a restaurant loyalty platform, to integrate SMS marketing with loyalty programs.

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.

ActiveCampaign is a customer experience automation (CXA) platform that specializes in email marketing and marketing automation. The platform offers 600+ pre-built marketing automation recipes that allow the personalization of marketing campaigns. It also features tools for customer relationship management (CRM) and customer targeting and segmentation as well as 880+ integrations with other apps and services.&nbsp;ActiveCampaign has built a reputation for customer service. In January 2020, the firm introduced the industry’s first customer success commitment which included the first anti-no-reply policy to ensure that all feedback received from customers will be responded to. ActiveCampaign claims that as a result, customers save 20 hours per month on average by making use of its marketing automation services.&nbsp;In November 2021, ActiveCampaign entered the sales engagement space with the<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6984"> launch of a sales engagement platform</a> to unify the roles of marketing and sales teams. In June 2022, the firm introduced a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11024">no-code data model</a> to customize and automate workflows.The firm has also entered into product integrations with a number of firms including with CallRail, a phone call tracking and analytics platform to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11549">add call analytics intelligence</a> to its CXA platform.&nbsp;In April 2022, ActiveCampaign <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10106">executed its first acquisition</a>, acquiring Postmark (transactional email delivery service), and DMARC digest (email authentication and monitoring service) in order to grow its email marketing services. In October 2023, the company acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22868">Onesend,</a> a suite of tools for franchise and multi-location brands, to enhance tools for franchise and multi-location brands.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of June 2022, the platform catered to 180,000+ customers ranging from ecommerce sites, B2B, and B2C clients.&nbsp;In February 2023, the firm <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16213">partnered with ActiveEngine,</a> a service provider of ActiveCampaign tasks, to offer B2B companies a solution to optimize their lead nurturing and sales processes while maximizing revenue. In April 2023, the company partnered with the <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17646">Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE), </a>to assist businesses that are expanding in the country.

<div>
 
 Moloco is a suite of machine-learning (ML)-powered performance advertising solutions for marketing teams. Its product offering consists of 1) Moloco Cloud demand-side ad platform (DSP), a programmatic ad solution for mobile apps that leverages first-party data to drive growth through performance-driven advertising, offering real-time reporting, creative tools, broad reach, and exclusive access to in-app impressions, 2)&nbsp; Moloco Retail Media, which enables eCommerce platforms to launch ad businesses by offering personalized ads, and self-serve campaign scaling tools, and 3) Moloco Monetization for Streaming and over-the-top (OTT), empowering content publishers to scale ad businesses, optimize ROI with first-party data, deliver relevant ads, expand audience reach, and maximize monetization, all while ensuring accuracy, privacy compliance, and continual improvements through machine learning (ML). ​​Additionally, Moloco offers a range of advertising solutions tailored to specific industries, such as gaming and fintech, providing specialized tools and features to meet the unique needs of each industry. As of June 2023, its customers included Playrix, Fetch, Bumble, DraftKings, and FunPlus.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform&rsquo;s Retail Media solution claims to offer a margin of 75%+ on ad revenue, generate up to 5% of GMV in ad revenue, and achieve an advertiser ad ROAS (return on advertising spend) of 800% or higher. Meanwhile, its streaming media monetization solution claims to have scaled infrastructure that captures value within 90 days, with features such as: 400+ billion daily bid requests, run-rate ad spend of more than USD 1 billion, and a presence in 240+ countries.
 
 
 In October 2022, the company acquired Tauk, which provides a unified platform for diagnosing, resolving, and communicating the issues that arise during testing apps.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;
 
 
 In May 2023, Moloco was recognized as a Google Cloud Premier Partner, leveraging Google Cloud's integrated infrastructure to power its operational ML solutions.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In June 2023, the company raised a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19797">
 secondary funding round
 </a>
 led by Fidelity Management and Research Company and EDBI, with a post-money valuation of USD 2+ billion, which is more than a 40% increase compared to the USD 1.5 billion valuation it received at its Series C funding round in 2021. It planned to use the funds to support Moloco's expansion and develop new products. The company also reported that its revenue surpassed USD 200 million in 2022, a more than 5x growth from 2020 to 2022 and had maintained profitability for 12 consecutive quarters.
 
</div>

Copy.ai offers marketing copywriting and content creation tools, utilizing its GTM AI platform to generate content such as social media posts, headlines, link descriptions, and blogs.The platform also incorporates an AI chatbot, which operates similarly to OpenAI’s ChatGPT but is constantly updated with new data. The chatbot can summarize YouTube videos, write personalized marketing copy, and offer an in-line document editor.Some of Copy.ai’s use cases are as follows:1) For teams: Several features to optimize marketing team workflows, including generation of cold emails using a prospect’s LinkedIn and product context, search engine optimization (SEO), bulk product descriptions, and integration with customer relationship management (CRM) tools2) Freestyle content generation: Users input their project title into the interface, mention what kind of content they wish to generate—selecting from email, social media posts, blog posts, product descriptions, or other forms of content—add some context on their campaign or product, and allow the platform to create their requested content. The tool produces several different options that can be edited using Copy.ai’s editing tool or exported immediately to a content management system (CMS).3) Blog and social media: Blog and social media tools allow users to add a post title, review the outline of the post, generate a draft, and export the fileThe company claims that its blog/SEO title generator can help write blogs 10x faster.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2024, Copy.ai was used by more than 15 million professionals and teams, including Microsoft, eBay, Ogilvy, and Nestlé.In March 2024, Copy.ai partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/2756101">Perplexity</a>, an advanced search intelligence platform, to combine their offerings and enable teams to gather and synthesize detailed market and competitive insights, automate data-driven content creation, and streamline account-based marketing strategies.

<div>
 
 VideoAmp is a privacy-focused suite of solutions for agencies, brands, and publishers to measure and optimize advertising performance across linear TV, streaming, and digital media. It leverages a commingling data process and platform powered by a trusted TV viewership dataset to help advertisers understand audience exposure to their ads with precision. VideoAmp's platform offers various capabilities, including content measurement, competitive insights, budget management, media plan optimization, currency management, audience measurement, outcome measurement, campaign optimization, digital activation, and targeting audiences.&nbsp;
 
 
 The platform claims to have one of the largest commingled, deduplicated, and enriched set-top box (STB) and automatic content recognition (ACR) television exposure datasets in the industry.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 VideoAmp has bolstered its suite of solutions through strategic acquisitions, including IronGrid Data Services in July 2018 to enhance measurement, planning, and audience solutions; Conversion Logic LTD in March 2020 to optimize media portfolios; and Elsy in April 2022 to streamline cross-platform media campaign management.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;
 
 
 In September 2023, the platform covered ~40 million households and 60 million+ devices across the US. The company saw the adoption of its measurement and currency solutions by 13 linear and streaming publishers, media holding companies, independent agencies, and 75+ advertisers.&nbsp;
 
 
 In October 2021, VideoAmp and HyphaMetrics, an independent quality data supplier, had partnered to integrate audience measurement solutions, using panel data with VideoAmp's TV viewership data for better audience insights and creating Virtual IDs (VIDs) for cross-platform reach in line with industry standards. In June 2023, VideoAmp and TransUnion joined forces to create a cross-platform media analytics solution, empowering marketers to measure campaign impact and optimize strategies for enhanced advertising effectiveness.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials&nbsp;
 
 
 In September 2023, the company raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21837">
 USD 150 million in a Series G funding
 </a>
 round led by Vista Credit Partners to accelerate growth and improve its advanced media currency solution. However, shortly after this funding round, VideoAmp decided to optimize its business operations, resulting in the layoff of 10% of staff (~45&ndash;50 employees).
 
</div>

Founded in Australia, Rokt provides solutions to drive new monetization and advertising opportunities on ecommerce platforms. Using its proprietary technology, Rokt can apply deep learning to analyze customer behavior on ecommerce platforms (across activities such as purchase review, sales checkout, and payment and confirmation pages of an ecommerce website). It automatically suggests relevant internal and third-party advertisements to customers to create a personalized experience. Rokt also offers lead generation service Rokt Ads.&nbsp;In May 2023, the firm announced the launch of <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18545">Rokt Payments Marketplace,</a> which enables ecommerce businesses to generate additional revenue on their payment pages.&nbsp;&nbsp;The company claims to have one of the widest reaches, with access to more than 30 million businesses (as of September 2021) of various sizes. In September 2021, marketers reported an average 14% boost to opt-in rates.In January 2024, the firm acquired <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25508">AfterSell, </a>which provides upselling and cross-selling support for ecommerce merchants on Shopify, to boost sales through AI-powered upselling technology.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;By December 2021, more than 2,500 firms were making use of its services including Ticketmaster, Groupon, Staples, and HelloFresh.In 2022 Rokt also secured new partnerships including with Uber and AMC theatres to drive growth in its ecommerce solution.

An alumnus of Y Combinator, Mutiny provides a no-code website personalization platform. The firm provides solutions for B2B account-based marketing (ABM) and content marketing teams by serving website visitors with customized versions of the webpage to improve user experience and increase customer conversions. The firm leverages an AI system known as GPT-3, which learns from 150 million data points of anonymized proprietary customer data as well a company’s online data, to provide insights on different customer segments. It also uses machine learning to write “human-sounding” customized headlines. The firm's platform can also be integrated with popular marketing automation and CRM platforms including Hubspot, 6sense, Salesforce, and Marketo to ingest customer data and extend its capabilities. The firm claims that it has served ~50 million customers across more than three million company websites.The firm is one of the few to specialize in website personalization. It claims that compared to alternatives such as landing page optimization tools and A/B testing tools, its integration with existing audience data sources allows it to create personalized elements of a webpage catering to different segments. The firm claims that on average, Mutiny’s platform can identify 73% of website visitors through various data sources and drives 108% conversion lift.The Co-founder of Mutiny Nikhil Mathew also helped launch LiveGit, an online tool for real-time music collaboration.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2022, Mutiny was used by 7,500+ content marketers from firms including Carta, Twillo, Brex, ClickUp, and Amplitude.

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

Portworx by Pure Storage is a cloud-native storage and data management platform to run mission-critical applications in containerized environments.The platform provides automated failover, snapshots, and performance optimization. Portworx provides high availability, scalability, and data mobility, enabling organizations to efficiently run stateful applications, accelerate DevOps workflows, and simplify data compliance. Its cost-efficiency, security, and support for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies further enhance its value proposition.Portworx provides a consumption-based pricing model.Portworx was acquired by Pure Storage in September 2020 for USD 370 million. The company was rebranded as Portworx by Pure Storage but continues to operate independently.Key customers and partnershipsPortworx serves customers in the healthcare, automotive, audio entertainment, and media sectors. Among its customers of cloud-native storage solutions are GE, Ford, Comcast, Adobe, and Airbus.The company has partnered with several major cloud companies including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Cisco, Docker, IBM, Red Hat Sysdig, and D2iQ.

Cockroach Labs is a software company specializing in cloud-native distributed SQL database solutions.Cockroach Labs offers CockroachDB, a distributed SQL database designed with global scalability, resilience, and data consistency. CockroachDB solves the problem of building and managing distributed databases that can handle massive scale, high availability, and transactional consistency across multiple geographic regions. It enables businesses to build modern, cloud-native applications that require high-performance, fault-tolerance, and data integrity.Cockroach Labs follows a subscription-based sales model, offering different tiers and pricing plans based on customer requirements. The company also has a Value Added Reseller Program.Key customers and partnershipsCockroach Lab’s database is used for cloud-native developments by technology and non-technology companies, including Comcast, DigitalOcean, Shipt, Mythical, Lush, Bose, and Fortinet.Cockroach Lab’s technology partners include cloud vendors such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, VMware, and Red Hat, and holds integrations with Confluent, DataDog, Elastic, Liquibase, and Pulumi.The company also partnered with PwC UK in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32634">August 2024</a>, to assist financial firms reduce the difficulties associated with regulatory compliance and modernizing outdated platforms.

Kong is a cloud connectivity company that provides an advanced API and service lifecycle management platform.Kong's flagship product, Kong Gateway, acts as an API gateway and service mesh solution, enabling organizations to manage and secure their API traffic effectively. It offers request routing, rate limiting, authentication, and traffic analytics, ensuring reliable and efficient communication between services. Kong Gateway provides a unified entry point for APIs, simplifying the complexity of managing multiple services and streamlining the development and deployment process.Its <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26672">open-source AI Gateway</a> is a tool that assists developers and operations teams in incorporating their applications with large language models (LLM) and accessing them through one API. This latest offering is available free of charge, but Kong expects to introduce paid premium features in the futureIn addition to Kong Gateway, Kong offers a range of complementary products and services. Kong Manager provides a simple interface for managing APIs and services, allowing administrators to configure and monitor their API ecosystem. The Kong Developer Portal enables organizations to create developer-friendly documentation and self-service experiences. Additionally, it offers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28538">Kong Konnect</a>, a dedicated cloud gateway on Amazon Web Services (AWS), exclusively available through its unified API platform, Kong Konnect. This gateway offers multi-cloud and multi-region deployment for Edge and internal APIs, with easy deployment, zero downtime, and private networking support.Kong operates under a direct sales model. It offers its API and service lifecycle management platform through subscriptions.Key customers and partnershipsKong serves organizations across various industries, such as financial services, manufacturing, retail, technology, insurance, healthcare, and education. Some of its key customers include PayPal, GSK, Nasdaq, Yahoo! Japan, Cisco, and Cargill.Kong also has technology partnerships with D2IQ, Datadog, Okta, and Red Hat.

Redis is a leading player in the real-time data processing and management space.Redis offers a suite of real-time data processing and management solutions, centered around Redis Enterprise and Open-Source Redis. Redis Enterprise enhances the capabilities of Open-Source Redis by providing an enterprise-grade data platform that supports modern data models, management, automation, and scalability for deploying and running applications at any scale. It provides high availability, with features like active-active geo-distribution and instant failover.Redis's offerings also include a rich set of data structures, in-memory caching, search, real-time analytics, and support for multiple programming languages, making it versatile for various use cases across industries.​ It also offers a tool named Redis Data Integration (RDI) that allows customers to move the contents of external databases into Redis for caching, automatically copying records, and syncing changes. Redis Copilot, an AI assistant, provides guidance on database usage, generates queries from natural language prompts, and performs related tasks.Redis provides a Cloud and Software version of its Enterprise product. The pricing follows a subscription-based model.The company has acquired three companies: RESP.app (November 2022), RDBTools (April 2019), and Redis Weekly (April 2017).Key customers and partnershipsRedis Enterprise is used by notable companies like AngelOne, Microsoft, Tiffany &amp; Co, BNP Paribas, British Airways, Telus, and SiriusXM.Redis’s cloud partners include AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and VMware. Additionally, the company has technology partnerships with leading technology companies like Suse, Red Hat, Hashicorp, databricks, and Intel.

Prefect is an open-source workflow management and automation platform designed to simplify and streamline data engineering and data operations.Prefect Cloud is a cloud-based platform offered by Prefect, which complements its open-source workflow management system. Prefect Cloud offers several notable features and benefits, including centralized and scalable infrastructure for managing workflows, making it easier to deploy, monitor, and control workflows across multiple environments.Prefect's sales model combines a direct sales approach with a self-service option, enabling customers to choose the most suitable subscription plan for their workflow management needs while receiving the necessary support and guidance from the Prefect team.Key customers and partnershipsPrefect serves a broad range of customers across a variety of industries. Some of its key customers include Anaconda, Jellyfish, Quilt.ai, and Dyvenia.Prefect collaborates with leading cloud providers to integrate their solutions. These partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure. Prefect also has dozens of pre-built integrations with partners such as Slack, Google Big Query, Databricks, and Snowflake.

Aviatrix is a cloud networking company providing advanced networking and security solutions for multi-cloud environments.Aviatrix offers a comprehensive networking platform that enables organizations to seamlessly connect and manage their cloud environments across multiple cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It provides centralized control and visibility, simplifying the management of complex multi-cloud networks.Aviatrix's platform includes a wide range of advanced network services, including next-generation firewall integration, site-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud connectivity, hybrid cloud networking, intelligent traffic engineering, and global transit networking.Aviatrix’s sales model includes direct sales, channel partners, and system integrators.Key customers and partnershipsAviatrix serves a broad range of customers across many industries. Notable customers include Yum!, Splunk, Autodesk, BankUnited, NASA, and Takeda.Aviatrix integrates with most major cloud providers, including AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud.

Timescale is a company providing time-series databases and related tools for analyzing and managing time-stamped data.TimescaleDB is Timescale’s flagship product. It is a time-series database designed to handle high volumes of time-stamped data with scalability and reliability. TimescaleDB solves the problem of efficiently storing and analyzing time-series data prevalent in various industries, including IoT, finance, monitoring, and analytics. The database allows users to store and query time-series data in a structured SQL format.Timescale's competitive advantage lies in the unique architecture of TimescaleDB, which combines the scalability of a distributed database with the ease of use and familiarity of SQL. It integrates with the existing PostgreSQL ecosystem and tooling, allowing users to leverage their SQL skills and existing infrastructure.Timescale offers TimescaleDB as a commercial open-source sales model; the core features are available as open-source software. Subsequently, Timescale also offers enterprise support options for businesses that require additional features, performance enhancements, and dedicated support.Key customers and partnershipsTimescale’s database is used for cloud-native developments by technology and non-technology companies, including European Space Agency, Jane, Density, FlightAware, and K6.As of June 2023, Timescale partners with all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and has technology partnerships with IBM and Intel.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, Timescale’s latest fundraising was in 2022 from a USD 110 million Series C round led by Tiger Global Management. The funds are to invest in product development, R&amp;D, and engineering.

Komodor is an Israeli startup offering a Kubernetes monitoring and troubleshooting platform for developers.The platform tracks changes and events in Kubernetes clusters, providing visibility into resource statuses, logs, and configuration changes.The platform includes automated playbooks that alert users to emerging issues, identify root causes, and provide step-by-step remediation instructions. This approach helps speed up response times, reduce mean time to repair (MTTR), and enable development teams to resolve issues independently.Additionally, the platform supports Helm release management and provides real-time log viewing. It also includes a&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33726">GenAI agent</a> named Klaudia, which identifies the root causes of Kubernetes issues.Key customers and partnershipsIts key customers include Cowbell, Visier, Digibee, Visier, and Priceline.

Using data and automation to achieve 24/7 production.

Smart Factory

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 Locus Robotics provides autonomous warehouse robots, LocusBots, which can be reconfigured with any container and sensor. On the back end, it offers a robotics software to control and monitor the fleet of bots, LocusServer. Customers are able to subscribe (monthly subscription fee to be paid) and scale up their use of robots as required, on a Robots-as-a-Service basis. The company states that its solutions can increase productivity by 2x&ndash;3x and reduce overtime spent by 15%. It also claims its software can be integrated with any warehouse management or warehouse control system.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 The company opened new headquarters in the EU and was focused on launching strategic reseller partnerships and building its customer base. As of February 2021, Locus Robotics served over 40 customers, including UPS, DHL, Boots UK, Geodis, Verst Logistics, and CEVA Logistics, and had deployed around 4,000 robots across 80 sites, with approximately 80% of its deployments in the US and the remainder in Europe. The company revealed that it exceeded the half-a-billion picking milestone by October 2021 (more than 300 million units picked as of February 2021) with LocusBots picking almost two million items daily.
 
 
 
 
 Locus Robotics acquired AMR provider Waypoint Robotics (September 2021), which offers AMRs that are industrial-strength with omnidirectional mobility features, enabling Locus Robotics to gain access to new market segments. This acquisition will expand the Locus product line of AMR solutions that focus on use cases from ecommerce, case-picking, and pallet-picking to those that require heavier payloads and fulfillment modalities.
 
 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22353">
 In October 2023
 </a>
 ,&nbsp; Locus Robotics extended its AMR warehouse automation solution to customers in Italy and Poland, increasing its presence in Europe. These products are available on a subscription-based robotics-as-a-service model. 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23242">
 It also extended to Central America
 </a>
 by making its first AMR deployment in Mexicali, Mexico at the fulfillment warehouse of lifestyle brand, Solo Brands.
 
 
 
 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22353">
 In October 2023
 </a>
 ,&nbsp; Locus Robotics extended its AMR warehouse automation solution to customers in Italy and Poland, increasing its presence in Europe. These products are available on a subscription-based robotics-as-a-service model. 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23242">
 It also extended to Central America
 </a>
 by making its first AMR deployment in Mexicali, Mexico at the fulfillment warehouse of lifestyle brand, Solo Brands.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 In November 2022, Locus Robotics 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14949?industryIds=6">
 raised USD 117 million
 </a>
 in Series F funding led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and G2 Venture Partners, valuing the company at &ldquo;close to&rdquo; USD 2 billion. The company previously raised USD 50 million in additional funding (series E round) from return investor Tiger Global Management in September 2021. The funds were used to facilitate the company&rsquo;s continued growth and further expand global operations.&nbsp;
 
 
 
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Rapid Robotics develops robotic automation solutions for manufacturing and logistics. In 2024, Rapid Robotics introduced its latest product “Rapid iD,” which leverages GenAI, computer vision, and machine learning to enable robotic arms to accurately pick, inspect, and place objects in end-of-line and logistics scenarios. The company's technology aims to address labor shortages in manufacturing by providing flexible and adaptable automation solutions.&nbsp;The company offers its products for either outright sale or on a subscription-based robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business model.Key customers and partnershipsRapid Robotics' customers include Behrens, Delphon, Westec Plastics Corporation, and Topcon.

SVT Robotics provides a software service integrating robots with enterprise software, creating a bridging platform to help manufacturers adopt robotic automation faster. Based on its proprietary robotic software technology, the company has introduced the SOFTBOT Platform in September 2020.&nbsp;With this service, the manufacturers can select their preferred robots and automation systems (from companies such as RightHand Robotics and Vecna Robotics), build custom material flows using SOFTBOT connectors without any coding required, and then deploy to the factory or cloud location. After installation, the SOFTBOT Platform can be reconfigured as needed. This will provide real-time performance analytics of all automation technologies across the factory through data mining, giving an integrated view to optimize performance quickly.&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;In February 2024, SVT Robotics <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26647">partnered with Contextant</a>, to sell its SOFTBOT Platform. The partnership was to combine Contextant's material handling and robotics systems integration expertise with SVT Robotics' warehouse automation platform to offer pre-built integrations and custom orchestrations to Contextant’s network of customers.&nbsp;Most of SVT Robotics’ customers are third-party logistics companies (3PLs), which require flexible and fast robotics deployment. In March 2024, the company partnered with LG to deploy the latter’s new CLOi CarryBot autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in warehouses in the US.

Elementary Robotics offers full-stack AI camera systems for quality assurance, from motor controls to the API, which apply machine learning and computer vision to help the inspection process. This enables finding defects in real time with the use of deep learning and improves traceability in workflows. Manufacturers can set up inspections in the cloud, and the systems can be traced and trained over time. The company claims that its solution can increase productivity by 50% and make 90% more detections.Key customers and partnershipsHaving made its products commercially available in July 2020, Elementary Robotics has entered multiple contracts with manufacturing companies, such as Toyota and Yamaha, and those in the aerospace, defense, and consumer packaged goods industries.

Vecna Robotics provides material-handling autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) with a fleet management and workflow optimization software platform, Pivot.al. The platform distributes and adjusts workflow tasks in real time, shares information between workers and robots, and integrates with legacy automation, robots, warehouse management systems (WMS), and management execution systems (MES). Vecna also offers the modification of existing machines into AMRs. Vecna Robotics spun off from parent company, Vecna Technologies (healthcare solutions manufacturer, research, and software firm). Although having received funding from a few government agencies initially to develop a humanoid robot, Vecna Robotics had shifted its focus to the development of logistics and delivery robots before the spin-off.&nbsp;&nbsp;Vecna Robotics has produced a variety of automated material-handling products to stay competitive: pallet trucks that can carry a maximum of 7,936 lbs at a maximum speed of 6.7 mph; pallet jacks that can carry a maximum of 3,300 lbs at a top speed of 3 mph; and tuggers that can carry a maximum of 9,920 lbs at a maximum speed of 6 mph. The pallet jacks can handle block, stringer, and plastic pallets, with or without bottom boards, and can run 24/7 with opportunistic charging. The tuggers are fork-free for safety and can tow different types of carts and navigate narrow aisles. Furthermore, Vecna offers autonomous counterbalanced fork trucks, via the Silverback Series line of vehicles. The fork trucks can lift a payload of up to 3,000 lbs up to 72” vertically and operate using Vecna’s orchestration platform, Pivot.al.&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23487">In November 2023</a>, Vecna Robotics introduced a performance guarantee to make automation more accessible and streamline the deployment of mobile robots in warehouses and manufacturing facilities across the US. The guarantee was based on customer-defined success criteria, such as throughput, task completion, and uptime.&nbsp;&nbsp;Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;Vecna Robotics’s clients include FedEx, Milton CAT, and Medline Industries. Vecna Robotics has partnered with competitors, such as RightHand Robotics (offers robot-picking solutions), integrating their material handling and autonomous mobility expertise to enhance e-commerce order fulfillment operations. The company also partnered with tech companies, such as Humatics (a microlocation product and software maker), integrating Humatics’ KinetIQ 300 microlocation system into Vecna’s AMRs, and Ouster (a developer of digital lidar sensors), to use Ouster lidar in its autonomous vehicles until 2025.&nbsp;&nbsp;Moreover, the company partnered with advanced material handling technology solution provider, Alta Material Handling Company, to offer its solutions to the latter’s clients in around 55 locations across the US.&nbsp;&nbsp;In March 2022, Vecna also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9436?industryIds=6">partnered with Big Joe Lift Trucks,</a> a pedestrian material handling equipment provider, to introduce a collaborative robot (co-bot) pallet jack named Vecna CPJ for manufacturing facilities and warehouses.&nbsp;

Viam offers an open-source platform designed to integrate and manage machines, sensors, and IoT devices. The platform supports various applications, including AI model deployment, predictive maintenance, and fleet management, and enables interoperability and streamlined data analysis across various machine types.Viam’s product portfolio includes 1) Viam Build, a tool for creating and customizing smart machines via pre-built code blocks, 2) Viam Core, a data synchronization tool that enables peer-to-peer connectivity between smart machines, the cloud, and mobile apps, 3) Viam Data, a tool to identify, store, and visualize smart machine data, 4) Viam ML, a tool for creating training and deploying machine learning models, and 5) Viam Mobility, a tool for programming autonomous motion paths smart machines.

Based in India, Infinite Uptime is a developer of predictive maintenance solutions for industrial assets. This includes remote condition monitoring, data-driven machine diagnostics, and digital reliability services using intelligent data analytics. Infinite Uptime’s main product is the Industrial Data Enabler (IDE), which utilizes proprietary hardware and software solutions. It enables businesses to actively monitor their machinery in real time, leading to decreased downtime and enhanced operational efficiency.&nbsp;Some features offered by the IDE platform are real-time condition monitoring with cloud data backup, smart dashboard for live monitoring and predictive data analytics, fault diagnosis and prescriptive maintenance, and digital twin scenario reports. Moreover, the company offers a GenAI assistant named Nity, designed to identify critical assets and report performance data. The solution can automatically monitor the machine condition, generate reports, and provide corrective actions and work instructions.The company has offices in the US, India, and Dubai.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsThe company targets industries like cement, steel, metals, FMCG, chemicals, tires, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, and automotive. As of May 2023, the company served over 300 global customers with 19,200 monitoring locations, and 4,500 active users. Some of its customers include Vedanta, JSW Steel, Hyundai, Borosil, Ceat, and Adani.&nbsp;

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Lattice, co-founded by Jack Altman offers an AI-powered platform to simplify HR operations related to employee performance (reviews, competency matrices and individual development plans), compensation benchmarking and management, engagement (onboarding and AI analysis of employee surveys) and analytics (for DEIB initiatives), among other features. The company also offers integrations with other platforms such as UKG, Workday and Slack.In September 2023, the company launched the Lattice HRIS in early access mode for mid-sized US-based organizations, allowing for the management of employee records (attendance, holiday calendar and leave management)&nbsp; and integrating it with its suite of products.The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions, ranging from USD 4 per person to USD 11 per person, based on packaged features. Lattice also offers special enterprise pricing for multi-product and volume purchases, with a minimum annual agreement of USD 4,000.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company had over 5,000 enterprises using its platform, with notable clients including Slack, Discord and Gusto.Lattice recorded positive cashflow for the first time in 1Q 2019 with 1,200 customers and reached 160,000 paid user accounts as of October 2019. The shift to enterprise clients bodes well for Lattice, with notable client signing in 2019 including Slack—one of its largest customers to date.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn its most recent funding round in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7876">January 2022</a>, Lattice raised USD 175 million in Series F funding from ​​Thrive Capital, Elad Gil, Tiger Global, Dragoneer, and several existing investors and new angel investors. Funds were earmarked to support Lattice’s growth across industries and geographies as well as for product development. The round valued the company at USD 3 billion, tripling the USD 1 billion valuation from its Series E funding round in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1299">March 2021</a>.

Factorial is an all-in-one HR platform that offers payroll, onboarding, time management, performance management, benefits administration, compliance management, etc. for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), allowing them to streamline and automate their HR processes. The company also offers Factorial AI (launched in June 2023), an AI-backed tool to streamline the recruitment process, task management, expense tracking and document summarization.The company generates revenue via monthly subscription plans starting at USD 4.5 per user.In October 2023, the company acquired Spain-based expense management firm Fuell to strengthen its presence in Spain and other international markets in areas related to budget management, tax payment, corporate cards and expense reimbursement.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, Factorial served over 10,000 companies across 65+ countries.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27261">March 2024</a>, Factorial partnered with Microsoft to improve product offering and security for its HR SaaS platform.In December 2023, the company partnered with cloud-based compliance solutions provider Cimplx to improve security and customization in payroll solutions offered.Funding and financialsIn April 2024, Factorial raised EUR 74.5 million (~USD 79.4 million) in a debt funding round led by General Catalyst. Funds were earmarked for future acquisitions and product development efforts.

Papaya Global is an automated platform for global payroll and workforce management. The platform offers end-to-end solutions that allow businesses to grow their teams globally by hiring from anywhere in the world as the employer of record (EoR). The platform simplifies the onboarding and management process with guidance in local compliance laws and allows cross-border payments with coverage in more than 160 countries, as of April 2024. Additionally the company offers global equity management (managing employee stock purchase plans, stock options, etc.) and contractor management.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21897">September 2023</a>, the company launched ‘made to measure’, an AI-backed solution designed to help organizations navigate complex US payroll regulations. Other notable product updates included the launch of Papaya Global Payroll Payments (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16965">March 2023</a>), a first-of-its-kind, fully automated, embedded payments platform for global payroll and mass payments to employees and other beneficiaries, with payments arriving within 72 hours.Papaya Global has undertaken a series of acquisitons to expand its product offerings; Mensch (an Israeli human resource information platform) in July 2021, to complement its end-to-end offering and feature employee management; NickNack, a remote work connectivity platform, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6767">November 2021</a> to enhance its technology solution to support clients onboard employees to remote teams with asynchronous activities by providing a platform to improve employee engagement and connectivity; Azimo, a UK-based online remittance service, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9416">March 2022</a> to help Papaya Global expand its geographical footprint using Azimo’s payment licenses and network spanning 190+ countries.The company generates revenue through monthly subscriptions on a per employee basis, based on the product offered. As of April 2024, this included payroll (USD 15-25), EoR (USD 500), contractors (USD 30) and agent of record (USD 200). Additionally, the company generates revenue from cross-border payments (USD 2.5 per transaction).Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company served over 2,000 enterprises, with 35% of its customer base being Global Fortune 500 firms. Notable enterprises using the platform included Toyota, Shopify, Canva and Wix.In September 2023, the company partnered with HiBob to connect its HR data to Papaya's payments and payroll platform, reducing administrative burden. Previously in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9612">April 2022</a>, the company launched a corporate payment and expense management solution for remote employees in partnership with Mesh Payments, a corporate payment and spend management solution provider.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5441">September 2021</a>, Papaya Global raised USD 250 million in a Series D funding round co-led by Insight Partners and Tiger Global, valuing the company at USD 3.7 billion. Funds were earmarked to support the company’s continued growth and attract more Fortune 5000 clients.As of April 2024, the company had over USD 7 billion in total payroll under management. In March 2021, the company claimed that in the past three years it has experienced 300% revenue growth YoY.

<div>
 
 Ontop is an EoR for SMEs to hire talent in 150 countries without the administrative burden of creating contracts, compliance documentation, and facilitating payments to international employees. Key platform features include managing salaries (including bonuses, rewards, reimbursements), invoices, hiring flow procedures and streamlined expense management. The company also offers online wallets and a physical or digital company card backed by Visa.&nbsp;
 
 
 Ontop added streamlined US wire payments to its platform in December 2023, enabling streamlined transactions and support for paying workers in cryptocurrencies. The company claims that use of its platform can save companies ~USD 1,000 per employee per year. The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions per individual, priced at USD 299 per employee, and USD 29 for contractors.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of May 2021, the platform reports more than 200 clients across 150 countries, facilitating payroll in more than 100 currencies. Notable enterprises using the platform included Softtek, ABInBev and FEMSA.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2022, the company raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Series A round which included participation from Endeavor Catalyst Fund. Previously, in May 2021, the company announced its USD 4.5 million seed funding round led by Point72 Ventures. Funds were earmarked for product development, including the roll-out of product features such as additional payment options for contractors and the ability to maintain accounts in multiple currencies.
 
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Jellyfish allows engineering managers to align engineering work with business objectives. By analyzing “engineering signals and business data” generated by developer tools, the platform offers insight into the tasks carried out, time spent, and operations. Jellyfish measures and analyzes companies’ spending on product innovation, technical debt, and metrics pulled from roadmap tools, calendars, HR systems, and other sources, to display the business impact of engineering investments, enabling teams to focus on high-value operations and products.&nbsp;In February 2024, the company launched JellyFish DevEx to uncover challenges in engineering team workflows. Previously in October 2022, the company launched JellyFish DevFinOps which builds upon Jellyfish’s data models to aid enterprises categorize and capitalize software development costs.The company claims that its users, on average, have focused 32% more on revenue-maximizing work and have reduced development cycle time by 21%. The company has integrated with developers and business tools, including GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Aha, and Google Sheets, to monitor activities and the time spent.&nbsp;&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsSome of its customers include New Relic, SessionM (a Mastercard corporation), Medium, and Toast. The company reports that its platform benefitted from the Covid-19-led migration to remote work.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8219">February 2022</a>, Jellyfish raised USD 71 million in a Series C funding round led by Accel, Insight Partners, and Tiger Global. The funds were earmarked to expand Jellyfish’s operations and reach. Further, the company’s revenue tripled in 2021, and its headcount increased to 150 from 20 employees two years ago.&nbsp;Forbes estimated that the company’s revenue was USD 13 million in 2022, and pinned it to be a future unicorn.&nbsp;Key competitors: None under coverage. (The company’s platform&nbsp; geared solely towards engineering teams).

Singapore-based Multiplier claims to be APAC’s first professional employer organization platform for managing payroll and compliance for international teams. Multiplier has established legal entities either by setting up the infrastructure or through partnerships with local entities. It assists businesses in reducing the cost of cross-border employment by offering hiring services, such as local labor law compliance, labor contracts, payroll, benefits, and taxes. It operates a subscription-based model charging USD 300 per employee and USD 40 per contractor per month as of September 2021.In its latest funding round ( <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9136">March 2022 </a>), Multiplier raised USD 60 million in Series B funding co-led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India. The round followed Multiplier’s USD 13.2 million Series A round in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6369">November 2021 </a>and brought its valuation to USD 400 million. The funds were raised to add new features such as allowing businesses to self-register, instantly share candidate contracts, and offer employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) through its platform. The company is also developing crypto-payroll features.

inFeedo is a people predictive analytics company based in India. The Y Combinator-backed startup founded in 2013 is currently focused on “Amber” (launched in 2016), an AI-enabled bot that helps manage employee engagement, predict attrition, and get a pulse on company culture in real time. The company also offers AI-driven exit surveys and analytics to improve retention.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, over 700,000 users across 250 organizations utilized inFeedo’s platform. Notable clients included GE Healthcare, Puma, Tata Group, and Lenovo.Funding and financialsIn its latest funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9099">March 2022</a>) inFeedo raised USD 12 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, reportedly tripling its valuation from less than 18 months ago. The fresh funds will be used for its second employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback for all employees and its go-to-market activities in North America. Further, the company claims it has achieved annual revenue of USD 1.6 million as of November 2020.

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

Sales Engagement Platforms

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;

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.

Chili Piper is a B2B sales workflow automation platform that specializes in demand conversion solutions, helping businesses streamline their lead qualification, routing, and meeting scheduling processes. Key products include Concierge for instant lead qualification and meeting scheduling directly from web forms, ChiliCal for advanced scheduling capabilities, Chat for engaging website visitors in real-time, Distro for automated lead distribution based on complex rules, and Handoff for facilitating smooth transitions between sales development representatives (SDRs) and account executives (AEs). The company’s technology integrates with CRM systems (Salesforce, HubSpot) and various inbound and outbound channels like web forms, chat, and email.&nbsp;Offers a unique sales proposition via its "inbound sales development representative (SDR)," which can schedule sales demos at the customer's request directly from the user’s website.Chili Piper claims that Concierge increases meeting conversion by 75%, Handoff improves show rates by 15%, and Distro saves 72 hours in lead time.In August 2024, the company acquired KosmoTime, an intelligent calendar solution, to further strengthen its B2B scheduling capabilities.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2024, the platform served more than 3,500 customers, including Twilio, Salesloft, Spotify, and Gong.&nbsp;In January 2023, the company announced that it has been accredited as a Premier Partner under the&nbsp; <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/434">Adobe</a> Exchange Program which is expected to boost client conversion rates and revenue potential.&nbsp;

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;

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.

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.

AI, robotics, and IoT to streamline the flow of goods and information

Logistics Tech

GrayOrange is a developer of robotic solutions for warehouse fulfillment and supply chain operations. The company’s solutions include “Ranger Rack-to-Person (RTP),” a goods-to-person autonomous mobile robot (AMR), and “Ranger PICK”, an autonomous robotic picking arm that uses AI-powered perception, manipulation, and grasping to automate order picking.The applications of GrayOrange’s technologies include unloading cartons/totes at inbound docks, pallet creation, and vertical and horizontal each picking. GrayOrange’s solutions are supported by its “GrayMatter,” a real-time order prioritization and fulfillment software.GreyOrange has operations in the Americas, Europe, Singapore, Japan, and India. It offers products on a subscription-based robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business model.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s customers include <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26945">Flaconi, </a>Apple Express, SEKO Logistics,Walmart, H&amp;M, Gold Bond, Rex Brown, COS, Plow&amp;Health, Nike, Logins@, GAP, GXO, and Coupang.GreyOrange has product partnerships with Pivotree (for tech; November 2022), Blue Yonder (for enhance fulfilment capabilities; May 2022), and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24860">Hai Robotics </a>(to optimize automation solutions; December 2023). The company also has partnerships to expand sales footprint across the UK, Eastern Europe, and the Nordics. The partners include Optimak STU (May 2023), Imperium Automation (March 2023), IDtotal (March 2023), IDNet (November 2022), and Logistex (April 2021).

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 Flexe provides an on-demand warehousing solution that connects retailers and brands to a network of warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment centers, transportation, and parcel carriers. Flexe has a network of distribution and fulfillment locations across North America, which is available for Flexe&rsquo;s customers on an on-demand basis. Flexe&rsquo;s offering is backed by its technology platform, which enables services such as order placement, order and inventory management, fulfillment, and transportation.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Flexe&rsquo;s customer base included six of the 10 largest US retailers and four of the five largest consumer packaged goods companies as of July 2022. Its customers include Johnston Logistics, Ace Hardware, Great Jones, Aterian, and Lull.&nbsp;
 
 
 Flexe&rsquo;s warehouse and logistics partner network includes DeFili Solutions, Mantoria, and Innovel. Flexe&rsquo;s platform also has integrations with ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and offers an integration with Google Merchant Center.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2022, Flexe raised USD 119 million in a Series D funding round led by BlackRock. The round valued the company at&nbsp;over USD 1 billion. The company intended to use the funds to expand the adoption of its logistics programs.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company layed off staff 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25350">
 in January 2024
 </a>
 (99 employees), and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22294">
 in September 2023
 </a>
 (about 131 employees; 33% of staff), citing the freight industry slowdown.
 
 
 Key competitors: None comparable
 (Flexe is the only startup in the Logistics Tech space that offers on-demand warehousing solutions connecting retailers and brands to a network of warehousing, distribution, and fulfillment centers in North America.)
 
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Locus Robotics develops autonomous mobile robots (AMR) for warehousing and manufacturing operations. It offers three main AMR solutions: 1) “Locus Origin,” an AMR designed for collaborative, high-volume order fulfillment; 2) “Locus Vector,” designed to handle small to medium payloads; and 3) “Locus Max,” designed for larger payloads. The AMR solutions are backed by “LocusONE,” a warehouse automation platform that uses AI and data science to deploy and manage the AMRs. LocusONE also generates real-time actionable insights to support operational decisions. The AMRs allow integration with warehouse management systems and warehouse control systems. The company also offers warehouse automation solution “LocusEmpower,” which supports a range of fulfillment types including zone-picking, discrete order picking, batch picking, and wave picking. It also offers <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27481">"LocusHub,"</a> an AI/ML-powered cloud-based business intelligence engine grounded with LocusONE for advanced analytics.The company offers its products on a robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) basis. In April 2024, Locus’s AMRs achieved the landmark of completing more than 3 billion unit picks.In September 2021, Locus Robotics acquired AMR provider Waypoint Robotics, which offers AMRs that are industrial-strength with omnidirectional mobility features, enabling Locus Robotics to gain access to new market segments. Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2023, the company had deployed its technology at 250+ locations in partnership with 100+ brands. Its global customers include Ceva Logistics, Boots, Cardinal Health, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27443">GEODIS, </a>DHL, DSV, JAS, Ryder, UniPharma, UnitedDrug, Go Retail Group, Bluegrass Supply Chain, FM Logistics, UPS, UPS Healthcare, VF Corporation, <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27275">Booktopia,</a> <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27659">John Lewis &amp; Partners</a> and ​<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33695">​KSP Fulfillment</a>.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30676">June 2024</a>, Locus Robotics entered a strategic partnership with Zion Solutions Group to integrate Locus's robotic solutions with Zion's supply chain solutions.Funding and financialsAs of November 2022, the company reported having USD 100 million+ in contracted recurring revenue.In November 2022, Locus Robotics <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14949?industryIds=6">raised USD 117 million </a>in Series F funding co-led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and G2 Venture Partners, valuing the company at “close to” USD 2 billion. The funds were to be used to facilitate the company’s continued growth and further expand global operations.

SVT Robotics offers a robotic integration platform to enable the integration of robots, automation, or IoT devices with enterprise software. The company’s robotic integration platform, “SOFTBOT,” is a tech-agnostic low-code platform that acts as a middleware that connects disparate robotic systems, allowing them to work together. SOFTBOT is designed with a plug-and-play approach that enables organizations to incorporate their preferred robots and automation systems (from companies such as RightHand Robotics and Vecna Robotics) into custom-built material flows. The platform enables organizations to track the performances of all their automation technologies by providing real-time performance analytics. The company offers its products on a subscription-based robotic integration-platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) basis. Key customers and partnershipsSVT Robotics’ customers span across the North American market and include companies such as CJ Logistics, Kenco Logistics, MacGregor Partners, andKardex Solutions. It also has a resell partnership with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/25867">Netlogistik.</a>SVT Robotics’s integrations include Locus Robotics, OSARO, Tecsys, VERSES Technologies, Barcodes, 6 River Systems, RightHand Robotics, Prologis, Fetch Robotics (Zebra Technologies), MiR, OMRON, OTTO Motors, and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27445">LG.</a>

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 Alaiko, founded in 2020 and exited from stealth in January 2022, is a Germany-based startup that offers warehousing and fulfillment solutions for ecommerce brands, supported by the company&rsquo;s proprietary logistics operating system. Services offered by Alaiko include first-mile handling and warehouse receiving, warehousing, order picking, shipping, and processing of returns. Alaiko uses technologies such as pick-by-light, sort-to-light, and conveyor technologies to support its fulfillment process. The company offers its services on a fulfilment-as-a-service busines model.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of April 2024, Alaiko had a customer network of 150+ companies including Atrikom Fulfilment, AMELI Zurich, The Female Company, ZO&Eacute; LU, Anio, bumpli,Hey Marly, gitti Conscious Beauty, Paperlike, TITAN, Schoko Winterscheidt GmbH, St&ouml;rtebekker Shaving Accessories, and Luoro GmbH.
 
 
 
 
 Alaiko&rsquo;s platform has integrations with ecommerce solution providers such as Magento, Shopify, Shopify Plus, Shopware, WooCommerce and Xentral. It also offers an integration with Klaviyo, a marketing automation platform to integrate Alaiko&rsquo;s shipping data with Klaviyo&rsquo;s email marketing updates. The company also offers its customers multi-carrier solutions and cross-border solutions in partnership with last-mile delivery operators such as DHL, Hermes, and UPS.
 
 
 &nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In January 2022, Alaiko raised USD 30 million in a series A round led by Next47 to expand its logistic partner network and fulfillment services, develop the company&rsquo;s operating system, and expand its international team.&nbsp;
 
 
 
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Vecna Robotics develops autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and case-picking robots (called&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35245">CaseFlow)</a> designed for material handling, supported by “Pivot.al,” the company’s fleet management and workflow optimization software platform largely pitched toward ecommerce operations. Pivot.al enables allocation and adjustment of workflow tasks in real time and enables integrations with legacy automation, robots, warehouse management systems (WMS), and management execution systems (MES). The company also enables companies to retrofit existing machinery into AMRs. It offers products on a subscription-based robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) business model.Key Customers and partnershipsVecna Robotics’ customers include FedEx, GE Appliances, Petco, Shape Corp, and Caterpillar.Vecna Robotics also has product partnerships with Ouster (a developer of digital LiDAR sensors) to obtain LiDAR for its autonomous robots until 2025 (January 2022) and advanced material handling technology solution provider Alta Material Handling Company (Alta MH) to offer Vecna’s solutions to its clients in the US (August 2021). Its other integration partners include Autotec, Barcodes, Mag Matiral Handling, Modo 8, Stac, and Storage Solutions.

Zip is an AI-powered procurement orchestration platform that streamlines the entire purchasing process for businesses of all sizes. Zip offers an end-to-end "intake-to-pay" solution that automates procurement from initial request to payment processing. The platform provides a single, intuitive interface for employees to initiate purchase requests routed through configurable approval workflows across finance, legal, IT, security, and other teams. Zip's no-code workflow builder also allows non-technical users to design and implement complex procurement processes without extensive training.The company's technology integrates with existing enterprise systems like ERPs, contract management software, and IT ticketing platforms. The platform also offers features such as purchase order management, accounts payable automation, and global B2B payments functionality.&nbsp;Zip's revenue model involved charging retail merchants and other businesses a fee when their customers use Zip's payment services at checkout. As of October 2024, Zip reported that over USD 107 billion in customer spending had been processed through its platform, with customers achieving USD 4.4 billion in savings since the company's launch.Key customers and partnershipsZip’s customers include Anthropic, Arm, Canva, Coinbase, Discover, Dollar Tree, Instacart, Lyft, Northwestern Mutual, Prudential, Reddit, Sephora, Snowflake, and Sprouts.

Technologies and processes that revolutionize the traditional construction industry

Construction Tech

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 Procore is a leading cloud-based construction management software platform that connects stakeholders across construction projects. Founded in 2003, Procore offers a comprehensive suite of tools for project management, quality and safety, construction financials, and field productivity. The platform allows unlimited users to access real-time project data, facilitating collaboration between office and field teams. Procore's core functionalities include document management, drawing management, RFIs, submittals, scheduling, budgeting, and reporting. The software is designed to streamline workflows, improve communication, and provide visibility into project health and performance.
 
 
 
 
 Procore's platform is accessible via web browsers and mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. The company emphasizes user-centric design and regularly updates its software based on customer feedback. Procore integrates with numerous third-party applications through its App Marketplace and offers an open API for custom integrations. The platform is used across various construction sectors, including commercial, residential, industrial, and infrastructure projects.
 
 
 
 
 In May 2021, Procore went public and is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange. The company has expanded internationally, with offices in the US, Canada, and other locations worldwide. Procore's pricing model is based on a company's annual construction volume rather than per-user fees, with custom enterprise solutions available for larger organizations.
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 
 Procore serves a diverse range of clients in the construction industry, from small contractors to large enterprises. Some notable customers include Mortenson Construction, Lennar, HITT Contracting, and Turner Construction. In Canada, companies like Houle Electric have adopted Procore to manage their hybrid work environments and multi-trade collaborations.
 
 
 
 
 Procore has established partnerships with various technology providers to enhance its offerings. For example, the company integrated with ProEst estimating software in 2013 to streamline the transition from estimating to project management. Procore also supports integrations with common business tools like Microsoft Office, Google Drive, and Salesforce, as well as construction-specific software such as Sage 300 CRE and Viewpoint.
 
 
 
 
 The company has focused on expanding its presence in international markets. In November 2022, Procore announced that several European contractors, including Ardmac, Henry Boot Construction, and BW: Workplace Experts, had adopted its platform. These partnerships demonstrate Procore's growing influence in the global construction technology market.
 
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EquipmentShare is a construction technology and equipment solutions provider founded in 2015 and headquartered in Columbia, Missouri. The company offers a comprehensive suite of services including equipment rental, fleet management technology, and digital solutions for the construction industry. At the core of EquipmentShare's offerings is its proprietary T3 technology platform, a cloud-based operating system that integrates telematics, hardware, and software to monitor equipment health, track utilization, and optimize rental operations. The T3 platform allows contractors to gather real-time data on their machinery, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and improve productivity.
The company's rental fleet features equipment from trusted brands like Genie, Takeuchi, and Doosan, enhanced with EquipmentShare's T3 technology. This technology enables features such as GPS tracking, real-time alerts on location and rental status, and remote monitoring of machine utilization and health. EquipmentShare also offers a mobile app for customers to manage their rentals, including online reservations and instant off-renting capabilities. Beyond rentals, the company provides equipment sales, both new and used, with machines outfitted with their fleet management technology.
EquipmentShare has experienced rapid growth since its inception. As of September 2023, the company had expanded to more than 185 locations across the US, including rental, retail, and service centers. In 2022 alone, EquipmentShare opened 32 new branch locations. The company employed over 4,100 team members as of April 2023. EquipmentShare is also investing in its future growth, with plans to build a new headquarters in Columbia, Missouri, which could potentially be ten times the size of its current campus and create 500 new jobs.

Kojo is a construction industry materials and inventory management platform that streamlines the procurement process for trade and self-perform contractors. Founded in 2018, the company offers an all-inclusive digital platform that connects office teams, field crews, warehouses, accounting teams, and vendors to provide real-time visibility into materials spending and usage. Kojo's system automates manual data entry, shortens purchase order processing time, and helps contractors source better prices across vendors.
The platform includes features such as automated invoice matching, warehouse inventory management, and a Request for Quote (RFQ) tool. Using Kojo's RFQ feature, contractors can quickly compare material prices and availability across thousands of vendors, potentially saving 3-5% per order. In the field, Kojo reduces the time supervisors spend managing materials by up to 38%, while for office teams, it can shorten purchase order processing time by up to 75%.
As of March 2023, Kojo had processed USD 2.8 million in invoices through its Automated Invoice Matching feature, catching mistakes on 27% of invoices processed. The company has expanded its services to cover all major construction trades, including mechanical, concrete, drywall, roofing, and flooring. In June 2023, Kojo launched its offering for mechanical contractors, processing over 17,000 purchase orders worth USD 50 million during its beta phase.

Versatile offers an AI and IoT platform that transforms construction sites into smart, data-collecting environments. The company's flagship product, CraneView, is a solution that mounts under the hook of any crane to capture and analyze thousands of data points in real-time. This technology provides unparalleled production data on jobsites, including information on materials, redundancies, construction progress, and crane utilization. CraneView enables construction digitalization through the automated capture and analysis of field data, empowering project teams to work safer and faster.
The company's solution aims to increase efficiency, safety, and cost-savings on construction sites. Versatile's technology has been shown to deliver value, insights, and critical learnings to get the most out of construction projects. By December 2020, CraneView was being used by top General Contractors on projects across the US and Canada. The company's approach turns traditionally time-consuming, manual processes into a controllable manufacturing process with fast feedback loops.

Assignar is a cloud-based construction operations and management software platform designed to streamline processes for general and subcontractors. The company's software helps construction teams manage labor, crews, equipment, resource-loaded scheduling, field data, and timesheets. Assignar's platform features smart allocations, which connect important details to resources, including availability and certifications, allowing users to find and schedule them quickly. The software also offers drag-and-drop scheduling, a recommendation engine for qualified and available workers, and a jobsite app for field-to-office communication.
One of Assignar's key features is its digital time cards, which save an estimated 16 hours compared to traditional methods. The platform allows users to notify workers of shifts, confirm shifts, clock in and out, and fill out timesheets from the field. This streamlined process reportedly saves 4-6 hours on payroll tasks. Assignar also provides real-time reporting and analytics through its Assignar Insights feature, enabling teams to evaluate overall performance and productivity. The platform integrates with accounting and ERP software, further enhancing its utility for construction businesses.
In September 2022, Assignar introduced new features to improve construction operations, including "Assignar in 45," an onboarding approach designed to help users quickly understand the platform, and "Assisted Data Import," which uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to normalize and structure imported data. The company also implemented "Assignar Signals," which provides in-platform indicators for shift-related issues, helping teams make better scheduling decisions.

RenoRun is an ecommerce platform for construction and building materials that aims to streamline the supply chain for builders and contractors. Founded in 2017 in Montreal, Canada, the company offers an on-demand delivery service for construction supplies, including lumber, drywall, insulation, shingles, siding, hardware, doors, and paint. RenoRun's platform allows contractors to order materials through a desktop site or mobile app, with deliveries made within two to four hours directly to job sites. The company sources materials from local hardware stores and its own network of warehouses, offering over 4,500 products through its online catalog.
RenoRun's business model is designed to increase job site efficiency by eliminating the need for contractors to leave work sites to purchase supplies, saving time and reducing labor costs. The platform also enables contractors to manage material orders across multiple job sites, consolidating purchases from various vendors. In addition to its core delivery service, RenoRun has expanded its offerings to include a FinTech product to help contractors finance material purchases.
The company experienced significant growth, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic, as customers were drawn to contactless delivery options. By February 2022, RenoRun had expanded its operations to serve six markets across Canada and the US, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal, and Washington D.C. At that time, the company reported having over 500 employees and serving more than 10,000 customers. RenoRun claimed to be growing 2x to 3x year-over-year and expected to exceed nine figures in revenue in 2022.
However, in May 2023, RenoRun faced significant challenges and was forced to shut down its operations. The company entered an insolvency process and began pursuing the sale of its assets through Quebec courts.

Built Robotics is a San Francisco-based company that develops autonomous construction machinery, primarily focusing on the solar energy sector. The company's flagship product is the Exosystem, an aftermarket upgrade that transforms manually-operated excavators into autonomous robots. Built Robotics' technology has been used to install over two GW of solar capacity across the US since 2018, enough to power more than 400,000 homes. In March 2023, the company unveiled the RPD 35 (Robotic Pile Driver 35), a fully autonomous solar piling system designed to accelerate the construction of utility-scale solar farms. The RPD 35 combines surveying, pile distribution, pile driving, and inspection into one integrated process, allowing a two-person crew to install over 300 piles per day, which is up to five times faster than traditional methods. This system utilizes Built's construction AI software, a custom pile cartridge system, and advanced sensors like RTK GPS to achieve high accuracy and efficiency. In addition to the RPD 35, Built Robotics offers autonomous trenching solutions for solar projects. The company's focus on automation aims to address labor shortages in the construction industry while improving worker safety and efficiency.

Remote learning is driving an education technology revolution.

EdTech: K-12

<div>
 
 Founded in 2004 by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel, Roblox is an online gaming and digital experience platform created to allow users to design their own digital experiences using a 3D desktop design tool, Roblox Studio, and share them online to be played by people around the world. Originally backed by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer Investment Group, Investment Group of Santa Barbara, and Warner Music Group, Roblox was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker &lsquo;RBLX&rsquo; in March 2021. With 150 million total users and 33 million active users as of 2020, the company operates a freemium model allowing users to access its vast array of content for free while offering premium options through the sale of its in-game currency &ldquo;Robux.&rdquo;&nbsp;
 
 
 Roblox for Education allows educators to create and share their lesson plans with students around the world using the Roblox platform. The platform includes classroom resources mainly consisting of lesson plans on introductions to coding, STEM learning, history, and game development among hundreds of others. In addition to user-created content, the company also publishes stand-alone modules that can be used to practice individual concepts.&nbsp;
 
 
 In November 2021, Roblox announced a USD 10 million Roblox Community Fund (RCF) to further expand its educational offering. The aim of the fund is to invest in education companies that integrate Roblox Studio into STEM-focused curricula and educational games. The first companies to receive the funding were FIRST, a non-profit robotics community, and Filament Games, an educational game developer.&nbsp;
 
 
 In December 2020, Roblox Corp acquired the intellectual property assets of Imbellus, a developer of simulation-based assessments of cognitive skills, to sharpen its recruitment practices before a late 2020 planned IPO. Imbellus is used by employers for recruitment and human capital development. Roblox will create a new team within the company led by Imbellus founder, Rebecca Kantar, to build a fair and objective assessment system for recruitment to source talent from more diverse backgrounds.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In May 2022, the company
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10764">
 partnered with
 </a>
 Digital therapeutics (DTx) company Akili Interactive Labs, to host Akili&rsquo;s DTx solution for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on its gaming platform.&nbsp;&nbsp;
 
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 Founded in 2011 by Byju Raveendran and Divya Gokulnath, Bangalore-based Byju&rsquo;s is an educational technology and online tutoring app operated by the Think and Learn corporation. It is also India&rsquo;s most-valuable startup. Byju&rsquo;s offers online video-based learning programs for K-12 students and domestic and overseas exams. It launched &ldquo;Byju's: The Learning App&rdquo; in 2015 to offer learning programs for students in grades 6&ndash;12, followed by the K5 app for grades 4&ndash;5 in 2017, and its early learning program for grades 1&ndash;3 in 2019. In August 2021, the company introduced a 'two-teacher' feature for its online tutoring program; reportedly the first offering of its kind in the Indian online tuition sector. As of March 2022, Byju&rsquo;s served 150 million users, up from 80 million it reached earlier in 2021.
 
 
 The company has made several acquisitions in its domestic market of India: LabInApp, an app that simulates the experience of lab equipment and experiments (September 2020); Delhi-based tutorial chain Aakash Educational Services (January 2021); Mumbai-based Scholr which uses AI and real tutors to provide on-demand homework and tutoring support (February 2021); HashLearn, an online coaching platform that tutors students for competitive exams (May 2021); Mumbai-based Toppr, an after-school learning app (July 2021); Bengaluru-based Great Learning, a provider for online professional and higher education (July 2021); Bengaluru-based AR company Whodat to introduce more immersive products into their existing product line (August 2021); and GradeUp, an Indian online exam preparation platform (September 2021). Its most recent acquisition was in February 2022, when its subsidiary Great Learning 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8663?industryIds=21">
 acquired Superset, 
 </a>
 a recruitment automation platform. In June 2022, unconfirmed reports stated that Byju&rsquo;s laid off 2,500+ employees across its group of companies, to cut down on operational expenditure and realign its strategic initiatives.
 
 
 In 2021, the company introduced its flagship product to the US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico. The international business will carry the Byju&rsquo;s Future School brand and will offer coding, math, science, English, music, and fine arts in synchronous and asynchronous formats. In July 2021, Byju&rsquo;s announced the launch of its Learning App featuring Disney in the US.
 
 
 Byju&rsquo;s has made a series of acquisitions as part of its US expansion, with plans to invest USD 1 billion in North America over 2021&ndash;2023: Palo Alto-based Osmo, the developer of an AI-based educational play system for children aged 5-12 (2019); Mumbai-based WhiteHat Jr., a coding platform for children that generates nearly half of its revenue from the US (2020); Epic, a Redwood City-based online reading platform provider (July 2021); Tynker, a US-based platform that specializes in teaching coding to kids aged 5&ndash;18 (September 2021); and Austria-based GeoGebra, a mathematics learning platform (December 2021). In June 2022, Byju&rsquo;s announced that it planned to acquire 2U, an online learning management solution for universities, for USD 2.4 billion. In May 2022, the company was reportedly in discussion with lenders, including Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, to raise 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10406">
 more than USD 1 billion 
 </a>
 to acquire an undisclosed EdTech firm. Byju's was expected to generate USD 300 million in revenue from its overseas markets in 2021, and targets revenue of USD 1 billion from the US over 2021&ndash;2023.
 
 
 Byju&rsquo;s Labs is an in-house research and development solution launched in October 2021. Based out of the UK, US, and India, Labs will focus on generating new ideas, developing technologies and solutions across Byju&rsquo;s portfolio, and improving personalization and accessibility for students. Byju&rsquo;s Tuition Centre (launched in February 2022) is a network of offline tuition centres that combine both online and offline learning products for students in grades 4&ndash;10. Byju&rsquo;s announced in 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16035?industryIds=21">
 January 2023
 </a>
 that it planned to open 300 physical tuition centers within the year to boost its hybrid coaching as the need for online education declines post-pandemic. In June 2023, the firm unveiled 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19834">
 three new transformer models
 </a>
 as part of its commitment to leveraging AI in education. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In June 2021, Byju&rsquo;s partnered with Google to integrate Byju&rsquo;s math and science curriculum with Google Workspace for Education on the Vidyartha platform&mdash;which will be available for free to participating educational institutions in India. The company has also partnered with several not-for-profit educational initiatives such as NITI Aayog, Isha Vidhya, and Bharat Edtech to educate children in underserved communities. It has also teamed up with technology company Intel to upskill coding and math teachers using the &ldquo;Intel Skills for Innovation Professional Development&rdquo; suite. In September 2022, the firm partnered with AR solution provider Meta Immersive Learning, to integrate the Spark AR Curriculum into Byju&rsquo;s platform allowing children aged 13+ to access Spark AR coding courses and create customized AR effects such as Facebook filters.&nbsp; 
 
 
 In March 2022, the company partnered with Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), to launch its EdTech platform and R&amp;D center in Qatar and extend its services to the MENA region.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 Byju's raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13823?industryIds=21">
 USD 250 million
 </a>
 in a funding round from 
 existing investors, including Qatar Investment Authority, in October 2022, leading to a valuation of USD 22 billion. However, in June 2023, Prosus, the largest non-founder shareholder in Byju's, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19834">
 significantly reduced the value of its stake
 </a>
 in the company from USD 6 billion to USD 493 million.
 The round follows 1) a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13466">
 USD 49 million fundraising
 </a>
 in early October 2022; 2) a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9068">
 USD 800 million fundraising
 </a>
 in March 2022 led by its co-Founder and CEO Byju Raveendran, who invested up to USD 400 million; and 3) a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/6682">
 USD 68 million Series F fundraise in November 2021.
 </a>
 The company reported in September 2022 that it was unable to close its USD 800 million fundraise with USD 250 million pending from investors citing volatile market conditions.&nbsp;
 
 
 In May 2023, the firm raised 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19027">
 USD 250 million via a structured credit transaction
 </a>
 led by Davidson Kempner Capital Management to support its core business activities and expansion plans. Moreover, in October 2022, the company secured 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/14084">
 INR 3 billion (~USD 36.45 million)
 </a>
 in debt financing from its subsidiary Aakash Educational Services for the principal activities of its Think &amp; Learn platform. In November 2022, it also revealed its intention to publicly list Aakash Education Services. 
 
 
 In April 2021, founder Byju Raveendran shared plans of Byju&rsquo;s to go public in India or the US and, in December 2021, unconfirmed reports revealed that the company was in advanced talks with Churchill Capital's special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to raise USD 4 billion at a valuation of USD 48 billion in an IPO in the US in mid-2022. In September 2022, Byju&rsquo;s stated that it had 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13077?industryIds=21">
 postponed its plans for going public
 </a>
 this year due to uncertain macroeconomic conditions and is considering an IPO in 9&ndash;12 months.
 
 
 In June 2022, Byju&rsquo;s reported that it expected its subsidiary Aakash Educational Services to record top-line growth of 60%&ndash;70% in FY2022, due to the reopening of schools and colleges. Based on this, the company planned to expand the team and open new centers during the year.
 
 
 Early September 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12964">
 came under scrutiny for not meeting its financial reporting deadlines
 </a>
 for the fiscal year ended March 2021. According to the company, the filing of audited accounts was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the complexity of accounting for numerous acquisitions in FY2021. By mid-September, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13077">
 released audited FY2021 results
 </a>
 after a delay of 18 months. Byju&rsquo;s reported a revenue decline of 3.3% YoY to INR 24.28 billion (~USD 305.6 million) in FY2021. This was due to the company adopting a new revenue recognition model which deferred ~40% of its revenue to FY2022. Byju's losses widened to USD 577.4 million in FY2021 compared to a loss of USD 32.9 million the previous year. The company also stated that it generated gross revenue of USD 1.26 billion in FY2022 and a revenue of USD 570 million in the first four months of FY2023. 
 
 
 &lt;h3&gt;WhiteHat Jr.&lt;/h3&gt;
 
 
 Founded in 2018, Mumbai-based WhiteHat Jr. is an online platform for children aged 6&ndash;18 to learn programming for games, animations, applications, and more using a one-on-one online teaching format. The platform covers subjects like data structure, app and game development, machine learning, and space technology. In line with its plans to launch new subjects, WhiteHat Jr. launched the &lsquo;Create with Math&rsquo; curriculum in February 2021 and online music classes, starting with piano and guitar, in May 2021.
 
 
 The company has expanded beyond its home market of India to the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. As of May 2021, WhiteHat Jr. had an 11,000-strong, all-female workforce, 8 million registered students, and 8.5 million cumulative classes taught globally as of May 2021. As of August 2021, WhiteHat Jr. also offered its coding curriculum to schools, with 500 schools already signed up with near-term goals of reaching 1,000 schools as well as training 1 million students through the &ldquo;physical blended training model&rdquo; in 2022.
 
 
 WhiteHat Jr. partnered with Thunkable, p5.js, Google Colab, Google Dialog Flow, Tensor Flow, Visual Studio Code, Codepen.io, Expo, and Jupyter Notebook and Code.org, a global computer science education non-profit, to enhance its coding curriculum. The company also partnered with FutureSkills Prime, a digital skill building platform offered by Nasscom and the Electronics and IT Ministry, in September 2021, to offer a course on artificial intelligence targeted at undergraduates and executives. In December 2021, WhiteHat Jr. partnered with Mojang, the developer of the videogame &lsquo;Minecraft&rsquo; to offer &lsquo;Code with Minecraft&rsquo; courses to teach students coding fundamentals, while WhiteHat Jr. educators gained access to workshops provided by the &lsquo;Minecraft Education Edition Teacher Academy. In May 2022, the company partnered with EnduroSat, a Bulgarian aerospace manufacturer, to enable kids to code a satellite.&nbsp;In August 2020, WhiteHat Jr. was acquired by Byju&rsquo;s for USD 300 million. The acquisition was designed to strengthen Byju&rsquo;s position in India and gain access to the top-tier market with a higher education spend, and aid its US expansion strategy. Byju&rsquo;s infused USD 18.4 million into the company the following month towards innovating the platform and product, expanding the teacher base, and scaling the business. According to Byju&rsquo;s, WhiteHat Jr. will continue to operate as a separate entity for now. A year after its acquisition, CEO and founder Karan Bajaj exited the company with Byju&rsquo;s Head of Customer Experience and Delivery, Trupti Mukker taking his place. More recently, in May 2022, more than 800 employees of WhiteHat Jr reportedly resigned from the company due to the termination of the 'work from home' policy. 
 
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Founded in 2015 by Amir Nathoo, Outschool is a marketplace of live, online, just-for-fun classes for children aged 3 to 18. Class teachers are independent and may be certified teachers, artists, scientists or other adults with an expertise or an interest to share. Classes meet in small groups over live video chat. Based on the idea that a significant amount of impactful learning occurs outside the classroom, Outschool promotes learner-directed, interest-based education. The company’s vision is to build a global education community that supplements local schools. Teachers retain 70% of class fees, with Outschool earning the remaining 30%. In 2020, Outschool launched in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. As of April 2021, ongoing classes account for 50% of the company’s business.In mid-March 2020 the company established Outschool.org to provide free classes to families facing financial hardship following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. In July 2022, the company announced that it laid off 31 employees or 18% of its workforce to cut down on costs and streamline operations.In September 2023, Outschool launched its AI Teaching Assistant tool for tutors to create progress reports for students. AI Teaching Assistant allows tutors to input session details and generates paragraphs summarizing students’ performance, facilitating communication with parents.Funding and financialsIn September 2020, Outschool raised USD 45 million in Series B funding to grow its workforce and expand beyond its consumer business to gain entry into school districts. The company raised USD 75 million in Series C funding in April 2021, for workforce expansion, particularly internationally. The company may also consider acquiring early-stage startups providing direct-to-consumer learning solutions in international markets. In October the same year, Outschool raised USD 110 million in Series D funding with a valuation of USD 3 billion led by Tiger Global Management and BOND to support and develop its ongoing initiatives including the recently launched “Outschool Pods,” a solution for teachers to plan ongoing organized classes in small group settings.As of September 2020, the company reported revenue of USD 54 million and recorded a profit for the first time. Annualized revenue for 2020 was estimated at USD 100 million, up from USD 6.5 million in 2019 and USD 500,000 in 2017.

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 Founded in 2015 by Ankit Gupta and Deepak Cheenath, Quizizz is an education platform that allows teachers to create gamified quizzes and interactive lessons designed to generate immediate student feedback. Although similar to Kahoot! in terms of educational technique, Quizizz offers two application modes–a real-time formative evaluation, and an extracurricular assignment arranged by the teacher. Kahoot!, on the other hand, relies on real-time evaluation, testing, and classroom discussions. Quizizz also allows students to answer questions independently at their own pace, unlike Kahoot! which brings students together in a classroom simulation. 
 
 
 The platform contains more than 30 million quizzes from primary school mathematics to higher education that teachers can use and customize. Teachers can also create quizzes and share them among peers. During 2020, students answered more than 13 billion questions on the platform. As of June 2021, the platform had more than 60 million monthly active users and was used in more than 120 countries, including more than 80% of US schools. Students answered more than 300 million questions on Quizizz each week.  
 
 
 In March 2021, Quizizz raised USD 12.5 million in Series A funding to expand its school and corporate customer support team, and its international user base. In June 2021, the company raised USD 31.5 million in a Series B funding round to expand its US and India teams, and continue its international expansion through partnerships.
 
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<div>
 
 Founded in 2017 by Hugh Yao, LingoAce is a Singapore-based company that offers a Mandarin-focused online language learning platform that provides kids aged 3 to 15 years with immersive learning experiences across a range of proficiency levels. The platform leverages over 4,500 professionally-certified teachers with international accreditation to provide live, one-on-one and group classes as well as real-time feedback. Additionally, teaching quality and developing curricula and learning experiences are assessed via machine learning-based technology. As of July 2022, the company has offices in the US, Southeast Asia, and China, and serves students across 100 countries. In December 2021, the company reported that it had achieved growth in bookings of nearly 5x since the end of 2019.
 
 
 In April 2022, the company launched an English language learning program, “English Live”, leveraging its expertise and technology in teaching Mandarin.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships 
 
 
 In July 2022, the company partnered with Workday, an enterprise management solution provider, to streamline its business processes to support its global expansion plans.
 
 
 Funding and financials
   
 
 
 In December 2021 LingoAce raised USD 105 million in a Series C funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. The funds were used to grow the company’s international employee base with significant hiring in the US, Europe, and Southeast Asia across multiple functions including curriculum, product development, and sales and marketing. 
 
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<div>
 
 GoGuardian is a provider of student security software solutions to help educators identify learning patterns, protect students from harmful and distracting content, and support students at risk of self-harm and suicide. As of August 2021, the company had partnered with more than 10,000 schools in the US, covering more than 22 million students.  
 
 
 In November 2020, GoGuardian announced a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1863">
 merger with Pear Deck
 </a>
 to deepen the support provided to students and teachers and improve their in-class experience. Founded in 2014, Pear Deck is a student engagement platform that allows teachers to create, edit, and launch multimedia content and formative assessments on students' devices to increase student engagement. At the time of the merger, Pear Deck was used by 8 million educators and students in more than 17,000 schools worldwide. Pear Deck co-founder and Chief Educator, Michal Eynon-Lynch, will join the GoGuardian Board of Directors. In May 2022, the company acquired 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10683">
 TutorMe,
 </a>
 Zovio’s tutoring services business, for USD 55 million in cash to strengthen its product offering. 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, GoGuardian secured a USD 200 million investment from Tiger Global Management. The funds will be allocated for product innovation, talent acquisition, and business development. 
 
 
 
</div>

Membership-based, non-insurance healthcare companies helping maintain a steady state of well being.

Preventive Healthcare

Hinge Health is a digital musculoskeletal (MSK) care company that provides a holistic platform to manage chronic pain and musculoskeletal conditions. Its technology combines teleconsultations with physical therapists, mobile app-based exercise therapy programs, and educational resources tailored to each patient's needs. The company was the first to launch a Digital MSK Clinic that combines guided one-on-one therapy with wearable motion sensors to provide real-time feedback and allow users to track their progress.&nbsp;Hinge’s product offering covers the full spectrum of MSK care, from prevention to post-surgical recovery, with access to virtual and <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15611">house-call</a> physical therapists and health coaches. The company includes solutions for women’s pelvic health as well. In September 2024, the company introduced Enso 3, an FDA-cleared wireless device that leverages electrical nerve stimulation to provide non-invasive, non-addictive pain relief within minutesIn September 2021, the company acquired Canada-based computer vision platform, Wrnch to offer personalized MSK care offering by motion tracking.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2024, its services were available to 18 million covered lives via its partnerships with over 1,700 employers and over 45 insurance providers.In <a href="https://www.hingehealth.com/resources/press-releases/hinge-health-creates-strategic-solutions-alliance/">May 2024</a>, the company launched a Strategic Solutions Alliance to expand MSK care. Initial partners of the alliance include<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22550">Teladoc Health</a>, Springbuk, Quantum Health, Personify Health, Lyra, Included Health, Children’s Hospital Association, Employer Direct Healthcare, Accolade, Alight, apree health, and Carrum Health.&nbsp;&nbsp;Further, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/30546">June 2024</a>, the company partnered with Upswing Health, a virtual orthopedic care company, to provide an integrated care experience for clients using both services. In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33024">August 2024</a>, the company partnered with Midi Health to provide its members access to menopause care in Midi Health's virtual care clinic.

Aledade is a value-based healthcare provider that offers population health technology solutions for independent primary care practices to identify and manage their most at-risk patients. It provides the tools, technology, and support to deliver coordinated primary care services under its accountable care organization (ACO) network.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16538">February 2023</a>, the company acquired Curia, an AI-enabled value-based care analytics platform, to use Curia’s platform to improve its data-gathering capabilities, refine patient-care targeting, and enhance primary care workflow.Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2024, the company collaborated with more than 1,900 independent primary care practices and over 16,300 clinicians across 45 states and the District of Columbia.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16840">March 2023</a>, the company announced a 10 year collaboration with health insurer Humana to provide independent primary care physicians within Humana’s network with the necessary tools to provide value-based primary care.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19610">June 2023</a>, the firm completed a USD 260 million Series F funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which was allocated towards the growth of Aledade's primary care network, strengthening strategic alliances with health plans, and enhancing technology and support for partner practices and patients.

Cityblock Health is a value-based healthcare provider focused on delivering comprehensive care to underserved communities, primarily Medicaid and lower-income Medicare beneficiaries. The company combines primary care, behavioral health, and social services to address the complex physical, mental, and social needs of its members.Cityblock's model involves partnering with local community-based organizations and deploying multidisciplinary care teams that include doctors, nurses, behavioral health specialists, and community health workers. These teams provide personalized care through 24/7 access to multi-modal care delivery, including in-home visits, telehealth, and community health hubs.The services of Cityblock are available to members at no additional cost if they are covered by an eligible health plan.Key Customers and PartnershipsAs of May 2024, the company’s services were available in seven states across the US and served over 100,000 members.In May 2024, it partnered with <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29647">Sunshine Health</a> to expand to Florida, and, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13270">September 2022</a>, it partnered with MDwise to expand into Indiana. Prior to that, the company had partnered with insurance providers such as ConnectiCare (Connecticut), Tufts Health Plan (Massachusetts), Emblem Health (New York), Healthy Blue (North Carolina), Molina Healthcare (Ohio) and CareFirst (Washington DC).Funding and FinancialsCityblock is a spin-off of Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet company that incubates and invests in tech companies and products to improve urban infrastructure. It completed a USD 400 million Series D funding round led by Softbank in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5326">September 2021</a>, valuing the company at USD 5.7 billion. The funds were used to expand its services.

Virta Health provides reversal treatments for Type 2 diabetes and other chronic metabolic diseases through behavioral and lifestyle changes while reducing dependence on medication.The company provides a virtual metabolic clinic with personalized nutrition therapy and continuous remote care from physicians and health coaches. The company has also extended its service offering to include prediabetes reversal, obesity treatment, and provider-led management for Type 2 diabetes.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the company has signed up more than 350 enterprise customers, including Blue Shield of California (3.7 million members), the US Department of Veterans Affairs, US Foods, Nielsen, Purdue University, Humana and AutoZone.Funding and financialsIn April 2021, Virta Health raised USD 133 million in Series E funding. The new round values the company at USD 2 billion from USD 1.1 billion in December 2020, nearly doubling its value in under five months.

Calibrate is a virtual weight loss management platform focused on chronic conditions such as obesity. It is built on the concept of metabolic reset, offering a one-year virtual program for weight loss via a mobile application. The app allows users to consult with obesity specialists, receive metabolism medication, access educational tools and health coaching to treat conditions such as pre-diabetes. In addition, users can track food intake, energy levels, and weight daily using the Calibrate app.The platform charges an annual subscription charge of USD 199 per month for its 52-week program, which includes a metabolic health assessment and a free kit with a smart scale and blood pressure cuff. Members can also purchase a one-time assessment with a Calibrate physician for USD 249.Calibrate claims to be the first D2C telemedicine startup to prescribe Wegovy, a FDA-approved (June 2021) injection for chronic weight management, and to deliver a holistic metabolic reset program with lifestyle interventions. As a result, Calibrate members have reported an annual weight loss of 15%, exceeding the goal of 10%.Key customers and partnershipsThe company’s services were available in 28 US states (as of May 2024) and had experienced a 51% month-over-month membership growth since June 2020.In February 2024, the company partnered with OptumRx to provide weight loss programs to employers. Furthermore, in February 2022, Calibrate partnered with Withings Health Solutions to integrate connected devices with Calibrate’s program.Funding and financialsIn February 2024, it raised an undisclosed funding from Madryn Asset Management to fund its growth initiatives.

Viz.ai offers an AI-powered integrated care coordination platform called Viz.ai One and develops diagnostic tools to support the early detection of deteriorating patient conditions by cross-referencing a patient’s CT images with its database of scans. The software then alerts healthcare providers and helps triage patients to specialists via its mobile app. The app also allows healthcare providers to view high-quality scans from any location.The Viz.ai One suite includes 1) Viz Vascular, tools for vascular medicine, 2) Viz Neuro, tools for suspected neuro diseases, 3) Viz Cardio, tools for cardiovascular needs, 4) Viz Trauma, 5) Viz Radiology, for radiologists, and 6) Viz Connect, a communication and workflow tool. In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35070">October 2024</a>, it launched a software incorporating natural language processing alongside imaging AI to enhance patient screening and follow-up for lung diseases.In 2021, Centers for Medicare &amp; Medicaid Service granted Viz.ai with the New Technology Add-On Payment, an industry first for AI technology in healthcare. This gives hospitals a maximum of USD 1,040 in additional payments per diagnosis for using its AI-enabled stroke intervention. The company has been rapidly expanding its offering, including the launch of a life science platform to perform clinical trials and support a go-to-market strategy.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of May 2024, the company has partnered with 1,600 hospitals across the US, Europe, Middle-East and Africa for its AI driven platform.&nbsp;Further in November 2022, the company partnered with Singaporean-based software development company Us2.ai to offer echocardiogram analysis in the Viz Platform. In May 2024, Viz.ai announced the collaboration with the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) to incorporate their Viz Subdural software into a study. Additionally, the company partnered with Cleerly in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33270">September 2024</a> to integrate Cleerly's AI software for coronary computed tomography angiography analysis into Viz.ai's One platform.

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.
 
</div>

Patreon provides a platform for creators to offer numerous types of content (videos, text, podcasts, images, etc.) for which fans can subscribe to a monthly membership without any ads or algorithms. Patrons (Patreon subscribers) can pay monthly or per post for content access, in addition to the pay-what-you-want option. Creators are paid monthly or for every new post uploaded. They can offer rewards for different tiers, including meeting patrons or custom work upon the patron’s request. Creators are offered three packages: Lite, Pro, and Premium. Lite offeirs basic creator tools for a membership business with no tiers for fans; Pro offers additional tools and perks (e.g., workshops) with unlimited membership tiers; Premium caters to established companies with a large following, earning a monthly income of USD 5,000 or more, offering Pro services in addition to advanced features and Dedicated Partner Manager services. Creators can start for free and are charged a monthly commission based on their plan when they start earning: 5% (Lite), 8% (Pro), and 12% (Premium), as well as payment processing fees.&nbsp;In&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36100">November 2024,</a> Patreon introduced new features allowing creators and fans to gift memberships and offer subscription discounts.The company revealed in November 2021 that it is building a video hosting platform with a native player to eliminate the reliance of third-party video hosting platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo for creators to share video content with their patrons.Memberful, a Patreon-owned membership software platform for independent creators, launched a newsletter feature in October 2021, allowing creators to send news emails to their subscribers. In the future, creators will be able to make posts publicly viewable and schedule and send targeted emails to specific groups of subscribers. Notably, Memberful’s paid plans (charged monthly) retain 4.9% of creator revenue, while competitor Substack retains 10%.Patreon acquired tech recruiting firm, Clear Talent, in August 2021 to scale up talent and build its engineering, product, and design team..Key Customers and partnershipsThe company has partnered with third-party services, including Vimeo (to host videos) and Discord (for community chats).&nbsp;As of August 2022, Patreon had more than 250,000 creators, over 8.5 million active subscribers, and had paid out more than USD 3.5 billion to creators.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Kajabi is a creator platform offering creators the necessary tools to transform their knowledge and expertise into successful online businesses. The platform primarily targets creative entrepreneurs, coaches, and any online businesses seeking to expand their brand presence and grow their online presence.Kajabi includes multiple features and tools for creators including the AI Creator Hub, which features tools to generate content ideas and then customize and refine the content to align with their brand and voice. The AI Creator Hub introduced several AI-powered tools in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18987">May 2023 </a>, such as the Course Generator and Content Assistant, which help creators generate content for online courses, podcasts, and more. The Creator Hub also features tools that help creators write sales emails, establish websites, create promotional videos, establish coaching programs, implement sales funnels, and host live streams and podcasts.Kajabi also features Kajabi Memberships, a membership website builder and membership management software for creators to manage their memberships/followers. In November 2021, Kajabi introduced its Coaching product, aimed at simplifying the use of various tools for creators and facilitating the development of stronger connections between coaches and their clients.In January 2023, Kajabi introduced the latest version of its community feature, known as Kajabi Communities, which lets creators engage with their audience and generate revenue from their offerings. Kajabi Communities includes features such as live calls, leaderboards, challenges, and accountability tools.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18987">May 2023 </a>, Kajabi launched two more products: 1) Kajabi Payments and 2) the Kajabi mobile app. Kajabi Payments gives creators additional payment options (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay), simplifies payment management, and improves sales conversion. The Kajabi mobile app lets creators offer their own branded mobile apps, enabling them to connect more closely with their audience and maintain control of their brand across all Kajabi offerings. In May 2024, the company launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29562">Creator.io, </a>an AI-powered chatbot system for creators.Kajabi’s business model is based on monthly subscription fees, starting from USD 119 a month for their basic package up to USD 319 a month for their pro package (June 2023). Kajabi charges 0% revenue fees from creators.Key customers and partnersAs of June 2023, the platform had over 60,000 creators and entrepreneurs who collectively earned USD 5 billion in lifetime gross merchandising value (GMV) from a customer base of over 75 million.In March 2024, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27541">partnered with Adobe Express </a>to launch an AI-powered generative tool called Creator Studio to turn individual videos into a variety of marketing content.Funding and financialsKajabi’s latest funding round was in May 2021 when it raised USD 550 million in the form of equity financing, which resulted in a company valuation of over USD 2 billion. The funding was led by Tiger Global Management, along with other investors TPG, Tidemark, Owl Rock Capital, and Meritech Capital, joining existing investor Spectrum Equity.

Clubhouse is a social app that allows users to spontaneously join group audio and text-based chat rooms. The platform is free to all users and does not offer any premium plans or charge any fee, while being ad-free. It was invite-only until July 2021, when it announced it was expanding access to everyone and did not require invitation (soon after its messaging feature “Backchannel” launch). Clubhouse has collected a sizeable roster of popular artists and celebrities including Drake, 21 Savage, Oprah Winfrey, Ashton Kutcher, Meek Mill, MC Hammer, Tiffany Haddish, and Mark Cuban on its platform. Over the first year (March 2020-2021), the Clubhouse app was downloaded more than 12 million times. As of April 2021, Clubhouse had 10 million weekly active users, including musicians, athletes, creators, comedians, and authors—though by July 2021, subscriber growth had reportedly slowed significantly. Reportedly, more than 700,000 rooms are created on the app daily as of September 2021.France’s privacy watchdog, the CNIL, opened a probe into Clubhouse in March 2021 following a complaint and petition with more than 10,000 signatures requesting regulatory intervention. The petition raised concerns of potential privacy breaches and the sale of user contact details to third-parties by Clubhouse. The Hamburg privacy regulator also voiced its data security concerns over the same app in February 2021. If Clubhouse is found breaching the GDPR guidelines, the CNIL stated it would be able to apply its own sanctions on the app.During 2021, the platform announced several improvements, including 1) “Clubhouse Creator First”, an accelerator program for creators (March 2021); 2) “Clubhouse Payments”, its first monetization feature for creators (April 2021) which enables fans to send money directly to the creator; 3) ‘exclusive audio chats’ launched in partnership with podcast media organization TED (July 2021); 4) “Backchannel”, a new 1:1 and group messaging feature (July 2021); 5) spatial audio effects, which give listeners a deeper awareness of the virtual surroundings (August 2021); 6) “Waves” that enables friends to have private conversations (September 2021); 7) “Replay” that allows hosts to record live rooms and save them to a club/ user profile to share later (November 2021).In April 2021, Twitter reportedly had been in talks to acquire Clubhouse for USD 4 billion; however, these discussions were stalled for undisclosed reasons. In the same month, Clubhouse raised an undisclosed amount in a new Series C funding round led by return investor Andreessen Horowitz. This round quadrupled Clubhouse’s valuation to USD 4 billion. The funds are to prepare the team to support the platform’s international growth, develop its localization and accessibility features, introduce more creator-supportive programs, further invest in the discovery feature, and continue to expand the support and community health teams.

Circle offers a community platform for creators to publish content and engage with paying customers. Community members can discuss various topics with creators and each other via Circle’s “Space.” Moreover, white-label custom domains are offered to communities. The company planned to eventually provide all the tools that a creator would require holistically (from publishing newsletters, videos, and audio podcasts to setting up streaming, engaging with customers, selling tickets and merchandise, and providing event calendars).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;It also reported that it had surpassed USD 4 million ARR in December 2021 (up from USD 1 million in December 2020 when it brought its iOS app out of beta mode).In February 2021, the company stated that 60% of its communities were “personality-led” by creators such as YouTubers, Twitch streamers, and Patreon creators. Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of October 2023, the company served 8,500+ communities.

RareCircles is a platform for the creation and primary sale of NFTs that enables creators and businesses to build personalized storefronts, sell paid memberships to followers, mint NFTs across multiple blockchains, and receive payments in fiat or crypto. RareCircles, which is in Early Access as of February 2022, also provides infrastructure to engage audiences post-purchase and customizable experiences through exclusive content, unique drops, and immersive benefits.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8301">February 2022 </a>, RareCircles raised USD 7.5 million in a seed funding round led by Tiger Global. The company intends to use the fresh funding to develop a new set of membership features.

AI-based solutions for evolving digital threats

Next-gen Cybersecurity

<div>
 
 SentinelOne offers a range of endpoint protection solutions for enterprises. The company provides the artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform &ldquo;Singularity,&rdquo; which is a unified offering for endpoint security, including a next-generation antivirus (NGAV), endpoint detection and response tools (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), and other tools to monitor endpoint behavior from laptops, phones, and internet-of-things (IoT) devices to identify threats. Singularity ActiveEDR incorporates Storyline Active Response (STAR) to provide automated threat detection and response and also enables end-users to write custom MITRE-compatible detection rules. SentinelOne&rsquo;s endpoint protection offering also extends to cloud endpoints and workloads, offering AI and behavior-based protection for virtual machines (VMs) and containers in the cloud. Singularity also provides features to centrally control cybersecurity policies and automate tasks for response and remediation. In addition to endpoint security, SentinelOne offers managed detection and response services, which support organizations with technology and human resources for threat hunting, response, and incident investigation.
 
 
 In April 2023, 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17965">
 SentinelOne launched a generative AI platform
 </a>
 for threat detection, allowing security teams to run threat detection and automated remediation operations using natural language instead of code based commands.
 
 
 In November 2023 the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23867">
 launched
 </a>
 a new, unified version of its Singularity platform, Singularity Unity, with upgraded cloud and endpoint security and data lake capabilities, as well as a GenAI cybersecurity assistant. Unity incorporated SentinelOne&rsquo;s &ldquo;PurpleAI&rdquo; models to simplify investigations, governance, and compliance and improving metrics such as mean time to detect/resolve (MTTD/MTTR).
 
 
 SentinelOne acquired cloud data-logging startup Scalyr in February 2021 for USD 155 million to bolster its own XDR capabilities. SentinelOne also entered into an agreement to acquire the identity threat detection and response (ITDR) startup 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9176">
 Attivo Networks 
 </a>
 for USD 616.5 million in March 2022, and expects to integrate Attivo Networks&rsquo; capabilities into its Singularity XDR solution to provide autonomous protection. This includes ITDR, identity infrastructure assessment, and identity cyber deception capabilities to protect endpoint, cloud workloads, IoT devices, mobile, and data against identity compromise, lateral movement attacks, credential theft, data cloaking, and more. This acquisition will also add to SentinelOne&rsquo;s gross margin and expand its total addressable market (TAM) by USD 4 billion in the critical identity security category.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 SentinelOne partnered with cloud services and cybersecurity distributor Exclusive Networks in July 2021 to launch its platform for Australian and New Zealand MSP and MSSPs. During the same period, the company inked a partnership with ConnectWise to offer its standalone endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions to its global partner base of technology solution providers (TSPs).
 
 
 SentinelOne has partnered with managed detection and response (MDR) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4878">
 providers 
 </a>
 such as 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/228245">
 Red Canary 
 </a>
 , deepwatch, and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/505475">
 BlueVoyant 
 </a>
 to 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/sectors/work/updates/6173">
 integrate 
 </a>
 its solution with the latter&rsquo;s MDR offerings. In addition, SentinelOne has also partnered with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/75116">
 Zscaler 
 </a>
 , a cloud network security 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/sectors/work/updates/5182">
 company 
 </a>
 , and Cloudflare, a web infrastructure and website security 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/5182">
 company 
 </a>
 , to push its own offerings through Zscaler and SentinelOne&rsquo;s services. It also 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12082">
 partnered
 </a>
 with the observable data management company, Cribl in August 2022 to leverage the latter&rsquo;s observability product suite to streamline cybersecurity triage, optimize data collection, and provide security teams control of their data. During the same month, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12235">
 partnered
 </a>
 with the IoT security startup, Armis to jointly provide three unified solutions that protect organizations across endpoints, cloud, mobile, IoT, OT devices, and more. In December 2021, Sentinel 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7149">
 partnered 
 </a>
 with Attivo Networks, to integrate its Singularity XDR with Attivo Networks&rsquo; Endpoint Detection Net (EDN) suite for a combined solution that prevents attackers from compromising endpoints, and to detect lateral movements to provide Active Directory protection, credential theft detection, and removal of exposed credentials. The company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/12331">
 partnered
 </a>
 with the cybersecurity and compliance company, Proofpoint to integrate SentinelOne Singularity XDR and Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP) solutions and provide organizations with threat intelligence, detection, and response across emails, endpoints, cloud, and identity management. In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/16912">
 March 2023
 </a>
 , SentinelOne partnered with cloud network security provider Wiz to provide end-to-end cloud security solutions by leveraging each company&rsquo;s platform. With their combined capabilities, the joint solution was claimed to detect and remediate cybersecurity threats faster than stand-alone platforms.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 The company&rsquo;s last private funding round was in November 2020, where it raised USD 267 million in a Series F funding round led by Tiger Global Management, and the company expects to use the funding to support the growth of its Singularity platform.
 
 
 In June 2021, SentinelOne 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/3850">
 commenced 
 </a>
 trading in New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker &ldquo;S,&rdquo; raising USD 1.2 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) at an implied valuation of USD 8.9 billion. The company expected to use the proceeds for working capital, product development, capital expenditure, and administrative matters. The company also aimed to use part of the funds to acquire and invest in complementary businesses and technologies.
 
 
 SentinelOne 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13278">
 launched 
 </a>
 &ldquo;S Ventures&rdquo;, a USD 100 million venture fund, to invest in enterprise cybersecurity startups, in September 2022. S Ventures invested in Armorblox, an API email security platform, and Noetic Cyber, a continuous cyber asset management and controls platform. These companies joined its portfolio companies which include Torq, a no-code security automation platform, and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/companies/1695999">
 Laminar 
 </a>
 , a cloud-native data security startup.
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17067">
 FY2023
 </a>
 , the company reported a revenue of USD 422.2 million, representing a YoY growth of 106% and an adjusted gross margin of 72%. The company saw its annual recurring revenue (ARR) growing at 88% to close at USD 548.7 million and the number of customers grew around 50% YoY to exceed 10,000 in Q4 FY2023. Management guidance for revenue for FY2024 stands in the range of USD 631 million and USD 640 million.
 
</div>

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>
 
 Lacework is a cloud security company offering solutions for enterprises to protect their cloud and container workloads at scale. These include tools that employ automation and machine learning in order to enable developers to build cloud applications securely, along with tools to monitor multi-cloud environments, detect misconfigurations and threats, and identify behavioral anomalies during runtime. As of November 2021, Lacework recorded more than 3x YoY growth in revenue and a 3.5x YoY increase in the customer base, which includes the likes of LogicMonitor, Hypergiant, and Sprinklr. Lacework employed over 1,000 staff as of March 2022, five times its headcount in January 2021. The company was however forced to lay off 20% of its headcount in May 2022 in a bid to improve its liquidity position amid uncertain economic conditions.
 
 
 Lacework announced its first-ever acquisition&mdash;the cloud-native security startup Soluble, in November 2021. Soluble provides automated testing and policy management to detect and remediate cloud misconfigurations and policy violations at the source code. Lacework will integrate Soluble&rsquo;s technology into its automated cloud security platform to expand into IaC remediation capabilities, which will enable Lacework to enhance existing workflows and protect software development lifecycles&mdash;at build, runtime, and the source code level. The company also launched new developer-focused features in its platform&mdash;vulnerability scanner, admission controller, risk-based scoring, extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) support&mdash;to detect and remediate container vulnerabilities in the development process.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Lacework partnered with Google Cloud in February 2022, to launch its new patented Polygraph Data Platform in Google Cloud Marketplace to strengthen multi-cloud capabilities for joint customers, including a commitment to partner on integrations with Google Cloud Security Command Center (SCC) and jointly develop features in the future. The Lacework Polygraph Data Platform delivers automated visibility and threat detection across multi-cloud environments from build time through runtime without requiring manual oversight from security teams. Following this, Lacework also announced an undisclosed investment from Google Ventures (GV).
 
 
 Lacework partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in June 2023 to incorporate its composite alerts into Amazon&rsquo;s GuardDuty threat detection service, providing AWS users with enhanced threat alerts and context for investigation.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In November 2021, the company raised USD 1.3 billion in Series D funding at a valuation of USD 8.3 billion, co-led by Sutter Hill Ventures, Altimeter Capital, D1 Capital Partners, and Tiger Global Management. The company will utilize the funds to fuel product development; pursue strategic acquisitions; accelerate go-to-market efforts; hire additional staff; and expand its global presence. Along with the funding round, the company also announced plans to go public via an IPO or a direct listing in the future.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 Traceable AI offers a platform to secure cloud-native applications, APIs, and web applications. The platform provides end-to-end protection, helping developers detect code-level security issues and vulnerabilities during the development of cloud-native applications. The platform also provides protection during runtime through insights and behavioral analytics on usage activities derived using its proprietary machine learning technology, &ldquo;TraceAI.&rdquo; Additionally, Traceable&rsquo;s platform allows enterprises to inventory all of their APIs, detect threats, and apply API security best practices.
 
 
 As of May 2022, Traceable AI had an employee headcount of 85, and it intends to expand this to 400 to 500 within 2025. The company has a number of paying customers, including Informatica, Bullish, Digital Ocean, Zolve, and Houwzer.
 
 
 In May 2022, the company 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10141?industryIds=51">
 raised USD 60 million
 </a>
 in a Series B funding round led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP). The round valued the company at more than USD 450 million. The funds were expected to be utilized to accelerate its growth by further investing in R&amp;D, expanding sales and marketing headcount, and increasing global sales.
 
</div>

<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>

Opus Security integrates with existing cloud security tools to orchestrate the cloud security response and remediation process based on guidelines and playbooks. The platform flags when sensitive issues require human intervention and allows automation to resolve the rest of the issues. Opus Security delivers instant visibility and maps remediation metrics to remove blind spots and provide organizations with insights into their risk states.Opus Security was founded by Meny Har and Or Gabay, who were also a part of the founding team at Siemplify, a cybersecurity startup that was <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7558">acquired by Google </a>for USD 500 million in January 2022.Funding and financialsIn September 2022, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13101">raised USD 10 million </a>in a seed funding round led by YL Ventures. This announcement also marked the company’s emergence from stealth. The funds were utilized to accelerate product R&amp;D, launch the platform in general availability (currently in early adoption) sometime around Q1 2023, and expand its footprint in the US.Opus Security also had plans to expand its employee headcount of 10 to 20–25 by the end of 2022.

Marketplaces and related solutions for selling goods and services online

Ecommerce Platforms

Trendyol is a leading ecommerce platform based in Turkey that was founded in 2010 by Demet Mutlu. It operates as a marketplace connecting buyers with a wide range of sellers offering products across various categories including fashion, electronics, beauty, and groceries. Trendyol has evolved from a single shopping site to a comprehensive ecommerce ecosystem, offering complementary services such as logistics (Trendyol Express), instant delivery (Trendyol Go), digital payments (Trendyol Pay), and a secondhand marketplace (Dolap).
Initially bootstrapped with USD 300,000 by Mutlu, Trendyol witnessed rapid growth, reaching over a million customers within its first year. As of 2023, the platform boasts over 30 million customers, 250,000 sellers, and delivers more than 1 million packages daily. Trendyol's success can be attributed to its focus on affordable pricing, a diverse product range, and a sustainable business model that supports digitization of local manufacturers and small businesses.
In 2018, Alibaba Group acquired a majority stake in Trendyol, valuing the company at USD 728 million. This strategic partnership provided Trendyol with technological expertise and helped position it as Turkey's first "decacorn" (a startup valued over USD 10 billion) after raising USD 1.5 billion in 2021, reaching a valuation of USD 16.5 billion.
Trendyol's commitment to creating a positive impact is evident through its support for local talent, sustainable sourcing, and initiatives promoting women's participation in the digital economy. The company has generated significant economic impact, contributing to the growth of over 90% of its sellers and enabling over 50,000 female entrepreneurs to establish ecommerce businesses.
Key customers and partnerships
Trendyol has established notable partnerships to enhance its technological capabilities and expand its reach. In 2018, Alibaba Group secured a significant stake in Trendyol, providing expertise and resources to support the platform's growth. This strategic partnership aims to boost Turkey's e-exports by enabling Turkish SMEs to leverage Alibaba's global network for exporting their products.
Additionally, Trendyol has partnered with EVS, aligning with their shared values of positively impacting people's lives and maintaining a startup spirit. This collaboration has allowed Trendyol to contribute further to Turkey's economy and leverage EVS's expertise in areas such as mobile payments, logistics, and exports.
Trendyol has also formed a partnership with AGH, a company rich in ecommerce experience. This alliance has enabled Trendyol to absorb knowledge and best practices in areas like logistics, mobile payments, and facilitating the growth of SMEs through the platform economy.

OfferUp is a mobile app that provides a local online marketplace for buying and selling items directly between users. Founded in 2015 and based in Bellevue, Washington, the platform allows users to list items for sale by taking photos, adding descriptions and prices, and specifying their location. As of 2023, OfferUp has over 90 million downloads and 20 million monthly active users across the US.
OfferUp's core functionality revolves around local, in-person transactions where buyers connect with nearby sellers to purchase items. Sellers pay no fees to list items for local sales on the platform. If opting to ship an item, sellers pay a 12.9% transaction fee or USD 1.99, whichever is higher. Buyers typically pay in cash when meeting sellers locally.
The mobile app has features like buyer/seller ratings, messaging for negotiating prices, and the ability to mark listings as sold once transactions complete. OfferUp also monetizes through allowing sellers to pay to promote or "bump" listings for increased visibility.
OfferUp acquired competitor app LetGo in 2020, absorbing LetGo's user base and features into its own platform. Popular product categories bought and sold on OfferUp include clothing, electronics, furniture, vehicles, and various household items and collectibles.

Branded is an international team of ecommerce and operational experts founded in 2020. The company acquires and onboards promising ecommerce brands that solely sell on online marketplaces like Amazon. Within the first 100 days of acquiring a brand, Branded implements strategies to accelerate its growth, such as changes in pricing, marketing tactics, opening new sales channels, and developing new products. The company aims to become a prominent digital consumer goods group by focusing on large sectors like home goods, sports, leisure, and beauty, where customers develop an emotional connection with brands beyond just functional needs.
As of 2024, Branded has acquired over 20 companies representing approximately USD 150 million in revenue. Branded's business model involves acquiring successful marketplace sellers, leveraging its expertise to scale their operations, and driving profitability.

Vestiaire Collective is a leading global online marketplace for pre-owned luxury fashion items. Founded in 2009 in Paris, France, the company aims to transform the fashion industry into a more sustainable model by promoting circular fashion and reducing overconsumption and waste.
Vestiaire Collective operates a platform where buyers and sellers can buy, sell, and trade authenticated pre-owned luxury fashion items, including clothing, handbags, shoes, and accessories from renowned brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, and Prada. As of 2023, the platform had over 3 million items listed and a community of around 23 million members across 78 countries.
The company's core value proposition lies in its rigorous authentication process. All items listed on the platform undergo meticulous quality and authenticity checks by a team of trained experts, ensuring the legitimacy of the products sold. This process involves thorough examination of materials, craftsmanship, branding elements, and serial numbers, as well as the use of advanced technologies like image recognition software.
Vestiaire Collective's business model is commission-based, with the company charging a percentage fee on successful transactions. The fee structure varies based on the sale price, ranging from 15% for items sold between USD 80 and USD 13,000 to a fixed fee for higher-priced items.
In recent years, Vestiaire Collective has undertaken various sustainability initiatives, such as launching the "Brand Approved" program, which allows luxury brands to integrate circularity into their business models by facilitating the buyback and resale of their pre-owned items. The company aims to become carbon neutral by 2026 and has implemented measures to reduce its environmental footprint, including offering green shipping options and eco-friendly packaging.

Rokt is a global ecommerce technology company that uses machine learning and AI to make transactions more relevant and engaging for each shopper. Its technology seamlessly integrates with brands' existing systems to personalize the checkout experience, enabling them to grow revenue by acquiring new customers at scale. Rokt's solution presents highly targeted, relevant offers to customers during the final stages of an ecommerce transaction when they are most likely to convert.
Rokt's AI optimizes every element of the transaction moment, tailoring high-performing experiences for individual customers. This approach removes irrelevant clutter and doubles profitability for businesses, allowing them to unlock incremental revenue of over USD 0.30 per transaction. The company's technology has powered billions of transactions annually across 2,500 leading companies, including Live Nation, AMC Theatres, PayPal, Uber, Hulu, Staples, Lands' End, and HelloFresh.
Founded in Australia, Rokt now operates in 15 countries across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region, with its US headquarters in New York City. In 2023, the company was featured on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US for the third consecutive year. Rokt raised a USD 325 million Series E funding round in December 2021, valuing the company at USD 1.95 billion.

Miferia is a curated online B2B wholesale marketplace operating in Mexico. It connects independent retail shops across the country with domestic brands selling products in categories such as cosmetics, food and beverage, and home decor. As of August 2022, the platform featured thousands of products from over 500 brands, with around 30 new brands being onboarded weekly.
Miferia aims to digitalize the traditional offline wholesale model still prevalent in Mexico, where over 90% of retail sales occur through 2 million physical stores. Less than 1% of B2B transactions have moved online in the country. The company enables independent Mexican shopkeepers to digitally consolidate their existing supplier relationships, expand their product selection, and gain access to improved credit terms compared to cash-on-delivery models.
For brands, Miferia provides an improved channel to reach the majority of sales happening through physical retail stores across Mexico. Traditional offline brands often forgo significant margins to distributors and grapple with cash collection challenges. Online D2C brands lack access to this large segment of the market concentrating sales in physical outlets.
Miferia has raised USD 7 million in seed funding co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global in August 2022, with participation from Canary, Latitud Ventures, and Asymmetric Capital Partners. The company plans to utilize the funds to build liquidity and accelerate growth on the marketplace.

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

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.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.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.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). Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2023, Databricks served a global customer base of approximately 10,000, including notable customers such as Comcast, DuPont, Honeywell, Rolls-Royce, Shell, and Tata Steel.Notable partnerships include collaboration with NVIDIA to incorporate NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM into its inference service and a partnership with Hevo-Data to automate data integration into the lakehouse for mutual customers (October 2022).Databricks also partnered with Karini AI to accelerate GenAI deployment for enterprises (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33687">September 2024</a>)Databricks also provides an LLM Mesh partner program; it has partnered with firms such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24218">Dataiku </a>where an emphasis is placed on comprehensive data access, enabling tight integration of GenAI applications with enterprise data.

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

Groq is a manufacturer of advanced chips engineered for inference processing, enhancing systems for real-time AI and high-performance computing (HPC). Groq provides hardware and software solutions, including GroqChip processors, GroqCard accelerators, GroqNode servers, GroqRack compute clusters, and GroqWare suites.Notably, Groq’s chips feature its proprietary tensor streaming processor (TSP) architecture, which delivers consistent, low-latency, and high-throughput performance built for machine-learning applications and other computationally intensive tasks.Groq also developed the Language Processing Unit (LPU) Inference Engine, which is a novel processing system designed to efficiently handle computationally intensive applications with a sequential component, like LLMs. These LPU Inference Engines address the primary bottlenecks for LLMs, offering substantial compute power and memory bandwidth, significantly improving the speed of text sequence generation compared to Graphics Processors (GPUs). Groq was the first to achieve 100 tokens per second (T/s) per user for Llama-2 70B, and by August 2023, its LPU system was generating more than 240 T/s per user.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27223">March 2024 </a>, Groq acquired Definitive Intelligence to scale its cloud platform and provide on-demand access to its AI chips. Further, the company stated in July 2024 that plans to deploy 1.7 million of its AI processors by end 2025, as it aims to capture half of the global AI inference market.Key customers and partnershipsIn July 2024, the company disclosed that it attracted 280,000 developers to its platform in a span of four months. Overall, Groq's products cater to various sectors, such as finance, industrial automation, cybersecurity, and scientific research. Notable customers include Argonne National Laboratory and In-Q-Tel, a non-profit investor dedicated to expediting the advancement and implementation of state-of-the-art technologies for US government agencies.Key partnerships include its collaboration with OneNano to create a next-generation CEX (cryptocurrency exchange) with scalable, ultra-low latency AI acceleration solutions (December 2022) and a partnership with Samsung's Foundry business, where it would be Groq’s next-gen silicon partner (August 2023).

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 Robust Intelligence specializes in protecting organizations from security, ethical, and operational risks associated with AI. Its flagship offering is the Robust Intelligence platform, which offers comprehensive AI risk management by automating the end-to-end security of AI models.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key features of the platform are AI Firewall, which provides real-time protection for AI models, blocking malicious inputs and validating outputs to prevent risks such as prompt injection and ensures output complies with organizational standards, customizable to different industries and use cases, and Continuous Validation, which is designed to test models and data throughout the AI lifecycle to identify and prevent risks early. It automates the validation process, enabling quick, comprehensive model validation against AI risk frameworks and regulatory requirements.
 
 
 Notably, Robust Intelligence claims that it enhances data science team productivity by 30%, helps reduce the mean time to resolve production machine learning issues by 80%, and decreases the cost and time required for model compliance verification by 3x.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Robust Intelligence's clientele includes prominent names such as the US Department of Defense, IBM, Hitachi, JPMorgan Chase, Expedia, Deloitte, and Cisco.
 
 
 Notably, Robust Intelligence has collaborated with MongoDB to combine Robust Intelligence's AI Firewall with MongoDB Atlas Vector Search (October 2023). Other partnerships include MITRE, which improved a no-cost tool for evaluating supply chain risks associated with publicly accessible AI models (August 2023), and Indiana University, which created automated risk assessment tools.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, the firm raised USD 30 million in Series B funding in a round led by Tiger Global. The company noted the funds would be allocated for scaling sales operations, with a major focus on enhancing product development and engineering efforts.&nbsp;
 
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Pinecone offers a vector database called “Pinecone Serverless,” simplifying enterprise AI application development. It caters to needs such as anomaly detection, recommendation systems, and scalable information retrieval. Pinecone Serverless stands out for its ability to handle high-dimensional vector data, which is essential for AI-driven search and retrieval tasks.Pinecone Serverless offers solutions for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), semantic and multimodal search, candidate generation, and data labeling and classification.Pinecone Serverless's main features include separating reading, writing, and storage operations, and supporting vector clustering on top of blob storage, leading to reduced response times and the capability to handle large datasets. Furthermore, Pinecone Serverless offers algorithms for indexing and retrieval, enabling rapid vector search within this blob storage. The service also incorporates a multi-tenant compute layer.Pinecone claims the serverless nature of its vector database eliminates the need for developers to manage or set up infrastructure, thereby reducing costs by up to 10x–100x.Pinecone offers integrations with several AI and back-end services, such as Anthropic, Anyscale, Cohere, Confluent, LangChain, Pulumi, and Vercel.The platform is offered through a SaaS subscription model where pricing is based on usage, which is measured in three metrics of storage, read units (RU), and write units (WU).In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32966">August 2024</a>,the company launched its serverless vector database offering across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud for improved storage and scalability.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2024, Pinecone claims to serve more than 5,000 customers, including prominent names such as Microsoft, ClickUp, Shopify, HubSpot, Zapier, Accenture, Course Hero, Gong, and Expel.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/23476">November 2023 </a>, Pinecone partnered with Cloudera to integrate its vector database expertise into Cloudera's open data platform.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18048">April 2023 </a>Pinecone raised USD 100 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total funding to USD 138 million. The company stated it planned to utilize the funds in workforce expansion and business development.

New technologies are opening up mental health services to previously overbooked and underserved populations.

Mental Health Tech

Spring Health is a psychiatry platform that offers personalized mental health solutions ranging from psychiatric assessments to mindfulness exercises, employee assistance programs, and coaching with therapists and mental health professionals. Through the app, employees can select what they need to accomplish in terms of their mental well-being and receive personalized suggestions. Spring Health also facilitates appointment scheduling with therapists, mindfulness exercises, and chats with licensed professionals.The company claims that it can improve productivity by making employees happy with 70% of treatments scheduled after business hours.&nbsp;In May 2022, the company <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10531">acquired Weldon </a>, a family, and pediatric-focused wellness provider to increase Spring Health’s product portfolio to support members and their families as part of its plan to enhance coverage for families.During 2022, Spring Health reported a 270% YoY revenue growth.Key customers and partnershipsAs of August 2023, the company served more than 4,500 clients, including Microsoft, Hershey, JB Hunt, Bumble, and Fujifilm. Furthermore, as of July 2024, Spring Health covered more than 10 million lives through 450 directly contracted employers, strategic payer relationships, and 27,000 groups accessing the solution through channel partners.Spring Health partnered with national health plan Highmark Health in October 2023 to launch a mental health solution called Mental Well-Being. Starting in 2024, those covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), fully insured, and Medicare plans (about 2.8 million members) will be eligible to access this solution.

Osmind develops measurement tools that gather real-world data to support the design, development, and delivery of new diagnostic and therapeutic solutions such as psychedelic medicines, neuromodulation, digital therapeutics, digital phenotyping, and neuroimaging for treatment-resistant mental health conditions. In addition, Osmind’s electronic health record (EHR) platform allows practices to track measurement-based outcomes of these mental health treatments. The platform includes features like streamlined charting workflows, secure patient engagement tools, and automated outcomes tracking.Its software solutions also support patient engagement, remote monitoring, and data-driven clinical decision-making. In addition, it provides management tools for mental health practices and an online community for patients with treatment-resistant mental health conditions. The company supports clinicians who provide emerging psychiatric treatments like ketamine therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and psychedelic medicines.Osmind is a public benefit company and claims it does not charge patients for its services. Instead, it generates revenue from providers. As of 2022, Osmind reported having collected data on over 2 million patient outcomes through its platform.Key customers and partnershipsAs of 2022, Osmind's software was being used by over 400 clinics across 45 states in the US.&nbsp;The company has established research partnerships with academic institutions like Stanford University School of Medicine to conduct large-scale studies using real-world clinical data. Osmind has also formed partnerships with companies like Enthea and First Tracks Health to expand insurance coverage for breakthrough mental health treatments among employer-sponsored health plans.

Ophelia is a telepsychiatry platform for treating opioid use disorder (OUD). The company provides online therapy and medication-assisted treatment (MAT) to reduce opioid cravings and withdrawal symptoms. The company offers an alternative to traditional rehab for treating OUD and claims to be a less costly option in comparison to monthly visits to a doctor and the cost of medication, which can range between USD 800 and USD 900.&nbsp;Ophelia’s monthly subscription, costing USD 195 per month out of pocket, covers MAT, care team support, and virtual clinician visits via audio and video calls. Members can speak to their physician on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsOphelia has established partnerships with several major health insurers to expand access to its virtual OUD care. In March 2024, the company announced it was in-network for Highmark Wholecare's Medicaid and Dual Special Needs Plan members in Pennsylvania, covering 360,000 additional patients. This built on Ophelia's existing relationship with Highmark Health since 2021, which provided coverage for 2.9 million commercial members.

Equip Health is a digital eating disorder treatment provider that began its operations with a focus on individuals aged 6 to 24. Equip uses a family-based treatment approach by providing patients and their families a dedicated five-person care team; a therapist, dietitian, physician, peer mentor, and family mentor. Sessions can be booked according to a family’s schedule and need instead of sending the patient away to a residential treatment facility.&nbsp;In September 2023, the company announced the extension of its services to adults. The new program for adults had contracts with more than 15 health plans, including national payers and Medicaid plans. The company plans to use a different approach to treating adults, relying on cognitive behavior-enhanced (CBT-E) therapy while also including loved ones in therapy.Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, the product was available in 50 states, and Equip Health worked with 12 major commercial health insurance providers in the US, including Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Horizon, Magellan Health, Optum, and United Healthcare.&nbsp;

Parallel Learning provides personalized psychoeducational assessments and treatment solutions to families, educators, and students who face learning differences. The platform matches its network of licensed psychologists, learning specialists, and occupational therapists with students who have conditions like anxiety, dyslexia, and executive dysfunction.The company offers psychological evaluations, skill-based tutoring, executive function coaching, behavioral therapy, and speech and language therapy through its network of licensed providers. Parallel's services are available both directly to families and to school districts as part of its enterprise offering. The platform aims to make testing, diagnosis, and support more accessible by providing services within days rather than months at a fraction of the cost of traditional providers.&nbsp;The company employs proprietary software that includes partnerships with curriculum publishers and an Enhanced GoalTracker tool to monitor student progress on Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, Parallel was working with nearly 80 school districts and over 150 providers across the US.&nbsp;In September 2022, Parallel announced a partnership with Pearson Clinical to expand its assessment services, allowing full access to Pearson's range of clinical assessments.

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

Telehealth

New York-based Rightway Healthcare operates Rightway Navigation, a B2B care coordination platform, and RighwayRx, an online pharmacy service platform. The Rightway Navigation app analyzes proprietary and third-party data to connect members with clinicians, guiding them to an appropriate treatment plan.&nbsp;The company also operates an app-based pharmacy benefit manager and concierge service called RightwayRx that provides support for a member’s prescription needs by connecting them with pharmacists. The RightwayRx app allows members to communicate with a clinical pharmacist, track prescriptions, compare medication prices, and set up medication alerts. As of <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rightway-partners-with-one-medical-to-expand-access-to-high-quality-primary-care-301826713.html#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20May%2017%2C%202023,to%20high%2Dquality%20primary%20care.">May 2023</a>, Rightway's platform had served over 1 million members.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rightway-partners-with-one-medical-to-expand-access-to-high-quality-primary-care-301826713.html#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20May%2017%2C%202023,to%20high%2Dquality%20primary%20care.">May 2023</a>, One Medical, a membership-based direct primary care service provider, became an integrated care partner in Rightway’s care network. Through this partnership, One Medical joined RightwayHub, an ecosystem partnership program, which allowed Rightway’s care navigators to recommend One Medical’s care services for both primary care and treatment adherence to increase customer engagement. The objective of the partnership included providing employers with an offering that would increase market reach and engagement on both companies’ platforms, along with enabling employees to identify the best provider more efficiently.

San Francisco-based Hinge Health is a B2B specialized telehealth provider offering physical therapy and behavioral health solutions for back and joint pain (chronic musculoskeletal-MSK) conditions. The company was the <a href="https://www.hingehealth.com/resources/support/the-worlds-first-digital-clinic-for-back-and-joint-pain/">first to launch</a> a Digital MSK Clinic that combines guided one-on-one therapy with wearable motion sensors to provide real-time feedback and allow users to track their progress.Hinge’s product offering covers the full spectrum of MSK care, from prevention to post-surgical recovery, with access to virtual physical therapists and health coaches. Following the acquisition of Canada-based computer vision platform, Wrnch in September 2021, the company will offer a more personalized MSK care offering by motion tracking.In <a href="https://www.hingehealth.com/resources/press-releases/major-advancements-to-womens-pelvic-health/#:~:text=Hinge%20Health%20first%20launched%20the,platform%20for%20all%20MSK%20care.">April 2022</a>, the company launched a new solution for women’s pelvic health during all stages of life including pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause.In <a href="https://www.hingehealth.com/resources/press-releases/house-calls/">January 2023</a>, the company launched a new house-call physical therapy service. The service allows patients to schedule appointments via Hinge Health’s app, securing an at-home visit from a physical therapist between one and two business days. The appointments last for 45 minutes and aim to assess patients’ physical ability, flexibility, strength, and balance. Physical therapists will also carry out fall risk assessments of patients’ homes.In <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/11/virtual-physical-therapist-hinge-health-lays-off-10-of-its-workforce/">April 2024</a>, the company announced a 10% cut in its workforce. The move was an effort to accelerate the firm's path to profitability, enhance decision-making processes, and optimize investment focus as it braces for an IPO. The layoffs affected roles from various departments, including engineering. Prior to the decision, the company had more than 1,700 employees.As of <a href="https://www.hingehealth.com/for-organizations/employers/">July 2024</a>, the company served over 1,800 enterprise clients and covered 18 million individuals.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://www.sunlife.com/en/newsroom/news-releases/announcement/sun-life-taps-hinge-health-as-preferred-digital-musculoskeletal-solution-for-members/123875/">July 2024</a>, the company partnered with Sun Life, an employee and government benefits organization to allow Sun Life members to access Hinge Health's resources, including health coaches, orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, and technological tools like surgery decision support and the FDA-cleared Enso wearable device for pain relief.In <a href="https://www.teladochealth.com/newsroom/press/teladoc-health-offers-clients-access-to-musculoskeletal-health-with-hinge-health">October 2023</a>, general telemedicine provider Teladoc Health partnered with Hinge Health to provide Teladoc's clients with access to a range of digital solutions for joint and muscle pain for their employees. Under its partnership with Hinge Health, Teladoc’s clients could access its digital physical therapy program, which aims to reduce MSK pain and minimize the need for opioids and surgery. The program was personalized and supported by a multidisciplinary care team.

Tyto is a remote patient monitoring and telemedicine provider based in New York. It allows a healthcare provider to examine the patient's heart, lungs, throat, ears, skin, abdomen, and body temperature using a handheld, all in one remote monitoring device (with built-in guidance) provided to the patient as a part of the membership, allowing the provider to diagnose and treat many common conditions. Tyto can be accessed 24/7 and integrated with electronic health records systems and other telehealth platforms such as Teladoc.In <a href="https://qumracapital.com/news/tytocare-announces-the-home-smart-clinic-the-first-remote-primary-care-offering-for-the-entire-family/">November 2022</a>, the company launched a primary care offering called the “Home Smart Clinic”. The Home Smart Clinic offering includes 1) Tyto’s FDA-approved handheld remote physical examination device 2) AI-powered diagnostic support 3) user engagement services including consulting and marketing services and 4) support for various clinician business models. This new primary care offering works with both providers and health plans to provide patients with a suite of healthcare services. TytoCare has also launched “Home Health Delivery Metrics”, a tracking system to ensure providers are able to carry out their services effectively and ensure positive experiences for patients. As of August 2023, TytoCare provides its services to over 220 health systems and health plans across the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.In <a href="https://www.tytocare.com/press-releases/tytocare-introduces-major-release-to-increase-flexibility-and-accessibility-of-care-delivery/">June 2024</a>, TytoCare released an update for its Home Smart Clinic software. The upgraded Home Smart Clinic offered a fully integrated experience adaptable to different care modalities and service providers, the ability to share TytoCare exams with others through TytoShare, a new provision for pre-visit exams enhancing efficiency and convenience, and a multimedia avatar named "Emma" to improve user onboarding and engagement.In <a href="https://www.tytocare.com/press-releases/tytocare-receives-fda-clearance-for-its-ai-powered/#:~:text=Accuracy%20from%20Home-,TytoCare%20Receives%20FDA%20Clearance%20for%20its%20AI%2DPowered%20Tyto%20Insights,Ensure%20Diagnostic%20Accuracy%20from%20Home">March 2023</a>, TytoCare received FDA 510(k) clearance for its wheeze detection algorithm, allowing the company to begin commercialization of the product as part of its Tyto Insights offering. The wheeze detection software utilizes Tyto’s stethoscope device to remotely capture and measure lung sounds and identify signs of wheezing in adult patients and children aged two and above.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32190">July 2024</a>, TytoCare received FDA clearance for its product "Tyto Insights for Crackle Detection," a new AI-powered diagnostic tool. Tyto Insights for Crackle Detection was designed to help clinicians detect lung crackles during virtual clinic visits in adults and children over two years old. The AI algorithm analyzes lung acoustic signals, flags exams with potential abnormal sounds indicative of crackles, and alerts providers to their presence.Key customers and partnershipsAs of <a href="https://www.tytocare.com/">July 2024</a>, TytoCare provided its services to over 220 healthcare institutions, had over 30,000 providers on its platform, covered over 900,000 patients, and worked with health plans across the US, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34808">October 2024</a>, TytoCare partnered with Frontier Health, a Texas-based direct primary care organization, to provide virtual primary care services. Through the partnership, Frontier Direct Care members were able to obtain the TytoCare's Home Smart Clinic device for no additional cost. By using the device, members could conduct virtual visits with their primary care providers, sharing vital signs and high-resolution images of various body parts during live video consultations.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/33111">August 2024</a>, the company partnered with The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) to expand virtual care technology in school health clinics. Through the partnership MUSC began deploying TytoCare's Pro Smart Clinic devices across 150 schools across the Charleston region. The devices would replace existing telehealth carts and allow more virtual care stations with expanded exam capabilities.In <a href="https://hitconsultant.net/2024/05/15/tytocare-partners-with-5-health-systems-to-bring-telehealth-to-100-schools/#:~:text=%E2%80%93%20TytoCare's%20school%20health%20initiative%20now,for%20children%20across%20the%20country.&amp;text=The%20recent%20expansion%20of%20the,by%20collaborations%20with%20health%20systems.">May 2024</a>, the company expanded its school health initiative as five new healthcare systems adopted its services. The initiative extended primary and urgent care services to over 2,500 schools in 31 US states. Through the partnerships, TytoCare planned to deliver its AI-facilitated Pro Smart Clinics to school clinics, offering remote access to primary, urgent, and specialized care. Health workers gained real-time patient data through the company's connected device, which analyzes various health metrics.In <a href="https://www.tytocare.com/press-releases/tytocare-and-st-lukes-health-system-forge-exclusive-health-care-partnership-in-idaho/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20are%20proud%20to%20work,its%20members%20beginning%20in%202024.">November 2023</a>, TytoCare also partnered with Idaho's St. Luke's Health System to provide its virtual care services to the healthcare provider’s members and employees in Idaho. Through the partnership, St. Luke members and staff would be given access to TytoCare's services, including on-demand virtual visits, with zero copays. Additionally, employees would have access to Tyto's Home Smart Clinic to conduct remote exams via Tyto’s connected devices, including its otoscope, tongue depressor, thermometer, and FDA-cleared smart stethoscope.In <a href="https://www.overlakehospital.org/news/2023-02/overlake-medical-center-clinics-partners-tytocare-enhance-virtual-care">February 2023</a>, TytoCare partnered with non-profit regional healthcare provider Overlake Medical Center &amp; Clinics, to enhance and expand Overlake’s virtual care services. Through this partnership, Overlake introduced TytoCare’s “TytoHome” device to its “Concierge Care” service to improve its clinician’s ability to diagnose and treat patients through virtual consultations while carrying out a range of physical tests through smart devices.

Virta Health provides reversal treatments for Type 2 diabetes through behavioral and lifestyle changes while reducing dependence on medication. Users are monitored via Virta’s remote monitoring devices and receive continuous medical supervision from and access to Virta’s dedicated health coaches three times a day. As of 2021, the company has signed up more than 200 enterprise customers, including Blue Shield of California (3.7 million members), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, US Foods, Nielsen, and Purdue University.In <a href="https://www.virtahealth.com/press/virta-health-adds-prediabetes-reversal-obesity-treatment-and-provider-led-diabetes-management-to-clinical-services">October 2020</a>, the company also extended its service offering to include prediabetes reversal, obesity treatment, and provider-led management for Type 2 diabetes.Key customers and partnershipsIn <a href="https://news.blueshieldca.com/2023/02/07/blue-shield-of-california-adds-virta-health-to-its-provider-network-to-help-reverse-the-states-growing-type-2-diabetes-epidemic">February 2023</a>, Virta Health joined the care network of the Blue Shield of California, an independent member of the Blue Shield Association health plan. Through this partnership, select members of the Blue Shield of California gained access to Virta Health’s services from February 2023. This marked an expansion of the two companies' previous partnership, where Vitra Health was offered under Blue Shield’s “Wellvolution,” a platform offering digital lifestyle apps.In <a href="https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/healthcare-life-sciences/virta-health-transforms-type-2-diabetes-care-with-google-cloud">March 2022</a>, Virta Health partnered with Google Cloud to develop AI tools for diabetes care management. Through the partnership, Virta used several Google Cloud tools to develop an AI tool to sift through de-identified patient data in order to identify patients that would most benefit from proactive care.

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 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.

Harbr is a UK based startup which operates a secure data exchange that enables organizations to share and collaborate data they already hold, and utilize it for analytics and business intelligence in a secure manner. Harbr’s platform also features granular controls to restrict access to sensitive data and prevent unauthorized use, thereby ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations. Harbr’s key customers include governments and entities in financial and enterprise services, such as Moody’s Analytics and WinterCorp. The company reported that almost the entirety of its client base is from the US.In November 2020, the company raised USD 38.5 million in Series A funding led by Dawn Capital and Tiger Global Management. The company aims to use the funding to invest in R&amp;D and grow its team in order to keep up with accelerating demand resulting from Covid-19 pandemic-induced digitization efforts.

Cape Privacy offers a platform for enterprises to securely share and collaborate on sensitive data. The platform uses encrypted learning, a concept that allows processing to take place on encrypted data without the need to decrypt them. The company’s platform allows multi-party sharing of data for processing or even training machine learning algorithms while retaining the privacy of the underlying data.As of April 2021, the company had a headcount of 20, focused on the financial services industry, with plans to expand into other verticals such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing.

Virtru provides a range of data protection products that offer email encryption, secure sharing, access controls, etc. for customers who need to meet privacy and compliance requirements. Virtru offers the Trusted Data Format (TDF) to secure data, a wrapper that encrypts and holds the underlying data for secure sharing. The company was co-founded by Will Ackerly, a former staffer of the National Security Agency (NSA) who invented the TDF during his tenure at the NSA.&nbsp;The products offered by Virtru can also be leveraged to transfer data across the organization in line with privacy regulations such as GDPR, CCPA, and others, by encrypting and preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information (for instance, sharing data to fulfill a data subject rights request).&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of September 2024, the company’s platform was used by 6,700+ organizations, including Verizon, Netflix, Salesforce, and Brown University.

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused internet search engine that does not log a user’s search history or any other personally identifiable information. The company also provides a downloadable browser extension and a mobile web browser that block trackers across the websites being visited. The company’s cross-platform email protection feature generates unique private email addresses and removes trackers. As of May 2021, DuckDuckGo averaged 95.8 million search queries a day and as of the same month, held 0.6% of the global search engine market share, highest of any privacy-focused search engine. The company generates revenue by presenting non-personalized advertisements. As of June 2021, DuckDuckGo employed 129 staff.In October 2022, DuckDuckGo launched a web browser for Mac devices, integrating a range of privacy-focused features and more robust tracker-blocking compared to peers. A <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19680">Windows version launched</a> into public beta in June 2023.In March 2023, the firm launched <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19680">Duck Assist</a>, a GenAI search function capable of compiling summaries from Wikipedia articles to respond to user queries.

Disrupting the traditional financial system using blockchain

Decentralized Finance (DeFi)

Founded by ex-employees of Meta, Aptos Labs develops a layer 1 blockchain network that uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Based on elements of Meta’s discontinued blockchain network Diem, the solution enables developers to build dApps and run them on the Aptos network. The company launched its public mainnet in October 2022.&nbsp;In April 2023, Aptos launched delegated staking, an update which lowers the amount of Aptos (the platform’s native token) needed to participate in staking and lets users earn rewards for staking without needing to run nodes.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAptos Labs partnered with a number of companies for feedback on the project, including cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase as well as video infrastructure platform Livepeer and NFT platform Rarible.The company has partnered with Google Cloud as an infrastructure provider for its ecosystem, with the latter also launching a validator node in November 2022 with data indexing features to help developers using the blockchain. In addition, the two companies had conducted an accelerator program to support Web3 startups and builders on its network.In April 2024, Aptos Labs <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28630">partnered with Microsoft, SK Telecom, and Brevan Howard (a fund management firm)</a> to launch a new DeFi platform named Aptos Ascend. Designed for institutional use, the Aptos Ascend platform offers a range of features such as customizable tokens, regulated transaction access, zero-knowledge transaction privacy, and upgradable network controls. Through this partnership, Aptos planned to leverage Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure as well as its Open AI solutions to further develop the product offering. Moreover, SK Telecom will provide users access to its wallet-as-a-service technology to ensure regulatory compliance, while Brevan Howard will provide asset management services.&nbsp;Funding and financialsIn July 2022, Aptos Labs <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11847">raised USD 150 million</a> in a Series A funding round led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto to support the development of the project.

<div>
 
 Ondo Finance is a decentralized lending protocol that offers specialized financial products that connect retail investors, institutions, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) within the Defi ecosystem. The company&rsquo;s platform offers a choice between downside protection and enhanced returns as well as &ldquo;liquidity-as-a-service&rdquo; (LaaS), which matches DAOs with underwriters to provide liquidity for native governance tokens. As of April 2022, Ondo has partnered with over ten DAOs including Terra, Frax, and Fei, and had a total value locked (TVL) of over USD 200 million in liquidity deposited into its protocol.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 Ondo also planned to decentralize its governance structure by launching a native ONDO token and related DAO. Additionally, it also aimed to launch vaults that bundle yields from algorithmic stablecoins and aggregate yield across different blockchains. In January 2023, Ondo Finance 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15626">
 launched a tokenized fund
 </a>
 that enables stablecoin holders to invest in bonds and US Treasuries and receive ownership tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. The company stated that this fund will process daily subscriptions and redemptions in both stablecoins and fiat currencies. Investors will be able to transfer ownership tokens between whitelisted investor addresses and smart contracts that pass a compliance review to engage in on-chain trading and lending with fund tokens. 
 &nbsp;The company expanded this product onto the Polygon blockchain in July 2023, and the Solana blockchain in December 2023. 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 In April 2022, Ondo Finance raised USD 20 million in Series A funding led by Founders Fund and Pantera Capital to expand the company&rsquo;s employee base and support new product launches including its multi-chain expansion. In May 2022, Ondo Finance
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/10246">
 announced the initial sale of its native token
 </a>
 (at a price of USD 0.055 and a total supply of 400 million tokens) on Coinlist via its subsidiary, Nami industries. 
 
</div>

Based in Israel, StarkWare Industries provides infrastructure solutions that address the scalability issues of the Ethereum blockchain. The company offers two platforms: 1) StarkEx, a scaling engine for Ethereum, and 2) StarkNet, blockchain infrastructure for building decentralized applications. The company’s solutions work together to cut transaction costs by reducing the amount of information sent to the Ethereum blockchain. This results in faster transactions due to the reduction of blockchain congestion.This technology supports a number of use cases including NFT minting, derivative trading, automated market making, spot trading, payments, and DeFi pooling. As of May 2022, the platform was used to mint over 52 million NFTs. The company also planned to decentralize StarkWare but has not disclosed whether the process would involve a token.Funding and financialsIn May 2022, StarkWare Industries raised USD 100 million in Series D funding led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue at a valuation of USD 8 billion. The company earmarked the funds for product and business development, engineering, and growing its peripheral ecosystem.

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