SWAN Venture Fund is a group of operators and industry experts. Our expertise ranges from tech development work, to connections into large acquisitive companies, to connections in the supply chain, to business development, and to almost every aspect of a business as it grows. This fund invests in pre-seed rounds (rounds of $500k-$1.5MM). Characteristics of companies that we are interested in:  Since we are in the Seattle area, we tend to be interested in exciting value-driven and B2B tech companies with great teams, early revenues, and a competitive advantage. We invest if we like a company, they like us, and one of our members will put time/work into the company, if necessary. Otherwise, we don't invest. Categories we might consider:  B2B software, IoT and scalable hardware, capital-efficient hard-science. Market-accelerating technologies. Low-regulatory-inhibited health: like healthIT, among others. Visit our website at www.swanventurefund.com

SWAN Venture Fund

Verticals:Enterprise, SaaS, Security, Networks, AI, VR/AR, Marketplace, Blockchain, Internet of Things, New materials, Electronics, Robotics, Cleantech, Agrotech, Seatech, Therapeutics, Digital Health, Diagnostics,  Innovative Accommodation, Tourist Entertainment Companies, Tour Operators, Wine, Nautical and Equestrian Tourism, Theme Parks Mobile, Robotics  Founded in 2012, Portugal Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Porto, Portugal. The firm is a part of the Banco Português de Fomento group. The firm seeks to invest in pre-seed, seed and series A stages

Portugal Ventures

Bynd Venture Capital, former Busy Angels, is a Portuguese venture capital investor with more than 30 active investments in the portfolio in different funds.  At Bynd Venture Capital we invest in companies: - At the seed / early stage - In IT/Digital and Sustainability (including Lifesciences, Clean Tech, among others) sectors - From Portugal, Spain and any startup that has a direct connection with these markets (founders, tech team, investors, ...).

Bynd Venture Capital

The Amazon Alexa Fund is Amazon’s venture capital fund investing in artificial intelligence, frontier tech, voice, robotics, and digital health across consumer and enterprise. We invest in early- to growth-stage companies globally. To learn more, visit us at alexafund.com.

Amazon Alexa Fund

Sony Innovation Fund is the corporate venture capital arm of Sony that invests and engages in early-stage companies. Beyond investment, our mission is to provide resources such as access to the broader Sony world and its global network, as well as collaborate with startups to:  • Foster business creation in related lines of business and new areas of interest to Sony  • Catalyze a talented and passionate team  Sony innovation Fund was founded in 2016.

Sony Innovation Fund

Evolution Equity Partners is an international venture capital investor leveraging deep sector expertise to help exceptional entrepreneurs develop market-leading companies. The firm has a focus on cyber-security, enterprise software and consumer related opportunities and brings significant resources to portfolio companies seeking to expand in international markets. Evolution Equity Partners has invested in well-known companies including AVG Technologies, OpenDNS, Carbon Black, Onapsis, Security Scorecard, Cognitive Security, DF Labs, 60K Group and others. The firm purchases both primary and secondary shares investing in high growth businesses across multiple stages, primarily in North America, Europe and Israel. Visit us at www.evolutionequity.com or follow us on Twitter at @EvolutionEquity

Evolution Equity Partners

Sony develops and manufactures audio, video, communications, and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony is a mix of consumer electronics and various well-known brand names, such as Walkman in portable audio players, Vaio in PCs, Xperia in smartphones, Cybershot and Alpha in digital cameras, and PlayStation in video game consoles. Sony has seven main business segments, operating electronic appliances, games, devices and semiconductors, entertainment content, and financial services.

Sony

Mastercard is a payments and technology company that connects consumers, businesses, merchants, and governments. They provide data services and marketing center. Their marketing materials help card portfolios and businesses. They also provide fraud prevention solutions and payment ecosystem security.

Mastercard

Kibo Ventures, based in Madrid (Spain) is a VC Fund focused on early-stage investments in digital companies.  Kibo Ventures manages $320 million from a mix of institutional and private investors, including IEF, Telefonica, the Spanish Government (through CDTI), Mutua Madrileña (Spain's largest insurance company) and Axis (ICO's 25 year-old private equity arm). Specifically, Kibo likes to invest in companies which combine exceptional and committed teams, aiming to digitalize a product or service in a big-enough market with international potential.  Kibo is managed by an experienced team of professionals with a solid track record, who are actively involved in the companies in which they invest.  Kibo follows a stage-investment approach and financially supports portfolio companies as they grow, whilst promoting co-investment from valuable investors.

Kibo Ventures

Ataria is a venture capital firm that offers family offices and conglomerates in Latin America diversified access to early-stage high-tech startups in Israel and Silicon Valley. It provides startups with the opportunity to expand into Latin America, a region with a substantial and fast growing customer base.

Ataria

EDP Ventures is a venture capital investment arm of EDP - Energias de Portugal, S.A. specializing in seed, series A and early stage investments. It seeks to invest in, energy efficiency solution, energy storage, smart grids, electric mobility, and information technology sectors. The firm typically invests in all regions. It invests between €0.5 million ($0.58 million) to €5 million ($5.85 million). EDP Ventures is based in Lisbon, Portugal with an additional offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

EDP Ventures

Ironfire Ventures is a cross-border fund with in-house design and research services for our portfolio companies. We invest in startups from seed to series B in AI/ML, Lifestyle (consumption upgrades), Marketplaces, and Enterprise Software categories.

Ironfire Ventures

Hermes GPE is one of the leading independent investors in global private markets. Their team's 20 year track record makes them one of the most experienced investors and portfolio advisors in international private equity and infrastructure. This extensive experience and proven investment judgement has helped them deliver returns that beat industry benchmarks. They are currently invested in approximately 300 funds and around 250 co-investments across the globe as well as a portfolio of infrastructure assets, and manage £6.0 billion* for major institutional investors and pension funds worldwide. Their team also manages one of the longest running co-investment programmes of any private equity and infrastructure investor. Hermes GPE is committed to responsible investment, aiming to deliver exceptional returns for their clients; but not at any cost.

Hermes GPE

Semapa Next is a venture capital firm that invests in teams of exceptional founders from Series A to late-stage funding. We support today the leaders of tomorrow. From Lisbon to Europe. We want to be a long-term partner of exceptional teams that are positively changing the world we live in. Besides investing with patient capital, we bring a mix of entrepreneurial, operational, and financial experience to our investments. Our team and network of advisors has direct experience in Sales & Marketing, Talent Management, Finance, and M&A with businesses across all stages of development. We provide access to Semapa’s Group and its international network of partners to leverage opportunities of business development, technology piloting and world-class expertise in managing and growing global businesses.

Semapa Next

Defined.ai

Defined.ai is enabling AI creators of the future, from those building their first boot-strapped models, to those fine-tuning complex AI projects. Defined.ai hosts the leading online marketplace where it's possible to buy, sell or commission off-the-shelf or custom-ordered AI data, tools and models, and offers professional services to help deliver success in complex machine learning projects. Defined.ai is a community of AI professionals working together to build fair, accessible, inclusive and ethical AI of the future.

Defined.ai provides high quality and ethically sourced datasets for developing AI applications. It offers a variety of datasets including text, image, GenAI, speech, and live data, catering to customers in industries such as retail, finance, telecommunications, and insurance.

The toolkit to build machine learning applications at scale

Machine Learning Infrastructure

Seattle AI company Defined.ai raises $3.3M, filing shows

Defined.ai provides high quality and ethically sourced datasets for developing AI applications. It offers a variety of datasets including text, image, GenAI, speech, and live data, catering to customers in industries such as retail, finance, telecommunications, and insurance.The company also offers a platform called Neevo, where members contribute to the development and improvement of AI systems by performing written, tagging, collection, and classification tasks. Members are compensated for each completed task.As of January 2023, the company operated in the US, Portugal, and Japan.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2024, the company served customers across the insurance, banking, telecommunications, and retail industries. Notable customers include Fortune 500 companies including BMW, Mastercard, Salesforce, Samsung, and Yahoo Japan.Moreover, Defined.ai is part of Accelerat.ai, a consortium of Portuguese companies backed by the Government, which seeks to develop trustworthy AI applications. In October 2022, it unveiled a conversational AI solution for contact centers that can handle multiple languages, including Portuguese.Funding and financialsIn May 2020, the company raised USD 50.5 million in a Series B funding round. The funds were utilized to expand its existing portfolio, launch new subscription-based solutions, expand its global reach, grow its employee headcount from 100 to 500, and open additional R&amp;D labs globally.In 2019, Defined.ai’s revenue increased by 656% YoY and employee headcount increased by 176% to 250 YoY.

Datagen provides a self-service synthetic data platform that generates visual synthetic data of humans for computer vision applications. The platform allows users to write their own code to generate labeled synthetic data for faces, full body, and humans in motion in the form of images and videos to test and train AI models while retaining complete control over the data. The data covers a range of computer vision tasks including face landmark detection, face and hair segmentation, facial recognition and identification, full body pose estimation, full body segmentation, and behavior detection.Key customers and partnershipsThe company serves three of the top five global technology companies and Fortune 500 companies across the automotive, smart fitness, AR/VR/metaverse, smart office, and home security industries. Its notable customers include Google, Toyota, NVIDIA, IBM, and Intel.Funding and financialsIn March 2022, the company raised USD 50 million in a Series B funding round led by Scale Venture Partners. The funds were utilized to bolster its position in the market.Datagen reported to have recorded 8x growth in revenue in 2022.

Datagen

Weights &amp; Biases offers a platform that allows users to build models with experiment tracking, data set and model versioning, data visualization, hyperparameter optimization, and model management. The platform enables users to automatically retrain and re-evaluate models and centrally manage all model versions through every lifecycle stage—from development to staging to production. It also helps to visualize comparisons between model versions to evaluate performance and identify regressions before model deployment. It also offers toolkits such as <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19172">W&amp;B Weave and W&amp;B Production Monitoring </a>to build and monitor data- and ML-powered applications, respectively, through interactive visualizations.The company also offers a <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17880">suite of tools (W&amp;B Prompts) </a>to support large language model operations (LLMOps). W&amp;B Prompts includes tools and features for experiment tracking, debugging, and collaboration, as well as a one-click method to evaluate and score prompts through the OpenAI Eval’s framework.The company provides the platform through a free tier and under a subscription model for up to USD 50 per user per month.Key customers and partnershipsWeights &amp; Biases served more than 700,000 ML practitioners as of August 2023. Its notable include NVIDIA, Toyota, BMW Group, Samsung, Fujifilm, Truebill, and Clear Capital.The company has <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/18663">partnered with Lambda </a>, a GPU cloud computing provider, to offer its MLOps platform integrated with the infrastructure services of the latter, catering to enterprises dealing with AI and deep-learning workloads.Funding and financialsIn August 2023, the company raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/20874">USD 50 million in a strategic investment </a>round at a valuation of USD 1.25 billion, led by Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. The round also saw participation from Sapphire Ventures, Coatue, Insight Partners, and other investors. The company aimed to utilize the fresh funds to further develop its ML tools, including the launch of W&amp;B Prompts.

Weights & Biases

BentoML offers an open-source platform called Bento Cloud, for the deployment and scaling of AI applications. It is a fully managed platform that handles the complexities of AI infrastructure, providing serverless autoscaling as required during the development and production stages. The platform helps to ship models to production with advanced deployment options including online and shadow A/B testing, while also providing visibility through model performance monitoring. The platform integrates with an organization’s existing data stack and enables users to continuously deploy and improve models in production. The company offers its platform through a combination of subscription and usage-based model.In addition, BentoML also provides the following open-source platforms: 1) Yatai, for model deployment on Kubernetes and 2) bentoctl, for model deployment on any cloud platform.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2024, BentoML reported that over 1,000 organizations, comprising more than 3,000 members, use its platform. Its notable customers include Koo, Open Layer, Line, and Naver.The company entered into a strategic partnership with TomTom, a developer of location technology, to help integrate with various models as well as in LLM deployments.Funding and financialsThe company raised <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/19684">USD 9 million in seed funding </a>in June 2023 led by DCM Ventures, with participation from Bow Capital. It aimed to channel the newly acquired funds to enhance its platform and offer developers a range of tools for building, deploying, and scaling AI applications efficiently.

BentoML

Iguazio provides a serverless platform based on its open-source Nuclio framework that helps users to develop, deploy, and manage real-time AI applications without requiring them to manually manage underlying infrastructures such as servers and storage. The platform creates real-time intelligence for applications located at the edge, public cloud, and on-premise data centers and reduces bandwidth constraints by consolidating data into a repository and making it available for applications as required. The platform can ingest and transform data from any source, which is then used to train, evaluate, deploy, and monitor models in production.The company leverages Big Data and ML software such as Apache Spark, TensorFlow, and Kubernetes to manage software containers that enable applications to run across different computing environments.Key customers and partnershipsIguazio serves customers in the financial services, telecommunications, smart mobility, manufacturing, retail, AdTech, gaming, healthcare, energy, and utilities sectors. Notable customers include Samsung, Microsoft, NVIDIA, AWS, Google, and Intel.Funding and financialsIn January 2020, the company raised USD 24 million in a funding round led by INCapital Ventures. The funds were utilized to accelerate its growth, expand its reach into new global markets, grow sales, and facilitate new sales channels that include companies such as Dell Technologies

Iguazio

Cogito Tech provides image and video annotation to generate computer vision training data sets for ML &amp; deep learning (DL). The video annotation solution leverages AI-powered tools to convert video into a sequence of images and generates training data sets for ML-based AI models, including self-driving cars and drones. The AI model understands and derives insights from visual data to detect, identify, classify, and track objects in an image or video. Cogito also provides virtual assistants and chatbots to help users in the process of training ML algorithms. Cogito Tech also provides high-quality, ethically sourced datasets that are compliant and reliable to train ML models.In addition, the company provides services to fine-tune LLMs and GenAI applications through reinforcement learning techniques as well as stress test models through red teaming.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the company served more than 150 customers across 25 countries in the retail, medical, automotive, agriculture, robotics, smart cities, security, and manufacturing industries. Notable customers includes Verizon Media, The University of Sydney, National Geographic, Tumblr, and Vimeo.

Cogito Tech

Platforms and frameworks that help developers build and train ML models.

Platforms that deploy and host the trained and tested models in production and integrate them into applications through APIs.

Platforms that generate artificial data that mimics the characteristics of real data, which is then used to train ML models at scale.

Platforms that help monitor and manage ML models in training and deployment to track performance, conduct variance analysis, and optimize performance.

Makers of hardware such as CPUs, GPUs, and other application-specific hardware required to train and run ML workloads.

Integrated solutions that handle the end-to-end processes of developing, training, deploying, and monitoring ML models.

Data exchange providers and platforms that offer data labeling services via manual and/or software methods, which are used as input to train ML models.

Includes companies that provide infrastructure to build AI/ML applications

Provides tools to build, monitor, and deploy GenAI applications

Industry is focused on offering platforms for other businesses to build AI-/ML-powered apps

Defined.ai

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