Allianz Life Ventures

Hardware, software, and wearable devices to help prevent and manage the next pandemic.

Infectious Disease Tech

Ezra AI is a New York-based healthcare technology company that utilizes advanced medical imaging techniques, such as MRI, and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide individuals with full-body cancer screening services. The company's primary focus is on early cancer detection, aiming to create a new standard for preventative care by advocating for regular cancer screenings.
Ezra AI's cancer screening protocol involves a comprehensive MRI scan that can detect cancer, precancerous lesions, and other actionable health conditions like aneurysms, polyps, and cysts in up to 13 organs for women and 11 organs for men. In addition to the full-body scan, the company also offers specialized lung and breast protocols for high-risk individuals, utilizing various imaging modalities.
One of Ezra AI's key offerings is its Prostate AI, an AI-powered solution designed to assist radiologists in analyzing and segmenting prostate MRI scans. The Prostate AI received FDA 510(k) clearance in October 2020, marking it as the first AI system of its kind to receive such clearance. The Prostate AI offers several benefits, including accurate prostate volume measurements, automatic lesion quantification, and 3D volume rendering capabilities, potentially improving radiologists' workflow efficiency and diagnostic accuracy.
Ezra AI partners with existing outpatient imaging facilities, such as RadNet, Inc., the largest outpatient imaging network in the US. As of 2019, the company's cancer screening programs were available in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles through its partnership with RadNet.

Retail investors demanding sophisticated passive investment strategies are looking for an edge.

Retail Trading Infrastructure

Ellevest is a hybrid investment management platform that specifically targets women, with an algorithm that takes into account gender-specific factors such as career breaks, longer life expectancy, and income differences.Ellevest currently offers services under three categories: Ellevest Essential (at a monthly fee of USD 1), Ellevest Plus (USD 5 per month), and Ellevest Executive (USD 9 per month). All three offerings include portfolio customization, banking services (spending and savings accounts), access to human advisors, and on-demand learning for subjects such as investing, career, and money. Ellevest Plus is more costly because it handles retirement accounts for clients. Meanwhile, Ellevest Executive handles both retirement accounts and investment management for multiple goals. The company also offers private wealth management services for clients who wish to invest USD 1 million or more through the platform. A dedicated advisor will work together with clients to create investment plans to meet their goals.Ellevest reported assets under management (AUM) of USD 1.4 billion as of December 2021, growing 44% during the year.In April 2022, Ellevest raised USD 53 million in Series B <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9622?industryIds=28">funding </a>co-led by BMO and Contour Venture Partners. The company planned to use the funds to expand its product offering and provide personalized coaching.

A concentration of wealth and a willingness to adopt age-in-place technologies present new opportunities.

Age Tech

Ambient is a company specializing in care services for people with Alzheimer's and dementia. The company's approach to care is centered around creating a "home from home" atmosphere for residents, utilizing a feelings-based methodology and their proprietary LIVES well framework. Ambient's care model focuses on removing barriers between staff and residents, involving residents in daily tasks and activities, and providing flexible routines that allow residents to choose how they spend their time. The company emphasizes turning essential tasks into engaging activities and creating a welcoming environment filled with sensory experiences and objects of interest.
Ambient's LIVES well approach encompasses five key areas: Love and Laughter, Inclusion and Occupation, Values, Environment, and Staff & Support. This framework guides the company in providing person-centered care that meets the psychological needs of residents with dementia. Ambient's care homes are designed to promote orientation, familiarity, and sensory stimulation, with safe outdoor spaces and decor that reflects residents' life experiences. The company also focuses on staff training in dementia awareness and engagement, and encourages family involvement in care planning.
Key customers and partnerships
Ambient's services cater to older adults with Alzheimer's and dementia, primarily in community and nursing home settings. The company's approach appears to be well-received by its target demographic. Ambient works closely with families of residents, offering support and guidance and involving them in the care planning process where possible.

Enabling the health systems to seamlessly connect, exchange, and interpret shared data

Hospital Interoperability

Human API is a leading health data platform that provides a proprietary consumer-driven data platform. The company's Health Intelligence Platform connects and converts health data from various sources into actionable intelligence, accelerating processes like underwriting, improving placement rates, and enhancing customer experiences. Their platform offers a robust data network with access to electronic health records (EHR) networks, health information exchanges (HIEs), patient portals, and traditional medical record retrieval partners across the US, serving over 260 million lives as of 2022.
Human API's data normalization engine expands the utility of digital health data, delivers deeper insights, and unlocks new opportunities through the development of this unique data asset. The platform uses smart evidence orchestration capabilities to optimize data retrieval paths and a reporting engine that presents useful information to underwriters at the right time. As of August 2022, Human API's platform connected to over 30,000 data sources in the US, including EHR networks, HIEs, and provider networks.
In April 2023, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data and analytics company focused on risk reduction for businesses, acquired Human API.
Key customers and partnerships
Human API has partnered with several leading insurance companies to streamline and enhance the life insurance buying experience for consumers. In November 2022, Nationwide announced a partnership with Human API to improve the life insurance buying experience by maximizing the use of digital health data to accelerate the underwriting process. Similarly, in August 2022, USAA Life Insurance Company partnered with Human API to expand the use of digital health data in their life insurance underwriting process, leveraging Human API's Health Intelligence Platform, patient portal network, HIPAA-authorized networks, and medical record retrieval services.
In December 2022, New York Life, America's largest mutual life insurer, announced a strategic partnership with Human API to continue streamlining and simplifying the life insurance purchase experience. This partnership enabled New York Life to retrieve consumer-mediated electronic health records in the form of normalized digital health data, replacing traditional manual methods and bringing speed, transparency, and efficiency to the underwriting process.

Incorporating technology to improve efficiency and success rate of clinical trials

Clinical Trial Technology

CliniSpan Health operates a platform designed to enhance diversity in medical studies and clinical research. The company's technology facilitates the connection between potential participants and relevant medical studies through a user-friendly interface. Users can create free accounts, fill out their profiles, and receive a curated feed of studies they are eligible for, streamlining the process of finding suitable research opportunities. The platform also offers secure consultations with healthcare providers to help users determine if a chosen study is appropriate for them. CliniSpan Health's approach aims to save time for participants by eliminating the need to review studies for which they may not qualify. The company's focus on diversity in medical studies is intended to improve the safety and efficacy of healthcare for all communities. CliniSpan Health utilizes influencer technology to increase diversity in research studies.
Key customers and partnerships
CliniSpan Health has partnered with Raise a Child of the Carolinas, an organization advocating for equitable access to resources for underserved communities. The Executive Director of Raise a Child of the Carolinas, Shaguana Hunt, has expressed support for CliniSpan Health's efforts in ensuring diversity in medical studies. The platform has also received positive feedback from participants, including a medical student at Duke University, highlighting its user-friendliness and efficiency in connecting users with relevant studies.

Providing AI-driven market intelligence and workflow automation to give firms an edge

Capital Markets Tech

Accern is a no-code natural language processing (NLP) platform for the financial services industry. Its AI/ML/NLP-powered solution enables domain experts and business analysts to extract accurate insights from unstructured data sources such as news, social media, industry reports, and internal documents within minutes.&nbsp;Accern's platform encompasses pre-assembled datasets, pre-built taxonomies spanning over 60,000 companies and 250 themes, over 250 pre-trained human-grade ML/NLP models, and pre-integrated dashboards. This empowers users to rapidly deploy end-to-end AI/ML/NLP workflows, delivering high-impact insights for equity research, credit risk analysis, M&amp;A activity monitoring, ESG performance tracking, insurance claims processing, fraud prevention, market intelligence, and sanctions monitoring, among other use cases.&nbsp;In addition to providing access to pre-trained models, Accern enables users to customize their workflows by incorporating their own documents, entities, themes, models, and downstream integrations.Key customers and partnerships&nbsp;As of May 2020, the company accounted for over 50 enterprise clients, including companies such as Allianz, Jefferies, and IBM.&nbsp;In February 2022, Accern announced a strategic partnership with LPA, a software and consulting firm focused on capital markets technology. This partnership aimed to drive the adoption of AI-powered investment research among clients in North America, Europe, and Asia by combining LPA's capital markets expertise with Accern's NLP platform.In May 2024, the company partnered with Socialgist, a repository of public conversational content, to enhance its GenAI capabilities. The partnership will enable Accern to leverage diverse sources like news, blogs, message boards, and web reviews, through which Accern aims to enhance its AI capabilities for use cases such as financial fraud detection, improving its large-language-models (LLMs) with richer, more varied data.

Deriving insights from uncommon data streams

Alternative Data

Accern is a company that provides a no-code natural language processing (NLP) platform designed specifically for the financial services sector. The platform utilizes NLP algorithms to extract insights from unstructured data sources such as financial filings, news articles, and internal company documents. Accern's platform offers over 250 pre-trained NLP models that can be customized according to an organization's requirements within minutes, eliminating the need for coding expertise or training neural networks from scratch.
Asset management firms leverage Accern's platform to track market developments that may impact their investment portfolios, while private equity firms use it to gather financial and competitive data on potential investment targets. The platform can detect tens of thousands of data points out-of-the-box, and users can add custom data categories as needed. As of May 2022, Accern's revenue had increased nine-fold over the preceding two years.
Accern's clients include major financial institutions like Mizuho Financial Group, one of the world's largest banks, and investment firm William Blair & Co. In May 2022, Accern raised USD 20 million in Series B funding co-led by Mighty Capital and Fusion Fund to accelerate sales and marketing initiatives to expand its customer base.

Using AI to mimic and understand human language

Natural Language Processing Tools

Accern is a provider of a no-code natural language processing (NLP) platform designed for the financial services industry. The company's platform enables organizations to extract insights from unstructured data sources such as news articles, social media, industry reports, and internal documents. Accern's solution incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to analyze and process large volumes of text data rapidly. The platform includes pre-assembled datasets, pre-built taxonomies covering over 60,000 companies and 250 themes, more than 250 pre-trained ML/NLP models, and pre-integrated dashboards. Users can deploy Accern's end-to-end AI/ML/NLP workflows to gain insights for various applications, including equity research, credit risk assessment, M&A activity tracking, ESG performance evaluation, insurance claims processing, fraud prevention, market intelligence, and sanctions monitoring. The company positions its platform as a faster alternative to training neural networks from scratch, allowing users to customize algorithms for specific requirements in minutes without coding expertise. Accern's platform also features a tool that enables users to specify data points for algorithms to search within unstructured information. As of May 2022, Accern reported that its annual recurring revenue had grown by a factor of nine since 2020.

InsurTech: Infrastructure

<div>
 
 Covr provides white-label platforms for life insurance providers and financial advisors. Covr offers platforms under two segments, Covr Consumer and Covr Advisor. The Covr Consumer segment enables life insurance providers to operate online platforms to sell life insurance policies digitally. The platforms are equipped with AI-based analytical tools and offer digital advice for users to gather information on different insurance products, compare coverage across policies, get instant quotes, and directly purchase policies online. The company also provides omnichannel sales support if customers require personal assistance with applications.&nbsp;
 
 
 Covr Advisor offers financial advisors AI-driven tools and dashboards that enable advisors to communicate with customers, determine the extent of coverage needed, compare policies and premiums, and complete life insurance applications on behalf of their customers online. In addition, the company launched Covr Pro, a digital insurance platform aimed to serve independent financial advisors in August 2022. The platform provides self-directed tools to obtain real-time quotes from insurance carriers, drop-tickets, and end-to-end service support for independent advisors to offer life, long-term care, linked-benefit, and disability insurance.
 
 
 Key customers and partnership
 
 
 As of January 2023, the company served over 30,000 financial advisors and had more than 40 million customers spanning more than 30 financial institutions.
 
 
 In addition, it formed a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15921">
 partnership with Smart Choice
 </a>
 , an independent agent network, to roll out Covr Pro to more than 9,500 agencies in January 2023.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In April 2022, the company raised USD 15 million in Series B funding in a round that saw participation from existing investors such as Sony Innovation Fund, Aflac Ventures, and Allianz Life Ventures. The company aimed to use the funds to support growth and expand its product portfolio.
 
</div>

Sip Herbals is a food production company that manufactures and markets a wide range of herbal coffee substitutes.

Gametime Hero strives to link adults of all ages to sports and activities that are appropriate for their ability levels by providing organizers with a free platform to post clubs and events.

Mili Llama connects with nearby students, pairing qualified college and community individuals for K-12 substitute teaching assignments.

Ambient Intelligence is a contactless fall management system that allows clinicians and administrators to monitor their populations in near real time.

CliniSpan Health is a software platform that is accelerating and diversifying clinical trial recruitment.

Ezra has created a new way to screen for cancer using full-body MRI technology assisted by Artificial Intelligence. The company's first AI, developed to assist radiologists when interpreting MRI images of the prostate, is an FDA-cleared software as a medical device.

MerQube is a cloud-native indexing platform designed for designing, calculating, and disseminating financial indices at scale. In the growing space of passive (index-linked) indexing, MerQube provides robust financial indices in the areas of equities, futures, options, and ESG and has the expertise that spans market-capitalization weighted indices to risk-premia, volatility, thematics, and ESG.

FLX Networks revolutionizes engagement for asset and wealth management firms and financial advisors. FLX community members access thought leadership, investment ideas, business resources, and industry connectivity in one centralized destination, delivering productivity, savings, and growth.

About Covr Financial Technologies Founded in 2016, Covr offers a full suite of digital life insurance platforms, tools and planning services for financial institutions, including: Covr Advisor for financial advisors, Covr Consumer for offering insurance products directly to customers financial institutions and Covr Insights for inforce policy management.  Covr currently serves over 24,000 financial advisors and 13 million customers across 30 financial institutions including wealth management firms, RIAs, IBDs, banks, credit unions, personal finance apps and P&C agencies.   Covr’s investors include leading venture capital firms: Nyca Partners, Commerce Ventures, Allianz Life Ventures, Connectivity Capital Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Connecticut Innovations and Fairview Capital. Covr’s Advisory Board includes financial services leaders including Brian Finn, former president of Credit Suisse First Boston; Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Elevest and formerly at Citigroup and Smith Barney; Hans Morris, managing partner, Nyca Partners, chairman of Lending Club, formerly president of Visa; Brady Dougan, former CEO of Credit Suisse; Gregg Fleming, CEO of Rockefeller Capital, Bob Kerzner, formerly CEO of LIMRA and Joe Plumeri, formerly of Smith Barney, FirstData and Willis Group.

Halo Investing is a financial technology startup that provides an independent multi-issuer platform focused on an investment product known as Structured Notes. Structured Notes are a pre-defined outcome investment product offering downside protection, previously only available to the ultra-high net worth. Halo is empowering and democratizing access to the product by building technology to analyze, purchase, and manage the full lifecycle of the product while building efficiencies for issuing banks.

Vestwell develops a digital savings platform to create a retirement plan for employees. It offers automated retirement investing options for RIAs depending on the rules and regulations and other defined contributions to companies and their employees to help advisers engage with their clients with compliance and automation.

Ellevest provides an engaging investing experience to help women meet their financial goals in life. Ellevest offers a modern, engaging user experience. The same care, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail that is reflected in its beautiful, easy-to-use interface are applied to the construction of its portfolios, its selection of investments, and the development of the algorithms that drive its forecasts and recommendations.

Human API is a real-time health data network that gives consumers a simple way to view and share their health data from everywhere - regardless of how or where that data was collected, processed, or stored. The company provides a single, secure connection to data from 90% of US hospitals, electronic medical records, pharmacies, and labs, along with 300+ wearable devices and wellness apps. Consumers are in full control of what companies they share their health data with, and companies have one easy way to access fragmented health data sources. It was founded in 2013 and is based in San Mateo, California.

Accern is the leading NLP company empowering enterprises to develop industry-specific solutions. Offering a comprehensive NLP platform, models, data, and chat tailored for multiple industries, the company accelerates time-to-value for leading organizations across Financial Services, Government, and beyond. With a streamlined no-code workflow complemented by pre-built taxonomies, over 50,000 classification models, and access to billions of rows of public data, Accern is revolutionizing operational efficiency across the global workforce. Accern's remarkable achievements have earned it a notable position in Gartner®'s 2023 Hype Cycle™ for Data Science, Machine Learning, and Emerging Technologies in Banking, as well as recognition by Fast Company as one of the Next Big Things in Tech. Trusted by elite data teams from global leaders like Capgemini, UniCredit, Interactive Brokers, Mizuho Bank, and Standard Bank, Accern facilitates the building and deployment of NLP solutions at scale. Headquartered in New York, NY, Accern is honored to be recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 company. The company has raised $40M from esteemed institutional investors including Fusion Fund, Tribe Capital, Shasta Ventures, Allianz Strategic Ventures, Mighty Capital, and many others. For more information about Accern, please visit www.accern.com.

Gainfully is a financial services platform that helps financial professionals generate new business and connect with their clients better.

LifeYield is a software company that helps forward-thinking financial firms, advisors, and investors make more and keep more money.  LifeYield's software takes a comprehensive view of investors'​ assets and provides simple tools to help improve their financial health.  The company does so through the LifeYield Advantage Suite™ of asset optimizing software programs including Portfolio Advantage, Social Security Advantage, and Income Advantage.  Based in Boston and founded by acclaimed finance, technology, and industry experts, LifeYield is passionate about helping people live the retirement of their dreams.

Founded by several Financial Advisors that had spent 15 years managing money for very wealthy clients, blooom has become of the nation’s fastest growing robo-advisors with a specific focus on helping any American with a workplace retirement account like a 401k or 403b. Blooom is a Registered Investment Advisor with the SEC, and aims to scale fiduciary best practices on low fees, and appropriate asset allocation and diversification, to millions of Americans who have workplace retirement accounts, yet no access to a financial advisor and no desire to ''DIY it.''

Allianz Life who are uniquely positioned to leverage our financial strength and in-house expertise to help our partners succeed.

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