As part of the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, GS Growth is the firm’s investment platform dedicated to providing preferred equity and mezzanine capital to high-growth companies. As of June 2019, Goldman Sachs' investing groups (Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, Principal Strategic Investments, and Private Capital Investing) have combined to form the GS Growth team. The team targets investments of $20-250 million.

GS Growth

Salesforce Ventures helps enterprising founders build companies that reinvent the way the world works.  they’ve invested in and partnered with more than 400 of the world's tenacious enterprise software companies  Salesforce Ventures leverages decades of expertise in the cloud and long-term relationships with key decision-makers at thousands of businesses around the world to give portfolio companies an unfair advantage, help them build credibility, and accelerate growth.

Salesforce Ventures

Safar Partners is a seed- to growth-stage venture fund investing primarily in technology companies out of MIT, Harvard, and the University of Rochester. We invest in platform technologies in the cleantech and advanced materials, AI/IT and robotics, and life science/medical device areas.

Safar Partners

Romulus Capital invests in early-stage technology companies that are looking to become industry leaders. We invest between $100K-$1M in brilliant – often first-time – entrepreneurs who are frequently affiliated with top universities and incubators. As a given company grows, our total investment can scale to $5M+ over time.   We are focused on company-building, rather than betting, and we remain strong partners throughout the trajectory of growth. Our firm is young, entrepreneurial, and established, with a powerful investor base from around the world.   We are a venture capital firm of the future, one that merges the classic, humanist focus on building large, impactful entities with the exciting realities of modern entrepreneurs.

Romulus Capital

OpenView is an expansion stage venture firm that helps grow software companies like Instructure, Kareo, Datadog, and Expensify into market leaders. Through OpenView's Expansion Platform, they help companies hire the best talent, acquire, and retain the right customers and partner with industry leaders so they can dominate their markets. OpenView's focus on the expansion stage makes it suited to provide truly tailored operational support to their portfolio companies. OpenView Partners has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

OpenView

Sidecar Angels is a Boston-based angel group that helps venture capital firms and entrepreneurs build early stage companies.

Sidecar Angels

Hearst Ventures makes strategic investments in companies operating at the intersection of media, information, and technology.

Hearst Ventures

Battery Ventures is a investment firm that focuses on technology. It invests in potentially, category-defining businesses in markets including application software, IT infrastructure technologies, consumer-internet and mobile services, and industrial technologies.

Battery Ventures

Western Technology Investment is a venture capital firm that specializes in offering acquisition financing to revenue-generating firms. The firm provides debt and lease financing to venture capital backed technology companies.

Western Technology Investment

Avaya is a global leader in communication systems, applications, and services. Learn about where they've been, where they're headed, and the leaders that are getting them there.  The company's communication equipment and software integrate voice and data services for customers including large corporations, government agencies, and small businesses. Its office phone systems incorporate Internet protocol (IP) and Session Initiation protocol (SIP) telephony, messaging, Web access, and interactive voice response. Avaya also offers a wide array of consulting, integration, and other managed IT services. The company sells directly and through distributors, resellers, systems integrators, and telecommunications service providers; more than three-quarters of its sales are made indirectly. Parent company Avaya Holdings filed for an IPO in 2011.

Avaya

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency was created with a national sense of urgency in February 1958 amidst one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the Cold War and the already-accelerating pace of technology.  In the months preceding the official authorization for the agency's creation, Department of Defense Directive Number 5105.15, the Soviet Union had launched an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the world's first satellite, Sputnik 1, and the world's second satellite, two months after Sputnik 1, resulted in a spectacular fiery failure. Finally, at the end of January 1958, a stunned United States became the second nation to place an object in orbit when it successfully launched the Explorer 1 satellite.  Out of this traumatic experience of technological surprise in the first moments of the Space Age, U.S. leadership created DARPA, initially with the shorter name Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In the nearly 60 years since it was established, DARPA has owned the critical mission of keeping the United States out front when it comes to cultivating breakthrough technologies for national security rather than in a position of catching up to strategically important innovations and achievements of others.  With no research and development facilities of its own, DARPA has become known as a laboratory and incubator of innovation by providing thought leadership, community-building frameworks, technology challenges, research management, funding, and other cultural and infrastructural support elements that it takes to usher transformative ideas toward consequential new realities.

DARPA

New York Life Ventures connects the financial strength of New York Life with the speed and agility of the start-up community, engaging in strategic partnerships that accelerate the pace of innovation across the enterprise. Through its strategic testing and investing approach and on-site research and development lab, New York Life Ventures drives opportunity and growth for early-stage ventures while fostering a network of innovation throughout New York Life and enhancing customer experiences.

New York Life Ventures

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is the lead federal agency for research on mental disorders. NIMH is one of the 27 Institutes and Centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest biomedical research agency in the world. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

National Institute of Mental Health

Cogito

Cogito is a computer service company that enhances the emotional intelligence of phone professionals by applying behavioral science through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its software evaluates hundreds of behavioral signals through voice to provide live conversation coaching for agents and a real-time measure of customer experience for every call.

Cogito is a company that develops artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to enhance customer service interactions in contact centers. Founded in 2007 as a spinout from the MIT Media Lab, Cogito's core technology uses voice analysis algorithms to provide real-time coaching and guidance to call center agents. The software analyzes over 200 acoustic and lexical signals during phone conversations, extracting data on tone, pitch, word frequency, and other factors to gauge customer sentiment and agent performance. This enables Cogito to offer live behavioral cues to agents, helping them adjust their communication style and improve customer satisfaction.

Uniphore A Unicorn As Startup Closes Largest Ever Funding Round For Call Center AI

Cogito Company (About Us)

Real-Time AI Coaching & Guidance for Contact Centers

Cogito Announces an AI-Informed Personalized Coaching Solution to Support Frontline Professional Development

Cogito Enhances Conversation AI, Bolstering Real-Time Agent Assist and Coaching Capabilities

Real Time Coaching

Cogito Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software — An Ethics Case Study

Creating safer digital communities with AI vigilance

Automated Content Moderation

Cogito Research Finds Customers Prefer AI-Powered Selling, Ushering in a New Era for Contact Centers

Cogito is a company that develops artificial intelligence (AI) software designed to enhance customer service interactions in contact centers. Founded in 2007 as a spinout from the MIT Media Lab, Cogito's core technology uses voice analysis algorithms to provide real-time coaching and guidance to call center agents. The software analyzes over 200 acoustic and lexical signals during phone conversations, extracting data on tone, pitch, word frequency, and other factors to gauge customer sentiment and agent performance. This enables Cogito to offer live behavioral cues to agents, helping them adjust their communication style and improve customer satisfaction.
Cogito's AI platform provides features like automated call transcription, personalized coaching plans for agents, and post-call smart summaries powered by generative AI. The software aims to increase first-call resolution rates, reduce average handle times, and enhance overall interaction quality. Cogito's technology was initially developed to help healthcare providers detect mental health issues in soldiers, but has since been adapted for enterprise customer service applications. The company's software is used across industries including healthcare, insurance, financial services, telecommunications, and travel.

Unitary is a London-based AI company specializing in visual content moderation. Founded in 2019, the company has developed proprietary machine learning algorithms that analyze multiple signals to understand the contents and contexts of videos, images, audio, and text. Unitary's technology mimics human moderation by simultaneously analyzing visual, aural, and textual content, allowing it to comprehend video and image content similar to humans. This approach helps digital platforms quickly identify inappropriate or illegal material at scale, addressing the challenge of exponentially growing online content that makes manual review unrealistic.
As of October 2023, Unitary was analyzing six million videos daily across multiple languages. The company's AI offers a scalable solution for content classification, empowering human moderators and helping platforms navigate nuanced content. Unitary's products have been used to classify billions of online images and videos. The company also maintains an open-source AI tool called Detoxify, which has been downloaded over 7 million times. Unitary's technology is designed to help platforms adapt to new regulations like the UK's Online Safety Bill and the EU's Digital Services Act, which require more proactive moderation and action against illegal content. In October 2023, Unitary reported seven figures in annual recurring revenue, demonstrating significant growth in its early stages.

Unitary

Smart Moderation is an AI-powered comment moderation service designed to protect brands' social media profiles and online communities. The company's technology automatically detects and removes inappropriate content, including hate speech, spam, trolls, and bullying across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Smart Moderation's proprietary AI system utilizes machine learning and natural language processing to understand text holistically, going beyond simple keyword matching. The technology was initially trained using Facebook's official community standards and continues to learn from users' preferences and past actions, creating a customized moderation approach over time.
The company offers a subscription-based B2B SaaS solution that operates 24/7 in real-time, providing continuous protection without human intervention. Smart Moderation's setup process is designed to be quick and straightforward, requiring only three steps: signing up with a Facebook account, connecting to social networks, and adding profiles. This streamlined approach allows brands to implement the service in less than a minute, offering immediate protection for their online presence.

Smart Moderation

Sightengine is an AI-powered content moderation platform that specializes in analyzing and filtering visual and textual content across digital platforms. The company offers APIs for image, video, and text moderation, utilizing advanced machine learning and natural language processing technologies to detect and filter unwanted content in real-time. Sightengine's capabilities include nudity detection, weapons identification, alcohol and drug recognition, as well as deepfake detection. The platform is designed to be scalable, handling up to tens of millions of images per month. Sightengine's technology also extends to optical character recognition (OCR), allowing for text extraction and analysis from images and videos. The company's solutions are applicable across various industries, including social media, ecommerce, news organizations, and online communities.

Sightengine

CyberPurify is a company focused on providing solutions for online safety and digital well-being, particularly for children. The company's technology aims to address concerns regarding inappropriate content exposure and excessive screen time among young users. CyberPurify's product offerings are designed to create a safer internet environment for children and promote healthier online habits. The company's solutions are positioned as alternatives to existing, more complex options in the market, suggesting a focus on user-friendly and accessible tools for parents and guardians.

CyberPurify

Hive is a project management software company that offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to streamline team collaboration and workflow management. The platform provides various features to visualize project scopes, track progress, and simplify stakeholder communication. Hive's interface includes multiple views such as Gantt charts, Kanban boards, calendars, and portfolio overviews, allowing users to manage tasks and projects according to their preferences. The software also incorporates functionalities like forms for creative requests, document proofing and approval processes, and integrated chat for team communication. Hive emphasizes customization, offering a range of add-ons and integrations through Hive Apps to tailor the workspace to specific needs. The company positions itself as a cost-effective solution, providing a "no-risk Hive Adoption Guarantee" and offering discounts to registered non-profit organizations.
Key customers and partnerships
Hive's content moderation services, which utilize artificial intelligence to identify and block unwanted content, are used by prominent companies including Visa, Netflix, and Reddit. The company has also collaborated with corporations such as GE, Dell/EMC, eBay, and McKesson to co-create startups. Additionally, Hive has partnered with various corporations like IBM, SAP, Intuit, TIBCO, CSAA, Microsoft, Cloudera, and Visa as sponsors for its innovation ecosystem and thought leadership forum.

Hive

Platforms that analyze and filter text-based content, including comments, chat messages, and forum posts, to detect and block hate speech, offensive language, harassment, and spam

Platforms that analyze and filter images and videos, blocking inappropriate or guideline-violating content such as nudity, violence, copyrighted materials, hate speech, and other harmful elements

Platforms that analyze and moderate a variety of media channels including text, images, audio, or video, to determine whether the content is inappropriate or violates guidelines

Platforms that offer specialized content moderation for industries like gaming, ecommerce, healthcare, and social media

Firms that offer content moderation services that combine automated AI-based content analysis with human experts’ analysis

Platforms that offer GenAI automated content moderation to identify and filter inappropriate or harmful content across digital platforms

Uses NLP to assess text, detecting policy violations such as hate speech and personal information

Generative AI can aid in policy creation and tools for summarizing large user-generated content volumes

AI and ML algorithms automatically assess user-generated content on digital platforms

The technology enables personalized policy and guideline adherence

Employs Foundation models like GPT-3 to analyze text and detect policy violations

Cogito

Sources

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless