NFX operates as a pre-seed & seed stage investor that is transforming how true innovators are funded for entrepreneurs. They believe that creating something of true significance starts with seeing things others do not. As Founders, they reinvented industries with this mindset. As investors, their approach is no different. They do this by asking ourselves one question - ideally, how should the startup experience work for Founders, both NFX and the whole ecosystem. NFX lens is always through the eyes of the Founder. The firm approach is to first build an early-stage experience for all Founders that is powered by more software. Second, to bring the founders they back exponential yet little-known techniques for network effects and growth. Third, to make visible the typically seen methods of technology's most impactful companies. Having built 10 companies with more than $10 billion in exits across multiple industries and geographies, they're entrepreneurs first because they're entrepreneurs first. And they are determined to guard the backs of the next generation of fearless founders.

The Chartered Group is an investment platform. It cut through the investment noise to deliver a variety of savvy financial products and services.

Chartered Group

Mayfield is a global venture capital firm with a people-first philosophy and a 50+ year track record of inception and investing, partnering with founders to build iconic enterprise, consumer, and engineering biology companies. Since its founding, the firm has invested in more than 500 companies, resulting in 119 IPOs and more than 200 acquisitions, and currently has $2.5B under management.

Mayfield Fund

Slow Ventures is a community built on the collective experience and fueled by curiosity, Slow understands the entrepreneurial journey. Investing at the center of technology and on the edges of science, society, and culture, Slow gives founders the resources, connections, experiences, and empathy required to build strong, sustainable companies.

Slow Ventures

Viola Ventures (formerly Carmel Ventures) is a venture capital firm that invests in Israeli-related early stage companies with significant ideas that can lead to transformational companies. Founded in 2000 by [Avi Zeevi](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/avi-zeevi) and [Shlomo Dovrat](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/shlomo-dovrat), Viola Ventures manages over $1.2B across six funds, and is the only Israel-based VC fund with seven investing partners solely dedicated to early-stage tech investments. This allows for unique depth and diversification that spans across a wide range of backgrounds and verticals. With over 20-year legacy in Israel’s vibrant technology ecosystem, Viola Ventures is known for repeatedly backing global tech companies and unicorns, such as ironSource, Payoneer, Lightricks, Redis Labs, and Outbrain. The fund holds a substantial share of Israel’s significant exits, including Actimize, RedBend, ECI, Samanage, Perfecto, Tapingo, and more. Viola Ventures invests in exceptional teams with a strong focus on AI technologies looking to transform traditional markets, the semiconductors and deeptech industries, and consumer facing products.

Viola Ventures

Ridge

Ridge goes beyond the public cloud with a flexible cloud that’s anywhere you need to be. Ridge Cloud integrates into multiple locations and technology stacks to offer a full cloud experience on top of any underlying infrastructure — public or private. Businesses get a cloud customized for their specific throughput, locality, and commercial requirements. Without any installation or CAPEX, Ridge leverages existing servers and runs application workloads on any IaaS, virtualization, or bare-metal machines. Whether you need to deploy in a private data center, on-prem, edge micro-center, or even in a multi-facility hybrid environment, Ridge expands your footprint without limits.

<div>Ridge is a technology company specializing in cloud infrastructure solutions.</div>

Building future-ready applications in the cloud

Cloud-native Tech

Ridge’s edge cloud rides digital transformation wave as enterprises seek solutions to hyperscale cloud shortcomings

<div>
 
 Ridge is a technology company specializing in cloud infrastructure solutions.
 
 
 
 
 Ridge offers Ridge Kubernetes Service, a managed Kubernetes platform designed to simplify the deployment and management of containerized applications. The service encompasses automated cluster provisioning, scaling, load balancing, and monitoring capabilities, streamlining the complexities of Kubernetes orchestration.
 
 
 
 
 Ridge Kubernetes Service operates on a subscription-based sales model.
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 Ridge raised funding in January 2022 through a USD 12 million Series A round. The round was led by Chartered Group, with participation from Slow Ventures, Mayfield Fund, and others. The funds are to be utilized for&nbsp;extending cloud services to locations where there is a gap in public cloud coverage and to applications for which a public cloud is not a great fit.&nbsp;
 
 
 
</div>

SingleStore is a company that provides a distributed SQL database platform for real-time analytics and operational applications.SingleStore’s platform combines the scalability of NoSQL with the querying capabilities of SQL. It enables organizations to ingest, process, and analyze large volumes of data in real-time, making it ideal for applications that require fast and accurate data processing. SingleStore solves the problem of handling massive amounts of data and delivering real-time insights for use cases such as real-time analytics, operational analytics, and high-velocity transactional applications.SingleStore's competitive advantage is its ability to handle analytical and transactional workloads in a single platform. It allows businesses to consolidate their data infrastructure, simplifying management and reducing operational costs.SingleStore operates with a sales model that includes direct sales and partnerships with technology and solution providers. It offers different pricing and licensing options tailored to the needs of its customers, including subscription-based models.Key customers and partnershipsSingleStore serves some of the largest tech and non-tech enterprises across various industries, including Comcast, Cisco, Akamai Technologies, Fiverr, Goldman Sachs, Sony, Siemens, Hulu.SingleStore partners with all major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud) and has technology partnerships with Dell, Red Hat, Intel, HP Enterprise, and Looker.Funding and financialsAs of June 2023, SingleStore’s latest fundraising was in October 2022 from a USD 30 million Series F round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Prosperity7 Ventures. The funds were slated to fuel SingleStore’s growth and various strategic initiatives.

SingleStore

Platform9 is an open-distributed cloud company that offers solutions for managing hybrid clouds, Kubernetes, and more. Platform9 offers several products and solutions, including Managed Kubernetes, Managed OpenStack, and Managed Bare Metal.Managed Kubernetes allows businesses to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters across any infrastructure, while Managed OpenStack offers a simplified way to deploy and manage private clouds. Managed Bare Metal enables businesses to run Kubernetes, OpenStack, and other workloads on dedicated hardware with bare-metal performance.Platform9 claims to deliver a seamless Kubernetes experience across any infrastructure. Platform9's SaaS-managed Kubernetes solution offers a single view to manage Kubernetes clusters running on any cloud or on-premises infrastructure, including bare metal servers, vSphere, and public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, providing customers with a unified Kubernetes experience. In addition, Platform9 offers automated security patching, on-demand upgrades, self-healing clusters, multi-version support, and audit logging.Platform9 has a subscription-based sales model. It offers its services on a pay-as-you-go basis, with pricing based on the number of managed nodes or instances, with optional add-ons for additional features and support.Key customers and partnershipsPlatform9 targets enterprise customers who run and manage Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies on distributed cloud services, whether on-premises or in the public cloud. Its customers typically include large organizations with complex IT environments, such as financial services, healthcare, technology, and retail companies.As of mid-2022, Platform9 catered to more than 60 enterprise clients and powered 40,000 nodes across private, public, and edge clouds.Platform9 has partnerships with various cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Additionally, in <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/32723">August 2024</a>, Platform9 partnered with Fairwinds, a managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service provider, to tackle issues related to Kubernetes over-provisioning and cost management costs in public cloud deployments.

Platform9

<div>
 
 Mirantis is a technology company that provides cloud-native software and services to help businesses modernize their IT infrastructure.&nbsp;
 
 
 Mirantis specializes in open-source software, focusing on Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies. Its core offering is the Mirantis Cloud Native Platform, a managed Kubernetes service that provides a complete set of tools for deploying and managing containerized applications. The platform helps organizations adopt and scale Kubernetes quickly and easily, with features like automated provisioning, integrated monitoring, and self-service access to resources. Mirantis also offers professional services including consulting, training, and support for Kubernetes, OpenStack, and related technologies.
 
 
 Mirantis sells its products and services through a subscription-based model. Customers can choose from various annual subscription plans, depending on their needs.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Mirantis focuses on enterprise customers who deploy and manage large-scale private clouds. Some of its high-profile customers include Volkswagen Group, Soci&eacute;t&eacute; G&eacute;n&eacute;rale, S&amp;P Global, Paypal, Volkswagen, and GSK.
 
 
 Mirantis also has technology partnerships with several companies, including Arm, Cisco, Entrust, and Fujitsu, and hardware vendors like Dell EMC, Intel, and Supermicro.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22579">
 October 2023
 </a>
 , specialty finance company Horizon Technology Finance provided a USD 35 million venture loan facility to Mirantis, Inc. A sum of USD 20 million was initially funded.
 
</div>

Mirantis

Rafay Systems is a cloud-native platform that automates deployment, life cycle management, and scaling of containerized applications across all cloud infrastructure.Rafay's platform provides enterprises with the tools to deploy and manage containerized applications, microservices, and serverless functions in a scalable and efficient way. The platform provides features including multi-cluster management, automated workload scaling, automated application recovery, and granular application-level access controls. Rafay also provides a Kubernetes-native API gateway that simplifies managing and securing microservices, and includes capabilities to include support for graphics processing unit-based workloads.Additionally, Rafay Systems offers an AI suite to simplify AI application development and deployment. This suite includes pre-configured LLMOps Playgrounds, a turnkey MLOps pipeline, central management of LLM providers and prompts, and AI data source integrations and governance. It also offers a cost optimization suite to help IT professionals manage Kubernetes expenses with dynamic cluster scaling, auto-rightsizing, policy application, and simplified infrastructure.Rafay has a subscription-based sales model and offers its platform as a service. The pricing is based on the number of clusters, nodes per cluster, and the amount of data transferred.Key customers and partnershipsRafay’s target customer segments are enterprises, service providers, and software vendors. Some of its notable clients include Verizon, Equinix, Samsung, Moneygram, and the US Air Force.In 2022, Rafay launched its Technical Alliance Program (TAP), which brings together technology and solutions providers to develop joint solutions to simplify and streamline Kubernetes management and operations. Partners of the program include GitLab Inc., F5 NGINX, MinIO, New Relic, and Sysdig. Meanwhile, Rafay’s public cloud and managed Kubernetes partners include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Oracle.

Rafay Systems

Docker, Inc. is a technology company developing productivity tools centered around Docker, a software container platform that automates the deployment of code inside containers.Docker, Inc's major commercial products include Docker Hub, a central repository for containers, and Docker Desktop, a GUI application that enables Windows and Mac users to manage containers.Docker's ease of use, portability, resource efficiency, scalability, and strong ecosystem has made it a popular solution for deploying and managing applications in various environments.Docker has a subscription-based sales model. Docker also collaborates with various channel partners, including technology resellers, system integrators, and value-added distributors to expand its reach.Moreover, Docker has made several strategic acquisitions to enhance its capabilities: AtomicJar (2023), Nestybox (2022), SocketPlane (2015), and Tutum (2015), among others.Key customers and partnershipsAs of December 2022, the platform was used by more than 18 million developers. As of March 2022, the company served more than 56,000 commercial customers, including Adobe, Netflix, PayPal, Verizon, and Target.In <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27771">March 2024</a>, Docker expanded its partnership with Red Hat to integrate Testcontainers Cloud into the Red Hat OpenShift platform. This partnership aimed to streamline the process of building cloud-native applications and facilitate real-world testing using Docker containers.Funding and financialsIn March 2022, Docker raised USD 105 million in a Series C round led by Bain Capital Ventures at a valuation of USD 2.1 billion. The funds were to accelerate investments in its product and go-to-market initiatives, such as increasing investments in developer productivity, trusted content, and ecosystem partnerships and investing in new channels and geographies.Docker’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) was more than USD 50 million in 2021.

Docker

Vendors offering cloud-native infrastructure or provisioning, which is the first layer in the cloud-native landscape. It encompasses tools to create and harden the foundation of cloud-native apps.

Vendors offering execution environment (runtime) solutions. This encompasses everything a container needs to run in a cloud-native environment, including the code used to start a container.

Vendors offering solutions for application definition and development. This layer focuses on the tools that enable engineers to build cloud-native applications

Vendors offering orchestration and management solutions including tools to handle running and connecting cloud-native applications.

Vendors offering observability, including tools to understand a cloud system from its external outputs, measured by CPU time, memory, disk space, latency, errors, etc.

Vendors that bundle different tools from different layers together into a platform, solving a larger problem. These can include an orchestration tool, a container runtime, service discovery, networking, an API gateway, etc.

Provide tools to design and build applications for deployment and operation in cloud environments

Disruptors are using Generative AI for AI-based assistants and help-bots, while others provide the technology for developing and deploying Gen AI applications and models.

Ridge

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