BlueYard invests in founders with transforming ideas that decentralize markets and empower humanity. Typically $1-3m as an initial investment; active around the world.  Most active in crypto / web 3 (e.g. Protocol Labs, Filecoin, Open Zeppelin, Radicle), technologies that help us overcome our largest planetary challenges (e.g. Marvel Fusion, Meatable, Dance), frontier biology to help us live long and prosper (e.g. BitBio, Biofidelity) and vertical software un-bundling monopolies (e.g. Pitch, Wonder).

BlueYard Capital

Crane is a London based VC firm investing and building seed and early stage intelligent enterprise and deep technology businesses across Europe. Our strategy is to support founders in building and executing their go-to-market strategy.

Crane Venture Partners

OMERS Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm with offices in Toronto, Palo Alto and New York. Typically, we invest in Series A-C companies with a first cheque size between $5-25M. We focus primarily on four categories: horizontal SaaS, vertical SaaS, fintech and AI enablement.

OMERS Ventures

Next Matter

Next Matter is a modern purpose-built cloud platform for operations. COOs and operations teams automate and orchestrate their operations with Next Matter without code. Our customers - some of the fastest-growing, technologically-advanced companies globally - use Next Matter to build and run their operations. Learn more at https://nextmatter.com

Founded in Berlin, Next Matter provides a no-code platform for sales, operations, and legal teams to automate workflows such as handling product returns, customer onboarding, and ensuring compliance. Users can create and automate workflows, forms, and processes from scratch via the platform's drag-and-drop interface or use prebuilt templates. The company also offers analytics and reporting tools that connect with business intelligence platforms and enable users to measure the performance of tasks and track progress.

Automation to improve business efficiency

Workflow Automation Platforms

Berlin-based Next Matter raises €15.3M to help automate business operations

Founded in Berlin, Next Matter provides a no-code platform for sales, operations, and legal teams to automate workflows such as handling product returns, customer onboarding, and ensuring compliance. Users can create and automate workflows, forms, and processes from scratch via the platform's drag-and-drop interface or use prebuilt templates. The company also offers analytics and reporting tools that connect with business intelligence platforms and enable users to measure the performance of tasks and track progress.Moreover, Next Matter provides consulting services to support onboarding and change management as well as enable customers to identify opportunities for process automation.The company operates under a subscription-based business model, offering 4 pricing plans for businesses of varying sizes (with custom plans for large enterprises)Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, Next Matter served several enterprises including Tink, Wefox, Trade Republic, Houst, and home24.The platform also integrates with third-party apps including Calendly, Dropbox, Docusign, Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, and Zapier, among others.&nbsp;

Headquartered in Berlin, Levity provides a no-code development platform (NDP) for building AI models to automate repetitive tasks. The platform is designed for managing customer service, marketing, and operations workflows, which deal with unstructured data such as images, text, and PDFs such as sales quote automation, direct order entry, and customer track and trace. Users can use simple templates to automate workflows and leverage the platform’s modular AI components (called AI blocks) that combine NLP and computer vision to parse unstructured data types.Levity offers 4 “AI blocks,” which enable users to create deep learning models based on their data to extract, classify, summarize, and generate text. Although the models come pre-trained out of the box, Levity allows users to fine-tune each model based on their requirements.Key customers and partnershipsAs of November 2023, Levity has automated workflows at companies such as HP, Mr. Beast, Reformation, Hear.com, BerlinCusine, and Gelato.It provides integrations with business applications such as Gmail, Outlook, and Zendesk.Funding and financialsIn October 2022, Levity <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/13740">raised USD 8.3 million </a>in seed funding, co-led by Balderton Capital and Chalfen Ventures to expand its employee base and invest in product development.

Levity

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 Danish company Leapwork offers a no code workflow automation platform that uses robotic process automation to design, manage, and scale workflows. The company&rsquo;s design &lsquo;language&rsquo; uses flowcharts to graphically represent steps in a workflow and allows users to record processes, validate steps, and input data where needed. The platform also allows users to build web apps, desktop apps, and mobile web and virtual desktop solutions to automate workflows. Moreover, Leapwork&rsquo;s automation solutions can be integrated with a range of third party technologies including SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, and ServiceNow, among others. 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company offers its services to a range of industries including financial institutions, logistics, healthcare, and retail, among others. As of August 2021, around 40% of its customers were part of the banking, insurance, and finance sector, and included companies such as PayPal, Mercedes Benz, BNP Paribas, and Accenture.
 
 
 The company reportedly doubled the number of customers year-over-year (YoY) since 2017 to over 300 customers as of August 2021 of whom around half were North American. The company claims that, with the use of their technology, businesses can achieve a 10x quicker time to market, 97% productivity gains, and a 90% reduction in application errors. As of August 2021, the company operates nine offices throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In August 2021, Leapwork raised USD 62 million in Series B financing led by KKR and Salesforce Ventures, at a USD 312 million valuation. The company intends to use these funds to recruit new full-time employees in key markets, invest in global expansion, and open tech hubs to advance product development efforts.
 
</div>

Leapwork

<div>
 
 Anvil offers a workflow-building platform that allows users to transform paper processes and PDF documents into digital workflows, using a no-code building tool as well as an API suite with more technical features for developers. The no-code workflow-building tool named &ldquo;Workflows&rdquo; enables users to convert PDF and paper forms into logic-driven web forms to streamline digital data collection and request signatures. Users can then share the completed, signed PDFs and/or data from a secure link.&nbsp;
 
 
 The tool eliminates the repetition of information in entries on multiple documents by using a logic engine that ensures interlinked forms are filled out properly. Moreover, Anvil&rsquo;s own &ldquo;Etch E-sign&rdquo; features, as well as integration with DocuSign, allow users to share and sign forms directly on the platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In March 2023, Anvil launched a new suite of enterprise products, which include APIs and no-code tools, to enable users to collect data, generate PDFs, and gather signatures within any application. These tools include conditional logic, lists, hidden fields, multi-field editing, single sign-on (SSO), and the ability to embed workflow and template builders.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 Anvil&rsquo;s integration with Zapier allows users to connect &ldquo;Workflows'' to over 6,000 applications. Anvil provides targeted solutions for the banking and wealth management industries with clients such as Citi, Ameritrade, and Catalyst Wealth Management.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2023, Anvil 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/17421">
 raised USD 10 million
 </a>
 in Series A funding from Craft Ventures and Gradient Ventures to secure more enterprise customers, grow its market, and expand its employee base.
 
</div>

Anvil

UiPath offers a low-code process automation platform that includes a suite of products that&nbsp;spans the entire automation lifecycle—from process discovery to automation development and management. These include: 1)&nbsp;process discovery tools that include process and task mining tools, as well as idea capture and management; 2) development tools that include robotic process automation (RPA) software, process orchestration, and intelligent document processing; and 3) operations tools that include automation performance analytics.&nbsp;Users can build automation for a range of repetitive tasks, such as logging into applications, data extraction, moving folders, filling forms, and updating information fields, across a range of business functions like HR, IT, and compliance.&nbsp;In October 2023, the company launched “Autopilot,” a GenAI-powered tool that enables users to automate using natural language. Users can convert documents such as PDFs and images into automation applications, accelerate process testing, and filter, summarize, and create dashboards for process mining.&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27785">In March 2024</a>,&nbsp;UiPath, launched new features for Autopilot that enable users to create automations,&nbsp;code, and expressions with natural language. Users can generate step-by-step test cases from requirements and any other source documents, generate automations from test steps, and surface insights from test results.&nbsp;Additionally, the company launched&nbsp;several new&nbsp;GenAI features in its&nbsp;platform, including:&nbsp;1) context grounding, which enables users to improve the accuracy of GenAI models via retrieval augmented generation, 2) new large language models (LLMs), specifically designed for document and communications&nbsp;processing, and 3) connectors, which enable users to leverage a number of foundation models from IBM's watsonx.ai platform.UiPath has also expanded its presence in the automation space through acquisitions. In March 2021, the company acquired Elements, an API integration platform, for an undisclosed amount. It leveraged the acquisition to provide API-based automation capabilities to its clients. UiPath went on to acquire Re:infer, a natural language processing platform, in August 2022 to provide its users with the capability to deploy custom machine-learning models to analyze documents and communications data.Key partnerships and customersUiPath has an extensive partner ecosystem with a range of&nbsp;companies, including technology partners that develop integrations for the platform, such as Adobe, Alteryx, DocuSign, Salesforce, and OutSystems, as well as cloud providers like AWS, Google, and Microsoft. The platform provides users access to over 1,400 reusable automation integrations and components to multiple applications, databases, and systems (as of October 2023).&nbsp;In February 2024, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27109">extended its partnership with Google Cloud</a> to make its platform accessible to a wider range of users via the Google Cloud Marketplace. The partnership also enabled the company to leverage 1) Google’s Vertex AI platform to enable users to infuse GenAI insights into their automations and 2) Google Workspace to offer users access to over 100 Google Cloud and Google Workspace integration activities.&nbsp;In March 2024, the company&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27554">partnered with Deloitte</a> to introduce a new implementation methodology for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software developed by SAP. It went on to&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/34847">launch an integration</a> with SAP's "Build" process automation software, in October 2024, to enable customers to migrate to SAP S/4HANA Cloud and automate processes across various SAP-based enterprise applications.&nbsp;The company has also entered a number of GenAI-focused partnerships with cloud and AI infrastructure providers.&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29849">In May 2024</a>, UiPath integrated Microsoft’s GenAI assistant, Copilot for Microsoft 365, into its automation platform to provide joint customers direct access to UiPath’s automation capabilities directly within Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Teams.&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35133">In October 2024</a>, it went on to integrate Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet language model into three key products: UiPath Autopilot, Clipboard AI, and a new GenAI healthcare solution. Moreover, during the same period, it&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/35134">partnered with Inflection AI</a>, an LLM developer, to offer an integration that enables users to keep their data on-premises while accessing Inflection AI's system and agentic automation capabilities.As of January 2023, UiPath served over 10,800 customers across a range of industries, including the American Red Cross, BMW Group, Carlsberg, Fujifilm, Japan Airlines, Korea Telecom, and the US Department of Defense.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

UiPath

Appian offers a low-code platform that provides a suite of products that enable users to build, automate and optimize internal workflows and business processes across the finance, sales, and procurement functions. Users can leverage Appian’s low-code declarative programming language named “SAIL” to build end-to-end process automation, including robotic process automation (RPA) bots, as well as connect customers, employees, systems, and AI. The platform also enables continuous monitoring of processes, tracking business metrics, performance, and return on investment via process dashboards and scorecards.&nbsp;In May 2023, the company released an AI Skill Designer, a low-code tool that enables users to build, train, and deploy custom machine-learning (ML) models. Users can leverage the company’s native AI/ML services to integrate AI into existing business functions and automate repetitive tasks such as document classification, email classification and document extraction. Moreover, the company went on to launch “AI Copilot,” a GenAI-powered assistant, in August 2023. Through this, the company aims to allow users to create workflows using natural language as well as query Appian's data fabric architecture for self-service analytics with instant reports.In November 2024, the company announced its&nbsp;<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/36791">latest platform release,</a> which includes new enterprise AI-powered automation features and a process scaling solution named "Appian Autoscale”, which enables scaling of 6 million processes per hour (a 10x increase from previous capabilities). The platform has also introduced AI Skills for document extraction, AI Copilot for data fabric with 40% faster response times, and Process Insights AI for creating business KPIs.&nbsp;Appian has expanded its offerings through acquisitions. The company acquired Novayre Solutions, an RPA platform, in 2020 and Lana Labs, a process mining company, in 2021, for undisclosed amounts. It leveraged these acquisitions to expand its automation and RPA, as well as process mining and optimization solutions respectively.Key partnerships and customersAppian has an extensive partner ecosystem with a range of companies, including service partner companies, such as FDM and Revature, and industry-specific technology companies to expand its services for enterprises. In 2021, the company partnered with Redox, a healthcare data platform, to enable health systems and payer entities to securely share patient medical record information. Appian also went on to partner with Swiss Re in October 2023 to launch “Connected Underwriting Life Workbench.” The solution enables insurers to evaluate and classify risk and handle exceptions and decisions on applications via a single interface.&nbsp;In February 2024, Appian <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/27108">partnered with Symphony </a>, a provider of financial services workflow management solutions, to offer secure communication solutions and automated processes to financial institutions. The partnership enables users to embed auditable omnichannel communications on a number of popular platforms into their workflows on the Appian platform. This includes messaging and voice networks such as WhatsApp, WeChat, and SMS. In April 2024, the company went on to <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28503">partner with AWS </a>, to combine its own in-built AI capabilities and data fabric with large language models (LLMs) and machine learning services offered by Amazon Bedrock and SageMaker. Appian users can leverage these capabilities to host LLMs while ensuring compliance and data security and create, train, and fine-tune proprietary AI models using their own data. During the same period, the company also <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/28530">expanded its partnership with TELUS international </a>, a Canadian IT services company, to develop an automation-as-a-service product.&nbsp;Appian’s data fabric comprises a library of integrations to enterprise systems (such as AWS, Oracle, Salesforce, and DocuSign) that can be used to connect and unify data.&nbsp;As of December 2022, the company served 925 enterprise customers, including Aon, Bayer, Deloitte, Union Bank, Sanofi, and Munich Re, across a range of industries.&nbsp;Funding and financials &nbsp;The company generated USD 468 million in revenue in 2022. However, the company was yet to turn profitable with an operating loss of USD USD 145 million in 2022. The company expected revenue to reach USD 538 million–543 million in 2023 (implying YoY growth of ~15%–16%).

Appian

Platforms that automate accounting and finance operations such as accounts receivable, reconciliation, transaction matching, financial close management, and intercompany financial management

Software to streamline and automate sales, marketing, and customer relationship management processes, such as qualifying leads, renewal, sales forecasts, pipeline tracking, and identifying overdue closing dates

Platforms that govern repetitive HR and admin processes such as recruitment management, employee onboarding, surveys, HRIS records, and assigning buddies

Platforms to automate operational workflows such as task monitoring and flows, streamlining facility requests, and supply chain management

Platforms that specialize in automating functions other than the four identified segments. These include platforms that automate IT, compliance, claims processing, cybersecurity, and product development

Platforms that offer a range of workflow automation and RPA bots that are not specifically targeted at any business function

Companies which utilize GenAI as a core part of their product offering for workflow automation

Offers solutions for businesses to build workflows and delivers them on a SaaS basis

Used together with RPA bots to optimize existing workflows and build new ones

Uses NLP to understand the information, especially unstructured information, present in workflows

Can automate workloads for several business functions for employees regardless of where they are

Used to extract data, understand and analyze unstructured data, and also deal with high-volume workflows

Next Matter

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