Supun Walpola

SPEEDA Edge Funding Analysis 2022

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SPEEDA Edge Funding Analysis 2022: A search for bright spots

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        GenAI is proving to be a necessary catalyst for making sense of the explosion of healthcare data and reducing the burden on healthcare workers
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        Big Tech is playing a key role in the development of GenAI solutions used by the healthcare industry
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        Among the many healthcare use cases for GenAI, four applications are seeing the most activity
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  <p>
  </p>
  <ul>
    <li>
      <p>
        GenAI is proving to be a necessary catalyst for making sense of the explosion of healthcare data and reducing the burden on healthcare workers
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Big Tech is playing a key role in the development of GenAI solutions used by the healthcare industry
      </p>
    </li>
    <li>
      <p>
        Among the many healthcare use cases for GenAI, four applications are seeing the most activity
      </p>
    </li>
  </ul>
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Revolutionizing healthcare: The power of GenAI

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    This report highlights the policies of the Democratic Party, examining their implications for key industries. 
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    The Democratic Party's policies focus on promoting sustainability through a shift to clean energy and environmental justice, advancing the US as a leader in emerging technologies while safeguarding privacy and ethics, and improving healthcare access and affordability. It also aims to strengthen the economy by investing in housing, education, and workforce training, ensuring economic stability and opportunities for all Americans in a dynamic global market.
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2024 US elections impact on emerging industries: Winners and losers of a Democratic presidency

Reinforcing recycling, rerouting refuse, and reducing wasteflows

Waste Recovery & Management Tech

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    This report covers the shift to a more circular economy-based approach, away from a linear approach, for consumer electronics. Focusing on repair, refurbish, and recycle elements of sustainable e-waste management.
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        <b>Integrating circular models to reduce e-waste:</b>
         Businesses are increasingly aligning with the circular economy, especially in the consumer electronics space where consumers are demanding affordable alternatives to repair or replace broken devices.
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        <b>Limitations against repair hamper consumers&rsquo; ability to repair their devices:</b>
         Restricted access to spare parts and information as well as design that discourage repair have led to most consumers, including those who wished to repair their devices, to replace their device instead.
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        <b>Environmentally conscious consumer demand and demand for affordable alternative is on the rise: </b>
        Comparatively lower prices are prompting consumers to opt for higher quality refurbished devices compared to lower quality new devices. Refurbished devices also offer significant emissions savings since most emissions are generated during production. Recycling can also reduce the reliance on raw material imports.
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        <b>The rise of the right to repair:</b>
         Legislative support for the right to repair in the EU and the US is forcing manufacturers to make devices more repairable while supplying spare parts and repair information. The expansion right to repair can also expand the repair value chain and make the electronic repair market more competitive.
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        <b>Market projections for the circular electronics sector:</b>
         The overall market is expected to grow with recycling leading the growth. Geographically, Europe and Mainland China are likely to be the leading locales for recycled electronics. Growing affordability of high-end devices will also be a catalyst for growth withing the refurbished electronics space. Major consumer electronics brands are also positioning themselves within the repair space either directly or through collaborations.
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Sustainable E-Waste Management

Democratizing financial technology with a suite of API-based solutions

FinTech Infrastructure

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    A deep dive into Airwallex's revenue, product, business model, competition and TAM expansion.
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        Sacra estimates that Airwallex hit a revenue run rate of USD 500 million in August 2024. It partnered with Australian banks to leverage interbank payment rails, enabling them to undercut traditional B2B forex companies by 50%&ndash;80% on fees while charging a 0.2% margin. Today, Airwallex relies more on its internal network for fund transfers.
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        Airwallex generates most of its revenue from its take rate on transaction volume, which passed USD 100 billion annually in 2024. A smaller amount comes from the fees platforms pay to access embedded finance services like card issuing.
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        Airwallex competes in the global cross-border payments and financial services space for businesses, facing competition from established players and newer FinTech entrants. Competitors include Stripe, Wise, and Marqeta.
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Airwallex: The global FinTech for cross-border transactions and virtual multi-currency accounts

Data Infrastructure & Analytics

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     A deep dive into Airbyte's financials, business model, competitive environment, and market opportunities...
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        Airbyte's valuation reached USD 1.5 billion in 2024, fueled by its open-source platform and growing adoption by companies needing data integration solutions. By 2024, the company raised USD 181 million in total funding.
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        Airbyte focuses on simplifying data synchronization, offering 300+ pre-built connectors, custom connector development, and orchestration tools. It allows companies to move data from various sources to destinations and is deployed as a cloud-hosted or self-hosted solution, catering to businesses of all sizes.
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        Airbyte competes with traditional ETL providers like Fivetran and Stitch and open-source platforms such as Meltano and Hevo Data. It also faces potential threats from native integrations by SaaS vendors like Stripe and Salesforce.
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Airbyte: The open-source data integration platform

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    A deep dive into Census's product, business model, competitive environment and market opportunities...
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        Census' core product is a reverse ETL platform that enables companies to sync data from their cloud data warehouses to various SaaS applications and operational tools. Key features include a standardized API for connecting to hundreds of SaaS tools, batch and near real-time data syncing capabilities, and an Audience Hub for creating customer segments without SQL.
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        The company primarily serves B2B SaaS companies, particularly those with a product-led growth model. Typical use cases include syncing product usage data to CRMs, updating marketing automation tools with customer data, and pushing customer health scores to support tools.
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        Census faces competition from other reverse ETL platforms like Hightouch and Rudderstack, and some overlap with customer data platforms (CDPs) and general-purpose integration platforms. The company differentiates itself through its focus on operational analytics use cases and its ability to handle complex data transformations.
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        Census is well-positioned to benefit from the growing adoption of cloud data warehouses and the increasing importance of data-driven business decision-making. The company can expand into adjacent markets like operational analytics, customer data platforms, and enterprise data integration.
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Census: Bridging data warehouses and SaaS apps through reverse ETL

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

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        <b>The failure of ChatGPT&rsquo;s &ldquo;Browse with Bing&rdquo; add-on created an opening for companies like</b>
        <a href="https://sacra.com/c/perplexity">
          <b><u> Perplexity</u></b>
        </a>
        <b> (USD 20 million ARR in April 2024), which drilled down into the prosumer search use case, finding contextually relevant search results, giving users a GPT 3.5-generated summary and providing extensive citations. </b>
        &ldquo;When ChatGPT used to have Bing browsing, it would start to use that, and I would always stop it. The reason: garbage in, garbage out&hellip; If the search results are not great, with a lot of SEO-driven spammy content, it'll actually make ChatGPT's output worse because it'll be conditioned on this low-quality knowledge.&rdquo;
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        <b>The once-open web that Google first indexed in the late 90s is fragmenting into a patchwork of walled gardens, with AI companies forging data partnerships to guarantee their ability to scrape the most valuable media and news content, from Conde Nast (OpenAI) to TIME (Perplexity) to Axel Springer (Microsoft) to Reddit (Google). </b>
        &ldquo;TikTok might make it really hard to search over their content or tweets could become harder to search because Elon is locking Twitter down. If that's true, then it's harder for a single organization to search over everything like we were used to in the past with Google. What might have to happen is either you have a bunch of different types of tools that each individually search over their categories or organizations partner with those data sources. I think both will happen and are starting to happen.&rdquo;
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        <b>With every company launching AI apps based on proprietary data, AI-native search API companies like Exa (Lightspeed, USD 22 million raised), Tavily (14,000 GitHub stars), Jina AI (Canaan Partners, USD 39 million raised) and Perplexity have become key components of the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) stack, alongside vector databases like Pinecone (A16Z, USD 138 million raised), enabling companies to supplement their data with data from the public web. </b>
        &ldquo;Our customers often bring their own LLM and prompt. We definitely think about those things too, but the vast amount of the value of our whole search system comes from the retrieval, not from the LLM.&quot;
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Exa CEO Will Bryk on building search for AI agents

Helping restaurants become more safe, more profitable, and more interesting.

Restaurant Industry Robotics

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    This report looks at the adoption of robots, machines, and softwares to automate tasks and streamline operations. Covers full automation, which include container restaurants and non-container restaurants (i.e. similar to traditional restaurants but the majority of operations are automated), and partial automation (focusing on preparation of food and beverages, serving, and cleaning) solutions.
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        <b>Partial Automation Easier to Integrate into Existing Restaurants, while Full Automation Better Suits New Restaurants
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        Partial automation is easier to integrate into existing restaurants, helping address labor shortages. Full automation, requiring more investment and renovation, is better suited for new restaurants, especially fast-food establishments, offering consistent results, speed, and a unique customer experience.
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        <b>Restaurants Face Labour Shortages, with Unappealing Working Conditions and Insufficient Wage Growth
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        Labor shortages, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased dining demand have driven restaurant automation, especially in the US, China, Japan, and Canada. Despite wage increases, the restaurant industry struggles to attract workers, leading to more reliance on automation.
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        <b>Developments in Grippers, Sensors, and AI Expand the Application and Accuracy of Automation, with Adoption Supported by Higher Affordability
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        Advancements in grippers, sensors, and AI have improved the accuracy and affordability of restaurant automation, enabling partial automation that integrates easily into workflows. Automation-as-a-service further reduces costs, though full automation remains relatively expensive for many restaurants.
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        <b>Potential Total Addressable Market for Server and Cooking Robots Worth Roughly USD 28 Billion in the US
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        The US leads the global food automation market, driven by rising labor and raw material costs. In 2022, 76% of US restaurants adopted multiple automated solutions. The potential market for server and cooking robots is estimated at nearly USD 28 billion.
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        <b>Players Partner with Upstream Firms to Source Hardware for the Final Product, and with Downstream Players for Customisation
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        Restaurants can develop in-house automation, adopt third-party solutions, or use both. Automation providers often partner with upstream players for technical support and downstream players (like Chipotle and Sweetgreen) to customize and implement solutions, leading to innovations like fully automated restaurants.
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        <b>Along with Performance, Public Approval Remains Key for Long-Term Survival
        </b>
        Restaurant automation can enhance efficiency and address labor shortages but risks failure if benchmarks aren't met. Public approval and robust funding are crucial, as seen with Chowbotics and Pazzi's closures.
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        <b>Further R&amp;D Seeks to Enable Robots to Produce Meals Based on Individual Preference
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        Companies are investing in further innovations in the restaurant automation space such as integrating advanced tech like the Metaverse, or using salinity sensors for real-time taste assessment, for customized food preparation.
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Automated Restaurants

Automation to improve business efficiency

Workflow Automation Platforms

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    A deep dive into Workato's financials, product, competitive environment, and market opportunities...
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        Workato achieved USD 150 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2023, representing a 36% YoY growth from USD 110 million in 2022.
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        The platform's revenue is primarily driven by software subscriptions (~80%) and services (~20%), offering a no-code/low-code integration and automation solution that allows users to create automated workflows, or &quot;recipes,&quot; across various enterprise applications.
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        Workato competes with enterprise automation platforms such as Salesforce's MuleSoft as well as other no-code tools like Zapier and Tray, focusing on enterprise-level solutions and aiming to increase partner-influenced revenue to reduce reliance on direct sales.
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        The total addressable market (TAM) for automation and integration solutions is projected to reach USD 24 billion by 2026, positioning Workato to capitalize on the increasing demand for enterprise automation across diverse industries.
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Workato: The enterprise automations platform with low/no-code capabilities

Powering digital transformation for businesses

Low-code Platforms

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    A deep dive into Prismatic's product, business model, competition and TAM expansion.
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        Prismatic achieved product-market fit by targeting B2B SaaS companies needing customer-specific integrations. Its embedded iPaaS drastically reduced integration times from months to weeks, leading to a tripling of its customer base in 2023.
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        Prismatic operates as a subscription SaaS company, offering an embedded integration platform with a pricing model that combines subscription fees and usage-based pricing. Clients pay for platform access and scale costs based on their integration deployments, making it flexible for growing businesses.
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        Prismatic's competitive edge is its focus on B2B SaaS companies, offering tailored solutions for their specific integration needs. The platform supports low-code and full-code experiences, accommodating varying levels of technical expertise.
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        Prismatic competes in the iPaaS market, primarily against traditional players like MuleSoft, Dell Boomi, and Zapier.
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EDGE Insights