Backed by Precursor Ventures with additional funding from Commerce Ventures, Slow Ventures, Allegis Capital, and Clear Heights Ventures, Sawa is a way to protect against future financial emergencies and help others in the community do the same.

OAKLAND, Calif., Feb. 8, 2023 — Sawa Credit Inc, the venture-backed startup for protecting against financial emergencies and helping others in the community address financial challenges, today announces the beta launch of its community financial support platform.

With Sawa, no one is alone. Every Sawa user has access to a community-backed emergency fund, protecting them from financial shocks and putting them on the path to building lasting financial health. Sawa is a technology platform that uses behavioral science to create a community support system for borrowers to increase financial literacy and improve access to emergency capital, addressing the wealth disparity.

Half the people in the United States own just two percent of the wealth (Piketty, 2022) and many of them are unable to bear a $400 shock (Federal Reserve Board, 2021). Most financial shocks are small dollar, and access to emergency capital of just $100 has a big impact on avoiding high-cost credit, delinquencies, and defaults. While any one household might not have the funds, the money is available in the community — with Sawa, everyone has access to that $100.

“We want to give people hope that they’re not alone in facing future financial shocks. Instead of going it alone, Sawa members are in a pod of others with shared financial goals and have access to a community-backed emergency fund,” says Charles Phillips, CEO of Sawa. “Sawa is a way to get out of and stay out of a financial hole and build lasting wealth in the community.”

The beta launch will follow several Sawa pods testing pod size, strength of member social connections, and modes for accessing the community pot, including a “ROSCA,” or rotating savings and credit association. Sawa beta is also in a research partnership with Common Cents Lab (CCL), a financial research lab part of the Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University, which will also have research pods in the beta.

“In the beta, we will learn how to engage community members so they can get through financial shocks and ease their financial fears together — ultimately transforming financial precarity into financial health and wealth for the entire community,” says Andrew Henry, co-founder and CFO of Sawa.

Sawa raised $3M in its seed round and has been using the venture funding on research and development. Many members of Sawa’s leadership, board, and advisors come from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) class of 1999. The team is guided by its board members, including Michael Spence, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and former dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business; David Brady, Deputy Director and Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution; and Brian Trelstad, Partner at Bridges Fund Management’s Sustainable Growth Fund and co-chair of the Impact Capital Managers.

About Sawa Credit Inc.: Sawa is a first-of-its-kind community platform helping underserved borrowers build financial health. We tap the power of community to help users increase their capacity so they can avoid delinquency and defaults and get and stay in their homes — all while reducing risk for lenders and borrowers. Leveraging behavioral science, Sawa is a venture-backed startup founded by industry-leading fintech and business experts. For more information, visit https://www.sawa.money.

Media Contact:
Andy Anderegg
(800) 420-6153
[email protected] 

SOURCE Sawa Credit Inc.

Light Field Lab Reveals Defy™ Interactive Experiences

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 8, 2023 — Light Field Lab^®, developers of the SolidLight^™ holographic display platform, today announced it has raised a $50 Million Series B led by global game developer NCSOFT. New investors Corning, Gates Frontier, LG Tech Ventures, NCSOFT, and OTOY are joined by additional participation from current shareholders Khosla Ventures, the venture capital arms of Samsung, Verizon, Bosch, Forvia, Liberty Global, and national technology fund Taiwania Capital. Light Field Lab also unveiled Defy experiences, the first of which, Space and Time, allows you to speak and interact with SolidLight holograms. The latest financing will drive the productization of SolidLight systems with implementations across a variety of enterprise and location-based entertainment applications.

Recently recognized as one of TIME’s Best Inventions, SolidLight is the highest resolution holographic display platform ever designed enabling real digital objects to form in mid-air without headgear. The hardware features self-emissive bezel-less panels that assemble into modular holographic video walls. SolidLight technologies combine to offer a turn-key system solution for a wide range of next-generation experiences. Defy is powered by Light Field Lab’s proprietary real-time WaveTracing^™ software.

“Light Field Lab is building the future of immersive experiences and we are pleased to support the team in bringing true holograms to life,” said Dr. Songyee Yoon, chief strategy officer, NCSOFT. “Being able to see, deliver and interact with 3D content without any assistive peripheral devices will substantially advance the consumer adoption of SolidLight, not just in the entertainment space, but also the way in which we interact and collaborate through remote technologies.”

“Light Field Lab’s SolidLight technology will change the way people consume content, providing immersive full-sensory holographic experiences that are indistinguishable from reality,” said Dong-Su Kim, CEO of LG Technology Ventures. “Our investment and partnership with Light Field Lab underscores LG’s interest in bringing next-generation displays to market.”

“Defy provides a unique glimpse into our vision of the future where physical people, places and things can be digitally transported with nothing but light,” said Jon Karafin, CEO of Light Field Lab. “We are grateful to be supported by a syndicate of visionary investors and partners on our journey building the holographic future.”

About Light Field Lab, Inc.
Light Field Lab’s roadmap of technologies begins with SolidLight holographic displays to seamlessly merge real and virtual worlds together. Light Field Lab is based in San Jose, Calif. and backed by industry luminaries at Gates Frontier and Khosla Ventures, the venture capital and corporate investment arms of market leaders Bosch, Comcast, Corning, Forvia, LG, Liberty Global, NCSOFT, NTT Docomo, OTOY, Samsung, and Verizon, and a prestigious list of venture capital firms including AVG, ACME Capital, R7 Partners, and Taiwania Capital.

Further information about Light Field Lab and the SolidLight platform is available online. You may also connect with Light Field Lab on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Light Field Lab, Inc.

Investment Led by March Capital Will Fuel the Next Phase of Growth

CAMPBELL, Calif., Feb. 8, 2023 — Acceldata, the market leader in data observability, has raised $50 million in Series C funding. This latest round of funding was led by March Capital, with additional investment from Sanabil Investments, Industry Ventures, and existing investors, Insight Partners.

Acceldata has raised nearly $100 million in funding from top tier VCs including Lightspeed, Sorenson Ventures, and Emergent Ventures since its inception. The round will be used for accelerating innovation and expanding go-to-market efforts for its Data Observability Platform.

Enterprise data volume and system complexity is increasing exponentially while data engineering teams are understaffed and hard to scale. Operational complexity, failing data pipelines, unreliable datasets, and rising data management costs inhibit data ROI, and cause costly compliance failures for enterprises across all industries. In a recent survey conducted by Censuswide, 80 percent of enterprise data leaders expressed their plans to prioritize investments in systems to provide visibility, and 85 percent plan to deploy data observability in 2023.

“Enterprises face an unprecedented challenge to satisfy business demands for data at scale,” said Rajan Mehra, Partner at March Capital. “Acceldata is leading the charge for the data observability industry, giving operational control back to the data teams with meaningful insights and we’re very excited to join them along this ride.” 

“Data teams are building revenue generating, mission-critical data products, but are missing purpose-built observability solutions to operate their data ecosystem,” said Rohit Choudhary, CEO and Co-founder of Acceldata. “We are rapidly innovating to enable enterprises with a comprehensive data observability platform, providing visibility across the supply chain of data.”

Acceldata is utilizing this investment to further expand its footprint into the Global 2000, while supporting the company’s existing partnerships with Snowflake, Databricks and the leading data and analytics services providers including Wipro and others. Acceldata is expanding its integrations with cloud service providers and ISVs, and continues to increase awareness of data observability as a must-have enterprise investment area.

“It’s been incredible seeing Acceldata’s accelerating growth in the most strategic customers’ data observability needs. Given its focus as an enterprise-scale platform, Acceldata is well-positioned to extend its lead in this mission-critical market,” said George Mathew, Managing Director at Insight Partners.

This news comes off the heels of an impressive 2022 for Acceldata, which netted 100% YoY growth of new logos in Fortune 500. New customer wins for Acceldata in 2022 included the largest telcos in the U.S. and the largest mortgage and insurance providers, which operate petabyte scale data lakes and data warehouses.

Other major product milestones in 2022 included:

• The general availability of the Acceldata Data Observability Platform, the first and only data observability platform to address all four forms of data observability.
• Availability of the Acceldata Data Observability Platform on the AWS Marketplace.
• Brought enterprise-grade data observability to the Snowflake and Databricks ecosystems.
• Announced the Open Data Platform, a free fully supported Hadoop open source data platform and several data observability libraries.

About Acceldata

Founded in 2018, Campbell, CA-based Acceldata has developed the world’s first enterprise data observability platform to help enterprises build and operate great data products. Acceldata’s solutions have been embraced by global customers, such as Dun & Bradstreet, Verisk, Oracle, PubMatic, PhonePe (Walmart), DBS, and many more. Acceldata investors include Insight Partners, March Capital, Industry Ventures, Lightspeed, Sorenson Ventures, Sanabil, and Emergent Ventures. Contact us to learn about the benefits of data observability.

SOURCE Acceldata

The Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Announces the Financial Partnership Days Before the National Football League Championship

 LOS ANGELES, Feb. 8, 2023 — Leading up to the highly anticipated game in Phoenix on Sunday, February 12, Casa Azul announced today that NFL Tight End Champion, Travis Kelce, will join the company as its latest investor. The announcement marks Kelce’s first investment in the rapidly growing RTD market as he prepares for his third appearance at the championship game.

“Not only do I know how to get wins on the board, I also like to make sure everyone is having a good time anywhere I go.” said Kelce. “I’m excited to turn up and announce my investment in Casa Azul Tequila Soda. To all the other hard seltzer brands out there, know your role and shut your mouth!”

Founded by serial beverage entrepreneur Lance Collins, Casa Azul Tequila Soda launched in August 2022 and is now available online and at retailers in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Arizona, and Louisiana. The brand differentiates itself from many traditional canned drinks by utilizing real spirits, not malt liquor, and features a simple ingredient list that includes sparkling water, Casa Azul Tequila, natural fruit flavors, and agave nectar.

“Travis is one of the best players in the league, and he’s also an influencer off the field in media and lifestyle,” said Collins. “Kelce’s investment in Casa Azul Tequila Soda will help introduce our RTD beverages to a new audience of sports fans who are seeking the best of both worlds — the real spirits and flavor found in canned cocktails, but with the low calories and low carbs of hard seltzers.”

Casa Azul Tequila Soda is available in a convenient variety 8 pack featuring the current flavors: Lime Margarita, Strawberry Margarita, Peach Mango, and Watermelon, as well as in single flavor 4 packs. Ingredient differentiators include real Tequila from Jalisco, Mexico, 0-1 g carbs and 100 calories per can, and 5% alcohol.

“Casa Azul is the perfect fit for Travis because not only does he love tequila sodas, but the brand aligns with his values to promote real ingredients and great taste,” said A&A Management Founder, Andre Eanes. “Casa Azul founder, Lance Collins, has an undeniable track record with successful exits in the beverage space with better-for-you products, so it makes sense to partner with them from the start.”

To learn more, visit casaazulspirits.com. Find Casa Azul on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook and LinkedIn.

ABOUT TRAVIS KELCE

Now ten years in the league, Travis Kelce, Super Bowl LIV Champion and Pro NFL tight end with the Kansas City Chiefs, continues to rise as a leader for his teammates both on and off the field. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, he is respected for his elite performance and is considered the undisputed #1 tight end in the NFL, in addition to being an 8x Pro Bowler. He holds the record for the most receiving yards by a tight end in any single season and consistently proves to be a transcendent athlete.

In 2015, Kelce launched 87 & Running, a foundation to empower underserved youth to achieve success by providing resources and support to their communities. Together with respected educators, he is cultivating local experts in education, business, athletics, STEM, and the arts.

Being one of the most recognizable names in sports, Kelce is carving out a lane all his own. The definition of a multi-hyphenate talent, this national champion is an entrepreneur, entertainer, fashion designer, and philanthropist. Sports Illustrated named him one of the most fashionable athletes in professional sports, recently launched his clothing line, Tru Kolors. The brand is designed around Kelce’s ethos of being bold and living true to yourself. The official Nike athlete, released his signature shoe with the brand in 2021. Kelce can also be seen on television hosting appearances on ABC, ESPN, and Disney as he continues to grow his reach across sports, culture, and entertainment.

About CASA AZUL®

Created by serial entrepreneurs in the beverage industry who have consistently delivered better-for-you products, Casa Azul is bringing that ethos to spirits and disrupting the RTD market with a fresh new entry. With the real flavor and real spirits of canned cocktails, but with the low calories and carbs of hard seltzers, Casa Azul is the perfect upgrade. Casa Azul focuses on providing the highest quality, most authentic, and flavor-forward ingredients in the growing tequila space. Casa Azul Tequila Soda is a light, refreshing, and delicious beverage that’s convenient for anytime and anywhere. At only 100 calories per can, 0-1g carbs, and 5% alcohol, Casa Azul is the perfect drink for unwinding with friends and family. To learn more, visit www.casaazulspirits.com.

SOURCE Casa Azul

Medical imaging AI company brings total investment to $10 million and targets global growth.

MARSEILLE, France, Feb. 8, 2023 — Medical imaging AI specialist Avicenna.AI today announced it has secured a Series A funding round, bringing aggregated investment in the company close to $10 million. The round was backed by existing investors Innovacom and CEMAG Invest.

The new funds will be used to scale up deployment of Avicenna.AI’s solutions across the world and to diversify the company’s offering into new areas of medicine.

“Last year was pivotal for Avicenna.AI, with huge growth in the deployment of our solutions around the world, and very positive feedback from our partners and users alike,” said Cyril Di Grandi, co-founder, and CEO of Avicenna.AI. “We have created the conditions to accelerate the extension of our portfolio within our emergency suite but also outside our initial scope. We have finally obtained the first patents that will allow us to consolidate our position as a leader in the field with a disruptive approach to the use of deep learning in therapeutic decision-making. This new investment reflects the continued confidence of our investors and signifies our readiness to become a dominant force in healthcare AI.”

Avicenna.AI provides healthcare AI solutions that use deep learning to identify, detect and quantify life-threatening pathologies from CT medical images. Using a combination of deep learning and machine learning technologies, the company’s solutions automatically detect and prioritize emergency cases within seconds, and assess them for severity, before seamlessly alerting radiologists.

Avicenna.AI’s unique business model is based on an asset-light, R&D powerhouse expertise, generating rapid business growth potential through already signed commercial partnerships with leading market actors in the US, Europe and Asia.

In a successful year for the company, 2022 saw Avicenna’s AI solutions rolled out to more than 140 hospitals in 14 countries across three continents. The company is now ready to scale up in 2023 and expects to deploy at least 30 new sites every month this year. 

In parallel, Avicenna’s R&D efforts will add to the four FDA and six CE mark approvals already awarded to its products. The company’s FDA-cleared and CE-Marked tools for neurovascular and thoraco-abdominal pathologies are seamlessly integrated within the clinical workflow, automatically triggering and reporting algorithm results through the systems already used by radiologists.

About Avicenna.AI

Founded in 2018, Avicenna.AI develops medical imaging AI solutions for highly prevalent pathologies. The company uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to optimize many of a radiologist’s manual tasks. Its CINA products leverage deep learning algorithms to identify acute abnormalities and to enhance clinicians’ workflow. Avicenna.AI is co-founded by Cyril Di Grandi, who previously co-founded and successfully sold Olea Medical, and Dr. Peter Chang, a radiologist and internationally recognized expert in AI and deep learning. www.avicenna.ai

About Innovacom

Innovacom is a pioneer in innovation capital in France. Since 1988, it has invested nearly €1 billion, supported more than 300 digital and high-tech startups, participated in more than 20 IPOs and completed more than 150 industrial divestments.

The team, which benefits from a long experience in high-tech, has contributed to several recent successes in multiple sectors (telco, healthcare, mobilityì, energy…) and has a solid track-record including unicorns like Heptagon or Soitec.

Today, Innovacom supports innovative industrial projects and high-potential disruptive technologies by providing financing, advice and support. Its association with the Turenne Group has givenì birth to one of the leading independent private equity firms in France with a platform of €1.5 billion under management. With offices in Paris and Marseille, Innovacom Gestion is licensed by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers.

About Cemag Invest

Cemag Invest is a family office dedicated to healthcare and technology, with a focus on adding value to patients. Cemag Invest has notably invested in Wandercraft, Diabeloop, and alongside innovacom in Aryballe Technologies.

SOURCE Avicenna.AI

functional protein platform developer on mission to clean labels, improve plant-based foods

HAIFA, Israel , Feb. 8, 2023 — Start-up Meala FoodTech, Ltd., the developer of a functional protein platform, announces the close of USD1.9M in pre-seed investment. The round was led by The Kitchen FoodTech Hub, part of The Strauss-Group and DSM Venturing (the corporate venture arm of the Dutch multinational Royal DSM); with participation of Milk & Honey Ventures, specializing in alt-protein investments DSM Venturing’s contribution marks its third investment in the Israeli FoodTech ecosystem in 2022.

While the plant-based category continues to gain momentum, alt-protein food formulators still struggle to improve the labels and mouthfeel of their products to match traditional, animal-based counterparts. Currently, popular meat alternatives such as veggie burgers and sausages, typically contain a long list of ingredients, some with complex chemical names unfamiliar to consumers.

Meala FoodTech is on a mission to revolutionize the plant-based protein industry by developing new ingredients and processes that allow the creation of cleaner, better-for-you, products.

Meala’s multi-functional proteins vastly improve the texture of meat alternatives to more compellingly mimic the organoleptic qualities of real meat and deliver a more full-bodied flavor. Meala’s proprietary platform creates functional proteins designed to be used as binding and gelling agents thanks to their superior water retention capabilities. The platform enables formulators to boost meat analogues with better nutritional value and functional properties using a short list of ingredients as in real meat.

“We are excited to complete this investment round with the support of leading investors,” notes Hadar Razmovich, CEO and Meala co-founder. “This achievement reflects the investors’ trust in our technology and R&D team of experts. “There is a significant need in the plant-based industry to effectively reduce undesirable ingredients and clean up labels. This investment will help us get closer and faster to the market, better address the companies’ specific needs and provide affordable, smarter solutions.”

“It is exciting to support Meala on this important mission to improve plant-based foods, making them tastier, more nutritious, and with readily recognizable ingredients,” expresses Jonathan Berger, CEO of The Kitchen FoodTech Hub. “This is another milestone in our quest to nourish a better tomorrow, and we are honored to have a leading entity such as DSM Venturing co-invest with us in such a promising company.”

The new funding will initially go toward continuing the development of the company’s platform technology and accelerate from lab to pilot scale. The start-up’s core technology enables the development of functional proteins for multiple meat replacements, including burgers, sausages, nuggets with egg and fish alternatives in development.

“This investment will enable us to accelerate our growth and support plant-based producers in their mission to reach new consumer segments,” states Dr. Tali Feldman Sivan, PhD, co-founder of Meala. “We already initiated collaborations with leading plant-based CPG manufacturers to implement Meala’s solution in their products. We are on track to launch products in the US and European markets in 2024.”

Meala’s vision for plant-based alternatives is to have a short list of simple, recognizable “home kitchen” ingredients while delivering the same full-bodied flavor and texture of real meat. The platform works with a versatile range of plant proteins. The Meala solution can be easily integrated into CPG products through existing manufacturing lines.

About Meala

Meala was founded in 2021 by product innovation specialist Hadar Ekhoiz Razmovich; Tali Feldman Sivan, PhD, a serial entrepreneur and business strategist; and Liran Gruda, CIO and culinary chef. After delving into the meat alternative category in depth, the trio joined forces on a mission to bridge the gap between processed vegan products currently available, and the perception that plant-based products are better for you, and to break down the last barriers between meat and meat analogs.

About DSM Venturing

DSM Venturing is the corporate venture arm of Royal DSM –a global, purpose-led company in Health, Nutrition & Bioscience, applying science to improve the health of people, animals, and the planet. DSM’s purpose is to create brighter lives for all. DSM’s products and solutions address some of the world’s biggest challenges while simultaneously creating economic, environmental, and societal value for all its stakeholders – customers, employees, shareholders, and society at large. The company was founded in 1902 and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam.

About The Kitchen Hub

The Kitchen FoodTech Hub is an incubator and a seed investor, addressing global food challenges. It nurtures promising FoodTech ventures showing potential to disrupt the global food system- making it more productive, affordable, sustainable, and healthier. The Strauss Group founded the Kitchen FoodTech Hub in 2015 in cooperation with the Israeli Innovation Authority. So far The Kitchen’s 22 portfolio companies have raised more than $280M which has served to assist them in developing their technology and products and boost their global activity.

For more information, contact:

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1998419/Meala_Co_Founders.jpg

SOURCE Meala FoodTech

ATLANTA, Feb. 7, 2023 — Atlanta-based investment firm Georgia Oak Partners has announced a majority equity investment in Artisan Custom Closets, a leading custom storage business for residential homes.

Founded in 2011, Artisan Custom Closets designs, manufactures and installs custom-designed home storage solutions. Artisan has served more than 20,000 customers in the Atlanta and Nashville metro areas. Every solution is designed to the client’s needs and delivers a luxurious organizational experience for each individual home.

“Artisan Custom Closets has established itself as a leading home storage solutions provider in a highly fragmented industry,” said Lisa Carlquist, CEO of Artisan Custom Closets. “Georgia Oak not only brings operational expertise in the home services industry, but a local, hands-on approach that will launch us into our next phase of growth as the clear market leader in the Southeast.”

Artisan has grown at an approximate 20% CAGR due to its exceptional service and strong referral and repeat business. Their expert designers are certified by the Association of Closet and Storage Professionals.

“We are thrilled about this partnership,” stated Michael Lonergan, Managing Partner of Georgia Oak Partners. “We believe in the business that Lisa and her management team have built. Artisan’s highly rated products and customer satisfaction are a clear result of the high-touch culture in place.”

Georgia Oak believes the home services sector will continue to experience strong tailwinds as people invest in their primary residences, and also due to the growing population of aging homes in need of renovation in the U.S. The Southeast is predicted to continue to experience high population growth, an influx of highly skilled workers, and growth in home values.

About Artisan Custom Closets

Artisan Custom Closets is a locally owned and operated custom closet company with a mission to provide functional and appealing storage systems to clients according to their storage requirements, budget, and style preferences. Artisan strives to bring organization to your closet with custom features that create a designated place for every item. To learn more, visit www.ArtisanCustomClosets.com.

About Georgia Oak Partners

Georgia Oak Partners makes equity investments in founder- and family-owned companies in Georgia and the broader Southeast. Using a hands-on approach, Georgia Oak collaborates with founders to achieve sustainable growth while maintaining culture and legacy. For more information about Georgia Oak Partners, please visit www.GeorgiaOakPartners.com.

For more information please contact:
Mirabella Woodward
850-590-4880
[email protected]

SOURCE Georgia Oak Partners

Fueled by capital from NEA, creator of novel manufacturing technology scales high resolution, sustainable, and cost-effective metal parts production

SAN DIEGO, Feb. 7, 2023 — Fabric8Labs, pioneer of electrochemical additive manufacturing, today announced the close of a $50M Series B investment round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from existing investors, including Intel Capital, imec.XPAND, SE Ventures, TDK Ventures, and Lam Capital. The new infusion of capital will be used to scale the company’s proprietary Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) technology and establish a pilot production facility.

“We are thrilled to have NEA’s support in executing our vision,” said Jeff Herman, Fabric8Labs CEO and co-founder. “It is critical to have partners that are aligned with our mission to fundamentally shift manufacturing with a sustainable, additive manufacturing approach; and we have been fortunate to surround ourselves with a team of top tier investors.”

Metal Additive Manufacturing (metal AM), also known as metal 3D printing, has seen explosive growth with an average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27% over the last 10 years. However, adoption of metal AM for high-volume manufacturing has been limited due to the constraints of powder-based feedstocks and thermal processes which drive high-costs, insufficient repeatability, and limitations in feature resolution. In contrast, ECAM builds at the atomic level from a water-based feedstock containing dissolved metal ions. The electrochemical approach allows for micron-scale feature resolution, complex internal features, high-purity materials, and rapid scalability to support mass manufacturing.

ECAM is uniquely suited to produce ultra-high resolution, pure copper components, which can be directly printed onto temperature sensitive substrates such as PCBs, silicon, or existing metal components. This capability comes at a time when electronics companies are seeking enabling technologies to address challenges with thermal management, power density, device form factor, and sustainability. ECAM enables the manufacturing of optimized designs to meet and exceed the increasingly stringent performance requirements in end-applications such as, high-performance computing (HPC), data centers, electric vehicles, wearables, RF communications, and a wide range of consumer electronics products.

“The potential of Fabric8Labs’ novel technology is undeniable and we believe ECAM is suited to support a wide range of applications across the electronics value chain,” said Jennifer Ard, Managing Director at Intel Capital. “As the team works to scale their offerings, they’ll be able to deliver value across multiple business units for their customers, furthering their value-add.”

In addition to enabling advancements in electronics – Fabric8Labs is developing medical device applications and micro-mechanical components. These applications leverage ECAM’s inherent advantages to produce extremely fine, complex features and high-performance alloys. As the company scales, ECAM will enable applications that require ultra-high resolution, such as advanced surgical tools, sensors, diagnostic equipment, and MEMs.

“ECAM stands out as truly differentiated among the sea of approaches to additive manufacturing.” said Greg Papadopoulos, PhD., Venture Partner at NEA. “You can avoid expensive post-processing, easily build complex things at micron-scale, print directly on your existing substrates, and do all of this at scale with, by far, the lowest energy — and thus carbon — footprint.  We’re thrilled to partner with Jeff and the Fabric8Labs team on this revolution for additive manufacturing.”

Beyond providing manufacturing capabilities that advance customers’ technology roadmaps, ECAM is environmentally sustainable and supports green initiatives. ECAM enables more than a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to alternative additive technologies and traditional manufacturing. The winning combination of capability, cost performance, and sustainability has accelerated customer adoption of ECAM across a wide range of market opportunities.

About Fabric8Labs

Fabric8Labs, Inc., based in San Diego, California, is revolutionizing manufacturing with its advanced 3D printing technology – Electrochemical Additive Manufacturing (ECAM). Founded in 2015, the company’s proprietary ECAM technology is a key enabler across multiple value chains, such as electronics, medical devices, communications systems, and semiconductor manufacturing. Fabric8Labs is working to broaden the market for metal additive manufacturing by providing advanced manufacturing services that displace traditional manufacturing. For more information visit Fabric8Labs.com.    

About NEA

New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm’s founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s track record of investing includes more than 270 portfolio company IPOs and more than 440 mergers and acquisitions. www.nea.com

SOURCE Fabric8Labs

Led by executives from Cisco, Amazon and Facebook, Rembrand launches beta to revolutionize the way creators incorporate sponsored products into their videos

LOS ALTOS, Calif., Feb. 7, 2023 — Rembrand, the revolutionary AI product placement platform that embeds photo-realistic products into digital videos, announced today an $8 million seed round and the upcoming launch of their beta platform. The round was led by venture capital firms and strategic funds, including Greycroft and UTA.VC. Rembrand enables creators to effortlessly incorporate sponsored products into their videos, thereby reducing costs, speeding up production timelines, and increasing monetization opportunities. The beta platform opened up on February 6, 2023 with leading influencers already onboard.

Rembrand envisions a future where digital video monetization is non-intrusive to the consumer. Currently, the product placement industry is worth $23 Billion and is native to movies and television, often done manually with a character using the brand’s vehicle, attire, beverage, etc. Rembrand uses AI to automate the placement of high-quality virtual products into video assets, not only for movies and television, but also for the universe of online creators that dominate today’s consumer viewing habits. With Rembrand, any video asset can be seamlessly enhanced with AI generated products that match the scene. This allows viewers to enjoy uninterrupted videos, while brands have the opportunity to be part of the story rather than an interruption.

According to CEO Omar Tawakol, who was previously the founder and CEO of Bluekai (a marketing data platform acquired by Oracle in 2014) and also the founder and CEO of Voicea (a conversational AI company acquired by Cisco in 2019), “Consumers are skipping ads at an alarming rate. IPG reports that up to 65% of commercials are skipped. Consumers don’t like interruptions, and advertisers are searching for a more effective way to get noticed in video. With the explosive growth of online video and streaming, the traditional model of selling advertising in video is ripe for disruption.”

“Product placement is a fantastic way to break through the clutter and get your brand in front of consumers, but it’s a manual process that requires big budgets. We see an opportunity to enable scalable, post-production product placement that meets the needs of today’s creators,” says Tawakol.

Rembrand is launching it’s beta with a number of leading influencers.  “Content creators move quickly and it’s about time that sponsors catch up. Currently it can take weeks and multiple back-and-forths for just one sponsored integration to be approved,” said Alexandra Botez of BotezLive, a leading YouTuber and Twitch influencer focused on chess. “Rembrand will help drastically speed up this process on top of providing new monetization opportunities. I can’t wait to try it out!”.

Rembrand plans to use the seed funding to support its beta launch. On February 7, they will begin accepting applications from elite creators who are eager to take their content monetization to the next level with Rembrand’s AI technology.

“We believe Rembrand has the tech and team in place to quickly address a significant gap in the product placement marketplace with a solution geared toward content creators and streaming platforms,” said Dana Settle, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner at Greycroft. “Omar and his founding team have a track record of success to build what we envision is a category-defining company.”

The founding team at Rembrand has deep product, technical, and operational experience, having built numerous companies in the advertising and artificial intelligence domain. 

• David Wiener, Chief Product Officer at Voicea and GM for Artificial Intelligence at Cisco.
• Nikki Heyder, Director of Product from Vidcast at Cisco
• Ahmed Saad founder at Amazon Prime, Virtual Product Placement.
• Abdelrahman Mohamed, Director of AI at Meta.  

To see Rembrand in action, check out this initial demo here.

Creators and brands can sign up for the beta launch via the links below:
Creators: https://www.rembrand.com/creators/ 
Brands: https://www.rembrand.com/brands/

About Rembrand
Rembrand is the leading programmatic platform for AI-generated product placement in digital video. Founded in 2022, Rembrand is pioneering the development of un-interruptive video advertising. Rembrand has developed a platform for inserting photo-realistic product placement dynamically into digital video in post-production. Rembrand is open to content creators of all shapes and sizes, and is taking applications for its  beta release beginning in January 2023.

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Greycroft