SINGAPORE, July 26, 2023 — Aethir, a pioneer in Decentralized Cloud Infrastructure (DCI), today announced the completion of its Pre-A funding round, bringing the total value raised to date to over USD$9 million and the company valuation to USD$150 million.
The round was led by leading global investors, including Sanctor Capital, Hashkey, Merit Circle, and CitizenX with further support from Mirana Ventures, Animoca Brands, Momentum6, Big Brain Holdings, Builder Capital, Tess Ventures, Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes) and many more.
Aethir was established in Singapore in 2021 by cloud industry veterans to build what they’ve coined Scalable Decentralized Cloud Infrastructure.
Already serving a growing customer base, including high-profile enterprises, AI companies and gaming studios, the investment enables Aethir to expedite its global expansion in key markets like South East Asia, Latin America, and North America, as well as to bolster its innovative Decentralized Cloud Infrastructure.
“The cloud sector has traditionally been a challenging industry to scale, plagued by high costs, particularly for customers requiring complex real-time rendering or streaming infrastructure – and that’s not taking into account the additional stress on the ecosystem as a result of the AI boom,” said Mark Rydon, Aethir Co-Founder and CEO. “At Aethir, we’re laser-focused on solving the cloud scalability challenge. We’ve built a global DCI network specifically to scale complex cloud infrastructure services globally; a significant milestone for the future of the gaming and AI industry. The cost and performance advantages of our DCI are significant, and when coupled with our ability to operate in developed and developing markets alike, we’re unlocking a huge amount of potential value for our customers.”
Aethir has shown consistent growth under Rydon’s stewardship, creating a scalable and secure Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) service that caters to the rigorous demands of enterprise-grade gaming and AI applications.
The completion of this successful funding round follows a previous Seed round led by Framework Ventures and Infinity Ventures Crypto, underscoring the demand for Aethir’s solutions and demonstrating investors’ conviction in its potential to revolutionize the gaming and AI industry through its Decentralized Cloud Infrastructure.
Arthur Hayes,CIO of Maelstrom
“We’re backing projects that are using the blockchain to solve real-world issues. Aethir is meaningfully expanding the addressable market for gaming and other streaming content in the world’s highest-growth (but hardware-constrained) markets. Everybody wins as Aethir expands – gamers, publishers and globally distributed rendering node operators alike.”
Han Kao, CEO of Sanctor Capital
“For the metaverse to become a populated, engaging, virtual universe, the underlying infrastructure needs to support efficient, low-cost computation. Aethir is part of this next-generation infrastructure stack that unlocks the gaming and social communication possibilities we have been waiting for.”
About Aethir
Aethir builds scalable, decentralized cloud infrastructure (DCI). Their network helps gaming and AI companies – big or small – put their product directly in the hands of consumers, regardless of where they live or the hardware they own. Aethir solves market fragmentation in a way only the decentralized cloud can. The Singapore-based company boasts a team of 68 dedicated employees. For more information, please visit www.aethir.com.
LONDON, July 26, 2023 — Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC (Hikma), the multinational pharmaceutical company, announces that its venture capital arm, Hikma Ventures, has invested in Octave Bioscience, the developer of a first-of-its-kind platform to accurately and objectively measure and help manage complex and high-cost neurodegenerative diseases, starting with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Founded by William Hagstrom, CEO, and Melinda Thomas, COO, Octave’s multimodal precision care solution provides comprehensive, objective, and actionable insights that bring scientific clarity to the patient’s disease over time.
“There is an immense unmet need within the MS space with outdated diagnostic tools, a lack of technological advancement, and limited support in addressing neurodegenerative diseases. Octave’s precision care solution is creating a new paradigm, where physicians and patients have a holistic view of a patient, their disease activity, and the impact of treatments on their disease progression,” said Lana Ghanem, Managing Director of Hikma Ventures. “By offering an end-to-end solution which optimizes and personalizes care, Octave is revolutionising the way MS is treated and managed. We’re thrilled to support their important mission, which aligns with Hikma’s role as a leading provider of MS treatments in the Middle East and North Africa.”
“We appreciate Hikma Venture’s thoughtful and collaborative approach in identifying and partnering with companies that have the potential to make a big impact in neurodegenerative diseases with novel digital health solutions,” said William Hagstrom, Founder and CEO of Octave Bioscience. “We share a vision for how digital health can improve patient care and outcomes, and we’re delighted that our partnership with Hikma will help bring our precision medicine solution to more MS patients and expand into other neurodegenerative diseases.”
MS is globally considered to be an important disease area with an underserved population and high unmet need ranging from diagnostics to care management. The challenges of this disease have been devastating and visible through misdiagnosis, difficulties in monitoring disease progression and evaluating the prescribed medication’s efficacy. This has also been reflected in high failure rates for MS R&D clinical trials, which have been notoriously difficult to conduct.
Octave Bioscience will use the proceeds to support their commercialization efforts in MS and to explore expansion opportunities into other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
About Hikma (LSE: HIK) (NASDAQ Dubai: HIK) (OTC: HKMPY) (rated BBB-/stable S&P and BBB-/positive Fitch) Hikma helps put better health within reach every day for millions of people around the world. For more than 40 years, we’ve been creating high-quality medicines and making them accessible to the people who need them. Headquartered in the UK, we are a global company with a local presence across the United States (US), the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Europe, and we use our unique insight and expertise to transform cutting-edge science into innovative solutions that transform people’s lives. We’re committed to our customers, and the people they care for, and by thinking creatively and acting practically, we provide them with a broad range of branded and non-branded generic medicines. Together, our 8,800 colleagues are helping to shape a healthier world that enriches all our communities. We are a leading licensing partner, and through our venture capital arm, are helping bring innovative health technologies to people around the world. For more information, please visit: www.hikma.com.
About Hikma Ventures Founded in August 2015, Hikma Ventures operates as the corporate venture capital arm of Hikma Pharmaceuticals. Hikma Ventures invests in global start-ups where Hikma’s expertise can accelerate revenue growth and enhance value creation by providing ventures with access to the resources of a multinational pharmaceutical company. For more information, please visit www.hikmaventures.com.
About Octave Octave was founded to deliver a fully-integrated precision care solution for multiple sclerosis as well as a full range of neurodegenerative diseases. The solution provides neurologists and their patients with quantitative, objective metrics to facilitate informed care and shared decision making to drive better patient outcomes.
Octave’s Precision Care Solution is the first-of-its-kind that accurately and objectively measures, and helps manage, complex and high-cost neurodegenerative diseases, starting with multiple sclerosis. Octave developed the first and only multivariate blood test to measure MS disease activity, enhanced MRI analytics and protocols, and a digital clinical program with Octave MS care partners to provide continuity of care.
Provider: The solution provides neurologists with a longitudinal and holistic perspective of the patient along with comprehensive and actionable insights, enabling more confident and informed care decisions.
Payer: The integrated and multi-dimensional approach allows payers to reduce total cost of care by optimizing healthcare medications and utilization (hospitalizations, ER visits, MRIs, labs).
Pharma: Octave enables pharma to optimize the entire lifecycle of drug discovery & development as well as clinical trials and post marketing with real world evidence.
Through purposeful problem solving and innovative technologies, Octave’s platform generates, analyzes and combines data to create a new paradigm of MS care, leading to improved patient outcomes.
MaC Venture Capital, Autotech Ventures, and Avanta Ventures invest in startup pioneering new solutions addressing market volatility-related financial exposure in auto
WASHINGTON, July 26, 2023 — Financial innovation platform Exponential Exchange today announced the successful close of an oversubscribed $7.4 million seed funding round led by MaC Venture Capital to continue building a suite of financial instruments designed to bring new risk-management solutions into the automotive ecosystem and other industries with underserved asset classes.
While industries such as agriculture, energy, and manufacturing have long been able to hedge against price risk by using derivatives, this ability has never been available to auto fleet owners and insurance companies. Exponential is on a mission to change this by creating a set of financial instruments that would allow rental car companies, auto insurers, and auto lessors to transfer their financial exposure to other market participants – the first of many industries Exponential plans to serve with this ability.
“Pioneering new financial markets involves great complexity and rigor. Having investors and strategic partners connected to each side of our multi-sided market is invaluable and will help us kickstart trading and build liquidity,” said Ryan Naughton, CEO and co-founder of Exponential Exchange. “The fact that our seed round was oversubscribed amid an extremely challenging fundraising environment is a testament to our vision and ability to execute.”
Exponential recently launched its initial product, the Exponential Used Vehicle Index, designed to offer an efficient and effective method for tracking used vehicle values using best-in-class data sets and modern data science techniques. It’s the first benchmark designed and built to serve as an underlying instrument for hedging and trading used vehicle market values. The creation of such derivatives is the next step in Exponential’s plan.
“The transportation revolution has created a fascinating array of new mobility choices for consumers, but the companies who own, finance, and insure these vehicles have limited options in managing the elevated levels of risk that come with rapid technological advancements,” said Marlon Nichols, founding managing partner of MaC Venture Capital. “Exponential is on a mission to create a more stable environment for the companies driving some of the world’s most ground-breaking innovations in auto and beyond, and we look forward to helping them launch a full array of risk management tools, similar to ones that exist in other industries.”
Other investors in the round include Autotech Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm with a mission to solve the world’s ground transportation challenges with technology, and Avanta Ventures, the venture capital arm of CSAA Insurance Group. The round also includes participation from several other investors from the automotive, finance and derivatives trading ecosystems.
“Exponential Exchange is pioneering risk-mitigation tools in auto that have been standard in other industries for decades, unlocking unprecedented opportunities for companies and market participants across the vehicle ecosystem,” said Burak Cendek, partner at Autotech Ventures. “We believe that these solutions could create a new multibillion-dollar opportunity, and if there is a team that can make that happen, it is the Exponential Exchange team, so we are very excited to partner with them.”
Exponential is now focused on cultivating over the counter (OTC) trades as a proof of concept while building the market architecture and engagement required for futures trading. The result will be a suite of derivatives products that are cash-settled against the Exponential Used Vehicle Index. This will allow both parties in a vehicle derivatives contract to effectively hedge against the inherent volatility in used vehicle depreciation – a significant problem for rental car companies, auto insurers, and lessors.
“Current risk-mitigation approaches are inefficient for both automotive fleets and lessors who want protection against market values declining more than expected, and for insurers who want to protect themselves against volatile vehicle replacement costs,” said David Li, senior principal at Avanta Ventures. “Exponential’s products address both of those market needs.”
Exponential Exchange has now raised a total of $8.8 million, including an earlier convertible debt funding round of $1.4 million. This new infusion of capital will enable the company to execute on its plan to pilot multiple OTC transactions while building the infrastructure required for exchange-traded futures.
About Exponential Exchange
Founded by a team with decades of expertise across fintech, derivatives design, data science, risk management, and automotive finance, Exponential Exchange is creating a series of next-generation financial instruments designed to offer new levels of financial protection for participants in a variety of asset classes. These tools will allow hedgers to offset exposure to adverse price movements via derivatives that settle against Exponential-powered indices. Targeting asset classes that lack effective risk-management tools, Exponential relies on robust data sets to create their tradable financial instruments. The result is a powerful and innovative alternative to more expensive, less efficient versions of risk mitigation, offering new levels of financial protection for hedgers, while unlocking new tradable asset classes for the derivatives market. Exponential’s launch product is designed for vehicle fleet owners and auto insurers looking to hedge against used vehicle market price volatility. For more information, visit www.exponentialexchange.com.
About MaC Venture Capital
MaC Venture Capital is a seed-stage venture capital firm based in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley that invests in technology startups leveraging shifts in cultural trends and behaviors. The general partners represent diverse backgrounds in technology, business, politics, entertainment, and finance, allowing them to accelerate entrepreneurs on the verge of their breakthrough moment. The firm provides hands-on support crucial for building and scaling category-leading companies, including operations strategy, brand building, recruiting, sales development, and mission-critical introductions. MaC Venture Capital is the result of a merger between Cross Culture Ventures, co-founded by Marlon Nichols, and M Ventures, co-founded by Adrian Fenty, Michael Palank, and Charles D. King. Find MaC Venture Capital online at macventurecapital.com and @MaCVentureCap.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2023 — Collaborative Robotics, a leader in the development of practical collaborative robots (cobots), today announced it has raised $30M in Series A funding led by new anchor investor, Sequoia Capital, bringing the total amount raised to over $40M. The funds will enable Collaborative Robotics to begin scaling early field deployments and manufacturing of its novel cobot.
The company was founded in 2022 by Brad Porter, former VP of Amazon Robotics.
Sequoia Capital led the funding round, with Alfred Lin joining the board. Other contributors include Khosla Ventures and Mayo Clinic, with Calibrate, Neo, and 1984.vc expanding existing investments. Jeff Wilke, former CEO of Amazon Consumer, Fuel Capital, and MVP Ventures added to the pool.
“Our vision for a future where robots seamlessly integrate into our surroundings to enhance operational efficiency and human potential is now closer than ever,” said Porter, CEO of Collaborative Robotics. “This funding will accelerate our mission to bring the world’s first truly practical cobots to market.”
“The need for automated solutions is at an all-time high as consumer demand for e-commerce surges and turnover rates in warehouse and storage industries continue to rise,” said Alfred Lin, partner at Sequoia Capital. “Collaborative Robotics is ushering in a new frontier of human-robot interaction rooted in collaboration, which is evident in their early commercial traction. We’re thrilled to partner with the team and Brad, whose comprehensive understanding of the robotics landscape and extensive experience deploying robotics at scale is unparalleled.”
Alongside Collaborative Robotics development of their cobot, the team launched the Cobot Flywheel Program to help the world’s most innovative companies in biotech, healthcare, and logistics drive operational transformation with advanced robotics solutions. As part of its collaboration with Collaborative Robotics, Mayo Clinic has adopted the Cobot Flywheel Program to accelerate robotics initiatives.
“Mayo Clinic is working with Collaborative Robotics to redefine how healthcare approaches automation. The Cobot Flywheel model is a novel approach to driving change in a complex healthcare environment where patient safety and care are paramount,” said Stephen Fischer, Operations Administrator at Mayo Clinic.
Mayo Clinic has a financial interest in the technology referenced in this press release. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.
JACKSON, Wyo., July 26, 2023 — Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital firm focused on investments in breakthrough scientific startups working to revolutionize the world’s most important industries and transform billions of lives, raised $245 million for its third early-stage fund (fourth overall fund). The fund brings the venture capital firm’s total assets under management to more than $1.2 billion.
Prime Movers Lab raised $245 million for its third early-stage fund.
Like the firm’s previous early-stage funds, the new investment vehicle is investing in companies tackling the world’s biggest problems across the energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture sectors. The firm’s other funds, Prime Movers Lab Fund I (a $100 million fund), Prime Movers Lab Fund II, (a $245 million fund), and Prime Movers Lab Early-Growth Fund (a $500 million fund) have invested in breakout companies like fixed wireless technology provider Tarana Wireless, supersonic aircraft developer Boom Supersonic, commercial spaceflight pioneer Axiom Space, and sustainable satellite network creator E-Space.
“Too many venture capital investors have been chasing Web3 and generative AI startups over the last 18 months, leading to ridiculous valuations. With Prime Movers Lab Fund III, we are focused on partnering with early-stage founders who are building must-have solutions for the world’s biggest problems,” said Prime Movers Lab Founder and General Partner Dakin Sloss. “An increasingly aging population combined with high demand for sustainable energy is changing the way we live, so we need to invest in solutions to these mission-critical challenges.”
Prime Movers Lab’s access to high-quality deal flow, particularly with serial entrepreneurs, positions the firm well among breakthrough science venture firms. The firm has conducted due diligence on thousands of companies from some of the world’s leading founders and the nation’s top universities and incubators since its inception in 2018.
Prime Movers Lab has already made investments in several breakthrough science startups out of Fund III, including cislunar infrastructure provider Quantum Space, mental health therapeutics company Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals, brain computer interface developer Paradromics and robotics innovator Robust.AI.
“Dakin and the Prime Movers Lab team provide more than just capital to their portfolio companies. They create a true partnership with founders to support them every step of the way,” said Quantum Space Co-founder and Executive Chairman Kam Ghaffarian. “I’ve never seen another venture capital fund roll up their sleeves to help a founder raise capital like Prime Movers Lab.”
“Prime Movers Lab is on the frontier of so many important breakthroughs. Its team of technical and subject matter experts helped us move into clinical trials faster than expected,” said Gilgamesh Pharmaceuticals Founder and CEO Jonathan Sporn. “The investments and portfolio support that they provide are paving the way for the future of mental health treatments.”
“There are a lot of early-stage venture capital firms that will write checks and then walk away. There are also others that will not invest in a biotech startup until there is clinical data. Prime Movers Lab plays a critical role in helping companies like Paradromics that are tackling big problems. They carry the torch for startup founders and help them get across the chasm to market,” said Paradromics CEO and Founder Matt Angle.
“From my time at iRobot to Rethink Robotics, I’ve worked with a lot of venture capital firms, and Prime Movers Lab had the most intentional and effective due diligence process that I’ve encountered,” said Robust.AI Co-founder and CTO Rodney Brooks. “They conducted comprehensive landscaping of the robotics sector with their research and deal team so they knew exactly what they were looking for in a robotics company. Once Prime Movers Lab invested in us, it sent a market signal to other investors and potential employees that helped us stand out in the middle of a very crowded robotics and artificial intelligence boom.”
About Prime Movers Lab
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, agriculture and human augmentation. Portfolio investments span fixed-wireless access, supersonic and hypersonic aircraft, space transportation, satellite constellations, batteries, brain computer interfaces, mental health treatments, nano-structured materials, wafer slicing, prosthetics, 3D printing, mobility, longevity and AI. For more information, please visit https://www.primemoverslab.com.
Media Contact: Gavin Mathis Phone: (406) 539-7277 Email: [email protected]
Generative-AI powered platform built on mesh architecture accelerates security teams’ ability to make risk-based decisions by 80%
TEL AVIV, Israel, July 26, 2023 — Cyclops, a contextual cybersecurity search platform, today announced its emergence from stealth with $6.4M in seed funding. The funding round was led by Merlin Ventures, Insight Partners, Tal Ventures and toDay Ventures, with participation from CrowdStrike’s strategic investment vehicle, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund. Celebrated cybersecurity veterans Mike Fey, CEO of Island.io; Dan Amiga, CTO of Island.io; Ofer Smadari, CEO of Torq; and Eyal Gruner, CEO of Cynet, also participated in the round.
Founded by cybersecurity veterans Eran Zilberman (CEO), Elay Gueta (CTO) and Biran Franco (CPO), Cyclops offers an intuitive, user-friendly search engine powered by generative AI to answer critical and timely questions about the state of an organization’s security posture, without the need for forensics or SIEM expertise.
“Today, organizations struggle to find answers to the most complex questions across the tools in their security stack, and get simple answers on business impact,” said Eran Zilberman, Cyclops CEO. “With Cyclops, these days are over. Our main purpose is to empower security teams to proactively defend against cyber threats and prioritize addressing critical vulnerabilities with the necessary contextual data. The platform generates simple and clear responses just like Google Search or ChatGPT, providing relevant security information to help security teams make better, faster decisions.”
For over a decade, the industry has seen organizations struggling to understand and manage security data, both on premises and cloud-based, across dozens of disparate and overlapping security tools – stifling productivity, visibility and the ability to prioritize security decisions and actions that matter most.
“One of the primary challenges faced by cybersecurity managers is staying abreast of the changes occurring in their work environment on a daily basis,” said Shay Michel, Managing Partner, Merlin Ventures. “With the introduction of a new security search engine, they can now obtain clear answers and receive valuable recommendations. This technology has emerged as a top priority for most CISOs today, and we are proud of our investment in a company that we firmly believe will spearhead the market in this domain. Moreover, as a cyber fund, we actively seek out companies that disrupt existing categories, and Cyclops is poised to revolutionize how we approach and combat cyber-attacks.”
The Cyclops platform is built on a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA), and powered by generative AI to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience. Security teams can quickly and easily query Cyclops through a natural language search bar to gain meaningful insights about their environment and address vulnerabilities, security incidents and governance, risk and compliance scenarios. Cyclops enables security teams to get the most value out of their existing technology stack, improve mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to response (MTTR) by 80%, and help CISOs more effectively manage their cybersecurity strategy.
“Drawing inspiration from Google’s groundbreaking revolution in contextual search over two decades ago, the Cyclops team is poised to make a similar seismic impact in the cybersecurity realm,” remarked Mike Fey, investor and CEO of Island.io. “In a landscape plagued by alert fatigue and an ever-expanding array of security tools, Cyclops serves as the all-seeing eye, providing security teams with a unified and intuitive solution to tackle their most intricate questions. By harnessing the power of generative AI-driven search, Cyclops paves the way for a new era of data consumption and analysis, empowering security teams to navigate complexities with unprecedented efficiency and foresight.”
Cyclops’ founders have decades of experience building and delivering high-end cybersecurity products in the domains of SIEM, asset management and XDR, with particular expertise in product development, security strategy and sales. Cyclops CEO Eran Zilberman’s extensive career has included roles such as regional sales director of RSA and general manager of the cyber security division at We Ankor. Elay Gueta, CTO of Cyclops, most recently served in the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel as an R&D group leader, served in the Israel Defense Forces as a security researcher and software developer, and led security research efforts at Cynet Security and Cellebrite. Cyclops CPO Biran Franco previously led product development and management at Axonius, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and SentinelOne, and also served as Company Commanding Officer in the Israel Defense Forces.
“To combat ever-increasing modern, sophisticated cyber attacks, organizations have turned to numerous discrete tools, inadvertently creating one of the most prominent security challenges – security silos,” said Gur Talpaz, vice president corporate development and ventures at CrowdStrike. “We’re excited to support Cyclops through CrowdStrike’s Falcon Fund because of its innovative approach to enhancing organizational security. Cyclops’ platform enables collaboration across tools and controls, eliminating silos, and drastically reducing individual security incidents.”
The funding will help scale the company to meet demands from its growing customer base, hire more developers to continue product innovation and expand capabilities, and fuel its go-to-market strategy. Cyclops is generally available now and already serves existing customers in the fintech, insurance, hi-tech, and manufacturing verticals by significantly improving their efficiency around risk validation, vulnerability prioritization, posture management and compliance monitoring.
About Cyclops Cyclops is the first Contextual Search Platform for cybersecurity. Powered by the cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) approach and Generative AI, Cyclops allows security practitioners and security teams, on any level, to ask any question about their security data in natural language – and receive accurate, actionable answers. For more information, visit www.cyclops.security.
About Merlin Ventures Merlin Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Merlin Group, a company with more than 25 years of success bringing technologies to the U.S. Government market. Merlin Ventures rapidly scales visionary companies and introduces disruptive solutions designed to help enterprises address today’s most critical cybersecurity challenges. Its unique business model combines robust infrastructure and capital, technical cybers advisory and engineering, market readiness acceleration, and deep-rooted customer and market relationships to enable its portfolio to accelerate growth and flourish. Learn more at merlin.vc.
On heels of recent acquisition, Very Good Ventures further expands its full-service strategic consulting firm and leadership position in Flutter to meet increasing demand for expertise
NEW YORK, July 26, 2023 — Very Good Ventures (VGV), the leading full-service Flutter consulting firm, today announced it has expanded its Series A round with $3.4 million from Celesta Capital for a total raise of $6.6 million. Driven by increasing client demand due to Flutter’s popularity, the funding will be used to scale up VGV’s service to a wider variety of clients and to deliver high-quality contributions throughout the Flutter ecosystem.
The expansion comes on the heels of its recent CreateThrive acquisition and is expected to support unprecedented demand for VGV services as Flutter skyrockets in popularity. Founded in 2018, Very Good Ventures is already cash flow positive, growing revenues 235 percent during the past two years.
Flutter is an open source UI toolkit from Google that enables developers to build apps for multiple platforms all at once from a single codebase – a significant advantage over legacy approaches to native software development. Since its first release in 2017, Flutter has grown into the most popular cross-platform mobile framework used by software developers globally. The number of published Flutter apps has doubled in just the last year, increasing from 500,000 to more than one million today.
“An investment in Very Good Ventures is an investment in the next generation of app development,” said David Goldman, Partner at Celesta Capital. “Cross-platform frameworks are the future and Flutter is outpacing similar cross-platform frameworks because of its superior performance and developer engagement. VGV is a clear leader in the Flutter ecosystem and is driving its maturity through high-quality client delivery and major contributions to open source software. It’s a natural move for us to double down on the company driving so much of this growth.”
With a founding team that has worked with Flutter longer than anyone, Very Good Ventures provides unique levels of expertise to help major brands transition to and maintain Flutter. Very Good Ventures leaders created the first-ever commercial Flutter app for the global musical phenomenon Hamilton, in 2017, in addition to having built the first public Flutter apps for desktop and web. The success of the Hamilton mobile app led to the creation of Very Good Ventures, now partnering with companies that include Google, Toyota, American Airlines, Dow Jones, Betterment, Keller Williams and others. Very Good Ventures today provides world-class product strategy, design, and management services as a full service partner.
“This new investment from Celesta Capital is evidence of both Very Good Ventures’ success and of the rapid growth and vibrancy of the Flutter community and ecosystem,” said David DeRemer, CEO at Very Good Ventures. “We’ve been contributing to Flutter long before we founded Very Good Ventures and continue to help define standards and build open source tools that are used by millions. This collaboration is how we’re able to both support our favorite technical community and achieve outsized results for our clients.”
Very Good Ventures recently announced its acquisition of CreateThrive, a mobile and web development firm that has emerged as a leader in the Flutter community in Latin America. The acquisition has resulted in the world’s largest Flutter consultancy team with a focus on driving high quality software solutions, designing beautiful and useful products and deepening its impact on the Flutter community.
About Very Good Ventures Very Good Ventures is the leading Flutter design and development consultancy working to empower software excellence for any platform. VGV works with the biggest companies to design, build, and scale successful apps using Flutter, the UI toolkit from Google that enables developers to build apps for any screen from a single codebase. VGV’s global team includes a presence in the United States, LATAM, and Europe. For more information, visit:http://verygood.ventures
Series seed extended to unite companies’ efforts in bringing Identity and Access Management to enterprise workloads
SILVER SPRING, Md., July 26, 2023 — Aembit, the Workload Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform that lets DevOps and security teams discover, manage, enforce, and audit access between workloads, today announced a strategic investment by Okta Ventures. Okta’s investment is an extension of Aembit’s previously announced seed funding led by Ballistic Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures. In addition to funding, Aembit will work with Okta on a technical integration and a joint go-to-market strategy. This relationship will bring Okta customers a complete strategy for managing their entire portfolio of identities: user, customer, and workload.
The seed extension helps further unite the companies’ efforts in bringing Identity and Access Management to enterprise workloads.
“I firmly believe that we’re in the age of identity, and it’s creating a significant change in how applications are built and secured,” said David Goldschlag, CEO and co-founder of Aembit. “Just like IAM hardens access for users and allows security-minded professionals to be more strategic about their posture, Workload IAM allows security, DevOps, and development teams to accelerate growth and innovation while more easily managing the risk in distributed applications. We are excited to be partnering with Okta Ventures to bring Aembit’s Workload IAM approach to the enterprise.”
Enterprise applications are becoming more distributed, and they include software the enterprise develops, along with databases, cloud APIs, and APIs from customers and partners. Despite this complexity, many companies today still rely on secrets and secret managers for workload-to-workload access. But those secrets are brittle, hard to manage, and don’t allow you to create, enforce, and audit workload access policies. Furthermore, while workloads have identities just like users do, the technical means and workflows to manage them are radically different.
To solve this, Aembit has pioneered the first SaaS service for Workload Identity and Access Management (IAM). Aembit provides the ability to identify workloads based on a range of characteristics and define policies that determine their access rights. Aembit also eliminates static workload identity secrets, alleviates the need for developers to code workload-to-workload auth, and makes it easy for DevOps to centralize visibility and control. Aembit lets DevOps manage access, not secrets.
“Both Okta and Aembit have taken an identity-first view of the world and consider modern identity and access management as a fundamental capability for enterprises to secure their data, their business, and by extension their customers,” said Austin Arensberg, senior director from Okta Ventures. “Workload Identity is the next frontier in that challenge, and we look forward to jointly securing all the identities that a business deals with across its organization.”
Enterprises can learn more and begin using Aembit for free at www.aembit.io.
Aembit is the Workload Identity Platform that lets DevOps and security teams discover, manage, enforce, and audit access between workloads. Aembit provides seamless and secure access from your workloads to the services they depend on, like APIs, databases, and cloud resources, while simplifying application development and delivery. DevOps teams can secure their workloads with Aembit for free at aembit.io. Follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.
About Okta Ventures
Okta Ventures (www.okta.com/okta-ventures) invests and supports companies creating cutting edge technologies focused on identity, security, privacy. As the leading identity cloud, Okta Ventures provides unique access to Okta’s extensive APIs, technologies and engineering expertise while supporting portfolio companies’ GTM and brand awareness.
Goodwater’s integrated services help early and growth stage founders and management teams win massive consumer markets
BURLINGAME, Calif., July 25, 2023 — Goodwater, the largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on consumer tech investments, announced today that it has raised over $1 billion across its family of early and growth stage funds. With this raise, Goodwater accelerates its mission to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. With a clear consumer tech focus and global reach, the firm has backed 79 early and growth stage startups in 19 countries around the world. Founded in 2014 by industry veterans Chi-Hua Chien and Eric Kim, the firm now manages over $3.3B in committed capital and continues to scale as much of the venture industry is slowing.
Goodwater’s founding partners: Eric Kim and Chi-Hua Chien.
“During a tough time in the market we are ready to support the very best early and growth stage consumer tech startups with $1 billion of fresh capital. We appreciate the support and trust placed in us by our Limited Partners. This new capital will fuel our global investing approach and strengthen our position as the best consumer tech investing platform in the world,” said Chi-Hua Chien, Co-Founder & Managing Partner.
“With our laser focus on consumer tech, global portfolio of companies building market-leading digital consumer utilities, and software-enabled platform, we are energized to champion the success of the most promising consumer tech startups around the world,” added Eric Kim, Co-Founder & Managing Partner. “We look forward to supporting ambitious teams building transformative digital solutions to address the needs of 8 billion humans who need better access to housing, healthcare, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment.”
ProvenConsumer Technology Expertise
Goodwater has established itself as a leader in consumer technology venture capital with a proven track record of successful investments. The firm’s global portfolio spans a number of the most impactful consumer tech startups of the past decade, including social media company musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance, China / US), fintech super app Toss (S. Korea), ethnic grocery eCommerce leader Weee! (California), fintech disruptor Stash (New York), global live entertainment platform Fever (Spain / UK), neighborhood social app Karrot (S. Korea), British neobank Monzo (UK), 10-minute delivery standout Getir (Turkey), and health tech innovator Everly Health (Texas). The firm’s partners also made early investments in Coupang, Facebook, Kakao, Spotify, and Twitter before launching Goodwater. For founders building a consumer tech company, Goodwater’s sector focus provides a distinct advantage in the market with proprietary data and services.
“We have been fortunate to partner with Goodwater since our early days and they have continued to provide tremendous value to us as we’ve scaled. Their consumer tech expertise has been invaluable as we’ve navigated growth from an early stage startup to a multi-billion dollar company. Goodwater is truly a global firm that uniquely appreciates the consumer tech opportunity for companies like Toss,” said SG Lee, Founder and CEO of Toss based in Seoul, South Korea.
Unique Global Approach
Goodwater’s consumer-only sector focus enables the firm to take a systematic global approach to investing. The firm actively participates in key consumer tech innovation hubs across North America, Europe, North Asia, SE Asia, and Latin America, leveraging a global perspective to share best practices across the portfolio and help companies win their markets. The global community of Goodwater CEOs and leaders gathers regularly in person and online to share best practices via Masterclasses taught by functional experts and small group squads designed to boost each company’s performance in specific focus areas including customer acquisition, conversion, engagement, retention, and monetization. In the last year alone, over 1,400 Goodwater founders and executives attended or viewed the firm’s Masterclasses over 5,000 times.
Goodwater’s team has invested in and operated global consumer tech giants like Coupang, Twitter, Kakao, Facebook, Activision Blizzard, Toss, and Spotify, uniquely positioning the firm to invest in the best global opportunities and help entrepreneurs win in large, competitive markets. Goodwater provides tactical, hands-on support to companies solving problems common to consumer-tech startups including:
How do I acquire customers?
How do I engage them deeply in my product or service?
How do I retain those customers and keep them happy over time?
How do I build a healthy and scalable business through eCommerce, services, or ads?
Software-Enabled, Platform Approach
Since its inception, Goodwater has invested heavily in proprietary software that enables the firm to identify and invest in the best companies and help to accelerate their growth. The firm’s software-enabled platform, powered by proprietary insights on consumer tech trends, enables the firm to track millions of products globally and understand how consumers are adopting new technologies. Its team of engineers, data scientists, and product managers builds software tools to help founders boost performance across their most important KPIs.
Goodwater has 79 venture and growth investments and the world’s largest dedicated consumer tech seed portfolio with over 600 seed deals across more than 50 countries. In addition to Founders Chi-Hua Chien and Eric Kim, Goodwater’s investing partnership includes Coddy Johnson, Hatim Khety, Jin Oh, and Vivek Subramanian.
To join the largest consumer tech platform dedicated to serving founders and teams globally, reach out at [email protected]. Founders of seed-stage companies can apply to Goodwater’s Genesis program directly through our website.
About Goodwater
The mission of Goodwater Capital is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. We are 100% focused on consumer tech, an area that we define simply as apps and services adopted directly by consumers.
Goodwater invests in consumer tech companies across early and growth stages. We manage more than $3 billion of committed capital and have the flexibility to invest anywhere from seed stage up to $100M+ into companies. We have been honored to invest in and help build successful companies including Chegg (CHGG), Coupang (CPNG), Facebook (FB), Kakao, Monzo, Musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance), Stash, Spotify (SPOT), Toss, Twitter (TWTR), Weee!, and Xendit.
Goodwater is the largest venture capital firm exclusively focused on consumer tech investments. With a global investment approach, the firm identifies and invests in the most promising consumer technology startups worldwide. Goodwater’s deep industry expertise, extensive network, and data-driven approach allow it to provide unparalleled support to entrepreneurs, guiding them towards becoming market-leading companies. For more information, visit www.goodwatercap.com.
This post is provided solely for informational purposes and should not be relied upon as investment advice or construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of interest to invest in any pooled investment vehicle managed by Goodwater Capital, LLC (“Goodwater”). Investments referenced are not representative of all prior Goodwater investments and there can be no assurance that the investments referenced will be profitable or that future investments will have similar characteristics or results. This post may contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from expectations or projections made or implicated in such statements. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.
