ITHACA, N.Y., Aug. 9, 2023 — Cornell Tech is proud to announce the launch of its groundbreaking Product and Tech Executive Summit. This innovative event is designed to equip leaders in tech or product functions with the skills and knowledge to drive innovation, growth, and success in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. Counter to typical conferences, the program blends leading-edge research with advice from top industry experts, excludes commercial sponsorships, and pre-screens participants to ensure high-value, closed-door conversations for the limited group of 50 leaders that attend.
Networking at Cornell Tech in NYC
Networking at Cornell Tech in NYC
“The Product and Tech Executive Leadership Program will cover the most critical and timely topics, including implementing AI while managing ethical considerations, keeping up with trends that are shaping the future of tech and shifting organizations to succeed amid the latest market dynamics,” said Keith Cowing ’04, MBA ’10, one of the directors of the program and a visiting lecturer at Cornell Tech. “By leveraging industry insights and real-world case studies, participants will gain valuable knowledge and practical tools to drive success at their own organizations.”
The program will take place Sept. 19 to 21, 2023, at Cornell Tech in New York, NY, and participants will participate in a combination of interactive workshops, case studies, and hands-on projects. Among the featured speakers are:
Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Design & Emerging Products, Adobe
Mamuna Oladipo, VP of Product, Shopify
Nikita Miller, SVP and Head of Product Management, The Knot Worldwide
Justin Bauer, CPO, Amplitude
Kristen Lalowski, SVP, VillageMD
Catherine Miller, CTO, Flatiron Health
In addition to the rigorous curriculum, the program will provide participants with an unrivaled networking experience. Josh Hartmann, a tech industry veteran and co-director of the program at Cornell Tech, highlighted the networking opportunities available. “Connecting with peers and meeting new mentors is a crucial aspect of professional growth,” said Hartmann. “The Product and Tech Executive Leadership Program was created to facilitate meaningful connections, with closed-door conversations, to enable participants to expand their professional networks and forge valuable relationships across the sector.” Hartmann serves as chief practice officer at Cornell Tech and oversees its signature Studio entrepreneurship curriculum for students in master’s programs.
The program is tailored for mid and senior-level executives with a background in technology, product management, engineering, or related fields. Interested individuals can find more information and apply on the summit’s website.
About Cornell Tech
Cornell Tech brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary results grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live in the digital age. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute embodies the academic partnership between the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University on the Cornell Tech campus.
Former PayPal Executive Jack Selby’s Venture Firm AZ-VC to Support The Growth of Nuclearn.ai’s Footprint And The Delivery of Mission-Critical AI For The Administration of Nuclear and Energy Facilities
PHOENIX, Aug. 9, 2023 — Nuclearn.ai, a leading provider of AI process automation solutions for the nuclear industry, announced today at the Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2023) a Seed investment of $2.5M, led by AZ-VC with participation from Nucleation Capital. The round empowers Nuclearn.ai to grow its market leadership in nuclear facilities, scaling access to its AI and machine learning tools that improve how common, time-intensive tasks are managed across a broader array of energy facilities.
The funds will be primarily used for hiring relationship-based sales teams focused on the North American nuclear power market and the general utility market. Nuclearn.ai also plans to continue the development of AtomAssist, its Nuclear Language Model (LLM), and other utility-focused product use cases.
“We are thrilled to support Nuclearn.ai, an Arizona-based company and leadership team that embodies the state’s innovative spirit and ability to deliver impactful solutions for often overlooked yet vital business opportunities,” stated Ben Brockwell, Partner at AZ-VC. “We were impressed with the Nuclearn team’s forward-thinking and commitment to using AI and machine learning to bring efficiencies to recurring time-intensive tasks that can reduce the viability of nuclear and energy plants.”
The funding will enable Nuclearn.ai to respond to market demand for AI and machine learning-enhanced offerings to bring more attention to products such as the Nuclear AutoCAP Screener and Nuclearn Evaluator. Additionally, with a strong desire for privacy and security in the nuclear industry, Nuclearn will be able to enhance the delivery of trainable GenAI capabilities in a private, secure fashion.
“With support from AZ-VC and Nucleation Capital, we are ready to expand our reach within the nuclear market,” added Jerrold Vincent, co-founder of Nuclearn.ai. “This funding marks a significant milestone in our journey; it enables us to refine our nuclear-specific LLM and to create new opportunities with minor changes to our existing product portfolio.”
“Our alignment with the investment theses of AZ-VC, focused on top tech companies in AZ, and Nucleation’s focus on nuclear innovation, further cements this strategic partnership,” added Bradley Fox, co-founder of Nuclearn.ai. “The nuclear industry’s demand for privacy and security meets an emergent market trend in trainable GenAI capabilities, enabling us to pioneer private, secure solutions not only in nuclear but across other utilities as well.”
“Nuclearn’s focus on deploying AI to enhance the efficiency and performance of nuclear power operations will benefit both the existing nuclear power plant operators as well as the next generation of advanced designs emerging in the coming years,” explained Valerie Gardner of Nucleation Capital. “We’re thrilled to invest in this industrious and talented team and support their vision of growth within the sector.”
For more information about Nuclearn.ai and its offerings, please visit www.nuclearn.ai.
About Nuclearn.ai Nuclearn.ai offers AI-based solutions tailored for the nuclear industry, helping organizations harness the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. With products such as Nuclear AutoCAP Screener and Nuclearn Evaluator, Nuclearn.ai is focused on innovation, privacy, and security in a market aligned with the emergent trends in GenAI. Based in Phoenix, Arizona and at the forefront of knowledge-work automation, they are committed to preserving the knowledge base in nuclear energy to ensure long-term sustainability and viability.
Course Hero announces 52 grants awarded to faculty for tech-based classroom projects
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 9, 2023 — Course Hero, the popular learning platform used by over 150,000 educators, today announced fifty-two recipients of its second annual Teaching Grants for Digital Learning. The program awards grants of up to $2,000 to support faculty “dream projects,” many of which utilize the power of generative AI through the lens of digital pedagogy.
AI, VR among Top Faculty Projects Funded Through Annual $100K Grant Program
“With advancements in generative AI and VR being widely and quickly adopted by students and faculty, educators are seeking out new ways to engage their students in increasingly digitized classroom environments,” said Sean Michael Morris, VP of Academics at Course Hero. “I’m continually amazed by the ingenuity of faculty members across the country who are embracing new technologies to help today’s learners succeed and achieve their higher education goals.”
Faculty from 142 institutions submitted projects for the Fall 2023 term. The 52 projects were selected through a blind review process led by former educators at Course Hero. Many faculty expressed an interest in exploring the ethical and effective use of generative AI in their classrooms, while others proposed using technologies like AR and VR to introduce hands-on learning in their classrooms. Some of the projects selected include:
Applying Learning with VR
Yu-Tung Kuo, professor of Applied Engineering Technology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (the country’s largest public Historically Black College and University and the largest producer of Black undergraduates in engineering), will use the funding to simulate real-world scenarios in VR game development. Students will apply learned knowledge and skills, explore the importance of diverse user research and testing, and foster collaboration and decision-making skills critical to the workplace.
AI-Prompted Role Playing
Carmen Villavicencio-Hein, a doctoral student at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work, will use the grant to purchase AI software that will support the creation of a series of simulated case studies where social work students must analyze quantitative and qualitative data to determine areas of need in schools, conduct mental health assessments, and develop culturally responsive interventions and strategies in response to needs. Practicing through simulation scenarios will allow students to apply, practice, and reflect on their learning before their direct work with students and families.
Exploring ChatGPT for Tutoring
Kimberley McHale, a Calculus II professor at Heartland Community College in Illinois, will use her grant to develop a classroom project in which students will investigate both the opportunities and pitfalls of using generative artificial intelligence to learn math. Students will investigate how ChatGPT can be applied in different learning scenarios, and present their findings to the class and Professor McHale’s peers.
The grants follow Course Hero’s 2023 Education Summit, which recently brought together over 7,500 educators to engage in conversations and workshops around digital pedagogy, assessment, and student-first learning environments. The Summit’s most widely attended sessions were focused on AI, including understanding the educational opportunities and tradeoffs of AI, using AI constructively in the classroom, and preparing students for an AI-enabled workplace.
About Course Hero: Course Hero is on a mission to help students graduate confident and prepared. The online learning platform now offers more than 100 million course-specific study resources created by and for students and educators, as well as 24/7 tutor help. More than 150,000 faculty across the U.S. and Canada use Course Hero to share their resources with the community, collaborate with other faculty, and hone new strategies for instruction. Every day, students, educators and tutors on Course Hero help more than 30 million students make every study hour count.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Aug. 9, 2023 — Today, Georgiamune Inc., a privately held, clinical stage biotechnology company, announced the clearance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for GIM-122, a dual-functioning monoclonal antibody. Furthermore, the company successfully completed a $75M Series A financing, positioning Georgiamune as a promising new biotechnology company in the fields of oncology and autoimmune diseases.
The clearance of Georgiamune’s first IND represents a significant milestone for the company as it embarks on its first clinical trial in oncology. GIM-122, a first-in-class dual-functioning monoclonal antibody, targets a highly novel mechanism discovered through the distinguished academic work of Georgiamune’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Samir Khleif and developed by the company to overcome immunotherapy resistance.
Georgiamune will initiate a first-in-human, open-label, phase 1/2 dose-escalation with enrichment and dose expansion study to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics and antitumor activity of GIM-122 as a single agent in adults with advanced solid malignancies who have failed treatment with a checkpoint inhibitor. Georgiamune plans to initiate its phase 1/2 clinical trial in the second half of 2023 and continue development of its extensive first-in-class pipeline for cancer and autoimmune diseases with high unmet needs.
Dr. Khleif stated, “Georgiamune is a discovery and early clinical development biotech company focused on transforming immunotherapy by reprogramming the immune system for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The acceptance of our first IND is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our talented team, and brings us closer to fulfilling our mission of transforming cancer patient care.”
In addition to the IND acceptance, Georgiamune has successfully closed an oversubscribed $75M Series A financing round, securing substantial financial support from leading biotech investors and venture capital firms. General Catalyst and Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) co-led the round. Mubadala Capital, Alexandria Venture Investments, Catalio Capital Management, CJNV BioVenture, and Verition Fund Management also participated.
“Georgiamune’s therapeutic approach to unlock and reprogram the immune system seeks to enable patients to recover from cancer or autoimmune diseases, and is a remarkable example of leveraging nature’s mechanisms for improved healthcare solutions, a core part of our Health Assurance thesis,” said Deep Nishar, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “We are proud to support Georgiamune in getting its novel therapies to patients worldwide, in what we believe will help people live higher quality and longer lives.”
“PICI is proud to support Georgiamune in bringing this novel technology to cancer patients worldwide,” said John Connolly, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at PICI. “Georgiamune’s approach of leveraging fundamental discoveries in next generation checkpoint blockade to develop novel immuno-oncology treatments is directly in line with PICI’s mission to accelerate breakthrough therapies to patients.”
“Georgiamune’s innovative therapeutic approach targets critical challenges in immunotherapy, adeptly tuning the immune system to reestablish equilibrium in cancer and autoimmune conditions and presenting a promising way forward for patients with high unmet needs,” said Ayman AlAbdallah, Partner at Mubadala Capital. “We are proud to partner with the Georgiamune team as they emerge from a period of intense research and development and advance several groundbreaking preclinical and clinical programs.”
About Georgiamune Inc.
Georgiamune Inc. is a clinical stage science and discovery biotechnology company focused on reprogramming immune signaling pathways to redirect the immune system to fight diseases. Georgiamune has designed unique approaches to re-establish immune balance, and its scientific discoveries have led to pioneering immunotherapies targeting high unmet needs. The company’s lead program, GIM-122, is a first-in-class, dual functioning monoclonal antibody. GIM-122 is designed to overcome immune therapy resistance in cancer patients. In addition to its lead program, the company is advancing a pipeline of first-in-class therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Georgiamune was founded by Dr. Samir N. Khleif, a world-renowned medical oncologist and researcher in the field of immunology and cancer, based on discoveries in his lab on novel mechanisms to modulate immune response. Dr. Khleif’s work has led to the discovery of novel core targets that control critical immune cell pathways leading to the development of first-in-class molecules that modulate and restore these immune signaling pathways for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.
For more information about Georgiamune, please visit the company’s website at Georgiamune.com or follow the company on LinkedIn.
Alltrna is advancing a new class of genetic medicines based on the power of tRNA biology to universally treat Stop Codon Disease, which encompasses thousands of genetic diseases caused by a premature termination codon (PTC) mutation and affects approximately 30 million people worldwide
Series B financing will enable further buildout of Alltrna’s machine learning-driven platform to unlock the enormous combinatorial power of tRNA sequences and modifications and advance its first drug candidates towards clinical studies
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Aug. 9, 2023 — Alltrna, a Flagship Pioneering company unlocking transfer RNA (tRNA) biology and pioneering tRNA medicines to regulate the protein universe and resolve disease, today announced that it has raised $109 million in a Series B financing to advance the company’s platform and first drug candidates towards the clinic for a first indication in Stop Codon Disease. The financing round included the company’s founder, Flagship Pioneering, and a number of top-tier investors.
“Alltrna’s platform optimizes tRNA nucleotide sequence and modifications to turn tRNA’s sophisticated biology into programmable medicines with powerful potential therapeutic properties,” said Michelle C. Werner, CEO of Alltrna and CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering. “Since launch, we’ve gained unparalleled insights into tRNA biology and shown that we can systematically design and deliver tRNAs with universal readthrough of premature termination codons and restore full-length functional protein production in vivo. For the first time, we have the opportunity to universally treat Stop Codon Disease, which encompasses thousands of rare and common human diseases driven by PTC mutations, giving millions of patients the chance at a treatment in years not lifetimes.”
“This is an important milestone for Alltrna as the company advances the first platform to unlock tRNA biology and systematically design, program, and deliver first-in-class tRNA medicines,” said Lovisa Afzelius, Ph.D., MBA, Origination Partner at Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and Board Director of Alltrna. “The team has made significant advancements to confirm that Alltrna’s platform can turn tRNA’s sophisticated biology into programmable medicines to restore disrupted protein production, regardless of target, for thousands of diseases with the same underlying genetic mutation.”
tRNAs not only play a central role in the translation of mRNA into proteins but also are programmable molecules with a diverse biology of sequences and modifications. There exist more than 1034 tRNA sequences with more than 120 natural and synthetic modifications possible for each nucleotide, yielding the potential to generate more engineered, modified tRNA oligonucleotides than atoms in the universe. Alltrna’s platform uniquely combines internal expertise and proprietary machine learning tools to harness the combinatorial potential of tRNA sequences and modifications that are key to structure, function, and stability. Alltrna recently presented data validating the potential of its platform to design, modify, produce, and deliver engineered, modified tRNA oligonucleotides with significantly increased potency and activity for the in vivo readthrough of PTC mutations to restore the production of full-length proteins, independent of gene and mutation location.
“Alltrna has made a big leap in tRNA biology to realize the potential of this powerful new class of medicines to truly accelerate drug development for genetically driven diseases. Without the limitation of developing a new genetic medicine for each disease, Alltrna has the opportunity to scale a whole new field of programmable medicines,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chairperson of the Board of Alltrna and Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. “We are pleased to welcome a group of co-investors and biopharma leaders who have joined us to scale Alltrna and its platform and to enable a new modality of medicines for patients.”
About Stop Codon Disease Stop Codon Disease encompasses thousands of rare and common diseases that stem from premature termination codons (PTC) also called nonsense mutations, where the code for an amino acid has been mutated into a premature “stop” codon. This results in a truncated or shortened protein product with no or altered biological activity that causes disease. Approximately 10% of all people with a genetic disease have Stop Codon Disease, representing approximately 30 million people worldwide. Alltrna is engineering tRNA medicines that can read these PTC mutations and deliver the desired amino acid, thereby restoring the production of the full-length protein.
About Alltrna Alltrna unlocks tRNA biology to correct disease. The company’s platform incorporates AI/ML tools to learn the tRNA language and deliver diverse programmable molecules with broad therapeutic potential. Alltrna has an unprecedented opportunity to advance a single tRNA medicine to unify treatment across a wide range of diseases with the same underlying genetic mutation. Alltrna was founded in 2018 by Flagship Pioneering. For more info, visit www.alltrna.com.
About Flagship Pioneering Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category bioplatform companies to transform human health and sustainability. Since its launch in 2000, the firm has, through its Flagship Labs unit, applied its unique hypothesis-driven innovation process to originate and foster more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in more than $90 billion in aggregate value. To date, Flagship has deployed over $3.4 billion in capital toward the founding and growth of its pioneering companies alongside more than $26 billion of follow-on investments from other institutions. The current Flagship ecosystem comprises 45 transformative companies, including Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Foghorn Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FHTX), Generate Biomedicines, Inari, Indigo Agriculture, Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA), Omega Therapeutics (NASDAQ: OMGA), Sana Biotechnology (NASDAQ: SANA), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB) and Tessera Therapeutics.
Media Contacts Jessica Yingling, Ph.D., Little Dog Communications Inc., [email protected], +1.858.344.8091 Josephine Zorbo, Ph.D., Flagship Pioneering, [email protected]
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands, Aug. 8, 2023 — Puffer Finance, a blockchain infrastructure company, has announced the successful closure of its seed round, raising a total of $5.5 million USD. The round was co-led by Lemniscap and Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, Bankless Ventures, Animoca Ventures, DACM, LBK, SNZ and Canonical Crypto.
The funding will be leveraged to accelerate the development of Puffer’s open-source Secure-Signer solution for the public good, and to create a capital-efficient permissionless staking pool.
Puffer recognizes the inherent challenges validators face in the Ethereum Proof of Stake (PoS) network, particularly the risk of losing all of their staked ETH to slashing penalties resulting from software bugs or user errors. This carries significant risk for solo stakers without access to substantial amounts of ETH, discouraging small-scale participation and increasing the appeal of centralized services.
Puffer’s open-source project Secure-Signer is a remote signing tool designed to prevent Ethereum validators from committing slashable offenses, limiting access to validator keys in order to mitigate the effect of software bugs and user errors while simultaneously protecting them from costly penalties that disproportionately impact solo stakers. Secure-Signer previously received support from the Ethereum Foundation in the form of a $120k grant, underscoring its importance within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Additionally, Puffer Finance is actively working on a protocol to lower the barrier of entry for at-home stakers and to help them unlock additional rewards, providing a financially viable alternative to centralized Liquid Staking Providers (LSPs), whose economies of scale can otherwise provide greater rewards by addressing the issue of inactivity penalties and implementing innovative anti-slashing technology. The protocol will effectively reduce the bond requirement from 32 ETH to just 2 ETH.
Other participants in Puffer’s seed round include community funds such as 33DAO, WAGMI33, and Concave, as well as angel investors including DiscusFish, Co-founder of F2Pool & Cobo; Sreeram Kannan, Founder of Eigen layer; Frederick Allen, Staking Sales Lead at Coinbase Institutional; Calvin Liu, Head of Strategy at Eigen Layer; Ramble, Founder of the North American Blockchain Association; Mr.Block: Core Contributor at Curve; Ladislaus von Daniels, Staking Educator, Richard Malone, Head of Business at Obol Labs.
Puffer’s seed round follows an initial $650K raise in a pre-seed round led by Jump Crypto, and supported by IoTeX, Acanam Capital.
Commenting on the announcement, Amir Forouzani, and Jason Vranek, Founders of Puffer Finance, said:“The rapid advancements in infrastructure and user experience have primed Ethereum for mass adoption. As this era ushers in new centralization pressures, preserving Ethereum‘s core values becomes increasingly essential. We hope the Puffer Protocol will create a pocket within the validator set where decentralization can thrive. By lowering barriers to entry, anyone can run a Puffer Node from their home to operate Web3 infrastructure and play a pivotal role in shaping a Web3 that is resilient and censorship-resistant. We want to express our utmost gratitude to our investors for their trust, support, and partnership. Together and with our community, we will build a flourishing ecosystem true to the values that made Ethereum so special.”
Justin Drake, Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said: “Validator operators should consider Puffer’s SGX-based secure signer – at least until we get one-shot signatures. Zooming out, enclaves are a great way to incrementally improve security whenever pure cryptoeconomic defences fall short.”
Roderik van der Graaf, Founder of Lemniscap, said: “The Puffer team is spearheading the development of sophisticated technological solutions geared towards reducing centralisation pressures on Ethereum. Puffer’s proprietary Secure-Signer solution greatly mitigates operational risks associated with user errors and client bugs, providing best-in-class security for validators. The solution’s low capital requirement of 2 ETH is a game changer in terms of broadening the accessibility of revenue streams for at-home stakers, encouraging new swathes of ecosystem participants to stake their claim in the burgeoning sector.”
Samuel Harrison, Managing Partner of Faction, said: “Through software defined security, Puffer enables lower fees for users and higher ROI for node operators, whilst enabling a more decentralized and fragmented validator ecosystem. This advancement is beneficial for the entire space.”
About Puffer Finance Puffer is defining a new industry standard for secure validator operations with the primary objective of preserving decentralization, with Anti-Slashing technologies designed to minimize the chance of slashing events. The company’s Secure-Aggregator technology provides the foundation to build a secure, scalable, and performant liquid staking protocol. Allowing permissionless and capital-efficient Node Operator (NoOp) participation allows anyone to join the PufferPool to help preserve Ethereum‘s decentralization.
About Lemniscap Lemniscap is an investment firm specializing in investments in emerging crypto assets and blockchain startups. Since its founding in 2017, Lemniscap has funded multiple investments in the crypto blockchain space, on the core belief that blockchain technology will upend traditional business models, resulting in profound changes in the world economy. The Lemniscap team consists of talented people with backgrounds in financial markets, PE/VC, technology and entrepreneurship. For more information, visit https://lemniscap.com/.
About Lightspeed Faction Faction is a joint-venture with Lightspeed Venture Partners. We back disruptive crypto projects at the early stage. We invest in the best entrepreneurs at the Seed and Series A, across both equity and tokens. We look to partner with BUIDLers who are working on something fundamentally useful in blockchain and who are passionately pushing the industry forward. We invest across the stack (layer zero to applications) and sectors (DeFi to NFTs). Regardless of vertical or horizontal, our north star is always the same: great entrepreneurs creating real utility and pushing the frontier. For more information, visit https://www.faction.vc/
Top FAA approvals to fly drones BVLOS without Visual Observers using Low Altitude Airspace Intelligence System
New R&D Facility Set To Open in Alabama
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8, 2023 — Remote sensing company Birdstop, Inc. raised $2.3M in funding to expand its constellation of BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) drones across the nation’s critical infrastructure, grow its AI capabilities, and deliver more data-driven value to customers. The round was led by Lerer Hippeau and included Anorak Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Data Tech Fund, Graph Ventures, Techstars, Timberline Holdings, as well as strategic investors in energy and telecommunications.
From its NASA-style mission control in California, Birdstop operates a network of drones across the nation akin to a constellation of satellites on the ground. Birdstop’s patented technology uses a suite of risk mitigation measures including a proprietary low altitude airspace deconfliction system to ensure the highest level of safety even when the operator is thousands of miles away. Birdstop has received several of the nation’s top Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approvals to conduct complex BVLOS operations.
Birdstop analyzes and protects power grids, telecom networks, and other national critical infrastructure. In addition to routine monitoring and inspection, Birdstop remote sensing is mobilized on-demand for extreme circumstances from natural disasters to security breaches. Birdstop coverage is already active in several states including Alabama, California, and Texas, providing real-time intelligence to customers managing both public and private sector assets. In addition to infrastructure users, over 20 other industries – from agriculture to construction to first response – can leverage Birdstop coverage to enhance situational awareness and real-time intelligence.
With the opening of a new R&D facility in Alabama, Birdstop has begun scaling production of its systems, starting with its airspace intelligence beacon.
Birdstop was founded by its CEO Keith Miao, former Google data scientist and Earth Institute satellite imagery analyst. Other leaders at Birdstop include Head of Software Jatin Kolekar, who brings a decade of experience at the frontier of drone technology, Software Engineer Robert Reynoso, who operated a global network of Internet balloons at Google Loon, and Principal R&D Engineer Timothy McPhail, who managed cellular infrastructure with drone imaging at American Tower.
“We all use Google Maps, but few of us have seen a physical satellite. At Birdstop, we take the same approach for drones. Our customers receive data and intel but the drones are invisible to them,” says Keith Miao, CEO. “We take away all the complexities of drones, robotics, and FAA regulations, so that users simply dial into their assets in real-time, on-demand.”
“Developments in drone technology and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) regulation over the past decade are allowing Birdstop’s vision to be realized for the first time,” says Andrea Hippeau, Partner at Lerer Hippeau. “Birdstop’s ability to generate real-time intel remotely is a huge step forward for the industry.”
About Birdstop Birdstop, Inc., Inc. is a San Francisco Bay Area remote sensing company using BVLOS drones and AI to protect national critical infrastructure. Its patented nodal network technology and cutting-edge FAA approvals enable it to conduct large scale BVLOS operations by placing drones across the nation and operating them remotely, like a constellation of satellites on the ground.
About Lerer Hippeau Lerer Hippeau is an early-stage venture capital firm founded and operated in New York City. Our portfolio includes more than 400 leading enterprise and consumer businesses including Guideline, MIRROR, Blockdaemon, K Health, Allbirds, ZenBusiness, and Thrive. We’re experienced operators who invest early and stay in our founders’ corners as they build iconic companies. Learn more at lererhippeau.com.
Joining Benchmark and Mayfield, the additional investment brings total seed funding raised to $46.5M to fuel the democratization of AI application development
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8, 2023 — MindsDB, an artificial intelligence virtual database enabling the creation of the next wave of AI-centered applications, today announced an investment from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, bringing total seed funding raised to $46.5 million.
The latest round – which includes existing investors Benchmark, Mayfield, Y Combinator, OpenOcean and Walden Catalyst – will further advance MindsDB’s mission, making AI more accessible to all businesses by enabling the world’s 30 million software developers to implement AI capabilities in their products.
“Today, there are close to 30 million software developers around the world, but only less than five percent are proficient AI/ML engineers,” said Jorge Torres, Co-Founder and CEO of MindsDB. “However, the world is facing a new transformation where most software that you know today will need to be upgraded with an AI-centric approach. To accomplish this, every developer worldwide, regardless of their AI knowledge, should be capable of producing, managing and plugging AI models to existing software infrastructure. This is the exact issue that our AI database resolves.”
“Businesses everywhere see the extraordinary potential generative AI can have for their operations, but there’s an acute shortage of specialized talent to help bring this capability within their reach,” said Mohamed (Sid) Siddeek, Corporate Vice President and Head of NVentures. “MindsDB is helping to change that, increasing the accessibility of AI for companies of all sizes.”
“We were immediately impressed with MindsDB’s success in open source, the broad reach of its platform for building AI into applications, and its extensive partnerships across the database and AI ecosystems,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield. “The team has built a uniquely innovative platform to increase AI accessibility within organizations and we see a clear opportunity to help scale an organization leading the way in empowering business to seamlessly create and deploy generative AI apps.”
MindsDB has more than 130 integrations and enables developers to manage AI models from the most advanced ML frameworks including Hugging Face, Cohere, LangChain, Nixtla, and to plug them to data in platforms like Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB and Snowflake.
On top of more than 150,000 open source deployments, MindsDB Pro Cloud is used by more than 100 emerging startups and small-to-medium sized businesses, helping companies like Bytes, Dumuso, JourneyFoods, Progressify, Precise Finance, Rize and more, to improve their products and internal operations.
“Institutional investors use Precise Finance’s B2B embedded finance platform to evaluate smaller companies with the help of AI. Since using MindsDB, we have removed the need for data engineers and data scientists, putting AI development skills directly in the hands of our domain experts,” said Dan Shapir, Co-founder and CTO of Precise Finance. “As a result, we not only improved both accuracy and ease of use for our domain experts, but we greatly reduced the time it takes for our customers to evaluate potential investments, allowing for a streamlined onboarding process that maintains stringent underwriting standards for the financial sector.”
“With MindsDB, we have used our existing team and technical resources to implement advanced Machine Learning models faster and with less complexity,” said Sameer Nayyar, EVP of product and operations at Domuso, a next-generation financial services platform offering comprehensive payment processing solutions for multifamily properties. “It has positively impacted our business, and we saw a reduction of chargebacks by $95k over two months and a saving of $500,000 over the year.”
The company is also recognized as one of the most promising AI companies from Forbes and by Gartner as a Cool Vendor for Data and AI (2022).
About MindsDB MindsDB enables developers to create the next wave of AI-centered applications that will transform the way we live and work. MindsDB was founded in 2017 by Adam Carrigan (COO) and Jorge Torres (CEO) and is backed with $46.5M in seed funding from Benchmark, Mayfield, MMC, NVentures, OpenOcean, SpeedInvest, TQ Ventures, University of California Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, Walden Catalyst Ventures and YCombinator. MindsDB is also recognized by Forbes as one of America’s most promising AI companies (2021) and by Gartner as a Cool Vendor for Data and AI (2022). To see how MindsDB can help you visit www.mindsdb.com or follow us @MindsDB.
TOKYO, Aug. 8, 2023 — The Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund is pleased to announce today to welcome an R&D-driven company Fujirebio Holdings Inc. (hereinafter “Fujirebio HD” and headquartered in Tokyo) to join GHIT as a new associate partner.
“We are excited to be working with Fujirebio HD to solve global health challenges and to help fight infectious diseases around the world. We expect that Fujirebio HD’s expertise, especially in in vitro diagnostics solutions, will drive innovation in product development for tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). We are also confident that we will be able to support the expansion of Fujirebio HD’s partnerships both domestically and globally,” said Dr. Osamu Kunii, CEO of the GHIT Fund.
Mr. Goki Ishikawa, president and CEO, Fujirebio HD, said, “We have decided to join GHIT since we empathize with the concept of its mission of ‘leveraging Japanese innovation to fight against infectious diseases through partnerships.’ Our participation in GHIT enables us to utilize our R&D efforts in the fight against infectious diseases around the world, which leads us to a further contribution to global health.”
About Fujirebio Fujirebio, a member of H.U. Group Holdings Inc., is a global leader in the field of high-quality in vitro diagnostics (IVD) testing. It has more than 50 years’ accumulated experience in the conception, development, production, and worldwide commercialization of robust IVD products.
Fujirebio was the first company to develop and market CSF biomarkers under the Innogenetics brand over 25 years ago. Fujirebio remains the only company with such a comprehensive line-up of manual and fully automated AD assays and consistently partners with organizations and clinical experts across the world to develop new pathways for earlier, easier and more complete neurodegenerative diagnostic tools. More information can be found at www.fujirebio.com/neuro.
The GHIT Fund is a Japan-based international public-private partnership fund (PPP) that was formed between the Government of Japan, multiple pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The GHIT Fund invests in and manages an R&D portfolio of development partnerships aimed at addressing neglected diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases, which afflict the world’s vulnerable and underserved populations. In collaboration with global partners, the GHIT Fund mobilizes Japanese industry, academia, and research institutes to create new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics for malaria, tuberculosis, and neglected tropical diseases. https://www.ghitfund.org/en
For more information, contact: Katy Lenard at +1-301-280-5719 or [email protected] Eriko Mugitani at +81-36441-2032 or [email protected]
SOURCE Global Health Innovative Technology (GHIT) Fund
