First-of-its-kind Solution Addresses Sweeping Shifts in Dental Labor Market, Empowering Professionals and Practices Across the US; Appoints Industry Veteran as Chief Commercial Officer

PHOENIX, Aug. 16, 2023 — Toothio, the on-demand dental staffing platform connecting qualified professionals with practices, today announced a $4 million seed round led by Craft Ventures with participation from Burst Capital, Moving Capital, Revere Partners, and Rho Capital Partners. This investment follows an initial backing from AZ Crown, founders of Insight Enterprises (Nasdaq: NSIT). The capital infusion will be used to accelerate Toothio’s growth by enhancing its technology, expanding into key US markets, increasing its network of dental professionals, and adding to its sales team.

To advance its growth plans, Toothio has appointed Keith Clements as Chief Commercial Officer, a seasoned executive with a proven track record of scaling the country’s largest dental companies. Clements spearheaded sales at Young Innovations, successfully developing its Dental Service Organizations (DSO) business and playing a key role in the integration of multiple acquisitions. Before that, Clements served as VP of Sales at Dentsply Sirona (Nasdaq: XRAY), leading the company’s US consumable business, strategic account group, and dealer-based business during his decade-long tenure.

“Every dental practice in the US today intimately understands the challenges of staffing the office. Toothio solves this problem by connecting credentialed, friendly dental hygienists, assistants, and receptionists with offices that rely on these important workers,” said Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and partner at Craft Ventures. “The result is a win-win solution not only for the workers who gain tremendous flexibility in working when and where they want, but also for the dental practices that are appropriately staffed to meet their patients’ needs.”

“We are committed to addressing the challenges facing the dental industry, and this investment accelerates our progress,” said Ian Prendergast, co-founder and CEO of Toothio. “Dental professionals now prioritize flexible work, the post-pandemic labor market is experiencing unprecedented shortages, and there is a growing demand for dental services. However, existing solutions have failed to keep up. Our focus is on revitalizing the dental ecosystem through innovation, and we are excited about the next phase of growth as we bring a modern, convenient, and seamless staffing solution to a wider audience.”

Since its founding, Toothio has facilitated thousands of completed shifts with a 97% fill rate, more than doubled revenue, and expanded to Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, and Austin. By the end of 2023, the company plans to serve additional US markets, increasing access to thousands of practices, professionals, and DSOs.

Toothio is actively hiring for sales and partnership roles. For more information about joining Toothio and its team of marketplace leaders hailing from Amazon, Uber, and Qwik, contact [email protected]. 

About Toothio:
Founded in 2021, Toothio’s mission is to alleviate the staffing challenges faced by dentists by providing on-demand access to hygienists and assistants. Toothio’s staffing platform enables dental practices to quickly increase office production and better support their patients. Toothio offers dental professionals freedom and flexibility, making it the class-leading labor option for those in the dental industry. For more information about Toothio, visit toothio.com.

Contact:

Press
press@toothio.com

SOURCE Toothio

Funding will support the commercialization of LiGas^®, South 8’s liquefied gas electrolyte technology that’s a safer, higher performance alternative to standard liquid electrolytes

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 16, 2023 — South 8 Technologies, Inc., the San Diego cleantech company innovating safer and higher performance electrolytes for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries, has closed a strategic investment with Lockheed Martin Ventures, the venture arm of Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), a global leader in defense and aerospace technology, with participation from current South 8 investors LG Technology Ventures, Foothill Ventures and Anzu Partners.

South 8 is the first company to develop a novel liquefied gas electrolyte technology as a safer, higher performance alternative to standard liquid electrolytes. Known as LiGas^®, the liquefied gas electrolyte is simple to incorporate into existing cell production processes, utilizes materials which are all currently manufactured globally at scale and offers simple recyclability at the end of life. LiGas improves safety, increases energy density, achieves all-weather performance, enables fast-charge capability and reduces costs while also being compatible with existing lithium-ion cell production or Gigafactory manufacturing processes and supply chains.

“The exceptional performance capabilities of the LiGas electrolytes are an enabling technology for increasingly aggressive customer requirements, particularly those set forth by the aerospace and defense industries,” said Cyrus Rustomji, CEO for South 8 Technologies. “We are excited to receive Lockheed Martin’s support as we continue to improve battery technology, reach new markets and lead the transition towards a greener future.”

“Forward-thinking, solutions-focused companies like South 8 Technologies are motivated to bring the right solutions to our customers,” said Chris Moran, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures. “We hope to leverage South 8’s LiGas technology to provide energy solutions that increase safety and energy density while achieving all-weather performance, enabling better field performance.”

Because LiGas maintains excellent operation at both low and high temperatures ranging from -60 to +60 degrees Celsius, the use cases are wide ranging from consumer, commercial and industrial electric vehicles to military defense systems. Examples include everything from connected battlefields, unmanned aerial vehicles and subzero power to all-weather energy applications for grid storage and power backup to marine sea monitoring, electric boats and submarines.

Want to be part of the solution toward a clean-energy future? The South 8 team continues to grow with eight positions currently open. To learn more, please visit www.south8technologies.com/#careers.

About South 8 Technologies
South 8 Technologies, Inc. has developed a novel liquefied gas electrolyte product, LiGas^®, to power the next generation of lithium-ion batteries and advance the world’s clean energy future. The venture-backed cleantech company’s Series A round of $12 million was led by Anzu Partners with participation from LG Technology Ventures, Shell Ventures, Foothill Ventures and Taiyo Nippon Sanso. For more information about South 8 Technologies, please visit www.south8technologies.com or follow the company on LinkedIn.

SOURCE South 8 Technologies

American Cancer Society’s Impact Venture Fund Announces Annual Results and New Framework that Measures Investments’ Impact on Mission to End Cancer

BOSTON, Aug. 16, 2023 — BrightEdge LLC, the American Cancer Society‘s (ACS) venture capital and impact investment arm, published its most recent annual report, featuring how its portfolio of 18 companies has the potential to improve the lives of more than 1.5 million cancer patients and their families. BrightEdge’s estimate is based on its proprietary Cancer Impact Investing Framework^™ (CIIF), which evaluates and measures the actual and potential impact of investments made in accordance with the ACS mission-driven priorities.

“Guided by CIIF, BrightEdge invests in innovations that span a patient’s cancer journey from prevention and wellness, to diagnosis, treatment and recovery,” said Alice Pomponio, vice president of innovation and impact investing and managing director of BrightEdge. “This diverse portfolio has the potential to deliver blended financial and social impact across the cancer care continuum to accelerate ACS’s vision of ending cancer as we know it, for everyone.”

Using CIIF, BrightEdge invested in four new companies in 2022: CellCentric, Paradigm, Vincere Health and Naveris. Respectively, these companies are developing innovations to improve access to novel oral treatment options for blood cancer patients, for clinical trials that promote equitable representation, in smoking cessation programs, and to enable early cancer detection for viral-related cancers. BrightEdge also participated in follow-on financings for five existing portfolio companies.

Across its 18 portfolio companies, BrightEdge has invested $28.9M to date from the donor-funded ACS Impact Venture Fund (AIVF). These companies have collectively raised more than $3.1B for their cancer-fighting innovations. In its annual report, BrightEdge also announced $9.7M in investment gains and a gross asset value of $78M at the close of 2022.

“BrightEdge works alongside ACS to not only accelerate patient-centric therapies and technologies but also provide alternative funding for our vision,” said  Dr. Karen E. Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. “Together, we’re advancing science, reducing disparities and building sustainability, and I thank the BrightEdge team for their strong contribution over this reporting period.”

BrightEdge was created by ACS in 2019 to build a sustainable stream of alternative income for the nation’s leading cancer-fighting organization while catalyzing market activity in areas of highest impact and unmet needs. Like traditional venture capital, BrightEdge invests in for-profit, early-stage companies developing cancer-focused therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and technologies. In addition, BrightEdge intentionally selects investments that help to further ACS’s mission-driven priorities across the patient care continuum: causes of cancer, healthy lifestyle and prevention, screening and diagnosis, treatment, survivorship, and health equity.

To view the full 2022 Annual Report, click here, and for the infographic, click here.

About ACS BrightEdge
BrightEdge is the American Cancer Society’s donor-funded innovation and impact investment arm that invests in for-profit companies developing therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, and technologies to eradicate cancer. It invests alongside top-tier life sciences and healthcare investors with a goal of generating financial returns and patient impact. For more information and a copy of the fund’s 2022 report, visit www.acsbrightedge.org.

About the American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is a leading cancer-fighting organization with a vision to end cancer as we know it, for everyone. For more than 100 years, we have been improving the lives of people with cancer and their families as the only organization combating cancer through advocacy, research, and patient support. We are committed to ensuring everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer. To learn more, visit cancer.org or call our 24/7 helpline at 1-800-227-2345. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

SOURCE American Cancer Society

HONG KONG, Aug. 16, 2023 — Venturous Group, the Citytech™ Group, emphasises its focus on Smart Buildings, Smart Energy and Smart Computing as it refreshes its brand and launches a new website (click here) following its successful Series B capital raising with CLP Group as the lead investor.

Venturous revisits its positioning and brand to communicate a more focused approach: Venturous Group is a Citytech™ business builder and investor. This follows the closing of Venturous Group’s Series B round in January, raising another US$21 million, in which CLP Group, one of the largest investor-owned power businesses in Asia Pacific, was the lead investor. This brings Venturous’ total capital raised from shareholders to US$152 million.

Venturous creates, builds and invests in game-changing technology companies, starting from China, to make cities smarter – more liveable, sustainable and productive. Its focus is Smart Buildings, Smart Energy and Smart Computing.

This updated positioning is fully reflected on the company’s new website, which has been completely rebuilt to clearly communicate the identity and essence of Venturous in conjunction with the group’s refreshed brand launched on 16 August 2023. Here you can discover the new Venturous Group, its focus areas, thought leadership around Smart Cities and Citytech, why it is such a big opportunity, and how Venturous creates value with its 12 companies.

Venturous Group’s new brand is an evolution of its earlier version, with the colours, design elements and brand character now being much more distinct. Similarly, the new website has a much more contemporary Citytech-oriented design and features a much-improved interface for all the content that the company continuously produces for Smart Cities and China in particular.

Mr Benson Tam, Founder & CEO of Venturous Group, says, “Venturous builds order out of chaos in the new complex digital reality. Complexity and Venturous are about revelations emerging from contrasts and opposites, like soft and hard, ice and fire, people and money, yin and yang. Our refreshed brand now makes that even clearer with the consistent use of two powerful colours – midnight blue and fiery orange. We believe opposites attract yet complement each other and generate richer overall value. At a tangible level, our rapid evolution to become a focused Citytech business builder and investor – using more strategic partnerships, spin-offs and joint ventures to create extraordinary value – made it natural for us to refresh our overall brand, positioning and how we tell our story online.”

– END–

About Venturous Group

Venturous Group is a Citytech™ business builder and investor. It creates, builds and invests in game-changing technology companies, starting from China, to make cities smarter – more liveable, sustainable and productive. The Group’s focus is Smart Buildings, Smart Energy and Smart Computing. Creating value by transforming life city by city, Venturous leverages the latest Citytech, strategic partnerships and digital transformation. Venturous works with its companies, strategic partners and cities, bringing strategy, capital and technology to build companies together. The Group currently has 12 companies, including two joint ventures. Venturous’ largest institutional shareholders are Fidelity China Special Situations PLC and CLP Group, and has its own IPO on the horizon.

https://www.venturousgroup.com

For more information

English
Mr Johan Riddergard
Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer
[email protected] 

Mandarin
Ms Jie Teng
Co-Founder & Chief IBO Officer
[email protected]

SOURCE Venturous Group

Groundbreaking truck parking service comes to Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

MARIETTA, Ga., Aug. 16, 2023 — TruckParkingClub.com, the largest and most innovative truck parking marketplace, connecting truckers across America to hosts with available parking locations, announces its free rest stop truck parking availability service is now in eight states across America at no charge to its Members.

TruckParkingClub.com, the AirBnB for trucking parking, is an application that helps drivers save time and fuel by providing instant access to available parking throughout the United States.

With today’s announcement, the company has opened up its network of 143 rest stops across eight states, including Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, to over-the-road truckers looking for a safe, clean parking place.

Why is this important

The TruckParkingClub.com team has been driving nationwide to find more truck parking, driving 25,000 miles in 3 months while adding dozens of properties owned by businesses and investors. Interacting with truckers during the journey to grasp the challenges posed by the truck parking shortage resulted in the implementation of a complimentary rest-stop truck parking service.

“Having little awareness of truck parking availability in real-time is one of the biggest issues with truck parking today,” says Evan Shelley, CEO at TruckParkingClub.com.

TruckParkingClub.com is solving this decade-old issue by providing truckers with a real-time view of truck parking availability. Whether checking availability at a rest stop or reserving a parking space to drop a trailer, parking for multiple days, or making sure you stay within your hours of service, TruckParkingClub.com is dedicated to solving the parking accessibility problem for the broader trucking community.

“TruckParkingClub.com is proud to offer free rest stop truck parking availability services across eight integral states to help our nation’s truckers find legal parking,” said Shelley.

How it works

TruckParkingClub.com provides a web and mobile app for truckers to see parking availability and book a space at their desired location. The TruckParkingClub.com app currently includes real-time availability at 143 accessible rest stops and 120 premium parking locations with added services like overnight, multi-night and monthly stays, and reserved spaces.

By creating an account on the website at https://truckparkingclub.com/ or the mobile app, truckers can store their information for easy bookings in the future.

Property owners can list their parking sites on TruckParkingClub.com’s website or app by creating an account and answering a few simple questions. TruckParkingClub.com takes the owner’s unused space and turns it into truck parking. Typical property members on the platform include trucking companies, storage companies, tow truck companies, CDL schools, truck parking operators, real estate investors and more!

TruckParkingClub.com will announce new locations and new features in the near future.

For any questions with the TruckParkingClub.com website, users can call (888) 899-PARK or use the contact us page.

CONTACT: TruckParkingClub.com
(888) 899-PARK
[email protected]

SOURCE TruckParkingClub.com

• Marqo is an end-to-end multimodal vector search engine for developers that includes all the infrastructure to enable AI-powered real-time search at scale.
• New funding will support Marqo to scale its existing cloud service and build search technology that learns from user engagement to continuously improve relevance.

LONDON and MELBOURNE, Australia, Aug. 16, 2023 — Marqo, the startup enabling AI-powered search and discovery, has closed US$5.2million in seed investment. The investment, led by Blackbird Ventures, also includes the support of Creator Fund, January Capital, and Cohere’s co-founders, Ivan Zhang and Aidan Gomez. The funds will be used to develop a new form of vector search technology that continuously improves based on user engagement, which differentiates it from existing vector databases.

Marqo was founded by Jesse Clark, formerly Lead Scientist at Amazon Robotics AI and Principal Scientist at StitchFix and physicist at Stanford and UCL, and Tom Hamer, a former Amazon Web Services (AWS) software engineer. The team has since brought in AI, engineering, and operations expertise from Amazon, Uber and Goldman Sachs.

Unlike traditional keyword search, Marqo uses machine learning models to return more accurate search results by understanding content and meaning. Users can search using text, images, or a combination of both. The technology initially targets end-user search (ecommerce, marketplaces) but has applications in generative AI, analytics and security. The new service, currently in closed beta, allows the machine learning models to automatically learn from user engagement and continuously improve the relevance of the vectors.

“Search is in desperate need of modernisation – the vast majority of search experiences are based on legacy keyword search systems, which provide poor results,” said Marqo’s co-founder, Tom Hamer. “Customers want search experiences that anticipate their needs, not just match keywords. This is especially important for businesses where the search bar is the core product, such as ecommerce. By automatically improving based on user interaction, Marqo provides highly relevant results, and increases customer conversion rate, order value, and revenue.”

Marqo’s mission is to democratise AI technology allowing transformative search experiences to be built with ease. “Despite many advantages, vector search remains challenging to implement especially for applications requiring real-time search,” said Jesse Clark, Marqo’s co-founder. “Vector search is rapidly becoming a must have for generative AI applications. We want anyone to be able to leverage the latest machine learning models, even if they’re not an expert in this field.”

“Vector search is a huge growth area. In addition to being at the core of AI search and recommendation systems – vector search has become a must have component of generative AI. Marqo is instrumental in making AI useful to businesses by enabling developers to use the best technology with little effort,” said Aidan Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Cohere.

Blackbird Partner Nick Crocker added: “There is over 100 trillion gigabytes of data in the world, the majority of which is unstructured data such as text, images or video. With generative AI creating more content than ever before people, computers and companies need new ways to search. Marqo represents the next generation of search – hyper-relevant, AI-powered and based on human understanding. We are thrilled to be supporting this team!”

Marqo’s belief in democratising AI technology fuels its decision to open-source the core Marqo code, meaning it is free and available for anyone to use. For customers who want a solution that is optimised for production without any operational overheads, Marqo offers a fully managed, serverless Cloud Service. Following a highly successful early access program the Cloud Service is now open to the public, allowing anyone to sign up and start using Marqo in a few clicks. The continuous-learning vector search service is expected to be released later this year as a part of Marqo Cloud.

Links

About Marqo

Marqo is an end-to-end, multimodal vector search engine. With Marqo, users can easily implement AI-powered search, leveraging the latest machine learning models. With offices in Melbourne, London, and San-Francisco Marqo brings together a global team of experts across AI and machine learning, search analytics and engineering, to develop the next generation of search. Find out more at https://www.marqo.ai/ 

SOURCE Marqo

Canapi Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners lead round to help company meet demand for LLM solutions that can safely train on sensitive, internal data

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 16, 2023 — DynamoFL, Inc. today announced that it has closed a $15.1 million Series A funding round to meet demand for its privacy- and compliance-focused generative AI solutions. Coming off a $4.2M seed round, the company has raised $19.3M to date. DynamoFL’s flagship technology, which allows customers to safely train Large Language Models (LLM) on sensitive internal data, is already in use by Fortune 500 companies in finance, electronics, insurance and automotive sectors.

The round, co-led by Canapi Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners, also had participation from Formus Capital, Soma Capital and angel investors Vojtech Jina, Apple’s privacy-preserving machine learning (ML) lead, Tolga Erbay, Head of Governance, Risk and Compliance at Dropbox and Charu Jangid, product leader at Snowflake, to name a few.

The need for AI solutions that preserve compliance and security has never been greater. LLMs present unprecedented privacy and compliance risks for enterprises. It has been widely shown that LLMs can easily memorize sensitive data from its training dataset. Malicious actors can exploit this vulnerability to extract sensitive users’ personally identifiable information and sensitive contract values with carefully designed prompts, posing a major data security risk for the enterprise. The pace of innovation and adoption in the AI sector is punctuated by the rapidly changing global regulatory landscape, many of which require that enterprises detail these data risks, but enterprises today are not equipped to detect and address the risk of data leakage. In the EU, the GDPR and the impending EU AI act, along with similar initiatives in China and India, as well as AI regulation acts in the US, require that enterprises detail these data risks. However, today they are not equipped to detect and address the risk of data leakage.

More clearly needs to be done. As government agencies like the FTC explore concerns around LLM providers’ data security, DynamoFL’s machine learning privacy research team recently showed how personal information – including sensitive details about C-Suite executives, Fortune 500 corporations, and private contract values – could be easily extracted from a fine-tuned GPT-3 model. DynamoFL’s privacy evaluation suite provides out of the box testing for data extraction vulnerabilities and automated documentation to ensure enterprises’ LLMs are secure and compliant. 

“We deploy our suite of privacy-preserving training and testing offerings to directly address and document compliance requirements to help enterprises stay on top of regulatory developments, and deploy LLMs in a safe and compliant manner,” said DynamoFL co-founder Christian Lau.

“Privacy and compliance are critical to ensuring the safe deployment of AI across the enterprise. These are foundational pillars of the DynamoFL platform,” said Greg Thome, Principal at Canapi. “By working with DynamoFL, companies can deliver best-in-class AI experiences while mitigating the well-documented data leakage risks. We’re excited to support DynamoFL as they scale the product and expand their team of privacy-focused machine learning engineers.”

The company’s solutions help organizations privately fine-tune LLMs on internal data while identifying and documenting potential privacy risks. Organizations can choose to implement DynamoFL’s end-to-end suite or to implement their Privacy Evaluation Suite, Differential Privacy and/or Federated Learning modules individually.

DynamoFL was founded by two MIT PhDs who have spent the last six years researching the cutting-edge, privacy-focused AI and ML technology forming the basis of the company’s core offerings. The team balances expertise in the latest research in privacy-preserving ML, with researchers and engineers from MIT, Harvard and Cal-Berkeley, and experience in deploying enterprise-grade AI applications for Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Palantir, among other top tech companies.

“This investment validates our philosophy that AI platforms need to be built with a focus on privacy and security from day one in order to scale in enterprise use cases,” said DynamoFL CEO and co-founder Vaikkunth Mugunthan. “It also reflects the growing interest and demand for in-house Generative AI solutions across industries.”

“While AI holds tremendous potential to transform every industry, the need of the hour is to ensure that AI is safe and trustworthy. DynamoFL is set to do just that and enable enterprises to adopt AI while preserving privacy and remaining regulation-compliant,” said Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners.”We are thrilled to have partnered with Vaik, Christian and team in their journey of building an impactful company.”

About DynamoFL, Inc.
DynamoFL is the world’s leading enterprise solution for privacy-preserving Generative AI. At DynamoFL we believe that prioritizing privacy, compliance and data security from day 1 while building Generative AI applications is the only way to responsibly scale AI and use it to augment human potential beyond what was thought possible. Our proprietary technology encapsulates state of the art optimization techniques for training and deploying Generative AI models along with a robust privacy training and evaluation suite incorporating paradigms like Federated Learning and Differential privacy to bring high performing end-to-end plug-and-play Generative AI to global enterprises.

About Nexus Venture Partners
Founded in 2006, Nexus Venture Partners is a venture capital firm that supports extraordinary founders in building product-first companies. The firm takes a high-conviction approach, serving as inception, seed, or series-A stage partner to founders, actively engaging with them throughout the company lifecycle. With $2.6 billion capital under management, Nexus focuses on two primary investment areas: enterprise software and AI companies globally and technology-powered businesses within India. For more information, visit https://nexusvp.com/

About Canapi Ventures
Canapi Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early to growth-stage fintech companies. Our partners have been at the forefront of financial services innovation as operators, investors, bankers, advisors, and regulators. Our venture capital model connects high-quality fintech companies to our extensive network of banks and strategic partners. Canapi Ventures is advised by CenterHarbor Advisors and Canapi Advisors, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Live Oak Bancshares, Inc. (Nasdaq: LOB). For more information, visit http://www.canapi.com.

Media Contacts
Inkhouse for Canapi Ventures
[email protected]

SOURCE DynamoFL

Mitra Chem is developing a portfolio of Iron-Based Cathodes for Tier-1 Automotive and Energy Storage Supply Chains

Only U.S. Based Company Producing IRA Consumer Tax Credit Eligible Next Generation Iron-Based Cathodes

Funding will be Used for Investing in Accelerating Commercialization and Scaling Partnerships

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 16, 2023 — Mitra Future Technologies Inc. (“Mitra Chem”), a leading innovator in North American production of lithium-ion battery materials, today announced the completion of a $40 million first close of $60 million Series B funding round led by GM. The investment will fuel Mitra Chem’s mission to develop, deploy and commercialize U.S.-made iron-based cathode materials in an effort to enable mass-market electrification for electric vehicles, energy storage solutions, and beyond.

As part of the partnership with GM, Mitra Chem will develop iron-based cathode active materials (CAM) like lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP) to power affordable and accessible EV batteries compatible with GM’s EV propulsion architecture, the Ultium Platform. GM’s funding will enable Mitra Chem to scale its current R&D and pilot operations to expedite bringing their battery materials to market.

Mitra Chem has been at the forefront of battery technology research, focusing on developing sustainable and high-performance energy storage solutions.

• Mitra Chem’s proprietary technology and development process shortens the lab-to-market timeline by >90%.
• Mitra Chem is one of the only companies taking a multi-faceted approach by combining R&D, machine learning acceleration, and manufacturing to supply battery materials to OEM and battery cell customers.
• Mitra Chem’s battery R&D facility can synthesize and test thousands of cathode designs monthly, ranging in size from grams to kilograms – these processes drive significantly shortened learning cycles, enabling shorter time to market for new battery cell formulas.
• An “atoms-to-tons acceleration platform” powers Mitra Chem’s lab, using simulations and physics-informed machine learning models to accelerate formulation discovery, cathode synthesis optimization, cell-lifetime evaluation and process scale-up. The in-house cloud platform, purpose-built for battery cathode development, automates data ingestion across diverse synthesis, material characterization, cell prototyping and standardized analyses and visualizations.

Lithium-ion batteries are one of the key platform technologies enabling electrification in transportation, and consumer electronics, along with residential, commercial, and grid-scale energy storage. Mitra Chem is positioned to disrupt the global production and supply chain of these vital battery materials and revitalize the North American battery supply chain industry.

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has supercharged demand for U.S.-made battery materials by offering consumer tax credits tied to domestically manufactured material usage. Mitra Chem is one of the only U.S.-based iron-based cathode manufacturers that enable purchasers of U.S.-made electric vehicles to qualify for the full suite of tax credits passed in the IRA.

The company today said it has additional requests for samples to cover the next year of production including nearly every global Tier 1 battery cell maker and multiple household name automotive OEMs.

“GM’s investment in Mitra Chem will not only help us develop affordable battery chemistries for use in GM vehicles but also will fuel our mission to develop, deploy and commercialize U.S. made, iron-based cathode materials that can power EVs, grid-scale electrified energy storage and beyond,” said Mitra Chem CEO and Co-Founder Vivas Kumar.

“This is a strategic investment that will further help reinforce GM’s efforts in EV batteries, accelerate our work on affordable battery chemistries like LMFP and support our efforts to build a North America-focused battery supply chain,” said Gil Golan, GM vice president, Technology Acceleration Commercialization. “GM is accelerating larger investments in critical subdomains of battery technology, like cell chemistry, components and advanced cell production processes. Mitra Chem’s labs, tools and talent will fit well with our own R&D team’s work.”

The growing strategic relationship with GM will enable Mitra Chem to leverage GM’s industry expertise and global reach, accelerating the development and commercialization of its iron-based cathode technology. The additional funding will go to scale current operations and support accelerating commercialization.

In addition to GM, other notable investors participating in the Series B funding round include incumbents such as Social Capital, Fontinalis Partners, Earthshot Ventures, The Keffi Group, Boutique Venture Partners, and new investors such as GS Futures, Bricks Capital Management, Zeon Ventures, Scribble VC, WovenEarth Ventures, Bonds Investment Group, and others. The involvement of these esteemed investors underscores the industry’s recognition of Mitra Chem’s groundbreaking technology and its potential to shape the future of battery energy storage with a focus on US-based production.

The involvement of both financial and strategic investors underscores the industry’s recognition of Mitra Chem’s groundbreaking technology and its potential to shape the future of battery energy storage with a focus on US-based production. In November 2021, the company completed a $20 million Series A round which was led by Social Capital and Chamath Palihapitiya along with Taiwanese industrialist Richard Tsai, Fontinalis Partners, Boutique Venture Partners, Integrated Energy Materials, and Earthshot Ventures.

About Mitra Chem
Mitra Chem is building the first North American lithium-ion battery materials product company that shortens the lab-to-production timeline by over 90%. Lithium-ion batteries are the key platform technology enabling electrification in transportation, consumer electronics, along with residential, commercial, and grid-scale energy storage. Mitra Chem’s first product category is iron-based cathodes for Western battery applications. Iron-based cathodes shift away from the use of elements such as nickel and cobalt, which are facing imminent supply crunches. Mitra Chem takes cathode products from lab to industrial scale faster than the competition by leveraging an in-house machine learning technology advantage to dramatically shorten the R&D timeline. The company’s goal is to transform the cathode from a specialty chemical to a platform technology that differentiates cell performance by end application.

About GM
General Motors (NYSE: GM) is a global company focused on advancing an all-electric future that is inclusive and accessible to all. At the heart of this strategy is the Ultium battery platform, which powers everything from mass-market to high-performance vehicles. General Motors, its subsidiaries and its joint venture entities sell vehicles under the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, Baojun and Wuling brands. More information on the company and its subsidiaries, including OnStar, a global leader in vehicle safety and security services, can be found at https://www.gm.com.

SOURCE Mitra Chem

• Assembly Ventures has built the first transatlantic venture capital platform to invest in cutting-edge technologies in the mobility sector.
• Founded by trailblazers in the mobility sector with strong operational and investment credentials, this brings total assets under management on the platform to $94 million after closing.
• Substantial investment potential seen in mobility technologies is driven by a shift in Western industries’ and governments’ approach to rebalance their technological dependencies on China.
• Focused investment thesis validated by a broad range of top tier corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, private investors and organizations of strategic relevance across the U.S. and Europe.

DETROIT, Aug. 16, 2023 — Assembly Ventures [“Assembly”], the first early-stage transatlantic venture capital platform investing in cutting edge technologies across the mobility sector, today announced the successful closing of their inaugural $76 million Assembly Ventures Fund I [“Assembly I” or “the fund”]. Focused on series seed, A and B investments, Assembly is committed to strategically supporting outstanding entrepreneurs driving transformative innovations across land, air, sea, and space.

The successful fundraise reflects Assembly’s strong credentials as a world-class team, guided by a focused investment philosophy and founded in 2020 by experienced mobility investors and operators Chris Thomas, Jessica Robinson, and Felix Scheuffelen.

Assembly recognizes substantial investment potential in the U.S. and Europe, especially in areas such as battery technology, clean energy solutions, climate tech, supply chain optimization, and automotive production. This is driven by a shift in many Western governments’ and industries’ approach to rebalance their technological dependencies, and as a result, the strengthening of public sector industrial policy to support critical investment.

Chris Thomas, co-founder and partner at Assembly Ventures said, “We believe that the world is on the cusp of a new geopolitical era where the West will increasingly choose to de-risk its heavy reliance on China. In the coming decades, we anticipate a radical reshaping of economies, especially in automotive and mobility technology across air, land, sea, and space, along with their respective supply chains. We look at the world through this lens to anticipate and identify which technologies are critical, unique, and capable of generating exceptional value for our investors. By strategically investing in these technologies, and helping our portfolio companies to scale, we aim to play a pivotal role in moving the world towards efficiency, sustainability, growth, and freedom.”

With $94 million in assets under management, Assembly has benefited from its unique position with access to dealflow and thought-leaders in the industrial and innovation capitals of the Western world, including Detroit, Silicon Valley, Berlin. With the successful closing of the fund, Assembly Ventures is in the process of opening an office in the German capital to advise on European investments.    

To date, it has announced several investments following their Mobility 4.0 thesis, including Metropolis Technologies, NAVIT, Our Next Energy (ONE), and Sortera.

“Selecting investors with a shared vision and values is one of the most important and foundational decisions a new company can make,” said Mujeeb Ijaz, CEO & Founder of ONE. “As an early-stage investor, Assembly Ventures has used their team’s business relationships, sector knowledge, and operations expertise to help ONE grow efficiently and scale its manufacturing ecosystem here in Michigan.”

Amidst a declining global venture market, which saw only 16 first-time funds secure new capital in Q1 2023 in the U.S. compared to 181 in 2022 and 363 in 2021*, the closure of this fund further underscores the Assembly team’s resilience. Despite weaker global economic growth, investors’ appetites for unique mobility technologies continue to grow, validating the firm’s investment strategy.

Assembly’s investors include strategic corporates such as Arbor Bancorp Inc., CRONIMET, MANN+HUMMEL, Renaissance Global Logistics, Stellantis Ventures, Vontier, and WF Whelan, and a long list of individual investors in the U.S. and Europe including Wolfgang Bernhart, Matt Cullen, Calvin Ford, Dan Gilbert (DVP), Philipp von Hagen, Joe Hinrichs, Karl Iagnemma, Jody Kelman, Tim Lalonde, Kathleen Ligocki, John Moavenzadeh, Stephen Polk, Tony Posawatz and Dug Song.  Additional leading strategic entities, a pension fund, and individuals with deep expertise in automotive, mobility, energy and infrastructure are also part of Assembly’s investor base.

*Source: Pitch Book & NVCA: Venture Monitor 2023 Q1.

For more info, visit www.assemblyventures.com 

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SOURCE Assembly Ventures LLC