Leading LTO provider Kafene strengthens leadership team with new senior executive hires

NEW YORK, Feb. 6, 2024 — Kafene, a point-of-sale leasing platform that helps retailers offer underserved customers more flexible purchase options through lease-to-own (“LTO”) agreements, today announced the appointments of Vin Thomas as General Counsel & Corporate Secretary and Tony Cerino as Senior Vice President of Partnerships.

Thomas will build and lead Kafene’s legal and compliance function, and Cerino will scale the company’s enterprise sales team as Kafene increasingly seeks to partner with America’s best-known retailers.

Thomas is an industry veteran who has served as a general counsel for a mix of public and private companies in the financial services sector for more than 15 years. He most recently worked at Troutman Pepper, a national law firm with more than 23 offices across the U.S., focusing his practice on providing fractional general counsel services to private and public companies across the financial services and other sectors. Before Troutman, Thomas was the General Counsel & Corporate Secretary for PROG Group Holdings, a large lease-to-own provider. He previously was Chief Legal Officer & Corporate Secretary for CURO Financial Technologies, a multinational consumer finance company for whom Thomas led a department of approximately 45 employees and helped take public in 2017. Thomas previously was General Counsel & Corporate Secretary for TitleMax, one of the largest retail consumer lenders in the Southeast. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Georgia and a Juris Doctor from Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law.

Cerino brings more than 25 years of specialized sales and business development experience to Kafene, where he is already responsible for signing partnerships with Furniture Marketing Group and Versatile Credit. Cerino most recently served as the Head of Sales for Tandym, a financial technology company transforming the private label credit card industry. He was previously Vice President of Business Development for Jifiti, a financing company enabling banks and lenders to seamlessly reach customers at the point-of-sale in-store and online. Before that, Cerino spent five years as Vice President of Sales for Katapult, a leader in the lease-to-own financing space, where he was part of the executive team that took the company public in 2021 and supported notable merchants including Wayfair and Lenovo. Cerino has additionally held senior sales roles regionally and nationally for well-known brands such as Guardsman (now part of Sherwin-Williams), Mattress Warehouse, Broad River Retail (an Ashley Furniture Licensee), and Raymour & Flanigan.

“We are thrilled to welcome Tony and Vin to the Kafene team,” said Neal Desai, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Kafene. “Their collective vision and expertise will be invaluable assets as we continue to strengthen our internal operations and expand our presence in stores across the country.”

“Vin’s experience as a veteran fintech general counsel and Tony’s proven track record in business development for the financing space are exactly what we need for the next leg of our journey. Their addition to the leadership team underscores the firm’s commitment to fostering excellence and driving innovation in every facet of our operations. With their guidance, we are confident in our ability to drive sustainable growth for years to come. It’s an exciting time at Kafene.”

In late-2023, Kafene finalized its Series B venture funding round at $31 million in equity financing led by Third Prime alongside existing investors, and it announced a $15 million venture debt facility with Trinity Capital in January 2024.

For more information on Kafene please visit www.kafene.com.

About Kafene

Kafene is a leading point-of-sale leasing partner dedicated to empowering flexible ownership solutions for underserved customers nationwide. By enabling our retail partners to offer flexible LTO purchase options for prime and nonprime consumers, Kafene helps merchants grow their customer base, and meet growing demand for furniture, appliances, electronics, tires and other durable goods. Utilizing cutting-edge AI and machine learning technologies, our platform creates a best-in-class experience for both merchants and customers. Kafene has generated more than $150 million in incremental sales for its retailer partners in less than four years since launch. To learn more about Kafene please visit www.kafene.com, and to learn more about Kafene’s commitment to customer experience and consumer protection, please visit here: https://kafene.com/consumer-friendly-commitments.

Contacts

For Kafene:
Roger Sauerhaft
[email protected]

SOURCE Kafene

The latest $3M funding round brings GigaStar’s total funding to $7.8M since May 2022, a notable achievement in a shifting VC environment.

CHICAGO, Feb. 6, 2024 — GigaStar, a startup that fuels human creativity, has announced the completion of an additional $3M investment round. GigaStar provides YouTube Creators with a streamlined way to raise capital by monetizing potential future revenue.

The funding will enable the firm to accelerate efforts to scale GigaStar Market (its current primary market platform), attain its broker-dealer registration, and develop its secondary market, which is anticipated to launch by the end of 2024. Additionally, it will allow GigaStar to establish partnerships that will give Creators access to thousands of strategic investors in a regulated public offering process.

“YouTube Creators deserve access to funding and strategic investors, just as traditional entrepreneurs do. GigaStar Market is the only investment platform focused on providing accredited and non-accredited investors access to the fast-growing $250B Creator Economy via unique revenue-sharing securities,” said GigaStar CEO, Hazem Dawani. “Our ability to raise funding in this environment at a higher valuation than the previous round is another testimony of the validity of our business model and market potential.”

This latest investment round included participation from existing and new strategic investors. GigaStar investors currently include DV Crypto VC, Tomsic Holdings, Nameless Ventures, Belvedere Strategic Capital, and Metropolitan Capital Bank.

This news follows GigaStar’s recent announcement that ex-Robinhood serial entrepreneur Victor Glava was appointed Chief Technology Officer.

GigaStar Market, an SEC-registered funding portal, operates under Reg CF and has launched seven YouTube channel offerings so far, raising $1.2M+ on the platform with over 12,000 investor accounts.

About GigaStar

GigaStar fuels human creativity by empowering Creators and Investors to grow together. Through GigaStar Market, Creators monetize potential future revenue by accessing thousands of strategic Investors in a streamlined platform. Creators can build an army of promoters while Investors gain access to the Creator Economy to share YouTube revenue with Creators, enjoy an alternative investment, and join an exclusive club. Website: https://gigastar.io.

Creator Networks, Inc., (dba GigaStar) is the Parent Company of GigaStar Portal, LLC (dba GigaStar Market). GigaStar Market is an SEC-registered funding portal and a member of FINRA offering securities under Reg CF. Investment offerings are speculative, illiquid, and involve risks, including risk of loss of entire investment.

Contact: 
Sarah McNabb 
[email protected]

SOURCE GigaStar

Cimba’s AI infrastructure empowers organizations to seamlessly create custom AI agents on top of their structured and unstructured data to solve complex business operational challenges

SEATTLE, Feb. 6, 2024 — Cimba.AI, the Gen AI-native platform that gives enterprises the power to create custom AI agents that produce deep insights, recommend and trigger business actions, has officially come out of stealth with $1.25M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Ripple Ventures, with participation from SeaChange, PackVC, and angel investors like Chad Sanderson and Chris Riccomini. 

Cimba.AI’s unique platform uses self-training artificial intelligence that adapts to an organization’s specific knowledgebase, including dashboards, query history, metadata, and playbooks. Business operations teams, such as CS, RevOps, and SalesOps, can leverage these AI agents to tackle intricate business goals and trigger subsequent actions based on their data in the data warehouse, such as Snowflake. Users can get complex and open-ended insights using a simple natural language query, such as the customers requiring attention this week or strategies to improve a marketing campaign within a few minutes on Cimba.

Cimba is the only AI-native application platform that can help with these kinds of complex business objectives using highly customizable and adaptive agents that sit on a company’s structured and unstructured data. The majority of LLMs available for public consumption are generic and do not contain organization-specific context. This is a major roadblock when considering Generative AI adoption for an enterprise.

“Most enterprises are scared to adopt AI in their critical business operations as they are required to train or finetune LLMs with their knowledge and data, which can cost millions and be ineffective for their workflow and ROI,” says Subrata (Subu) Biswas, Co-Founder & CEO at Cimba.AI. “Creating an easy to use, cost effective platform for businesses to train AI and utilize those in their day-to-day business operation is our mission at Cimba.”

Cimba created an agent-network-based AI platform layer on top of various open-source and closed-source large language models (LLM) to achieve this. This method is highly cost-effective, potentially saving millions in LLM retraining costs for businesses. Cimba.AI’s platform marks a significant advancement in the practical application of Generative AI in the business world.

Enterprises start benefiting from Cimba within a week by incrementally shipping specialized agents with a limited set of data and knowledgebase without being worried about larger-scale data quality challenges.

Cimba provides both business users and data practitioners with a simple, intuitive interface to turn their data into useful business actions with the following unique capabilities:

• Text-to-workflow to solve complex business challenges – Business users often look for open-ended answers requiring multiple repetitive data exploration steps following some contextual playbook.
• Trigger action from insights – AI can suggest the next recommended actions, agents can help trigger those.
• Train AI agents using SQL & Natural Language – Users can train our adaptive AI agents using a simple feedback loop, natural language, or SQL.

“We invested in Cimba.AI, captivated by the vision and expertise of Subu Biswas and Vishal Das, whose backgrounds with tech giants have uniquely positioned them to lead in the evolving space of adaptive and generative AI,” says Dom Lau, Partner at Ripple Ventures. “Their approach to AI-driven business operations is not just innovative; it’s the future. We’re excited to see how their leadership will shape the next wave of AI solutions, transforming decision-making and operational efficiency across industries.”

“Cimba.AI’s strength lies in its ability to automate repetitive and time-consuming data analysis tasks by training custom agents to act as a natural language interface with relational data,” said Vineeth Loganathan, Director of Data Science at ViralGains. “With Cimba, we aim to significantly boost productivity and efficiency to our campaign management and customer success teams this year.”

Cimba.AI is currently in private beta with a strong list of mid to large-sized enterprise customers. To book a demo or join the waitlist, visit https://www.cimba.ai/.

About Cimba.AI
Cimba.AI is the adaptive Gen AI-based analytics agent infrastructure. It helps organizations optimize their business operations at scale by generating dynamic workflows and triggering actions using natural language via adaptive analytics AI agents. With founders Subrata Biswas, ex- Microsoft and Amazon software engineer who built the Airbnb data quality platform, and Vishal Das, a PhD from Stanford University and former Applied Scientist at AWS AI – Cimba is built from a deep understanding of analytics and AI’s pain points and its market landscape. Cimba’s AI infrastructure is the most cost-effective way to contextualize and leverage LLMs in business operations. It saves businesses millions of dollars in re-training and operationalizing LLMs.

Contact
Rick Medeiros
[email protected]
510-556-8517

SOURCE Cimba.AI

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6, 2024 — Ambience Healthcare, the most comprehensive AI operating system for healthcare organizations, has announced a $70M Series B raise co-led by Kleiner Perkins and OpenAI Startup Fund. The raise also includes existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Optum Ventures.

“Healthcare is one of AI’s most promising opportunities to create an outsized positive impact on the world. Ambience Healthcare has built an incredible team to focus on providing a complete ecosystem of products that seamlessly fit into the workflow of practitioners, pushing both AI and medicine forward,” said Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI and manager of the OpenAI Startup Fund.

This announcement comes on the heels of Ambience’s rapidly accelerating commercial progress, including deployments with major healthcare organizations such as UCSF, Memorial Hermann Health System, John Muir Health, The Oncology Institute, GI Alliance, Midi Health, and Eventus WholeHealth. A key driver of Ambience’s growth has been the ability to help health systems and large provider groups achieve clear financial ROI as a result of rapid clinician adoption, best-in-class performance, and seamless integrations with leading electronic medical records (EMRs), including Epic, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Athenahealth, Elation, and AdvancedMD.

Redefining the Clinician and Patient Experience

The Ambience AI operating system consists of a holistic suite of applications, designed to alleviate clinician burnout, improve overall system efficiency, and enable high-quality care. This includes:

• AutoScribe: A real-time AI medical scribe that generates comprehensive notes across all clinical specialties–including emergency medicine and hospital medicine–and integrates directly with all major EMRs;
• AutoCDI: A point-of-care CDI assistant that analyzes conversations and past EMR context to ensure that ICD-10 codes, CPT codes, and documentation all appropriately support each other, as well as full audit trails for revenue cycle teams.
• AutoRefer: AI software that improves handoffs by composing clinically relevant and well-organized referral letters to specialists for expert consult and from specialists back to primary care for long term management;
• AutoAVS: An after-visit summary tool that creates comprehensive educational handouts for patients, families, and caregivers, tailored specifically to each visit, and translated into their language of preference;
• AutoPrep (coming soon): Intelligent pre-charting that equips clinicians with relevant context and suggestions for the visit agenda, along with predictive ‘suspecting’ to unveil potential conditions for screening.

Working in concert as part of a collective ecosystem, these applications are helping health systems reduce documentation time by an average of 78%, improve coding integrity, and achieve at least a 5X return on investment.

“To truly move the needle on quality, cost, and access, we needed a comprehensive platform that covered every single clinical specialty at each touchpoint. From the very first appointment a patient has with one of our clinicians, all the way to the back office operations of how we code and bill. Our team rigorously evaluated and pressure-tested the major solutions on the market. Ambience was the clear choice,” said Dr. Priti Patel, Chief Medical Information Officer at John Muir Health.

What Sets Ambience Healthcare Apart

One of the major challenges for technology in healthcare is that it needs to work well enough to drive widespread end-user adoption, demonstrate measurable time savings, and create a clear financial return on investment.

One complication is the scope of medicine that health systems need to support, which may cover dozens of specialties and subspecialties. Each department has different care models, workflows, and reimbursement frameworks. This poses a serious hurdle for “one-size-fits-all” approaches, which fly blind to these differences. What differentiates Ambience Healthcare is how meticulously it’s been designed for each individual clinical specialty.

For example, in the emergency department, Ambience’s products support non-linear, fast-paced documentation flows, including suspecting, critical care documentation, and consults with paramedics and/or other specialists. Other key technical product features include the ability to:

• Manage simultaneous speakers, multiple languages, and translators
• Operate robustly through intermittent wifi
• Interleave between concurrent visits
• Extract structured data from conversations

By customizing the Ambience AI operating system for each clinical specialty, healthcare systems have seen rapid adoption among clinicians.

“It feels like I have the world’s best medical scribe for Urology, the world’s best CDI expert for Urology, and the world’s best patient experience specialist for Urology at my side for every single visit,” said Richard Long, MD a Urologist at John Muir Health.

Ambience’s platform approach also enables healthcare organizations to break down silos and achieve significant improvements to overall system efficiency. For example, clinical documentation and coding & billing are inextricably linked, yet traditionally these processes are approached separately. This means that internal revenue cycle teams must work off of an incomplete picture of what happened during the visit, often leading to chronic challenges with compliance and financial performance. Ambience’s operating system addresses this structural limitation by leveraging a single shared brain with context across the entire process life cycle, making it easier for healthcare organizations to turn best practice into standard practice.

“Having better CDI at the point of care has resulted in better performance and compliance for our organization. This is increasing confidence in coding among our clinicians, and having access to each audit trail makes it easier for our internal auditing and monitoring team to review. Our team’s feedback goes back into the system so that we can scale improvements across all of our clinicians. Ambience is the only solution on the market to combine scribing with comprehensive CDI support across the entire payer mix, from fee-for-service all the way through full risk value-based care,” said Will Sampson, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer at Eventus WholeHealth

Ambience’s vision is to leverage the same principles to build an entire ecosystem of applications within its operating system. By leveraging a single shared brain, Ambience’s operating system can similarly address the structural inefficiencies of other vital organizational initiatives, such as prior authorization, utilization management, and clinical trial matching. With this most recent round of funding, Ambience Healthcare will focus on accelerating product roadmap, building out dedicated teams for its health system partners, and continuing to push the frontier of the most capable AI foundation models for medicine.

Within the raise, Ambience Healthcare also has set aside open allocation for potential strategic partners. This includes Memorial Hermann, which decided to invest in Ambience after seeing the platform’s impact across the entire spectrum of care, including its ambulatory, emergency department, and hospital inpatient settings.

“As the partner of a physician, I’ve witnessed firsthand my wife burn out from the day-to-day practice of medicine. She had to spend countless hours through nights and weekends on documentation, manual data entry, and other administrative tasks. The market has been screaming for a solution like Ambience, but even with the recent advances in generative AI, this has been an exceedingly challenging problem. Getting the medicine right is hard. Getting the user experience right is hard. Navigating the complicated web of healthcare operations and driving ROI is hard. Ambience’s users and customers–clinicians and healthcare leaders–rave about Ambience, and we couldn’t be more excited to be part of the company’s journey,” said Mamoon Hamid, Partner, Kleiner Perkins.

About Ambience Healthcare:
The mission of Ambience Healthcare is to supercharge clinicians with breakthrough generative AI technology. Leading health systems and provider organizations across North America partner with Ambience Healthcare to reduce clinician burnout, improve system efficiency, and enable high quality care. Founded in 2020 by Mike Ng and Nikhil Buduma, Ambience is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has raised $100M in total funding from Kleiner Perkins, OpenAI Startup Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Optum Ventures, Human Capital, Martin Ventures, AIX Ventures, AirTree Ventures, John Doerr, Jeff Dean, Richard Socher, Pieter Abbeel, Anne Wojcicki, Eren Bali, Jay Desai, Nish Bhat, Matt Mochary, and others. To learn more, visit ambiencehealthcare.com.

SOURCE Ambience Healthcare

SINGAPORE, Feb. 6, 2024 — Rider Dome, a Singapore-based company specializing in AI-driven safety solution for motorcycle fleets and riders, announces the successful completion of a $2.3 million seed funding round.

Participating in the funding round were private angel investors, Goldbell, a prominent Singaporean venture capital firm specializing in mobility, and Radha Rani Holdings Family Office based in Singapore.

Founded by Yoav Elgrichi, Kineret Karin and Guy Ron, Rider Dome has positioned itself at the forefront of motorcycle safety innovation. CEO Yoav Elgrichi expressed confidence in the strategic investors, stating, “With the strategic partnership of our investors, Rider Dome not only gains financial support but also taps into a wealth of experience and market understanding within the automotive industry. Our investors play a prominent role with a vast network that extends far and wide”.

Meeting Growing Demand for Safety Solutions

Rider Dome recognizes a surging demand from motorcycle fleets seeking safety and monitoring solutions to enhance rider safety and reduce the substantial costs associated with accidents, such as soaring insurance premiums and decreased productivity. This demand is particularly pronounced as businesses operating motorcycle fleets recognize the imperative need for advanced safety measures to mitigate risks and safeguard their riders.

In addition to fleet demand, Rider Dome is also witnessing a growing interest from cities aiming to enhance safety measures for the large motorcycle fleets navigating their roads. As urban environments experience a significant increase in two-wheeled transportation, municipalities and city planners are actively seeking cutting-edge safety solutions to ensure the well-being of riders and the safety of their communities.

In an era where Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have become standard in cars, Rider Dome aims to revolutionize the motorcycle safety landscape, addressing a significant technological gap. The company leverages the power of AI to effectively reduce motorcycle accidents and enhance overall safety for riders, with a focus on the needs of large motorcycle fleets.

Rider Dome has already made significant strides, serving large motorcycle fleets globally, including notable clients such as Coca Cola, Singapore Post (SingPost), The City Council of Barcelona and more. The company’s technology is making a tangible impact in various sectors that uses motorcycles as part of their operation including logistics fleet, delivery service, motorcycle rental, ride-sharing, and emergency services.

For inquiries, please contact:
[email protected]
www.riderdome.com

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2334001/Rider_Dome_2_mid.jpg

MONTREAL, QC, Feb. 5, 2024 – Cycle Capital, a leading ClimateTech venture capital investment platform, is pleased to announce the addition of three new members to its Industrial Expert Advisory Committee (IEAC). Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, former Chief Engineering Officer at Intel and Executive Vice President at Qualcomm Inc; Raj Singh, former Executive Vice President of Compute Strategy and Business Development at Marvell Technology and Jim Whitham, Senior Vice President & Strategic Advisor at Infineon. They join Bertrand Gautier, Founding Partner at Schroders Greencoat Capital, already a member of Cycle Capital Fund IV advisory committee, along with current representatives from Cycle Capital’s Limited Partners (LPs), to support Cycle Capital’s team in its mission to scale deep tech companies developing enabling technologies in the transition to net zero.

“We are delighted that Murthy, Raj, Jim and Bertrand have joined the IEAC. Their technical insights and experience in microelectronics and growing businesses will be extremely valuable and complement Cycle Capital’s growing investment team to evaluate climatetech startups more thoroughly,” said Andrée-Lise Méthot, Founder and Managing Partner of Cycle Capital. “Murthy will support Cycle Capital and its portfolio companies with his commercial and engineering insights, as well as product design. Raj and Jim will help Cycle Capital reinforce its expertise in semiconductors and industrial scaling up in microelectronics, a key component of Cycle Capital’s Fund V’s investment thesis. These additions support Cycle Capital’s expansion in the US and in Europe, where Jim and Bertrand are located.

Dr Murthy Renduchintala currently serves as a Member of the Board of Directors at Accenture plc. The former Group President and Chief Engineering Officer of Intel Inc. also served as Executive Vice President and Co-President, Qualcomm CDMA Technologies during his 12 years at Qualcomm Inc. and worked at Philips Electronics for 17 years, ending his tenure there as the Vice President of Engineering. He sits on Advisory Boards at the University of California, San Diego – Jacobs School of Engineering and the University of California, Berkeley – Fung Institute of Engineering Leadership.   Dr Renduchintala holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in business administration and a Ph.D. in digital communications from the University of Bradford in England. His alma mater subsequently awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Technology for his contributions to Science and Technology.

Raj Singh was previously executive vice president of the processors business group at Marvell Semiconductor and joins the Cycle Capital team from San Francisco, California. He has over four decades of executive experience in technology, specializing in the semiconductor industry, including as CEO of Wavesat, a semiconductor manufacturing company that Cavium Networks acquired. Alongside his current role, Raj is the founder of Banchory LLC – an advisory tech consultancy firm –  and a member of the board of directors at Kandou in Switzerland.

Jim Witham was recently named Senior Vice President & Strategic Advisor at Infineon. He is the former CEO of GaN Systems, a Cycle Capital portfolio company acquired by Infineon for US$830 million this past Fall. Jim joined GaN Systems from Neoconix, a manufacturer of high-density miniature connectors. As CEO of Neoconix, he successfully implemented strategic changes which dramatically increased revenue and resulted in the company’s acquisition by Unimicron Technology. Prior to Neoconix, Jim was CEO of Fultec Semiconductor, where his team designed and manufactured circuit protection devices using high-voltage silicon, silicon carbide and gallium nitride (GaN) transistors. Jim holds an MBA from Harvard and both M.S. and B.S. with distinction in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford.

Bertrand Gautier is the Founding Partner at Greencoat Capital, a leading asset manager in the energy transition space in Europe. He was previously the Director at Terra Firma Capital Partners in their London office and Vice President at Merrill Lynch. Bertrand holds a Master’s in General Engineering from ICAM (France) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

About Cycle Capital

Cycle Capital is a leading ClimateTech venture capital platform scaling impactful, sustainable innovation. Founded in 2009, Cycle Capital invests across North America, Europe and Asia in growing companies commercializing solutions to the major ecological challenges and contributing to a net-zero transition. Cycle Capital is the founder of Cycle Momentum Accelerator + Innovation Engine. Cycle Capital has developed an ESG and impact assessment methodology integrated into the investment workflow from the pre-investment phase to the exit of the portfolio company. For more information on Cycle Capital, visit cyclecapital.com.

SOURCE Cycle Capital

HOUSTON, Feb. 5, 2024 — Nauticus Robotics (NASDAQ: KITT), a leading developer of subsea robots and software, announces securing over $12M net today, part of a second tranche of investment.

The new investment will expedite certification of Nauticus’ flagship robot, the Aquanaut, which facilitates the transformation of tethered ROV operations to fully autonomous operations. It is expected to perform numerous tasks in water depths ranging from 200 – 2000+ meters during February in preparation for an inaugural job inspecting a deep-water production facility of a major oil and gas company in the Gulf of Mexico.

The new investment comes only weeks after the company announced a change in leadership, including a new CEO, CFO and lead General Counsel.

Since becoming the President of Nauticus in October, John Gibson has been assessing the go-to-market strategy and said “the market sees our potential and supports our vision of delivering full autonomy to subsea operations – however, the diffusion rate of our solutions requires a significant shift from the current paradigm of human operations to autonomous operations. To eliminate the inertia to change, we recast our vision. We realized the fastest path to full autonomy would be through the deployment of ‘tethered/augmented autonomy.’ This allows the customer and operators to retain the ability to intervene while simultaneously allowing Nauticus to gather the operational data needed to train our fully autonomous solutions for the future.”

This is possible because our software architecture is platform independent and can be used on all subsurface vehicles and has already been deployed on several competitor vehicles for defense-related work. This enables the company to become a multi-platform operating system for a vast array of vehicles already deployed. The forecasted efficiency improvements for existing platforms using ‘tethered autonomy’ will exceed 20%, while simultaneously reducing emissions and increasing safety for all subsea robots.

“What Nauticus has planned can truly revolutionize the entire industry – and I don’t use that term lightly. We can now normalize performance of ROV operators because you will no longer have disparities between skill levels of employees. This obviously provides substantial safeguards to any company using this technology” said Sean Halpin, Head of Autonomous Solutions.

“We are creating a win-win situation for ROV operators. We are not asking them to give up complete control. These robots are not replacing jobs, but instead are making them both easier and more reliable”, said Chuck Claunch, Co-head of Software Solutions.

“It’s not dissimilar to when pilots first needed to adjust to automation in the airline industry – they didn’t lose their jobs – they gained more reliable support to enjoy them,” said Paul Dinh, Co-head of Software Solutions.

The board added that while they are investing heavily into commercialization, they are also actively working to minimize G&A costs. Changes to align board cost with the current forecast are underway.

In addition, the board has retained Piper Sandler & Co. to assist in the evaluation of strategic options to maximize shareholder value and the acquisition of 3D At Depth.

Media Contact:
Narwhal Media Group
Jennifer Gooding 
[email protected] 

About Nauticus Robotics

Nauticus Robotics, Inc. develops autonomous robots for the ocean industries. Autonomy requires the extensive use of sensors, artificial intelligence, and effective algorithms for perception and decision allowing the robot to adapt to changing environments. Nauticus’ robotic systems and services are designed to address both commercial and government-facing customers. The company targets the Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) business model complemented by direct product sales of vehicles, components, and licensing of related software. Nauticus has designed and is currently testing and certifying a new generation of vehicles to reduce operational cost and gather data to maintain and operate a wide variety of subsea infrastructure.

Cautionary Language Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Act”), and are intended to enjoy the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Act as well as protections afforded by other federal securities laws. Such forward-looking statements include but are not limited to: the expected timing of product commercialization or new product releases; customer interest in Nauticus’ products; estimated 2024 operating results and use of cash; and Nauticus’ use of and needs for capital. Generally, statements that are not historical facts, including statements concerning possible or assumed future actions, business strategies, events, or results of operations, are forward-looking statements. These statements may be preceded by, followed by, or include the words “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “projects,” “forecasts,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “seeks,” “plans,” “scheduled,” “anticipates,” “intends,” or “continue” or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events, results, or performance to differ materially from those indicated by such statements. These forward-looking statements are based on Nauticus’ management’s current expectations and beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions concerning future events. There can be no assurance that the events, results, or trends identified in these forward-looking statements will occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and Nauticus is not under any obligation and expressly disclaims any obligation, to update, alter, or otherwise revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by law. Readers should carefully review the statements set forth in the reports which Nauticus has filed or will file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) for a more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and that could cause actual outcomes to be materially different from those indicated in the forward-looking statements made by the Company, in particular the sections entitled “Risk Factors” and “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” in documents filed from time to time with the SEC, including Nauticus’ Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 28, 2023 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, filed with the SEC on August 14, 2023. Should one or more of these risks, uncertainties, or other factors materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information or statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated, believed, estimated, or expected. The documents filed by Nauticus with the SEC may be obtained free of charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

Important Information for Investors and Stockholders

This press release relates to a proposed transaction between Nauticus and 3DAD. It does not constitute an offer to sell or exchange, or the solicitation of an offer to buy or exchange, any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, sale or exchange would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. Nauticus intends to file a registration statement on Form S-4 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), which will include a document that serves as a prospectus and proxy statement of Nauticus, referred to as a proxy statement/prospectus. A proxy statement/prospectus will be sent to all Nauticus stockholders. Nauticus will also file other documents regarding the proposed transaction with the SEC. Before making any voting decision, investors and security holders of Nauticus are urged to read the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC in connection with the proposed transaction as they become available because they will contain important information about the proposed transaction.

Investors and security holders will be able to obtain free copies of the registration statement, the proxy statement/prospectus and all other relevant documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC by Nauticus through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov.

Participants in the Solicitation

Nauticus, 3DAD and their respective directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from Nauticus’ stockholders in connection with the proposed transaction. A list of the names of the respective directors and executive officers of Nauticus and 3DAD and information regarding their interests in the business combination will be contained in the proxy statement/prospectus when available. You may obtain free copies of these documents as described in the preceding paragraph.

No Offer or Solicitation

This communication does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities or a solicitation of any vote or approval, nor shall there be any sale of any securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such other jurisdiction.

SOURCE Nauticus Robotics (NASDAQ: KITT)

StatusPRO’s flagship franchise NFL PRO ERA breaks 1M users and validates the company’s vision to develop future sports titles

NEW YORK and MIAMI, Feb. 5, 2024 — StatusPRO, Inc., a sports technology and gaming company that uses real-time player data to create authentic extended reality experiences, today announced $20 million in new funding, one of the largest Series A of any VR gaming company to date, led by GV (Google Ventures). StatusPRO is joining GV’s investment portfolio of successful tech, healthcare, and consumer companies, asserting its spot as a standout and growing VR company in the space. After two years of laying a foundation in the sports gaming industry and establishing a new genre, first-person sports, StatusPRO will use the additional capital to broaden development into new sports titles while continuing to enhance its modes and features and further improve its cutting-edge technology.

The round includes additional funding from India’s renowned sports-tech giant Dream Sports, Minnesota Vikings Owners Mark & Zygi Wilf’s Wise Ventures, JDS Sports, and Alumni Ventures, with participation from existing investors including LeBron James, Drake, Maverick Carter, Main Street Advisors, Haslam Sports Group and more.

StatusPRO was founded and developed by two former football players, Troy Jones and Andrew “Hawk” Hawkins, on the premise that the way coaches, players, and fans experience their favorite sports could be elevated to a new level through XR technology. In 2022, the Black-founded StatusPRO launched the first-ever NFL and NFLPA-licensed virtual reality (VR) simulation gaming franchise, NFL PRO ERA, and made its mark on the sports gaming category by allowing players to experience what it feels like to be on the field playing as QB of their favorite NFL team. This immersive, first-person simulation brings fans closer to the gridiron by giving them a professional football player’s perspective through VR technology. Last October, the franchise, which highlighted NFL MVP and All Pro QB Lamar Jackson as its cover athlete, saw an evolution that introduced new features such as head-to-head multiplayer gameplay so players could interact, connect, and compete against one another in the virtual world.

NFL PRO ERA is one of the most successful sports franchises in VR history. Since launch, StatusPRO has garnered over 1,000,000 users and players have spent an average of 41 minutes in game, estimated to be 2x longer compared to VR industry averages. As one of the top VR studios, StatusPRO has not only produced the fastest selling sports title in VR history but is a top title on the Meta Quest platform (top 10 in sales). NFL PRO ERA is among the most successful Black-founded gaming franchises ever.

“No matter if its virtual reality or spatial computing, our vision at StatusPRO is to define first-person sports and deliver experiences that truly embody the emotion, competition and sense of community that comes with being a professional athlete,” said Troy Jones, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of StatusPRO. “The investment from GV, Dream, and all other syndicates in the round, further validates the opportunity to leverage emerging technology to innovate the way fans interact with their favorite sports and define a new form of engagement that brings current and future fans closer to the game.”

Other substantial new investments came from a diverse group of athletes, entertainers, firms, and industry leaders including Myles Garrett, David Grutman, Bobby Wagner, Jeff Stibel, Peter Delgrosso, Cameron Jordan, Kayvon Thibodeaux, Crystal Hayslett, Devale Ellis, TitletownTech, Black Angel Group, Life Line Family Heritage Fund, Sun Technology Investors, Andre Gaines of Cinemation Studios, and the Fuller Brothers of 6408 Ventures, among others.

“StatusPRO is building the next generation of sports and gaming entertainment through cutting-edge virtual reality. The company’s unique technology-driven approach and meaningful partnerships have resulted in strong early growth and product traction,” said M.G Siegler, Venture Partner at GV. “Troy Jones and Andrew Hawkins have built an impressive team and track record of execution in a short time, and we’re thrilled to support StatusPRO as they move the VR gaming industry forward.”

VR gaming continues to grow in popularity. The global VR gaming market is projected to grow from $7.92 billion in 2021 to $53.44 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 31.4% in forecast period 2021-2028 period. With this projected growth, StatusPRO prepares for ongoing customer acquisition and retention while continuing to solidify the company as the innovative leader redefining the sports gaming world and eyeing global expansion in the sports VR market with a focus on future sports IP.

“As a former professional athlete, working with a dedicated team of people who have all participated in sports and worked for years across the sports business industry at a high level, we understand what it takes to compete and win,” said Andrew Hawkins, co-founder and President of StatusPRO. “We believe that VR is the innovative answer to help allow fans globally to see and experience what it’s like to be a Pro. This is just the beginning for StatusPRO and paves the way for us to enter additional sectors of sports VR, opening doors for us to explore other professional sports avenues and teams.”

StatusPRO’s NFL PRO ERA is available on the Meta Quest, Official PlayStation™, Pico, and Steam Store.

For more information on StatusPRO, please visit: https://www.status.pro

For more information and assets, please access the media kit.

ABOUT STATUSPRO:
StatusPRO, Inc. is a sports technology company that combines data with augmented, mixed, and virtual reality to provide a suite of training and gaming products that revolutionize the way coaches, players, and fans experience their favorite sport. Headquartered in Miami, FL, StatusPRO is minority-owned and led, where almost half of its employees in the United States are former athletes. StatusPRO’s ties to the NFL and the NFLPA began in its club locker rooms when co-founders and former elite football players Troy Jones and Andrew (Hawk) Hawkins had a vision to develop Pre Game Prep, a tool that would bring the brand’s proprietary technology to NFL teams with the goal of improving the athlete training experience, which is now being utilized by NFL teams. The company’s investors include notables such as Naomi Osaka, LeBron James, Maverick Carter, Paul Wachter, Drake, Lamar Jackson, along with investment groups Greycroft, TitletownTech, Verizon Ventures, Haslam Sports Group, 49ers Enterprises KB Partners, and SC Holdings.

ABOUT GV:
GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies. Across the fields of life science, enterprise technology, consumer products and services, and frontier technology, GV’s portfolio companies aim to improve lives and transform industries. GV’s team of world-class engineers, designers, physicians, scientists, marketers, and investors work together to provide startups with exceptional support.

Launched as Google Ventures in 2009, GV is the venture capital arm of Alphabet, Inc. GV helps startups interface with Google, providing unique access to the world’s best technology and talent.

GV has over $8 billion under management. Notable investment outcomes include Uber, Slack, One Medical Group, Nest, Flatiron Health, and Duo Security. GV is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with offices in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and London.

SOURCE StatusPRO

Funding to support the DRAIN-HF pivotal IDE trial evaluating the company’s Aortix pump, internal R&D programs to improve manufacturability, and commercialization preparation

HOUSTON, Feb. 5, 2024 — Procyrion™, Inc., a medical device company dedicated to improving outcomes for patients with cardiac and renal impairment, announced today the completion of a $57.7 million Series E funding round, including the conversion of $10.0 million of interim financing. These funds will be used to support the ongoing DRAIN-HF pivotal IDE trial evaluating the Aortix™ percutaneous mechanical circulatory support (pMCS) device in patients with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) who remain congested despite standard medical therapy (cardiorenal syndrome or CRS). In addition, funds will support internal programs to improve product manufacturability and to prepare for commercialization. The round was led by Fannin Partners in partnership with new and existing family/multi-family office investors. The Series E financing also included significant participation from returning investors including Bluebird Ventures and an undisclosed strategic investor.

“Approximately 25% of the millions of patients admitted to the hospital with ADHF are unable to be successfully treated with standard of care therapies, yet there is a lack of effective treatment options available, leading to very poor outcomes. Aortix therapy is uniquely suited for treating CRS patients and this latest round of investment will enable the company to make significant progress toward commercialization of our technology,” said Eric S. Fain, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Procyrion. “We thank our investors for recognizing the engineering and clinical achievements to date, as well as the potential of Aortix to be a truly groundbreaking advancement to break the vicious CRS cycle and improve the outcomes in these most challenging-to-manage heart failure patients who currently have no proven therapeutic options.”

Patients with CRS, which is characterized by resistance to standard of care intravenous diuretic therapy,¹ experience a negative cycle where the underlying heart failure leads to reduced blood flow to the kidneys, causing the kidneys to become less effective at removing excess fluid from the body, which further stresses the heart. Effective treatment options for CRS are lacking, as evidenced by up to a 25% rate for heart failure rehospitalization or mortality at 30 days^2,3 for those patients who remained clinically congested after 96 hours of standard of care medical therapy and were discharged from the hospital.¹

Aortix is a catheter-deployed pump that is placed in the descending thoracic aorta and designed to directly increase perfusion to the kidneys while unloading the heart and improving cardiac performance. Its innovative design harnesses fluid entrainment to pump blood without the need for a valve, delivering a therapeutic benefit via a physiologically natural mechanism of action. In the Aortix CRS Pilot Study, which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure, patients demonstrated rapid decongestion with substantial removal of excess fluid and improved hemodynamics, as well as significant improvements in kidney function, cardiac function, and patient-reported assessment of shortness of breath sustained out to 30 days after treatment with the Aortix pump.

“Approximately 500,000 patients in the US who are admitted to the hospital with cardiorenal syndrome are unable to be successfully treated with current available therapies and suffer high rates of mortality and heart failure rehospitalization,” said Leo Linbeck III, Chairman and Founder of Fannin Partners and a Procyrion Board Member. “We are pleased to lead this round as we see enormous commercial potential for Aortix and look forward to seeing the results of the DRAIN-HF study with the goal of demonstrating improved patient outcomes, which should also reduce the burden on the overall healthcare system.”

About Procyrion
Procyrion™, Inc. is a privately held medical device company dedicated to providing effective treatment options for patients with cardiac and renal impairment. The company is developing the Aortix™ percutaneous mechanical circulatory support device, a catheter-deployed pump technology that uniquely harnesses fluid entrainment to pump blood to address multiple conditions with significant unmet needs. Aortix is limited by Federal law to investigational use only and is not approved for sale in any geography. Please visit www.procyrion.com for more information.

About Fannin
Fannin is a life science product development group, with a dozen programs/platforms at different stages of development. Fannin advances its pipeline both internally and through Fannin-founded entities. In the last decade, Fannin programs have sourced approximately $225 million of funding, with about $75 million from grants and $150 million from private investors. Fannin’s innovative talent development program has also grown to become one of the largest of its kind, with more than 320 alumni active in pharma/biotech, medical device/medtech, and venture capital. For more information, visit www.FanninInnovation.com.  

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release may contain predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future performance.

References:

1. Cooper et al. Clin Cardiol. 2023 Jul 18. DOI: 10.1002/clc.24080
2. Bart et al., N Engl J Med 2012; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1210357
3. Wattad et al., Am Journal of Cardiol 2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.amjcard.2015.01.019

SOURCE Procyrion