CEO Dave Fellows named non-Executive Chairman of the Board

Executive appointments follow $170 million Series B fundraise

LONDON and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 24, 2024 — Beacon Therapeutics Holdings Limited (‘Beacon’ or ‘the Company’), a leading ophthalmic gene therapy company with a mission to save and restore the vision of patients with blinding retinal diseases, today announced the appointment of Lance Baldo, MD as Chief Executive Officer, effective August 12, 2024, and Thomas Biancardi as Chief Financial Officer, effective August 1, 2024.

Dr. Baldo brings more than 20 years of experience in biopharmaceuticals including the successful launch of two new indications and a new formulation for Lucentis while at Genentech. Most recently, he served as Chief Medical Officer at Freenome, an early cancer detection company, where he led the design and execution of the Company’s medical strategy to support its pipeline, from clinical trials through registration and commercialization. Prior to Freenome, Dr. Baldo was the Chief Medical Officer at Adaptive Biotechnologies, serving as a member of the senior leadership team through the transition from a private to publicly traded company. He has also held numerous roles within the Roche Group and its affiliates, including Senior Vice President and Head of U.S. Medical Affairs of Genentech and Franchise Head for Ophthalmology.

Dr. Baldo succeeds David Fellows, who has served as CEO since Syncona Limited’s acquisition of AGTC in November 2022. Mr. Fellows will assist during the transition and assume the role of non-Executive Chairman of the Board in January 2025. During his tenure, Mr. Fellows oversaw the launch of Beacon Therapeutics in June 2023, initiation of the Phase II DAWN trial and registrational VISTA trial for AGTC-501 for the treatment of X-Linked Retinitis Pigmentosa (XLRP), and the recent closing of Beacon’s $170 million Series B.

“I am honored and incredibly excited to join Beacon at this important juncture for the Company. Dave and the team have guided Beacon to the forefront of ophthalmic gene therapy with a robust clinical pipeline of candidates poised to meaningfully improve the treatment paradigms for patients with both rare and prevalent blinding diseases,” said Dr. Baldo. “With AGTC-501 in a registrational study, world class science and incredible financial backing, we are poised to make a run at a devastating inherited retinal disease.”

Beacon also appointed Thomas Biancardi as the Chief Financial Officer, who assumes the role from interim CFO Andrew Prosser, effective August 1, 2024. Mr. Biancardi is a biopharmaceutical industry veteran with over 25 years of financial and operational leadership experience, predominantly within ophthalmology. During his career, he has assisted numerous companies in raising capital, and establishing clinical and commercial operations. As one of the first employees of Ophthotech Corporation, he helped the Company evolve from a pre-clinical venture-backed startup to a publicly traded biotech company. He also played a crucial role in the successful launch of the first pharmacologic treatment for macular degeneration at Eyetech Pharmaceuticals.

“I am excited to serve as Beacon’s CFO and collaborate with Lance, the Board and Beacon’s experienced team to support the Company’s mission to fight blinding diseases,” shared Mr. Biancardi. “Beacon has a strong operational foundation and the partnership of a global investor syndicate; I am looking forward to supporting the Company’s growth and development through market entry.”

“We are fortunate to bring in two experienced executives who share our passion to develop treatments for sight-threatening diseases. The addition of Lance and Tom will accelerate Beacon’s growth as a leading ocular gene therapy company focused on bringing transformative gene therapies to patients,” said Mr. Fellows.

Beacon has raised approximately $290 million in funding to date. In July, Beacon announced a $170 million Series B fundraise following several clinical milestones, including the first patient dosed in the VISTA registrational trial for AGTC-501, the initiation of the Phase II DAWN trial and the presentation of positive 12-month interim results of the Phase 2 SKYLINE trial at the 47th Annual Macula Society Meeting demonstrating the precision, effectiveness and safety of Beacon’s lead development candidate, AGTC-501.

About Beacon Therapeutics

Beacon Therapeutics is an ophthalmic gene therapy company founded in 2023 to save and restore the vision of patients with a range of prevalent and rare retinal diseases that result in blindness.

The Company has an established scientific foundation that combines a late-stage development candidate to treat X-linked retinitis pigmentosa (XLRP), as well as two preclinical programs, one targeting dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and another targeting an inherited cone-rod dystrophy (CRD).

Lead development candidate AGTC-501, is a gene therapy program currently being investigated for the treatment of XLRP, an inherited monogenic recessive disorder that causes progressive vision loss in boys and young men. XLRP is predominantly caused by mutations in the retinitis pigmentosa GTPase regulator (RPGR) gene. AGTC-501 expresses the full length RPGR protein, thereby addressing the full complement of photoreceptor damage caused by XLRP, including both rod and cone loss.

Beacon Therapeutics also has access to a target generation technology platform that will identify, screen, and search secreted proteins in the ophthalmology space.

The Company is supported by funds from Syncona Limited, Forbion, Oxford Science Enterprises, TCGX, Advent Life Sciences, and additional investors.

Find out more about Beacon Therapeutics at beacontx.com.

Contact:

[email protected]

Media:

[email protected]

SOURCE Beacon Therapeutics

SAN FRANCISCO, July 24, 2024 — Splight, an AI startup at the forefront of grid operations technologies, today announced the completion of its seed funding round. The $12M round was led by noa (formerly A/O) and joined by EDP Ventures, Elewit, Draper Cygnus, Draper B1, Ascent Energy Ventures, Fen Ventures, Reaction Global, Barn Investments, and the UC Berkeley Foundation, among others.

This capital infusion will support the company’s mission to address the global, multi-generational challenge of clean energy at scale, expanding its North America and EU presence and continuing to grow its development, implementation, and leadership teams to keep up with growing demand.

Grid congestion, also known as grid bottlenecks, is a shortage of transmission capacity caused by the grid’s reliance on outdated contingency management methods that leave up to half of grid transmission capacity unutilized. These bottlenecks lead to up to 40% of renewable energy generation being wasted and thousands of gigawatts of renewable energy projects waiting in queues to be connected to the grid.

As electrification increases across all industries, renewable energy supply and efficient grid operations are essential to meet growing demand. Renewable energy power plants, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) and batteries are booming, but until now the industry lacked the technology to manage them at scale.

Splight has developed new AI-based technology for advanced grid operations that tackles congestion using inverter-based resources (IBRs) as a source of reliability. It significantly reduces curtailment and accelerates the connection of utility-scale renewable power plants and the deployment of DERs and batteries. Its technology takes a novel approach, using real-time data and algorithms to use IBRs as grid-friendly assets.

By using Splight technology to tackle contingencies in real-time, up to 2x extra transmission capacity is unlocked, enabling terawatts of clean energy to be injected into the grid while simultaneously adding reliability. The no-tradeoff solution is transformative for grid operations: Splight’s tech is the key to prevent clean energy being wasted and facilitate the deployment and connection of renewable energy, DERs, and batteries at the pace needed and with the existing transmission infrastructure.

“Our technology is proven and commercially viable: we are solving grid congestion while adding reliability. It can be deployed fast enough to inject more than 3,000 GWs of clean energy within months. This round is a huge vote of confidence and will be used to expand our business globally,” said Fernando Llaver, CEO of Splight.

Thomas Vadora, CTO of Splight, said: “This investment is a significant milestone on our journey and will accelerate our growth, enhance our product offerings, and deliver huge value to our customers.”

The funding round attracted diverse investors, including climate tech and energy specialized venture capital firms, industry leaders, and university endowments. The investors have a global footprint covering the UK, the US, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Argentina.

Kia Nejad, Investor at noa, said: “Energy curtailment is perhaps the most pressing issue for the transition to a sustainable energy system. Splight’s technology is a far more practical approach for modernizing the energy grid to meet current demands. We are excited to support Splight as they lead the implementation of scalable grid software, with an established presence amongst industry-leading customers in Europe, the US, and Latin America.”

About Splight

Splight is a pioneering AI startup that addresses the global, multi-generational challenge of clean energy at scale. It takes a fresh approach, using real-time data and AI algorithms to bridge the gap between technology and energy. It unlocks millions of terawatts of clean energy trapped by how energy grids are operated.

Splight adds a real-time operational layer and increases reliability to the grid. This new layer of reliability based on flexibility enables unleashing up to 2x of transmission capacity, massive adoption of EVs and DERs, making the most out of the use of batteries and reaching net zero electrical grids years ahead of any other alternative. 

This new approach solves the grid’s biggest problems faster and more efficiently than any other solution available today.

Splight was founded by Thomas Vadora, Fernando Llaver, and Carlos Caldart. Their backgrounds span computer science, electrical engineering and deep experience in the energy industry, culminating in the vision to revolutionize energy and sustainability through technology.

For more information, visit www.splight-ai.com.

About noa

noa (formerly A/O) is Europe’s largest built world venture capital firm and partners with the most talented founders, engineers, executives and thought leaders on revolutionary, category-leading investments to drive disruption in real estate and positively impact the entire built world ecosystem and beyond.

Launched in 2019 as A/O, noa closed its first evergreen vehicle with €250m, backed by some of the largest and most forward-thinking real estate owners, operators and family offices in Europe who share noa’s vision and commitment to improving quality of life, accelerating sustainable living, and enabling decarbonisation of the largest asset class in the world.

For more information, visit www.noavc.com.

SOURCE Splight

Strategic funding will accelerate the development of Abstract, a blockchain designed to power consumer apps

MIAMI, July 23, 2024 — Igloo, Inc. (“Igloo”), Pudgy Penguins’ parent company, today announced the closing of over $11 million in funding led by Founders Fund with additional investments from Fenbushi Capital, 1kx, Everest Ventures Group, and Selini Capital.

Igloo will use the strategic financing to establish Cube Labs, a new venture under the Igloo banner, to lead blockchain research and technology development. Cube Labs will oversee and contribute to the development of Abstract, a new consumer-focused blockchain designed to drive the mass adoption of crypto. Incubated under the not-for-profit Abstract Foundation, Abstract – soon to be in testnet – is built to lead the consumer crypto revolution by bringing billions of people onchain for the first time.

“Abstract will open up a new world of possibilities for crypto-native developers and global brands – in turn creating the dominant crypto consumer platform,” said Michael Lee, Abstract co-inventor and CEO of Cube Labs, a veteran technology and web3 executive who previously led growth for ZKsync and launched games to Activision Blizzard’s 400+ million players. “We are at the beginning of a new era where blockchain technology will reinvent the idea of digital ownership and seamlessly integrate into our daily lives, enhancing how we live, work, connect, and play.”

“Pudgy Penguins has the best 0 to 1 distribution edge we’ve seen in the crypto space. Instead of paying massive amounts to acquire users, they acquire them organically through the Pudgy brand. They’re leveraging this to grow Abstract, a consumer L2 focused on making onchain experiences mainstream. By building for users first, and allowing companies and brands to better interface with their consumers, Abstract is well-positioned to onboard the masses to crypto,” said Joey Krug, Partner at Founders Fund. “Abstract is built for everyone — not just cryptonatives — and we’re extremely happy to be supporting them on this journey.”

Co-invented by notable blockchain entrepreneurs Michael Lee, Luca Netz, and Lorenzo Melendez, Abstract is engineered by notable web3 developers Cygaar, 0xbeans, and stinkypablo.

To fulfill the mission of building the biggest onchain community and catalyzing the widespread adoption of web3, Abstract’s technology is designed to make the process of developing decentralized apps easier, cheaper, and safer.

By leveraging cutting-edge ZK (zero-knowledge) cryptography, the open-source technology provides low-cost, fast, and secure transactions for users and builders alike. The user-centric platform’s use of ZK Stack and EigenDA streamlines the development process, and the Abstract Foundation provides dedicated builder and brand support to ensure a smooth onboarding.

“Our mission is to build infrastructure to power the next wave of consumer crypto applications,” said Cygaar, CTO at Cube Labs. “This requires collaborating on technology that makes crypto UX simpler, building a platform for mass distribution, and working closely with teams looking to build the next generation of consumer-facing experiences. By doing so, we have the potential to truly onboard retail users to crypto for the first time.”

With its innovative approach and strong financial backing, Abstract is set to lead the consumer crypto revolution. The platform’s focus on fostering culture, community, and creativity onchain will not only drive mass adoption, but also empower users to explore new possibilities within the crypto ecosystem.

“My work has always centered around creating a web3 ecosystem that enables new ways for brands to interact directly with their consumer base,” said Abstract co-inventor Luca Netz, who serves as CEO of the wildly successful NFT brand Pudgy Penguins and Igloo, Inc. “Our vision is to change the dynamic of how users interact with blockchain technology and easily merge both the real and digital worlds. We are excited to drive the consumer crypto revolution forward.”

For more information, please visit abs.xyz

About Igloo, Inc.
Igloo, Inc. is a collection of companies, the largest of which is Pudgy Penguins. Founded in 2024, the company is headquartered in Miami, Florida. Millions of people use its wide range of popular crypto-native products and platforms each day, from Pudgy Penguins®, Pudgy World™, OverpassIP™, and more. To learn more about Igloo, visit igloo.inc.

About Abstract
Abstract is a consumer-focused blockchain powered by cutting-edge ZK cryptography for consumer crypto, pioneering culture, community, and creativity onchain. Its mission is to build the world’s biggest onchain community, driven by the culture economy, leveraging ZK Stack and EigenDA to provide cheap, fast, and secure transactions. Abstract was invented by individuals who launched and scaled Pudgy Penguins, Ethereum, and Kubernetes. To learn more about Abstract, visit abs.xyz

Media Contact
Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis (on behalf of Igloo, Inc.)
[email protected] 

SOURCE Igloo, Inc.

Plans launch of wealth management offering
Financing round was led by Cantor Fitzgerald

COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 23, 2024 — Strive Enterprises, Inc. (“Strive”), a financial services company with an asset management platform focused on maximizing long-run returns for investors, today announced it closed a $30 million Series B financing round led by Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. Deason Capital Services, who led the Series A round, Narya Capital, and several prominent entrepreneurs also participated in the financing.

The company plans to launch Strive Wealth Management, given the significant demand for expanded financial services following the early success of its asset management platform in the United States.

“The success of Strive’s asset management business has been extraordinary, growing to over $1.6 billion in assets under management less than two years after the launch of our first ETF,” said Matt Cole, CEO of Strive. “Off the back of this momentum, Strive will be launching a direct wealth management offering focused exclusively on maximizing value for our clients. Many Americans are hungry for an authentic and unapologetic embrace of capitalism, meritocracy, and innovation and that’s what we strive to deliver.”

Strive will also leverage Cantor’s deep institutional relationships and proven market expertise to expand and enhance Strive’s products and services. Additionally, Cantor Fitzgerald and Deason Capital Services will each nominate a member to Strive’s Board of Directors.

“We are strategically investing in fascinating companies – like Strive – that are working to shape our future,” said Howard Lutnick, Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, L.P. “We look forward to partnering with Strive on their exciting growth opportunities and believe the wealth management industry is primed for an offering that focuses solely on maximizing value and returns for clients.”

Strive was co-founded in 2022 by Vivek Ramaswamy with the goal of restoring shareholder primacy in the capital markets. Seed investors include Peter Thiel, Bill Ackman, Cantor Fitzgerald, Founders Fund, and Narya Capital.

Cantor acted as the sole placement agent on the Series B financing round.

To register to meet with a Strive Financial Advisor, please visit learn.strive.com/wealth.

About Strive
Co-founded in 2022 by Vivek Ramaswamy, Strive is a financial services firm with a mission to maximize value for their clients through unapologetic support of capitalism. The firm has quickly grown to manage $1.6 billion in assets, competing directly with the world’s largest financial institutions by empowering Americans to invest with a sole focus on shareholder value maximization. Learn more at strive.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements included in this release contain forward-looking statements regarding Strive’s future operations and performance, including statements on future services and future acquisitions. Such statements are based on current expectations, speak only as of the date of this release and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. There can be no assurance that the events predicted in this release will be attained. Strive does not have any obligation to update of any changes to the statements included in this release.

SOURCE Strive Enterprises, Inc.

Funding led by Scale Venture Partners will accelerate native mobile testing and AI enhancements.

SEATTLE, July 23, 2024 — Today QA Wolf, the company that guarantees 80%+ end-to-end automated test coverage for web apps, is announcing a US$36 million Series B financing round to accelerate its expansion into native mobile testing, which is set to launch later this year and is now open for waitlist. The investment is led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Threshold Ventures and Ventureforgood, and existing investors Inspired Capital and Notation Capital.

Two-thirds of enterprise software companies test less than 50% of their workflows before releasing new features to their customers. Gaps in test coverage that let out critical bugs, slow releases, and impede developer productivity are caused by misaligned incentives within teams to develop and ship features quickly, while running and maintaining an ever-expanding test suite. Despite spending $68 billion annually on QA tools and labor, comprehensive coverage is an unattainable goal for most teams. QA Wolf is the first and only solution to fully address this by aligning incentives, selling complete coverage instead of licenses or labor hours, and achieving 80%+ coverage for applications.

“The same misaligned incentives that inhibit browser-app testing appear in the development of native mobile apps, but they’re compounded by even more complex testing infrastructure,” said Jon Perl, CEO of QA Wolf. “With this new round of funding, we’ll make improvements to our existing infrastructure and be the only solution offering 100% parallelized regression tests for Android and iOS. The same ‘human-in-the-loop AI’ that enables 15-minute QA cycles for web apps will soon support our customer’s entire product stack.”

The fragmented market of scripting tools for non-technical users, AI-powered test maintenance, and pay-per-test run infrastructure forces engineering teams to bundle together in-house and third-party systems to address individual challenges of test automation. In contrast, QA Wolf is a vertically integrated “test coverage factory,” providing test creation, parallel run infrastructure, and 24-hour test maintenance to deliver comprehensive test coverage in a single service.

“QA Wolf represents the biggest leap forward for QA in decades,” said Eric Anderson, Partner at Scale Venture Partners. “The overwhelming interest the team is already seeing from the market validates an expansion into native mobile testing and we’re looking forward to partnering with them on their next phase of growth.”

“QA Wolf is seizing the huge opportunity in the growing QA market as software systems become more complex and the need for efficient testing and quality assurance dramatically increases,” said Megan Kelly, Partner at Threshold Ventures. “The clear, demonstrable results they deliver for customers sets them apart from the rest of the pack. We’re thrilled to partner with QA Wolf for this journey.”

The QA Wolf platform and 24-hour team are catching 10,000 bugs and saving customers over $100 million dollars every year, delivering 5–10 times more test coverage per dollar spent than traditional in-house or outsourced teams, which reduces the average engineering team’s QA expenses from 25% of a team’s budget to less than 5%.

• AutoTrader VP of Engineering: “For the first year we invested in QA Wolf, it cost us one engineer but we had a suite of tests that 10+ people would have built.”
• Drata Senior Manager of QA: “In one year’s time, we’re running 400 test cases on every deployment. Just the platform and infrastructure alone would have taken us more than a year.”
• Salesloft QA Program Manager: “Working with [QA Wolf] is going to be the new thing that everybody does, because if you don’t get to market in time, then someone else is going to get there first.”

To sign up for a demo go to www.qawolf.com. For those interested in joining our mission to eliminate every software bug in the world, go to wellfound.com/company/qawolf/jobs for open roles.

About QA Wolf
QA Wolf is revolutionizing software quality assurance with results-based end-to-end test automation. By aligning incentives with customer success and leveraging cutting-edge AI, QA Wolf delivers unprecedented levels of test coverage and accelerates software development cycles. For more information go to www.qawolf.com.

SOURCE QA Wolf

SAN FRANCISCO, July 23, 2024 — Momentum, the customer intelligence platform that enables enterprise listening and automation, today announced that it has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital with participation from Stage 2 Capital, bringing Momentum’s total funding to $18 million. Existing Momentum investors, including Basis Set Ventures and Leadout Capital, also participated in the round. Amish Jani, FirstMark Founder and Partner, joins the board alongside Mandy Cole, General Partner at Stage 2.

Today’s investment follows a year of stellar growth for the company. In 2023, Momentum increased annual recurring revenue (ARR) by more than 400%, adding companies like Ramp, 1Password, Alation, and Demandbase to its already impressive customer base, including Zscaler and Postman.

“In a world where companies are adding AI to their product so they can check a box, Momentum has built transformative AI capabilities that have shown up in tremendous customer love. We heard from their customers, many in our portfolio, who are thrilled by the process automation and actionable insights Momentum enables,” said Amish Jani, Founder and Managing Partner at FirstMark Capital. “We’re excited to be an investor, and I’m personally looking forward to joining the board and working alongside Santi, Ashley, and Moiz to realize their vision.”

Mandy Cole, General Partner at Stage 2 Capital and former LivingSocial and Zenefits sales leader, added, “I wish Momentum existed when I was a sales leader. I just think about how much more my teams could have sold with the time savings and the better decisions I would have made with more insight into our deal pipeline and customer sentiment. I couldn’t be happier to partner with such a talented team to bring the power of a customer intelligence platform to more companies.”

Now, more than ever, revenue leaders are being asked to streamline their operations and find ways to grow revenue efficiently. Gone are the days focused on the number of deals and raw revenue. Today, they’re tasked with increasing revenue per rep and decreasing churn.

Momentum enables companies to automatically capture customer intelligence via call recordings, emails, and Slack and then turn that data into actionable insights to predict and prevent customer churn, alert revenue leaders of forecast risk, streamline processes, and automate routine tasks. Ultimately, Momentum’s AI-powered platform uncovers blind spots and optimizes operations so customer-facing teams can move faster and wiser.

“We chose Momentum because of their investment in harnessing the power of LLMs to make manual, repetitive Salesforce data entry a thing of the past,” said Andrea Scott, Director of GTM Systems at Weights & Biases. “Also, because their overall product strategy is rooted in using AI to empower end users and give them back their most precious resource: time. Time to build relationships, time to identify opportunities, time to sell.”

Momentum accomplishes all of this without being yet another tool for revenue teams to learn. It fully integrates into the tech stack they’re already using today by extracting raw data from applications like Gong, Clari, Zoom, Google Meet, and more, processing it using AI, storing that structured data in Salesforce, and presenting it in Slack at the right time. That makes it seamless for Revenue Operations to implement and roll out.

“Momentum is uncovering insights for revenue leaders that they only dreamt of before. We’re helping CROs make better, smarter decisions,” said Santiago Suarez Ordoñez, Co-founder and CEO at Momentum. “The traction and incredible retention we’re seeing can only come from driving real impact for our customers, and what makes me most excited is that we’ve just uncovered the tip of what’s possible.”

Momentum has released several new features in recent months, including Custom Summaries, a first-to-market feature. Sales and customer success teams can now refine their call summaries and notes with their own prompts, ensuring every detail aligns with what matters most to their business. Since the beginning of the year, the team at Momentum has launched Contact Automation, Automatic Churn Detection, and native integrations with Salesoft and Chorus by ZoomInfo. With this latest round of funding, Momentum plans to accelerate product development to further innovate for enterprise revenue teams and drive additional business expansion.

About Momentum
Momentum turns your sales calls and emails into a powerful source of customer intelligence, driving revenue, accelerating sales cycles, and establishing GTM observability across your whole team. Seamlessly integrating with your existing tools, Momentum leverages AI and automation to extract and synthesize data at scale without adding a new platform for your reps to log into. Founded in 2020, revenue teams at leading companies like Zscaler, Ramp, and 1Password use Momentum daily to capture forecast and churn risk, autofill Salesforce fields, share product signals, and deliver instant insights at the right time and place. Learn more at www.momentum.io

About FirstMark Capital
FirstMark is an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. Our mission is to partner with entrepreneurs who are focused on solving meaningful problems. We have built an engaged community among the teams in our network to spread ideas and opportunities. We are privileged to work alongside the founders of businesses like Pinterest, Shopify, Airbnb, Discord, Riot Games, and DraftKings. Visit us in New York City or online at www.firstmark.com and @FirstMarkCap on Twitter.

About Stage 2 Capital
The first go-to-market venture capital firm, Stage 2 Capital combines capital and GTM execution expertise, leveraging its elite LP base of 450+ senior executives from unicorns and Fortune 500 firms to help portfolio companies scale revenue and accelerate growth. Co-founded in 2018 by Jay Po, former investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, and Mark Roberge, former Founding CRO at HubSpot, Stage 2 Capital invests in B2B software companies between seed and Series A. For more information, visit: www.stage2.capital

Media Contact:
Clayton Pritchard
[email protected]

SOURCE Momentum.io

Investment will accelerate product development to empower clinicians to scale their practice and provide care to more diverse patient populations

The company’s valuation has more than doubled to $2.3 billion

NEW YORK, July 23, 2024 — Headway, the company building a new mental healthcare system, today announced a $100 million Series D funding round and its planned expansion to Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. These developments will further enable clinicians on the platform to scale their practices and provide affordable, effective mental health care to a broader and more diverse community of patients, including seniors, low-income Americans and individuals living with disabilities.

The recent funding values the company at $2.3 billion, a 130% increase from its previous valuation. Led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing investors Thrive Capital, Accel and a16z, and new investor Forerunner Ventures, this round will accelerate platform development to simplify private practice operations so providers can focus on delivering excellent clinical care.

Headway streamlines credentialing, onboarding, clinical training, scheduling, billing and more, making it easy for mental health clinicians to accept patients through insurance. Since launching in 2019, the company has scaled its platform with commercial insurance, and is in-network today with more than 40 commercial health plans across 50 states and the District of Columbia. With 34,000 clinicians leveraging Headway’s platform to run their private practice, Headway will now expand its services to allow providers to serve patients through Medicare Advantage and Medicaid. The company and its affiliates have begun working with Medicare Advantage plans in certain states, with thousands of clinicians already participating. Headway expects to be live with Medicare Advantage in 51 markets by the end of the year, and plans to launch with Medicaid in 2025.

“Headway believes that every person across this country deserves access to not just any care, but great and affordable care. Headway’s community of clinicians are well-equipped to deliver great mental health care services to those in need,” said Andrew Adams, Founder & CEO of Headway. “This funding positions Headway to accelerate our expansion into Medicare Advantage and Medicaid to meaningfully improve the lives of millions of people, which we know is important to the providers who use our platform.”

Medicare Advantage and Medicaid cover more than 100 million people — nearly one-third of Americans — who often experience higher rates of need, yet face additional barriers to care. A March 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that despite the fact that one in three Medicaid beneficiaries and one in four Medicare beneficiaries live with a mental illness, access remains elusive due to a dire shortage of mental health providers. Headway’s community of providers are eager to fill these gaps; in a survey of more than 1,000 clinicians conducted by the company last year, a majority reported that the top reason they took insurance was to “provide access to care for those that may not be able to afford private pay services.”

“Headway has made working with Medicare easier for me through enrollment, onboarding and navigating compliance expectations. I can truly say that I would not be accepting Medicare clients without Headway,” said Andre Maxie, LMFT, an early adopter of Headway’s Medicare Advantage expansion. “Accepting Medicare is important to me because it allows me to reach a population that has been historically underserved.”

As a direct result of the company’s most recent funding, Headway will make further investments in clinicians by:

• Helping licensed clinicians grow their practices by serving more clients through new partnerships with Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and additional commercial plans.
• Building new tools and products that expedite Medicare and Medicaid credentialing timelines and compliance requirements, while empowering clinicians to practice at the top of their license.

“Headway is quickly becoming the centralized platform for mental health care access and delivery,” said Will Reed, General Partner at Spark Capital and Headway Board Member. “The company is uniquely positioned to bring together providers, patients and payers and unite a fragmented system, and Spark Capital is excited to further support its mission and growth.”

About Headway
Headway is building the modern mental healthcare system where everyone can get the right care from the right therapist, covered by insurance. Today, we’re the largest mental health provider network in the country, with 34,000 providers across race, gender, ethnicity and specialty working with Headway to run their private practice. Patients can schedule care within 48 hours via one-click booking at headway.co, or can get care through a referral. The company operates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and has funding from a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Accel, Forerunner Ventures, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Spark Capital, Thrive Capital, and Health Care Service Corporation.

SOURCE Headway

Data-as-Codewords Upends the Use of Compression and Enables Enterprises to Use, Move, Control, Manage, and Secure Data More Efficiently Than Ever Before

Company Opens Reg A+ Funding Round with 50 Patents and Blue-Chip Partners

MORAGA, Calif., July 23, 2024 — Atombeam, whose innovative technology redefines how data is used, moved, stored and secured, today unveiled the technology behind its ability to change the way data is transmitted and used. Atombeam’s Data-as-Codewords technology brings a new, more efficient and secure approach to data that addresses the explosion of information associated with transformative computing trends, among them the dramatic growth of edge computing, generative AI, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Neurpac is Atombeam’s first Data-as-Codewords product. Neurpac reduces the size of data being transferred by an average of 75 percent, and enables enterprises to realize an average 4x increase in effective bandwidth – with near zero added latency – making it possible to eliminate the network congestion typically experienced with “real-time” data transfers. Atombeam’s technology is protected by 50 issued and allowed patents, with another 62 pending.

“Enterprises in every industry are seeing an explosion in data volume that is quickly pushing networks and the pipes that connect them to their limits, even as generative AI and the rapidly expanding Internet of Things demand greater capacity,” said Charles Yeomans, chairman and CEO of Atombeam. “A new, more efficient and more secure way of using, moving, managing, and storing data is needed. We believe our Data-as-Codewords approach addresses this reality and represents a paradigm shift similar to what enterprises experienced when they embraced ground-breaking data innovations like blockchain, Bluetooth, and machine learning.”

Atombeam has officially opened its Reg A+ funding round under StartEngine’s Broker Dealer. The company previously secured $12.5 million through crowdfunding investment.

The company already has multiple active contracts with the United States Department of Defense. Atombeam is also engaged in partnerships with data stalwarts including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Nvidia, and Viasat, and works closely with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Data Growth Exceeds Capacity

Machine-generated data is the fastest growing major category of data, with IDC predicting that the billions of IoT devices already online will generate 90 zettabytes of data in 2025. This growth is overwhelming existing wireless and satellite networks and hindering enterprises’ efforts to fully utilize their information assets.

This data deluge of low-entropy, machine-generated data is an ideal initial use case for Data-as-Codewords. Whereas compression technology is generally unusable for the small message files generated by machines, Atombeam can optimize the messages from sensors and other devices that, while small, create significant network bottlenecks because of their sheer number and frequency.

An Entirely New Approach – Neurpac’s Data-as-Codewords

Neurpac‘s Data-as-Codewords technology represents an entirely new approach to data. To a computer operating at microsecond speed, a codeword is functionally the same as a much larger data pattern when they are tied together in a “codebook.” The magic of Neurpac is in building codebooks, using them to accelerate and secure data, and making that data usable.

A “trainer” uses advanced AI and machine learning to generate a codebook, which is a set of very small codewords, typically 3-10 bits in length, matched to much larger patterns found in a data sample, which are typically 64, 128 or 200 bits in length. The codebook is then installed on both ends of a communication link, such as a ship at sea and a data center, with a satellite acting as the network.

When a new message is generated, Neurpac’s encoder uses its codebook to almost instantly replace the message content with codewords it finds in the codebook – the same information, but much smaller. A decoder at the destination flawlessly, in near real-time, restores the original data from the codewords it receives from the transmission. Some of the many benefits of this approach include:

• Increased bandwidth: By reducing the size of data by an average of 75% in near real-time, Atombeam’s Neurpac expands effective bandwidth by an average of 4x. Notably, Neurpac works with files as small as four bytes, which is impossible with compression. Neurpac uses very little computing power and can operate on virtually any network hardware.
• Dramatic Gains in Security and Resiliency: Neurpac enables the deep obfuscation of data, rendering it highly secure. An upcoming version will add ultralight encryption while retaining Neurpac’s data size reduction feature. Neurpac also recovers almost instantly from connection interrupts.
• Enhanced Battery Life: For most IoT devices, sending data is the greatest use of power. By reducing the amount of data to be sent by 75%, Neurpac significantly reduces time-on-air, and so can positively impact battery life.
• Searchable Data: Unlike compressed data, data converted into codewords by Neurpac remains randomly accessible and searchable. This capability could have profound implications for analysts by making Neurpac-compacted data lakes as usable as the original data.

“The future of how data is transferred, stored, secured and used is here,” says Julien Dersy, chief product officer of Atombeam. “Every transformative computing trend begins with a new idea and a new approach. At Atombeam, we are at the forefront of this innovation, and as we continue to build upon our technology, we discover new benefits that drive further transformation.”

Neurpac – Transforming the Use of Data

Neurpac has the potential to revolutionize data transmission on edge devices like compute, routers, and gateways. By compacting sensor data, the product boosts bandwidth capacity by 4x, enabling more sensors, more frequent data transmission, and significant communication cost reductions. Because of this, Neurpac is ideal for optimizing network efficiency, lowering LTE/5G and satellite expenses, and transforming any edge computing ecosystem.

Neurpac enables application developers, chip manufacturers, cloud providers, and hardware companies to optimize their offerings, and is available now as a cloud-based platform hosted within a SaaS environment, with future plans to offer the technology embedded in chips and devices. Check out the Atombeam Quickstart Connector for how you can take advantage of Neurpac today.

A Strong Team, Backed by Ordinary Investors

Atombeam is guided by an executive team of data transfer luminaries and seasoned executives from the networking, software and satellite industries. The company is crowdfunded, allowing ordinary investors to gain an ownership stake in a potentially transformative technology, and has already raised $12.5 million in funding.

Potential investors can learn more about Atombeam by visiting the equity crowdfunding platform StartEngine. Interested parties are also invited to request a demonstration of Atombeam’s Neurpac SaaS to see how it could impact your business.

About Atombeam
Atombeam has the potential to revolutionize data management through its Data-as-Codewords Neurpac technology, altering how data is encoded, used, transferred, managed, stored and secured. Atombeam increases available bandwidth an average of 4x, improves access to stored data by making it searchable while encoded, and enhances security with ultralight software, all in a single computing step. Atombeam’s Neurpac is uniquely capable of operating on the smallest machine-generated or Internet of Things data, which is not possible with compression. For more information, please visit www.atombeamtech.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube.

Media Contact:
Jeff Drew
Guyer Group for Atombeam
P: 617.233.5109
E: [email protected]

This Reg. A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Please read the Offering Circular and Risk Factors disclosure before investing. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment.

SOURCE Atombeam

Fund will target lower-middle market companies in need of flexible financing

RADNOR, Pa., July 23, 2024 — NewSpring (the “Firm”), a family of private equity strategies, today announced the final close of NewSpring Mezzanine Capital V (“NSM V” or the “Fund”), out of the Firm’s dedicated private credit strategy, NewSpring Mezzanine. In total, the Fund was oversubscribed with total commitments of $390 million. NSM V received strong support from existing and new investors, including a diverse group of banks, insurers, public plans, financial institutions, and individuals.

Operating as a U.S. Small Business Administration SBIC (Small Business Investment Company) NSM V builds on the Firm’s long history within the SBIC program, which allows the Fund to leverage additional funding to support lower-middle market businesses. To date, NSM V has deployed approximately $273 million into 19 companies in the business and consumer services, niche manufacturing, distribution, and healthcare markets. This rapid deployment in just under 18 months is attributed to the team’s deep industry knowledge, extensive networks, and consistent focus within the lower-middle market, which enables them to identify and act on high-potential opportunities efficiently.

“At NewSpring Mezzanine, we leverage our expertise to help business owners and CEOs optimize their capital structure, pursue strategic acquisitions, and make operational movements that are in line with their vision for the company,” said Anne Vazquez, NewSpring General Partner. “As demand for mezzanine debt and other flexible capital solutions continues to rise among lower-middle-market businesses, we look forward to partnering with more great companies while putting this Fund to work on behalf of our investors.”

NewSpring Mezzanine partners with business owners, either independently or with other financial sponsors, to provide a wide range of flexible mezzanine debt and equity solutions as well as access to its deep operational resources. The team, composed of investors and former operators with a relentless focus on value creation, includes two dedicated operating professionals with deep experience executing key growth initiatives at expanding businesses. With this, NewSpring Mezzanine portfolio companies receive tailored strategic guidance and operational support to help them navigate complex operating challenges and optimize opportunities that typically arise in lower-middle-market businesses to achieve their full potential. 

“Our goal at NewSpring Mezzanine is to build great companies through strong partnerships. We pride ourselves on building close relationships with financial sponsors, intermediaries, and portfolio company management teams to form strategic alliances that produce lasting value for all stakeholders,” said Greg Barger, NewSpring General Partner. “We’re thrilled with the support of our investors as the number of attractive opportunities in the lower-middle market continues to rise and look forward to continuing to expand our portfolio.”

About NewSpring
NewSpring partners with the innovators, makers, and operators of high-performing companies in dynamic industries to catalyze new growth and seize compelling opportunities. The Firm manages approximately $3.5 billion across five distinct strategies covering the spectrum from growth equity and control buyouts to mezzanine debt. Having completed over 250 investments, NewSpring brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and resources to take growing companies to the next level and beyond. Partnering with management teams to help develop their businesses into market leaders, NewSpring identifies opportunities and builds relationships using its network of industry leaders and influencers across a wide array of operational areas and industries. To learn more, visit www.newspringcapital.com.

SOURCE NewSpring