• Razor Group has acquired Perch, the leading Amazon aggregator in the US, solidifying its position as the global leader in the aggregation of online marketplace consumer brands.
• This acquisition paves the way for Razor to reach over $1 billion in topline revenue in the medium-term and adds significant scale to its operations.
• The combined entity will manage an assortment of more than 40,000 products across various online channels in the US, UK, EU, and Latin America.
• The acquisition is part of Razor’s broader consolidation strategy in the e-commerce aggregator space, following successful acquisitions of Factory14, Valoreo and The Stryze Group.
• Presight Capital is leading Razor’s Series D financing round, demonstrating strong confidence in Razor’s long-term vision and further growth potential.
• The additional funding will be used to further invest in Razor’s technology infrastructure including leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to achieve complete automation of Razor’s consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) retail operations.

BERLIN and BOSTON, March 5, 2024 — Razor Group (“Razor”) has acquired Perch, the leading Amazon aggregator in the US, solidifying its position as the global leader in the aggregation of online marketplace consumer brands and creating the #1 player in the industry.

The acquisition is part of Razor’s broader consolidation strategy, underscoring its capability to act as the key consolidator within the global e-commerce aggregator ecosystem, following successful acquisitions of Factory14, Valoreo and The Stryze Group.

It also paves the way for Razor to reach over $1 billion in revenue in the medium-term, add significant scale to its operations and create a highly profitable global technology and e-commerce powerhouse. The new combined entity will manage an assortment of more than 40,000 products across key brands selling on 30+ marketplace and direct-to-consumer channels in 10+ countries across North America, United Kingdom, Europe, and Latin America.

In conjunction with this acquisition, Razor is also announcing a Series D financing round, led by Presight Capital. This new round, against a challenging macroeconomic backdrop, underscores the strong confidence investors have in Razor Group’s long-term vision and its potential for further growth.

The additional funding will be used to further invest in Razor’s technology infrastructure throughout the entire supply chain. Moreover, recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and the emergence of large language models (LLMs) presents a valuable opportunity to achieve complete automation of Razor’s consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) retail operations, optimising processes, improving efficiency, and driving faster product innovation cycles and delivery.

“The e-commerce aggregator space will undergo continued consolidation in the medium-term, driven by the current macroeconomic environment. The acquisition of Perch is a highly value-accretive and transformative transaction on Razor’s path to becoming a global technology-driven e-commerce powerhouse. Presight is delighted to lead this funding round and continue to support Razor on its future growth path. With this sizable investment, we are also doubling down on Razor’s technology stack and capabilities, led by its CTO Shrestha Chowdhury, to power the global marketplace ecosystem,” said Christan Angermeyer and Fabian Hansen, Co-Founders and General Partners of Presight Capital.

Tushar Ahluwalia, Co-Founder and CEO at Razor Group, commented: “We are excited to partner with Perch, the leading US player in our space. The transaction further strengthens our market leadership, solidifying Razor Group as the #1 player globally. In contrast to our peers, our focus has been to build the Western response to Chinese vertical C2M models like Temu and Shein, rather than an internet version of P&G. Therefore, our secret sauce has been to invest in sophisticated technology automation to ensure deep supply-chain integration and hyper-fast product innovation cycles right from the start, a prerequisite to making the model work and seeing us develop the industry’s leading automation stack. With the ongoing advancements in AI and LLMs, that work continues.”

Chris Bell, Founder and CEO of Perch, added: “Over the past 18 months, Perch has transformed its business through our proprietary technology, machine learning-based decision engine, and leading supply chain capabilities, creating one of the first large-scale, cash flow positive players in our space. This combination with Razor, which will combine the best technology and people across two top players in our industry, creates a clear global platform for the next stage of consolidation and growth.”

About Razor Group
Razor Group GmbH (“Razor”) was founded by e-commerce experts and serial founders Tushar Ahluwalia, Christoph Gamon, Shrestha Chowdhury and Dr. Oliver Dlugosch. The Berlin-based company acquires and operates profitable Amazon FBA businesses and other online marketplace sellers which have consistently demonstrated superior product quality, outstanding customer satisfaction and sharp business acumen. Razor pairs significant growth capital with extensive e-commerce and technology expertise, thereby ensuring that the acquired businesses reach the next stage in their development. Razor defines itself as a technology-driven e-commerce business to push world-class consumer products in relevant categories into all leading marketplaces globally. 

About Perch
Perch is a technology-driven commerce company that acquires and operates Amazon FBA and other D2C brands at scale. With roughly 100 brands and 5,000 products, Perch offers a diversified portfolio of leading consumer goods across multiple popular categories such as Home & Living, Sports, Health and Toys. Through its proprietary technology platform, strong focus on the US Amazon sales channel, and leading supply chain capabilities, Perch has quickly become the established leader within the US Amazon aggregator segment. Perch was founded by Chris Bell in 2019 in Boston, USA. 

About Presight Capital
Presight Capital is a leading venture capital fund with >$600m assets under management that backs ambitious founders across multiple sectors globally including Consumer, Fintech, Healthcare, Robotics etc. Presight was launched in 2019 by serial entrepreneur Christian Angermayer and seasoned investor Fabian Hansen, as the flagship venture capital investment arm of Apeiron Investment Group, the family office of Christian Angermayer. Since its inception, Presight has invested in 70+ companies and completed 8+ portfolio public listings.

Contact:
Ben Li
VP Corporate Finance
[email protected]

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2355116/Razor_Group_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Razor Group

Leading data observability platform for data teams experiences rapid growth, closes capital from top tier investors

BOSTON, March 5, 2024 — Metaplane, the leading data observability platform for data teams, today announced its $13.8 million Series A funding round led by Felicis, with participation Khosla Ventures, Flybridge, Y Combinator, Stage 2 Capital, B37, and SNR. This comes on the heels of a successful 2023 that saw impressive revenue growth, accelerated customer acquisition, and rapid product innovation. With the close of its Series A round, Metaplane has now raised a total of $22.2 million including its Seed round, which was raised less than one year ago, and includes leading investors like Khosla Ventures, Flybridge, and Y Combinator. Metaplane will use the fresh round of capital to continue building the next evolution of data observability, with the goal of helping data teams monitor data more deeply, easily, and faster than ever before. In 2023, the Metaplane customer base tripled to over 100 companies and now includes the data teams at leading companies like Klaviyo, Sigma, Census, GoFundMe, Bose, Ramp, and ClickUp.

“We are so proud of what Metaplane was able to accomplish in 2023. Data is foundational to modern businesses, and our commitment to bring insights, fast resolution times, and peace of mind to our customers is our company mission. With this funding, Metaplane will enhance its data observability platform to support the evolving needs of data engineers. Our main areas of focus will be adding new automations, deeper data observability analytics and new ways to integrate Metaplane into data workflows so everyone using the data can check performance,” said Kevin Hu, CEO and co-founder of Metaplane. “We are honored to count Felicis and all our other investors as our partners in this effort. Their belief in Metaplane makes this all possible.” Metaplane usage has surged this past year – as of January 2024, Metaplane customers have run more than 500 million data quality checks on over 40 million data assets and over 30 million data lineage connections. Metaplane customers tripled the number of monitors created while detecting and resolving over 80,000 incidents.

Metaplane was founded by Kevin Hu, Guru Mahendran, and Peter Casinelli in 2019 to provide instant visibility into data quality issues that negatively impact businesses. Data pipelines today are more complex than ever, with hundreds of data sources, convoluted business logic, and many cross-functional stakeholders. Testing, monitoring, and fixing issues across the entire data stack is critical and nearly impossible for one team or department to accomplish on their own. Metaplane data observability empowers data engineers to identify issues with machine learning-based data quality monitoring, enabling users to discover unknown incidents in real-time.

“Metaplane has changed the way we monitor our operational data,” said Evan Cover, Director, BI Engineering and Governance at Klaviyo. “In the past, data teams had to be reactive and fix issues after they became problems. If data teams don’t catch these problems, the business teams risk making important decisions with incorrect information. Metaplane puts us, the data team, in the driver’s seat. At Klaviyo, we now more proactively monitor data quality and fix problems before the business teams are impacted. Within a week of deploying Metaplane, we were able to more quickly catch issues for the data and business teams. This led to even greater trust across the company. I sleep a bit easier at night knowing that Metaplane has our back.”

“We believe that data will only continue to increase in importance, and as it does, additional layers of monitoring, tooling, and services will make data stacks even more efficient and crucial to all kinds of businesses, ” says Javier Soltero, who joined the Metaplane board, is a Senior Venture Partner at Felicis, and is the SVP & GM of Canva Enterprise. “Metaplane’s excellent team has built a compelling feature set that promises to drive deep technical innovation for data teams. But, what overwhelmingly made this investment decision a no-brainer was how passionate and happy Metaplane’s customers are. They love both the product and team. In my experience, these are the fundamental drivers of growth and success.”

Data teams interested in learning more about Metaplane can schedule a live demonstration at https://www.metaplane.dev/book-a-demo. Metaplane is hiring across all functions, and open positions can be found at https://www.metaplane.dev/careers.

About Metaplane
Metaplane, the leading data observability platform for data teams, ensures that companies can trust the data that powers their business. Metaplane’s best-in-class data observability platform monitors your data warehouse to catch data quality issues when they happen and help prevent incidents before they occur. In doing so, Metaplane helps avoid costly mistakes, saves data teams hours spent debugging, and fixes issues before downstream users and customers are affected. Founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 2019, Metaplane has raised capital from Felicis, Khosla Ventures, Flybridge, Y Combinator, and others, and counts as its customers leading companies, like Klaviyo, Sigma, Census, GoFundMe, Bose, Ramp, and ClickUp. To learn more or get started for free, visit https://www.metaplane.dev.

About Felicis
Founded in 2006, Felicis is a venture capital firm investing in companies reinventing core markets, as well as those creating frontier technologies. The firm was the first to offer a Founder Development pledge, providing needed resources to help founders scale themselves. Felicis focuses on early-stage investments and currently manages over $3B in capital across nine funds. The firm is an early backer of more than 49 companies valued at $1B+. More than 100 of its portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen, Credit Karma, Cruise, Fitbit, Guardant Health, Meraki, Ring, and Shopify. The firm is based in Menlo Park and San Francisco in California. Learn more at felicis.com.

Media Contact
Guru Mahendran
[email protected]
(510) 449-3805

SOURCE Metaplane

Series A funding will drive expansion of platform, which enables quick, AI-powered insights previously unavailable in the energy sector

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., March 5, 2024 — HData, a company using AI and automation to help the U.S. energy industry to file, explore, analyze, and leverage regulatory data, today announces the close of $10 Million in Series A funding, led by Buoyant Ventures, an early-stage venture fund that invests in digital solutions to combat climate change. Participating investors include Victorum Capital, Hyde Park Venture Partners, and Firebrand Ventures, among other prominent investors. Funds will be used to accelerate the expansion of the flagship HData platform with enhanced capabilities for energy industry professionals.

HData’s innovative AI-powered platform enables clients to receive, analyze and understand crucial data, empowering key strategic decision-making for energy initiatives. HData’s expanded platform will play a crucial role by amassing the largest authoritative library of structured and unstructured regulated energy data in the industry, and equipping companies with powerful AI tools that can quickly unearth intelligence that previously would have taken months to uncover, if at all. This caliber of analysis will transform energy companies’ day-to-day while also providing the critical energy transition intelligence required to solve significant regulatory and climate-related issues.

“HData stands at the digital forefront, bridging the gap between the current energy sector and its sustainable future,” said Hudson Hollister, co-founder and CEO of HData. “With our Series A funding from Buoyant Ventures and other key investors, we are set to broaden our platform’s impact, unlocking insights from industry data to make better decisions today and positioning our customers to navigate the changing industry tomorrow.”

Allison Myers, general partner and co-founder at Buoyant Ventures, emphasized HData’s transformative potential: “HData’s platform can unlock and analyze the industry data that is crucial to transitioning our energy economy efficiently,” Myers said. “Buoyant is passionate about energy transition intelligence, and we see HData’s technology as an essential tool and opportunity to help the industry and regulators address the climate crisis. We also see HData’s work as a blueprint for addressing other monumental issues and heavily regulated industries which require precise data analytics.”

This funding also spotlights HData’s work with leading energy companies, such as Southern Company, to enhance reporting, decision-making, rate case analysis, and industry benchmarking, ultimately streamlining compliance and risk management and fostering a more efficient, data-driven approach within the utility sector.

“HData’s AI-enhanced data analytics is an exciting development for the sector,” said Noel Black, SVP of Federal Regulatory Affairs at Southern Company. “At Southern Company, we are committed to serving customers with safe, reliable and affordable energy. Our commitment to net zero goals and our customers will be greatly assisted by the insights and intelligence provided by HData.”

Currently used by more than 30 regulated energy companies and supporting organizations like consultants, intervenors, and regulators, HData’s platform automates the entire regulatory data lifecycle from collection to actionable insights, allowing energy professionals to focus on strategies that drive growth and sustainability. To learn more about HData and its pioneering solutions in the energy industry, visit www.hdata.us.

About HData
HData is a technology company that enables anyone in the energy industry to file, explore, analyze, and capitalize on authoritative regulatory data. Using AI and analytics, HData’s platform transforms millions of pages of filings and dockets – previously tedious, manual, and error-prone to manage – into rich intelligence, empowering analysts, and executives to make crucial decisions with confidence. HData’s groundbreaking Regulatory AI allows users to query fully secured data libraries (including their own private documents) to get quick and accurate answers to their business-critical questions. The company was named to the GovTech 100 by Government Technology Magazine, appointed to the SAP.iO Munich Sustainability and Energy Management cohort, and recognized as the ‘Best Regulatory or Compliance Startup’ at the 2023 TLTF Summit. Visit www.hdata.us for more information.

Media Contact:
Truc Nguyen
[email protected]

SOURCE HData

Tech Founders Raise nearly $7M in Funding to Create a New Infrastructure that Allows AI Bots and Data Scrapers to Efficiently Pay for Website Content

TollBit will Benefit Publishing Industry, Tech Companies, and Consumers by Boosting Content Revenue, Protecting Quality Information, and Reducing Legal Uncertainty

NEW YORK, March 5, 2024 — TollBit founders Olivia Joslin and Toshit Panigrahi today announced the company has raised $7M for their new platform aimed at addressing the shifting economics of web content in the age of AI. TollBit allows AI bots and data scrapers to pay websites directly to license their content. The technology allows websites to monetize data and content, monitor bot traffic to sites, and easily onboard AI and LLM partners. By providing a tech infrastructure,TollBit helps to establish clear guardrails to reduce the legal uncertainty of scraping. The system relies on tokens that are issued and validated by the platform to ensure every scrape is authorized and logged.

“We are seeing a fundamental shift in the economics of the Internet: as more consumers turn to AI to meet their needs, less eyeballs will reach websites. This trend inadvertently undercuts the financial health of the publishers and websites that reliable AI needs to thrive. AI agents and LLMs are only as good as the information they can access so this poses a massive threat to the entire ecosystem. TollBit is building the infrastructure to help power the Internet in this new era by ensuring publishers and content creators can be fairly paid for their work,” said Joslin and Panigrahi.

TollBit has raised initial funding from top investors with ties across digital media, tech, and AI. The round was led by Sunflower Capital and includes participation from AIX, Lerer Hippeau, Operator Collective, and Liquid 2 Ventures. Among other things, the funding will be used for the continued expansion of TollBit’s tech team.

Researchers have already raised concerns that AI companies may be running out of high quality content and data and many publishers see language models and web-enabled AI tools as an existential threat to website traffic.

“Modern AI agents rely on a steady stream of fresh and high-quality content and data to provide users with trustworthy and timely answers. We believe TollBit will be a key part of the future AI stack, providing a mechanism to incentivize and compensate publishers for the content and data they produce,” said Anthony Goldbloom, Partner at AIX.

“This disruption is coming for every industry. Any company that relies on traffic to a website or app will need to rethink their approach. User-generated and aggregated content sites will soon be impacted as AI products begin to be able to take actions on end-users’ behalf,” added Liu Jiang, Founder of Sunflower Capital.

“Our fund and leadership have spent decades managing and investing in legacy and digital media businesses, so we’ve seen the enormous impact technology has had on the sector,” said Ben Lerer, Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau. “The incredible power of AI promises tremendous benefits to society, but we need to act swiftly to coalesce around a sustainable content model that satisfies both the supply and demand sides of the market. If we fail to establish systems-wide guardrails and incentivize rich content creation, the entire system will collapse – it’s the start of a sinkhole and we’re all at risk of falling in. TollBit’s solution benefits all parties, protecting world-class journalism, creative content, accurate data, and LLMs’ ability to mature and improve.”

TollBit is currently onboarding publishers to the platform. Learn more at https://tollbit.com/

About TollBit
TollBit offers AI bots and data scrapers an easy and compliant way to compensate websites directly for content. The platform seeks to address the new economics of content creation in the AI era by reducing the legal uncertainties of scraping and protecting the health of the entire content ecosystem.

About Sunflower
Sunflower Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with foundational infrastructure companies building for the modern enterprise. We specialize in B2B products with technical moats in categories like data and machine learning, developer tooling, cybersecurity, frontier tech, and more. Sunflower was founded by solo GP Liu Jiang, who has invested in companies including Athelas, Clay, DBT, Hadrian, Retool, Semgrep, Temporal, Vercel, Verkada and Warp.

About AIX
AIX Ventures is an AI-native, early-stage venture capital firm, founded in 2021 by Richard Socher and Shaun Johnson, that includes some of the world’s top AI practitioners: Pieter Abbeel, Anthony Goldbloom, and Christopher Manning. AIX Ventures invests in founders who are developing industry-changing AI technologies. Its portfolio includes HuggingFace, Perplexity, Weights & Biases, You.com, Chroma, and others. AIX Ventures is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About Lerer Hippeau
Lerer Hippeau is an early-stage venture capital firm founded and operated in New York City. Our portfolio includes more than 400 leading enterprise and consumer businesses including Zipline, Guideline, MIRROR, Blockdaemon, K Health, Warby Parker, and ZenBusiness. We’re experienced operators who invest early and stay in our founders’ corners as they build iconic companies. Learn more at lererhippeau.com.

About Liquid 2
Liquid 2 is building the most valuable ecosystem at seed.  Founded in 2016 by Joe Montana, our ecosystem is defined by a network of deeply rooted connections with our founding advisors (Ron Conway, Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham), top-tier co-investors, and a portfolio of over 800 technology companies representing over $100B of combined enterprise value.  Liquid 2 invests $250K – $1M in pre-seed and seed rounds and our portfolio includes Gitlab, Rippling, Jasper AI, Retool, Anduril, Applied Intuition, Remote, Solugen, Astranis, Stoke Space, Rappi, WhatNot, Modern Treasury, Athelas and many more.

About Operator Collective
Operator Collective is an early-stage B2B venture firm and community backed by tech’s most exceptional operators and top-tier institutions. OpCo brings together leaders who are critical to a startup’s success but largely absent from the venture ecosystem – senior operating executives from diverse backgrounds who have built the world’s most admired tech companies. Our proprietary platform enables portfolio founders to efficiently tap into 200+ active Operator LPs to help companies as they build and scale, reach potential customers, and connect with talent networks for potential executives, board members, and industry leaders.

For more information contact: press@tollbit.com

SOURCE TollBit

Led by veteran silicon entrepreneurs, Taalas’ direct-to-silicon foundry will pave the way to a 1000x improvement in the cost of AI, with a single chip able to outperform a small GPU data center.

TORONTO, March 5, 2024 – Taalas Inc., an innovator in AI and silicon, is pleased to announce today that it has exited stealth mode and raised $50 million dollars over two rounds of funding led by Pierre Lamond and Quiet Capital.

Over the last year, AI has undergone a large scale productization and has already begun reshaping the world. Concurrently, deep learning models have become the world’s most demanding computational workload, unsustainably capital intensive, power hungry, and GPU constrained.

“Artificial intelligence is like electrical power – an essential good that will need to be made available to all. Commoditizing AI requires a 1000x improvement in computational power and efficiency, a goal that is unattainable via the current incremental approaches. The path forward is to realize that we should not be simulating intelligence on general purpose computers, but casting intelligence directly into silicon. Implementing deep learning models in silicon is the straightest path to sustainable AI,” said Ljubisa Bajic, Taalas’ CEO.

Taalas is developing an automated flow for rapidly implementing all types of deep learning models (Transformers, SSMs, Diffusers, MoEs, etc.) in silicon. Proprietary innovations enable one of its chips to hold an entire large AI model without requiring external memory. The efficiency of hard-wired computation enables a single chip to outperform a small GPU data center, opening the way to a 1000x improvement in the cost of AI.

“We believe the Taalas ‘direct-to-silicon’ foundry unlocks three fundamental breakthroughs: dramatically resetting the cost structure of AI today, viably enabling the next 10-100x growth in model size, and efficiently running powerful models locally on any consumer device. This is perhaps the most important mission in computing today for the future scalability of AI. And we are proud to support this remarkable n-of-1 team as they do it,” said Matt Humphrey, Partner at Quiet Capital.

The company is taping out its first large language model chip in the third quarter of 2024 and planning to make it available to early customers in the first quarter of 2025.

“Making chips is a difficult and risky endeavour in which success requires experience, ingenuity, and persistence. Taalas’ founders have produced numerous cutting-edge chips and systems. Their track record in the industry is second to none,” said Pierre Lamond, a legend in the field, whose work across Fairchild, National Semiconductor, Sequoia, and many other organizations, helped lay the foundation of the semiconductor industry.

Taalas was founded by Ljubisa Bajic, Drago Ignjatovic, and Lejla Bajic. Prior to co-founding Taalas, Ljubisa founded Tenstorrent in 2016. Drago and Lejla joined Tenstorrent soon after as early engineering leaders. The team has spent decades collectively working together on a long list of AI processors, GPUs, and CPUs across Tenstorrent, AMD, and NVIDIA.

SOURCE Taalas Inc.

READING, England, March 5, 2024 — OQC, a global leader in quantum computing-as-a-service (QCaaS), today announced that Chevron Technology Ventures, part of Chevron Corporation (CVX: NYSE), has joined its $100m Series B funding round.

Quantum computing in the energy market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 37.9%, owing to the increasing demand for efficient optimisation and simulation across the sector^[1]. Chevron’s investment marks a significant move by a supermajor into the rapidly evolving field of quantum computing.

“OQC’s development of the quantum computer has the potential to change the information processing landscape by merging the bounds of engineering and physics,” said Jim Gable, Vice President, Innovation and President of Technology Ventures at Chevron. “This is the latest investment from our Core Energy Fund, which focuses on high-tech, high-growth startups and breakthrough technologies that could improve Chevron’s core oil and gas business performance as well as create new opportunities for growth.”

OQC recently launched OQC Toshiko, an upgradable 32-qubit platform and the world’s first Enterprise Ready Quantum Computing Platform. As the first company in the world to integrate quantum computing into commercial data centres, OQC is bringing quantum out of the lab and into the data centre. The company aims to make it possible to offer hybrid computing, integrated quantum and high-performance computing, to the market.

A quantum future for energy
OQC’s technology provides several potential groundbreaking opportunities for the energy sector, including  the development and optimisation of catalysts and the efficiency of transportation and distribution networks. Quantum is anticipated to accelerate the energy industry’s discovery and development of new materials through the simulation of complex molecules to lower carbon products.

To realise this future, the energy industry requires secure, accessible and powerful quantum computing that is integrated with existing high-performance computing. Prior to the launch of OQC Toshiko, quantum computers were only available in labs, making secure access for companies and integration with existing high-performance computing the largest barriers to wider business adoption of this groundbreaking technology.

Spearheading industry-leading R&D
OQC recently announced that SBI Investment, Japan’s premier venture capital fund, is leading OQC’s $100m Series B raise. Existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), Lansdowne Partners, and OTIF, acted by manager Oxford Investment Consultants (OIC), are also participating.

The ongoing round is the UK’s largest ever Series B in quantum computing enabling industry-leading R&D that could pave the way to quantum advantage and furthers OQC’s ability to bring next generation platforms of hundreds of qubits to businesses globally.

Commenting on the news, Ilana Wisby, Chief Executive Officer at OQC, said: “Chevron’s investment marks a significant milestone in harnessing quantum computing for the energy sector. We’re excited to drive innovation and efficiency in exploration and renewables and pioneer enterprise-ready quantum in the energy sector.”

About Chevron Technology Ventures
Chevron Technology Ventures identifies and invests in externally developed technologies and new business solutions with the potential to enhance the way Chevron produces and delivers affordable, reliable, and ever-cleaner energy. CTV has more than two decades of being the primary on-ramp for external innovation into Chevron. For more information, visitwww.chevron.com/technology/technology-ventures.

About OQC
OQC is a global leader in quantum computing-as-a-service, building a brighter future by providing enterprise-ready quantum solutions that seamlessly integrate into digital infrastructures and customer workflows. Its award-winning and world-first integration of quantum computing into colocation facilities removes technical, financial, and geographical barriers to quantum; offering every enterprise a chance to seize a competitive edge.

Prior to Series B, OQC raised $52 million including the largest Series A in quantum in the UK at that time. In 2023, OQC’s team grew to over 100, attracting talent from across the globe. The team has built and deployed OQC Toshiko platforms to colocation data centres expanding its operations in the UK, Japan and Spain.

OQC Toshiko is the world’s first and only enterprise ready platform: a powerful next generation system, deployed to commercial data-centres, enabling businesses to securely tap into ground-breaking technology from anywhere in the world. This new technology is now in private preview and coming soon on public cloud and data centre fabric. For more information, visit our website: www.oxfordquantumcircuits.com.

^[1] UnivDatos Market Insights

SOURCE Oxford Quantum Circuits

Family-owned SixSibs Capital provides funding to meet the need for innovative talent during pivotal time in industry

FORT LEE, N.J. and LONDON, March 5, 2024 — Stevenson Search Partners, a global life sciences executive search firm, announced today that it received a significant long-term investment from SixSibs Capital, a Milwaukee-based family-owned private investment company, to advance its expansion into a total talent solution company for the global life sciences market.

Stevenson Search Partners is an established and trusted executive search advisor servicing the global biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical technology, contract research organization (CRO) and contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) sectors.

“Stevenson’s long-term focus on quality, culture, diversity and partnership has been our driving force in providing leading-edge talent and services to our partners across the globe,” said Adam Bloom, President, Stevenson Search Partners. “We are thrilled with the opportunity to build on our foundation and grow our business with the support and collaboration of SixSibs Capital. Our ability to scale our capabilities is an important next step in our commitment to supporting the remarkable life science professionals who are dedicated to advancing medicines and improving lives.”

This new partnership comes during an important time as the life sciences industry faces an emergence of tech bio, precision medicine and digital developments with a rising demand for advancements in science technology and biopharma innovation. This increased need coupled with an aging population and a shortage of innovative, experienced life science executives is propelling the urgency to find and develop the best and brightest leaders.

“Our investment in Stevenson is timely and strategic, driven by the pressing call for innovation in the biopharma industry,” said SixSibs Capital President and CEO Jack Wigdale. “With long-term healthcare spending on the rise and a need for skilled human resources, Stevenson’s expertise in life sciences talent acquisition, combined with their deep network, positions them perfectly to meet this challenge. By providing additional investment in its people, process and technology, we aim to accelerate Stevenson’s growth in executive search, empowering them to leverage advancements and meet the evolving needs of the industry.”

With this investment and momentum, Stevenson Search Partners is positioned to grow in the U.S., United Kingdom and Europe. While maintaining its core values, the company aims to expand its services in talent development to continue to foster innovation and growth in the life sciences sector. 

About Stevenson Search Partners
With more 40 years of experience, Stevenson Search Partners is a trusted executive search advisor servicing the global biotechnology, pharmaceutical, medical technology, health technology and CRO/CDMO sectors, with offices in the U.S. and the U.K. Dedicated to finding executive talent who will drive innovation across the life sciences industry, Stevenson’s expertise includes C-Suite, Research, Clinical, Development, Commercial Manufacturing and Corporate functions, and working with companies ranging from start-ups and academic spinouts to large pharma clients. Stevenson provides a unique collaborative, long-term approach to its clients with a global network and strategic talent mapping and pipelining, and competitive analysis services. Stevenson Search Partners is committed to actively supporting, strengthening and promoting diversity — to its clients, in its own organization, and across the life sciences ecosystem. For more information, visit stevensonsearch.com.

About SixSibs Capital
SixSibs Capital is a family-owned private investment company based in Milwaukee, WI. SixSibs focuses on buy-and-hold investment opportunities, leveraging its patient capital base to partner with management teams to execute their long-term growth plans. The team manages a diverse portfolio, including Private Equity, Venture Capital and Real Estate investments, to create long-term value for its investors and management teams.

Media Contact:
Robin Traum
[email protected]

SOURCE Stevenson Search Partners

“We are deeply appreciative of the trust and support received from such a high–quality investor base. We’re particularly proud that the vast majority of our long-term Limited Partners re-upped with us and were joined by a who’s who of new LPs,” said Carter Weiss, Partner of Silas Capital.

With Fund II, Silas Capital will continue to focus on $3 million to $15+ million investments in high-growth, and typically profitable, consumer brands between $5 million and $50+ million in revenue. This “emerging growth” strategy resides uniquely between venture capital and private equity, which has proven to be an ever-inefficient segment of the market within the consumer space.

Brian Thorne, Partner, said, “Frank, Carter and I have unique, complementary backgrounds that together bring expertise across e-commerce, wholesale, and retail that differentiates our partnership. We’ve seen great success focusing on brands with distinctive propositions, authentic founder stories and unfair advantages that allow for more efficient customer acquisition – especially when across an omni-channel distribution strategy.”

Drawing upon its extensive experience as an active, lead investor in minority transactions, and as former entrepreneurs themselves, the Silas team helps stand-out brands accelerate growth, execute operationally and recruit talent. This fund will continue to attract unique and proprietary investments in beauty, personal care, wellness, apparel, home, and food & beverage… Silas Capital portfolio companies include ILIA Beauty (sold to Famille C), Boll & Branch (sold to L Catterton), Lord Jones (sold to Cronos), Bare Snacks (sold to PepsiCo), Makeup by Mario, Hello Cake, Vacation, Wonderbelly, Sakara Life, Bellroy, HATCH, Herbivore Botanicals and many others.

“In addition to our extensive network to support our portfolio, what sets Silas Capital apart is our deep consumer expertise and a record of successfully investing across multiple economic cycles,” said Frank Lin, Partner. “Many of the shifting consumer behaviors we’ve seen through the pandemic will continue to endure, including the convergence of e-commerce with physical retail, growth in health and wellness, and conscious consumption.”

Morrison Cohen serves as legal counsel for the Fund. Silas Capital did not use a placement agent.

About Silas Capital:

We’ve been there too — Silas Capital is a consumer growth equity and venture capital firm formed in 2012 by founders and principal investors with a long record of success across e-commerce, wholesale, and retail.

The firm’s flagship funds, Silas Capital I & II, specialize in partnering with growth stage consumer businesses between $5 and $50+ million in revenue that are capital efficient and on a clear path to profitably as lead investor with check sizes of $3 to $15+ million. Silas is one of the few experienced firms specializing in “emerging” growth stage consumer businesses, having pioneered the segment.

Additionally, Silas looks to invest up to 10% of its capital into seed and early-stage brands with smaller passive checks under $500K through Silas Ventures, the firm’s early-stage venture platform comprised of two micro funds, Silas Ventures I & II.

For more information visit www.silascapital.com

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Silas Capital
Frank Lin
info@silascapital.com

SOURCE Silas Capital

GP Investment Represents Daraja’s First Following Launch of Seeding Platform in 2023

NEW YORK, March 5, 2024 — Daraja Capital (“Daraja”), an investment and advisory firm providing seed capital to new, diversely owned, private fund managers and independent sponsors, today announced that it has made a strategic investment in Serac Ventures (“Serac”), an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in U.S.-based technology companies. This transaction will provide Serac with the capital to launch its first fund vehicle and accelerate the firm’s growth.

Serac is led by Kevin Moore, who serves as the Founder and General Partner. Based in Oklahoma City, Serac plans to invest in the future of work (SaaS), financial services (fintech) and commerce enablement sectors within the technology industry. Daraja will provide strategic capital and counsel to Serac while ensuring support across business leadership and management, branding and marketing, team development and operations.

The investment is Daraja’s first GP investment since launching its seeding platform in 2023 and is reflective of the firm’s mission to bridge the gaps in capital and connections that exist for diverse entrepreneurs and fund managers raising funds for the first time.

“Our decision to invest in a strategic partnership with Serac is multifaceted. Kevin embodies the qualities we seek in a general partner – he is a person of integrity, possesses a distinctive perspective, has a strong conviction in and passion for his markets and has a long-term orientation,” said Raudline Etienne, Founder and CEO of Daraja Capital. “His investment thesis and vision for leading his firm are compelling, and our partnership enables us to position Serac for accelerated growth at a pivotal moment in venture investing.”

“Working with Daraja Capital provides Serac Ventures with a high degree of credibility in the marketplace that would ordinarily take years to build,” said Kevin Moore, Founder and Managing Partner of Serac. “Raudline brings a wealth of investment experience and connections in the private markets industry, and we are super excited to start our partnership with her and the entire Daraja team.”

Moore has 18 years of experience in finance and private market investing. Prior to Serac, Moore was a Partner at Spur Capital Partners where he led investments in top-tier, early-stage technology and life science venture capital fund managers and select co-investment/direct investments. He also served on the investment committee, where he led (or co-led) the deployment of $129 million in investment commitments. Prior to Spur, Moore was the Director of Angel Investments and Venture Advisor at i2E, a seed-stage investment firm, where he sourced and led investments in early-stage companies in the biotech, materials, consumer, and SaaS sectors. He has served on the advisory boards of prominent venture capital funds, and successfully raised capital from institutional investors globally.

About Daraja Capital
Daraja Capital is a private investment and advisory firm providing seed capital to new, diversely owned, private fund managers and independent sponsors. Launched in 2023 by Raudline Etienne, Daraja focuses on bridging access and knowledge gaps and celebrating the brilliance, creativity and talent that is often overlooked across private markets. Daraja aims to provide flexible capital and takes a bespoke, aligned partnership approach to driving successful outcomes for its managers and investors. To learn more, visit: www.darajacapital.com.

About Serac Ventures
Serac Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm backing founders building the next generation of global technology companies. Serac targets companies at the seed stage, generally writing checks between $500K – $750K. Core verticals include fintech, SaaS, commerce enablement, and emerging sectors like the future of work and the creator economy. Learn more at www.seracventures.vc.

Media Contacts:
Prosek Partners 
Pro-DarajaCapital@prosek.com 

SOURCE Daraja Capital