Generative-AI powered platform built on mesh architecture accelerates security teams’ ability to make risk-based decisions by 80%

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 26, 2023 — Cyclops, a contextual cybersecurity search platform, today announced its emergence from stealth with $6.4M in seed funding. The funding round was led by Merlin Ventures, Insight Partners, Tal Ventures and toDay Ventures, with participation from CrowdStrike’s strategic investment vehicle, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund. Celebrated cybersecurity veterans Mike Fey, CEO of Island.io; Dan Amiga, CTO of Island.io; Ofer Smadari, CEO of Torq; and Eyal Gruner, CEO of Cynet, also participated in the round. 

Founded by cybersecurity veterans Eran Zilberman (CEO), Elay Gueta (CTO) and Biran Franco (CPO), Cyclops offers an intuitive, user-friendly search engine powered by generative AI to answer critical and timely questions about the state of an organization’s security posture, without the need for forensics or SIEM expertise.

“Today, organizations struggle to find answers to the most complex questions across the tools in their security stack, and get simple answers on business impact,” said Eran Zilberman, Cyclops CEO. “With Cyclops, these days are over. Our main purpose is to empower security teams to proactively defend against cyber threats and prioritize addressing critical vulnerabilities with the necessary contextual data. The platform generates simple and clear responses just like Google Search or ChatGPT, providing relevant security information to help security teams make better, faster decisions.”

For over a decade, the industry has seen organizations struggling to understand and manage security data, both on premises and cloud-based, across dozens of disparate and overlapping security tools – stifling productivity, visibility and the ability to prioritize security decisions and actions that matter most.

“One of the primary challenges faced by cybersecurity managers is staying abreast of the changes occurring in their work environment on a daily basis,” said Shay Michel, Managing Partner, Merlin Ventures. “With the introduction of a new security search engine, they can now obtain clear answers and receive valuable recommendations. This technology has emerged as a top priority for most CISOs today, and we are proud of our investment in a company that we firmly believe will spearhead the market in this domain. Moreover, as a cyber fund, we actively seek out companies that disrupt existing categories, and Cyclops is poised to revolutionize how we approach and combat cyber-attacks.”

The Cyclops platform is built on a cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA), and powered by generative AI to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience. Security teams can quickly and easily query Cyclops through a natural language search bar to gain meaningful insights about their environment and address vulnerabilities, security incidents and governance, risk and compliance scenarios. Cyclops enables security teams to get the most value out of their existing technology stack, improve mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to response (MTTR) by 80%, and help CISOs more effectively manage their cybersecurity strategy.

“Drawing inspiration from Google’s groundbreaking revolution in contextual search over two decades ago, the Cyclops team is poised to make a similar seismic impact in the cybersecurity realm,” remarked Mike Fey, investor and CEO of Island.io. “In a landscape plagued by alert fatigue and an ever-expanding array of security tools, Cyclops serves as the all-seeing eye, providing security teams with a unified and intuitive solution to tackle their most intricate questions. By harnessing the power of generative AI-driven search, Cyclops paves the way for a new era of data consumption and analysis, empowering security teams to navigate complexities with unprecedented efficiency and foresight.”

Cyclops’ founders have decades of experience building and delivering high-end cybersecurity products in the domains of SIEM, asset management and XDR, with particular expertise in product development, security strategy and sales. Cyclops CEO Eran Zilberman’s extensive career has included roles such as regional sales director of RSA and general manager of the cyber security division at We Ankor. Elay Gueta, CTO of Cyclops, most recently served in the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel as an R&D group leader, served in the Israel Defense Forces as a security researcher and software developer, and led security research efforts at Cynet Security and Cellebrite. Cyclops CPO Biran Franco previously led product development and management at Axonius, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and SentinelOne, and also served as Company Commanding Officer in the Israel Defense Forces.

“To combat ever-increasing modern, sophisticated cyber attacks, organizations have turned to numerous discrete tools, inadvertently creating one of the most prominent security challenges – security silos,” said Gur Talpaz, vice president corporate development and ventures at CrowdStrike. “We’re excited to support Cyclops through CrowdStrike’s Falcon Fund because of its innovative approach to enhancing organizational security. Cyclops’ platform enables collaboration across tools and controls, eliminating silos, and drastically reducing individual security incidents.”

The funding will help scale the company to meet demands from its growing customer base, hire more developers to continue product innovation and expand capabilities, and fuel its go-to-market strategy. Cyclops is generally available now and already serves existing customers in the fintech, insurance, hi-tech, and manufacturing verticals by significantly improving their efficiency around risk validation, vulnerability prioritization, posture management and compliance monitoring.

For more information on how to reap the most value from your security data, contact [email protected] or visit www.cyclops.security. 

About Cyclops
Cyclops is the first Contextual Search Platform for cybersecurity. Powered by the cybersecurity mesh architecture (CSMA) approach and Generative AI, Cyclops allows security practitioners and security teams, on any level, to ask any question about their security data in natural language – and receive accurate, actionable answers. For more information, visit www.cyclops.security.

About Merlin Ventures
Merlin Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Merlin Group, a company with more than 25 years of success bringing technologies to the U.S. Government market. Merlin Ventures rapidly scales visionary companies and introduces disruptive solutions designed to help enterprises address today’s most critical cybersecurity challenges. Its unique business model combines robust infrastructure and capital, technical cybers advisory and engineering, market readiness acceleration, and deep-rooted customer and market relationships to enable its portfolio to accelerate growth and flourish. Learn more at merlin.vc.

MEDIA CONTACTS
Emily Ashley
Lumina Communications
[email protected] 

SOURCE Cyclops

On heels of recent acquisition, Very Good Ventures further expands its full-service strategic consulting firm and leadership position in Flutter to meet increasing demand for expertise

NEW YORK, July 26, 2023 — Very Good Ventures (VGV), the leading full-service Flutter consulting firm, today announced it has expanded its Series A round with $3.4 million from Celesta Capital for a total raise of $6.6 million. Driven by increasing client demand due to Flutter’s popularity, the funding will be used to scale up VGV’s service to a wider variety of clients and to deliver high-quality contributions throughout the Flutter ecosystem.

The expansion comes on the heels of its recent CreateThrive acquisition and is expected to support unprecedented demand for VGV services as Flutter skyrockets in popularity. Founded in 2018, Very Good Ventures is already cash flow positive, growing revenues 235 percent during the past two years.

Flutter is an open source UI toolkit from Google that enables developers to build apps for multiple platforms all at once from a single codebase – a significant advantage over legacy approaches to native software development. Since its first release in 2017, Flutter has grown into the most popular cross-platform mobile framework used by software developers globally. The number of published Flutter apps has doubled in just the last year, increasing from 500,000 to more than one million today.

“An investment in Very Good Ventures is an investment in the next generation of app development,” said David Goldman, Partner at Celesta Capital. “Cross-platform frameworks are the future and Flutter is outpacing similar cross-platform frameworks because of its superior performance and developer engagement. VGV is a clear leader in the Flutter ecosystem and is driving its maturity through high-quality client delivery and major contributions to open source software. It’s a natural move for us to double down on the company driving so much of this growth.”

With a founding team that has worked with Flutter longer than anyone, Very Good Ventures provides unique levels of expertise to help major brands transition to and maintain Flutter. Very Good Ventures leaders created the first-ever commercial Flutter app for the global musical phenomenon Hamilton, in 2017, in addition to having built the first public Flutter apps for desktop and web. The success of the Hamilton mobile app led to the creation of Very Good Ventures, now partnering with companies that include Google, Toyota, American Airlines, Dow Jones, Betterment, Keller Williams and others. Very Good Ventures today provides world-class product strategy, design, and management services as a full service partner.

“This new investment from Celesta Capital is evidence of both Very Good Ventures’ success and of the rapid growth and vibrancy of the Flutter community and ecosystem,” said David DeRemer, CEO at Very Good Ventures. “We’ve been contributing to Flutter long before we founded Very Good Ventures and continue to help define standards and build open source tools that are used by millions. This collaboration is how we’re able to both support our favorite technical community and achieve outsized results for our clients.”

Very Good Ventures recently announced its acquisition of CreateThrive, a mobile and web development firm that has emerged as a leader in the Flutter community in Latin America. The acquisition has resulted in the world’s largest Flutter consultancy team with a focus on driving high quality software solutions, designing beautiful and useful products and deepening its impact on the Flutter community.

To learn more about Very Good Ventures or Flutter, please visit https://verygood.ventures/

About Very Good Ventures
Very Good Ventures is the leading Flutter design and development consultancy working to empower software excellence for any platform. VGV works with the biggest companies to design, build, and scale successful apps using Flutter, the UI toolkit from Google that enables developers to build apps for any screen from a single codebase. VGV’s global team includes a presence in the United States, LATAM, and Europe. For more information, visit: http://verygood.ventures

Media Contact
Ray George
[email protected]
650-922-3825

SOURCE Very Good Ventures

Series seed extended to unite companies’ efforts in bringing Identity and Access Management to enterprise workloads

SILVER SPRING, Md., July 26, 2023 — Aembit, the Workload Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform that lets DevOps and security teams discover, manage, enforce, and audit access between workloads, today announced a strategic investment by Okta Ventures. Okta’s investment is an extension of Aembit’s previously announced seed funding led by Ballistic Ventures and Ten Eleven Ventures. In addition to funding, Aembit will work with Okta on a technical integration and a joint go-to-market strategy. This relationship will bring Okta customers a complete strategy for managing their entire portfolio of identities: user, customer, and workload.

“I firmly believe that we’re in the age of identity, and it’s creating a significant change in how applications are built and secured,” said David Goldschlag, CEO and co-founder of Aembit. “Just like IAM hardens access for users and allows security-minded professionals to be more strategic about their posture, Workload IAM allows security, DevOps, and development teams to accelerate growth and innovation while more easily managing the risk in distributed applications. We are excited to be partnering with Okta Ventures to bring Aembit’s Workload IAM approach to the enterprise.”

Enterprise applications are becoming more distributed, and they include software the enterprise develops, along with databases, cloud APIs, and APIs from customers and partners. Despite this complexity, many companies today still rely on secrets and secret managers for workload-to-workload access. But those secrets are brittle, hard to manage, and don’t allow you to create, enforce, and audit workload access policies. Furthermore, while workloads have identities just like users do, the technical means and workflows to manage them are radically different.

To solve this, Aembit has pioneered the first SaaS service for Workload Identity and Access Management (IAM). Aembit provides the ability to identify workloads based on a range of characteristics and define policies that determine their access rights. Aembit also eliminates static workload identity secrets, alleviates the need for developers to code workload-to-workload auth, and makes it easy for DevOps to centralize visibility and control. Aembit lets DevOps manage access, not secrets. 

“Both Okta and Aembit have taken an identity-first view of the world and consider modern identity and access management as a fundamental capability for enterprises to secure their data, their business, and by extension their customers,” said Austin Arensberg, senior director from Okta Ventures. “Workload Identity is the next frontier in that challenge, and we look forward to jointly securing all the identities that a business deals with across its organization.” 

Enterprises can learn more and begin using Aembit for free at www.aembit.io.

Contacts

Okta:
Kyrk Storer
kyrk.storer@okta.com

Aembit:
Apurva Dave
[email protected]aembit.io

About Aembit

Aembit is the Workload Identity Platform that lets DevOps and security teams discover, manage, enforce, and audit access between workloads. Aembit provides seamless and secure access from your workloads to the services they depend on, like APIs, databases, and cloud resources, while simplifying application development and delivery. DevOps teams can secure their workloads with Aembit for free at aembit.io. Follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter.

About Okta Ventures

Okta Ventures (www.okta.com/okta-ventures) invests and supports companies creating cutting edge technologies focused on identity, security, privacy. As the leading identity cloud, Okta Ventures provides unique access to Okta’s extensive APIs, technologies and engineering expertise while supporting portfolio companies’ GTM and brand awareness.

SOURCE Aembit

Goodwater’s integrated services help early and growth stage founders and management teams win massive consumer markets

BURLINGAME, Calif., July 25, 2023 — Goodwater, the largest venture capital fund exclusively focused on consumer tech investments, announced today that it has raised over $1 billion across its family of early and growth stage funds. With this raise, Goodwater accelerates its mission to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. With a clear consumer tech focus and global reach, the firm has backed 79 early and growth stage startups in 19 countries around the world. Founded in 2014 by industry veterans Chi-Hua Chien and Eric Kim, the firm now manages over $3.3B in committed capital and continues to scale as much of the venture industry is slowing.

“During a tough time in the market we are ready to support the very best early and growth stage consumer tech startups with $1 billion of fresh capital. We appreciate the support and trust placed in us by our Limited Partners. This new capital will fuel our global investing approach and strengthen our position as the best consumer tech investing platform in the world,” said Chi-Hua Chien, Co-Founder & Managing Partner.

“With our laser focus on consumer tech, global portfolio of companies building market-leading digital consumer utilities, and software-enabled platform, we are energized to champion the success of the most promising consumer tech startups around the world,” added Eric Kim, Co-Founder & Managing Partner. “We look forward to supporting ambitious teams building transformative digital solutions to address the needs of 8 billion humans who need better access to housing, healthcare, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment.”

Proven Consumer Technology Expertise

Goodwater has established itself as a leader in consumer technology venture capital with a proven track record of successful investments. The firm’s global portfolio spans a number of the most impactful consumer tech startups of the past decade, including social media company musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance, China / US), fintech super app Toss (S. Korea), ethnic grocery eCommerce leader Weee! (California), fintech disruptor Stash (New York), global live entertainment platform Fever (Spain / UK), neighborhood social app Karrot (S. Korea), British neobank Monzo (UK), 10-minute delivery standout Getir (Turkey), and health tech innovator Everly Health (Texas). The firm’s partners also made early investments in Coupang, Facebook, Kakao, Spotify, and Twitter before launching Goodwater. For founders building a consumer tech company, Goodwater’s sector focus provides a distinct advantage in the market with proprietary data and services.

“We have been fortunate to partner with Goodwater since our early days and they have continued to provide tremendous value to us as we’ve scaled. Their consumer tech expertise has been invaluable as we’ve navigated growth from an early stage startup to a multi-billion dollar company. Goodwater is truly a global firm that uniquely appreciates the consumer tech opportunity for companies like Toss,” said SG Lee, Founder and CEO of Toss based in Seoul, South Korea.

Unique Global Approach

Goodwater’s consumer-only sector focus enables the firm to take a systematic global approach to investing. The firm actively participates in key consumer tech innovation hubs across North America, Europe, North Asia, SE Asia, and Latin America, leveraging a global perspective to share best practices across the portfolio and help companies win their markets. The global community of Goodwater CEOs and leaders gathers regularly in person and online to share best practices via Masterclasses taught by functional experts and small group squads designed to boost each company’s performance in specific focus areas including customer acquisition, conversion, engagement, retention, and monetization. In the last year alone, over 1,400 Goodwater founders and executives attended or viewed the firm’s Masterclasses over 5,000 times.

Goodwater’s team has invested in and operated global consumer tech giants like Coupang, Twitter, Kakao, Facebook, Activision Blizzard, Toss, and Spotify, uniquely positioning the firm to invest in the best global opportunities and help entrepreneurs win in large, competitive markets. Goodwater provides tactical, hands-on support to companies solving problems common to consumer-tech startups including:

• How do I acquire customers?
• How do I engage them deeply in my product or service?
• How do I retain those customers and keep them happy over time?
• How do I build a healthy and scalable business through eCommerce, services, or ads?

Software-Enabled, Platform Approach

Since its inception, Goodwater has invested heavily in proprietary software that enables the firm to identify and invest in the best companies and help to accelerate their growth. The firm’s software-enabled platform, powered by proprietary insights on consumer tech trends, enables the firm to track millions of products globally and understand how consumers are adopting new technologies. Its team of engineers, data scientists, and product managers builds software tools to help founders boost performance across their most important KPIs.

Goodwater has 79 venture and growth investments and the world’s largest dedicated consumer tech seed portfolio with over 600 seed deals across more than 50 countries. In addition to Founders Chi-Hua Chien and Eric Kim, Goodwater’s investing partnership includes Coddy Johnson, Hatim Khety, Jin Oh, and Vivek Subramanian.

To join the largest consumer tech platform dedicated to serving founders and teams globally, reach out at [email protected]. Founders of seed-stage companies can apply to Goodwater’s Genesis program directly through our website.

About Goodwater

The mission of Goodwater Capital is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. We are 100% focused on consumer tech, an area that we define simply as apps and services adopted directly by consumers.

Goodwater invests in consumer tech companies across early and growth stages. We manage more than $3 billion of committed capital and have the flexibility to invest anywhere from seed stage up to $100M+ into companies. We have been honored to invest in and help build successful companies including Chegg (CHGG), Coupang (CPNG), Facebook (FB), Kakao, Monzo, Musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance), Stash, Spotify (SPOT), Toss, Twitter (TWTR), Weee!, and Xendit.

Goodwater is the largest venture capital firm exclusively focused on consumer tech investments. With a global investment approach, the firm identifies and invests in the most promising consumer technology startups worldwide. Goodwater’s deep industry expertise, extensive network, and data-driven approach allow it to provide unparalleled support to entrepreneurs, guiding them towards becoming market-leading companies. For more information, visit www.goodwatercap.com.

Media Contact
Kelsey Cullen, KCPR
[email protected]
650.438.1063

This post is provided solely for infor­ma­tional purposes and should not be relied upon as investment advice or construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or a solic­i­ta­tion of interest to invest in any pooled investment vehicle managed by Goodwater Capital, LLC (“Goodwater”). Investments referenced are not repre­sen­ta­tive of all prior Goodwater investments and there can be no assurance that the investments referenced will be profitable or that future investments will have similar char­ac­ter­is­tics or results. This post may contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncer­tain­ties, actual results may differ materially from expec­ta­tions or projections made or implicated in such statements. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

SOURCE Goodwater

The gaming studio announced a seed round raise of $5.5 million

LOS ANGELES, July 25, 2023 — Shima Capital today announces its investment in Pixion Games, an innovative gaming studio. Shima Capital and founder Yida Gao were joined in the round by Avalanche Foundation’s Blizzard Fund, Eldridge, Merit Circle, ReadyPlayerDAO, VGC, Zee Prime, Mechanism Capital, GSR, Misfits Gaming, and others. The funds will go towards scaling the development of Pixion Games’ flagship game, Fableborne.

Fableborne is a mobile, action role-playing game that combines strategic base building with allowing players to gather blockchain-based in-game assets. Players of the game can also compete in Pixion League, the studio’s in-app tournament system. With the founders hailing from such companies as Konami, Gala Games, Ubisoft, and Sony, the project is set up for long term success.

“We love investing in a strong founding team, and the Pixion team already has a track record of more than half a decade of working well together,” said Yida Gao, Shima Capital’s Founder and Managing General Partner. “Once you add in their extensive experience developing and building multiplayer games that have been played by millions of users, this investment made a lot of sense for Shima Capital. We’re excited for Fableborne to be played by the masses.”

With the investment, Yida Gao continues his commitment to web3 gaming and the many opportunities it presents. To date, Shima Capital’s investment portfolio is made up of a large portion of gaming projects and remains an area of growth for the venture capital firm.

For more on Shima Capital, visit www.shima.capital. For more on Pixion Games, visit www.pixiongames.com.

About Shima Capital

Shima Capital is a leading early stage VC firm, founded by Yida Gao in 2021, investing in disruptive blockchain companies. The fund is deeply focused on taking a hands-on approach and working closely with its portfolio companies to provide the most sweat equity per dollar invested. As teams in Web3 push the frontier of innovation, Shima helps hire talent, build community, amplify narratives, and foster the acceleration of technical research and development. Shima is composed of seasoned investors, accomplished operators, and former founders who align on a mission to support all-star teams with building and scaling generational companies. For more information visit https://shima.capital/.

About Pixion Games

Founded in 2017, Pixion Games creates exciting multiplayer games that are easy to understand, hard to master, but ultimately fun to play in short sessions. Pixion Games was formed by veterans from Konami, Garena, Gala Games, Square Enix, Sony, Wargaming, Pixonic, Ubisoft, NCSOFT and many of the world’s most formidable game studios, with a proven track record in developing multiplayer experiences for millions of players. For more information visit https://pixiongames.com/.

Contact:
***@shima.capital

Photo(s):
https://www.prlog.org/12975692

Press release distributed by PRLog

SOURCE Shima Capital

GREENWICH, Conn., July 25, 2023 — Ennabl, a leading Insurtech data analytics platform, is proud to announce the successful completion of its Series A funding, which has raised $8M.  This funding will accelerate the company’s growth and expand its market reach.

The Series A round was led by Brewer Lane Ventures, with participation from Altai Ventures and private investors.  The company will use the funds to invest in product development, expand the company’s sales and marketing efforts, and grow its team.

“Ennabl’s mission is to provide cutting-edge solutions for insurance brokers and agencies to help them grow their book of business and simplify their existing processes,” said Kabir Syed, CEO of Ennabl. “We’re thrilled to have Brewer Lane Ventures and our other investors on board as we continue to grow our platform and help brokers achieve their goals.”

Ennabl’s SaaS platform helps insurance brokerages and agencies to harness data to drive top-line growth.  Ennabl’s machine learning algorithms provide actionable intelligence for brokers to increase their commissions, find new customers, grow their book of business, and manage carrier strategy by extracting, cleaning, and enriching data from all of the broker’s systems and processes.

Ennabl has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2021, with a customer base that includes a number of the world’s largest insurance brokers. The company has also partnered with several leading technology and service providers, including Reagan Consulting, NeuralMetrics, HazardHub, and Fenris Digital, to provide actionable external data that allows brokers to accelerate their top-line growth.

We’re excited to partner with Ennabl as they continue to drive innovation in the insurance technology space,” said Chris Downer, Partner at Brewer Lane Ventures. “Their platform is revolutionizing the way insurance brokers leverage data, and we see tremendous promise in Ennabl’s ability to further impact the market.” 

ABOUT ENNABL

Ennabl launched in 2021 with a seasoned management and engineering team of industry veterans to help brokers with data, insights, and workflow challenges. Serving as an insurance platform, Ennabl is used by numerous brokers and agents to unify and manage their data. By utilizing the platform, brokers can minimize the time spent on data maintenance and allocate more attention to enhancing their clients’ experience and their bottom line.

SOURCE ennabl

NMC and DWS secure $500 million for the Four Columns Junior Capital Fund VI

MILWAUKEE, July 25, 2023 — Northwestern Mutual Capital and DWS Group have secured $500 million in commitments from investors, successfully accomplishing the goal of the partnership between the two companies.

Today’s announcement officially closes fundraising for the Four Columns Junior Capital Fund VI (“the Fund”) with the $500 million in commitments coming from limited partners representing institutional investors from North America, Asia and Europe. Northwestern Mutual Capital (“NMC”) and DWS Group (“DWS”) first announced their partnership in October 2020 to identify and develop private market investment opportunities.

NMC has been investing in junior capital and private equity for more than 40 years, including $14 billion in junior capital through 425 investments since 2000. Through its partnership with DWS, NMC has grown third-party assets and further diversified.

“This is a unique opportunity for investors to access the same investments that Northwestern Mutual selects for its own general account,” said Dan Julka, vice president – securities of the Northwestern Mutual Investment Management Company and Head of Northwestern Mutual Capital. “We are pleased with the progress of the Fund to date. The current market environment has allowed NMC to continue to differentiate itself by providing our private equity partners with steady access to capital for businesses we find attractive and improved economics and terms to our investors.”

“This collaboration with Northwestern Mutual Capital affords our clients access to a strong private credit investing team and unique platform not typically available to outside investors,” said Paul Kelly, head of alternative investments at DWS. “The NMC partnership is a great complement to DWS’s USD 123 billion¹ global Alternatives business as we continue to grow and expand our offerings across the private debt investment spectrum.”

The Fund is unlevered and invests in junior capital of performing, private-equity-backed businesses directly sourced from leading North American and European private equity sponsors. NMC serves as the Fund’s portfolio manager. A fixed portion of each junior capital investment sourced by NMC for its parent company, Northwestern Mutual, is allocated to the Fund, thereby providing investors with strong alignment with Northwestern Mutual, a company that has been helping people and businesses achieve greater financial security for more than 165 years.

DWS, a leading global asset manager, serves as the Fund Manager, providing the fund and its investors with institutional-caliber fund operations and administrative services, along with certain relationship management and fund oversight functions.

Since beginning its investment period in 2022, the Fund has made 30 separate commitments and is expected to provide investors with a highly diversified portfolio of an estimated 75-100 investments by the end of the investment period.

About Northwestern Mutual Capital (“NMC”) and Northwestern Mutual

NMC provides private market investment management and advisory services to Northwestern Mutual and other institutional clients. Led by a senior team with an average of more than 20 years working together, NMC’s 30+ investment professionals take pride in building strong relationships based on extensive deal-making capabilities and dependability. NMC has a long, proven track record across industries and asset classes through more than four decades of market cycles.

As of year-end 2022, NMC was responsible for managing portfolios with total AUM of $58 billion, including $16 billion of private equity and related investments.

https://media.nmfn.com/capital/index.html

Northwestern Mutual has been helping people and businesses achieve financial security for more than 165 years. Through a comprehensive planning approach, Northwestern Mutual combines the expertise of its financial professionals with a personalized digital experience and industry-leading products to help its clients plan for what’s most important. With more than $558 billion of total assets being managed across the company’s institutional portfolio as well as retail investment client portfolios, nearly $35 billion in revenues, and $2.2 trillion worth of life insurance protection in force, Northwestern Mutual delivers financial security to more than five million people with life, disability income and long-term care insurance, annuities, and brokerage and advisory services. Northwestern Mutual ranked 111 on the 2023 FORTUNE 500.

Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NM), Milwaukee, WI (life and disability insurance, annuities, and life insurance with long-term care benefits) and its subsidiaries. Subsidiaries include Northwestern Mutual Investment Services, LLC (NMIS) (investment brokerage services), broker-dealer, registered investment adviser, member FINRA and SIPC; the Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company® (NMWMC) (investment advisory and services), federal savings bank; and Northwestern Long Term Care Insurance Company (NLTC) (long-term care insurance). Not all Northwestern Mutual representatives are advisors. Only those representatives with “Advisor” in their title or who otherwise disclose their status as an advisor of NMWMC are credentialed as NMWMC representatives to provide investment advisory services.

About DWS Group

DWS Group (DWS) with EUR 841bn of assets under management (as of 31 March 2023) aspires to be one of the world’s leading asset managers. Building on more than 60 years of experience, it has a reputation for excellence in Germany, Europe, and the Americas and Asia. DWS is recognized by clients globally as a trusted source for integrated investment solutions, stability and innovation across a full spectrum of investment disciplines.

We offer individuals and institutions access to our strong investment capabilities across all major liquid and illiquid asset classes as well as solutions aligned to growth trends. Our diverse expertise in Active, Passive and Alternatives asset management complements each other when creating targeted solutions for our clients. Our expertise and on-the-ground knowledge of our economists, research analysts and investment professionals are brought together in one consistent global CIO View, giving strategic guidance to our investment approach.

DWS wants to innovate and shape the future of investing. We understand that, both as a firm as well as a trusted advisor to our clients, we have an important role in helping navigate transition to a more sustainable future. With approximately 3,800 employees in offices all over the world, we are local while being one global team. We are committed to acting on behalf of our clients and investing with their best interests at heart so that they can reach their financial goals, no matter what the future holds. With our entrepreneurial, collaborative spirt, we work every day to deliver outstanding results, in both good and challenging times to build the best foundation for our clients’ financial future.

The brand DWS represents DWS Group gmbH & Co. KGaA and any of its subsidiaries such as DWS Distributors, Inc., which offers investment products, or DWS Investment Management Americas, Inc. and RREEF America L.L.C., which offer advisory services.

NOT FDIC / NCUA INSURED – MAY LOSE VALUE – NO BANK GUARANTEE
NOT A DEPOSIT – NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY

¹ 1 As of March 31, 2023

SOURCE Northwestern Mutual

The agreement seeks to expedite breakthrough health and healthcare innovations for patients  

NEW YORK, July 25, 2023 — Digitalis Commons, the non-profit affiliate of Digitalis Ventures, has entered into a Partnership Intermediary Agreement to provide commercialization services to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health’s (ARPA-H) Project Accelerator Transition Office (PATIO). This first-of-its-kind agreement aims to speed up and smooth the process of getting breakthrough innovations in health to the American public.

Equipped with $2.5 billion in federal dollars, ARPA-H is funding the research and development of new ways to tackle the hardest problems in health, including cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. PATIO exists to ensure that the biomedical and technological breakthroughs supported by ARPA-H translate into solutions and products that reach patients rapidly and equitably. 

“This collaboration presents an unprecedented opportunity to bring solutions to human health to market faster to improve people’s lives,” said Geoffrey W. Smith, founder of Digitalis Commons. “Together with PATIO, we are committed to harnessing our experience commercializing breakthrough innovations to transform patient care across the country.” 

Digitalis Commons’ selection signals the non-profit’s expertise in navigating through the regulatory, intellectual property, and market hurdles that can slow the delivery of innovative solutions to patients who need them. Throughout the collaboration, the Commons will harness its extensive network in the field of human health, technological proficiency, and market insights to expedite the transition of groundbreaking discoveries from the lab to the real world. 

“One important goal that PATIO has set and that Digitalis Commons wholly believes in,” said Smith, “is to reduce market friction at common failure points that too often get in the way of huge leaps in healthcare innovations.”

For each ARPA-H program, Digitalis Commons will build a team with the technical, translational, and business acumen to implement a successful and speedy go-to-market strategy. Candidates with relevant technical and market experience and a genuine commitment to having an outsized, positive impact on public health are encouraged to send a resume and cover letter to [email protected].

About Digitalis Commons:
Digitalis Commons is a non-profit, public interest technology-focused platform affiliated with the venture investment firm Digitalis Ventures. The Commons builds open, frontier-advancing, and scalable technology solutions that have an outsized impact on important problems in health and healthcare.

SOURCE Digitalis Commons

LOS ANGELES, July 25, 2023 — Valhalla Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, today announced its debut $66M flagship fund to invest in audacious innovators challenging the status quo across deeptech and gaming. The firm is committed to supporting entrepreneurs who are unafraid to question consensus views and push the boundaries of science and engineering.

Valhalla Ventures prides itself on being a daring early-stage investor, focusing on technologies and ideas years before they enter the mainstream. Valhalla’s inaugural $66M fund will primarily focus on investments in seed-stage companies across deeptech (areas of interest include materials science, biology, energy generation/storage, and space technology) and gaming (targeting novel and underfunded gaming mediums with an emphasis on social experiences).

“Capital is scarce right now, especially for first time funds like us, so we’re honored to be backed by some of the world’s best founders, family offices, executives, and corporations,” says Devan Malhotra, general partner, who leads Valhalla’s gaming practice. “We want to bring venture back to its original promise, when Georges Doriot and the early investors in Silicon Valley worked hand-in-hand with the world’s boldest and zaniest entrepreneurs to solve the world’s hardest problems. The VC industry has lost its way. Too many funds spray and pray into ‘tier 1’ led deals while spending more time tweeting and fundraising than working with portfolio companies. We want to tack left, building a concentrated portfolio across non-traditional areas – gaming and deeptech – and working boots on the ground with the engineers, creatives, and scientists that are building a brighter future.”

Valhalla’s Fund I has been actively deploying since early 2022 taking 15 core positions to date, and will continue to make new investments until early 2025. On the deeptech side, Terran Biosciences and Avery Digital are each in their own way redefining what it means to be a biotechnology company, while Irradiant Technologies is revolutionizing the field of nanofabrication. In the realm of gaming, Incredible Dream is using board games to build the next billion-dollar IP franchise, while 1v1Me is building a platform for gamers to compete and bet on their favorite streamers.

“At Valhalla Ventures, we back relentless entrepreneurs tackling obvious problems with non-obvious solutions that challenge the bounds of science and engineering,” says Rohan Pujara, general partner, who leads Valhalla’s deeptech investments. “If you look at the biggest problems we face today, they are not solved by incrementally better software, but rather by breakthroughs in physical technology. We’re looking for businesses built around critical technology with captive markets, hinging on best-in-class engineering, execution, and scale-up.”

The Valhalla team is closely tracking the booming ecosystem of deeptech companies forming around SpaceX. “SpaceX has created a new generation of engineers that approach problems in a very unique way, with emphasis on questioning assumptions, simplifying processes, rapid execution, and automation. SpaceX is constantly working on things that have never been done before, and this has made it a breeding ground for technical entrepreneurs that want to solve impossible problems,” says Pujara, who recently led Valhalla’s investments in two companies founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, K2 Space, which is building high-powered satellite platforms for the next generation of space development, and Starpath Robotics, which aims to refuel vehicles like SpaceX’s Starship on the lunar surface.

“Bunch welcomed Valhalla Ventures to our team during our latest round. They quickly became one of our most insightful and helpful partners, making valuable connections to strategic partners and key players in the media and entertainment industry. They carry a strong conviction and demonstrate a deep understanding of our market. Any founder would be lucky to have them in their corner,” says Selcuk Atli, founder of Bunch, which is building a mobile digital world where gamers talk, share, and play together.

Valhalla Ventures was founded in 2020 by Devan Malhotra, Matthew King, and Rohan Pujara. Prior to raising Fund I, Valhalla invested $27M via SPVs in eight companies across deeptech, gaming, and blockchain.

About Valhalla Ventures

Valhalla Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm that invests across deeptech and gaming. Founded in 2020, the firm is dedicated to supporting heretics who are audacious enough to challenge consensus and redefine the frontiers of science and engineering. Follow Valhalla Ventures at @hello_valhalla. For more information, please visit valhalla.ventures.

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Michelle Isaacs, 22 Spring
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Julian Galano, 22 Spring
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SOURCE Valhalla Ventures