Opportunity Finance Network’s climate financing invests in six member CDFIs working to build climate resiliency, curb emissions, and boost local climate economies in underserved communities 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 13, 2023 — Opportunity Finance Network (OFN), the leading national financial intermediary and membership network of community development finance institutions (CDFIs) and mission-driven community lenders, has committed $8.5 million in loans and grants from its Finance Justice Fund to six member CDFIs to support products and services that build climate resiliency, curb emissions, and bring underinvested communities into the climate economy.

Launched in 2020, OFN’s Finance Justice Fund has deployed more than $210 million through loans and grants to 101 CDFIs serving rural, urban, and Native communities. The Finance Justice Fund was launched with the goal of advancing OFN’s mission to align capital with racial, economic, and climate justice by leveraging corporate and philanthropic partners for catalytic investments into CDFIs across the country.

“OFN is deeply committed to strengthening the capacity of its broad network of community lenders to lead the deployment of climate-focused financing and capital in underinvested communities across the country,” said OFN President and CEO Harold Pettigrew, who recently shared OFN’s climate justice message at COP28. “Our growing membership of 410 CDFIs and mission-driven community lenders are at the forefront of leading community investment and the fight for racial, economic, and climate justice. The Finance Justice Fund was launched for this purpose, and our initial round of climate-focused capital will advance the community investment efforts of these six extraordinary pioneers in climate lending.”

The CDFIs in this round of funding have footprints across several states and Tribal communities: Coastal Enterprises Inc. based in Maine, Craft3 based in Washington state, California-based Pacific Community Ventures, West Virginia-based Partner Community Capital, Self-Help Ventures Fund headquartered in North Carolina, and Solar and Energy Loan Fund (SELF) of Florida.

OFN’s Finance Justice Fund climate investments will support various products and services, from low-interest rate loans for electric vehicles, solar panel installation, and energy efficiency retrofits that empower communities of color and low-income communities to participate in the climate economy.

OFN will work with the recipients and other member mission-driven community lenders nationwide to answer its call to action that 100% of CDFIs become climate lenders by 2028 by offering climate-focused consumer, small business, housing, and community facility capital products.

OFN is helping CDFIs reach this goal by providing support, capital, and leadership to transform the community development finance industry into a leader in climate finance.

In addition to climate lending to its national network of CDFIs and mission-driven community lenders, OFN offers tools and training to help its members build and strengthen their climate lending portfolios. In 2023, OFN trained people across 130 community lenders and other organizations.

The organization also recently submitted a historic bid to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to scale these activities and accelerate the clean energy transition in underinvested communities.

About OFN

Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) is the leading national network of community development financial institutions. Its membership of more than 400 mission lenders specializes in providing affordable, responsible financial products and services in low-income rural, urban, and Native communities nationwide. As a trusted intermediary between CDFIs and the public and private sectors, OFN works with its partners – banks, philanthropies, corporations, government agencies, and others – to create economic opportunity for all by strengthening and investing in CDFIs. Learn more at ofn.org.

SOURCE Opportunity Finance Network

The CPA firm joins The Alliance’s esteemed group of sponsors to mentor and advise founders on tax and accounting issues and prepare them to receive capital.

Connecting GreatSoCal entrepreneurs to Venture Capital 

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 13, 2023 — The Alliance for SoCal Innovation (“The Alliance”) is pleased to announce that they have formally entered into a multi-year agreement with HCVT to be a new supporting sponsor of the SoCal Venture Pipeline program (SVP) which connects the most promising early stage startups with venture capital in order to improve access to institutional capital across the SoCal region. Entering its third year, the SVP program is completely free for the startups and investors who participate. The Alliance does not collect any fees or take equity thanks to lead underwriting from Pacific Western Bank as well as support from Wilson Sonsini and KPPB LLP. Increasing capital access for the most promising startups across the expansive SoCal region is core to the Alliance’s mission and this particular program is foundational to that effort.

Andy Wilson, Executive Director of the Alliance, said “We are so fortunate in SoCal to have so many amazing founders building great startups across this massive and diverse region. However, access to critical early stage capital is not equally available to all. We rely on great partners like HCVT who share our commitment to support the most promising entrepreneurs in their effort to build high-growth startups.”

“We are very excited to partner with the Alliance on the important mission of the SoCal Venture Pipeline program,” said Vicken Haleblian, CEO and Managing Partner at HCVT. “We are committed to supporting the venture community and entrepreneurs. The Alliance, with its deep SoCal network, has a proven track record of connecting venture-ready founders to relevant investors. As a firm, we are committed to community impact and cannot think of a better way to support a thriving economy than improving capital access for the region’s most talented entrepreneurs.”

Kei Morita, an HCVT Audit Partner and co-leader of the firm’s Technology Industry group, will serve as the firm’s representative in the Alliance.

Startups based in the SoCal region who apply to be in the SVP program undergo a rigorous screening process by a team of investment professionals before being accepted into the program. Once accepted, they are further vetted before receiving highly targeted personal introductions to appropriate investors in the Alliance’s extensive and growing network of 215 active venture capital partners.

Since its formal launch in June 2021, the SoCal Venture Pipeline, which serves both Seed and Series A-ready companies, has attracted 540 total applicants with 67 accepted companies of which 15 startups were funded for a total of $63.18M raised, plus 3 additional companies that were acquired.

For SoCal-based tech startups that are raising $1M+ of seed or $4M+ of Series A institutional capital and meet the guidelines outlined in the program FAQ, may apply now to begin the process of getting connected to the right investors.

About The Alliance for Southern California Innovation

The Alliance for Southern California Innovation (the “Alliance”) is a not for profit formed in 2017 that has successfully brought together the heft of Southern California’s top research institutions, local business leaders, and world-class advisors to focus on bridging critical gaps in the SoCal innovation ecosystem. The goal of the Alliance is to engage and unify SoCal’s compelling diversity of talent, ideas, and perspectives in order to optimize the conditions for the region’s innovators to bring breakthroughs to the world.

About HCVT

HCVT is the largest Los Angeles-based public accounting firm and the 33rd largest firm nationally. Founded in 1991, HCVT provides tax, business management, and advisory services to public and closely held companies; high-net-worth individuals and families and their related entities; and family offices. The firm also provides audit and assurance services to privately held companies and employee benefit plan sponsors. With more than 800 team members, which include more than 100 partners and principals, HCVT serves clients from 13 offices across Southern and Northern California; Ft. Worth, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; and Park City, Utah. To learn more about HCVT, visit https://www.hcvt.com/.  

Contact: Eric Eide, The Alliance for SoCal Innovation, Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Alliance for SoCal Innovation

BOSTON, Dec. 13, 2023 — AllSpice.io, the hardware development platform that empowers engineers to modernize their collaboration and workflows, has raised an additional $6 million in venture capital. The funding is being leveraged to develop new features for its growing enterprise customer base and expand complex implementations, integrations, and additional ECAD format support.

Investors participating in the recent round included Root Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Benchstrength, Bowery Capital, and a group of angel investors.

Founded and built by engineers,AllSpice.io empowers fellow engineers to modernize their workflows – all through the power of Git. With automation, cross-team collaboration, and version control, engineers can develop hardware more efficiently.

“After decades of stagnant toolsets, enterprises have a giant appetite to modernize their electronics design processes. In a difficult market, driving greater team efficiency is crucial,” said Valentina Ratner, Co-Founder & CEO ofAllSpice.io.

Hardware teams today have more complex requirements and constantly shirking delivery timelines. “A car 20 years ago had a dozen or so PCBs – now it’s hundreds,” said Kyle Dumont, Co-Founder & CTO ofAllSpice.io. “As an electrical engineer before creating AllSpice.io, I experienced these same significant challenges building a hardware design and review process that could proactively adapt to changing business and operational requirements.”

Hardware products used to take many years of research and development. Nowadays, if companies take that long, by the time they launch, the technology is already obsolete.

“We see these challenges rising from the engineering leaders at enterprises approaching us,” continued Ratner. “Hardware development timelines have compressed from years to months in the last decade, which means hardware and electrical engineering teams need to be 10x more efficient, yet their tools have remained largely the same.”

AllSpice.io serves as a home base for hardware teams, similar to what GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket have done for software teams.

Hardware Engineers, PCB Designers, and Electrical Engineers are the primary users of the AllSpice.io platform. Additionally, other teams and third parties that work in parallel to these counterparts, including Firmware Engineers, Software Engineers, Contract Manufacturers, and Procurement Departments, also collaborate on the platform.

AllSpice.io customers range from startups to Fortune 500s across the robotics, instrumentation, aerospace, consumer electronics, transportation, medical devices, and automotive industries.

Funding purpose

• Release of CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Deployment) for hardware development
• Implementation of AI for electronics design
• Support a growing number of enterprise customers
• Product roadmap and team growth
• Support of additional ECAD formats
• Support of additional SaaS integrations

About AllSpice.io

AllSpice.io is a hardware collaboration platform that connects native engineering design tools to provide effortless Git-based revision control, a central hub for cross-team collaboration, workflow automation, and design analytics.

Contacts:

Enterprise/ Business Development Inquiries

Valentina Ratner

Co-Founder & CEO

[email protected]

Product Inquiries

Kyle Dumont

Co-Founder & CTO

[email protected]

Press Inquiries

Robert Byrne

Director of Marketing

[email protected]

General

www.AllSpice.io

[email protected]

https://www.linkedin.com/company/allspice-io/

SOURCE AllSpice.io

With the vast amount of LLMs being used by enterprise companies, the Feature Store is here to save data scientists by simplifying big data workflows

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 13, 2023 — Featureform, the MLOps feature store for building AI and ML systems, has announced $5.5MM in Seed funding led by GreatPoint Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners with participation from Tuesday Capital and Alumni Ventures. This round of capital allows Featureform to expand its product growth and increase support for existing and new enterprise customers, in addition to its open-source community. The completion of the Seed round brings Featureform’s total funding to date to $8.1MM.

At enterprise companies, LLM usage has surged alongside traditional ML use cases. At the heart of both these systems is private data. The most critical thing that ML teams do is take their raw data and transform it into valuable signals to feed into LLMs via prompts or ML models as inputs. Featureform believes there needs to be a unified framework to define, manage, and deploy these signals (or features). This creates a unified resource library that can be used by all ML/AI teams across an organization with built-in search & discovery, monitoring, orchestration, and governance. Featureform has seen to this be true with their existing customers in the ML space and has begun spearheading this approach in the LLM space.

“MLOps is moving out of the hype phase and entering the actual productivity phase,” says Featureform Founder and CEO Simba Khadder. “On the backend of this, we’re seeing a huge wave of new use-cases that have been unlocked with LLMs. Data is at the core of these two systems, and in practice, the problems look almost identical. Featureform’s frameworks will fundamentally change the way ML and AI teams work with data.”

The rise of Retrieval Augmented Generation architecture, or RAG, has provided a way for data scientists to inject relevant signals and content from their data sets into their prompts as content to increase an LLMs accuracy and decrease likelihood of hallucination. These signals are analogous to traditional machine learning features that you’d find in a feature store. The big difference is that, after being processed, they are stored in a vector database. By adding vector database support, Featureform becomes the hub where data scientists can define, manage, and deploy their features for both ML and LLM systems.

“Featureform’s feature store platform offers a distinct advantage in the market with its unique virtual architecture,” says Gautam Krishnamurthi, Partner at GreatPoint Ventures. “This virtual approach not only sets them apart from the competition, but also significantly lowers the cost of feature store implementation in the large and growing MLOps market. Coupled with their expert team, Featureform provides a best-in-class solution in the market for building out machine learning feature management. We are excited to support the Featureform team in their Seed round and beyond!”

Featureform provides data scientists with a framework to turn their data into useful features for ML models and LLMs. By using Featureform, these teams:

• Accelerate time to build and deploy new features from months to hours.
• Deduplicate and leverage existing work by allowing data scientists to collaborate on, share, and discover features.
• Improve models in production by guaranteeing consistency between serving and training data, and catch feature drift before it becomes a problem.
• Effortlessly enforce access control and governance policies in the feature workflow.

To learn more visit https://featureform.com.

About Featureform
Featureform is the creator of the virtual feature store. Our mission is to streamline how data and model features are built and maintained in machine learning orgs. Our python framework and feature store does away with copy and pasting between scattered notebooks with names like “Untitled18.ipynb,” unifies feature pipelines between experimentation and production, deduplicates repeated features across teams, and eliminates ambiguously named tables like “feature_table_v5.” While we pride ourselves on our open-core model, we also offer a robust enterprise solution with governance, streaming, and more. We are proudly based out of San Francisco. Discover more about how we’re reshaping the MLOps landscape at https://featureform.com.

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

SOURCE Featureform

• Inductive Bio emerged with $4.3M in a seed funding round co-led by a16z Bio + Health and Lux Capital, with participation from Character, Bessemer Venture Partners, Alleycorp, and others.
• Inductive’s team has deep expertise building innovative ML products and bringing drugs into the clinic.

NEW YORK, Dec. 13, 2023 — Inductive Bio, a technology company developing a machine learning (ML) platform designed to dramatically accelerate the compound optimization process, emerged from stealth today with $4.3M in funding. Their seed round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health and Lux Capital, with participation from Character, Bessemer Venture Partners, Alleycorp, and others.

Half of the time and money spent in small molecule preclinical drug discovery is focused on optimizing compounds to effectively balance potency with Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity (ADMET) properties. Inductive’s platform maps the drivers of small molecule ADMET by pairing a proprietary dataset with state-of-the-art ML, helping scientists to optimize initial compounds into leads and development candidates faster and with a better balance of ADMET properties.

Inductive Bio was co-founded by Josh Haimson and Ben Birnbaum who had previously built out the ML organization at Flatiron Health, which was acquired by Roche in 2018. “We set our sights on compound optimization after talking to dozens of medicinal chemists who all described this process as a complex game of ‘whack-a-mole’ with dramatic consequences for the success or failure of drug programs,” said Josh Haimson, co-founder and CEO of Inductive Bio. “From our experience at Flatiron and Google, we knew it would be possible to help chemists leverage vast quantities of data to make better decisions.”

“Our deep graph learning algorithms have been tailored to the specific needs of real-world, heterogeneous data and trained on the world’s best-curated ADMET dataset,” said Ben Birnbaum, Ph.D., co-founder and CTO of Inductive Bio. “Traditional QSAR approaches make accurate predictions in novel chemotypes only around 30% of the time, whereas our algorithms are predicting accurately across 80% of novel chemotypes, and that number is continuing to improve as our data set grows.”

Wendy Young, Ph.D., a life sciences senior executive and former SVP of small molecule discovery at Genentech, where she oversaw the discovery and progression of more than 25 clinical candidates into development, joined Inductive’s advisory board in the summer of 2022. “When we were building out the small molecule discovery organization at Genentech, I pushed for our teams to leverage earlier generations of ML because I saw how impactful they were for focusing our resources on the experiments with the highest chance of success in the lab,” said Dr. Young. “I’m excited that at Inductive, we’re building the next-generation technology that the entire biopharma industry can tap into.”

One of Inductive’s early partners is Denali Therapeutics, who is leveraging Inductive’s ML capabilities for ADME property predictions. Denali has integrated custom ADME models from Inductive into their small molecule drug design platform to support rapid, data-driven decision making.

Ankit Mahadevia, M.D., a serial biotech entrepreneur, former Venture partner at Atlas Ventures, and co-founder of nine therapeutics companies, also joined Inductive’s advisory board. “Having launched and run many biotech companies in my career, I’ve seen the pain of compound optimization first hand – years of intuition-driven science and millions of dollars spent to find one or two compounds that have the right balance of potency and ADMET,” said Dr. Mahadevia. “When I learned about the platform Inductive is making available to the biopharma industry I was excited to get involved because I know how much this will accelerate our industry’s ability to bring safer and more effective therapies to patients.”

About Inductive Bio
Inductive Bio is a technology company developing a machine learning (ML) platform designed to dramatically accelerate the compound optimization process, a critical and time-consuming step in developing new therapeutics. By building datasets and state-of-the-art ML models designed to map the drivers of small molecule Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity (ADMET), Inductive’s platform allows scientists to optimize initial compounds into leads and development candidates faster and with a better balance of ADMET properties. For more information, please visit www.inductive.bio.

About Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen Horowitz (“a16z”) is a venture capital firm that backs bold entrepreneurs who are building the future through technology. We invest in companies across multiple sectors, including bio + health, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and companies building toward American dynamism. For more than a decade, our bio + health team has invested in innovative companies leveraging AI and other technologies to drive process efficiencies, usher in the next generation of therapeutics and personalized care delivery, and ensure enduring healthcare for all. We believe the Future is Health.

About Lux Capital
Lux Capital invests in emerging science and technology ventures at the outermost edges of what is possible. They partner with iconoclastic inventors challenging the status quo and the laws of nature to bring their futuristic ideas to life. Over the past two decades, Lux has expanded from its New York City roots to Silicon Valley, and built a $5 billion AUM firm of more than 30 full-time professionals, with the versatility to invest at any stage.

SOURCE Inductive Bio, Inc.

Fueling Expansion: Funding to Boost Wearable Robotics Company’s Drive to Minimize Industrial Workplace Injuries and Enhance Productivity

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 13, 2023 — Pioneering the future of industrial safety, Verve Motion, a Harvard University spinout, today announced it has reached a significant milestone by securing $20 million in Series B funding. This achievement, raising the company’s total funding to over $40 million, marks a crucial step in the company’s rapid expansion and the widespread adoption of its innovative industrial-use connected wearable technology, SafeLift™ exosuit.

The Series B funding round, which will play a pivotal role in supporting the company’s goals of market expansion and scaling manufacturing to meet demand, was led by Safar Partners, with new investments from Cybernetix Ventures as well as follow-on investments from existing investors, including Construct Capital, Pillar VC and OUP. The round also included participation from individual investors including Frederic Kerrest, Vice-Chairman and Co-Founder of Okta, and John McEleney, Co-founder of Onshape, and formerly CEO of SolidWorks.

Mitigating back injuries is a major workplace safety challenge that plagues a multitude of industries. Occupational back pain ranks as the most frequent injury, with more than one million workers suffering back injuries annually. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the average cost of back injury claims, including medical bills, wage loss benefits, and other expenses, can range from $40,000 to $80,000 per injury.

“The era of transformation in workplace safety and productivity is here,” said Ignacio Galiana, the CEO and Co-founder of Verve Motion. “Our mission is to power the human workplace by spearheading the next generation of wearable technology for industrial workers. Our SafeLift solution significantly diminishes the risk of back injury and fatigue, while enhancing facility productivity, and fostering employee retention. We’re creating a safer and more efficient future for industrial workers globally. This additional funding will drive the expansion of our solution and enable us to scale operations to meet the growing demand for our technology, ensuring it is accessible to the workers who need it most.”

“As a lead investor in the Series B funding, we are excited to fuel the growth and innovation of Verve Motion, a trailblazing force in wearable robotics,” said Arunas Chesonis, co-founder of Safar Partners. “The company’s focus on commercializing high-performance wearable technology for the workplace aligns with our vision for transformative advancements in world-changing disruptive technology. We believe this substantial investment will not only accelerate Verve Motion’s market presence but also contribute to reshaping the landscape of workplace safety and productivity.”

“At Albertsons Companies, we are committed to pursuing innovative technologies that will safeguard our associates, particularly those on the frontline in our distribution centers,” said Mustafa Harcar, VP of Automation at Albertsons Companies. “The integration of the SafeLift solution into our warehouse operations is proving to be a game-changer, helping mitigate physical strain, reducing injuries, and cultivating a safer work environment. We are enthusiastic about what we’ve observed and look forward to furthering our partnership with Verve Motion as we continue to prioritize the health, safety, and well-being of our employees.”

Powering the Human Workplace through People-centric Robotics

The SafeLift exosuit is the world’s first soft exosuit offering tailored, adaptive assistance that is customized for each worker and task. Invented by a team of scientists, engineers, and athletic apparel designers, it is a lightweight wearable solution that combines real-time motion sensing with robotic assistance. Its comfortable form factor, which wears like a backpack, is designed to power and protect industrial workers. The solution alleviates about 40 percent of the strain on a worker’s back during a typical workday by providing assistance in parallel with their underlying muscles. SafeLift exosuit includes a cloud platform with motion-based sensors for automatic detection of risky movements like excessive bending and twisting. The software not only improves injury prevention through coaching but also promotes ergonomic enhancements in the workplace.

Verve Motion’s technology evolved from work in the Biodesign Lab at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Researchers there developed a soft exosuit with the goal of mitigating fatigue and injury risks for military personnel, work that paved the way for the next generation of wearable robots. The work was supported by DARPA (the advanced research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense), the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

Since the company’s inception in 2020, Verve Motion’s soft exosuits have helped American workers lift more than 300 million pounds, eliminating up to 85 percent of lower back and hip injuries at sites using SafeLift, and increase productivity by 3-7 percent, while creating a positive effect on worker retention and recruiting.

Verve Motion’s soft exosuits are deployed in a wide range of industries, including grocery, package distribution, third party logistics, retail, supply chain distribution, and manufacturing. For more information, visit www.vervemotion.com.

About Verve Motion

Verve Motion is a wearable robotics technology, committed to improving the lives of workers across various industries. With a passion for innovation and a focus on ergonomics, safety, and productivity, the company is developing cutting-edge soft exosuits that redefine the way people work. Spun out from Harvard University’s Biodesign Laboratory at the Wyss Institute, Verve Motion is based on a decade of research funded by DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Since its inception in 2020, Verve Motion has raised more than $40 million in financing from a diverse group of investors. For more information, visit www.vervemotion.com.

Supporting Resources

SOURCE Verve Motion

Oversubscribed Third Private Equity Fund Closed at $2.8 Billion Hard Cap, Alongside Dedicated LP Co-Investment Vehicles

Fund Focuses on Buyout and Growth Investments in Industrial Decarbonization Sector

HOUSTON and BOSTON and DUBLIN, Dec. 13, 2023 — Ara Partners (“Ara” or the “Firm”), a leading private equity and infrastructure investment firm specializing in industrial decarbonization, today announced that it has closed over $3 billion of new capital commitments. The Firm has concluded a successful fundraising for Ara Fund III (“Fund III” or the “Fund”), closing on $2.8 billion of limited partner commitments, alongside dedicated limited partner co-investment vehicles.

The Fund was significantly oversubscribed at an increased hard cap, exceeding its $2 billion initial target, and received the support of Ara’s existing investor base and a diverse set of new institutional investors comprised of pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and foundations from North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Fund III will continue Ara’s strategy of investing in the decarbonization of the industrial economy, the greatest source of carbon emissions globally. Leveraging significant technical and operations expertise, the Fund will pursue both buyout and growth investments in industrial companies primarily headquartered in the United States, Canada and Europe that have the potential to achieve reductions in carbon emissions across sectors, including industrial and manufacturing, chemicals and materials, energy efficiency and green fuels, and food and agriculture.  Ara’s predecessor fund, Ara Fund II, closed in September 2021 at approximately $1.1 billion, above its $650 million target.  Ara has total assets under management of approximately $5.6 billion.

“We are grateful for the extraordinary interest in Fund III demonstrated by Ara’s increasingly global, blue-chip investor base,” said Charles Cherington, Managing Partner of Ara. “The strong support from new and existing investors, is a testament to their confidence in our talented team, our investment strategy, and the compelling opportunities in the industrial decarbonization sector. We look forward to collaborating with our world-class portfolio company management teams to generate strong returns for our investors in the coming years.”

Fund III has already completed four investments: Vacuumschmelze, a leading global producer of advanced magnetic materials and the largest producer of rare earth permanent magnets in the Western Hemisphere; Genera, a sustainable pulp and packaging producer; CFP Energy, which provides market-facing solutions in environmental and green energy products to industrial customers across Europe; and CycleØ, a fully integrated developer of distributed biomethane facilities.

“The growing, global presence of Ara’s platform and portfolio directly reflects the industrial economy’s continued demand for the technological innovation and infrastructure needed to decarbonize,” said Troy Thacker, Managing Partner of Ara. “The support we have received for Fund III will enable the Ara team to continue investing in high-growth companies globally that are positioned to build value while achieving positive environmental impacts.”

Mr. Cherington and Mr. Thacker founded Ara in 2017. Ara’s experienced investment team also includes Partners Chris Picotte, Cory Steffek, and Tuan Tran, as well as Teresa O’Flynn and Churchill George Yong, Co-Heads of the Firm’s infrastructure strategy. The investment team operates from offices in Houston, Boston, and Dublin, and is supported by a deep bench of operating professionals with experience across industries.

Rede Partners acted as placement agent, and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP served as legal counsel in the formation of Fund III.

About Ara Partners
Ara Partners is a private equity and infrastructure firm focused on industrial decarbonization investments. Ara Partners invests in the industrial and manufacturing, chemicals and materials, energy efficiency and green fuels, infrastructure, and food and agriculture sectors, seeking to create companies with significant decarbonization impact. It operates from offices in Houston, Boston and Dublin, Ireland. As of September 30, 2023, Ara Partners had approximately $5.6 billion of assets under management. For more information about Ara Partners, please visit www.arapartners.com.

Contacts
Mark Semer / Alex Jeffrey                                                    
Gasthalter & Co.                                                                   
[email protected]                                                 
(212) 257-4170

SOURCE Ara Partners

WOBURN, Mass., Dec. 13, 2023 — Molecular Loop Biosciences, Inc., an innovator at the forefront of targeted sequencing technologies, is pleased to announce that it has received a $1.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further its groundbreaking work in the field of multi-pathogen genomics. The grant will support a project to expand access to next-generation sequencing (NGS) for the surveillance of infectious disease pathogens in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

“This grant from the foundation will support our commitment to expanding access to NGS with LoopCap™ technology. LoopCap addresses challenges in sample turn-around time and dropouts due to rapid mutation – both common issues with pathogen sequencing methods today,” said Greg Porreca, PhD, CEO of Molecular Loop. “We are excited to continue our mission of democratizing access to NGS technologies for all laboratories, particularly in resource-limited settings.”

Globally, there currently is a disparity in laboratories’ ability to participate in comprehensive pathogen surveillance. Limited access to advanced genomic technologies poses a significant obstacle, particularly in LMICs. Molecular Loop will utilize this grant to develop and evaluate a multiplex NGS assay for the genomic analysis of the causative agents of respiratory infections. Through strategic partnerships and innovative technology, Molecular Loop aims to overcome technical barriers of existing methodologies and empower laboratories in LMICs to actively participate in global viral surveillance efforts.

Molecular Loop Biosciences, Inc. looks forward to the positive impact this project will have on global health and anticipates sharing progress updates with esteemed stakeholders, including the US CDC, AfricaCDC, WHO, and others.

About Molecular Loop

Molecular Loop tailors customized targeted next-generation sequencing solutions using its unique technology that delivers industry-leading workflow simplicity without sacrificing data quality. The company leverages its technology and deep genomic expertise to accelerate innovations in life sciences and make advancements in personalized healthcare. The team is passionate about making it easier than ever for labs to harness the power of genomic technology and make genetic testing broadly accessible.

Contacts
[email protected]

SOURCE Molecular Loop Biosciences, Inc.

The funding, which comes less than a year after the company’s launch from stealth, will enable Guardz to expand its holistic platform for MSPs to seamlessly manage small business cybersecurity

TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 13, 2023 — Guardz, the cybersecurity company securing and insuring small businesses, today announced that it has raised an $18M Series A round led by Glilot+, the early growth fund of Glilot Capital Partners. Guardz’s existing investors Hanaco Ventures, iAngels, and GKFF Ventures participated in the oversubscribed round and were joined by new investors ClearSky. The investment comes less than a year after Guardz launched with $10M in seed funding, bringing its total funding to date to $28M.

Since emerging from stealth, Guardz has achieved product-market fit, optimizing its holistic cybersecurity offering for the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who serve small businesses. In less than a year, Guardz has experienced rapid growth, partnering with hundreds of MSPs and securing thousands of the businesses they manage in the US and Europe. The new funds raised will be used to fuel the company’s commercial growth and accelerate product development to increase cybersecurity coverage, as well as to expand sales, marketing, and customer success operations globally.

Small businesses, which serve as the backbone of the US economy, are increasingly targeted by cybersecurity attacks. Recent years have seen them suffer 43% of data breaches with nearly $7 billion in reported losses, and yet only 14% of small businesses are prepared to defend themselves. With most cybersecurity solutions too cumbersome for small companies to deploy, too complicated for them to understand and maintain, and too costly, small businesses regularly turn to their MSPs to handle their cybersecurity needs. MSPs, in turn, face challenges in managing multiple companies’ cybersecurity setups across a multitude of disparate platforms, sourcing attractive cyber insurance coverage for their customers, and successfully outshining competitors for new clients.

The Guardz cybersecurity platform empowers MSPs to seamlessly manage their numerous small business customers’ cyber posture, subscription plans, and remediation from a single, multi-tenant platform with a simple and cost-effective approach. The holistic solution provides automated threat detection and remediation across all attack vectors, including business data, employee identities, cloud directories, web browsing, emails, and devices, with real-time risk prevention and actionable alerts. The AI-powered solution automatically monitors a company’s external and internal digital footprint to continuously analyze cybersecurity risks and remediate threats. Additionally, Guardz’s comprehensive cybersecurity protection enables MSPs to offer their clients cyber insurance, which was previously inaccessible due to a lack of cybersecurity controls, generating an additional MSP revenue stream and further protecting their customers’ business interests.

“MSPs are at the forefront of protecting small businesses, which underpin the US economy, and we are on a mission to empower them to do so better and more efficiently,” said Dor Eisner, CEO and Co-Founder of Guardz. “We are proud to enable our MSP partners to ensure not only small businesses’ cybersecurity posture, but also the longevity of their businesses. The time is now to double down on our successful go-to-market machine and equip even more MSPs to do so.”

“When we met the exceptional team at Guardz, which combines cybersecurity leaders with small business go-to-market experts, it became evident that they had built the ultimate solution for small business cybersecurity – a longstanding and rapidly growing market need we’ve been monitoring at Glilot for a while,” stated Lior Litwak, Managing Partner and Head of Glilot+. “Guardz has developed an impressive, holistic, and user-friendly cybersecurity and cyber insurance risk-assessment platform that is cleverly tailored to MSPs, who serve the often-overlooked long-tail small business market. We are excited to lead this funding round and join the Guardz team on their journey to secure the digital world for those who today need it most.”

“Guardz continues to demonstrate top-decile growth, in exceptionally challenging market environments. The trend for MSPs’ customers being drawn to securing and insuring their businesses in a holistic, hassle-free manner is a significant tailwind. We’re exceptionally proud to continue to support Dor and Alon as we have done from the very beginning of their journey,” said Alon Lifshitz, Founding Partner at Hanaco Ventures.

“The speed at which Guardz has brought a product to market, and then instantly created adoption and usage is profound,” said Shelly Hod Moyal, iAngels Founding Partner. “It is rare to see a company multiply sales quarter-over-quarter at this stage, and it speaks volumes to Dor and Alon’s vision and execution.”

To learn more about the new funding, please visit here.

About Guardz

Guardz is a holistic cybersecurity solution built to empower MSPs to secure and insure SMEs against ever-evolving threats such as phishing, ransomware attacks, data loss, and user risks by leveraging AI and a multilayered approach. The solution streamlines cybersecurity with its automated detection and response capabilities across users, emails, devices, data, and cloud apps, all from a single pane of glass. By combining robust cybersecurity technology and deep insurance expertise, Guardz ensures that businesses’ security is consistently monitored, managed, and optimized to prevent the next attack and mitigate the risk. Guardz was founded in 2022 by Dor Eisner and Alon Lavi along with a team of cyber and insurance experts who combine innovation, experience, and creativity to create a safer digital world for small businesses.

About Glilot Capital Partners

Glilot Capital Partners is a multi-stage venture fund that invests in Israel’s most extraordinary entrepreneurs. Glilot backs teams that develop advanced technology in areas of Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, AI/ML DevOps, DevTools, and more. The fund creates an environment that makes it possible to generate real lasting value for both sides of the investment equation, supporting founders from inception to acquisition with long term relationships and methodologies built in over a decade. Glilot was founded in 2011 and currently manages over $700M+ across its funds. This round is led by Glilot+, the early growth fund of Glilot Capital Partners, which focuses on leading Series A and B rounds in the firm’s focus sectors.

Media contact:
Allison Grey
Headline Media
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SOURCE Guardz