The funding will be used to enhance the company’s asset-agnostic autonomous inspection capabilities, modernizing the utilities industry via real-time asset performance management

GRAND FORKS, N.D., Oct. 10, 2023 — Thread, the leader of enterprise-scale autonomous data collection for delivering precise inspection insights, today announced that it closed a Series A funding round in the amount of $15M. The round was led by Badlands Capital with notable participation from an early utility partner of Thread’s, Minnkota Power Cooperative, Generational Partners, Rosecliff Ventures, Excell Partners, Homegrown Capital and Kevin O’Leary’s Wonder Fund North Dakota. This new round of funding accelerates Thread’s horizontal expansion across asset types and enables the company to continue developing its UNITI platform, which is positioned to become the first practical turnkey Asset Performance Management (APM) platform for the energy and utilities industry.

Since its inception, Thread has proven its ability to automate data capture of utility assets via robotic inspection across wind, oil and gas, and now linear (transmission and distribution) at scale. The company works across the fleets of several Fortune 500 customers including Xcel Energy and with major asset protection companies such as MISTRAS Group.

“We recognize the challenges our customers face in today’s dynamic utility sector,” said Josh Riedy, Founder and CEO of Thread. “The aging of the world’s critical infrastructure, disconnected workflow integrations between traditional software and shiny object vendors, and a depleting skilled workforce in Operations & Maintenance (O&M) continue to be major issues in data collection, which makes it increasingly difficult for stakeholders to make data-driven decisions. This Series A funding allows us to better service our customer’s needs by bridging the gap between legacy one-off inspections and real-time asset performance data, bringing the industry into the digital age. We are enabling our customers to cut inspection workstreams from days into hours, using UNITI as a single point for collaborative decision-making and O&M spend prioritization.”

The $1T Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for new energy infrastructure has elevated industry demands for a more robust way to monitor the health of its most critical assets. “UNITI by Thread is cementing its position as the industry-standard,” said Blaine Crissman, General Partner at Badlands Capital. “Thread empowers its customers to make more data-driven decisions around inspection and maintenance through digital representation and autonomous upkeep of their assets.”

“For nearly a decade, utility operators have been disappointed by unkept promises of low-cost, on-demand drone inspections,” said Asher Kraut, Partner at Generational Partners. “Thread has not only fully automated the inspection process, but they’ve also built a turnkey platform that empowers its customers to make Operations and Maintenance decisions based on real-time data across their entire fleet of assets. Thread is a prime example of an emerging business that is leveraging well-understood technologies once considered ‘deep tech’ to solve today’s most crucial customer challenges. What’s more, they’re achieving this in a safety-critical industrial environment that will define the next generation of founders and investors.”

Thread also announced the expansion of its relationship with Xcel Energy, one of its earliest customers and co-development collaborators. This work will advance the development of Thread’s flagship product, UNITI, to ensure its viability for deployment at scale across all asset types in the utility industry globally. This relationship, which is the first-of-its-kind for Xcel Energy, puts both organizations at the forefront of transforming the way energy and utility operators utilize automation, robotics, and business intelligence to drive asset performance.

As presented at a recent Utilities Imagery and Inspection Consortium Conference of top Utility leaders, the value of transforming Utility asset health was of prime concern. 

“When Xcel Energy began automated wind inspections in-house, we changed the dynamic of how we work on a day-to-day basis, as well as how we manage our data and assets,” said Thomas Stegge UAS Program Manager, Xcel Energy. “What we have learned from this transition is flowing into changing asset management strategies across the entire company.”

About Thread
Thread, formerly Airtonomy, is the leading data solution for enterprises looking to streamline and transform critical infrastructure lifecycle management. Leveraging its proprietary, data-driven, and robust platform technology, Thread embeds unmanned aerial systems and robotics with a suite of applications to automate enterprise inspection workflows and to create the first inspection-based digital asset catalog. Digital asset information becomes far more valuable to many stakeholders within the enterprise while also being easier and more efficient to maintain up-to-date information. For more information, visit thread.one.

About Xcel Energy
Xcel Energy (NASDAQ: XEL) provides the energy that powers millions of homes and businesses across eight Western and Midwestern states. Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company is an industry leader in responsibly reducing carbon emissions and producing and delivering clean energy solutions from a variety of renewable sources at competitive prices. For more information, visit xcelenergy.com or follow us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and Facebook.   

Media Contact
Paul Bilardo
[email protected]

SOURCE Thread

ENGLEWOOD, Colo., Oct. 10, 2023 — Jogan Inc., a Denver-based holding company, acquired Echo Mountain, a ski area located near Evergreen and Idaho Springs, CO on September 18th, 2023, turning the page on a new chapter at the storied ski area located just 36 miles or 50 minutes from downtown Denver.

Jogan, Inc. has been rapidly expanding since being founded by entrepreneur Dan Dietrich in 2021. When Dietrich’s passion for skiing and innovative approach to business brought him the opportunity to acquire a Colorado ski area, he described it as “a dream come true.”

“Growing up skiing and working at Stevens Pass in Washington gave me the opportunity to not only develop my own love for skiing, but it gave me an inside view at how ski areas work to deliver the joy that so many people get from snow sports,” said Dan Dietrich. He added, “My fascination with how ski areas operate and passion for the industry has grown tremendously over the years, so I’m thrilled at the opportunity to work with the experienced team at Echo and empower them to keep building on its current foundation.”

Echo Mountain has evolved over the years, but its near-universally recognized and still untapped potential carries it forward. In recent years, Echo Mountain has grown to become Denver’s Closest and Most Affordable ski, snowboard and tubing area, offering a Colorado snow sports experience requiring less time and money than neighboring industry-giants. Those efforts have attracted a unique customer base that Dietrich feels is essential to the success of the industry’s future.

“It’s no secret that the ski industry has been struggling to diversify its customer base, and we feel like Echo has really tapped into something special. We believe we can not only help create more skiers and snowboarders, but we can also continue to bring in more and different groups of people than you’re used to seeing at other resorts,” said Dan Dietrich.

Recently, Echo has been working to capitalize on its summer season potential through weddings, events, and concerts. Seeing this summer’s success, the Jogan team believes with strategic investments and partnerships, Echo could quickly become one of Denver’s most desirable outdoor mountain venues.

“We have a lot of great ideas, some of which we’ll be sharing more about over the coming weeks and months, and yet we recognize that there’s no shortage of challenges ahead of us,” said Dietrich; “but we believe we have a vision for Echo to help fully realize its potential while continuing to offer a one-of-a-kind experience for guests, whether it’s just for a day of skiing or the biggest day of their life.”

About Jogan Inc.
Jogan Inc. is a venture capital organization founded by entrepreneur Dan Dietrich. Over the last two years, Jogan has launched, acquired, or invested in over 30 companies aiming to revolutionize a variety of industries through technological innovation, comprehensive solutions, and a relationships-based approach with a mission to bring communities closer together.

For more information about Jogan, please visit http://www.joganinc.com.

For More Information:
[email protected] 

Media Contact:
Leonor Lucero
303-720-1878
[email protected] 

SOURCE Jogan Inc.

$10 million investment from Prosperity7 Ventures brings Series C funding round to $60 million as company reports record year-to-date revenue growth

CAMPBELL, Calif., Oct. 10, 2023 — Acceldata, the market leader in enterprise data observability, today announced the company has achieved 150% year-over-year Fortune 500 logo growth and a $10 million Series C funding addition from new investor Prosperity7 Ventures to fuel its go-to-market expansion. The investment brings the company’s total capital raised to over $100 million as it reports significant corporate momentum fueled by customer growth, product innovation, global expansion, and the acquisition of Bewgle. In addition, the company has expanded its executive leadership with the appointment of Mike McQuaid as chief revenue officer, Mahesh Kumar as chief marketing officer, and Ramon Chen as chief product officer.

“We have invested heavily in our data observability platform over the last five years and the world’s largest enterprises, including many Fortune 500 companies, are using our products in the most complex data operations to operate business-critical data products at petabyte scale,” said Rohit Choudhary, CEO and co-founder of Acceldata. “This funding by a premier investor, Prosperity7, the addition of a world-class executive team, and AI-led innovation will propel our mission of shaping the rapidly expanding data observability category.”

Company Achieves 150% Year-Over-Year Fortune 500 Logo Growth and Expands Global Presence 

Acceldata continues to see rapid customer growth, reporting 150% year-over-year Fortune 500 logo growth as more leading organizations recognize the value of its enterprise data observability platform to build best-in-class data products.

To support the needs of its growing customer base, Acceldata has expanded its global presence into Canada with the opening of a new office in the greater Toronto metropolitan area. The office brings the company’s footprint to three locations across North America and Asia with employees worldwide. The Toronto location has more than doubled its employee headcount over the last four months to support the company’s customers, with plans to continue to expand the team over the coming months.

Series C Funding Addition to Accelerate Go-To-Market 

In February of this year, Acceldata announced a $50 million Series C funding round led by March Capital, with additional investment from Sanabil Investments, Industry Ventures, and Insight Partners to expand its product innovation and leadership in the data observability market. The $10 million addition from Prosperity7 Ventures brings the total funding round to $60 million, and will enable the company to accelerate go-to-market efforts and continue to deliver innovative observability solutions that address the rapidly expanding category.

“As enterprises across the globe are doubling down on initiatives to bring AI and large language models into production, access to trusted, reliable data becomes even more imperative,” said Abhishek Shukla, senior investment director at Prosperity7 Ventures. “Acceldata is setting the new standard for data management with its innovative platform and world-class team, and it’s a privilege to partner to deliver AI-driven solutions and drive the future of enterprise data observability market.”

Key Executive Appointments Accelerate & Scale Go-To-Market Execution

As the company continues to expand its global operations and market leadership, Acceldata has extended its executive staff with the appointment of seasoned technology executives, including industry veteran Mike McQuaid who has joined Acceldata as chief revenue officer (CRO) to lead the company’s sales strategy. McQuaid has over 20 years of experience at organizations including Hitachi Vantara, BusinessObjects (acquired by SAP), and Birst (acquired by Infor) with a proven track record of success managing large, field-sales organizations.

The company has also appointed Mahesh Kumar as chief marketing officer (CMO) to drive global marketing strategy. Kumar joins with over 30 years of experience driving category leadership across technology markets at companies including Gitlab and Propelo (acquired by Harness). Additionally, Ramon Chen has joined as chief product officer (CPO) with over 30 years of experience developing and executing product strategy for leading cloud platforms, SaaS applications, and infrastructure at companies including ActivTrak and Reltio.

Last month, Acceldata also acquired Bewgle, a cutting-edge AI platform, to expand its best-in-class enterprise data observability capabilities into AI and large language models (LLMs). Led by Bewgle founders Ganga Kumar and Shan Shah, both former Google employees, the AI team will expand the company’s product offerings to ensure reliable, high quality data pipelines across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.

Helpful Links

About Acceldata

Founded in 2018, Campbell, CA-based Acceldata has developed the world’s first enterprise data observability platform to help enterprises build and operate great data products. Acceldata’s solutions have been embraced by global customers, such as Dun & Bradstreet, Oracle, PubMatic, PhonePe (Walmart), HCSC, and many more. Acceldata investors include Insight Partners, March Capital, Industry Ventures, Lightspeed, Sorenson Ventures, Sanabil, and Emergent Ventures. Contact us to learn about the benefits of data observability.

About Prosperity7 Ventures

Prosperity7 Ventures is the diversified growth fund of Aramco Ventures, a subsidiary of Aramco, the world’s leading integrated energy and chemicals company. The fund’s name derives from “Prosperity Well,” the seventh oil well drilled in Saudi Arabia and the first to strike commercial oil, paving the way to prosperity. Bringing forward this pioneering history, Prosperity7 invests globally with a long-term view in breakthrough technologies and transformational business models that bring prosperity and positive impacts on a vast scale. Official website: https://www.prosperity7vc.com/

SOURCE Acceldata

One of the largest seed rounds in cybersecurity history, led by YL Ventures and Mayfield

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 10, 2023 — Today cybersecurity veterans and serial entrepreneurs Ben Bernstein (Co-founder and CEO), Dima Stopel (Co-founder and VP R&D), and John Morello (Co-founder and CTO) launch Gutsy, redefining the security governance market. Gutsy’s founders were the founding team of Twistlock, the cloud-native security pioneer acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019, and have raised an exceptional $51M in seed funding led by YL Ventures and Mayfield.

Gutsy’s 2023 State of Security Governance survey, with responses from over 50 enterprise CISOs, highlights the problems the company is solving. Enterprise CISOs reported that 55% of their security tools are not well operationalized, which has led to process failure being the root cause of 38% of security incidents. Similarly, 63% of audit findings are the result of breakdowns in security processes.

Gutsy’s revolutionary solution applies process mining to cybersecurity for the first time, providing automatic, data-driven insight into how an organization’s teams, tools, and processes work together and what outcomes they deliver. Gutsy provides security leaders with the data and understanding to answer hard questions and make good decisions.

“Customers often tell us they have 80 or 100 different security tools, but they consider less than half of them to be well operationalized, so they struggle to get the outcomes they need,” said Ben Bernstein, CEO and co-founder of Gutsy. “That’s because security is more than just tools; it’s people, process, and technology. But today security processes are more complex and opaque than ever.  Gutsy revolutionizes governance by taking a process and outcome focused perspective, helping you understand how all the pieces work together, what results you’re delivering, and why you’re getting them.”

Joining the funding round are prominent cybersecurity executives and founders including George Kurtz – CEO of CrowdStrike, Chenxi Wang – Managing Partner at Rain Capital, Mickey Boodaei – CEO of Transmit Security, Udi Mokady – Founder of CyberArk, Assaf Rappaport – CEO of Wiz, and others. Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield, and Yoav Leitersdorf, Managing Partner at YL Ventures, have both joined Gutsy’s board of directors. Michael Cortez, Partner at YL Ventures, is a board observer.

Customers are using Gutsy to:

• Improve Outcomes: Gutsy helps CISOs gain insight into how their teams, tools, and service providers work together, identifying friction, removing delays, and reducing risk. Gutsy enables security leaders to define KPIs across all their security functions, automatically measure performance, and instantly drill into what outcomes they’re getting and why.
• Transform Auditing: Gutsy automatically gathers data about every execution of every process, automatically correlates activity across complex workflows, and helps security organizations find the unknown unknowns. Gutsy transforms auditing from a time consuming checkbox exercise into real understanding of how risks develop and linger.
• Drive Strategic Change: Gutsy helps leaders reduce risk from strategic projects like cloud migration, managed services adoption, and deploying new security tools. Gutsy provides comparative insights centered around how changes are operationalized so ROI can be measured and investments aligned with best practices and standards.

Gutsy’s beta, available now, provides three modules covering processes in identity management, incident response, and vulnerability management. The platform integrates with a broad range of tools from cloud providers to HR systems, vulnerability management tools, ticketing systems, EDR platforms, and more. Gutsy is agentless, provided as SaaS, and is available globally in any customer selected region.

“There is a misconception that the single answer to security is technology, so CISOs increase budgets in hopes that more tools will equal better defenses,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner, Mayfield. “Instead, they end up increasing complexity and spending more money on resources to track down what’s broken and why. As a People First investor, we look forward to the journey with the world class-founding team at Gutsy, as they solve this age-old problem with a data-driven approach to understanding security processes so that CISOs can maximize their technology investments, streamline auditing and improve outcomes.”

“Gutsy’s seed round check was the largest we’ve written, but one of the easiest decisions we’ve made,” says Yoav Leitersdorf, Managing Partner of YL Ventures. “These entrepreneurs have a proven track record of consistently and accurately anticipating the market’s needs and addressing business and security priorities, as well as building a startup that had some of the most impressive growth metrics we’ve seen to date. This tried-and-tested approach, along with their vision and determination, ensures that Gutsy will lead the market in their category.”

Gutsy Testimonials

“At Redis, we are all about the positive impacts of real time data. We’re happy to partner with Gutsy to get a continuous data-driven view of the effectiveness of our security processes, ultimately  helping us better secure our products and systems.”

–  Quincy Castro (CISO, Redis)

“True cloud transformation requires operational transformation. You can’t safely operate at cloud scale and speed without a new way to do security governance. Gutsy’s innovative, software-driven approach to helping security organizations visualize, gain semantic awareness, and optimize security operations enables organizations to maintain ongoing security governance at cloud scale.”

–  Nancy Wang (Former Director of Engineering & GM – Amazon Web Services)

“For decades, security vendors have focused on detections and settings. But without understanding how and why something occurred, it’s hard for CISOs to prevent it from happening again.  Gutsy’s application of process mining to security governance can provide customers a different perspective – focusing on processes and outcomes. This process centric approach can help CISOs see the full series of events that leads to an outcome, so they can better mitigate cyber-risk and deliver desired security results more quickly and reliably.”

–  Jon Oltsik (Distinguished Analyst and ESG Fellow, Enterprise Strategy Group)

“I’ve always had a hard time understanding and improving my security processes. The way it’s done today is pretty much the same way it was done 20 years ago. It takes too much time and too much manual effort to understand disparate and disconnected tools. Gutsy transforms governance, auditing, and operations by applying software to automatically and continuously gather data about every execution of a security process, correlate the steps within it, and measure compliance with control objectives and SLAs. Gutsy transforms not just your day-to-day but your overall security program by using software to offload mundane tasks so teams can focus on taking action.”

–  Frank Kim (Former CISO, Kaiser Permanente)

“Security organizations are constantly going through strategic change to keep up with evolving threats and business needs. Whether that change be organizational, like moving the SOC to a managed service provider, or technical, like deploying a new cloud security platform, these changes are often complex and risky. Gutsy helps organizations lower that risk and quantify ROI by understanding the big picture of how new capabilities work with the rest of their security ecosystem and compare to vendor and industry best practices.”

–  Ryan Gurney (Former CISO, Looker)

About Gutsy
www.gutsy.com
[email protected]

SOURCE Gutsy

Arctop brings world-class expertise in neuroscience, from having previously developed Stephen Hawking’s BCI communications technology to now building innovative surgical training applications for medical schools.

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 10, 2023 — Arctop, a software platform for brain decoding, announced today $10 million in Series A funding co-led by Fifth Growth Fund (“FGF”) and Supermoon Capital. This funding will accelerate the commercialization of Arctop’s pioneering technology that translates brain activity into real-time information for third party applications.

“By investing in revolutionary companies like Arctop, we aim to ensure technology serves people,” said Royce Wilson, partner at FGF. “Arctop is positioned to create the world’s premier non-invasive brain-computer interface and we couldn’t be more excited.”

“Our partnership with Arctop is part of our commitment to advancements in human-centered technologies that improve our lives, organizations, and communities,” Mike Masterson said, following Supermoon Capital’s investment.

Founded in 2016 by neuroscientist Dan Furman and software engineer Eitan Kay, Arctop decodes brain signals measured from wearables like headbands, earbuds, and virtual and augmented reality headsets equipped with basic electric skin sensors. Arctop’s software is licensed to enterprise developers who are creating unprecedented user-centric applications, such as personalized skill training, assistive communication, and emotion-adaptive experiences.

Arctop’s software platform is the intelligence layer between wearable electronics and third-party applications and is designed with end-users’ privacy in mind. The company’s business model explicitly does not and will never include sharing raw brain data with clients or partners. Arctop provides end users with a simple dashboard that allows them to control their own data, including granting and withdrawing permissions for third party apps, authorizing or deactivating certain features, and easy data and account deletion.

CEO Dan Furman, Ph.D., began his neuroscience training at age 16 as a research intern working to mathematically model brain tumor growth patterns and proactively halt metastases through targeted gamma radiation. After graduating from Harvard University, he led the team that developed a non-invasive brain-computer interface for renowned physicist Stephen Hawking to continue communicating as his ALS advanced.

“As a neuroscientist, I have seen firsthand the life-changing impact that cutting edge technology can have on people who face difficult challenges,” said Arctop’s CEO Dan Furman, “And that is basically all of us at some point of our lives. Our neural decoding platform can enhance communication, learning, and experiences in a way that is accessible for all.”

Arctop’s real-time cognition technology has many uses and can be deployed today with trusted partners in health, education, cybersecurity, gaming and entertainment. Initially, the primary applications are in the medical field, where Arctop is collaborating with Stanford Medicine, Surgical Safety Technologies and Academy for Surgical Coaching as recipients of a grant from Wellcome Leap’s SAVE, a $50 million program. Stanford Medicine’s Drs. Teodore Grantcharov, James Korndorffer, and Carla Pugh are Co-PIs on the project titled “Advanced Quantification and Acquisition of Surgical Skills Using the Wearable Sensing System” which has multiple goals, including decreasing the time it takes to acquire minimally invasive surgical skills.

About Arctop
Arctop is a cognition company, founded to create widely-accessible technology that profoundly improves human life. Arctop’s software applies artificial intelligence to electric measurements of brain activity — translating people’s feelings, reactions, and intent — to empower the human experience. We’re decoding the brain’s signals to optimize skill training, power new communications, and enable unprecedented adaptive experiences. https://arctop.com

Arctop Co-Founders
Dan Furman began his interest in neuroscience in high school, where he co-developed, with neurosurgeon Christopher Duma, a minimally invasive surgical method that used brain imaging to predict the spread of malignant brain tumors and proactively halt tumor growth using gamma radiation. Dan went on to earn his A.B. in Neurobiology at Harvard. After graduating, Dan joined Neurovigil, a startup with Irwin Jacobs and Elon Musk as investors, where he led successful efforts to develop a novel brain-computer interface for Stephen Hawking. Dan was subsequently invited to do a PhD at Technion’s Evoked Potentials Laboratory, where he became the first in the world to demonstrate that non-invasive brain sensor data could be used to control the movement of individual neuroprosthetic fingers. This level of granularity had never been accomplished before, and proved that brain signals measured from the scalp carry far more information than previously believed.

Eitan Kay is a self-taught, full-stack software engineering polymath who previously led cybersecurity and software engineering teams at some of the fastest growing high tech startups in Tel Aviv. In 2015, he began collaborating with the city’s premier neurology department at Ichilov Hospital on specialized IT infrastructure to support cognitive research. While advancing a new virtual reality technology to enhance stroke rehabilitation in a Google-run accelerator, he met Dan. They were each representing their own respective projects but quickly realized their work was complementary and joined forces to form Arctop.

About FGF
FGF is a $100M growth stage vehicle that invests in the next generation of innovative Media, Entertainment, and Consumer Technology companies. Led by veteran media executive Ed Wilson, FGF is powered by a team of experienced investors, founders, and large-scale operators who leverage their diverse operating experience, industry knowledge and large network to foster and accelerate growth for early-stage companies. Visit www.fgf.co for more information.

About Supermoon Capital
Supermoon Capital is the only venture capital firm in the world focused exclusively on the sleep technology market. The San Francisco-based firm partners with visionary innovators across the sleep market spectrum encompassing chronobiology, neurotech, biotech, pharmaceuticals, consumer interventions, and enterprise solutions. Supermoon’s global network of prominent academics, strategic partners, and renowned sleep scientists supports companies across a range of functions, including product development, go-to-market strategy, and growth financing. Visit www.supermoon.com for more information.

SOURCE Arctop

INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 10, 2023 — Plan Forward, a leading dental software company enabling dental practices to offer an alternative method of payment to their uninsured patients, today announced it has raised $2 million in Seed B financing led by Elevate Ventures, with participation from IU Ventures and Revere Partners.

“Plan Forward’s innovative software has seen strong demand from independent practices, groups and Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) who see our solution as the best way to transition to a Direct Primary Care model, with improved care for their patients,” said Jane Levy, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Plan Forward.”The level of interest in the platform has exceeded our expectations.”

“With integration to over 20 dental practice management systems, our platform is the most effective for creating seamless workflows for growing groups and DSOs,” said Megan Lohman, Founder and Co-CEO of Plan Forward. “The new financing will accelerate our next chapter of growth to support our customers, grow the team, and continue to invest in our technology.” 

Plan Forward has launched its new integrated platform, Plan Forward Advanced, and has seen surprising demand for its innovative offering for practices looking to grow their cash patients. Built-in automation ensures that the practices’ workload does not increase, and that the platform supports the existing workflows in the practice. The company is working with both large dental organizations, private groups and independent practices across 40 states. 

“Plan Forward is on the cusp of a significant growth trajectory, and the market traction the team has achieved in such a short time attests to the value of their software. Their solution has evolved to include a fully integrated enterprise product which sets it apart as a robust platform that dental practices can use to scale their business,” said Christopher Day, CEO of Elevate Ventures. “We are excited to partner with Jane, Megan and their team on the next phase of Plan Forward’s growth journey.”     

To learn more about Plan Forward, visit planforward.io.  

About Plan Forward
Plan Forward is a leader in offering a comprehensive solution, including an innovative new platform for enabling the custom creation, management and analysis of dental membership plans, compliant membership agreements, and marketing support to drive membership growth for practices and groups. The company was founded in 2018, and has assembled an experienced, seasoned team of technologists and domain experts. Follow Plan Forward at planforward.io.

About Elevate Ventures
Elevate Ventures is the #1 most active seed and early-stage investor in the Great Lakes region and is #24 in the United States. The firm assists high-growth startups and early-stage companies expand into high-performing companies. Elevate has invested over $150 million in more than 500 companies. To learn more about Elevate Ventures, visit elevateventures.com.  

SOURCE Plan Forward, LLC

SAN FRANCISCO and ZURICH, Oct. 10, 2023 — Minds.ai, a pioneering company applying AI to semiconductor manufacturing optimization and autonomy, has secured a significant investment from Momenta. Minds.ai is poised to revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing by driving significant productivity and waste reduction advancements.

The World’s Most Expensive, Complex, and Productive Factories

Semiconductors are made in factories called ‘fabs.’ Building and outfitting a new fab cost as much as $20 billion. The latest fabs are heavily automated, with highly skilled workers augmented by robust software systems.

Last year, the semiconductor industry produced more transistors than the combined quantity of all goods produced by all other companies and industries in human history. Nothing else comes close. Fabricating ever-miniaturizing semiconductors has been the most significant engineering challenge of our time.

The potential of AI in the semiconductor industry

Semiconductor device makers have already begun their journey to generate value with AI. McKinsey believes that AI can contribute between $5 billion and $8 billion annually to earnings before interest and taxes across the industry. Within the next few years, AI could generate over $35 billion in value annually, and over the longer term, AI could contribute over $85 billion. The largest share of value creation will come from using AI to reduce semiconductor manufacturing costs and begin the move to Autonomous manufacturing.

The investment from Momenta

Recognizing the immense potential in semiconductor manufacturing, Momenta decided to invest in Minds.ai. With a strong commitment to optimizing efficiency, Minds.ai offers innovative solutions that revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing processes. Through the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Minds.ai’s products are designed to address complex scheduling and resource allocation challenges faced by professionals in the industry.

“Minds.ai is privileged to count Momenta among our investors and board members, given their deep passion and engagement in smart manufacturing,” says Sumit Sanyal, Founder and CEO at minds.ai.

Michael Dolbec, Managing Partner of Momenta, said, “Minds.ai is pioneering deep commercial use of deep reinforcement learning for fab automation, with the potential to save hundreds of millions through productivity gains and waste reduction. They have a significant opportunity to transform semiconductor manufacturing.”

Jerry O’Gorman, VP at Advantech IIOT division, stated, “We are pleased to support this investment in Minds.ai. Our leading role in edge computing and IoT solutions gives us a deep appreciation for the value of semiconductor manufacturing operations and, thus, the potential for AI-powered optimization solutions. We see a tremendous opportunity to collaborate with Minds.ai to co-create solutions to address the huge investment in new semiconductor fabrication facilities in North America and Europe.”

This thirteenth investment from Momenta’s AIoT Ecosystem Fund, powered by Advantech, validates Minds.ai’s vision. The new funding will enable Minds.ai to extend its library of AI-enabled applications and expand its solutions to more fabs and geographies. 

About Minds.ai: For more information, please visit http://www.minds.ai.
About Advantech: For more information, please visit https://www.advantech.com.
About Momenta: For more information, please visit http://www.momenta.one.

Media Contact
Sandra Mueller, Momenta Partners AG, +41415620003, [email protected], https://www.momenta.one/

SOURCE Momenta

minds.ai Enables More Semiconductors to Be Produced Faster With Less Waste at a Lower Cost 

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 10, 2023 — minds.ai announced today that it has raised $5.3 million in seed funding to drive innovation in the application of AI in semiconductor manufacturing. The funding was led by Monta Vista Capital, with other investors, including Momenta joining the round. As part of the financing, minds.ai welcomes Venkatesh Shukla from Monta Vista Capital and Michael Dolbec from Momenta to its board of directors.

The CHIPS Act in the U.S. and the European Chips Act have highlighted the importance of semiconductor manufacturing as the most critical of all the smart manufacturing industry segments. McKinsey & Company predicts that semiconductor manufacturing will become a trillion-dollar industry by 2030. It’s also one of the most complex manufacturing processes in the world, requiring hundreds of process steps in hundreds of tools – with many dozens of scheduling, prediction and meeting of time constraints between steps in real time across the entire fab. That leads to the need for human intervention, but human capacity to make informed decisions in a complex and rapidly changing environment is limited, resulting in inefficiencies. Given the investment of tens of billions of dollars in modern fabs, every efficiency improvement has a significant impact on the bottom line.

To address the industry’s challenges, minds.ai is bringing its proven experience in applying deep learning to solve business and technical problems to dramatically improve the efficiency and productivity of large-scale semiconductor manufacturing processes. The minds.ai Maestro™ end-to-end solution integrates seamlessly into existing workflows, improving the efficiency and productivity of fab manufacturing processes using supervised learning, reinforcement learning and generative AI.

• Improved targeted key performance indicators: General managers and data science managers in semiconductor fabs will gain efficiencies in areas including throughput, fault detection and classification, preventive maintenance planning, reduction of wafer scraps and prediction of wafer lot processing times.
• Faster, more productive planning and investment: Business operations professionals can do capacity planning, product mix allocation, and capital investment planning and optimization quantitatively and more rapidly than with spreadsheets alone.
• Deep learning tools and established AI expertise: C-suite leaders can leverage minds.ai’s technology to assist with high-value programs ranging from product mix planning to demand forecasting and training of operators.

Venkatesh Shukla, Founder and General Partner of Monta Vista Capital, said: “Increasing the efficiency of semiconductor manufacturing operations is one of the most challenging programs in the industry. Traditional approaches don’t suffice and humans alone cannot make informed decisions using them. This is an intractable problem and minds.ai has created a solution portfolio with proven results for this sector.”

Michael Dolbec, Managing Partner of  Momenta, said: “With our focus on smart manufacturing, Momenta sought an investment to apply AI to semiconductor operations. We’ve found exactly that in the highly skilled team and groundbreaking product suite of minds.ai Maestro.”

Sumit Sanyal, CEO of minds.ai, said: “We’re on a mission to completely transform the semiconductor industry through the application of various deep learning techniques. These technologies are key to solving some of the biggest pain points in this sector, with the ability to deliver results that existing tools could never achieve. The investment from Monta Vista Capital and Momenta will help accelerate our journey.”

Additional resources:

Listen to Momenta’s Podcast “The Digital Thread” featuring

Sumit Sanyal: Podcast Link

About minds.ai
minds.ai dramatically improves the efficiency and productivity of semiconductor manufacturing processes. This includes enabling more semiconductor wafers to be produced faster with less waste at a lower cost, reducing the number of scraped wafers, and speeding up the design and planning processes. Founded in 2014, minds.ai is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Amsterdam and Bangalore. More information is available at https://minds.ai/

SOURCE minds.ai

FARMINGTON, Conn., Oct. 10, 2023 — Horizon Technology Finance Corporation (NASDAQ: HRZN) (“Horizon”), an affiliate of Monroe Capital, and a leading specialty finance company that provides capital in the form of secured loans to venture capital-backed companies in the technology, life science, healthcare information and services, and sustainability industries, announced today that on September 15, 2023 it provided a $35 million venture loan facility to Mirantis, Inc. (“Mirantis”), of which $20 million has been initially funded.

Mirantis frees developers to create their most valuable code, building and managing open cloud software infrastructure, enabling enterprises across a wide range of industries to ship code more rapidly, notably improving the productivity and efficiency of developers. Through its use of open-source technologies, Mirantis leverages technology to allow organizations to automate, build, test, release and run modern software applications in the cloud. Mirantis serves more than 700 enterprise customers and supports 400,000 container nodes in production. Lens, Mirantis’ Kubernetes development platform, supports more than 50,000 companies and 1 million users. Mirantis is backed by top-tier investors including Intel Capital and Insight Partners. The company will use the loan proceeds for general growth and working capital.

“Mirantis eliminates the need for companies to devote vast resources to creating and managing their tech infrastructure,” said Gerald A. Michaud, President of Horizon. “Through its cloud infrastructure, Mirantis has developed a loyal base of Fortune 100 clients that are optimizing their IT efficiency and creating additional value for their customers. We are pleased to support Mirantis’ ongoing expansion.”

“Horizon’s support is a catalyst to help us pursue our growth strategy and accelerate our ability to empower enterprises to easily control and enhance their tech infrastructures,” said Adrian Ionel, Chief Executive Officer of Mirantis. “Mirantis is transforming how companies manage their IT infrastructure while greatly improving their efficiency and overall software development process, which ultimately increases their productivity and creativity.”

About Horizon Technology Finance
Horizon Technology Finance Corporation (NASDAQ: HRZN), externally managed by Horizon Technology Finance Management LLC, an affiliate of Monroe Capital, is a leading specialty finance company that provides capital in the form of secured loans to venture capital backed companies in the technology, life science, healthcare information and services, and sustainability industries. The investment objective of Horizon is to maximize its investment portfolio’s return by generating current income from the debt investments it makes and capital appreciation from the warrants it receives when making such debt investments. Horizon is headquartered in Farmington, Connecticut, with a regional office in Pleasanton, California, and investment professionals located throughout the U.S. Monroe Capital is a $17 billion asset management firm specializing in private credit markets across various strategies, including direct lending, technology finance, venture debt, opportunistic, structured credit, real estate and equity. To learn more, please visit horizontechfinance.com. 

About Mirantis
Mirantis helps organizations ship code faster on public and private clouds, increasing developer productivity by removing the stress of managing infrastructure. The company combines intelligent automation and cloud native expertise to provide a ZeroOps approach to managing and operating Kubernetes and cloud environments. Mirantis delivers a public cloud experience on any infrastructure, from the data center to the edge, with one cohesive cloud experience for complete app and DevOps portability, a single pane of glass, and automated full-stack lifecycle management, all based on open source. 

Mirantis has a strong record of acquisitions – most recently, Shipa in January, amazee.io in July 2022, the staff behind Kontena in 2020, and Docker Enterprise in 2019 – and incorporating those companies’ technologies into the Mirantis product portfolio in order to boost developer productivity.

Mirantis serves many of the world’s leading enterprises, including Adobe, DocuSign, Inmarsat, PayPal, Reliance Jio, Societe Generale, Splunk, and S&P Global. Learn more at www.mirantis.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Statements included herein may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements other than statements of historical facts included in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements and are not guarantees of future performance, condition or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Horizon undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement made herein. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release.

Contacts:

Investor Relations:
ICR
Garrett Edson
[email protected]
(860) 284-6450

Media Relations:
ICR
Chris Gillick
[email protected]   
(646) 677-1819

For Mirantis:
Joseph Eckert
Eckert Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE Horizon Technology Finance Corporation