Combination Creates Preferred Provider of Smallwares and Supplies for Foodservice, Healthcare, Hygiene Industries

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oct. 3, 2023 — CFS Brands announced today that it has acquired The Foodware Group (TFG), creating a preferred provider of smallwares and supplies to the foodservice, healthcare, and hygiene markets, well positioned to capitalize on future growth opportunities. The transaction was completed October 2, 2023. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The Foodware Group was formed through a strategic combination of G.E.T, which has a 40-year legacy of providing complete “front of house” solutions in dinnerware, drinkware, display, and buffetware; and Winco, a “one-source” supplier for tabletop, smallwares, janitorial, and countertop equipment. Through a commitment to customer-focused service, along with a unique strength in product development and sourcing, The Foodware Group has become an award-winning supplier partner for foodservice operators and distributors.

With the combination of CFS Brands and The Foodware Group, customers will have access to the broadest and deepest line-up of products and solutions to enhance their business, including Carlisle FoodService Products, San Jamar, Dinex, Winco, and G.E.T. brands, among others. Distributors and end users will be able to consolidate their purchases under a single supplier, reduce complexity in their operations, and lower their total costs.

“The acquisition of The Foodware Group is a transformational opportunity for CFS Brands,” said CFS Brands CEO Trent Freiberg. “The Foodware Group joins a portfolio of businesses and brands that are leaders in their respective markets. CFS Brands and TFG are a great fit, and together we will build on our combined strengths and shared values to continue our track record of sustainable growth and exceptional results. We are excited to work with the leadership team at The Foodware Group, and we welcome all TFG employees to CFS Brands.”

Jim White, CEO of The Foodware Group, said, “We have built a great company over the last few years that has driven strong growth and created many opportunities for our exceptional team. Our products and capabilities are a great complement to what CFS Brands offers, creating the opportunity to leverage the best of both. This is one of those rare situations where the complementary strengths of two companies create an opportunity to make one plus one equal three.”

The Foodware Group Executive Vice President and President of Winco Elaine Shen added, “We see tremendous opportunities ahead of us to enhance our value and partnership to customers. While we will continue to deliver outstanding customer service, we will also develop greater depth in our product capabilities and strengthen our competitiveness to better serve foodservice, healthcare, hygiene, and international customers.”

The integration process will be a gradual evolution that begins with taking needed time to develop a deep understanding of the businesses, brands, and teams, and the companies’ respective strengths and opportunities. G.E.T. and Winco will each continue to operate as stand-alone entities within CFS Brands. Customers and suppliers will continue to interact with CFS Brands, G.E.T, and Winco as they have in the past.

Guggenheim Securities, LLC, is serving as financial advisor, and Winston & Strawn is serving as legal counsel to CFS Brands. Houlihan Lokey is serving as financial advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis is serving as legal counsel to The Foodware Group.

ABOUT CFS BRANDS

CFS Brands (www.CFSBrands.com) is a U.S.-based manufacturer of products for the foodservice, healthcare, and janitorial industries. CFS Brands operates Carlisle FoodService Products, Dinex, Sparta, El Castor, Jofel, Piper, San Jamar, Snap Drape, WipesPlus, Elite Global Solutions, and AyrKing brands globally. Based in Oklahoma City, OK, CFS Brands employs more than 1,600 people across its headquarters, six manufacturing locations, and seven distribution centers worldwide.

ABOUT THE FOODWARE GROUP

The Foodware Group (www.thefoodwaregroup.com) is a leading end-to-end provider of supplies to the foodservice industry, delivering the highest value solutions to all of its partners with uncompromised quality and exceptional service. The Foodware Group provides front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house supplies and smallwares for diverse foodservice applications. G.E.T. was founded in 1982 and Winco in 1992. The companies joined to form The Foodware Group in 2018. The company is headquartered in Lodi, N.J., and operates four warehouses throughout the U.S. (Lodi, NJ; Miami, FL; Houston, TX; and Las Vegas, NV) with nearly 450 team members and more than 800,000 square feet of total warehouse space.

SOURCE CFS Brands

Funding to Support Expanded Access to Whole-Child, Value-Based, Outcomes-Driven Autism Care

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 3, 2023 — Cortica, the United States’ leading physician-led, whole-child, value-based autism services company, has raised $40 million in a Series D extension, bringing the total Series D round to $115 million. The extension was entirely strategic, led by CVS Health Ventures, in conjunction with LRVHealth, Ascension Investment Management (a subsidiary of Ascension), and the University of Wisconsin Foundation.

“There is an increasing need for access to evidence-based care for children with neurodivergent conditions and autism, and we believe that Cortica is well positioned to help support our members and their dependents by deploying an integrated, medical and behavioral care model,” said Justin Brock, partner at CVS Health Ventures. “Through our investment and collaboration with Cortica, we believe that we can help improve the overall quality of care for individuals with autism, as well as provide support to their caregivers.”

Founded to fix the fragmented care journey families typically experience when seeking diagnoses and treatments, Cortica’s whole-child, whole-family, value-based care model for autism spans medical treatment, neurodiversity-affirming behavioral therapy, developmental therapy (encompassing speech, occupational, physical, and music therapies), and family support and counseling.

Cortica’s care model has shown improved outcomes across conditions that frequently co-occur with autism, including sleep disorders, seizures, psychiatric comorbidities, and gastrointestinal, communication, behavioral, and sensorimotor issues, among others – while utilizing less than 50% of standard applied behavioral analysis volumes, limiting the use of antipsychotic and stimulant medications, and reducing emergency department and inpatient admissions.

Cortica delivers on multiple metrics related to the healthcare effectiveness data and information set (HEDIS), one of the healthcare industry’s most widely used performance tools. Cortica’s value proposition has led to four whole-child value-based care contracts, with several more in the pipeline.

“After working closely with our strategic network and developing a deep thesis on autism, one of the most complex challenges in healthcare, we’re thrilled to have discovered and invested in Cortica,” said Ellen Herlacher, principal at LRVHealth. “Cortica’s validated care model and technology platform improve clinical outcomes, enhance the healthcare experience, and reduce waste in the system.”

The additional funding will support the company’s continued national scaling of whole-child autism value-based care, as well as deeper investments in technology, data capture, clinical decision support, research, and optimization of the clinician and patient experience.

“I’m deeply grateful to have the support of these impactful and visionary strategic partners,” said Neil Hattangadi, MD, co-founder and CEO of Cortica. “With 1 in 36 children in the United States now affected with autism, and that prevalence continually climbing, partnerships between the field’s most innovative clinicians, strategic investors, health plans, and health systems are essential to defragment the traditional care model and evolve the reimbursement paradigm. We can no longer wait. Collectively, we’re in a position to solve one of the most pressing challenges confronting humanity.”

About Cortica Inc.
Cortica’s mission is to design and deliver life changing care – one child, one family, one community at a time. Founded in 2017, Cortica now employs more than 1,800 experts across disciplines, including pediatric neurologists, developmental pediatricians, epileptologists, pediatric nurse practitioners, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, music therapists, board certified behavior analysts, marriage and family therapists, and more. The researchers and physicians in the company’s Cortica Innovation Network conduct outcomes research, serve as global leaders in clinical trial recruitment, and have assembled the largest long and wide dataset in autism and neurodevelopment. Cortica will serve more than 12,000 children and their families this year. For more information, visit corticacare.com.

About CVS Health Ventures
CVS Health Ventures is a dedicated corporate venture capital fund that works with high-potential, early-stage and growth-stage companies focused on making health care more accessible, affordable, and simpler. The company focuses on investments that transform care delivery and focus on whole person care, consumer-centric health, and disruptive technology enablement. CVS Health Ventures’ goal is to enable promising entrepreneurs to scale more quickly and effectively through access to their unmatched enterprise capabilities and consumer touchpoints, while offering expertise and insights from their company’s unique perspective. For more information, visit cvshealth.com/health-care-redefined/ventures.html.

About LRVHealth
LRVHealth is the “Inside Healthcare” venture capital platform. Through a network of strategic limited partners that includes leading providers, payers, and vendors and touches half of all healthcare consumers in the U.S., LRVHealth applies industry knowledge and operational experience to early-stage companies focused on innovation. LRVHealth’s exclusive focus is helping to transform healthcare by forging partnerships among its network members and the entrepreneurs addressing the industry’s biggest challenges and opportunities. For more information, visit lrvhealth.com.

About Ascension Investment Management, LLC
Ascension Investment Management (AIM) is an SEC-registered investment adviser with a mission to help faith-based organizations meet their operating, investment, and mission goals by investing its clients’ capital according to their values. AIM is a Missouri limited liability company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Ascension Capital, LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ascension, one of the nation’s leading non-profit and Catholic health systems, with a Mission of delivering compassionate, personalized care to all with special attention to persons living in poverty and those most vulnerable. For more information, visit ascensioninvestmentmanagement.com.

About the University of Wisconsin Foundation 
The University of Wisconsin Foundation (UWF) raises, invests in, and distributes funds for the benefit of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. UWF’s mission is to help ensure that the University of Wisconsin-Madison has the financial resources necessary to maintain its national leadership in teaching, innovative research, and outreach. For more information, visit supportuw.org.

Press Contact
Sarah Wall
Communications Manager, Cortica
[email protected]

SOURCE Cortica Inc.

ADP Ventures will focus on leading edge innovators in the HCM space and beyond

ROSELAND, N.J., Oct. 3, 2023 — ADP, a leading global technology company providing human capital management (HCM) solutions, announces the launch of its corporate venture capital arm and innovation lab, ADP Ventures. ADP Venture’s mission is to enhance and strengthen ADP’s core business, create offerings in new adjacent segments and geographies, and develop new assets to monetize markets and segments beyond HCM.  

“Our mission is to empower businesses and their employees,” says Maria Black, president and chief executive officer of ADP. “ADP Ventures will allow us to further invest to provide clients with unmatched support throughout the HCM journey, from hire to retire and, most importantly, that critical space in between where we hope to inspire people as they fulfill their potential.”

As part of its strategy, ADP Ventures will invest in and partner with early-stage and scaling tech startups that advance ADP’s innovation strategy.  ADP Ventures has also invested in SemperVirens Venture Capital, a leading early-stage venture capital fund that invests in technology transforming work, health and financial wellness.

“The world of work is changing at an unprecedented pace and many entrepreneurs are focused on advancing speed to innovation in this space,” says Sreeni Kutam, president of global product and innovation at ADP. “ADP Ventures is investing in the total human experience, in technology that empowers people at work and beyond work, whether it’s collaboration, health and wellbeing, talent acquisition, financial wellness or HCM analytics.”

ADP Ventures intends to focus on early-stage strategic investments with co-investors and will target a small, leading subset of the most innovative new companies. Consistent with this discipline, ADP recently completed investments in two start-ups this year: Cocoon, a leave management software provider that focuses on improving the employee leave experience by automating the most challenging parts of compliance, claims and payroll calculations; and, Fringe, a marketplace of services that facilitates a plethora of programs such as lifestyle benefit stipends, wellbeing, rewards and recognition, and peer-to-peer gifting.    

“ADP is committed to innovating and partnering to shape the future of the HCM industry,” says Usman Khan, senior vice president, Ventures at ADP. “ADP possesses the product stack, global market footprint, brand, and partnership expertise to work with and scale new companies. As an active partner to startups we invest in, we can help accelerate their growth and impact on the human experience through access to our customers, platforms, proprietary data, subject matter experts and broader community.”

The partnership with SemperVirens also brings direct access to the firm’s executive advisory board, composed of over 140 experts, to advise founders on scaling their products, sales strategies and key partnerships.

The ADP Ventures investment team will be holding meetings with interested startups at HR Tech 2023 in Las Vegas. Or learn more at adp.com/ventures.

About ADP (NASDAQ: ADP) 
Designing better ways to work through cutting-edge products, premium services and exceptional experiences that enable people to reach their full potential. HR, Talent, Time Management, Benefits and Payroll. Informed by data and designed for people. Learn more at ADP.com

About SemperVirens
Founded in 2018, SemperVirens is an early-stage ecosystem fund investing in workforce technology, healthcare technology and financial technology companies that sell to and through employers. Their team members bring deep industry experience, relationships, and insights and is led by Allison Baum Gates, Robby Peters, Greg Golub, Caribou Honig and Colin Tobias. The firm has more than $150 million AUM and a portfolio of 52 companies. For more information, visit www.sempervirensvc.com.

About Fringe
Fringe is the world’s first wellbeing marketplace, with global solutions for lifestyle spending accounts, rewards and recognition, wellbeing and flexible benefit programs. With 150+ services and experiences available, Fringe allows employees to build tailored benefits packages that meet their own unique and diverse needs. For more information, visit www.fringe.us.

About Cocoon
Cocoon is a leave management software that’s using technology to take the work out of leave. They partner with employers like Carta, Notion and Benchling to support their people through life’s most pivotal moments — from having a baby to caring for a loved one to navigating personal health. Cocoon’s proprietary software automates the most complex parts of compliance, claims and payroll, saving HR teams hours while giving employees the seamless, intuitive experience they’ve come to expect from modern workplace tools. Founded in 2020 by former Stripe and Square employees, Cocoon is backed by Index Ventures, First Round Capital, and other prominent technology investors. For more information, visit www.cocoon.com.

ADP, the ADP logo, and Always Designing for People, are trademarks of ADP, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Copyright © 2023 ADP, Inc.  All rights reserved.

SOURCE ADP, Inc.

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 3, 2023 — The American Diabetes Association^® (ADA) invites life science leaders, business professionals, angel investors and venture capitalists to the 28th Annual Leaders Forum HealthTech Showcase on November 3, 2023, from 10:00 am to 1:30 pm PT at the Marriott in San Mateo, California. The Leaders Forum HealthTech Showcase connects investors and industry experts to healthcare startup companies, while benefitting the ADA’s mission to prevent and cure diabetes, and to improve the lives of all people affected by diabetes.

Over 300 healthcare industry, venture capital, banking, legal, accounting and other executives will have the opportunity to meet with more than 50 startup companies focused on unmet medical needs. The event begins mid-morning with an Exhibitor Showcase where more than 50 start-ups display their technology or innovation in tabletop presentations. If you are an early-stage company, apply to be a part of the showcase by visiting www.diabetes.org/leadersforum.

The Exhibitor Showcase is followed by a luncheon during which the top three companies present to a panel of judges and the event attendees. The attendees then vote for the most innovative startup of the day, and the winner receives a prize of $10,000. Though only one company wins the prize, any startup can potentially be funded by one or more of the many investors attending the event. While most of the companies are Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay Area startups, the event draws applicants from across the country.

“The Leaders Forum HealthTech Showcase is what Silicon Valley is about: innovation, technology and progress. It offers healthcare investors and experts visibility into the newest concepts from entrepreneurs in any medical area, while contributing to an important cause,” said Karen Talmadge, PhD, 2018 Chair of the ADA’s National Board of Directors, an award-winning healthcare entrepreneur and a co-founder of the Leaders Forum HealthTech Showcase.

“Nearly half of American adults have diabetes or prediabetes, and the impact on the patient, their family, and our society is profoundly underestimated,” she continued. “Many of the healthcare executives and entrepreneurs attending our HealthTech Showcase played a critical role in the creation of technologies that dramatically improved the ability of people with diabetes to manage their disease, because poorly controlled diabetes is a leading cause of heart attack, stroke, blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage and amputations. I am grateful to all the sponsors of the HealthTech Showcase who are helping the ADA fight this terrible disease, while also bringing expertise and possibly even funding to help the newest medical industry entrepreneurs pursue their innovations for all diseases. The pioneers at this Showcase may even have the next great win for diabetes or other diseases.”

Leading sponsors of the HealthTech Showcase include Abbott, Wilson Sonsini, MedTech Innovator & Moss Adams. Table sponsors include, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Greenstein, Rogoff, Olsen & Co. (GROCO) CPA’s and Tax Advisors, Knobbe Martens, Latham and Watkins LLP, Murdock Martell, Perkins Coie LLP, Life Science Angels, RBC Wealth Management, BPM & Abbvie.

Information on sponsoring the event and purchasing tickets is available at diabetes.org/leadersforum.

About the American Diabetes Association
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is the nation’s leading voluntary health organization fighting to bend the curve on the diabetes epidemic and help people living with diabetes thrive. For 83 years, the ADA has driven discovery and research to treat, manage, and prevent diabetes while working relentlessly for a cure. Through advocacy, program development, and education we aim to improve the quality of life for the over 133 million Americans living with diabetes or prediabetes. Diabetes has brought us together. What we do next will make us Connected for Life. To learn more or to get involved, visit us at diabetes.org or call 1-800-DIABETES (1-800-342-2383). Join the fight with us on Facebook (American Diabetes Association), Spanish Facebook (Asociación Americana de la Diabetes), LinkedIn (American Diabetes Association), Twitter (@AmDiabetesAssn), and Instagram (@AmDiabetesAssn). 

Contact:  Virginia Cramer, (703) 253-4927
[email protected] 

SOURCE American Diabetes Association

Funding led by Energize Capital to unlock more value from grid data and advance electricity forecasting innovation

HOUSTON, Oct. 3, 2023 — Amperon Holdings, Inc., the leader in AI-powered electricity forecasts, raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Energize Capital. Other participants in this round include the D. E. Shaw group, Veriten, and existing investor, HSBC Asset Management. Two long-time Amperon customers, Ørsted and another strategic utility partner, also joined the round. The funding will propel Amperon’s evolution from an electricity demand forecasting platform to a comprehensive data analytics solution, enabling businesses to navigate the energy complex and accelerate grid decarbonization. This brings Amperon’s total funding to $30 million.

From ERCOT’s grid failure in February 2021 to CAISO’s rolling blackouts in the summer of 2022, the escalating impact of extreme weather events underscores the urgent need for critical forecasting tools for the energy transition. Today, predicting and planning for power demand is more challenging than ever. This is due not only to the effects of climate change, but also the increasing penetration of variable energy resources, like wind and solar, on the supply side, and surging demand growth driven by flexible loads and rapid electrification. Amperon’s advanced data analytics software has emerged as a critical linchpin to mitigate the systemic risk that comes with increasingly turbulent power grids worldwide.

“The energy transition is creating unprecedented market volatility, and Amperon is uniquely positioned to help market participants better navigate the transitioning grid – both in the U.S. and as we expand globally,” said Sean Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Amperon. “We’ve already established ourselves as the premier provider of electricity demand forecasting software. With this funding, we are poised to leverage our cutting-edge AI models to enable customers to unlock more value from data and asset optimization, spanning from on-site solar to commercial load management with backup generation and microgrid deployment.”

“Today’s electricity grid is facing uniquely modern challenges as we work to rapidly transform our energy assets and decarbonize our economy,” said Energize Capital Partner Tyler Lancaster, who joins the Amperon board of directors. “To facilitate the energy transition – a multitrillion-dollar market opportunity — we need more software tools custom-built to handle the complexities of our evolving energy markets. Amperon’s AI-powered analytics platform is exactly that, providing the accuracy and sophistication necessary for energy players across the value chain to manage their energy use and streamline our collective pathway to net-zero. After getting to know Sean and the Amperon team since inception, Energize is thrilled to officially partner with them as a lead investor in this funding.”

Amperon has experienced exceptional growth in the last two years. Since 2021, the company grew revenue by 5x, finding product-market fit with existing customers, and helping new market participants navigate the space. Headcount has grown by 4x over the same period, and Amperon plans to hire more engineers, data scientists, customer support, and sales roles as the company expands into new markets. This growth will provide customers with invaluable insights and predictive capabilities to help them anticipate market shifts, advance energy utilization, and optimize their carbon footprint.

With increasing global net-zero commitments and impending carbon accounting requirements, Amperon’s expertise in granular data management further enables companies to measure the carbon footprint of their hourly electricity usage, optimize load and lower-carbon power resources, and integrate carbon into industry business models – accelerating decarbonization on both the supply and demand side.

About Amperon
Amperon is a technology company based in Houston that builds AI-powered electricity analytics for energy market participants. Founded in 2018, Amperon empowers businesses to make informed decisions, optimize energy utilization, and work toward a more sustainable grid. With a commitment to innovation and sustainability, Amperon is the forecasting company of the energy transition. For more information about Amperon, visit www.amperon.co/.

About Energize Capital

Energize Capital is a leading climate software investor focused on scaling sustainable innovation. Founded in 2016 and based in Chicago, to date Energize has funded 27 companies and deployed more than half a billion through its venture capital and growth equity strategies. The firm is backed by institutional, strategic and impact LPs including Invenergy, CDPQ, Credit Suisse, SE Ventures (corporate venture arm of Schneider Electric), GE Renewable Energy, Xcel Energy, Caterpillar, HASI and more. For more information on Energize, please visit www.energizecap.com.

SOURCE Amperon

BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 3, 2023 — Allium Data, Inc., a disruptive insurtech startup, announced the close of a pre-seed funding round of $750,000. The funding round comes from Markd, an insurance/insurtech-focused venture capital firm. This investment boosts Allium’s resources for disrupting the incredibly antiquated data acquisition and analytics market in insurance.

Allium, established in 2022, is a platform company with several products currently in market. Allium’s data analytics product is unique in its ability to source and digitize current in-force policy and premium data. With nearly 40,000 policies and $10,000,000,000 of premiums analyzed, agents, brokers, and carriers can use this information to better prospect, price risk, and develop market insights.

Extending from this core product, Allium introduces a game-changing technology to automatically parse, analyze, and structure insurance data. This groundbreaking development marks the end of the era in which agents are burdened with manual policy data entry and policy or quote comparisons. Powered by state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) and generative artificial intelligence (AI), this product has been designed to empower insurance brokers by streamlining the client administration process.

“Parker Beauchamp is a bold, out-of-the-box thinker in the insurtech space” says Michael Rost, CEO of Allium. “He has a background rooted as an independent insurance broker, and because of that, he understands the failures and opportunities inherent in the legacy systems and distribution better than anyone I know.”  

Markd’s Beauchamp iterated, “Michael is a sharp, veteran insurance lawyer that discovered a remarkable opportunity to help agents, brokers, carriers, and insureds. His use of data, powered by today’s technologies, for the purpose of good is exciting to be a part of.”

“Further, his interest in sharing technology that he has created for his own purposes is an adjacent opportunity for those in the space. It is mind-boggling to think of the billions of hours wasted by those seeking the information account by account that then needs to be manually entered, all of which he already has available at his fingertips or can provide for others to use. I am proud of him.”

This pre-seed round will fuel Allium’s growth and go-to-market strategy for all platform products. The recent advancements in Generative Artificial Intelligence have created a unique moment in time for early adopters to take advantage. 

About Allium Data, Inc.
Allium Data, Inc. is a Boulder, CO-based insurtech SaaS company that seeks to disrupt the data intelligence industry in insurance by creating novel and unique products that solve data transparency, data integration, and data analytics issues.

About Markd
Markd is a venture capital company focused on funding and partnering with transformative insurtechs. It pays homage to the insurance industry’s legacy while helping design its future. Markd’s mission is to power substantial work and continually inspire more ideas to prevent hurt and loss.

SOURCE Allium Data, Inc

MONTREAL, Oct. 3, 2023 – Relocalize, the developer of the world’s first autonomous micro-factory for the food & beverage industry, announced today that it has raised US$2.5 million in the initial closing of a US$3.5 million seed round led by i4 Capital and Waterpoint Lane.

The proceeds from the round will be used to prepare Relocalize’s autonomous production platform for scaling and to solidify its leadership position as the industry’s first mover in distributed, hyper-local food & beverage manufacturing.

D. Wayne McIntyre, Co-founder and CEO of Relocalize, expressed his excitement stating, “This is a big step towards a truck-free future for our food system. It reflects both the urgent need to decarbonize food production and the high market demand for sustainable and affordable products.”

Also joining this round is RGS Ice, LLC, a California-based private equity investor focused on investments in retail and technology led by managing partner David J. Moore.

The new seed investors bring valuable expertise in cleantech, advanced manufacturing, and deep tech. i4 Capital is committed to building a prosperous and responsible future by championing innovative, disruptive technologies. Waterpoint Lane focuses on driving sustainability, social, and economic outcomes, shaping a positive future for our planet. The company is proud to collaborate with these pioneers in building a relocalized future for manufactured foods.

Tim Tokarsky, Founder & Managing Partner of i4 Capital, said, “We believe that Relocalize’s micro-manufacturing technology will help reinvent the way consumers access quality food and beverage products. The world’s first hyper-local micro-factory for packaged ice is just the beginning; numerous applications will leverage their disruptive manufacturing platform, directly cutting GHG emissions.”

Ben Gibbons, Founder & Managing Partner of Waterpoint Lane, said, “We are excited to partner with the Relocalize team to advance our shared vision for a more sustainable food system. By harnessing the potential of Relocalize’s technology, it becomes possible to both decarbonize and decentralize key segments of the food and beverage supply chain. Their approach is not just innovative; it is transformative, setting a new standard for the industry.”

In March 2023, Southeastern Grocers announced a partnership with Relocalize to pilot an autonomous micro-factory, known as RELO, at their Jacksonville distribution center. The pilot  RELO is successfully producing the world’s first hyperlocal, certified plastic-negative packaged ice, on-demand for local supermarkets in Florida. Building on this achievement, Relocalize plans to install multiple new systems to further impact climate change mitigation.

The company recently received international recognition for sustainability innovation, winning major awards such as “Best Climate Change Innovation” at CogX and “Sustainability Product of the Year” by the Business Intelligence Group, alongside major brands like DHL, Honeywell, IBM, S&P Global Sustainable1, and Siemens. Relocalize’s recent accolades also include the Real Leaders Awards, the CDL-RBCx Innovation Prize, the CFIN FoodTech Next Award, Clean50 Top Projects, and the FoodTech 500.

About Relocalize

Relocalize offers autonomous food production platforms as a service (PaaS) to grocery and convenience retailers. Positioned at retailer distribution and fulfillment centers, these micro-factories, known as RELOs, produce CPG products on-demand for 100–200 retail stores. Each RELO performs all the functions of a traditional factory but at approximately 1/20th the scale, aiming to disrupt the US$1+ trillion ice and beverage CPG market by eliminating 100% of transportation-related CO2 emissions and waste.

About i4 Capital Fund

i4 Capital is a venture capital fund with over $40 million dedicated to early-stage, innovative companies developing disruptive technologies. I4 Capital focuses on innovative manufacturing/Industry 4.0, CleanTech, information technology, and advanced technologies, aiming to transform industries and economic sectors.

About Waterpoint Lane

Waterpoint Lane is a venture capital and growth equity firm specializing in the agrifoodtech sector, dedicated to revolutionizing the global food system by investing in growth stage enterprises that are reshaping the way we produce and consume food.

SOURCE Relocalize

NEW YORK and SINGAPORE and MUMBAI, Oct. 3, 2023 — Everise, a leading global healthcare services outsourcing company, announced today that Warburg Pincus, a leading global growth investor, has agreed to invest in the company. Warburg Pincus joins existing investor Brookfield and both investors are committed to accelerating the growth trajectory of the company through business expansion and M&A. Warburg Pincus’ investment values the company at around $1 billion.

Since its inception in 2016, Everise has evolved into an end-to-end customer experience solutions provider and one of the fastest-growing businesses in the healthcare services outsourcing space today. Headquartered in the US, with over 19,000 employees in eight markets, Everise provides customer service solutions to some of the world’s leading healthcare companies. The company has attained numerous industry awards in recognition of its leadership, as well as its commitment to innovation and a people-centric culture.

As part of the transaction, Everstone Group, the Singapore-headquartered private equity firm will exit its investment in Everise.

The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of 2023.

Saurabh Agarwal, Managing Director of Warburg Pincus, said, “We are pleased to partner with Brookfield in our shared vision to elevate Everise into a next-generation global leader in the healthcare customer experience industry. Everise extends a vast array of top-tier services to its clients, including some of the world’s largest healthcare organizations. We are excited about backing Everise’s exceptionally experienced leadership team that has a proven track record of driving scale and profitability. With our deep network and resources across Asia and the US, we are well-positioned to help Everise gain further momentum as a leader in the industry.”

Warburg Pincus has invested in healthcare for over 50 years with investments in some of the most iconic and innovative healthcare companies such as Ensemble Health Partners, Quantum Health, Alignment Healthcare, Modernizing Medicine, Qualifacts, and ParetoHealth.

Viraj Sawhney, Managing Director of Warburg Pincus, added, “Warburg Pincus has been an active investor in the global outsourced technology-enabled services space, and Everise presents an attractive platform to offer such services to the global healthcare payer and provider ecosystem. We have continued to see strong underlying demand for quality customer experience, driven by an increasing outsourcing trend across the global healthcare industry. We are excited about the growth prospect of the company and look forward to leveraging our global presence and extensive experience in both healthcare and outsourced services to help the management team accelerate growth, innovate, and drive more value for its customers.”

Sudhir Agarwal, Founder and CEO of Everise, said, “I and the management team are confident that the partnership between Warburg Pincus and Brookfield will take Everise’s growth to the next level. Warburg Pincus’ deep domain expertise across diverse industries and next-generation technologies, coupled with the institutional knowledge of our trusted partner Brookfield, will contribute substantively to Everise’s next phase of growth in offering strategic customer solutions. I would also like to thank Everstone Group for being a strong and supportive partner to Everise from its inception.”

Aditya Joshi, Managing Partner at Brookfield, said: “Since our investment in Everise in 2020, the company has delivered strong organic growth following investments in technology and operations and has become a strategic partner for its customers around the world.  We look forward to partnering with Warburg Pincus and the Company’s management team for the next stage of the journey.”

About Warburg Pincus

Warburg Pincus LLC is a leading global growth investor. Founded in 1966, Warburg Pincus has raised 21 private equity and 2 real estate funds, which have invested more than $112 billion in over 1,000 companies in more than 40 countries. The firm has more than $83 billion in assets under management. The firm is headquartered in New York with offices in Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, Mauritius, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Singapore. For more information, please visit www.warburgpincus.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.

About Everise

Founded in 2016, Everise is a global leader transforming customer service for healthcare, transport, logistics, insurance, financial services, and tech businesses. The Company solves problems for the millions of customers of some of the world’s leading brands, by combining the best technology with compassionate service. With over 19,000 champion agents operating across eight strategic markets globally, Everise seeks to deliver happiness to customers of some of the world’s best loved brands. Our customer service solutions are high-performing, secure, and agile, with fluent proficiency in 32 languages, enabling businesses to scale globally while achieving top customer satisfaction. Learn more at www.weareeverise.com.

About Brookfield Business Partners

Brookfield Business Partners is a global business services and industrials company focused on owning and operating high-quality businesses that provide essential products and services and benefit from a strong competitive position. Investors have flexibility to invest in our company either through Brookfield Business Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BBUC), a corporation, or Brookfield Business Partners L.P. (NYSE: BBU; TSX: BBU.UN), a limited partnership. For more information, please visit https://bbu.brookfield.com.

Brookfield Business Partners is the flagship listed vehicle of Brookfield Asset Management’s Private Equity Group. Brookfield Asset Management is a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $850 billion of assets under management.

SOURCE Everise

While Finance teams have been slow to adopt AI for fear of errors or hallucination, Stampli’s AI has been successfully deployed in one of Finance’s most sensitive functions for years.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct. 3, 2023 — Stampli, a leader in AI-powered accounts payable automation, today announced that it has raised $61 million in a Series D venture funding round led by funds managed by Blackstone, with the participation of existing investors Insight Partners, SignalFire, Bloomberg Beta, and NextWorld Capital. This latest funding round takes the total amount raised by the company to over $148 million. 

Accounts Payable automation and B2B payments represent a massive and largely unpenetrated market. Put simply, every business has to pay bills, which means every business has an accounts payable function. Sizing the market opportunity, Deutsche Bank Research estimated in 2021 that AP automation and ePayments combined represent ~$70bn in US revenue opportunity, not including the international opportunity, which they estimated could be ~3-5x larger.

Launched in 2015, Stampli is today one of the fastest-growing providers of accounts payable automation and ePayment services. In August alone, Stampli processed more than 1 million invoices totaling a collective value of more than $5 billion.

A model for AI in sensitive financial applications
Stampli’s 1,300 accounts payable automation customers trust its AI with invoice capture, expense allocation, approval routing, fraud detection, and more.

These activities are the final checkpoint before money is released, which means there’s zero tolerance for errors or hallucinations.

This safe and effective use of AI is significant because today’s CFOs feel immense pressure to embrace AI for faster workflows, lower costs, and fewer mistakes. But AI is infamous for issues with data security and unpredictable outcomes. Stampli’s success demonstrates that AI can succeed even in finance. Stampli also provides a blueprint for CFOs to maintain human validation of critical data as well as to ensure rank-and-file team members accept AI as a partner.    

“Before we brought on Stampli, our AP team was nervous that the AI would be a threat rather than an asset to their jobs,” says Amanda Brown, Controller of Wenspok Companies, a $150M+ Wendy’s franchisee that operates 67 restaurant locations in 10 states. “But with Billy the Bot now performing such time-consuming manual tasks as coding invoices to the correct general ledger accounts, the AP team has seen their responsibilities shift to projects that add much greater value to the business. Today, we think of Billy as a team member, not an AI. Honestly, we love Billy the Bot and frequently refer to it by name.”

Stampli’s core promise: Implementation without disruption
The efficiency and cost benefits of accounts payable automation are widely known. For CFOs, the overriding concern in choosing a provider is minimizing the disruption of implementation to existing processes and the ERP systems, and ensuring the fastest time to value.

Stampli’s solution is designed specifically to eliminate implementation risk. Stampli builds its ERP integrations in-house to support the full range of native functionality, allowing customers to implement without reworking their ERP, changing their existing processes, or engaging expensive consultants; in addition, it reduces deployment time to days instead of months. Stampli’s adaptability makes it especially well-suited for complex multi-entity corporate structures, highly regulated industries such as healthcare, and businesses that have already automated their AP but are disappointed with their current provider.

“Stampli has reduced our invoice processing time by 75%, which has a strategic impact on cash flow management,” says Brown. “With a more accurate picture of our operating costs, Wenspok leadership can schedule major operational projects with confidence in budgeting and timing of cash flow requirements. At the tactical level, Stampli has created efficiencies across the board — not just on the AP team, but for all our operating team members outside of finance that we consult to validate the bills we receive. The average invoice approval time has dropped from 16 days to 2 days, and we think we will bring that number down even further.”

Stampli offers its fast implementation for more than 70 different ERPs, including systems from Sage, Oracle, Microsoft, QuickBooks, SAP, Acumatica, IBM and many others. Beyond Accounts Payable, Stampli offers an integrated suite of FinTech products, including Stampli Credit Card and Stampli Direct Pay.     

Blackstone’s focus on AI and strategic finance
This investment in Stampli highlights Blackstone’s thematic focus on investing in businesses driving the digitization of the economy, as well as those enabling and benefitting from AI adoption. In Stampli, Blackstone sees a company that is well positioned at the intersection of these trends.

With stakes in more than 230 companies and 12,600 real estate assets, Blackstone uniquely understands the strategic necessity to automate legacy processes with the benefit of AI technology, and it is excited to partner with Stampli as it continues to work to ensure that its portfolio is equipped with the right tools and technologies needed to succeed.

Additionally, Blackstone has been an industry pioneer in its commitment to invest significant resources to streamline procurement across its portfolio and then garner strategic insights across spend categories from that data. Stampli stands to benefit from Blackstone’s reach and scale as it builds a best-in-class offering.

Quotes
Eyal Feldman, CEO and Co-founder of Stampli, said, “In this macroeconomic environment, where companies have to be more careful with their spend and their cash, Stampli became the solution of choice due to our superb user experience, super-fast implementation and deep ERP integration capabilities. We chose Blackstone as our partner because of our shared vision and experience driving operational efficiencies through best practices, technology and AI. I am honored that they see a similar fit in our company. Together, we will make Stampli one of the largest FinTech companies in the world.”

Yifat Oron, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone and head of the firm’s office in Israel, said, “In today’s environment, building a digital-first modern finance organization is a top priority for CFOs and controllers. While we are still in the early innings of AP automation, Stampli stands out as a transformative leader in this extremely large, underpenetrated market. Stampli’s best-in-class team has built a product loved by customers and differentiated by its ease-of-use and out of the box integration. We are thrilled to have Stampli join our growing portfolio of innovative companies.”

Praveen Akkiraju, Managing Director at Insight Partners, said, “Stampli continues to provide a differentiated accounts payable automation platform by building deep ERP integrations and best-in-market AI/ML features that bring enterprise-grade functionality to the midmarket. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Stampli as they expand and grow.”

MARKET DATA SOURCE: Deutsche Bank Research. “Understanding the B2B Payments Sector.” Published 6 October 2021.

About Stampli
Stampli is a complete AP automation platform that brings together accounts payable communications, documentation, and payments in one place. By centering communications on top of the invoice itself, AP departments collaborate and communicate better with approvers, vendors, and anyone involved with purchases, allowing approvals to happen 5x faster. Stampli’s AI, Billy the Bot, learns an organization’s unique patterns to simplify GL and costing-related coding, automate approval and verification flows, identify duplicate invoices, and reduce time spent on manual data entry. Stampli’s flexible platform fits seamlessly into any existing processes and integrates with financial systems, including NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, and more. For more information, visit stampli.com.

About Blackstone
Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. We seek to create positive economic impact and long-term value for our investors, the companies we invest in, and the communities in which we work. We do this by using extraordinary people and flexible capital to help companies solve problems. Our $1 trillion in assets under management include investment vehicles focused on private equity, real estate, private and liquid credit, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, public securities and secondary funds, all on a global basis. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow @blackstone on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. 

SOURCE Stampli