TORONTO, Sept. 12, 2023 – BookSeats has raised a total of $1.4 million CAD in a round led by major sports tech venture capital firm KB Partners, along with other notable investors Phoenix Capital Ventures and Calano Funds. These investors are joining Comcast NBCUniversal, which had previously made a strategic investment in BookSeats through their Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech program. This significant investment marks a pivotal moment in the company’s journey and paves the way for accelerated growth and innovation in the event travel technology sector.
BookSeats has revolutionized the way fans plan and book their event travel. By creating a dynamic marketplace that brings together leading players in the airline, accommodation, and event ticket industries, BookSeats offers fans unparalleled freedom of choice and exclusive discounted rates across the full travel experience. This innovative platform serves as a one-stop-shop for fans, making the entire travel planning process seamless and enjoyable.
“We are thrilled to partner with Joseph and the BookSeats team. They have been incredibly resourceful in establishing critical relationships and building a new personalized travel experience that brings fans closer to their favorite sports, teams, and musicians, ” said Lance Dietz, a Partner at KB Partners.
The infusion of capital from top-tier investors will enable BookSeats to further enhance its technology and expand its product offerings, with a specific focus on growing their talented team and continued development of BookSeats Experience, a custom fan travel technology for sports teams, leagues and music properties. BookSeats provides partners with a comprehensive solution that enables them to engage their fans, expand their international reach, amplify existing travel partnerships, and gain valuable insights through data analysis.
“This wasn’t just about raising capital for us,” said Founder & CEO Joseph DeMarinis. “By joining forces with these experienced and influential investors, the true value lies in the access to valuable industry expertise, strategic guidance, and a vast network of potential partners, which we feel will allow us to accelerate our path to success. We are extremely grateful for the trust and confidence that our investors have placed in us, and we are excited about the future of BookSeats.”
BookSeats is poised for tremendous growth and is eager to embark on this new chapter of the business. By leveraging the power of technology and strategic collaborations, BookSeats will continue to redefine the event travel landscape and create unparalleled value for fans and partners alike.
Leveraging TSG’s ecosystem of channel partner companies to expand Veza’s footprint with channel community
PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 12, 2023 — Veza, the identity security company, and The Syndicate Group (TSG), a leading venture firm focused on revenue growth and new customer acquisition, today announced a strategic investment. The new capital will be used to accelerate the execution and growth of Veza’s channel partnership program as the company leverages TSG’s growing network of leading channel partners and investors.
Business initiatives, such as digital transformation and cloud migration, have increased the volume and fragmentation of identities in organizations today. The result is a significant rise in identity-related breaches and an urgent need for next-generation identity security solutions. Veza exists to give CISOs and CIOs the tools they need to secure the access of identities before a breach occurs. Global Fortune 500 brands like Blackstone and Expedia rely on Veza to manage identity risk and understand who has access to data at the most granular level.
“Channel partners were quick to see that traditional identity tools could no longer keep pace with the speed of enterprise access processes,” said Tarun Thakur, Co-Founder and CEO of Veza. “Security-focused partners have been instrumental in helping Veza reach new market segments. As identity security becomes a strategic imperative, we’re excited to double-down and collaborate with these partners.”
Veza’s identity security platform gives security professionals a complete understanding of who can take what action on with data, across all enterprise resources including identity systems, data systems, cloud infrastructure services, SaaS apps, and custom-built apps. The Veza Authorization Graph helps organizations address key use cases of access visibility, access intelligence and monitoring, access reviews, entitlement certifications, access provisioning, and access requests.
With a demonstrated history of investing in disruptive, category-creating companies and helping them accelerate revenue growth, the partnership with TSG will provide both strategic and tactical go-to-market counsel to expand Veza’s market presence in the channel community.
“We are excited to partner with Veza to bring the company’s identity security solutions to our extensive ecosystem of channel partners to accelerate growth,” said Chad Cardenas, CEO of TSG. “Veza is particularly well-suited to capitalize on the channel ecosystem due to significant and growing market challenges related to identity security and data security. The company is leading a major transformation in the identity market, from authentication to authorization, and its solutions will directly benefit channel businesses and help CXOs everywhere create a secure environment. We are thrilled to bring Veza into our ecosystem and help the company scale.”
“Many organizations today must adhere to disclosure requirements about their cybersecurity and risk management practices,” said Adam Couch, Managing Partner of Socium Security. “Veza provides a revolutionary capability that helps CISOs, CXOs, and CTOs modernize access governance for the new data and SaaS application landscape, and we’re excited to work with TSG and the company to bring this exciting new technology to market.”
TSG’s ecosystem of strategic investors includes more than 450 leading channel partner companies and over 7,500 members. TSG’s program is designed to accelerate Veza’s go-to-market efforts and capture both mindshare and focus all the way through exit. In addition to the strategic value provided for portfolio companies, TSG channel partner companies and members benefit by staying ahead of emerging tech trends, gaining early access to great resale relationships and sharing in the value-growth upside of the greatest enterprise tech companies through private, pre-IPO investments.
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About The Syndicate Group
The Syndicate Group (TSG) helps startups scale faster with revenue growth and new customer acquisition by organizing exclusive investment access for their strategic go-to-market ecosystem. TSG programmatically aggregates dozens of strategics (VARs, Integrators, Consultancies, CXOs) who arrive on the cap table as a single investor entity, creating a virtual army of individual contributors in the field who then have skin in the game and are uniquely positioned to deliver results.
About Veza
Veza is the identity security company. Identity and security teams use Veza to secure identity access across SaaS apps, on-prem apps, data systems, and cloud infrastructure. Veza solves the blind spots of traditional identity tools with its unique ability to ingest and organize permissions metadata in the Veza Authorization Graph. Global enterprises like Blackstone, Wynn Resorts, and Expedia trust Veza to visualize access permissions, monitor permissions activity, automate access reviews, and remediate privilege violations. Founded in 2020, Veza is headquartered in Los Gatos, California, and is funded by Accel, Bain Capital, Ballistic Ventures, GV, Norwest Venture Partners, and True Ventures. Visit us at veza.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
SINGAPORE, Sept. 12, 2023 — Mythic Protocol officially closes an oversubscribed $6.5M seed round co-led by Shima Capital’s Yida Gao. Joined by Alpha JWC, a SEA powerhouse VC, in a bid to create a world-first ecosystem of entertainment products that leverages the ideal use case of blockchain technologies, gaming, and creative media: collaboration. Additional contributors to the round include Saison Capital, GDP Ventures, Planetarium Labs, Arcane Group, Presto Labs, MarbleX, EMURGO Ventures, HYPERITHM, and several prominent Angels.
Mythic Protocol
“Shima Capital is thrilled to co-lead Mythic Protocol’s seed round,” saidYida Gao, Founder and Managing General Partner at Shima Capital. “With a founding team that has launched over 250 game titles since 2009 from one of the biggest gaming studios in SEA, we have no doubt that they will carry their track record of success into the next cycle of gaming.
Initiated by gaming veterans Arief Widhiyasa (Agate founder, Forbes Asia 30 under 30) and Igor Tanzil (ex-Agate CMO & CCO, Critical Forge founder) the Mythic Protocol team is rounded out by 130+ team members around the globe, including industry veterans from Caravan Studio, Microsoft, Samsung, Intel and Symantec. The team identified a unique opportunity to build their Collaborative Entertainment ecosystem that utilizes a game-first strategy to acquire, retain, and scale users. Collaboration is the fundamental principle of the project, combined with creativity (where ideas matter) and consequence (where actions matter), delivering a unique experience for investors, creators, and consumers alike.
The funds will be deployed towards the development and launch of the initial core offerings:
– Gamer Offering: A collaborative action-shooter RPG meets roguelite progression, with cross-play multiplatform (PC, Console & Mobile), named RIFTSTORM. – Creator Offering: A collaborative source of truth as creator’s building blocks, cheekily labeled as Decentralized Universal Meta (on Blockchain) – DUMB. – Investor Offering: A collaborative set of digital asset classes that evolves based on consequence, thus affects the asset growth & yield – LEGACY.
“The concept of Collaborative Entertainment represents the realization of ideals and potential that technology offers. To that end: I envision a system where every contribution is meaningful, attribution is equitable, and consequence drives evolution,” said CCO Igor Tanzil, later lamenting: “It really is a shame that so much of this potential has been squandered by frenzied financialization in these past years.”
CEO Arief Widhiyasa added: “Almost like clockwork – every 25 years – the game industry experiences a new technological cycle. Beginning with semiconductors giving birth to the game industry, that first cycle focused on solving the base issue of ‘fun’. Driven by the internet and mobile computing, the second cycle was a rush to bring games and gaming to the masses – giving way to the free-to-play and freemium business models.”
Arief continued: “I believe that the next cycle is coming. This cycle will be driven by distributed computing (blockchain) and artificial intelligence (AI); where the next problem to solve is: economy – collective participation in value generation within the ecosystem.”
“We are proud to back the team at Mythic Protocol because they have stayed true to their vision from the very beginning – unfazed by short-term industry trends. Their conviction in their long-term vision is refreshing to see and their uniquely mindful approach to new technologies is as reassuring as it is inspiring,” said Qin En Looi, Partner at Saison Capital.
To learn more about Mythic Protocol visit www.mythicprotocol.com, or follow at @mythicprotocol on Twitter and Instagram.
For media inquiries and additional information, please contact: Serry Osmena, Mythic Protocol 3233658000 [email protected]
About Mythic Protocol: Mythic Protocol is an entertainment company developing games, media, and platforms that will realize the establishment of world-first Collaborative Entertainment. Its first products: Mythic Protocol Riftstorm, Collaborative Assets with Legacy, and the Decentralized Universal Meta (on Blockchain) are being built to attract and cater to the collaborative desires of gamers, investors and creators around the world.
Lumber offers purpose-built workforce management solution, powered by the largest regulatory dataset for the construction industry and a proprietary LLM
SARATOGA, Calif., Sept. 12, 2023 — Lumber, creator of the comprehensive workforce management platform for construction, today announced the launch of its SaaS product and the completion of a $5.5M seed round of funding. With its fully integrated, purpose-built solutions, Lumber is designed to meet the growing compliance and workforce needs of an essential industry.
Lumber Team
“Small to medium-sized construction firms face a formidable challenge as they confront labor constraints and a complex regulatory environment testing the limits of their operational capacity and profitability,” said Lumber Founder and CEO Shreesha Ramdas.
“Lumber’s LLM-powered platform and AI chatbot will help management teams at SMB construction firms to deploy a game-changing workforce experience.”
Today, the construction industry faces significant technological limitations while struggling to meet complex regulatory and labor requirements, making modernization and growth difficult. Construction is also a heavily regulated sector, with disparate new regulations emerging continuously at the federal, state and local level.
Labor shortages and scheduling issues require contractors to utilize a diverse workforce from different unions and states and with different types of engagements – greatly complicating rules for payroll, compliance and overall management. Current workforce management approaches range from archaic (paper or excel spreadsheets) to overly broad (general SaaS solutions that offer limited features or must be combined with other software).
“Construction technology has lagged behind other industries, resulting in inefficiencies and waste in project execution. Many construction firms are primarily focused on staying afloat and meeting customer needs. The Lumber platform is making unified workforce management vision a reality by integrating disparate data elements from various systems and project stages,” said Gerardo Rivera, Co-owner of Level 5 Drywall.
With an LLM trained on the large sets of regulatory and compliance data for the construction industry, Lumber is designed to offer a simplified user experience for the back offices of small to medium construction firms.
“In today’s fast-paced and labor-constrained construction industry, payroll solutions for specialty contractors and the types of trade partners we use need to go beyond basic payment processing and adopt next-generation automation to stay compliant with regulations, boost efficiency, and enhance the employee experience,” said Atul Khanzode, management executive at DPR Construction, the largest construction firm in California. “I believe that Lumber is bringing much-needed automation to the construction industry with a modern, purpose-built payroll and time-tracking solution that is powered by a construction-specific LLM with an initial focus on industry regulations.”
Added Pankaj Tibrewal, General Partner, Carbide Ventures. “The Lumber team brings together an exceptional blend of technological prowess and product expertise required to revolutionize workplace productivity in traditional industries.”
The funding round was led by Carbide Ventures, with participation from Escape Velocity, 8VC, Sure Ventures, Converge VC, and Firsthand Alliance, as well as notable individual investors, such as Atul Khanzode (management executive at DPR Construction), Eric Brown (former CEO Dynamic Signal and current Growth Partner at Sumeru Equity), John Case (CEO Accumatica), and Thiago Da Costa (Co-Founder and CEO of Toric and Lagoa).
The Lumber platform is now available to general contractors, subcontractors, and specialty contractors who want to leverage its integrated time tracking and payroll application. To sign up please visit Lumber.
About Lumber
Lumber provides a fully integrated, end-to-end SaaS workforce management platform for SMB construction contractors, powered by a purpose-built LLM. Lumber seamlessly unifies Payroll, Time Tracking, Compliance, Accounts Payable, and Onboarding Workflows providing productivity solutions that save time and cost. Lumber enables Financial Leaders, Payroll Managers & Back Office Administrators to ensure compliance, manage labor costs, streamline the payroll process and make informed financial decisions.
The investment will be used to expand the company’s team and footprint in North America, extend AI/ML capabilities, and further solidify SQream’s position as a dominant player in the big data & analytics markets
TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 12, 2023 — SQream, the data & analytics accelerator company built for big data and AI/ML workloads, announced today the successful completion of a $45 million Series C financing round. The round was led by World Trade Ventures, with participation from new and current investors, including Schusterman Investments, George Kaiser Foundation (Atento), Icon Continuity Fund, Blumberg Capital, and Freddy & Helen Holdings. The latest round will be utilized to further expand the company’s presence in North America, extend its strategic partnerships and propel advancements in AI/ML enterprise capabilities and big data analytics.
The industry is witnessing firsthand that legacy data infrastructure cannot keep up with the demand of current analytics projects. Companies are often forced to limit the amount of data that can be analyzed in specific projects, risk that complex analysis cannot be completed in time to drive business decisions, or suffer with reporting latency that threatens user adoption of completed projects. Until now, the only option was to make disproportional investments in hardware and compute resources to get necessary insights. The addition of Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) into analytics processes is revolutionizing corporate analytics programs and driving incredible demand for SQream’s solution, which significantly accelerates time to value and reduces costs for terabyte-to-petabyte-scale data workloads in AI/ML applications and beyond.
SQream’s benchmarks consistently return improvements in expanding data capacity while reducing ingestion times by 90%, preparation times by 90%, footprint by 90%, and costs by 80%, all while using familiar SQL processes combined with the power of data parallelism.
“As Generative AI shines a light on the importance of leveraging AI and ML within enterprises, as well as the value of GPUs as part of the analytics process, we have seen interest in our technology skyrocket,” said Ami Gal, CEO of SQream. “Companies are very focused on driving analytics maturity right now, and this recent funding round is another step in our mission to better equip our customers with cutting-edge data analytics and processing solutions that empower them to derive meaningful insights from their vast datasets and drive growth in ways previously thought impossible. We are grateful for the trust from World Trade Ventures and for the ongoing support from our investors, especially in a tight funding climate.”
By utilizing the massive and parallel processing capabilities of GPUs, SQream’s solution allows companies to process extremely large and complex datasets faster, more cost-efficiently, with a smaller carbon footprint, using less hardware and consuming less energy than conventional big data solutions that rely strictly on CPUs. SQream’s patented GPU technology complements almost any data architecture to augment compute power and analytics velocity, breaking through barriers that have hindered analytics success to date while minimizing cost.
“SQream is enabling enterprises to become data-driven and deliver insights at the point of impact where they are needed most, and in their ability to push technological boundaries in the ever-growing analytics and AI/ML spaces,” said Abraham Schwartz, partner at World Trade Ventures. “We are thrilled to contribute to SQream’s ascent towards reshaping the big data and AI landscape, and look forward to seeing the significant impact they will make in the market, especially in North America, to meet this increasing demand.”
SQream’s customers include enterprises across a range of industries- including semiconductors, manufacturing, telecomms, financial services, and healthcare – who have already seen the ability of GPU computing to dramatically accelerate their data analytics and AI/ML data pipelining processes.
SQream is a data analytics company that helps organizations break through barriers to ask the biggest, most important questions from their data. Our GPU-based technology empowers businesses to overcome dataset limits and query complexity to analyze exponentially more data and get substantially faster insights at dramatic cost-savings. By leveraging SQream’s advanced analytics capabilities for AI/ML, enterprises can stay ahead of their competitors while reducing hardware usage. If you want to take your data initiatives to the next level and unlock new insights and opportunities with SQream.
SQream is trusted by leading enterprises including Samsung, LiveAction, Sinch, Orange, AIS, LG and more. To learn more, visitsqream.com or follow us on Twitter @sqreamtech.
BUCHAREST, Romania, Sept. 12, 2023 — DRUID, a global leader in conversational AI technology, announced today its successful $30 million Series B led by TQ Ventures, with participation from new investors Smedvig Capital, Endeavor, and Verve Ventures, and existing investors GapMinder, Hoxton Ventures and Karma Ventures.
The funding will be used to continue accelerating DRUID’s international expansion, particularly its footprint in the US market, which already accounts for 60% of DRUID’s current revenue.
DRUID Secures $30 Million as part of Series B Round to Enhance Enterprise Productivity Through Conversational Business Applications and Generative AI
DRUID’s platform gives enterprises the tools to build and design conversational business applications (CBA) to provide the most natural employee-customer experience. Early customers appreciate that the DRUID suite can be applied in any existing technology environment without replacing prior investments in ERP, CRM, RPA or other digital tools. Moreover, DRUID’s recent integration with ChatGPT, via Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, makes generative AI enterprise-ready and secure.
“Amid the fanfare around conversational and Generative AI, DRUID stood out to us as a category leader. We were pleased to discover through our research how much current customers value the platform and how large a problem DRUID is solving for prospective customers. We are honored to lead this round and partner with Liviu and the DRUID team,” said Schuster Tanger, co-managing partner at TQ Ventures.
Furthermore, DRUID’S CBA enhances Conversational AI’s technological abilities with the power to understand business context and trigger intelligent actions, thus providing a user-friendly conversational layer that brings customers closer to their users and allows for use across multiple channels to streamline the successful completion of business tasks.
Several industry leaders have already implemented DRUID’s technology with exceptional results. Kmart, Liberty Global, Texas Children’s Hospital, White Castle, NHS, Auchan, Georgia Southern University, Société Générale, Erste Group, BNP Paribas, Axa, and more have integrated DRUID’s Conversational Business Applications platform, experiencing significant improvements in both customer engagement and employee efficiency.
These organizations have reported enhanced customer satisfaction, reduced wait times, and increased issue resolution rates. Freeing employees from repetitive tasks allows them to focus on more strategic and meaningful responsibilities, resulting in heightened employee efficiency and satisfaction as well as overall team morale.
“DRUID capitalizes on recent advancements in generative AI, which seamlessly integrate into our conversational business applications platform. We believe our platform will, for large international enterprises, ignite a new era of productivity and tangible business outcomes. Bolstered by our latest investment round and against the backdrop of this technological revolution, we are well positioned and excited to work hard to offer technology solutions that empower our customers to unlock maximum value,” said Liviu Dragan, CEO of DRUID.
The new financing round comes on the heels of DRUID’s continued growth and development. In 2022, DRUID increased its annual recurring revenue by 2.5 times compared to 2021 and is predicting a further growth of 3 times this year.
“The international validation of the revolutionary platform built by DRUID convinced us for our third investment in the company, the first being at the end of 2020. Ever since then we have seen the potential of the team led by Liviu Dragan to create a technology that will transform the field of conversational artificial intelligence solutions for complex industries. DRUID demonstrated to enterprise clients that the platform met the highest technological security standards, thus confirming the platform’s versatility and flexibility. Having been with DRUID since its first steps globally, we are happy to now see the company’s important list of international clients and the increasingly ambitious plans of the team members to build an AI hub that can quickly incorporate the latest artificial intelligence technologies such as Generative AI,” said Dan Mihăescu, Founding Partner, GapMinder.
Founded in Romania, DRUID has recently grown its global team by 60% and onboarded a few key ex-UiPath executives in strategic roles: notably, (a) Kedar Dani, ex-Global VP to design, to assist with go-to-market strategy; (b) Vargha Moayed, ex-Chief Strategy Officer, to provide strategic advice to the CEO; and (c) Mihai Faur, CIO of UiPath, to become an independent board member.
About DRUID
DRUID (www.druidai.com) is an end-to-end platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI-driven Conversational Business Applications, designed to deliver next-level employee productivity and the total customer experience in the most intuitive way. Acting as a front layer to all digital operations, DRUID unifies and enhances the existing technology landscape while mitigating app fatigue (learning and adapting to new systems). In addition, DRUID intelligent virtual assistants enable fast, personalized, omnichannel, and hyper-automated interactions while speaking each organization’s language via open integrations with any existing enterprise systems and RPA technologies. Starting with 2018, DRUID actively builds on its vision to provide each employee with an intelligent virtual assistant, establishing an extensive 160+ partner network and servicing 200+ clients worldwide.
SITE Technologies will accelerate its mission to empower the real estate industry with real-time data collection and AI property condition analysis
CHICAGO, Sept. 12, 2023 — SITE Technologies, the leading innovator in asset management and data analytics technology utilizing artificial intelligence and advanced imagery capturing technologies, is excited to announce the successful completion of its Series A funding round, securing $10 million in investment. The round was led by Prologis Ventures, the investment arm for Prologis, the global leader in logistics real estate, along with technology investors DivcoWest Ventures and Protagonist.
“Managing multiple properties can be complex, and our proprietary technology enables our clients to make decisions faster, increasing ROI while optimizing performance and productivity,” said Dan Duffy, CEO of SITE Technologies. “The way property inspections are completed has been transformed, combining our state-of-the-art data capture technology with powerful data analytics, and AI, providing invaluable insights into property conditions, infrastructure, budgets, and operations.”
SITE Technologies was formed with the vision to revolutionize the real estate industry through advanced data collection and AI analysis. The SITE’s proprietary intelligence platform uses the power of AI and drones, satellites, manned aircraft and other methods to gather precise and real-time property data, significantly improving the efficiency and accuracy of a facility’s condition analysis. This round of funding will allow the company to accelerate enhancements of the AI intelligence platform and expand globally.
“We are really excited about how Site Technologies’ platform can enhance long-term value and performance for real estate properties,” said Will O’Donnell, Managing Director, Prologis Ventures. “It’s truly a game changer in the industry. Its ability to leverage AI and other capture technologies to quickly and accurately analyze critical property characteristics allows property owners to identify potential issues as well as optimize bid management processes more efficiently.”
SITE Technologies has already established itself as a trusted partner for various industries, including commercial, industrial, and retail real estate, construction, and infrastructure management. The company’s innovative approach enables clients to access critical data remotely, eliminating the need for expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes hazardous “boots on the ground’ inspections. Prologis is now expanding using SITE in all of its locations across the Americas and expanding into Europe.
About SITE Technologies: SITE Technologies is an innovative asset management and data analytics company whose team of experts develop best-in-class technology solutions by utilizing imagery to offer our clients’ proactive, predictive, actionable data designed to extend the lifespan of their properties and save time and money. Headquartered in Chicago, SITE Technologies serves a diverse range of industries, including retail and industrial real estate, construction, infrastructure management, and more.
For media inquiries or further information, please contact: SITE Technologies (847) 312-4764 625 West Adams Street, 19th Floor, Chicago, IL 60661 [email protected] www.sitetechnologies.io
DALLAS, Sept. 12, 2023 — NexPoint, a multibillion-dollar alternative investment platform, announces it has made an initial investment in NexPoint Life Sciences II DST, a Delaware statutory trust (DST), through a fund advised by its affiliate. The investment represents 6% of the total equity available. NexPoint plans to increase the investment size, ultimately targeting 10%-12% of the total equity available. The investment aligns NexPoint’s and DST investors’ interests and underscores the firm’s commitment to the life sciences sector. The DST acquired the two properties earlier this year. The properties, located in Philadelphia, PA, are occupied by a subsidiary of Adare Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on oral dosage forms for the pharmaceutical industry.
Within life sciences, NexPoint sees CDMOs—and the manufacturing facilities they operate—as a key area of growth. NexPoint sees a significant demand in the United States for facilities that meet the standards of current good manufacturing practices (cGMP). America’s existing cGMP infrastructure cannot support the development and production needs of the life sciences industry, which is rapidly evolving with the commercialization of novel and emerging products and therapies. Other factors adding to demand for cGMP manufacturing facilities are bipartisan governmental initiatives to re-shore manufacturing and supply chains back to the United States, as well as the sector growth in healthcare that is driving commercial-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing activity. NexPoint’s co-investment in the Life Sciences II DST is driven by these industry trends, along with the predictable cash flow offered by the properties’ triple-net tenant, Adare Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
“Real estate plays a critical role in this rapidly evolving industry and can help accelerate innovation for life sciences companies at all stages of development,” said Matt McGraner, NexPoint Real Estate Advisors’ Chief Investment Officer. “As we continue to grow our life sciences platform, our investment in NexPoint Life Sciences II DST allows us to dedicate capital alongside our investor base and increase our exposure to cGMP facilities, which we believe have some of the strongest tailwinds within life sciences real estate.”
NexPoint expects to pursue additional opportunities in the cGMP space and plans to continue to invest alongside investors in future life sciences offerings.
About NexPoint
NexPoint is a multibillion-dollar alternative investment firm comprised of a group of investment advisers and sponsors, a broker-dealer, and a suite of related investment vehicles. NexPoint provides differentiated access to alternatives through a range of investment solutions, including public and private real estate investment trusts, tax-advantaged real estate vehicles, merger arbitrage and event driven strategies, other private real estate investments, closed-end funds, interval funds, and a business development company. NexPoint is based in Dallas, Texas and is part of a network of affiliates with expertise across the asset management and financial services spaces. For more information visit nexpoint.com.
Important Disclosures
Only “accredited investors” (as that term is defined in Rule 501 promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933) who meet certain minimum requirements may invest. Investing in NexPoint Life Sciences II DST interests involves a high degree of risk. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Before investing, please review the applicable offering materials, including NexPoint Life Sciences II DST’s Confidential Private Placement Memorandum as amended or supplemented from time to time, including the “risk factors” described therein.
Contacts
Media Relations Mike Geller, Prosek Partners for NexPoint [email protected]
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 12, 2023 — Plug and Play, the world’s largest global innovation platform, is excited to announce its partnership with Visa, a global leader in digital payments, to launch an Inclusive Fintech Accelerator. The program aims to foster diversity and inclusivity in the fintech sector by supporting and empowering diverse founders. The application process for the accelerator is currently open and will close on September 29, 2023. To apply to the accelerator, please visit the Plug and Play DRIVE website here.
Plug and Play has a commitment to promoting innovation and cultivating a diverse ecosystem through its recently launched DRIVE initiative. DRIVE (Diversity, Respect, Inclusion, Visibility, and Equity) is designed to develop, assist, and provide better access to funding for diverse founders, and educate our broader ecosystem on the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion and how it fuels innovation. The success of this initiative will be achieved through a community-centric approach bringing together all stakeholders needed to build a thriving ecosystem for diverse founders and communities nationwide. This framework allows innovation to work as a great equalizer.
Through this partnership with Visa, the Inclusive Fintech Accelerator aims to provide an inclusive platform that addresses the unique challenges faced by diverse founders in the tech industry. The Inclusive Fintech Accelerator will offer selected founders access to strategic guidance to help grow their business, Visa products/APIs/insights, preferential review for Visa Fast Track, mentorship, customized support from industry experts, networking opportunities from Plug and Play’s ecosystem, and customized programming. Participants will be able to collaborate closely with Visa executives, tapping into their deep knowledge of the payments and financial technology sectors.
“We are thrilled to partner with Visa to launch this internal Inclusive Fintech Accelerator,” said Saeed Amidi, Founder and CEO of Plug and Play. “By combining our resources, expertise, and global networks, we can create an environment that fosters the growth and success of diverse founders in the tech industry. We believe diversity drives innovation, and this accelerator is a significant step towards creating a more inclusive ecosystem worldwide.”
“At Visa, we believe that diversity drives innovation and progress. And that by uplifting diverse founders, the communities we live and work in can better thrive,” said Marie Elise Drogo, SVP Head of Global Fintech Partnerships, Visa. “We are excited to partner with Plug and Play to launch the Inclusive Fintech Accelerator to support and uplift diverse founders.”
Founders from diverse groups in North America, including but not limited to women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, are encouraged to apply. More information about the application process, eligibility criteria, and program details will be available on the Plug and Play website.
The accelerator program will run for a total of eight months and will culminate in Silicon Valley at Plug and Play’s bi-annual summit in June 2024.
About Plug and Play Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we’re present in 50+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we’ve invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi. For more information, visithttps://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/
Contact: Dominique Reese Head of DE&I Plug and Play [email protected]
