The round is led by Montage Ventures and Trucks with participation from Fortune 500 giants, CarMax and Assurant Ventures

DETROIT, Aug. 9, 2023 — Treehouse, an electrification company that delivers turnkey installations for home EV charging, today announced $10M in funding. The round is led by Montage Ventures and Trucks Venture Capital, with participation from CarMax, Assurant Ventures, Acrew Capital, Gutter Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, Holman, and Automotive Ventures. The funds will be used to expand Treehouse’s Installation-as-a-Service offering to more than 30 states in the next 12 months, while investing in software that can expand the offering to other electrification products.

The Edison Electric Institute projects that 26.4 million electric vehicles will be on U.S. roads in 2030, meaning that EVs will make up nearly 10% of the 259 million cars and light trucks on the road in less than 8 years. Treehouse is addressing this by providing a home charging solution that allows EV owners to get an estimate in under two minutes and bundle home charging installation with the purchase of the best charger for each individual’s budget and needs.

“Home charging is an essential part of the EV ownership experience and Treehouse is transforming the customer experience with a novel approach,” said Todd Kimmel, Founder and Managing Partner of Montage Ventures. “We believe the installation-as-a-service model has disruptive potential in electrification far beyond EVs.”

Treehouse’s unique pricing technology allows EV buyers to receive an instant, guaranteed quote for home charging installation at the point of sale in auto retail locations or via API while applying for vehicle financing. Instant pricing allows home charging to be integrated directly into the vehicle loan, reducing barriers to affordability for home charging. Treehouse also automates permit documentation and has a proprietary network of electricians, enabling the company to deliver an elevated experience by managing the customer journey from end to end.

“The power of transparent charger installation pricing is going to change how consumers shop for and buy EVs,” said Reilly Brennan, Partner at Trucks Venture Capital. “Treehouse is removing a barrier to EV ownership and making it easier for millions of consumers across the country to switch to EVs.”

“We understand the challenges consumers typically face when it comes to installing at-home EV chargers and realize it can often feel overwhelming,” said John Trieu, Managing Director, Growth Ventures, Holman. “The Treehouse team has developed an innovative strategy to streamline this complex process and, similar to Holman, their dedication to delivering an exceptional customer experience is truly remarkable. We’re excited to support the company’s continued growth through this strategic investment and look forward to offering customers a turnkey solution for EV charging.”

Beyond charger installation, Treehouse is helping EV owners maximize incentives and rate plans by compiling every federal, state, and local incentive for home EV charging. This ensures that Treehouse’s customers are able to claim available rebates and select the best utility plans for their needs.

“‘Decarbonizing homes is an urgent task, with over 1 billion machines needing to be replaced or upgraded on the path to decarbonizing US homes in the next 15 years,” said Eric Owski, CEO and Co-Founder of Treehouse. “This funding round will allow us to rapidly expand our geographic footprint and solve core technical problems that have been barriers to scale in this industry until now.”

Treehouse is partnered with leading brands in auto retail delivering turnkey EV charging solutions. To partner with Treehouse visit https://www.treehouse.pro/partner and to learn more about Treehouse visit https://treehouse.pro.

About Treehouse
Treehouse is an electrification company that delivers turnkey installations for home EV charging. The company’s mission is to simplify electrification through software-enabled Installation-as-a-Service, empowering people to live more sustainable lives and accelerating the decarbonization of the places we live and work. Treehouse has raised more than $10.4M in financing to date. Investors include Montage Ventures, Trucks, CarMax, Assurant Ventures, Acrew Capital, Gutter Capital, Detroit Venture Partners, and Automotive Ventures and more.

Press contact:
BAM for Treehouse
[email protected]

SOURCE Gutter Capital

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 9, 2023 — SkyCool Systems Inc., a leading innovator of sustainable cooling technologies raises $5.0 million to scale deployments of its unique technology that can cool objects with no input energy, using the cool temperatures of earth’s upper atmosphere. The seed financing round was led by Nadel and Gussman Ventures, with support from D3 Jubilee Partners and several prominent private and institutional investors.

Along with its fundraise, SkyCool announces Arjun Saroya as its new Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Arjun has 20 years of experience leading engineering, product, business, and corporate development, within the clean energy sector. As Executive Vice President of Innovation at Lime Energy, he helped build a $140 million a year industry leader in energy efficiency solutions for commercial businesses and utility programs.

The $5.0 million seed financing round marks a significant milestone for SkyCool as it transitions from commercial pilots to scaled deployments of its patented radiative cooling technology. The financing will accelerate the development and commercialization of SkyCool’s groundbreaking panel and film products.

SkyCool’s panel-based cooling product improves the efficiency of refrigeration and air conditioning systems, 24 hours a day. The company is currently focused on deploying panels with grocery stores, refrigerated warehouses, data centers, and other buildings with persistent cooling loads.

SkyCool’s direct film products passively cool buildings, shade structures, and transportation systems. The film is especially impactful in applications where heat stress is threatening lives –  including low income communities and emerging economies. Both product lines utilize radiative cooling technology, which sends heat to the cold sky and reduces the temperature of any surface to which it’s applied.

In addition to equity financing, the company has received generous grant support from ARPA-E’s SCALEUP program, the California Energy Commission and New Energy Nexus. With assistance from these agencies, and the new funding round, the company will continue to add to its installed base of projects with some of the world’s largest grocery chains, manufacturing and logistics companies, and government facilities.

“It’s rare to come across a practical, scalable technology and team that is ready for mass adoption – one that can not only make an impact on major energy use sectors of our economy, but also save lives in regions under extreme heat stress. I’m thrilled and honored to be able to lend my experience and time to furthering SkyCool’s mission,” said Arjun Saroya, on joining the team.

Eli Goldstein, the co-founder of SkyCool, will assume the role of CTO, leveraging his extensive technical expertise to drive innovation and maintain the company’s technology leadership. Co-founder Aaswath Raman, now Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA, will continue to lead SkyCool’s Technical Advisory Board.

Johannes Douma of Nadel and Gussman, who will join the company’s Board of Directors, also commented on the investment, saying: “rising global temperatures and growing populations are leading to larger energy demand used for cooling. SkyCool’s scalable, and most importantly, passive cooling technology can make a significant impact to reduce global energy demand. SkyCool has demonstrated a clear value proposition across multiple applications from refrigeration in grocery stores and data centers to direct film applications. We look forward to working closely with SkyCool’s talented management team and leveraging our operational and energy sector experience to help the company grow while addressing the thermal stresses from climate change.”

About SkyCool Systems Inc.
SkyCool Systems Inc is a cooling technology company focused on reducing energy use and improving comfort. SkyCool has two product lines: a thin film which can be applied to outdoor sky-facing surfaces and a panel product used to passively cool fluids. The thin film product, when applied to a roof, can keep it cooler than the ambient temperature, even under direct sunlight. The panel product can significantly improve the energy efficiency of commercial AC and refrigeration equipment 24/7. For additional information about SkyCool, please visit www.skycoolsystems.com.

About Nadel and Gussman Ventures
Nadel and Gussman was formed in 1940 by Isadore Nadel and his son-in-law, Herb Gussman.   Headquartered in Tulsa Oklahoma, the company has focused on oil and gas exploration and production for over 8 decades and is currently managed by Steve Heyman and Jim Adelson representing the third and fourth generations of the family.  Nadel and Gussman Ventures was formed in 2021 to focus on investing in companies that are creating sustainable energy technology to reduce the fossil fuel impact on our planet.

About D3 Jubilee Partners
Established in 2011, D3 Jubilee Partners (“D3”) is an impact venture capital firm based in Seoul Korea and Silicon Valley. The company invests in innovative solutions and tech ventures for mitigating climate change and other big world problems. D3 also convenes impact investor conferences such as “Asia Impact Nights”, to uncover the enormous potential of Asia connecting with the global impact investing community. D3 made its first investment into SkyCool in 2019 and is participating in this round through a fund backed by Korea’s Ministry of Environment and SK EcoPlant.

SOURCE SkyCool Systems

RALEIGH, N.C., Aug. 9, 2023 — Dentognostics, a research-driven technology company, has secured significant investments from Dental Innovation Alliance (DIA) and Dental365, further propelling its growth and innovation in the U.S. dental market. With their patented products for oral health and wellness, Dentognostics has gained the trust and support of industry leaders; notably, Pacific Dental Services^® made a major investment in 2021, partnering with Dentognostics to actively explore innovative technologies, including the tool to screen patients by taking a simple mouth rinse sample, within their supported practices.

Dentognostics seeks to empower patients with knowledge about what is happening in their mouth and with the understanding of the importance of proper dental hygiene, periodontal care, and maintenance. This is done with a patented product that analyzes saliva to determine the collagen breakdown activity in the mouth. By providing patients with a quantitative Oral Fitness Score, the technology keeps the patients accountable for their daily home care behavior and allows the clinician to truly personalize the patients’ care needs based on the data generated, ultimately developing trust between patients and their dental care provider.

DIA is a first-of-its-kind venture firm that funds, advises, and propels the success of early-stage dental technology companies through its leadership and investor team, which has a combined 200+ years of dental industry experience. Beyond capital, DIA provides mentorship and connectivity that can enhance sales activity for portfolio companies.

“Supporting Dentognostics aligns perfectly with our mission at DIA, which is to foster innovation and collaboration in the dental and health sectors,” says Thomas Sharpe, DIA Managing Partner. “We firmly believe in the transformative power of Dentognostics’ technology and see it as a game-changer in improving patient outcomes.”

Joining PDS and DIA as an investor is Scott Asnis, DDS, CEO of Dental365, a full-service dental group with locations throughout New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. This addition further underscores the widespread adoption potential of this technology within the U.S. dental market.

“Investing in and providing other DIA resources to Dentognostics is a natural fit. We believe in their technology and see potential in their testing to greatly improve outcomes in patients. We are excited about its potential to revolutionize patient care and elevate oral health globally,” adds Doug Brown, DIA Managing Partner. 

“We sincerely thank Pacific Dental Services for their unwavering partnership and support over the past two years. Their belief in our vision has been instrumental in our growth,” said Dirk-Rolf Gieselmann, Dentognostics founder and CEO. “We are equally thrilled to welcome DIA and Dental365, whose investments further strengthen our position in the industry and affirm our dedication to 14 years of research and development. Together, we are poised to revolutionize the oral health landscape and reach new heights.”

About Dental Innovation Alliance
www.dialliance.com
Dental Innovation Alliance (DIA) is a close group of dental industry executives that funds, advises and propels the success of early-stage companies building the future of dentistry through technology. Its investor base includes executives and experts from some of the largest and most innovative dental support organizations and other dental businesses. DIA has offices in New York, Nashville, and Raleigh-Durham.

SOURCE Dental Innovation Alliance (DIA)

Founded by the IDF’s Former CISO, Sweet introduces an all-in-one cloud runtime security suite

TEL AVIV, Israel, Aug. 9, 2023 — Sweet Security today announced $12 million in seed funding and the launch of its Cloud Runtime Security Suite. The round was led by Glilot Capital Partners with participation from CyberArk Ventures and angel investors including Gerhard Eschelbeck, former CISO at Google and Travis McPeak, who led product security at Databricks. Sweet was founded by retired Brigadier General, Dror Kashti, former CISO of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), retired Colonel, Eyal Fisher, former head of the Cyber Department at Unit 8200 and Orel Ben-Ishay, former Head of the Cybersecurity R&D center at Unit 81. With a clear vision on how to best raise the bar for cloud defense, they built a cloud-native runtime security suite that enables security teams to stop cloud workload attacks, quickly and with surgical precision.

While leading the IDF’s digital transformation effort, Sweet CEO and co-founder Dror Kashti found that even though securing development environments is essential, current cloud runtime security solutions are insufficient for preparing a company for a breach. As critical as it is for companies to shift their cloud security left, attacks only unfold in runtime. Companies require technological “boots on the ground” to detect them. Existing detection tools either provide very limited functionality or aren’t optimized for the cloud. Defenders need cloud-native runtime protections that provide a full narrative for understanding and stopping attacks as they unfold.

Introducing Sweet – The Cloud Runtime Security Suite

Sweet’s Cloud Runtime Security Suite enables CISOs and security teams to level up their cloud security from partial to complete defense. Providing robust defenses across all stages of an attack, its feature set includes Detection & Response, Discovery and Prevention – all in runtime. Sweet’s runtime sensor takes under five minutes to deploy, immediately providing cloud-native cluster visibility. It streams key application data and business logic to its servers, using an innovative framework to profile workload behavior anomalies and contextualize them with traditional TTPs.

Sweet’s modern attack detection model and patent-pending auto learning technology enable immediate delivery of critical, comprehensive attack findings that allow mitigation before, during and after attacks occur. As a result, Sweet provides CISOs with the technical underpinnings needed to be accountable for cloud security. It also enables them to refresh corporate SOC and IR processes for cloud native environments, enabling the organization to ease into cloud adoption and digital transformation.

For security teams, Sweet provides a powerhouse set of runtime “must-haves”, providing a fully contextualized, at-a-glance attack narrative, backed up with extensive response capabilities, a detailed runtime topology and the ability to prioritize DevSecOps remediation efforts.

“As a large, cloud-first company, our business relies on our ability to protect our customers’ digital assets. We needed a runtime security suite that matched our scale, speed, and technology,” said Michael Shaulov, co-founder and CEO, Fireblocks. “Sweet’s technology provides real-time security detection & prevention capabilities to our cloud workloads and, importantly, with minimal business interruption. Its insights on connectivity, visibility to our cloud’s topology, and automatic classification of real-time threats is a force multiplier to our Security Operation Center and our DevSecOps teams.”

“Sweet’s vision for cloud runtime security is spot on, with a  deep understanding of how cloud attacks unfold, and critically, enables defenders to be much more effective at containing them,” said Srinath Kuruvadi, Managing Director, Head of Cloud Security, JPMorgan Chase & Co. “Attacks against cloud workloads are only going to increase in frequency and sophistication. The industry needs comprehensive security solutions to face them and Sweet is driving this shift with its extraordinary vision and expertise.”

“Investing in Sweet Security was a no-brainer,” said Kobi Samboursly, Founding Partner, Glilot Capital Partners. “First, it’s addressing an increasingly problematic cloud security gap – cloud runtime defense. Second, Dror, Eyal and Orel bring superpowers to the table: the depth and breadth of their cloud security expertise and their ability to build and mentor talented, high performing teams. Sweet is off to a great start and we look forward to supporting its success.”

“‘Cybersecurity’ and ‘delightful’ are not words that normally go hand in hand, but we want our customers to use them in the same sentence when talking about our solution,” said Dror Kashti, co-founder and CEO, Sweet Security. “We feel our timing is right to make that happen. If SOC and IR teams don’t have to constantly tune their security products or sift through mountains of alerts, they’ll execute at a higher level, and they’ll be happier. Cloud detection and response may be complex, but it doesn’t have to be painful.”

About Sweet Security

Sweet’s Cloud Runtime Security Suite delivers first-to-market capabilities for defending cloud workloads, shifting cloud security right. Founded by retired, elite IDF commanders with prodigious expertise in offensive and defensive cloud security, Sweet’s approach elevates the ability of security teams to shut down cloud attacks when they occur, where they occur, with maximum precision and minimal business disruption. Sweet Security is backed by Glilot Capital Partners, CyberArk Ventures and an elite group of angel investors. For more information, please visit http://sweet.security

Media Contact:
Liz Safran
Looking Glass Public Relations
[email protected]
408-348-1214

SOURCE Sweet Security

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 9, 2023 — Weights & Biases, the leading end-to-end MLOps platform, today announced both the close of a strategic investment of $50 million at a $1.25 billion valuation and the launch of W&B Prompts. The round was led by Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, with additional participation from Sapphire Ventures. The round also includes participation from existing investors, including Coatue, Insight Partners, Felicis, BOND and BloombergBeta.

As the adoption of large language models (LLMs) grows, Weights & Biases has continued building out their best-in-class MLOps platform to meet the needs of the most advanced machine learning research in the world. The team will use this new influx of capital to continue to build out these tools, including the launch of Weights & Biases Prompts.

W&B Prompts allows LLM builders to better understand every step of their LLM programs so they can fine-tune, prompt engineer, and debug the latest foundational models. This is a critical step, enabling faster time to production on LLM models and the apps they power. Like many of their features, W&B Prompts was co-designed with partners and customers, ensuring it meets the needs of a rapidly changing community of practitioners.

“Weights & Biases found their footing by helping developers supervise model training, where they are the popular choice for practically everyone we know — from Meta to OpenAI to Microsoft,” said Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. “Now that the industry is maturing, they’re expanding from training to prompting – helping enterprises around the world use LLM platforms in a safe & reliable way. It is rare to find a team and company so well positioned to capture share of the ever-growing AI market – all while maintaining terrific SaaS margins.”

“We’re big Weights & Biases fans here at OpenAI and have been using their product for a long time. In fact, we were their first customer,” said Peter Welinder, VP of Product at OpenAI. “You simply can’t do ambitious, expansive projects without best-in-class tools. We use W&B to train our models at OpenAI and I’m thrilled to see Lukas and the whole team at Weights & Biases continuing to grow and build the tools practitioners need to innovate.”

Weights & Biases is quickly becoming the default tooling for LLM and MLOps. The team has seen significant user growth since it raised its Series C in 2021, growing from 100,000 users to over 700,000. It is used by virtually all the major GenAI model builders like Meta, OpenAI, MosiacML, Aleph Alpha, HuggingFace, and more. In total, their MLOps platform has tracked nearly 300 million hours of machine learning experiments for customers from industry leaders like NVIDIA, OpenAI, Toyota Research Institute, Volkswagen and Square to emerging players like Cohere.

“Our goal at Weights & Biases has never changed: to build the best tools for machine learning practitioners,” said CEO and Co-Founder Lukas Biewald. “We’re really excited about where the field is moving, specifically the success and adoption of foundational generative AI models. Honestly, I’m thrilled to raise an institutional round from Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross—who have both trained quite a lot of their own models—and have been significant users of Weights & Biases for quite a long time.”

W&B is integrated in 20,000 repos, including the LLM repos practitioners rely on like Langchain, LlamaIndex, GPT4All, and specialized infrastructure providers like Coreweave, Lambda and Graphcore. In addition to their deep, long-standing partnership with NVIDIA, Weights & Biases has partnered with other leaders in the space like Microsoft, AWS, GCP, Anyscale, and Snowflake. Cited in hundreds of state-of-the-art research papers, Weights & Biases is also a vital tool for academics pushing the boundaries of what AI can accomplish.

“Machine learning development has skyrocketed and the rate at which we are seeing new tools and experiences being built is breathtaking. To help support this tremendous wave of innovation, Weights & Biases has emerged as a leading developer-first MLOps platform,” said Casber Wang, Partner at Sapphire Ventures. “Sitting at the center of the ML workflow, Weights & Biases has become the popular choice for ML practitioners. Sapphire couldn’t be more excited to partner with Co-Founder and CEO Lukas Biewald, and the entire Weights & Biases team.”

Few industries change at the pace machine learning does. Weights & Biases remains not only committed to building the best end-to-end MLOps platform in the world but also to evolving with the machine learning ecosystem as it moves to the broad adoption of large language models and the solutions those LLMs will power.

About Weights & Biases

Weights & Biases is the leading developer-first MLOps platform that provides enterprise-grade, end-to-end MLOps workflow to accelerate ML activities. Used by over 700,000 ML practitioners including teams at OpenAI, Toyota, Microsoft, and hundreds more, Weights & Biases is part of the new standard of best practices for machine learning.

SOURCE Weights & Biases

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 9, 2023 — Symmetry Systems, a next generation AI-powered data-centric security company, today announced an $17.7 million inside round of funding with repeat participation from ForgePoint Capital and Prefix Capital and new participants W11 Capital Management and TSG (The Syndicate Group), a channel-focused strategic investor.

Symmetry Systems’ mission is to protect the world’s data, ensuring resilience and enabling modern data-centric companies to grow, innovate and lead with confidence. The world today has two massive tailwinds. First, organizations are doing incredibly sophisticated things with data, from datalakes to generative AI. Second, in the cloud, data and identity become the main points of security controls versus infrastructure and applications. This means data-centric organizations will have to build security around data and the identities that use it. And that’s Symmetry’s focus.

“It’s extremely gratifying to see that after 15 years of research, data flows have a central place in enterprise cloud security. Spectacular data applications need a new kind of security — as long as we provide great visibility into every data object, who has access to it and what they’re doing with it, we can enable safe and agile innovation within modern companies where everyone can collaborate confidently,” said Mohit Tiwari, Co-Founder and CEO of Symmetry Systems.

Organizations must unlock their data to be agile and resilient, and even to survive, in a remote-first, generative AI era. Yet organizations do not even know what data they have, who can access it, or how it is used. As a result, data is either locked away in regulated vaults or exposed to unmanaged risk in cloud and data lakes. Symmetry enables that data to flow – across business units and into the cloud and data lakes – faster and safer than ever before. Partners, including managed security service providers, incident response teams, and GSIs such as Accenture, turn to Symmetry to proactively harden their customers’ data against risks and respond with data-object level precision within minutes when an incident does occur.

Data – what to keep around, who to share it with, and how to use it – is everyone’s business in an organization. As a result, an effective data security solution must evolve beyond a security experts-only product to become a collaborative tool for both security and business (including developer and data) teams. Symmetry is building an LLM-based natural language interface, where even a business user without deep cloud expertise can understand what data and what actions create a security or compliance risk, as well as what options can iteratively improve data risk, through a sequence of plain language prompts.

Byron Alsberg, Co-Founder of Prefix Capital, stated, “Symmetry is one of those rare companies that knows how to build deeply technical products to solve very difficult and complex problems for its customers. When you see an opportunity like this, you double-down.”

“In the data access governance space, Symmetry DataGuard differentiates itself with its ability to analyze data objects and identities previously missed by traditional solutions so security teams can accurately contextualize the risk of the data in their environment,” said Katherine Walther, VP, Innovation at Trace3. “We look forward to bringing this innovative approach to our clients and organizations who still find themselves grappling to find efficient and effective ways to meet data security policies and compliance regulations.”

Further details on the funding round are available at https://www.symmetry-systems.com/blog/symmetry-systems-closes-17-7-million-to-scale-its-ai-powered-data-security-platform/. For more information about Symmetry Systems or the DataGuard solution, please visit https://www.symmetry-systems.com/.

About Symmetry Systems 
Symmetry Systems is the industry’s first hybrid cloud data security platform that safeguards data at scale in AWS, GCP, Azure services, and on-premise databases while supporting a data-centric zero trust model. With Symmetry, security and compliance teams can address threats quickly through AI-driven data security posture management (DSPM). Symmetry provides visibility into data risks from excessive permissions and anomalous data flows while giving organizations the evidence required to demonstrate compliance best practices.

Born from the award-winning Spark Research Lab at UT Austin, Symmetry is backed by leading security investors ForgePoint Capital and Prefix Capital with participation from Accenture Ventures. Symmetry provides solutions for the most demanding security teams. For more information about Symmetry Systems, please visit www.symmetry-systems.com or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Media Contact 
Caitlin Kruell
Lumina Communications for Symmetry Systems
[email protected]

SOURCE Symmetry Systems

ITHACA, N.Y., Aug. 9, 2023 — Cornell Tech is proud to announce the launch of its groundbreaking Product and Tech Executive Summit. This innovative event is designed to equip leaders in tech or product functions with the skills and knowledge to drive innovation, growth, and success in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. Counter to typical conferences, the program blends leading-edge research with advice from top industry experts, excludes commercial sponsorships, and pre-screens participants to ensure high-value, closed-door conversations for the limited group of 50 leaders that attend.

“The Product and Tech Executive Leadership Program will cover the most critical and timely topics, including implementing AI while managing ethical considerations, keeping up with trends that are shaping the future of tech and shifting organizations to succeed amid the latest market dynamics,” said Keith Cowing ’04, MBA ’10, one of the directors of the program and a visiting lecturer at Cornell Tech. “By leveraging industry insights and real-world case studies, participants will gain valuable knowledge and practical tools to drive success at their own organizations.”

The program will take place Sept. 19 to 21, 2023, at Cornell Tech in New York, NY, and participants will participate in a combination of interactive workshops, case studies, and hands-on projects. Among the featured speakers are:

• Scott Belsky, Chief Strategy Officer and EVP of Design & Emerging Products, Adobe
• Mamuna Oladipo, VP of Product, Shopify
• Nikita Miller, SVP and Head of Product Management, The Knot Worldwide
• Justin Bauer, CPO, Amplitude
• Kristen Lalowski, SVP, VillageMD
• Catherine Miller, CTO, Flatiron Health

In addition to the rigorous curriculum, the program will provide participants with an unrivaled networking experience. Josh Hartmann, a tech industry veteran and co-director of the program at Cornell Tech, highlighted the networking opportunities available. “Connecting with peers and meeting new mentors is a crucial aspect of professional growth,” said Hartmann. “The Product and Tech Executive Leadership Program was created to facilitate meaningful connections, with closed-door conversations, to enable participants to expand their professional networks and forge valuable relationships across the sector.” Hartmann serves as chief practice officer at Cornell Tech and oversees its signature Studio entrepreneurship curriculum for students in master’s programs.

The program is tailored for mid and senior-level executives with a background in technology, product management, engineering, or related fields. Interested individuals can find more information and apply on the summit’s website.

About Cornell Tech

Cornell Tech brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary results grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live in the digital age. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute embodies the academic partnership between the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University on the Cornell Tech campus.

Media Contact:
Molly Israel
[email protected]
301-471-4197

SOURCE Cornell Tech

Former PayPal Executive Jack Selby’s Venture Firm AZ-VC to Support The Growth of Nuclearn.ai’s Footprint And The Delivery of Mission-Critical AI For The Administration of Nuclear and Energy Facilities

PHOENIX, Aug. 9, 2023 — Nuclearn.ai, a leading provider of AI process automation solutions for the nuclear industry, announced today at the Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2023) a Seed investment of $2.5M, led by AZ-VC with participation from Nucleation Capital. The round empowers Nuclearn.ai to grow its market leadership in nuclear facilities, scaling access to its AI and machine learning tools that improve how common, time-intensive tasks are managed across a broader array of energy facilities.

The funds will be primarily used for hiring relationship-based sales teams focused on the North American nuclear power market and the general utility market. Nuclearn.ai also plans to continue the development of AtomAssist, its Nuclear Language Model (LLM), and other utility-focused product use cases.

“We are thrilled to support Nuclearn.ai, an Arizona-based company and leadership team that embodies the state’s innovative spirit and ability to deliver impactful solutions for often overlooked yet vital business opportunities,” stated Ben Brockwell, Partner at AZ-VC. “We were impressed with the Nuclearn team’s forward-thinking and commitment to using AI and machine learning to bring efficiencies to recurring time-intensive tasks that can reduce the viability of nuclear and energy plants.”

The funding will enable Nuclearn.ai to respond to market demand for AI and machine learning-enhanced offerings to bring more attention to products such as the Nuclear AutoCAP Screener and Nuclearn Evaluator. Additionally, with a strong desire for privacy and security in the nuclear industry, Nuclearn will be able to enhance the delivery of trainable GenAI capabilities in a private, secure fashion.

“With support from AZ-VC and Nucleation Capital, we are ready to expand our reach within the nuclear market,” added Jerrold Vincent, co-founder of Nuclearn.ai. “This funding marks a significant milestone in our journey; it enables us to refine our nuclear-specific LLM and to create new opportunities with minor changes to our existing product portfolio.”

“Our alignment with the investment theses of AZ-VC, focused on top tech companies in AZ, and Nucleation’s focus on nuclear innovation, further cements this strategic partnership,” added Bradley Fox, co-founder of Nuclearn.ai. “The nuclear industry’s demand for privacy and security meets an emergent market trend in trainable GenAI capabilities, enabling us to pioneer private, secure solutions not only in nuclear but across other utilities as well.”

“Nuclearn’s focus on deploying AI to enhance the efficiency and performance of nuclear power operations will benefit both the existing nuclear power plant operators as well as the next generation of advanced designs emerging in the coming years,” explained Valerie Gardner of Nucleation Capital. “We’re thrilled to invest in this industrious and talented team and support their vision of growth within the sector.”

For more information about Nuclearn.ai and its offerings, please visit www.nuclearn.ai.

About Nuclearn.ai
Nuclearn.ai offers AI-based solutions tailored for the nuclear industry, helping organizations harness the benefits of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology. With products such as Nuclear AutoCAP Screener and Nuclearn Evaluator, Nuclearn.ai is focused on innovation, privacy, and security in a market aligned with the emergent trends in GenAI. Based in Phoenix, Arizona and at the forefront of knowledge-work automation, they are committed to preserving the knowledge base in nuclear energy to ensure long-term sustainability and viability.

SOURCE Nuclearn.ai

Course Hero announces 52 grants awarded to faculty for tech-based classroom projects

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Aug. 9, 2023 — Course Hero, the popular learning platform used by over 150,000 educators, today announced fifty-two recipients of its second annual Teaching Grants for Digital Learning. The program awards grants of up to $2,000 to support faculty “dream projects,” many of which utilize the power of generative AI through the lens of digital pedagogy.

“With advancements in generative AI and VR being widely and quickly adopted by students and faculty, educators are seeking out new ways to engage their students in increasingly digitized classroom environments,” said Sean Michael Morris, VP of Academics at Course Hero. “I’m continually amazed by the ingenuity of faculty members across the country who are embracing new technologies to help today’s learners succeed and achieve their higher education goals.”

Faculty from 142 institutions submitted projects for the Fall 2023 term. The 52 projects were selected through a blind review process led by former educators at Course Hero. Many faculty expressed an interest in exploring the ethical and effective use of generative AI in their classrooms, while others proposed using technologies like AR and VR to introduce hands-on learning in their classrooms. Some of the projects selected include:

Applying Learning with VR

Yu-Tung Kuo, professor of Applied Engineering Technology at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (the country’s largest public Historically Black College and University and the largest producer of Black undergraduates in engineering), will use the funding to simulate real-world scenarios in VR game development. Students will apply learned knowledge and skills, explore the importance of diverse user research and testing, and foster collaboration and decision-making skills critical to the workplace.

AI-Prompted Role Playing

Carmen Villavicencio-Hein, a doctoral student at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work, will use the grant to purchase AI software that will support the creation of a series of simulated case studies where social work students must analyze quantitative and qualitative data to determine areas of need in schools, conduct mental health assessments, and develop culturally responsive interventions and strategies in response to needs. Practicing through simulation scenarios will allow students to apply, practice, and reflect on their learning before their direct work with students and families.

Exploring ChatGPT for Tutoring

Kimberley McHale, a Calculus II professor at Heartland Community College in Illinois, will use her grant to develop a classroom project in which students will investigate both the opportunities and pitfalls of using generative artificial intelligence to learn math. Students will investigate how ChatGPT can be applied in different learning scenarios, and present their findings to the class and Professor McHale’s peers.

The grants follow Course Hero’s 2023 Education Summit, which recently brought together over 7,500 educators to engage in conversations and workshops around digital pedagogy, assessment, and student-first learning environments. The Summit’s most widely attended sessions were focused on AI, including understanding the educational opportunities and tradeoffs of AI, using AI constructively in the classroom, and preparing students for an AI-enabled workplace.

About Course Hero: Course Hero is on a mission to help students graduate confident and prepared. The online learning platform now offers more than 100 million course-specific study resources created by and for students and educators, as well as 24/7 tutor help. More than 150,000 faculty across the U.S. and Canada use Course Hero to share their resources with the community, collaborate with other faculty, and hone new strategies for instruction. Every day, students, educators and tutors on Course Hero help more than 30 million students make every study hour count.

SOURCE Course Hero