Source: analyticsinsight.net
Today a number of Artificial Intelligence startups are gaining momentum with significant funding and investments. These startups are not only coming up with great platforms and technologies but mastering the art of innovation. Innovation is at the core of such startups which serve the industry with something that was never explored before. Utilizing hefty amounts of investment from notable investors every now and then, they are marking the commencement of a new era of innovation with several investors coming forward to contribute to the transformative journey of emerging innovators.
Here is the list of top 10 artificial intelligence investments/funding that made the headlines in February 2020.
Worlds
Worlds, Dallas based startup, whose artificial intelligence helps large organizations observe their physical spaces to ensure security, safety, and productivity, has raised US$10 million in the first round of funding. The funding round, led by Align Capital, includes Chevron Technology Ventures, PIVA, and Hypergiant Industries. The company’s software uses multiple cameras to track spaces in 3D over time, providing a more reliable view of what’s happening than typical 2D security video would. Worlds then trains its artificial intelligence models to find unusual patterns within and across locations — and if a pattern is unusual enough, it alerts the company. Worlds says it plays in the growing extended reality (XR) market, which is expected to grow to more than US$209 billion in the next four years, where computers generate immersive experiences for physical worlds.
BenchSci
Assessing the well-being of pharmaceutical R&D by unearthing hidden patterns in procurement information is a process made less complicated by Artificial Intelligence. At least, that’s the pitch given by David Qixiang Chen, Elvis Wianda, Liran Belenzon, and Tom Leung, who cofounded BenchSci in 2015. The Toronto, Canada-based biotech firm faucets AI to run experiments that speed up drug discovery with the purpose of accelerating the velocity and high quality of the medical analysis. Last month, in an indication of confidence from new and current backers, BenchSci raised US$22 million in sequence B funding, bringing its whole raised to US$45 million.
Labelbox
Labelbox last month announced the close of a US$25 million Series B round to grow its platform that helps customers label the data needed to train artificial intelligence systems. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Google’s AI-focused Gradient Ventures fund, Kleiner Perkins, and First Round Capital. The funds will be used to develop and accelerate Labelbox’s roadmap for machine learning and computer vision models by doubling the size of its engineering and sales teams. Labelbox also enables users to automate some labeling so a company can manually label all data except any that falls below a particular prediction confidence threshold, COO Brian Rieger told VentureBeat in a phone interview.
Cherre
Real estate data assortment and analytics prices can complete within the thousands and thousands of dollars. That’s why in 2016, L.D. Salmanson based Cherre, a startup that leverages AI to cost-effectively resolve property data from disparate private and non-private sources. After elevating US$9 million in October 2018, the New York-based firm introduced that it’s snagged US$16 million in enterprise and debt funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from Navitas Capital, Carthona Capital, Zigg Capital, Dreamit Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank. “Last year was marked by incredible growth for the entire market,” stated Salmanson, who famous that this newest capital infusion brings Cherre’s complete raised to US$25 million. “This massive industry migration towards fully integrated data systems is just starting, and we’re incredibly proud to be leading the charge. We look forward to continuing working with our most demanding clients on their mission-critical data needs.”
Deep Instinct
Deep Instinct, which uses deep learning both to learn how to identify and stop known viruses and other hacking techniques, as well as to be able to identify completely new approaches that have not been identified before, has raised US$43 million in a Series C. The funding is being led by Millennium New Horizons, with Unbound (a London-based investment firm founded by Shravin Mittal), LG and Nvidia all participating. The investment brings the total raised by Deep Instinct to US$100 million, with HP and Samsung among its previous backers. The tech companies are all strategics, in that (as in the case of HP) they bundle and resell Deep Instinct’s solutions, or use them directly in their own services. The Israeli-based company is not disclosing valuation, but notably, it is already profitable.
CybelAngel
CybelAngel, a cybersecurity startup and a digital risk management platform that provides enterprises with actionable threat intelligence, announced that it has raised US$36 million in series B funding to accelerate global expansion, build strategic partnerships and advance the capabilities of its unique AI-powered technology platform. The investment round, which brings the company’s total funding to US$52 million, was led by Prime Ventures and joined by a coalition of US-based entrepreneurs and a consortium of European venture capital firms. In conjunction with the round, CybelAngel also announced that Pieter Welten, Partner at Prime Ventures, has joined its Board of Directors.
SentinelOne
SentinelOne — which provides a machine learning-based solution for monitoring and securing laptops, phones, containerized applications and the many other devices and services connected to a network — has picked up US$200 million, a Series E round of funding that it says catapults its valuation to US$1.1 billion. The funding is notable not just for its size but for its velocity: it comes just eight months after SentinelOne announced a Series D of US$120 million, which at the time valued the company around US$500 million. In other words, the company has more than doubled its valuation in less than a year — a sign of cybersecurity times. This latest round is being led by Insight Partners, with Tiger Global Management, Qualcomm Ventures LLC, Vista Public Strategies of Vista Equity Partners, Third Point Ventures and other undisclosed previous investors all participating.
OnSiteIQ
OnSiteIQ announced that it has raised a US$4.5 million series A round to grow its artificial intelligence powered safety analysis of 360-degree imagery from construction sites. In addition to supplying computer vision for risk assessment reports, the company’s platform is made to stitch together imagery so construction site managers can examine progress, skimming through footage for a guided tour like Google Street View. OnSiteIQ built the largest data set — over 100 million images — of visual construction risk information in the industry, OnSiteIQ CEO and cofounder Ardalan Khosrowpour told VentureBeat in a phone interview. The funding will be used to open new offices in Texas and California, grow the company sales team, and partner with more insurance companies to give them insights into data that may indicate risk at construction sites.
Karius
Mickey Kertes and Tim Blauwkamp — who labored collectively at Moleculo, a startup spun out of Stanford centered on commercializing know-how that generated lengthy genome sequencing reads — sought to develop a technological resolution at Karius. The Redwood City, California-based startup the 2 cofounded gives insights that allow clinicians to make remedy choices. With a blood draw, it takes a look at detecting over 1,250 potential pathogens, together with infections that may be recognized utilizing most typical testing strategies. Following a US$59 collection A funding spherical in August 2017 and a US$25 million debut financing spherical in November 2018, Karius introduced that it’s secured one other tranche — this one value US$165 million. Softbank’s Vision Fund 2 led the collection B with participation from General Catalyst, HBM, and present traders Khosla Ventures, and LightSpeed Venture Partners. bringing the startup’s whole raised to over US$200 million.
Qure.ai
Qure.ai’s AI, qXR, announced that it raised US$16 million funding to further develop its algorithm detector of malignancies and cardiac disorders. The need for a low-cost chest X-ray product becomes apparent when you think about how many tuberculosis patients in developing countries develop complications while waiting for help. As Qure.ai says, sometimes you need something that works faster than a traditional scan, especially for people living in remote locations: “Our products ensure that life-saving treatments can be delivered to patients, even in remote locations, in a fraction of the time required for traditional scan interpretation.” Here is where qXR comes in. The product works on a computer AI capable of processing X-rays and identifying up to 15 common abnormalities, including COPD, cardiac disorders, besides tuberculosis. The model was trained on X-ray scans from various medical institutions, amassing a gallery of 2.5 million images.