AVP Investment Thesis – Basetwo

AXA

AVP is excited to announce our lead investment in Basetwo’s $11.5M Series A round, alongside co-investors Glasswing, Global Brain, Deloitte Ventures, SHIMADZU and Chiyoda. After spending considerable time exploring the potential of software solutions in the manufacturing space, we are thrilled to support Basetwo’s innovative AI co-pilot for manufacturing processes. When we first met the Basetwo team over a year ago, we were impressed by their visionary solution to a clear and pressing market need. Below, we highlight the key reasons behind our enthusiasm for Basetwo:

1. The Manufacturing Market is Massive – and Technology is Outdated

Basetwo is at the forefront of AI-driven manufacturing optimization, entering the market at a time where AI technology is feasible, and companies are eager to adopt. The manufacturing industry is massive, contributing to ~16% of GDP¹, but it remains disproportionately reliant on outdated technology. Despite its size and impact, many manufacturers still rely on legacy tools and desktop simulation software—some dating back to the Windows 95 era. Our calculations estimate Basetwo’s TAM to be approximately $20 billion, primarily focused on chemicals, and around $60 billion when expanded to include other underserved verticals.

At AVP, we seek opportunities in industries primed for disruption, and believe this gap in manufacturing represents a significant opportunity. The industry is grappling with rising costs, labor shortages, nearshoring trends, and increasing competition, all of which are driving demand for greater operational efficiency. We believe Basetwo is uniquely positioned to fill this gap. In verticals such as pharmaceuticals, there is a distinct lack of advanced process optimization solutions, and Basetwo’s technology addresses this need, unlocking substantial value by improving operational efficiency.

2. Basetwo’s Technology is Cutting-Edge

Basetwo has a unique value proposition, providing a low-code, user-friendly platform enabling operators to efficiently perform process optimization with quick setup and time to value. The platform leverages best-in-class physics AI models to accurately simulate complex processes and recommend optimization strategies.

What truly sets Basetwo apart is not just the use of advanced AI, but also modern MLOps tools they have architected – creating a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for process optimization. The combination of technical excellence and usability positions Basetwo to drive significant operation improvements across manufacturing.

3. Basetwo’s Solution Delivers Strong ROI

The ROI potential for process optimization in manufacturing is significant. Even small inefficiencies can compound at scale, leading to millions of dollars in lost productivity. Basetwo’s platform has already demonstrated its value by helping customers identify and eliminate inefficiencies, generating millions in cost savings. As a result, Basetwo has been able to secure early contracts with large Fortune 500 companies—an endorsement of the platform’s effectiveness and real-world value.

4. Basetwo Has an Exceptional Management Team

At AVP, we prioritize investing in companies with strong leadership, and Basetwo’s management team of three brothers exceeds our expectations. CEO Thouheed and COO Thamjeeth previously co-founded an AI-driven water infrastructure company, which was acquired by Innovyze and later by Autodesk; Thouheed then went on to lead Autodesk’s AI initiatives. Head of Engineering Tawfeeq brings experience from highgrowth tech companies like Lyft, Uber, and Databricks. Their combined expertise gives us confidence in management’s ability to scale and grow Basetwo into a market leader.

Since its founding in 2022, Basetwo has made impressive strides with its cutting-edge platform addressing the significant gap in the manufacturing sector. We at AVP are excited to partner with Basetwo to help manufacturers across the globe unlock millions in cost savings and shape the future of process optimization.

Basetwo Raises $11.5M Series A

AXA

Basetwo Raises $11.5M Series A to Transform Chemical Manufacturing with Physics AI Platform

Basetwo, an AI copilot for manufacturing engineers, today announced it has raised USD $11.5M in Series A funding led by AVP with participation from existing investor Glasswing Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Global Brain Ventures, Shimadzu Corporation, Chiyoda Corporation, and prominent UAE angel investors via Qora71. The investment allows the company to accelerate its mission to revolutionize how pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers optimize their production processes.

Pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers face significant challenges when scaling production from lab to commercial scale and optimizing existing processes for quality and efficiency. When launching new drug compounds or chemical formulations to market, manufacturers must precisely determine numerous production parameters — from reactor temperatures to mixing speeds — while maintaining strict quality standards. At the commercial scale, teams must continuously verify production performance, identify issues, and implement corrective actions to ensure optimal batch quality. Traditional machine learning approaches relying solely on historical data struggle with these complex manufacturing processes, as they can only learn from correlations rather than the underlying physics and chemistry engineers use to control and troubleshoot these systems. This technology gap leads to significant inefficiencies, with 20 cents of every dollar spent in manufacturing going to waste — a staggering global loss of $8 trillion annually.

Basetwo’s Physics AI platform uniquely combines fundamental chemical engineering principles with artificial intelligence to optimize pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing processes. This results in an up to 40% improvement in cycle times and raw material usage while helping customers achieve a 25% improvement in product quality. The platform enables manufacturers to run virtual experiments and simulate process changes before implementation, significantly reducing the time and cost traditionally required to optimize production processes and eliminating the risks associated with live testing.

“Amid the excitement around generative AI, most applications have focused on consumer use cases using black box models that learn from data patterns and correlation rather than foundational knowledge and principles,” said Thouheed Abdul Gaffoor, CEO and Co-founder of Basetwo. “Manufacturing requires a fundamentally different approach, incorporating decades of engineering expertise and physics-based understanding of how chemicals and equipment interact. Our Physics AI platform enables manufacturers to optimize complex processes with powerful and explainable models.

The confidence of our investors in this Series A round is a testament to the transformative potential of our approach. We’re thrilled to have their support as we expand our capabilities and continue to empower manufacturers with cutting-edge solutions for the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

The funding will accelerate the development of Basetwo’s AutoPilot technology for autonomous, real-time manufacturing control while expanding the company’s presence in the US, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East. Basetwo will continue growing its business development, AI, and software engineering teams to support increasing market demand.

“Basetwo is transforming how global manufacturers optimize their operations,” said Manish Agarwal at AVP. “Basetwo’s Physics AI platform addresses challenges critical for process efficiency and quality control, delivering measurable improvements that impact the bottom line. With their proven success across major pharmaceutical and chemical companies, Basetwo is positioned to become a leader in next-generation manufacturing optimization.”

Basetwo’s low-code platform empowers process engineers to leverage AI technology for critical use cases, such as quickly bringing new products to market and optimizing existing processes. The platform’s physics-based models provide interpretable insights that help engineers understand and control manufacturing systems while meeting regulatory requirements.

“Traditional manufacturing software was built for an era before cloud computing and modern AI,” added Gaffoor. “We’re excited to partner with global leaders across pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and consumer goods to usher in a new generation of intelligent manufacturing optimization that maximizes efficiency, quality, and sustainability.”

About Basetwo

Basetwo is a Toronto-based startup that provides an AI platform designed to enhance manufacturing efficiency. Working with category leaders in the pharmaceutical and consumer goods industry, Basetwo has helped manufacturers improve yield, cycle time, and operational costs by over 20-30%.

About AVP

AVP is a global venture capital firm specializing in high-growth, technology-enabled companies, managing more than $2 billion in assets across four investment strategies: Venture, Early Growth, Growth, and Fund of Funds. Since its establishment in 2016, AVP has invested in more than 60 technology companies in Venture and Early Growth stages in the U.S. and Europe. With offices in New York, London, and Paris, AVP supports companies in expanding internationally and provides portfolio companies with tailored business development opportunities to further accelerate their growth. For more information about AVP, please visit www.axavp.com.

Basetwo Raises $11.5M Series A

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AXA

Basetwo Raises $11.5M Series A to Transform Chemical Manufacturing with Physics AI Platform

Basetwo, an AI copilot for manufacturing engineers, today announced it has raised USD $11.5M in Series A funding led by AVP with participation from existing investor Glasswing Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, Global Brain Ventures, Shimadzu Corporation, Chiyoda Corporation, and prominent UAE angel investors via Qora71. The investment allows the company to accelerate its mission to revolutionize how pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers optimize their production processes.

Pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturers face significant challenges when scaling production from lab to commercial scale and optimizing existing processes for quality and efficiency. When launching new drug compounds or chemical formulations to market, manufacturers must precisely determine numerous production parameters — from reactor temperatures to mixing speeds — while maintaining strict quality standards. At the commercial scale, teams must continuously verify production performance, identify issues, and implement corrective actions to ensure optimal batch quality. Traditional machine learning approaches relying solely on historical data struggle with these complex manufacturing processes, as they can only learn from correlations rather than the underlying physics and chemistry engineers use to control and troubleshoot these systems. This technology gap leads to significant inefficiencies, with 20 cents of every dollar spent in manufacturing going to waste — a staggering global loss of $8 trillion annually.

Basetwo’s Physics AI platform uniquely combines fundamental chemical engineering principles with artificial intelligence to optimize pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing processes. This results in an up to 40% improvement in cycle times and raw material usage while helping customers achieve a 25% improvement in product quality. The platform enables manufacturers to run virtual experiments and simulate process changes before implementation, significantly reducing the time and cost traditionally required to optimize production processes and eliminating the risks associated with live testing.

“Amid the excitement around generative AI, most applications have focused on consumer use cases using black box models that learn from data patterns and correlation rather than foundational knowledge and principles,” said Thouheed Abdul Gaffoor, CEO and Co-founder of Basetwo. “Manufacturing requires a fundamentally different approach, incorporating decades of engineering expertise and physics-based understanding of how chemicals and equipment interact. Our Physics AI platform enables manufacturers to optimize complex processes with powerful and explainable models.

The confidence of our investors in this Series A round is a testament to the transformative potential of our approach. We’re thrilled to have their support as we expand our capabilities and continue to empower manufacturers with cutting-edge solutions for the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

The funding will accelerate the development of Basetwo’s AutoPilot technology for autonomous, real-time manufacturing control while expanding the company’s presence in the US, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East. Basetwo will continue growing its business development, AI, and software engineering teams to support increasing market demand.

“Basetwo is transforming how global manufacturers optimize their operations,” said Manish Agarwal at AVP. “Basetwo’s Physics AI platform addresses challenges critical for process efficiency and quality control, delivering measurable improvements that impact the bottom line. With their proven success across major pharmaceutical and chemical companies, Basetwo is positioned to become a leader in next-generation manufacturing optimization.”

Basetwo’s low-code platform empowers process engineers to leverage AI technology for critical use cases, such as quickly bringing new products to market and optimizing existing processes. The platform’s physics-based models provide interpretable insights that help engineers understand and control manufacturing systems while meeting regulatory requirements.

“Traditional manufacturing software was built for an era before cloud computing and modern AI,” added Gaffoor. “We’re excited to partner with global leaders across pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and consumer goods to usher in a new generation of intelligent manufacturing optimization that maximizes efficiency, quality, and sustainability.”

About Basetwo

Basetwo is a Toronto-based startup that provides an AI platform designed to enhance manufacturing efficiency. Working with category leaders in the pharmaceutical and consumer goods industry, Basetwo has helped manufacturers improve yield, cycle time, and operational costs by over 20-30%.

About AVP

AVP is a global venture capital firm specializing in high-growth, technology-enabled companies, managing more than $2 billion in assets across four investment strategies: Venture, Early Growth, Growth, and Fund of Funds. Since its establishment in 2016, AVP has invested in more than 60 technology companies in Venture and Early Growth stages in the U.S. and Europe. With offices in New York, London, and Paris, AVP supports companies in expanding internationally and provides portfolio companies with tailored business development opportunities to further accelerate their growth. For more information about AVP, please visit www.axavp.com.

ABB invests in generative AI energy manager startup Edgecom

ABB Ventures
  • BB extends partnership with Edgecom, winner of its 2024 Startup Challenge
  • Edgecom and ABB will collaborate on AI solutions for large industrial customers

ABB is investing in a strategic partnership with Edgecom Energy, the Toronto-based energy management startup. The company’s unique energy management platform uses artificial intelligence to help industrial and commercial users manage and reduce peaks in their power demand. It is the first in the market to use a generative AI copilot to optimize the user experience.

The partnership involves a minority investment in Edgecom through ABB Electrification Ventures, the venture capital arm of ABB Electrification. ABB Electrification Ventures is part of the group-wide ABB Ventures framework, investing in transformative technology companies that advance ABB’s vision of a more sustainable, electrified, and automated world. Edgecom was a winner in ABB’s 2024 Startup Challenge.

The International Energy Agency has stated that the world must double the pace of energy efficiency progress in the next decade to meet net zero targets. It highlights the key role digital energy management must play. Innovation teams at ABB’s Smart Power division will collaborate with Edgecom to develop new AI-enabled solutions to help customers in North America save energy and reduce costs.

Massimiliano Cifalitti, President of ABB’s Smart Power division, said: “Partnerships are key to ABB Electrification’s artificial intelligence strategy for energy management. Edgecom shows how gen AI can create business value from complex data sets with an easy-to-use interface. The company also has the scalability and interoperability ABB is looking for as we grow our AI ecosystem for energy management.”

Artificial intelligence can be a game-changer for energy management. ABB’s digitalised electrification solutions collect data from across a site’s power network; Edgecom’s AI Energy Copilot can turn complex dataset into energy saving opportunities. Adapting to the customer’s goals, the AI Energy Copilot suggests small adjustments to lower bills or smart ideas to reduce environmental footprint.

Behdad Bahrami, CEO and Co-Founder of Edgecom, said: “ABB’s commitment to our vision underscores the transformative impact we’re bringing to energy management. Together, we’re empowering large energy users to achieve significant cost savings and emissions reductions through innovative solutions that deliver real world cost savings and emissions reductions. As the energy transition accelerates, innovative partnerships like this are key to creating a more efficient and sustainable future for industries worldwide.”

Mehdi Parvizi, CTO and Co-Founder of Edgecom, added: “Generative AI is transforming energy management by enabling tailored strategies that unlock savings across energy-intensive assets and facilities. This technology optimizes asset performance, integrates operations with energy market programs and price tariffs, improves energy efficiency, and guides operator behavior toward more effective energy decisions.”

The investment in Edgecom brings the total portfolio of ABB Electrification Ventures to 15 companies, with investments totalling €80 million since 2021. It is part of ABB Ventures, which has invested more than $450 million in 70 startups across electrification and automation sectors since 2010.

Edgecom Energy's unique energy management platform uses generative AI to help users reduce power demand peaks
Edgecom Energy’s unique energy management platform uses generative AI to help users reduce power demand peaks

ABB is a global technology leader in electrification and automation, enabling a more sustainable and resource-efficient future. By connecting its engineering and digitalization expertise, ABB helps industries run at high performance, while becoming more efficient, productive and sustainable so they outperform. At ABB, we call this ‘Engineered to Outrun’. The company has over 140 years of history and more than 105,000 employees worldwide. ABB’s shares are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (ABBN) and Nasdaq Stockholm (ABB). www.abb.com

ABB Electrification is a global technology leader enabling the efficient and reliable distribution of electricity from source to socket. With more than 50,000 employees across 100 countries, we collaborate with our customers and partners to solve the world’s greatest challenges in electrical distribution and energy management. As the energy transition accelerates and electricity demands grow, we are electrifying the world in a safe, smart and sustainable way. At ABB, we are ‘Engineered to Outrun’, and we are passionate about helping our customers and partners do the same. go.abb/electrification

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Sia Partners Welcomes a Strategic Minority Investment from Blackstone

Blackstone

PARIS, FRANCE – 16 December 2024 – Sia Partners (“Sia” or “the Company”), a global, next-generation independent management and AI consulting firm, announced today a minority investment of up to €250 million from funds managed by Blackstone’s private equity strategy for individual investors (“Blackstone”), to support the Company’s continued growth. Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Matthieu Courtecuisse, retains a significant majority stake in Sia and will continue to lead the Company. It marks the Company’s first partnership with a financial investor since its inception.

Founded in 1999, the Company has become a leading player in the global consulting market, recognised for its deep expertise in strategy, management consulting and AI, and ability to leverage technology and data to drive business transformation. With 3,000 employees across 20 countries and 50 offices, the Company works with over 1,000 clients, including Fortune 500 and major tech clients, across a diversified base of end markets, within sectors such as Energy, Banking, Consumer, Luxury and Retail and TMT. Projects range from significant strategic transformation, change management, operational analysis, post-merger integration and innovation.

Sia continues to deliver impressive results, achieving close to €500 million in revenue, 40% of which is in France and 30% in the United States. The partnership with Blackstone will support Sia’s acceleration of its expansion across the U.S. market, as well as support strategic M&A.

Matthieu Courtecuisse, Chief Executive Officer, Sia Partners, said: “We are thrilled that Blackstone is investing in our consulting firm as a minority partner. This partnership reflects a shared conviction in our strategic consulting model augmented by AI and design, as well as the common ambition of a leadership position in a market that is experiencing a new phase of consolidation.

“Today’s announcement is also a testament to the hard work of everyone at Sia, our 25 years of organic growth and the opportunity that lies ahead. With Blackstone’s resources we can grow our organic offerings, accelerate our international expansion plans and develop our ability to innovate, bringing our premium offering to more clients around the world.”

Lionel Assant, Global Co-Chief Investment Officer, Blackstone, said: “Sia is a fast-growing leader in the space, benefitting from a differentiated service offering given their deep expertise across industry defining megatrends such as the energy transition and AI. We look forward to partnering with Matthieu and the wider team to drive long-term growth by leveraging our global footprint, scale and expertise.”

Alongside the transaction, the Company is also pleased to announce the appointment of Sandrine Carreau as President & COO, alongside Matthieu Courtecuisse, Founder & CEO. Sandrine Carreau has been with Sia Partners for 12 years, is based in Paris, and was previously in charge of Strategy and M&A, Marketing, and ESG.

J.P. Morgan SE acted as Exclusive Financial Adviser and Sole Placement Agent, and A&O Shearman acted as legal advisor, to Sia Holding with respect to the strategic minority investment from Blackstone.

Freshfields acted as legal advisor and Eight Advisory as legal transaction services advisor to Blackstone.

Media Contacts
 
Sia Partners
Marc Landré
marc.landre@sia-partners.com

Blackstone
Rebecca Flower
Rebecca.Flower@blackstone.com
+44 (0)7918 360372

The Leverage Advisory on behalf of Blackstone
Florence Sabourin
fsabourin@theleverageadvisory.eu
+33 (0)6 07 62 47 36

About Blackstone  
Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. We seek to deliver compelling returns for institutional and individual investors by strengthening the companies in which we invest. Our more than $1.1 trillion in assets under management include global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, credit, real assets, secondaries and hedge funds. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow @blackstone on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

About Sia Partners
Sia Partners is a next-generation management and AI consulting firm. With 3,000 employees across 20 countries and 50 offices, we offer strategy, management, and AI consulting services to over 1,000 clients worldwide, including most Fortune 500 companies. Founded in the AI era, our unique value proposition lies in deep sector expertise across all industries, combined with innovative, AI-driven consulting methodologies that deliver tangible results. Further information is available at www.sia-partners.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram.

LegalFly secures €15 Million to set security standard in AI legal services

Fortino Capital

LegalFly raises €15m in a Series A round led by Notion Capital to further expand its GenAI-driven product to power corporate legal teams and democratise legal services.

London, UK – Monday, 15th July, 2024 – LegalFly, a pioneering legal AI platform, today announced it has raised over €15 million in Series A funding led by Notion Capital, with participation from redalpine and Fortino Capital. Founded one year ago, LegalFly has swiftly made its mark on the legal tech industry. This investment comes just eight months after the company’s €2 million Seed round led by redalpine, which saw early participation from industry leaders including Mehdi Ghissassi, Director of Product at Google Deepmind.

LegalFly was founded by a team of former product experts from Tinder – Ruben Miessen, Kasper Verbeeck, Dennis Montégnies and Gregory Vekemans – with a vision to democratise legal services for enterprises. The company has swiftly built momentum in the market with its advanced and intuitive legal AI solutions tailored for law firms and in-house teams, particularly within the finance and insurance sectors. Today, LegalFly counts dozens of leading European law firms and enterprises as customers and has forged strategic partnerships with industry giants such as Slaughter & May and Allianz.

“LegalFly is redefining how legal services are delivered, ensuring they are more accessible within a corporate environment while upholding the highest standards of security and efficiency,” stated Ruben Miessen, CEO of LegalFly. “This investment enables us to scale our operations and innovate further, driving forward the digital transformation in legal services that our clients require globally.”

Ruben Miessen, CEO

LegalFly is revolutionising legal and compliance departments with a full suite of Legal AI agents designed to automate legal services and enhance productivity. As the €884 billion legal services market turns to AI to boost efficiency and cut costs, LegalFly is setting the global standard for responsible legal AI featuring unrivalled security.

Unique in its approach, LegalFly ensures that sensitive client data never leaves a company’s premises. This is achieved through on-premise anonymisation, where a fine-tuned model secures data before it ever reaches the LLMs. Coupled with an LLM-agnostic platform that selects the best foundational models for each legal scenario, LegalFly increases both product efficacy and security.

The investment will fuel LegalFly’s ambitious growth plan, tripling its current team by year’s end and accelerating feature development. The funding will also support LegalFly’s continued expansion across Europe and enhance its partnerships with leading law firms and enterprises, paving the way for next-generation legal services that are both effective and secure.

“The legal industry is a perfect fit for AI. We have been looking at making an investment in the market for sometime and in LegalFly we are very confident that they will be one of the enduring success stories,” said Jos White, General Partner at Notion Capital. “The super talented team have a clear vision for the future and have already built a market leading product. The true test of this is the way it’s being received in the market which has been nothing short of amazing after only a year.”

“LegalFly’s rapid ascent showcases their exceptional vision and execution, solidifying their product leadership in the Legal AI space. Their unique focus on enterprise-grade security and an LLM-agnostic platform not only meets a critical industry need but also drives their continuous expansion and innovation. Transforming legal services with secure, AI-driven solutions, we are proud to have led their seed round and to witness their robust and sustained growth.” said Sebastian Becker, General Partner at redalpine.

 

About LegalFly

Founded in 2023 by four Tinder tech veterans, LegalFly is driving a monumental shift in the legal industry from its base in Belgium. Our mission is to democratise legal services within enterprises, making complex legal processes more accessible and manageable. Our leading AI solution automates a broad spectrum of the more repetitive legal tasks, translating legalese to ease. Discover how we’re simplifying legal workflows for enterprises at https://www.legalfly.ai.

Altor divests Silo AI

Altor divests Silo AI

Published

Jul 12 2024

In June 2022 Altor invested and partnered with Silo AI, a private AI lab based out of Helsinki, Finland. The ambition was to build a leading European AI flagship.

On July 10, 2024, AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Silo AI, which now has become the largest private AI lab in Europe, in an all-cash transaction valued at $665 million. The Silo AI team consists of world-class AI scientists and engineers with extensive experience developing tailored AI models, platforms and solutions for leading enterprises spanning cloud, embedded and endpoint computing markets.

Silo AI CEO and co-founder Peter Sarlin will continue to lead the Silo AI team as part of the AMD Artificial Intelligence Group. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2024.

“We are really proud of the partnership with Silo AI and it is astonishing what they have been able to accomplish during the past years,” said Mattias Holmström, Partner and head of the Tech Sector at Altor. “This combination is a testament to the great franchise that Peter, Tero and the rest of the Silo AI team and board have built. We think AMD is an excellent new owner and we wish them the best on their future endeavours” said Stian Tuv, Principal at Altor.

“At Silo AI, our mission from the start has been to build an AI flagship company. Today’s announcement is a logical next step in that pursuit as we join forces with AMD to shape the future of AI computing,” said Peter Sarlin, CEO and co-founder of Silo AI. “Since we partnered with Altor in 2022, we have reached many milestones and succeeded in building Silo AI into a leading European AI flagship. We have had a fantastic journey with Altor and now we look forward to further scale our impact and reach new heights”

About Altor

Since inception, the family of Altor funds has raised more than EUR 11 billion in total commitments. The funds have invested in just south of 100 companies. The investments have been made in medium-sized predominantly Nordic and DACH companies with the aim to create value through growth initiatives and operational improvements. Among current and past investments are Meltwater, OX2, Carnegie, Raw Fury, Toteme and QNTM Group.

For more information visit www.altor.com

About Silo AI

Silo AI is Europe’s largest private AI lab on a mission to ensure Europe has a flagship AI company. We’re a trusted AI partner that brings competitive advantage to product R&D. We build AI-driven solutions and products to enable smart devices, autonomous vehicles, industry 4.0, and smart cities. Silo AI provides its customers unique access to world-class AI models and expertise, as well as the SiloGen model-as-a-service platform. As part of SiloGen, Silo AI is currently building market leading open source LLMst to ensure European digital sovereignty and democratize access to LLMs.

For more information visit www.silo.ai

About AMD

For more than 50 years AMD has driven innovation in high-performance computing, graphics and visualization technologies. Billions of people, leading Fortune 500 businesses and cutting-edge scientific research institutions around the world rely on AMD technology daily to improve how they live, work and play. AMD employees are focused on building leadership high-performance and adaptive products that push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information about how AMD is enabling today and inspiring tomorrow, visit the AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) website www.amd.com

Press contact

Karin Åström

Head of Communications

karin.astrom@altor.com

+46 707 64 86 59

Axelera AI Raises $68 Million Series B Funding to Accelerate Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence

Innovation Industries

Axelera AI Raises $68 Million Series B Funding to Accelerate Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence

Silicon Valley, CA and Eindhoven, NL – June 27, 2024 – Axelera AI, the leading provider of purpose-built AI hardware acceleration technology for generative AI and computer vision inference, today announced its successful close of an oversubscribed $68 million Series B financing round, bringing the total amount raised to $120 million. In just three years, Axelera AI has built a world-class team of 180+ employees (including 55+ PhD’s with more than 40,000 citations), launched its Metis™ AI Platform which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and has visibility into a strong business pipeline which exceeds $100 million. This success has attracted diverse, global funding from venture capital, sovereign wealth and pension funds.

Axelera AI’s Series B funding round is Europe’s largest oversubscribed Series B funding round in the fabless semiconductor industry. It is backed by major institutional investors, including Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, the European Innovation Council FundInnovation Industries Strategic Partners Fund (backed by Dutch Pension Funds PMT and PME, administered by MN) and Samsung Catalyst Fund, along with existing investors Verve VenturesInnovation Industries, Fractionelera and the Italian sovereign fund CDP Venture Capital SGR. The new capital adds to previously raised funds, including the innovation credit from RVO, and equity investment from Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM), imec, imec.xpand and Innovation Industries.

Companies are embracing new and innovative ways to incorporate computer vision and generative AI capabilities into business models. However, challenges associated with energy consumption, cost, limited supply and scalability are inhibiting the true potential of AI. Axelera AI addresses these exact industry challenges by providing a solution that delivers unmatched performance and efficiency. This new capital enables Axelera AI to grow its high demand AI inference solutions based on its proprietary digital in-memory computing and RISC-V technology.

Axelera AI’s growth strategy also eyes opportunities across new geographies and market sectors. The Series B funding fosters global expansion for Axelera AI with a focus on growth opportunities in North America, Europe and Middle East. In addition, the capital facilitates expansion across key vertical markets such as automotive, digital healthcare, Industry 4.0, retail, robots & drones, surveillance and more. The funding also enables Axelera AI to broaden its future product offerings from the edge to the data center to address the growing computing needs for generative AI, large language models and large multi-modal models. This market expansion includes high-performance computing by designing high efficiency, high-performance and price-competitive AI accelerators to power future exa-scale and peta-scale HPC centers.

“There’s no denying that the AI industry has the potential to transform a multitude of sectors,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, Co-Founder and CEO at Axelera AI. “However, to truly harness the value of AI, organizations need a solution that delivers high-performance and efficiency while balancing cost. This funding supports our mission to democratize access to artificial intelligence, from the edge to the cloud. By expanding our product lines beyond the edge computing market, we are able to address industry challenges in AI inference and support current and future AI processing needs with our scalable, proven technology.”

IDC forecasts that IT infrastructure for AI semiconductors will reach $193 billion by the end of 2027. To address this market demand, Axelera AI’s Metis™ AI Platform, the industry’s most powerful, cost-effective and energy efficient AI processing unit for inference, will be in full production in the second half of 2024.

“We are very excited to support Axelera AI in their Series B financing. The company introduces a very innovative approach for high performance AI acceleration at the edge, by implementing Digital In-Memory Computing,” said Marco Chisari, Head of Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center and Executive Vice President, Samsung Electronics. “Axelera AI’s architecture minimizes data movement between memory and compute elements, aiming to overcome the “Memory Wall” challenge. It also has the promise of significantly reducing power consumption, a critical attribute for AI applications at the edge and beyond.”

“Axelera AI’s Series B funding round, with backing from venture capital, sovereign and pension funds, underscores the company’s record of delivering industry defining solutions for customers to meet the growing demand for generative AI and computer vision,” said Inder Singh, Axelera AI board member and former CFO of Arm. “With this new funding, Axelera AI will be able to continue to build upon its product offerings and expand into additional markets, in alignment with the progression of the market for GenAI.”

The combination of Axelera AI’s experienced Board of Directors, the executive leadership team and this Series B investment positions Axelera AI to build upon its early customer momentum and further support the needs of AI innovators across vertical markets. Axelera AI customers are currently utilizing the Metis AI Platform within their cutting-edge products to differentiate the unique offerings they bring to their respective markets.

Axelera AI is currently shipping evaluation kits. Additional details can be found at at www.axelera.ai/metis-evaluation-kit.

For more information on Axelera AI, please visit www.axelera.ai.

About Axelera AI

Axelera AI is the leading provider of purpose-built AI hardware acceleration technology for AI inference, including computer vision and generative AI applications. Its first-generation product is the game-changing Metis™ AI platform – a holistic hardware and software solution for Edge AI inference which delivers world’s highest performance and power-efficiency at a fraction of the cost of alternative solutions. Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Axelera AI has R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and the UK, with more than 180 employees in 18 countries. Its team of experts in AI software and hardware hail from top AI firms and Fortune 500 companies.

Media Contact:

Hanna Kang
Wireside Communications® for Axelera AI
axelera@wireside.com

Our Series A in Decagon: Bringing Human-Like AI to Enterprise Customer Operations

Accel

Today we’re announcing our Series A in Decagon, an AI company powering a new generation of customer operations.

The promise of customer experience automation has been just around the corner for years. We’ve seen the industry go through many transitions from branching scripts to chat widgets, and yet it continues to be a human-in-the-loop process rife with mistakes, latency, and overall poor NPS. Mix together the broadening, global customer base that companies like Rippling, Vanta, and Eventbrite (all current Decagon customers) serve today with each company’s own expanding portfolios of products, and one can appreciate the compounding problem of delivering customer services like support, success, sales, and onboarding. It’s not getting easier.

Decagon flips the problem on its head with an AI-native solution that mirrors human capabilities and accelerates every layer of the customer operations stack. Decagon’s agents don’t just respond to customer inquiries, they proactively analyze conversations to understand insights, file bug reports, synthesize feature gaps, and even take actions on behalf of customers. In turn, engineers get the right bug reports, UX sees real-time visibility issues — and most importantly, customer issues are resolved in a fraction of the time and cost.

We’ve known Jesse and Ashwin for many years, and have seen first hand the intensity and intuition they apply to even the most unique product and company building problems. As second-time founders of both consumer and enterprise startups, they deeply understand what it means to be customer-obsessed. That’s critical, because we’re in an era of software where computer science fundamentals matter again, but founders must stay grounded in real customer problems. The winners won’t just be the ones with the biggest billboards — the winners will blend these new technical forces with deep customer understanding.

We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Decagon to redefine how companies engage with their customers. We’re hiring high-agency, passionate teammates now. Come join us!

– Ivan Zhou

EQT to acquire majority position to support the growth of CluePoints, a leading provider of AI-powered software solutions used for data interrogation and analytics in clinical trials

eqt
  • CluePoints is a cloud-based software platform for Risk-Based Quality Management (“RBQM”) and data quality oversight in clinical trials, designed to enable safer and more efficient processes and improving data integrity and risk compliance
  • As scientific breakthroughs and advancements in technology and data are accelerating healthcare innovation, the markets for RBQM and data interrogation & analytics software are expected to experience strong growth
  • In this highly thematic investment at the intersection of pharma, software and AI, EQT will apply its expertise investing in healthcare and throughout the tech value-chain to help CluePoints cement its leading global position
  • Summit Partners, an investor in CluePoints since 2020, and Clinimetrics SA, a co-founder of CluePoints, will retain minority stakes with participation in this funding round

EQT is pleased to announce that the EQT Healthcare Growth Strategy and the EQT Growth Fund have agreed to acquire a majority stake in CluePoints (the “Company”), with meaningful reinvestment from the management team and existing shareholders Summit Partners and Clinimetrics SA, which was also a co-founder of the Company.

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Belgium, CluePoints is a premier software provider for RBQM and data quality oversight in clinical trials. Applying advanced statistics and machine learning, and harnessing over 10 years of clinical trials knowledge, CluePoints’ proprietary algorithms help drive positive outcomes for pharmaceutical and biotech companies, contract research organizations and other customers. The Company offers an end-to-end value proposition from initial risk identification to ongoing tracking and monitoring of issues and discrepancies throughout the drug development process. With more than 9,500 platform users, CluePoints has helped de-risk more than 1,600 studies and has detected over 142,000 issues for its customers, which include many of the top 20 largest pharma companies.

CluePoints received a growth investment from Summit Partners in 2020, and over the course of the last several years, the Company has generated significant growth, building a robust go-to-market function, launching new products and diversifying into new markets.

This new investment comes at a time when CluePoints is seeing accelerating growth, underpinned by increasing adoption of RBQM software across virtually all clinical trial phases. The industry is experiencing momentum due to growing research & development spend, increasing data complexity in clinical trials and a focus on patient safety and data quality driven partly by regulatory scrutiny.

Investing in CluePoints is aligned with the objectives of EQT Healthcare Growth to support companies with their mission to deliver positive healthcare outcomes, and of EQT Growth to invest in the next generation of technology leaders. EQT will apply its 30-year track record of investing in healthcare, experience of investing in software and AI, its in-house digital team and global network of Industrial Advisors to help CluePoints cement its leading global position in RBQM and data analytics for clinical trials.

Andy Cooper, CEO of CluePoints, said: “We are delighted that EQT has chosen to partner with CluePoints. EQT is a market-leading investor in both SaaS (Software as a Service) and medical research industries. This combination makes EQT an ideal partner for CluePoints which is a market leader for SaaS-based clinical data analytics. We are grateful for Summit’s active support over the last four years. Their depth of industry knowledge and operational resources have been instrumental in our growth trajectory. Both EQT and Summit share our passion for and commitment to leveraging innovative advanced statistics and machine learning solutions to eliminate manual, error-prone activities in the clinical trial process.”

Dr Mark Braganza, Partner in the EQT Healthcare Growth Advisory Team, commented: “We are excited to be partnering with CluePoints and its dynamic leadership team to help it scale and reach its full potential. The Company’s ambition is a perfect match with ours to help enable the development of medical research to deliver more effective, efficient and accessible healthcare.”

Kirk Lepke, Partner in the EQT Growth Advisory Team, said: “CluePoints is a prime example of how data, machine-learning and AI can be leveraged to improve real world outcomes – in this case pharmaceutical drug development. The entire EQT platform is behind this investment and ready to support the Company with its continued expansion in RBQM and into growing, adjacent markets.”

Thomas Tarnowski, a Managing Director at Summit Partners, said: “We’ve been proud to work alongside the entire CluePoints team during a period of meaningful growth and expansion, supporting the acceleration of product development efforts and entry into new markets.” Jono Pagden, a Principal at Summit, continued: “We are excited to continue our support of the Company and to partner with management and EQT during this next phase of growth.”

The transaction is subject to customary conditions and approvals. It is expected to close in Q3 2024.

Contacts
EQT Press Office, press@eqtpartners.com
Summit Partners Press Office, mdevine@summitpartners.com
CluePoints Press Office, Jodie@discovery-pr.com

The information contained herein does not constitute an offer to sell, nor a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, and may not be used or relied upon in connection with any offer or solicitation. Any offer or solicitation in respect of EQT Healthcare Growth will be made only through a confidential private placement memorandum and related documents which will be furnished to qualified investors on a confidential basis in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. The information contained herein is not for publication or distribution to persons in the United States of America. Any securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”), and may not be offered or sold without registration thereunder or pursuant to an available exemption therefrom. Any offering of securities to be made in the United States would have to be made by means of an offering document that would be obtainable from the issuer or its agents and would contain detailed information about the issuer of the securities and its management, as well as financial information. The securities may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from registration.

About EQT
EQT is a purpose-driven global investment organization with EUR 242 billion in total assets under management (EUR 132 billion in fee-generating assets under management), within two business segments – Private Capital and Real Assets. EQT owns portfolio companies and assets in Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Americas and supports them in achieving sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More info: www.eqtgroup.com
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About CluePoints
CluePoints is the premier Risk-Based Quality Management (RBQM) and Data Quality Oversight Software provider. CluePoints is leveraging the potential of artificial intelligence using advanced statistics and machine learning to determine the quality, accuracy, and integrity of clinical trial data both during and after study conduct. Aligned with guidance from the FDA, EMA, and ICH E6 (R2), CluePoints is deployed to support central and on-site monitoring, medical review, quality risk management and to drive a holistic Risk-Based strategy in all trials. Coupled with thought leadership and consulting expertise to aid pre-study risk assessment, identification of risk controls and solution implementation, you now have everything you need to adhere with global regulatory guidance. The result is positive clinical development outcomes, increased operational efficiency, lower costs and reduced regulatory submission risk as part of the industry paradigm shift to RBQM.

More info: www.cluepoints.com

About Summit Partners
Founded in 1984, Summit Partners is a global alternative investment firm with capital dedicated to growth equity, fixed income, and public equity opportunities. Summit invests across growth sectors of the economy and has invested in more than 550 companies in healthcare, technology and other growth industries. Summit maintains offices in North America and Europe and invests in companies around the world. For more information, please see www.summitpartners.com or Follow on LinkedIn.