Tag Archives: Artificial intelligence

Fractal announces US$ 360 million investment from TPG

Apax

TPG, a leading global alternative asset firm, and Fractal (fractal.ai), a global provider of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics solutions to Fortune 500® companies, today announced that they have signed a definitive investment agreement. TPG is investing US$ 360 million (about INR 2700 crores) in Fractal through TPG Capital Asia, the firm’s Asia-focused private equity platform, in a transaction that includes a combination of primary investment and secondary share purchase from Funds advised by Apax, who will remain a major shareholder following the transaction. The transaction is expected to close by the first quarter of 2022. Additional terms were not disclosed.

“We continue to see great momentum in how clients are leveraging AI to accelerate digital transformation. Fractal is building a great workplace and an innovative culture that’s driving significant client outcomes through our ‘user focused, decision-backwards’ approach to solving problems,” said Srikanth Velamakanni, Co-founder & Group CEO, Fractal. “TPG’s capabilities across all our markets and their proven success in building and supporting top AI providers is the perfect complement to the partnership we’ve enjoyed with Apax, whose insight and expertise have been instrumental in accelerating our growth.”

Pranay Agrawal, Co-founder & CEO, Fractal, said: “The demand for AI is surging across the enterprise. Our AI solutions and products, along with our globally recognized team of experts, empower these organizations to realize and maximize their full potential. Apax has been a great partner to us as we have worked to grow our business, providing valuable insights from their tech experience, operational leadership, and access to their unique network. As we continue to build upon this foundation, the investment from TPG will accelerate our ability to scale and meet this rising demand globally.”

“In the growing market for data and analytics services, Fractal continues to stand out as one of the most well-established, differentiated providers and a clear leader in AI and advanced analytics,” said Puneet Bhatia, Co-Managing Partner of TPG Capital Asia. “The quality of Fractal’s offering has enabled them to build a deep and loyal client -base, made up of some of the world’s largest and most respected companies. Srikanth and Pranay have built a highly respected and market leading company, and we are excited to partner with this proven management team to continue to enhance Fractal’s organic and strategic growth.”

Rohan Haldea, Partner at Apax and Shashank Singh, Partner at Apax, commented: “Since partnering with Fractal, we have been able to combine the Company’s strong value proposition and unique culture with Apax’s deep tech expertise to drive the business forward. We are proud of the progress the Company has made to date alongside Srikanth and Pranay, establishing Fractal as one of the leading players in the rapidly-evolving analytics and AI space, and look forward to partnering with TPG and Fractal in this next chapter for the business.”

Fractal is one of the most prominent players in the Artificial Intelligence space. Fractal’s mission is to power every human decision in the enterprise and brings AI, engineering, and design to help the world’s most admired Fortune 500® companies. Fractal has more than 3,500 employees across 16 global locations, including the United States, UK, Ukraine, India, Singapore, and Australia.

As part of the transaction, TPG’s Puneet Bhatia and Vivek Mohan will join Fractal’s board of directors. All current directors including Gavin Patterson, Rohan Haldea, Shashank Singh, and Gulu Mirchandani will continue to serve on the company’s board. Both TPG and APAX will be minority shareholders in the company.

TPG is a leading investor in software and enterprise technology with extensive experience partnering with the world’s top AI solutions, business analytics, and data processing companies. Select current and past investments include C3 AI, Digital.ai, LLamasoft, MX, Noodle Analytics, and Onfido.

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AI-powered transaction monitoring start-up Sentinels raises €5.7 million seed round led by INKEF Capital

Inkef Capital

Dutch artificial intelligence company Sentinels has raised £4.9 million (€5.7 million) in a seed funding round, led by INKEF Capital, complemented by strategic angel investors and industry leaders – including several members of the early Adyen team. The startup has now raised a total of £7.3m (€8.4m) to date.

Sentinels protects fintechs with an AI-powered transaction monitoring system, reducing repetitive tasks and workload and is relied upon by the likes of online payments unicorn Mollie. It was created in response to rising pressure from regulators on fintechs and traditional financial institutions to crack down on money laundering and other illegal activity passing through their platforms.
Sentinels will use this funding to further build out the product and expand its operations into the UK and beyond Europe, to North America, LatAm and APAC. The funding round also included investment from several members of the early Adyen team including its former EVP sales Thijn Lamers and Head of Growth Maikel Lobbezoo.

Dutch-based Sentinels was launched 18 months ago by Joost van Houten and is a spin-out from Slimmer AI, a European B2B AI venture studio which builds businesses that use AI to disrupt markets. As well as Mollie, it already counts Terrapay, Online Payment Platform, Ginger Payments and ManoBank among its roster of clients.

Unlike legacy compliance technology, Sentinels starts by analysing internal data siloes and augmenting them with external sources – such as adverse media, sanctions lists and merchant websites – to create a rich context. Expert logic, machine learning models and graph networks then sieve out only on the truly suspicious cases. A smart workflow then helps to automate repetitive tasks and make better decisions. The entire compliance process is simplified to one API.
Joost van Houten, Founder and CEO of Sentinels, commented: “In less than five years, we’ve seen countless companies enter the compliance space and a 10x increase in the number of compliance staff – and yet money laundering still remains a significant challenge for financial institutions.

“The big issue is that legacy technology is increasingly out-of-step with the needs of fintechs and other fast-growing institutions. Excessive reports and an unacceptably high number of false alarms puts undue resourcing pressure on companies that should be targeting growth, instead of being waylaid by time-consuming compliance admin.

“Our aim is to help financial institutions keep track of who their customers really are and how they behave – not only to understand risks, but also to serve them better. With this funding round, we’re excited to leverage the knowledge, network and expertise from INKEF, several key members of Adyen’s original founding team and select other fintech leaders.”

Kyang Yung, INKEF, added: “We were attracted to the impressive early traction; particularly Sentinels’ ability to convert small-to-large fintechs, as well as more traditional banks, who recognise the imperative to change. Coming from the payments industry myself, I see a huge market opportunity for Sentinels.”

About Sentinels: Sentinels is an intelligent transaction monitoring solution dedicated to data-driven compliance for the financial industry. With a team of more than 20 in-house engineers, Sentinels’ pragmatic-AI approach has a proven track record in improving compliance outcomes. Its secure cloud-based offering ensures a high level of customer trust and meets constantly changing regulatory requirements. For more information visit: Sentinels.ai

Investors’ overview

INKEF Capital is a venture capital firm based in Amsterdam, backing promising early stage companies in Europe. INKEF takes pride in being a patient, long-term investor with the ability to support companies through several rounds of funding. From the early stages of being a technology or life science venture, INKEF Capital supports entrepreneurs building their ideas into successful international businesses INKEF has also invested in GitLab, Remote and Silverflow, among others. For more information: INKEF.com

Strategic angel investors: Thijn Lamers – former EVP Global Sales of Adyen; Maikel Lobbezoo – former Head of Growth at Adyen; and several other fintech angels.

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