Artificial Intelligence

Praktika: $32.5 Million Raised To Transform Language Learning With Avatar Tutors

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jun 1, 2024

Praktika, a language learning app that utilizes highly personalized AI-powered avatars, announced it secured $32.5 million in Series A funding led by Blossom Capital to disrupt the traditional language learning market after a previously unannounced $2.5 million seed round led by Creator Ventures and Blue Wire Capital. These rounds included participation from prominent figures, including Carles Reina (ElevenLabs) and Patrice Evra (five-time Premier League champion).

Palantir Wins $480 Million Army Contract For Maven AI Technology

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jun 1, 2024

Palantir Technologies announced that the Department of Defense Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) awarded its subsidiary (Palantir USG) a production contract to make licenses of their AI-enabled operating system available across the Department of Defense (DoD). Starting with an initial order of $153 million for supporting certain Combatant Commands and the Joint Staff, more awards could be made up to $480 million over a 5-year period.

Evergrowth And Apolo Mktng Merge And Pre-Seed Increases To €2.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Jun 1, 2024

Evergrowth, an AI-powered B2B account-based sales platform, announced a merger with Apolo Mktng, which utilizes AI to deliver personalized marketing solutions. This merger brings together two innovative forces in AI technology to drive forward a more customer-centric approach to sales strategies.

Patronus AI: $17 Million Raised To Deploy Reliable LLMs At Scale

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 31, 2024

Patronus AI recently announced it raised $17 million in Series A funding, bringing the total amount raised to $20 million.

Suno: AI-Based Music Creation Company Secures $125 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 30, 2024

Suno, an AI-based music company, announced it has raised $125 million in funding. The funding was provided by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, Matrix and Founder Collective.

H: France-Based AI Company Raises $220 Million In Seed Funding

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 30, 2024

H, a Paris, France-based company has raised $220 million in seed funding. This funding round comes just a few months after the company was founded.

SOCRadar: End-To-End Threat Intelligence And Brand Protection Company Raises $25.2 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 30, 2024

SOCRadar, a provider of enterprise-grade and end-to-end threat intelligence and brand protection, announced the successful completion of its Series B funding round at $25.2 million. This funding round was led by PeakSpan Capital, with participation from Oxx.

Zendata: AI-Based Data Governance And Privacy Solutions Company Raises $2 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 29, 2024

Zendata, a leading provider of AI-based governance and data privacy solutions, emerged from stealth with $2 million in funding to redefine how security teams manage data and security. The seed funding round was led by PayPal Ventures, First-hand Alliance (operated by Salesforce Alumni), Geek Ventures, and Altari Ventures.

Harness: Modern Software Delivery Company Buying Split

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 29, 2024

Harness, a Modern Software Delivery Platform company, today announced it entered into an agreement to buy Split Software, a leading Feature Management and Experimentation provider. This strategic deal will define a new standard in software delivery, empowering companies to innovate faster and more efficiently than ever before.

DeepMotion AI: A Rapidly Growing Company That Is Building The Largest AI-Generated 3D Animation Platform

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 28, 2024

DeepMotion aims to build the largest AI-generated 3D animation platform, democratizing the creation and use of digital human motion by making our technology accessible and user-friendly for diverse groups of creators, innovators, and industries. Pulse 2.0 interviewed DeepMotion AI founder and CEO Kevin He to learn more about the company.

Betterworks: How This Company Drives Higher Employee Engagement And Greater Manager Effectiveness

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 28, 2024

Betterworks is an intelligent performance management solution that empowers your people to reach their highest potential. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Betterworks CEO Doug Dennerline to learn more about the company.

Kudos: AI-Powered Smart Wallet Company Raises $10.2 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 28, 2024

Kudos, an AI-powered smart wallet that automatically maximizes consumer rewards and benefits on every purchase, announced it has completed a $10.2 million Series A fundraising round. This oversubscribed round was led by QED Investors. Additional participants included returning investor Patron, and The Points Guy founder Brian Kelly, Samsung Next, SV Angel, Precursor Ventures, The Mini Fund, Newtype Ventures, and the Four Cities Fund. Kudos plans to use some of the funding to roll out various new services that will augment its quickly evolving smart wallet product.

Rain AI: $8.1 Million Raised To Build Cost-Efficient Computing Hardware

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 28, 2024

Epic Venture Partners announced it has invested $8.1 million into Rain AI (a Sam Altman-backed startup). This was part of Rain AI's $25 million Series A extension round. Rain AI is an AI chip startup headed by CEO William Passo, with a goal of building cost- and energy-efficient AI hardware.

SugarCRM Buys Sales Automation Platform Company sales-i

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 27, 2024

SugarCRM, a provider of the intelligence-driven sales automation platform, announced it has acquired sales-i, a leading provider of a revenue intelligence solution that helps businesses maximize their revenue and profitability. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.

xAI Raises $6 Billion At $24 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 27, 2024

xAI, a company founded by Elon Musk that builds artificial intelligence to accelerate human scientific discovery, announced it has raised $6 billion at a valuation of $24 billion. The Series B funding included participation from Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and, Kingdom Holding, and others.

Steno: $46 Million Raised And ‘Transcript Genius’ Launched

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 27, 2024

Steno, a tech-enabled provider of legal support and court reporting services, announced that it launched a first-of-its-kind generative AI tool for transcript analysis called Transcript Genius. This tool transforms how attorneys interact with transcripts. Along with the unveiling of Transcript Genius, Steno also announced the completion of $46 million in additional capital.

Vercel: AI-Based Frontend Cloud Platform Company Raises $250 Million At $3.25 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Vercel, a leading Frontend Cloud platform, announced that it has secured $250 million in Series E funding at a valuation of $3.25 billion. This funding round was spearheaded by existing investor Accel, with participation from other existing investors including CRV, GV, Notable Capital (previously GGV Capital), Bedrock, Geodesic Capital, Tiger Global, 8VC, and SV Angel.

Malted AI: Scotland-Based Company Secures £6 Million To Simplify Output Of Large Models

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Malted AI, a Scotland-based AI firm helping enterprises to build smaller, more focused AI models with greater performance at a fraction of the cost, announced that it has secured £6 million in seed investment, led by Hoxton Ventures and joined by Creator Fund and angel investors.

Leya: $10.5 Million Raised To Transform Legal Work

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

Stockholm-based Leya has announced the successful closing of its $10.5 million seed funding round, which was led by Benchmark and participated in by Hummingbird, SV Angel, and Y Combinator.

c/side: $1.7 Million Raised To Secure Browsers Against Zero-Day Attacks

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 26, 2024

c/side, a cybersecurity company with tools for monitoring, optimizing, and securing vulnerable browser-side third-party scripts, has emerged from stealth with $1.7 million in funding. This pre-seed funding round was led by Scribble Ventures, with strategic individual investors including Roar Ventures, Kathy Korevec, Dan Scheinman, Jason Warner, Mike Taylor, Kevin Van Gundy, Zain Rizavi, Daniel Lopez, Dan Smith, and Nick Gianos.

Angel AI: $4.5 Million Secured To Provide Age-Appropriate Internet Experiences For Children

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

Angel AI, a parent-designed AI platform offering an age-appropriate internet experience for children aged 5 to 12 years old, announced it has raised a $4.75 million seed funding round led by Cortical Ventures with significant participation from Village Global and several other renowned angel investors.

Metropolis Technologies: AI-Based Checkout-Free Payment Company Raises $1.8 Billion

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

Metropolis Technologies, an AI-based company whose platform enables checkout-free payment experiences, announced that it has closed its acquisition of SP Plus Corporation (SP+). SP+ is the largest parking network and provider of mobility services for aviation, commercial, hospitality, and institutional clients in North America.

HydroX AI: Providing Comprehensive Security Measures In A $200+ Billion Market

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 24, 2024

HydroX AI is a company that is focused on providing comprehensive security measures, ensuring that your AI projects thrive in a secure and dynamic environment. Pulse 2.0 interviewed HydroX AI founder and CEO Zhuo Li to learn more about the company.

XConn: Accelerating Next-Gen Interconnect Technology For Lowering Energy Consumption

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 23, 2024

XConn Technologies is on a mission to accelerate composable memory innovation to lower the energy consumption and cost of next-generation AI processing. This will mean that data centers around the world can facilitate new AI workloads without draining our fragile global environment. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Krishna Mallampati, XConn’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Expedera: Edge Inference AI Licensor Company Raises $20 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 22, 2024

Expedera, a leading licensor of edge inference artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor intellectual property (IP), announced it raised $20 million in Series B funding led by indie Semiconductor, with participation from prominent repeat and new industry investors. This funding, which includes converting a previous SAFE note, brought the company's total funding to more than $47 million.

WitnessAI: $27.5 Million Raised To Develop Safe Adoption Of Enterprise AI

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 22, 2024

WitnessAI, the creator of the first enablement platform for safe AI use, announced a $27.5 million Series A round, co-led by GV and Ballistic Ventures. The company had previously been incubated by Ballistic Ventures, beginning in 2023.

Highperformr: Social Media Platform Company Raises $3.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

GenAI company Highperformr announced that it has secured $3.5 million in seed funding and launched its product Highperformr for Teams, which is a modern social media management platform designed to help B2B businesses maximize their return on investment (ROI) from social media efforts by amplifying their social presence and driving meaningful engagement.

Scale AI: Data Engine Company Raises $1 Billion At $13.8 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

AI data foundry company Scale AI announced it had closed a $1 billion financing transaction, bringing the company to a valuation of $13.8 billion. Existing investor Accel led the funding round with participation from returning investors, including Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive Capital, Spark Capital, NVIDIA, Tiger Global Management, Greenoaks, and Wellington Management. The new investors include Cisco Investments, DFJ Growth, Intel Capital, ServiceNow Ventures, AMD Ventures, WCM, Amazon, Elad Gil, and Meta.

RestorePoint.ai: Enabling Customers To Extra Business Intelligence

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

RestorePoint.ai is a Secure Managed Data as a Service company with a goal of enabling midsize enterprises to punch above their weight by unlocking the full potential of their data with simplicity and security, and within budget. The RestorePoint.AI platform and Secure Managed Data Service enables customers to take advantage of new analytics and AI driven technologies and extract business intelligence from their data regardless of where it resides, while meeting security and governance requirements. Pulse 2.0 interviewed RestorePoint.AI founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Abdul Altamimi to learn more about the company.

Sona: Frontline Workforce Management Company Raises $27.5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● May 21, 2024

Sona, a next-generation and intelligent workforce management platform for frontline enterprises founded by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson, and Ben Dixon, announced a $27.5 million Series A funding round. Felicis led the funding round with participation from Northzone, Gradient (Google's AI fund), SpeedInvest, Antler, BAG Ventures, and several notable angels participated in the round.