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NeuReality, an Israeli AI hardware startup that is working on a novel approach to improving AI inferencing platforms by doing away with the current CPU-centric model, is coming out of stealth today and announcing an $8 million seed round. The group of investors includes Cardumen Capital, crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and Varana Capital. The company also today announced that Naveen Rao, the GM of Intel’s AI Products Group and former CEO of Nervana System (which Intel acquired), is joining the company’s board of directors.
The founding team, CEO Moshe Tanach, VP of operations Tzvika Shmueli and VP for very large-scale integration Yossi Kasus, has a background in AI but also networking, with Tanach spending time at Marvell and Intel, for example, Shmueli at Mellanox and Habana Labs and Kasus at Mellanox, too.
It’s the team’s networking and storage knowledge and seeing how that industry built its hardware that now informs how NeuReality is thinking about building its own AI platform. In an interview ahead of today’s announcement, Tanach wasn’t quite ready to delve into the details of NeuReality’s architecture, but the general idea here is to build a platform that will allow hyperscale clouds and other data center owners to offload their ML models to a far more performant architecture where the CPU doesn’t become a bottleneck.
“We kind of combined a lot of techniques that we brought from the storage and networking world,” Tanach explained. Think about traffic manager and what it does for Ethernet packets. And we applied it to AI. So we created a bottom-up approach that is built around the engine that you need. Where today, they’re using neural net processors — we have the next evolution of AI computer engines.”
As Tanach noted, the result of this should be a system that — in real-world use cases that include not just synthetic benchmarks of the accelerator but also the rest of the overall architecture — offer 15 times the performance per dollar for basic deep learning offloading and far more once you offload the entire pipeline to its platform.
NeuReality is still in its early days, and while the team has working prototypes now, based on a Xilinx FPGA, it expects to be able to offer its fully custom hardware solution early next year. As its customers, NeuReality is targeting the large cloud providers, but also data center and software solutions providers like WWT to help them provide specific vertical solutions for problems like fraud detection, as well as OEMs and ODMs.
Tanach tells me that the team’s work with Xilinx created the groundwork for its custom chip — though building that (and likely on an advanced node), will cost money, so he’s already thinking about raising the next round of funding for that.
“We are already consuming huge amounts of AI in our day-to-day life and it will continue to grow exponentially over the next five years,” said Tanach. “In order to make AI accessible to every organization, we must build affordable infrastructure that will allow innovators to deploy AI-based applications that cure diseases, improve public safety and enhance education. NeuReality’s technology will support that growth while making the world smarter, cleaner and safer for everyone. The cost of the AI infrastructure and AIaaS will no longer be limiting factors.”
Image Credits: NeuReality
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/10/neureality-raises-8m-for-its-novel-ai-inferencing-platform/
The Amazon Marketplace roll-up play is well and truly underway. In the latest development, Thrasio — one of the biggest and earliest movers in the market to consolidate third-party sellers on the platform, with the promise to provide better economies of scale to manage and grow those businesses — announced that it has raised another $750 million at a valuation that is likely to be over $3.75 billion.
The funding is being led by existing backers Oaktree and Advent, and it includes participation from previous unnamed investors. (That list of equity backers has included Peak6, Western Technology Investment, and Jason Finger, the co-founder of one of the early players in food delivery startups, Seamless.)
Thrasio said it will be using the money to continue its rapid pace of buying up more third-party sellers in the “Amazon FBA ecosystem”, a reference to smaller merchants that sell and distribute their products using the “Fulfilment By Amazon” service from the e-commerce giant.
“Thrasio continues its exceptional growth,” said Joshua Silberstein, who co-founded and co-leads the company with Carlos Cashman. “Over the past two months, we’ve been acquiring $1.5 million in revenue per day.” Those are his italics. “Thrasio is now closing two or three deals every week.”
Thrasio to date has acquired nearly 100 FBA businesses says that it reached that number by way of evaluating 6,000 possible companies and 14,000 “category-leading products.”
Six thousand may sound like a big number, but one estimate puts the number of third-party sellers on Amazon at around 5 million, a number that appears to be growing exponentially at the moment, with more than 1 million sellers joining the platform last year.
The size of the opportunity, plus the Amazon-proven promise of economy of scale in the world of e-commerce, are likely two reasons why we have seen so many startups emerging looking to roll them up.
Thrasio’s $750 million fundraise is an all-equity venture round. Based on its $3 billion valuation in January (when it closed a debt round of $500 million), this latest cash injection appears to be coming in at a $3.75 billion valuation, but quite possibly more.
“Quite possibly more” because the news comes at a particularly overheated time in this specific area of e-commerce.
Thrasio’s news came out yesterday afternoon, only hours after we reported on a new rival called Branded, which launched its own roll-up business on $150 million in funding and with a critical detail: one of the “co-founders” is the deep-pocketed European VC firm Target Global.
And that comes on the heels of others in this space — they include, in addition to Thrasio and Branded, Berlin Brands Group, SellerX, Heyday, Heroes, Perch and more — collectively raising or committing from their own balance sheets well over $1 billion in aid of their own efforts to buy up small but promising third-party merchants.
For its part, Thrasio notes that the funding was raised quickly and diluted existing shareholders by 11.1%, and that it has now raised $1.75 in equity and debt.
We have asked Thrasio to confirm its valuation and will update as we learn more.
Thrasio products do not carry any kind of Thrasio branding. But I’m guessing that as Thrasio and its rivals look for a better edge and aim to give the impression of more quality (rather than the fly-by-night feeling that some of these sellers have today), we may see more of that coming out.
Brands that it owns include Vybe Percussion deep tissue massage gun, Circadian Optics bright light therapy lamps, and skincare products from Sdara Skincare, Thrasio said.
In the competition for the best of these, Thrasio claims its marketing and analytics can help these newcomers “compete with top household name labels, quickly becoming the trusted items that consumers turn to for their everyday needs.”
The feverish pace of fundraising in the area of FBA roll-ups feels very much like a bubble in the market — not least because none of these still-young companies have yet to prove that the strategy to buy up and consolidate these sellers is a useful and profitable one.
(The only one that has stated that it is profitable, Berlin Brands Group, has done so on its existing business model, which has involved building a variety of third-party sellers from the ground up itself, not buying up others, with whatever legacy baggage they may carry, good or bad.)
Thrasio is very much in the go-big-or-go-home stage of scaling with funding, and in its favor, although it’s only three years old (founded in 2018), that age has made it one of the oldest and more proven in this current wave.
“In ten years, omnichannel retail will be the backbone of the entire consumer products ecosystem – but today, it’s still in its genesis. Every day, the very fabric of this market is twisting as it continues to evolve,” said Cashman in a statement. “Our balance sheet isn’t built to win yesterday’s battles – it is designed to pursue the accelerating opportunities that accompany these kinds of seismic changes in an industry.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/10/thrasio-raises-750m-more-in-equity-for-its-amazon-roll-up-play/
Freelancers who work well together in teams are the target for Collective, a French startup that’s launching a software-as-a-service marketplace today. (Not to be confused with Collective, a US-based startup that offers back-office tools for the self employed running a business-of-one.)
Collective (the French ‘teams’ edition) is co-founded by Jean de Rauglaudre and Vianney de Drouas, and is backed by the SaaS-focused startup studio/venture builder, eFounders, which covers expenses during the first 18 months (so how much it ends up investing depends but typically runs to at least a few thousand euros.)
“As a former freelancer, I was really attracted by this new way of working,” says de Rauglaudre, discussing why Collective is focusing on “independents teaming up by mutualizing skills, networks and work methodology in a quest to go faster, think bigger, and find more meaning”, as he puts it.
The startup points to notable Collectives that have emerged in recent years — such as ProductLed.Org and Knackcollective.com in the US, and Mozza.io, Alasta.io and Lookoom.co in France, as feeding the idea.
It argues that the indie ‘collectives’ phenomenon has only been accelerated as a result of the coronavirus pandemic — with companies faced with more uncertainty looking for more resilient and flexible options.
The pair of founders worked with eFounders to hone their fledgling idea. “We understood that collective was the ultimate next step on this market. Though, we noticed that those forms today do not scale (because of so many admin issues), do not shine (because they do not thrive under a standardized reality), and work alone (while solo freelancers have a lot of tools and benefit from a legal existence, collectives are still undeserved). Therefore, we ‘imaginated’ Collective!” de Rauglaudre tells TechCrunch.
For teams of skilled indie workers the lure of Collective is a promise that it combines the benefits of working in an agency — because its SaaS platform automates a bunch of back-office functions like proposals, invoices, contracts and payments — with the flexibility of still being freelance and thus able to pick and choose projects and clients.
“Exhaustive” back-office is the promise from de Rauglaudre. (Which — yes — does include chasing clients for late/non payment of invoices. When we checked that detail he dubbed the service “a perfect combination of flexibility (inherent to collective models) and security (related to our back-office)”. Late freelancer payments are of course an infamous pain-point that’s been targeted by other startups over the years; but Collective is coming with the full back-office package.)
Additionally, Collective offers freelancer teams marketplace visibility — and thus help with their client pipeline.
It’s been soft launched for one month at this point and in that time says 18 collectives have been formed on its marketplace, comprising more than 150 freelancers in total.
Early collectives operating on its marketplace are offering “varied” expertise — from software development, design, product management, and growth — and are already working with five companies. Collective also says it’s speaking with more than 80 companies as it starts its push for scale.
“We did not expect such huge interest in so little time, coming both from independents and companies,” adds de Rauglaudre in a statement. “This confirms our initial realization: That people and companies are looking for more flexible ways of working and that it is by joining forces that we can reach higher. What we’re seeing is the very beginning of the teamwork revolution.”
“While solo freelancers benefit from a legal existence and have dedicated platforms, collectives are still under-served,” says eFounders co-founder Thibaud Elziere in another supporting statement. “They all operate under different legal structures and struggle to find work because they don’t have the right tools. Collective aims to become the go-to solution to help collectives exist, find work and scale.”
In terms of the underlying trends Collective is aiming to tap into, de Rauglaudre points to “skyrocketing” rates of independent work over the past decade (150%+).
As they investigated further, he says they noticed that more and more freelancers are working together in various forms — suggesting that around a fifth of independents “work as a collective consciously or not”.
“We estimate that +10M freelancers are merging in collectives worldwide but with very various forms (structured or not). They want to team up to increase their revenues (competing against agencies and not solo freelancers) while improving their working mode (not alone any more),” he suggests.
In terms of target sectors/skills for the marketplace to serve (and serve up), he doesn’t think there’s a single template — but Collective is starting by focusing development (on the ‘collectives’ supply side) on design, product, tech, data and growth marketing; and (on the client demand side) on large scale-ups and tech companies.
The business model at this stage is for it to a charge markup (5%-15%) on the client side. The lower fee is charged is the platform isn’t providing the client; while the higher figure is if it is, per de Rauglaudre.
Once all the bells and whistles are ready with the SaaS — in about another month — he says it will also charge a monthly fee on the collective side.
Given the branding clash with the SF-based back-office startup Collective, the French team may want to take that time to consider a name change — maybe ‘Collectif’ could work? 
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/10/collective-launches-a-saas-marketplace-for-freelancer-teams/
Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm with $16.5 billion in assets under management, has poured millions into an edtech startup that sells virtual STEM lab simulations to institutions.
Copenhagen-based Labster, which sells virtual science laboratory simulations to schools, announced today that it has raised $60 million in a Series C round led by the prominent Silicon Valley firm, including participation from existing investors GGV Capital, Owl Ventures and Balderton Capital. Labster has now raised $100 million in total known venture capital to date.
Like many edtech companies, Labster has found itself centered and validated as the pandemic underscores the need for remote work. In April, Labster signed a contract to bring its services to the entire California Community College network, which includes more than 2.1 million students. Months later, the startup brought on $9 million in equity funding to bring GGV’s Jenny Lee onto the board and expand its Asia operations.
“A16z is very excited about investing in technology companies that have a big impact and potential to become massive global successes’,” CEO and co-founder Michael Bodekaer Jensen said. “The fact that Labster is a platform innovating learning at scale is really what attracted them.”
The new capital will help Labster increase its staff, grow into new regions that include Latin America and Africa, as well as invest in new product development to better support teachers.
Jensen says that today’s raise, which is singularly larger than any capital Labster has raised prior, “dramatically increased” the valuation of the company. Jensen did confirm that Labster has not yet hit the $1 billion mark in terms of valuation, nor did he comment on whether the startup had hit profitability or not.
What Jensen did share, though, is that he thinks Labster’s new capital brings the startup one step closer to two big goals: serve 100 million students in the next few years, and become a platform to “enable anyone in the world to customize and build their own simulations on their platform.”
“We’re not a content company,” the co-founder said. “We’re a platform for immersive learning.”
Currently, Labster sells its e-learning solution to support and enhance in-person courses. Based on the subscription an institution chooses, participants can get differing degrees of access to a virtual laboratory. Imagine a range of experiments, from understanding bacterial growth and isolation to exploring the biodiversity of an exoplanet. Along with each simulation, Labster offers 3D animations for certain concepts, re-plays of simulations, quiz questions and a virtual learning assistant.
Image Credits: Labster
Jensen is hinting that the startup might finally be able to move past pre-determined learning tracks and into the world of customizable immersive learning. Other startups, including Inspirit, are also aiming to bring the creativity associated with games such as Minecraft or Roblox to the day-to-day schoolwork of students around the world.
With platform ambition, Labster is pausing its virtual reality efforts, which requires acquiring headsets at scale.
“VR is good for learning, but we need to make sure that we understand and provide services and solutions that work with the hardware that institutions already have and are available,” he said, adding that many institutions have been unable to afford headsets for all students. The fact that Labster is stepping away from virtual reality and framing itself as an immersive learning environment is more than a branding decision, but suggests that the future of scalable edtech might look less like goggles and more like a customizable web page.
“In the early days there was definitely a little naïve entrepreneurial mindset to build it and suddenly all teachers will come,” Jensen said. “[VR] was in no way as revolutionary as we hopped and thought of.”
New investments for the startup include Labster Portal, which is a dashboard for teachers to understand how individual students are using the immersive simulations and what lessons make sense to embed together. The company is also focused on landing partnerships with institutions, on either a country or state-wide level or district-level. Jensen says that the bigger the contract, the bigger the discount because it saves them money on onboarding costs. Labster recently signed a deal to bring its technology to the entire country of Denmark.
Labster currently has more than 2,000 colleges, universities and high schools on its platform.
“Post-COVID, the growth will slow,” Jensen said. “When we have conversations with institutions we are increasingly talking about post-COVID and continuing how we can further use Labster in new and innovative ways.”
Uptime, the self-described “knowledge hacking” app, has raised $16 million in seed funding, after officially launching on iOS in January.
Positioned as a “micro-learning” platform,” Uptime presents five-minute “knowledge hacks” from books, courses and documentaries. The idea is to let you quickly “grasp ideas and insights from trusted authors, instructors, and creative minds,” without spending too much of your precious time. In return, content creators — from those on The New York Times bestseller list to the most relevant courses and Academy Award-winning documentaries — get a new way to reach audiences who may go on to purchase the full works.
In other words, chalk this up as part content aggregator and discovery, and part lead generation for the actual content creators. Built, of course, for the short attention spans of millennials and Gen Z. Or so the pitch goes.
“Hacks are presented in a unique visual story format, designed to be inspirational and make learning effective, fun, engaging, and shareable – all verified by a team of experts,” explains the company. “At the end of each Hack, the user is presented with the option to buy the book, watch the full documentary or sign up for the course from the original source”.
Image Credits: Uptime
The seed funding comes from Uptime’s founders — serial entrepreneurs Jamie True and Jack Bekhor, who previously founded LifeWorks (acquired in 2018 for $325 million), and former YouTube and Facebook executive Patrick Walker — alongside other private investors. They include Lord David Alliance, ex-CEO of Tesco Sir Terry Leahy and unnamed members of private equity firm Thomas H Lee (THL).
“The global edtech market was valued at around [over] $89 billion last year, with people spending hundreds of dollars on online courses, building up their soft skills and watching documentaries,” says Uptime’s Patrick Walker. “It’s a huge opportunity for educational content creators but for customers, it leads to information overload and it can be hard to cut through and find the quality in what feels like an oversaturated market.
“With Uptime, we wanted to create something that could be a one-stop shop for knowledge. Instead of sifting through bestseller lists, endless sites of digital courses, and video platforms for documentaries, Uptime presents the best content from only the most trusted experts, organisations and sources. People can select the topics they’re interested in and gain access to the key elements of the content in snackable, easy-to-watch visual stories, audio and text”.
Uptime’s founders say the platform is aimed at anyone who wants to learn but only has a short amount of time, energy and/or limited resources to do so. “It’s perfect for Gen Z, millennials, parents, anyone with an interest in enhancing their personal or career prospects, and a desire to fill their time with constructive and uplifting content,” says Walker.
One criticism that could be levied at an app like Uptime is that it is another example of a parasitic aggregator, essentially monetising other people’s work. Its makers argue the opposite, and say that the app is actually helping to deliver a new audience to a creator’s work by providing a taster.
“At the end of each Hack, there is a link for people to go on and purchase the book, course or documentary, thereby delivering new audiences to creators,” adds Walker. “The authors and creators we’ve reached out to are extremely enthusiastic about their work being on Uptime. We’ve had support from the likes of Lily Cole, Oobah Butler and Dr Tara Swart… The idea is that everyone can benefit from Uptime; the users and the content creators”.
