Investors and entrepreneurs alike know that they need to "hear the sound of fire" in order to accurately capture market dynamics and investment opportunities. In the context of pluralism and globalization, these "gunfire" voices are no longer limited to Silicon Valley or any specific region, but are spread across the world's major innovation hubs.
As an early-stage venture capital firm active on a global scale, Antler has a strong global perspective. We recognize that from Asia to Europe, from North America to South America, each region has its own unique venture capital value and business model. This not only provides investors with diversified investment options, but also opens up a broader market for entrepreneurs. That's why Antler curates the most noteworthy venture capital and fundraising news from around the world every week, with the aim of providing our investors and founders with comprehensive, diverse, and in-depth market analysis and insights.
In the first week of December,Our selection of global corporate finance updates is as follows:
Respell, an AI digital work automation platform provider, has raised $4.75 million in seed funding
On December 5, Respell, a San Francisco, California-based provider of AI digital work automation platforms, closed a $4.75 million seed round of funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Abstract Ventures, Zapier, Oliver Cameron, Scott Belsky, Arash Ferdowsi, Matthilde Collin, Amjad Masad, Nick Candito, Roger Jie Luo, and others.
Respell allows users to automate digital work by leveraging OpenAI, Anthropic, Stability AI, and custom-built or LLM models, while the solution effectively combines an AI-first workflow builder with a Respell-based chatbot. The chatbot can autonomously learn Xi organizational processes over time and suggest optimizations or create new automated processes. Just like ChatGPT, users can give prompts in plain English.
But the difference is that Elle, a workflow automation platform powered by Respell, also adds the ability to "create reusable workflows" that allow these workflows to perform more complex tasks. In addition, Respell's versatility includes helping sales teams automate lead management and scaling, helping data teams quickly analyze large data sets, or enabling operations teams to centralize data from across the organization into a single intelligence hub.
Since the platform's launch, Respell has attracted nearly 10,000 users, including several enterprise customers, and driven more than 250,000 automated processes.
Enterprise-grade Copilot platform Asato.AI raised $7.5 million in seed round
On December 5, Asato, an enterprise-grade generative AI assistant R&D company headquartered in San Francisco, CaliforniaAI closed a $7.5 million seed round of financing. The round was led by Intel Capital and Lip-Bu Tan, with participation from Shah Capital Partners and angel investors including Amarjit Gill, Ash Bhardwaj, Charlie Giancarlo, Sanjay Mehrotra, and others. The company plans to use the funds to expand operations and development to bring its AI-powered, enterprise-grade Copilot platform to market faster.
asato.AI focuses on the research and development of enterprise-level generative AI assistants, which help enterprise CIOs (chief information officers) better coordinate, make decisions, and track their actions and results by analyzing the company's IT-related assets and the real-time usage and efficiency of their users, and at the same time enable enterprise CIOs to have a clearer understanding and control of the company's IT assets and related users, and make more informed decisions on resource allocation.
In addition, the AI assistant platform can also help enterprise CIOs solve the problems encountered by enterprises in the process of digital transformation, such as IT asset management and project resource relationship structure confusion.
R&D of physical computingCompany extropicReceived $14.1 million in seed financing
On November 29, Extropic, an American physical computing research and development company, closed a $14.1 million seed round led by Steve Jang and Kindred Ventures, and Buckley Ventures, Hof Capital, Julian Capital, Marque VC, OSS Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Weekend Fund, as well as many well-known angel investors such as Aitan Gomez (Cohere), Garry Tan (YC), Scott Belsky (Adobe), Tobias Lutke (Shopify) and many other well-known angel investors.
Founded in 2022, Extropic, a startup that is currently in hidden mode, plans to increase the computational scope and computing power of generative AI by borrowing physics principles to build new computational paradigms.
It is reported that Extropic is developing a computer chip designed to run large language models (LLMs), and its CEO Guillaume Verdon revealed that they want to build another physical supercomputer that is different from quantum computing, which will use the power of the laws of thermodynamics to help improve the computational efficiency and scope of generative artificial intelligence while reducing energy consumption.
Extropic's CEO, Guillaume Verdon, and CTO Trevor McCourt, both worked on Google's parent company Alphabet's quantum computing research team and were involved in Google's TensorFlow quantum project.
Software company KetryX addedSeries A financing to $18 million
On December 5, Boston, Massachusetts-based software company KetryX raised a new $14 million Series A funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with existing investors including MIT's E14** and Ubiquity Ventures. This round brings KetryX's Series A funding to $18 million.
Ketryx provides software development lifecycle management software for the healthcare industry, and the company's software platform can help medical companies automate the compliance check process in the software development process, while making the entire software development process real-time and traceable.
Ketryx's products dramatically reduce the time it takes for product quality assurance and compliance checks, which can often take months or even years for traditional medical device or medical device software companies to complete their products, because the process is largely manual, and the average material submitted to the FDA is more than 2,000 pages, which is also prone to errors.
The platform developed by Ketryx fully automates this process, and its platform is also built in accordance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's laws and regulations and quality standards, and is updated in real time according to the corresponding regulations and standard changes, which means that customers using the platform can quickly produce products that meet the latest laws and regulations and quality standards, and greatly reduce the product launch cycle.
Edtech startup Kyron Learning has raised $14.6 million in Series A funding
On December 5, Kyron Learning, an education technology startup headquartered in Los Altos, Calif., closed a $14.6 million Series A funding round led by Global Silicon Valley (GSV) Ventures, Owl Ventures, ECMC Group Education Impact Fund, Common Sense Growth Fund, and Charter School Growth Fund, Cambiar Education, LearnerStudio, Imagine Learning, and Array Education.
It is understood that the funds will be used to build the Kyron Learning platform business, as well as further develop the platform's generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. In addition, the company announced that it has received an $850,000 grant from the Bill &Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop its K-12 math curriculum.
Kyron uses interactivity** in its lessons, powered by AI, to transform traditional one-way teacher instruction into a lively, two-way conversation – just like a live coaching session.
The platform provides Xi tutoring services, which can be provided on demand, students can choose to Xi at any time, and facilitate course dialogue between teachers and students through AI technology to ensure that students can learn effectively and help Xi Xi learners keep up with the course progress.
Artificial intelligence company RohirrimReceived $15 million in Series A financing
On December 4, Reston, Virginia-based artificial intelligence company Rohirrim closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from existing investor General Purpose Venture Capital. Rohirrim plans to use the funding to continue expanding the team and language model research and development.
Rohirrim has developed a generative AI platform, Rohan, which uses domain-aware generative AI to help companies produce business documents or technical documents that meet their own style and requirements, including but not limited to bids, proposals, etc. This technology helps enterprises save a lot of manpower, material resources and time spent on the design of plans and proposals, so that enterprises can focus on more valuable decisions and more important business.
The company's products have won the hearts of many of Fortune magazine's top 100 companies worth more than billions of dollars, including well-known companies such as IBM, who have streamlined the process of producing content for business proposals through Rohirrim's system, greatly improving business efficiency.
Generative AI company Kognitos has raised $20 million in Series A funding
On November 30, San Jose, Calif.-based generative AI company Kognitos, closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Clear Ventures, Engineering Capital and Wipro Ventures. After this round of financing, Kognitos' total funding amount reached $30 million. The company plans to use the funds to expand collaboration and app integration with other business applications to improve the interoperability of the platform.
Kognitos was founded in 2020 with the vision of building a future where all business applications can be written in English, where AI or intelligent machines can understand human language naturally and natively, and where interacting with computers is as simple as communicating with people. The company leverages emerging generative AI technologies to provide business process automation solutions to enterprise users, unique in that the entire automation process can be described in English without the need for programmers to program.
"Every business needs to embrace AI, and we are very supportive of the bold vision of Kognitos' founders to enable 1 billion people to program in natural language and every business application can be written directly in English," said Vinod Khosla Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. ”
Kognitos also announced the Exception Center, a next-generation exception handling interface for business users. The company has also launched automation features in multiple modes such as voice transcription, image comparison, image manipulation, QR code support, data visualization, and PDF form filling.
It is used by many companies in the manufacturing, logistics, and retail industries, including Pepsico, Wipro, Century Supply Chain Solutions, and Norco Industries. By providing AI support to business users in a language they already know, Kognitos reduces the burden on business users and IT departments, significantly reducing their labor and operational costs, and helping enterprise users accelerate their business.
Biotech company Adcentrx Therapeutics raises a new Series A+ funding round to $51 million
On December 6, San Diego, California-based biotechnology company AdcentrX Therapeutics added a new $13 million Series A+ funding round led by Quan Capital and Partners Investment. After this round of financing, the company's total Series A+ financing amount reached $51 million. AdcentrX Therapeutics plans to use the funding to continue advancing the clinical development of its lead program, ADRX-0706.
Adcentrx Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the development of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs)** for cancer and life-threatening diseases, and is currently working on the development of next-generation targeting** options that improve the outcomes of cancer patients by combining the targeting precision of biologics with the disease-fighting capabilities of small molecule payloads.
ADRX-0706 is an ADC product candidate discovered by Adcentrx that targets NECTIN-4, a cell surface adhesion protein produced in a variety of human cancers. The ADC is produced using Adcentrx's proprietary I-Conjugation technology and a novel microtubule inhibitor payload AP052 to generate an ADC with a drug-to-antibody ratio of 8 (DAR 8). ADRX-0706 has good pharmacokinetic and safety performance in preclinical models, and has demonstrated significant efficacy in multiple tumor indicators.