Participated · Series A · Oct 2021

Countable provides an enterprise platform that helps brands design, launch and manage branded community sites that promote actions beyond likes and surface analytics tied to revenue, retention and innovation. The company leverages its "Causes" network of more than 190 million people and supports community features such as video testimonials, events and incentive-linked sharing. Countable began as a solutions-based journalism outfit and pivoted to enterprise SaaS in 2017, with Canaan Partners assisting in that transition. It has completed more than 120 implementations for customers including Starbucks, Uber, Patagonia, Levi’s and PG&E. Over the past year the company grew revenue nearly 300%, increased annual recurring revenue 277%, and has more than doubled customer acquisition and site usage. Countable plans to deploy the new funding into product development, go-to-market efforts, international expansion, third-party integrations and to serve as a launchpad for a social token community exchange.

Participated · Series D · Jan 2017

SoundHound AI develops conversational voice-AI products and platforms, including recent launches Dynamic Interaction and SoundHound Chat AI. The company is focused on growing its subscription business with AI-based customer service offerings for call answering and restaurant food ordering while expanding its licensing business across smart devices, TV, and automotive verticals. It reported a $332 million bookings backlog as of December 31, 2022. To strengthen its balance sheet and fund growth, SoundHound closed a $125 million, four-year loan facility with $100 million funded at closing. The financing replaces roughly $30 million of existing debt, extends the maturity to 2027, and is described as minimally dilutive. The credit agreement also enables access to up to an additional $25 million and is expected to leave the company with more than $100 million in cash after closing costs and repayment of existing debt. SoundHound is a voice AI company that provides conversational AI services for automotive, connected home and hospitality applications. Its core product is conversational voice AI integrated via partnerships with Mercedes‑Benz, Kia, Hyundai, Toast, Qualcomm and Snap, and the company previously built music‑identification AI. The company went public in November 2021 via a SPAC at a $2.1 billion valuation and was once valued above $1 billion as a private company; that valuation has since fallen. SoundHound reported preliminary full‑year 2022 revenues of $31 million with gross margins over 70% and says it has a bookings foundation of well over $300 million. The company expects approximately 50% year‑over‑year revenue growth in 2023 and is positioning its voice AI products toward customer‑service demand. Earlier this month it laid off 40% of staff; part of the newly raised proceeds will cover severance and help shore up its market position. SoundHound develops Houndify, a voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence platform built on its patented Speech-to-Meaning™ and Deep Meaning Understanding™ technologies and a Collective AI architecture. The platform provides fast speech recognition, sophisticated natural language understanding, knowledge graphs and developer tools, and exposes over 100 domains (weather, sports, flights, restaurants, etc.). Houndify powers more than 1,000 distinct products and has over 60,000 registered partners since its December 2015 launch. SoundHound also operates consumer apps—Hound (voice search & assistant) and SoundHound (music search and discovery)—that showcase the platform. The company plans to use new funding to drive adoption across automotive, IoT, consumer products and enterprise apps, and to expand globally with new offices in China, France and Germany while continuing momentum in the U.S., Japan and South Korea. The platform already integrates data and services from partners such as Yelp, Uber and Expedia and supports numerous automotive-specific domains. SoundHound began as a music-recognition app and has evolved under CEO Keyvan Mohajer into a company focused on conversational AI. It launched the Hound voice-powered assistant for iPhone and Android in March after around ten years of R&D. The company says Houndify has been embedded into more than 500 distinct products with over 20,000 partners, and its app has been downloaded more than 300 million times. SoundHound aims to build a voice-based AI that can understand increasingly complex, multi-part queries and plans to expand its AI patterns into other media such as text and images. With the new financing the company intends to invest heavily in what it calls “collective AI,” enabling developers to tap into shared domains and tools. Before this round SoundHound had raised around $40 million in financing.

Participated · Series D · Mar 2010

Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) develops and manufactures wafer fabrication solutions designed to advance technology, increase productivity and reduce manufacturing costs for global semiconductor manufacturers. Its core product highlighted in the articles is the Primo D-RIE(TM), a plasma etch tool targeted at customers working on very advanced devices. The company said the financing will provide extra bandwidth to further position the Primo D-RIE and accelerate volume production. AMEC maintains R&D, manufacturing, business and support operations in China and has sales and support organizations in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. Founded in 2004, the company has raised more than $150M from venture capital sources to date. The CEO and Chairman is Dr. Gerald Z. Yin. Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment is a Shanghai-based maker of semiconductor manufacturing tools. Its core products are the Primo D-RIE and Primo HPCVD tools, which perform etching processes in chip fabrication. Over the past year the company has shipped these tools to chip factories in three Asian countries and reports a positive market reaction. The company raised $58 million in a third round of funding to support its semiconductor manufacturing equipment business. New investors include Shanghai Venture Capital Co. Ltd. and Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co. Ltd., and existing investors also participated. Advanced Micro-Fabrication says it will focus future research and development on the Primo D-RIE/HPCVD category.

Participated · Series D · Feb 2010

Newport Media is a Lake Forest, CA-based fabless semiconductor company supplying products to the mobile broadcast media industry. Founded in 2005, it specializes in developing and selling system semiconductor solutions for all major mobile TV standards, including DVB-T/H, ISDB-T, FLO and CMMB. Its core products are system integrated circuits that implement those mobile-TV standards. The company is ramping 65 nanometer integrated circuits into mass production. It completed a $15M Series D financing to support operations. The new capital will be used to finance working capital during the production ramp.