The Venture Codex

Participated · Series B · Sep 2021

GigaIO is a Carlsbad, Calif.–based provider of scalable infrastructure designed for AI inferencing, with flagship products SuperNODE and Gryf. Its platform is built on the company's patented FabreX AI memory fabric, which enables scale-up and dynamic composition of compute, GPU, storage, and networking resources for ultra-low latency, memory-to-memory communication between GPUs. SuperNODE is positioned as a cost-effective, energy-efficient scale-up AI computing platform, while Gryf is described as a suitcase-sized AI inferencing supercomputer for edge deployment. GigaIO plans to ramp production of SuperNODE, accelerate deployment of Gryf, invest in new product development, and expand sales and marketing to meet surging demand. The company emphasizes a vendor-agnostic architecture that supports GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD as well as emerging AI chips, aiming to free customers from single-source vendor lock-in. Management says these capabilities unlock performance and cost efficiencies as AI models grow larger and more complex and enable scaling at the rack level and beyond. GigaIO develops an enterprise-class universal composable fabric, FabreX, that configures and orchestrates networking, storage, memory, and specialized accelerators into a single-system cluster fabric for AI and HPC workloads. Its rack-scale architecture lets workloads run as if using components inside one server while harnessing many nodes, improving utilization and reducing server, cooling, power, and footprint costs. The company positions FabreX as an open-standards PCIe-based solution and plans to extend to PCIe Gen5 and CXL to enable pooled memory and shared accelerators. GigaIO intends to use the new funding to aggressively expand market and channel development, recruit more partners, and devote resources to customer and partner development programs to accelerate sales and marketing. Financially, GigaIO completed an oversubscribed Series B raising $14.7 million led by Impact Venture Capital, with participation from Mark IV Capital, Lagomaj Capital, SK Hynix, and Four Palms Ventures. Founded in 2012, the company launched its first product line in 2019 and has been commercializing its fabric under CEO Alan Benjamin, who joined in 2017. GigaIO offers the GigaIO Fabrex™ platform, a patented interconnect network that delivers low latency and high bandwidth for data center connectivity. Its technology enables bare-metal disaggregation of hardware into dynamically reconfigurable resource pools, improving flexibility, utilization and cost reduction. That architecture allows data centers to scale up or out performance while preserving existing investments and adding new capabilities. The company is led by CEO and president Alan Benjamin and is based in Carlsbad, CA. GigaIO closed a $4.5M Series A to accelerate product development and expand sales and marketing. Management planned availability of the platform in Q4 2018.

Participated · Series A · Oct 2020

Brandzooka is a self-service programmatic platform that enables companies and agencies to place targeted ads on primetime TV and premium digital properties worldwide. The company is based in Boulder, Colorado and was founded in 2015 by a group including Alex Bogusky and Kelly Dotseth. Dotseth has stepped into the CEO role. Brandzooka closed a $5.6M Series A, bringing total funding to date to $10.1M. Backers in the round included Mark IV Capital, Lagomaj Capital, Sweet Moose Enterprises, Rockies Venture Fund and Batshit Crazy Ventures. The company said it will use the proceeds to accelerate platform development and expand its marketing, media and sales teams for growth in 2021. Brandzooka (formerly Visibl) is a self-service programmatic video marketing SaaS platform that helps small and medium-sized businesses and agencies execute targeted online video ad campaigns across major sites and ad networks. The company rebranded from Visibl to Brandzooka to reflect its focus on making powerful video advertising easy and accessible. Launched as Visibl in October 2015, the platform emphasizes affordability and ease of use, allowing campaigns to start for as little as $50. Brandzooka automates programmatic expertise to open real-time engagement opportunities for marketers and agencies. The company announced a $1.5 million initial funding round, signaling investor confidence despite cautious market conditions in AdTech. Founder and Director Alex Bogusky is positioned as the public face of the business.