Participated · Series C · Jul 2022

Arable builds an integrated solution combining connected sensors, agronomic models, and a software suite to provide weather, soil, plant-health and irrigation insights for farmers, agronomists and food companies. Its platform combines sensor data and machine learning to support on‑farm decisions, optimize water use, and benchmark sustainability and carbon outcomes. Customers have used Arable to reduce irrigation by up to 50% and pesticide use by about 15% in deployed cases cited by the company. Arable serves customers in over 40 countries and works with partners including Bayer, Netafim, The Nature Conservancy, Treasury Wine Estates and The World Food Programme. The company reports four‑time growth in annual recurring revenue each of the last two years, a 200% increase in active mobile app users over the past 12 months, and has doubled its team while adding offices in Sao Paulo and Bangalore. With the new funding Arable plans to accelerate product development, deliver new services, and expand its global footprint to advance climate resilience in agriculture. Arable provides an integrated system of hardware, agronomic modeling, and software that uses spectral and thermal sensors plus unique rain‑measurement microphones to observe crops continuously and diagnose stress. Its products fuse ground devices, forecasts, satellite data, and APIs to deliver actionable intelligence to farmers, researchers, processors, and food companies. The company reports just over 300% sales growth through Q3 2020 and has deployed thousands of devices across hundreds of thousands of farm acres, covering 37 crops in 39 countries on six continents. Arable’s calibration‑validation network includes more than 30 scientific research sites and its system collects over 36 million data points per day. The team emphasizes data quality, accuracy, and intuitive design and partners with major agriculture players such as Bayer, BASF, Corteva, and Treasury Wine Estates. With the new capital, Arable plans to accelerate global commercial growth and build the next phase of its predictive data products. The company is led by CEO Jim Ethington and Founder & Chief Scientist Adam Wolf and is based in San Francisco, CA. Arable makes solar-powered sensors (Arable Mark, formerly the Pulsepod) and the Arable Insights software platform to collect and analyze plant, light and weather data for farms. Its sensors measure more than 40 different, relevant data types, aiming to provide broader field visibility than single-focus IoT devices. The platform helps farmers automate monitoring, improve forecasting and reduce supply chain risk by surfacing onset of blooms, cluster development and crop coloring. Arable positions its data as valuable to farmers and downstream buyers — processors and grocers — for reducing distribution and procurement risk. The company says the capital raised will be used to hire scientists and engineers and to ramp up sensor production. Arable Labs builds the Pulsepod, a professional-grade, solar-powered crop and weather sensor that pairs with cloud software and developer tools. The device is ruggedly designed by Fred Bould and contains a six-band spectrometer, a 4-way net radiometer and an acoustic rain gauge. Each Pulsepod continuously monitors crop growth, rainfall, crop water demand, light and heat levels and crop color to inform harvest timing and yield forecasts. Data are sent to the cloud and accessible via Arable’s app and API for custom forecasting and analysis. Early adopters include Valley Irrigation, Yara International, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, Treasury Wine Estates, Driscoll’s and Blue Marble Microinsurance. Longer term the company says the sensors could be used beyond agriculture for urban flooding, water quality or fire management, though current focus remains on food farmers and reducing food waste.

Participated · Series D · Feb 2021

Fictiv operates a Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem that lets clients upload CAD files or 2D drawings, select parts and manufacturing methods (3D printing, injection molding, etc.), and receive pricing, lead time, and other key information. The platform targets hardware firms seeking faster, more resilient supply chains and has gained traction during the pandemic and resulting supply-chain disruptions. According to CEO Dave Evans, Fictiv manufactured over 4 million parts in 2021 and has created 19 million mechanical parts for 3,000 companies. The company strengthened enterprise security with SOC 2 certification and expanded enterprise workflow services to accelerate new product development and engineer-to-order cycles. Fictiv says the funding will be used in part to address supply-chain issues and further build out its platform and partnerships. Fictiv provides a cloud-based platform and supply‑chain network for designing, pricing, ordering and routing the production of specialized hardware, focusing on prototypes and low-to-mid volume runs. Its services include injection molding, CNC machining, 3D printing and urethane casting, combined with software to manage manufacturing workflows. The company targets production runs in the 1,000–10,000 unit range and works with customers from Bay Area startups to large multinationals, including Honeywell (notably its aerospace division), with use cases in medical devices and robotics. Fictiv is building out what it calls a "Digital Manufacturing Ecosystem," aiming to shorten development cycles from months to about a week. The company is also developing sustainability tools, including a carbon-measurement tool and plans for a carbon-neutral shipping program. Financially, the business has raised a total of $92 million to date and its valuation is undisclosed. Fictiv provides a cloud-based platform that lets customers design components and route orders to a network of contract manufacturers for prototyping and small production runs. It does not own manufacturing equipment but coordinates a network of hundreds of manufacturers, primarily in the U.S. and China, covering processes including injection molding, CNC machining, 3D printing, and urethane casting. Customers use Fictiv's software to select plants best suited to make parts; notable customers include Sphero and Facebook. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its production ecosystem, broaden the range of components and materials it can make, and grow its customer base and capacity. Financially, Fictiv raised $33 million in a Series C and has raised $58 million to date; PitchBook suggested a post-money valuation of around $65 million in the prior round and estimated this round could place the company at about $100 million. Leadership emphasizes building a highest-quality rather than largest network and positioning the service as an "AWS for manufacturing" to speed hardware development. Fictiv provides hardware teams with a virtual manufacturing platform that combines intelligent workflow and collaboration software with a vetted global network of manufacturers to support projects from prototype to production. The platform includes a private workspace for collaboration and file management, intelligent algorithms for automated quoting and manufacturability feedback, a smart matching system for pairing projects to manufacturers, centralized order tracking, and quality control systems. The company reports a vetted network of over 200 worldwide manufacturers. Led by CEO and co‑founder Dave Evans and headquartered in San Francisco, Fictiv has opened offices in Guangzhou, China. Financially, the company has raised $25M in total funding to date following its latest round. Fictiv plans to use the new capital to grow its global manufacturer network and to introduce new digital tools to automate and optimize workflows for hardware teams and manufacturers.

Led · Equity · Jul 2015

Lecorpio offers an enterprise-class, cloud-based IP management and analytics suite that spans the entire IP supply chain, including invention disclosure management, patent and trademark management, e-billing, licensing management and general matters management. Led by CEO Jay Madsen, the platform targets corporate IP teams and is used by customers such as Adobe, T-Mobile, Analog Devices, Rockwell Automation, NEC, NetApp and Red Hat. The company emphasizes analytics-driven IP workflows and enterprise-scale functionality. Lecorpio intends to use recently raised funds to accelerate growth, product development and expansion into new markets. The article identifies the company as Fremont, CA–based and positions it as a provider for large innovators and R&D organizations. Lecorpio is a Fremont, CA-based provider of a cloud-based intellectual property (IP) management and analytics platform. Led by CEO Jay Madsen with Sunny McRae as VP of Engineering and Mark Bullard as VP of Product Management, the company offers an enterprise-class suite of pre-built applications spanning the IP supply chain, including invention disclosure management, patent and trademark management, e-billing, licensing management and general matters management. Its platform is used by over 40 Global 1000 companies and by 13 of the top 100 most active US patent filers, including Analog Devices, NEC, NetApp, Praxair and RF Micro Devices. Lecorpio released version 2.7 of its suite in April 2014. The company raised $10m in a Series B round led by M2O and intends to use the funds to make strategic hires, accelerate product development and support its enterprise customers. The financing will fund continued product development and scaling of its enterprise customer base.