The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Sep 2023

Parade is a San Francisco-based software platform that provides truckload capacity management to freight brokers, driving carrier access and digital transformation. Led by CEO and Co-Founder Anthony Sutardja, the platform helps users manage relationships, increase truckload capacity, and re-utilize carriers to find the right truck at the best price at the right time. The company raised $17M in funding to support growth and product development. Parade intends to use the proceeds to develop and enhance products that accelerate brokers’ ability to transact freight at scale. Its roadmap includes using Generative AI to turn conversations into freight bookings and expanding integrations with transportation management systems, load boards, rating benchmarks, visibility platforms, and compliance solutions. Parade provides an AI-enabled Truckload Capacity Management Platform that layers on top of a freight broker’s existing systems, such as a Transportation Management System (TMS), to help brokers find availability, book trucks online, and digitally transact loads. Over the past year the company brought its core Capacity Management product to market for freight brokers. Parade’s platform is designed to charge a broker’s capabilities to find and transact truckload capacity and to strengthen connectivity with third-party partners. Customers include major brokerages such as Armstrong Transport Group, Schneider, and Worldwide Express. The company plans to use its recent funding to accelerate digital adoption, expand product capabilities, grow its team, and deepen connectivity across its partner ecosystem. Parade was founded in 2015 in San Francisco.

Participated · Series B · Feb 2022

Tribal provides SMBs in emerging markets with corporate spend management, physical and virtual cards, international and local wires, and financing for payments. The company launched a beta spend management platform in December 2019 and introduced Tribal Pay in 2020, enabling transfers to 180+ countries and payment financing for up to 120 days. Tribal serves a fast-growing client base across more than 22 countries and grew its LatAm volume by 90x in 2021. Proceeds from the latest round will be used to expand professional teams across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile as the company scales in LatAm. The founding and management team includes former leaders from HSBC, Visa, Experian, Mercado Libre, American Express, Nubank, Marqeta, and Didi Pay. To date the company has raised a total of $140 million including the newly announced $60M Series B. Tribal Credit issues virtual and physical multi-currency business Visa cards (Tribal Card) and a payments product (Tribal Pay) aimed at startups and SMBs in emerging markets. The company uses a proprietary AI-driven underwriting process to evaluate businesses and approve credit lines without impacting founders’ personal credit. Tribal’s platform also offers spend management tools for distributed teams and wire/treasury capabilities. Its largest market is Mexico, and it lists customers including Minu, Ben and Frank, Fairplay and SLM. Tribal reports 10x year-over-year growth and has grown headcount to 75 employees from 31 the prior year. The company joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track Program and received $3 million from the Stellar Development Foundation as part of the recent raise. Tribal says it is exploring four additional Latin American markets and expects to be operational in one new market by year-end. Tribal Credit provides a business credit-card product aimed at SMEs and startups in emerging markets, combining virtual corporate cards, configurable spending limits, and instant card suspension. Its platform uses AI-driven analytics and a proprietary AI algorithm developed from NYU research to surface spend insights and control costs. The company issues an unlimited number of virtual cards to employees and emphasizes transparency and control over corporate expenditures. Tribal Credit is in private beta and has a distributed team mainly based in San Francisco with remote teams in Cairo, Dubai, and New York. The founding team includes serial entrepreneurs, data scientists, and fintech executives with backgrounds in banking, risk, compliance, and scaling in emerging markets. With new capital, the company plans to scale operations, pursue partnerships, and expand development, sales, and operations teams.

Participated · Series C · Apr 2021

Astranis designs, manufactures, and operates satellites for geostationary and other high orbits to deliver dedicated, secure communications networks to large enterprises, sovereign governments, and the U.S. military. The company reports five satellites on orbit and a commercial backlog in excess of $1 billion. Astranis has been selected as a prime contractor for initial phases of multiple U.S. Department of Defense Programs of Record, including PTS-G, Resilient GPS, and Andromeda. It employs roughly 500 engineers and operates out of a 153,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Northern California. The company is scaling manufacturing capacity to accelerate satellite production and meet rising demand from commercial and government customers.

Participated · Series B · Aug 2020

Exo develops a handheld ultrasound device together with Exo Works, a point-of-care workflow platform that streamlines exam review, documentation and billing in under one minute. The device combines artificial intelligence, medical imaging and silicon technology to enable use in settings from cardiology to lung scans and at-home monitoring. Exo says the device will cost around the price of a laptop, aiming to make ultrasound more widely accessible. The company is focused immediately on commercializing the device, building out its informatics platform (currently being piloted across the U.S.), and ramping production and its sales force. Exo has raised over $320 million in total funding since its 2015 founding, including a $40 million raise in 2020. The company plans to bring the handheld device to market after securing U.S. FDA approval and is based in Redwood City, California. Exo is developing a handheld ultrasound device built on patented Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasound Transducer (pMUT) technology intended to deliver industry-leading image quality, affordability and portability. The device is paired with cloud-based workflow software and data apps designed to improve interoperability, documentation and clinician workflow in emergency and critical care settings. Exo will use its Series B+ funding to finish product development and bring its data and workflow apps to market. The company says its technology is intended to image denser body compositions and provide powerful diagnostic capabilities for frontline physicians. Exo highlights a team with experience from Apple, GE, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Maxim, Medtronic and Siemens and envisions a multi-functional platform that could converge diagnostics and therapeutics. Financially, the Series B+ follows an August 2019 Series B that raised $35 million and brings Exo’s total funding to nearly $100 million.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2020

Activ Surgical develops artificial intelligence and augmented reality technologies to improve surgical procedures, primarily through its ActivSight endoscopy imaging system. ActivSight, cleared by the FDA in April 2021, attaches to standard laparoscopes and arthroscopes and uses machine‑learning algorithms to add real‑time measurements of blood flow, tissue perfusion, and vascularity to the camera feed. The system is housed on the ActivEdge platform, which also hosts ActivInsights — augmented‑reality overlays powered by robotics and advanced AI trained on the company’s annotated imaging data. The company plans a worldwide launch and rollout of ActivSight and says the new funding will be used to scale the business and add resources for that debut. Financially, Activ added a $15M extension to its Series B, bringing that round to $60M and substantially increasing its lifetime fundraising since 2020. Hikma Ventures will support deployment efforts, including introductions in the Middle East. Activ Surgical builds intraoperative imaging hardware and software to give surgeons enhanced visualization during minimally invasive procedures. Its primary product, ActivSight, is a hardware module that fits between an endoscope and a white-light camera to visualize blood flow and other structures in real time without injectable dyes. ActivSight received FDA 510(k) clearance in April 2021 and has been tested in a 70-patient clinical trial at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the University of Buffalo. The company plans near-term commercialization of ActivSight in hospital systems across seven states and seeks CE certification to enter seven European countries in 2022. Longer term, Activ Surgical is developing an AI software suite called ActivInsight to analyze intraoperative data, autonomously annotate key structures (nerves, arteries, veins) and return machine-learned guidance to surgeons. The company has raised $45 million in this Series B and $77 million in total to date to support commercial rollout and its AI roadmap. Activ Surgical develops computer vision and AI-powered surgical vision software and connected imaging hardware for use in laparoscopic and arthroscopic procedures. Its ActivEdge platform ingests real-time data from surgical implements outfitted with company sensors to power machine-learning and AI visualizations that guide surgeons and surgical systems. The company’s first product, ActivSight, is a small, connected imaging coddle that can be attached to existing surgical instruments. The platform launched to market in May, and Activ is working with eight U.S. hospital partners on pilot projects. The company is tracking toward FDA clearance for its hardware by Q4 this year. Activ Surgical has raised a total of $32 million in funding to date. Activ Surgical is a digital surgery company that develops patent‑protected, software‑centric and hardware‑agnostic surgical intelligence technology driven by computer vision, AI, analytics and machine learning. Its platform is designed to enhance intra‑operative decision making and reduce unintended and preventable surgical complications for endoscopic and robotically‑assisted procedures. The company’s first planned commercial product, ActivSight, is an advanced software and sensing platform slated for a fall 2020 launch that aims to “ACTIVATE” existing surgical visualization and robotic systems. Activ Surgical intends to use the newly raised funds to accelerate commercialization of its proprietary technology. The company was founded in 2017 and is led by CEO Todd Usen. Activ Surgical develops the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), a surgical robotics system that uses near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) markers to deliver a biocompatible, near-infrared 3D tracking system for tissue and surgical tools. STAR was developed out of Children’s National Medical Center and is positioned as an improvement over standard optical tracking technology. The company aims to integrate advanced computer vision, artificial intelligence and robotics to fit within operating-room workflow and provide advanced imaging and diagnostic accuracy during surgery. Activ describes a future in which robots could autonomously engage in soft tissue surgery under the supervision of a surgeon. Financially, the company has raised nearly $13 million to continue STAR’s development and filed a Form D with the U.S. SEC on July 1 indicating it had been seeking nearly $19 million. In March, Activ named Todd Usen, the former president of Olympus Medical Systems, as its first CEO.