Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

Safe Kids AI provides a solution for keeping children safe online, offering patented technology that intercepts online threats, including those that bypass existing countermeasures such as firewalls. Its system uses instances of intercepted threats to Pause, Reflect, and Redirect™ children toward more appropriate content and authentic human connection. The company is led by Abbas Valliani and Atif Bhanjee, who is noted in the article as Chief Operating Officer, Founder and CEO. In January 2022 the company raised $1.5M in Seed funding, with backers that included The Resource Group and other existing investors. Safe Kids AI intends to use the funds to expand operations and its business reach. The product positioning emphasizes interception of threats that bypass conventional defenses and redirecting youth to safer interactions.

Participated · Series D · Oct 2018

Afiniti uses patented artificial intelligence to identify subtle patterns of human interaction and pair individuals based on behavior to increase the success of customer-service interactions. Its technology is deployed across industries including healthcare, telecommunications, travel, hospitality, utilities, insurance, and banking. Afiniti reports over 150 deployments in major enterprises, has optimized more than 600,000 agents and 700 million customers, and analyzes about 1.3 million interactions daily to refine its pairings. The company says its pairings drive measurable increases in enterprise profitability. Afiniti’s leadership says momentum is building as it continues to add new clients around the world and pursue accelerated growth. To support that growth it has engaged credit partners to access new capital and strengthen its market position. Afiniti supplies an AI layer that analyzes customers and call‑agent interactions to route callers to the agents most likely to produce better outcomes, a process the company calls “behavioral pairing.” It integrates with customers’ CRM, sales and telephony systems and measures results by running continuous on/off experiments, taking a share of the revenue delta as its pricing model. Afiniti says it has operated in dozens of countries (22 referenced) and holds dozens of patents with more pending. The company reports roughly 100% revenue growth each year over the last five years and has started to tip into profitability. Afiniti has increased its market visibility recently as it considers an IPO after filing confidentially and instead raising at the potential IPO valuation. The team includes well‑connected advisors and local leaders that have helped global expansion. Afiniti builds AI software that matches customers to the sales or service agent most likely to close a sale, using data from as many as 100 databases. The company says customers see a 4–6% average revenue lift (long-term average expected ~4.5%) and cites examples such as $70M in incremental revenue for T‑Mobile. It initially served large telecom and insurance call centers, expanded into medical and banking, and is now targeting retail with proposed facial‑recognition pairings (no retailer has adopted that yet). Afiniti runs continuous on/off experiments to measure impact and charges fees competitive with alternative customer acquisition costs. The company has about 700 employees, including roughly 500 engineers, and sources say revenues are growing at a 100% run rate. Afiniti confidentially filed for an IPO and was valued at $1.6 billion after an $80M fourth round; it is not expected to be profitable this year but aims for profitability in its fiscal 2018 year beginning in June.