Participated · Series A · Oct 2020

Canvass Analytics provides an industrial AI software platform used by operators in oil & gas, chemical and petrochemical, metals and mining, and energy sectors. The platform helps frontline teams solve day-to-day operational problems such as reducing carbon emissions and waste, improving yields, and optimizing facility operations. The company is led by CEO Humera Malik and is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Canvass intends to use the new funding to expand operations and broaden its business reach. The article does not disclose revenue or user metrics. Canvass Analytics offers a no-code industrial AI platform that simplifies building, training, and scaling applied AI for plant operators. Its patent-pending technology puts AI directly in operators' hands to enable predictive, data-driven improvements in production processes and asset optimization. Customers include Fortune Global 2000 companies, leading manufacturing and energy firms, system integrators, and partners such as Microsoft and OSIsoft. The company says its platform helps optimize production, generate new revenue streams, and reduce energy and operating costs. Canvass plans to use new capital to aggressively expand go-to-market efforts, accelerate product development, and support a growing customer base across North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Prior investors include Alphabet’s Gradient Ventures. Canvass Analytics offers an AI-based predictive analytics platform that works with IoT hardware to automatically identify inefficiencies in industrial operations, prevent equipment malfunctions, save energy and increase production. The company serves customers across automotive, aerospace, food and agriculture, energy, and metals and mining, and says it has helped manufacturers cut greenhouse gas emissions by tens of millions of pounds and helped an agricultural processor optimize fermentation end times. Founded in 2016 and based in Toronto, Canvass plans to use new capital to pursue “aggressive sales growth” by expanding account and technical sales teams in North America, the European Union and Asia. The stated goal is to sign up more Fortune 500 companies. Financially, Canvass announced a $5 million funding round led by Gradient Ventures, bringing total capital raised to $7.5 million. Investors in the round include Bedrock Industries, Viaduct Ventures and returning backers Real Ventures and Barney Pell.

Participated · Series A · May 2020

Accern provides AI-powered apps and natural language processing models trained to recognize, classify and extract domain-specific financial language from public sources such as news, blogs and SEC filings. The platform offers a visual dashboard for building custom no-code AI apps and includes pre-built taxonomies for companies, people, places and themes tailored to financial services. Customers use Accern to enhance models, business-intelligence dashboards and products with text-derived features for use cases including sentiment analysis, credit and fraud monitoring, and compliance. The company plans to use new capital to pursue product-led growth, expand into new markets, and invest in R&D on its AI technologies. Accern reports that its annual recurring revenue has grown 9x since 2020, has 80 employees, and expects headcount to exceed 100 by the end of 2022. Accern provides a no-code AI platform that enables users in financial services to build workflow automation and risk-management solutions. The platform supports use cases including investment research, credit lending, financial crimes (KYC), and reputational-risk workflows. Its clients and strategic partners include Allianz, Jefferies, IBM, Google, and Microsoft. The company was founded in 2016 by Kumesh Aroomoogan and Anshul Vikram Pandey, Ph.D. Accern intends to use the new funding to expand its customer base and further develop its platform. This Series A is the company's second equity financing and brings total equity raised to $14.5M since formation. Accern provides an AI-curated platform that monitors news sites, blogs, social networks, and SEC filings to surface the most relevant financial content for analysts and traders. The platform tracks more than 300 million websites, social networks such as Twitter and Tumblr, and SEC filings in real time. About a dozen financial institutions use Accern, with roughly 500 active users typically paying $500 per user per month. The company plans to expand beyond financial services to help clients understand buzz around internal controversies and has named IBM as its first non-financial customer. Accern competes with services like Dataminr and overlaps with Reuters and Bloomberg, though the CEO described those as complementary. Founded in 2014 and based in New York with 12 employees, the startup will use new funding to hire more data scientists and engineers and to increase its AI capabilities.

Participated · Equity · Jan 2014

Synthelis Biotech is an Isère-based startup focused on acellular (cell-free) manufacturing of complex proteins intended for therapeutic drugs and vaccines. Its proprietary technology aims to streamline and scale the production of proteins that are typically difficult to express with traditional cell-based systems. By eliminating living cells from the process, the company targets faster development cycles and greater control over product quality. The firm plans to move from laboratory-scale proof-of-concept to industrial-scale manufacturing. Recent state backing is intended to accelerate this industrialization phase. Although specific revenue, customer, or production metrics were not disclosed, the new support underlines the company’s transition from R&D to commercialization. Future efforts will likely focus on building production capacity and forging partnerships with biotech and pharmaceutical clients.