AI @ Work

Oracle, a leading integrated cloud applications and platform services provider, is looking to strengthen their presence in China and to do that, have decided to collaborate with iClick Interactive Asia Group limited. iClick is a Chinese independent online marketing and enterprise data solutions provider and a member of Oracle Partner Network. This collaboration will help Oracle to launch tailored SaaS offering that will empower brands to better serve and connect with consumers.

Mainspring Services, a Title and escrow software company announced the release of their SaaS Platform, “titleLOOK”. This Platform streamlines your title production process. The first SaaS product by the company, titleLOOK addresses a major pain point for lenders, underwriters and consumers. The software will help users automatically publish preliminary documentation and reports which can then be shared with customers and stakeholders instantly.

The Governance, Risk and Compliance giant, Diligent Corporation, that is used by nearly 19,000 clients, has announced that it will be acquiring Galvanize, a global leader in SaaS GRC software. Diligent Corporation has signed a contract towards this, however, the financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. This transaction follows Diligent’s planned acquisition of Steele Compliance Solutions Inc. a leader in ethics and compliance SaaS, which was signed earlier this year in February. Both these transactions are expected to come to a conclusion in March. With this acquisition, Diligent will become the largest SaaS GRC provider globally.

ThinkIQ, a pioneer of digital manufacturing transformation SaaS, today announced an expansion in their suite. The new SaaS solutions by the manufacturing platform, features four new areas of data functionality, included with ThinkIQ's Visualize, Insight, Transform and Enterprise solutions. This will help manufacturers make sense of data surfacing actions that enhance safety, reliability and efficiency. The new platform components integrate with existing IoT infrastructure to help manage everything from supply chains to manufacturing processes and beyond.

FarEye, an Indian SaaS start-up that helps firms globally optimize their supply chain, and logistics operations, raises $100 million in its Series E round. The funding was co-led by high-profile backers TCV, and Dragoneer Investment Group. FarEye helps companies orchestrate, track, and optimize their logistics operations. With it’s funds, the firm is looking to further expand the team, and is also open to exploring acquisition of smaller firms, in international markets.

B Capital Group, the six-year-old venture capital fund formed by Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, and Bain Capital veteran, Raj Ganguly, is doubling down on China as it looks to allocate $500 million to $1 billion of its fund, into Chinese tech companies over the next few years. With $1.9 billion assets under management, B Capital is going after enterprise software providers in China, an area that has seen explosive growth, but is still only a fraction the size of the U.S. SaaS market.

Resolve , a San Francisco-based start-up, in the space specializing in buy now, pay later capabilities for B2B transactions, raises $60 million in funding. Initialized Capital, led the funding round. This is the company’s first funding since its 2019 inception. The funding is a combination of equity, and asset funding. The San Francisco start-up is using the money primarily to grow its embedded billing platform.

Interactio, a remote interpretation platform whose customers include massive institutions like the United Nations, European Commission, and the Parliament, along with corporates like BMW, JP Morgan, and Microsoft, raises $30 million Series A. The Series A funding was led by Eight Roads Ventures, and Silicon Valley based - Storm Ventures. The funds will be used for enhancing its tech, and UX - UI, with a focus on ensuring ease of access and simplicity, and on upgrading the tools it provides to interpreters.

EYs3D Microelectronics, a fabless design house, that focuses on end-to-end software, and hardware systems for computer vision technology, raises $7 million in Series A. The new funding will be used to expand eYs3D’s product development, and launch a series of 3D computer vision modules. It also will work with new business partners to expand its platform and hire more talent.

AcuityMD raises $7M, to better track the evolving world of medical hardware. AcuityMD, is a data platform that tracks the entire medical device lifecycle from the sale of an item, to a patient’s outcome after a surgery.

Microsoft, today announced Py-Torch Enterprise, a new Azure service that provides developers with additional support, when using Py-Torch on Azure. Py-Torch is a Python-centric open-source machine learning framework, with a focus on computer vision and natural language processing.

French start-up Matera, raises a new $43 million Series B funding round, led by Mubadala Capital, to turn residential building management, into SaaS. The company is building a vertical SaaS, for residential property management. With the funding round, Matera plans to expand to Germany.

Huler Launches Its Human Experience SaaS Platform, The HulerHub. HulerHub transforms the way businesses engage with their teams by introducing a people-centric and time-saving digital solution. The much-anticipated flagship SaaS offering has already registered interest from global household names within the UK, USA and Canada, following an initial $7 million dollar investment.
Flipkart Group is close to buying travel and hotel booking platform Cleartrip in a distress sale, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant strengthens its operations in the hospitality segment.The cash-and-stock deal valuing Cleartrip at almost $40 million may close in the next 10 days. The deal comes at a time the hospitality industry continues to reel from the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic.
Risk and compliance startup LogicGate confirms a data breach. An unauthorized third party has obtained credentials to its Amazon Web Services-hosted cloud storage servers storing customer backup files for its flagship platform Risk Cloud, which helps companies to identify and manage their risk and compliance with data protection and security standards. LogicGate has not stated how the AWS credentials were compromised. LogicGate has not made any public statement about the breach.
Clubhouse is rapidly expanding access to payments, its first revenue-generating feature for creators, since its launch into testing earlier this month. At the beginning of April, Clubhouse said it would give a small test group of creators the ability to accept payments from their fans and supporters through the social audio app. Clubhouse this weekend rolled out payments to 60,000-plus users in the U.S.and it expects to have payments roll out to everyone over the next few weeks.
1Password acquires SecretHub and launches new enterprise secrets management tool. 1Password has not disclosed the price of the acquisition. 1Password is currently in use by more then 80,000 businesses worldwide. In addition to the acquisition 1Password has also announced a new partnership with GitHub.
Deeplite raises $6M seed to deploy ML. Deeplite, a startup based in Montreal, wants to change the way ML is provided at very high price by providing a way to reduce the overall size of the model, allowing it to run on hardware with far fewer resources.The investment was led by Boston-based venture capital firm PJC led the round, with help from Innospark Ventures, Differential Ventures and Smart Global Holdings. Somel Investments, BDC Capital and Desjardins Capital also participated.. .

Growth equity firm PSG has acquires a majority stake in Nalanda Global, a Spanish provider of supplier risk management software solutions to companies across 10 countries. The deal marks the eighth investment from PSG's Europe-focused fund, which closed on €1.25 billion in February.
Datadog Completes Acquisition of Sqreen. The acquisition will accelerate the way they build security tools that automate application protection, threat detection, and security monitoring.The closing of this deal will boost Datadog's existing APM functionality and move the company closer to providing customers with a robust, full-stack security monitoring solution for the cloud age.
NVIDIA and Global Computer Makers Launch Industry-Standard Enterprise Server Platforms for AI. NVIDIA and VMware’s collaboration provides customers an AI-ready enterprise platform to accelerate AI, container-based and traditional enterprise workloads. Among the first incorporating these systems into their data centres are Lockheed Martin and Mass General Brigham.
Commvault announces that Metallic Backup-as-a-Service solutions are now available in the UAE and wider Middle East region. The solutions include Metallic’s enterprise-grade offerings including Metallic Office 365 Backup and Recovery, Metallic Endpoint Backup and Recovery and Metallic Core Backup and Recovery. With this expanded availability, the firm claims that customers can now seamlessly address growing business concerns around cost, scalability, and security as they protect critical data.
SaaS security startup DoControl raises $10 million in Series A funding to help customers safeguard SaaS applications from Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and others. Key financial backers include RTP Global, CrowdStrike Falcon Fund, StageOne Ventures and Cardumen Capital. DoControl is the latest in a growing list of security startups focused specifically on safeguarding SaaS applications.

B2B retail SaaS platform ‘6 Degree’ raises $1M from SucSEED Indovation Fund, and other angel investors as a part of series A. 6 Degree is a fashion network, with over 15,000 professionals, and home to over 4,000 fashion designers. The startup has long-standing partnerships with over 100 multi-brand stores, and leading fashion platforms, including Lakme Fashion Week, and The Fashion Design Council of India. 6 Degree will use the funds, to ramp up operations for its flagship product. Honeycomb, a B2B retail SaaS platform, catering to the fashion and lifestyle sector. 6 Degree claims to be on track to grow another 5X this year, enabling over 3,000 brands to scale with it.

Acronis raises $250 Million, at a $2.5 Billion valuation, to double down on cyber protection services. The funding was led by CVC. Integrating with a range of popular enterprise software packages, Acronis now have over 10,000 managed service providers, and 500,000 businesses using their services. The funding will be used on engineers, and M and A, to complement their cyber protection services. The company is also focussing on its next steps, which could involve a public listing, or a sale in the next 12 to 24 months.

HoneyBook, a client experience and financial management platform, for service-based small businesses and freelancers, raises $155 million in a Series D round, led by Durable Capital Partners LP. With the latest round, HoneyBook has now raised $248 million since its inception in 2013. The company plans to use its new capital toward continued product development, and to boost its 103-person headcount, across its San Francisco and Tel Aviv offices.

Thentia, a global leader in GovTech Software-as-a-Service, raises $10 million in Series B investment, led by New York City-based Spring Mountain Capital, with participation from BDC Capital. Thentia was developed by subject matter experts, with a mission to transform GovTech through best-in-class technological capabilities. Thentia will use this equity financing to accelerate its go-to-market strategy, and grow its position across the U.S., as the industry-leading SaaS platform for the government technology sector.

IoT platform ‘Thingsup’, raises $100,000 from GSF Accelerator. Launched in 2020, Thingsup is a low-code, SaaS-based platform that comes with ready to use, wireless IoT sensors, and enables businesses to digitalise their entire supply chain operations, within a few days, instead of months. The Parent company iobot stated that, the investment will be used to cater to the demand for digitalising cold chain logistics, the market for which, is rapidly expanding due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.