Tekion, a cloud technology provider for automotive sector founded by Tesla’s former CIO Jay Vijayan, has secured $200 million in growth equity capital from Dragoneer Investment Group. This financing round sets Tekion’s valuation above $4 billion, the company said in a press release. 

Tekion plans to invest the capital to expand its product offering for dealer partners and OEMs, accelerate implementation timelines, and deliver better customer support.

“Tekion has charted an extraordinary growth path, revolutionizing the automotive retail industry through our comprehensive and fully integrated platform,” said Jay Vijayan, Founder and CEO of Tekion. “We are delighted to partner with Dragoneer, whose team has followed our progress closely for multiple years, believes in our long-term vision, and carries an impressive track record investing in best-in-class vertical SaaS businesses.”

The funding announcement follows Tekion’s performance in 2023, with 97% year-over-year annual run rate revenue growth and expanding partnerships in the industry including with over 2,000 automotive retailers, multiple leading-brand OEMs, and over 250 ecosystem technology partners. The company had recently made key appointments to its leadership team, including the CFO, CRO, and CTO. 

“Having watched Tekion’s rapid pace of innovation and market adoption over the past several years, we are proud to partner with and support Jay and his world-class team in the next phase of the company’s growth journey,” said Christian Jensen, Partner at Dragoneer. “

Tekion had raised $250 million funding in October 2021. The Pleasanton-headquartered firm has close to 3000 employees globally and caters to some of the leading automotive dealers across geographies.  

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inHEART, a medical device company delivering AI-driven digital twin of the heart, has raised $11M to drive commercial growth of its therapeutic software solution for cardiac ablation procedures and advance the development of its predictive cardiac models for heart failure, sudden cardiac death, and cardio-embolic stroke.

The financing was led by Vesalius Biocapital IV and co-led by Elaia Partners with participation from NACO, Sagana, Sofia Angel Ventures, CWR Funds, and Webit Investment Network. In addition, inHEART received funds from a successful crowdequity campaign on Tudigo and from the UK impact fund Astorg Foundation.

The funding will also support commercial expansion of inHEART’s digital twin of the heart in the US, EU, Asia Pacific, and Middle East markets. 

“We welcome this strong international group of investors to our latest round of financing,” said Todor Jeliaskov, Chairman and CEO of inHEART. “This new round allows us to go further in addressing the needs of cardiac patients from early screening and disease detection through advanced therapeutic support. It’s exciting for us to be at the forefront of transforming the healthcare industry with the power of AI technology by improving the efficiency of care, quality of decision-making, and effectiveness and safety of medical interventions.” 

Optimizing cardiac care

inHEART’s current therapeutic solution addresses the challenges of conventional cardiac ablations. The inHEART solution creates highly detailed, interactive 3D heart models with proprietary AI-driven cardiac CT or MR image segmentation. These 3D models of the heart allow physicians to optimize treatment strategies based on each patient’s unique cardiac anatomy and to support pre-procedural planning for faster ablation procedures and improved clinical outcomes.

AI-driven predictive models

Financing from this round will also support the development of new product verticals for AI-driven predictive software models for sudden cardiac death and cardio-embolic stroke, as well as a new therapeutic software solution to help physicians treat heart failure patients. Currently, inHEART is commercially available in the US and EU through a direct sales force model, with plans to establish a global distribution network in the coming months to further accelerate growth.

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SiMa.ai, the software-centric, embedded edge machine learning system-on-chip company, recently announced it has raised an additional $70M of funding led by Maverick Capital, with participation from Point72 and Jericho, as well as existing investors Amplify Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Lip-Bu Tan and others. SiMa.ai will utilize the $270M raised to date to continue meeting customer demand for edge AI/ML with its first-generation Machine Learning System-on-Chip (MLSoC) while accelerating the delivery of its second-generation MLSoC for release in Q1 of 2025, the company informed. 

With the release of the second-generation MLSoC, SiMa.ai will unveil one software-centric platform for all edge AI. SiMa.ai’s ‘one platform for all edge AI’ scales with customers as their AI/ML journey evolves, from computer vision, to transformers to multimodal generative AI.

The rapid proliferation of generative AI is simplifying the way we interact with AI/ML, namely through multimodal inputs such as text-to-speech, text-to-image, speech-to-text, speech-to-image, audio-to-image, image-to-image and image-to-video. Edge devices such as robots, drones, diagnostic machines, autonomous vehicles and more must be equipped to handle this new, more collaborative interface. 

The first-generation SiMa.ai MLSoC claims to deliver better ing performance and efficiency for vision-centric edge inference. Future generations, said the company, will power and process any modality customers prefer with even greater performance and power efficiency. 

“AI — particularly the rapid rise of generative AI — is fundamentally reshaping the way that humans and machines work together. Our customers are poised to benefit from giving sight, sound and speech to their edge devices, which is exactly what our next generation MLSoC is designed to do,” said Krishna Rangasayee, Founder and CEO at SiMa.ai. 

“The computational intensity of generative AI has precipitated a paradigm shift in data center architecture. The next phase in this evolution will be widespread adoption of AI at the edge. Just as the data center has been revolutionized, the edge computing landscape is poised for a complete transformation,” said Andrew Homan, Senior Managing Director at Maverick Capital. 

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Borderless AI, the AI-powered startup in the Employer of Record (EOR) space, announced that it has raised $27 million in seed funding to leverage the power of generative AI to automate and accelerate the process of onboarding, managing, and paying international team members. The company maintains that its AI agent, Alberni, can solve complex problems and automate processes in any country around the world within 10 minutes; the market norm is 7-10 business days.

The $27 million seed round was led by Susquehanna and Aglaé Ventures, the venture arm of Bernard Arnault, currently the richest man in the world, with participation from additional institutional investors. The company was founded by serial entrepreneur Willson Cross and Lyft’s founding investor Sean Aggarwal. Borderless AI’s launch comes at a time of increased investment and interest in vertical-specific AI, with numerous companies like Harvey for legal services and Sierra for customer service, leading the way and drawing attention to the critical need for AI agents across verticals.

“As the first company in the world to bring AI agents to HR, we are firm believers that AI agents will become commonplace for companies just like websites in the 90s and mobile apps in the 2000s,” said Willson Cross, Co-founder and CEO of Borderless AI. “Leveraging conversational AI, our platform automates many of the complexities within the global HR stack, without hallucinations, such as payroll set-up, time-off requests, or employment agreement generation. Our AI is fluent in a multitude of languages, allowing for geographic expansion and successful deployment of business operations around the globe.”

Alberni is available in 170 languages and cuts the time it takes to generate employment agreements, allowing a company’s legal and HR teams to move faster, save money and ensure compliance in the onboarding and payments processes. Alberni can also answer complex employment law, finance or tax queries, an important need for the distributed global workforce and employers looking to scale quickly.

“Our mission is to bring economic empowerment to the world,” said Sean Aggarwal, Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Borderless AI. “With our AI first approach to HR, we’re removing geographic barriers and democratizing access to the best job opportunities for talented people around the globe, and we’re excited to see the possibilities it opens for employers and employees alike.”

Borderless AI is serving organizations of all sizes and across industries, and claims popular dating app Raya; MG2, a 500+ employee-size, global architecture firm; and Affiniti, a venture-backed fintech startup as customers.

The company worked with Omeed Malik and his investment bank, Farvahar Partners, in raising the majority of the round.

Borderless AI is also a strategic partner of Large Language Model (LLM) leader Cohere and is the only partner deploying Cohere’s models to global HR. Borderless AI has developed its proprietary data platform that augments Cohere’s LLM, putting trust and accuracy at the forefront of the technology.

“The HR industry is ripe for innovation and Borderless AI is one of those companies that has the rare combination of industry expertise, product innovation, and a deeply committed and capable founding team,” said Miyuki Matsumoto, Partner at Aglaé Ventures. “Globalization isn’t going anywhere and companies will rely on seamless technology like Borderless AI and Alberni to help them scale successfully on a global level. We strongly believe that AI agents for HR will become mainstream and we’re thrilled to be a part of this journey.”

With an increased demand in technologies that help companies navigate complex issues that arise from hiring international team members, such as employment agreements and employee tax forms, Borderless AI’s technology is a key differentiator in the EOR market, accelerating the future of work and allowing companies to understand complex queries that previously took days or weeks to navigate.

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Figure, an AI robotics company developing general purpose humanoid robots, today announced that it has raised $675M in Series B funding at a $2.6B valuation with investments from Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), Parkway Venture Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures, and ARK Invest. This investment will accelerate Figure’s timeline for humanoid commercial deployment.

What is even more interesting is its collaboration with OpenAI in conjunction with this investment. Figure and OpenAI will work together to develop next generation AI models for humanoid robots, combining OpenAI’s research with Figure’s deep understanding of robotics hardware and software. The collaboration aims to help accelerate Figure’s commercial timeline by enhancing the capabilities of humanoid robots to process and reason from language.

“We’ve always planned to come back to robotics and we see a path with Figure to explore what humanoid robots can achieve when powered by highly capable multimodal models. We’re blown away by Figure’s progress to date and we look forward to working together to open up new possibilities for how robots can help in everyday life,” said Peter Welinder, VP of Product and Partnerships at OpenAI.

The Figure team, made up of top AI robotics experts from Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Google DeepMind, and Archer Aviation, has made remarkable progress in the past few months in the key areas of AI, robot development, robot testing, and commercialization (Figure recently announced its first commercial agreement with BMW Manufacturing to bring humanoids into automotive production). This new capital will be used strategically for scaling up AI training, robot manufacturing, expanding engineering headcount, and advancing commercial deployment efforts.

Figure will also leverage Microsoft Azure for AI infrastructure, training, and storage. 

“Our vision at Figure is to bring humanoid robots into commercial operations as soon as possible. This investment, combined with our partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft, ensures that we are well-prepared to bring embodied AI into the world to make a transformative impact on humanity,” said Brett Adcock, Founder and CEO of Figure. “AI and robotics are the future, and I am grateful to have the support of investors and partners who believe in being at the forefront.”

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ElevenLabs, a voice technology research company, has raised an $80m Series B round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and joined by Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Smash Capital, BroadLight Capital and Credo Ventures. 

Bloomerg reported that the new financing gives the company a $1.1 billion valuation helping it secure a unicorn status. 

Since its public launch, ElevenLabs has been enabling users to create and design AI voices in several languages and accents, with the ability to deliver a wide range of emotions and intonations. ElevenLabs’ users have generated over 100 years of audio, while the firm grew from 5 to 40 employees. The company’s technology is reportedly being used by employees at 41% of Fortune 500 companies. 

ElevenLabs was co-founded in 2022 by Piotr Dabkowski, an ex-Google machine learning engineer, and Staniszewski. 

The new funding will be used to further refine the company’s product offering whilst ensuring the safe deployment of AI technology, the company stated. 

Piotr Dąbkowski, CTO of ElevenLabs, said “Our team’s dedication has already made a lasting impact on voice AI. This new funding enables us to take on even bigger challenges and focus on maintaining our competitive edge in research and product development.”

ElevenLabs also unveiled some new product developments, which will go live over the coming weeks. These include a Dubbing Studio, a Voice Library market place to help users monetize AI versions of their own voices and a Mobile App reader that enables instant conversion of text and URLs into audio . 

Last year, the company had expanded its presence in multiple sectors, including publishing, gaming, media, and conversational verticals, as well as forging B2B partnerships with major media houses.

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San Diego-based Shield AI, a startup that built the first fully autonomous AI pilot deployed in combat since 2018, is leveraging AI to make life-saving differences. Founded in 2015, Shield AI is a venture-backed defense technology company whose mission is to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems. The company says that its AI pilot, Hivemind, has flown a fighter jet, a vertical takeoff and landing drone, and a quadcopter. It enables teams of intelligent aircraft to operate and complete missions autonomously in high-threat environments, without the need for remote operators or GPS. 

The company recently announced the expansion of their Series F funding round to a total of $500 million. An additional $100M in equity, raised at the Series F price, and $200M in debt from Hercules Capital were added to the initial $200M in equity closed in November. 

“AI pilots are becoming a strategic conventional deterrent in class with our aircraft carriers and guided missile submarines. But interestingly, it’s the first strategic deterrent that is software-defined and has only recently become possible because of advances in AI and compute power. That’s a huge paradigm shift for aerospace and defense,” said Ryan Tseng, Shield AI’s CEO and Cofounder.

“The defense and investment communities are seeing the profound impact AI pilots will have on national security and global stability. AI pilots solve the electronic warfare (GPS- and communications-jamming) problem that’s devastating 10,000 drones per month in the Russia-Ukraine War, and they enable the operating concept of intelligent, affordable mass, where swarms of affordable aircraft can accomplish missions normally reserved for expensive, exquisite aircraft,” said Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s President, Cofounder, and former Navy SEAL.

Hivemind is an aircraft agnostic autonomy stack similar to the self-driving technology found in cars. It has flown quadcopters, the MQ-35A V-BAT, and the F-16. Next year it will fly Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie. Shield AI has reportedly accumulated more autonomous flight hours executing fighter jet maneuvers, like dogfighting, than any company in the world. 

Recently, Shield AI introduced V-BAT Teams, a software product powered by Hivemind that enables teams of V-BATs to execute missions, autonomously reading and reacting to each other and the environment just as a team of humans would normally pilot them.

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Augmentus, a startup that offers no-code robotics software, has raised $5 million in Series-A funding. The round was led by Sierra Ventures, along with Cocoon Capital.

The Singapore-based startup has solutions that combine computer vision with AI to enable intelligent and no-code robotics. These solutions, maintains the company, can be used by even those with no robotic experience or programming skills to develop, deploy and re-purpose robotic systems in minutes. 

Conventional robot programming is fragmented and costly, requiring extensive training and expertise due to proprietary programming languages. This results in 75% of lifetime costs being attributed to software and programming. Augmentus’ proprietary technology serves as the eyes and brains of any industrial robots. 3D cameras gather spatial data, which is processed by its AI model to suggest the best path for the robot, even complex parts. This reduces time from four weeks to 15 minutes and cuts costs by over 70%, according to the company. 

Augmentus has supplied to more than 30 manufacturers worldwide, including Fortune 500 companies. The platform is compatible with over ten major robot OEMs, including ABB, Kawasaki, and Kuka.

The new funds will be used to scale operations in the US, Europe, and Asia. As part of its expansion plans, Augmentus will leverage its Augmentus System Partner (ASP) program to onboard system integrators and channel partners, focusing on high-mix and complex manufacturing. A portion of the investment will also be allocated to intensify research.

Leong Yong Shin, Co-Founder and CEO of Augmentus states, “We are excited to tap into Sierra Ventures’ expertise and network to execute our commercial plans and enhance our product. We are also thrilled to receive Cocoon Capital’s continued support for our vision. This funding highlights the potential future where robots can adapt to any part and process with no downtime and expertise required.”

“With the continuous growth of industrial robotics and the increasing deployment of robots in production, there is a pressing need for a more efficient and scalable programming solution,” said Ben Yu, Managing Partner at Sierra Ventures. “Augmentus’ integration of precise 3D scanning, no-code micro-adjustability, and automated code generation is the solution to this challenge.”

Will Klippgen, Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital added: “We have been impressed by how fast they reached product-market fit and engaged with some of the largest players around the world only a few months after launch. We are proud to back a team that is so committed to bringing down the cost of production by making robotics available to businesses regardless of size and industry.”

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B2B payment platform Slope has secured $30M venture round led by Union Square Ventures, with major participation from OpenAI’s Sam Altman, bringing its combined equity and debt funding to $187 million. 

The startup, co-founded by Lawrence Lin Murata and Alice Deng, was launched in 2021 with the aim to bring simplicity and flexibility to B2B payments. It started off by addressing cashflow issues that businesses face. The company leverages generative AI to offer products around payments, embedded financing, AR automation and credit risk management. 

The fintech recently launched its payments risk model powered by GPT. 

The company’s co-founder and CEO Murata, in a blog, wrote that the new and previous funds will “enable us to continue playing on the offense, conquering opportunities when incumbents and competitors are on the defense. As we continue to scale and build out our product, go-to-market, and operations, we’d love to share this journey with others.” 

He believes that the company is positioned to win the opportunity to digitize the $125T B2B economy. The company secured its $24M Series A within the first six months of its inception.  

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