Tag: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

SparkLabs closes $50M fund to back AI startups

Posted on by faz_business


SparkLabs — an early-stage venture capital firm that has made a name for itself for backing OpenAI as well as a host of other AI startups such as Vectara, Allganize, Kneron, Anthropic, xAI, Glade (YC S23) and Lucidya AI — is gearing up to double down more startups in the space. The VC firm announced Tuesday that it has closed a new $50 million fund, AIM AI Fund, which will back AI startups out of its own AIM-X accelerator in Saudi Arabia as well as other AI startups across the globe.

SparkLabs’ new fund and its wider investment aims underscore the bigger trends that have swirled around artificial intelligence for the last few years. The explosion of interest in generative AI in particular has led to a surge of startups in the space, as well as a rush of investors looking for the next Open AI — or at the least, a startup that a bigger company might snap up as it looks to sharpen its own AI edge.

It also points to how the AI opportunity continues to widen beyond Silicon Valley. AIM-X is an AI-focused startup accelerator that SparkLabs launched earlier this year in the kingdom as part of its AI Mission, a national initiative to bolster AI technology over the next five years.

There has been a significant increase in AI startups on a global scale over the past few years. As of March 2024, more than 210 AI unicorns, valued at over $1 billion, have emerged, per the Edge Delta report. Yet despite it being a global phenomenon, the U.S. overall still leads the pack for founding the most AI startups between 2013 and 2022 with 4,633 startups, according to the report.

About 35% of SparkLabs’ new fund will support accelerator participants, with the remaining 65% targeted at making Series A and Series B investments beyond Saudi Arabia, according to co-founder and CEO of SparkLabs Bernard Moon.

“The accelerator will seek a minority allocation for Saudi Arabia or MENA investments, about 10%-20%,” Moon said. “The majority will be just the best AI startups regardless of location… I assume the majority in the U.S.”

The average check size for accelerator participants will be $200,000, but it can go up to $500,000 in unique situations, Moon told TechCrunch. The Series A and Series B investments will be between $1 million and $5 million, Moon added. It aims to invest between 50 and 70 companies in total from the fund.

SparkLabs did not name its limited partners, but Moon said its LPs include a government fund of funds.

Its first batch will be announced live at the GAIN Summit (Global AI Summit) in Riyadh next Tuesday, September 10. Moon exclusively told TechCrunch that SparkLabs has already invested in 14 startups, the first batch, via the AI fund:

  • viACT: a Hong Kong-based AI video analytics for workplace safety and construction management.
  • IdeasLab: a New York-based startup that has built AI solutions for analyzing body movements without using sensors
  • Ahya: a Pakistan-based startup that has built an AI-powered climate software for measurement, analysis, reporting, reduction of emissions, and transacting carbon offsets.
  • Swirl: a video platform in India that uses AI to help brands connect with customers on their websites and mobile apps through features like videos, user-generated content (UGC) reviews, video ads, and live shopping.
  • Contents.com: an AI content creation platform in Italy
  • Orko: a Singaporean AI-enabled EV fleet management platform
  • Layla: an AI-powered travel startup in Germany
  • Roughneck AI: a San Francisco-based multimodal real-world data platform for deep learning applications
  • Arctech Innovation: a startup that spun out from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, using AI to create sensor-enabled products for the detection of pests and diseases
  • OptimHire: an AI-enabled recruitment platform in San Francisco
  • WideBot AI: an Arabic generative AI platform in Riyadh
  • Orbo AI: a Mumbai-based startup that has built an AI-powered tool to help beauty brands boost loyalty, engagement, and sales.
  • Vyrill: an AI-powered video intelligence and marketing platform in San Francisco
  • Stack Tech Farm: an agritech startup that specializes in vertical farming in Berlin.

SparkLabs has more than 14 funds across the globe and two funds in Saudi Arabia. It has invested in over 550 startups globally.

Farmblox puts the control into farmers’ hands with its AI-powered sensor-reading platform

Posted on by faz_business


Nathan Rosenberg, the founder of farm automation platform Farmblox, said if there is one thing to know about trying to sell technology to farmers, it’s that you can’t tell them what to do.

“[Farmers] are multigenerational,” Rosenberg told TechCrunch. “It is not a profession, it’s more a community, a way of life, and you need to respect that. You can’t come in as a Silicon Valley tech person and tell them what to do.”

Rosenberg said that’s why his startup Farmblox is approaching agtech a little differently than companies that have come before it. The startup created a solar-powered connected monitor; farmers hook it up to the third-party sensors they are already using, allowing them to track things like soil moisture levels and water waste in a less-manual way. That information is translated back to an AI-powered automation platform that farmers can check from anywhere.

“If you say I can increase your yield with this fancy AI thing, they aren’t going to believe that, but they will believe in not having to go out and check on this specific thing,” Rosenberg said.

The company signed on 55 farms in 18 months, and Rosenberg credits this to the fact that Farmblox gives farmers the control to customize and implement the systems themselves.

“It’s very important for us that the farmer install us themselves,” Rosenberg said. “We don’t do white glove service. Of course we are here if they need it, but they do it all themselves with very little documentation.”

Rosenberg said Farmblox is meant to help solve the biggest issue facing farms right now: labor shortages. Farmblox is meant to help farms reduce the number of people they need to work on a farm at a given time. He said that when he was a teenager, he had a part-time job on an organic farm that involved just walking around constantly to check sensors. It wasn’t efficient. Farmblox looks to automate that.

The company now covers more than 14,000 acres of farm land with Rosenberg using his earnings as a top three developer on Minecraft to bootstrap the startup. Farmblox just raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Hyperplane with participation from Slow Ventures, MHS Capital and Service Provider Capital.

Vivjan Myrto, the founder and managing partner at Hyperplane, told TechCrunch he got introduced to Farmblox at a startup event held by his Boston-based firm. Hyperplane had backed a handful of other agtech startups and through that, Myrto discovered that a growing problem for farms will be the increasing shortage in water.

While Farmblox isn’t specifically focused on saving water or water waste, it can help farms track that. The fact that the company has already seen the traction, didn’t hurt either. “We were very impressed that this team has basically bootstrapped this from their dorm room to [more than] 50 customers in 18 months,” Myrto said. “In this industry, automating farms has been very costly and very cost prohibitive. What is unique about Farmblox is the bay station is solar powered and very cheap. It has data and sensors that are way ahead of everyone else.”

Farmblox started with high-margin tree-based crops including maple, vineyards and orchards because the sensors can remain on the same trees after a harvest; with other crops like tomatoes, the whole plant is pulled up each season. Rosenberg said he expects the startup will move down into lower-margin crops in the future.

The company will use the seed funding to expand to more farms.

“We are building tools around not just monitoring and giving real-time data to the farmer but really connecting that with automation flows to create new and exciting bundles of solutions that they can deploy on the farm,” Rosenberg said.