In this monthly digest we’ve collected a list of startups that are bringing innovations and new solutions to various industries and expanding the user experience. November’s list includes Ukio, Apiiro, V7 Labs, Prisma Lab, FrankieOne, Swell Energy, Female Invest and Obrizum. These startups recently received massive investments and made significant deals.
Property technology
Ukio
Country: Spain
Founded date: 2020
Ukio offers a platform for those looking for short-term rental apartments. The clients are mainly remote workers who need comfortable and well-furnished homes. Currently, the apartments on offer are available in Barcelona, Madrid, Lisbon and Berlin. Ukio aims to assist remote and flexible workers, providing them with a digitally advanced, sustainable and eco-friendly renting experience. Apartments include eco-friendly furnishings from local designers and are powered with renewable energy. Additionally, tenants get cleaning service, gym memberships and notifications about local events. The platform handles all payment procedures.
Ukio has raised $28 million in a Series A funding round. The company plans to expand to Paris, Milan, London and Dublin, while continuing further software development and adding new features such as automated monthly rental subscriptions. The team is also looking to incorporate b2b service, so as to work directly with companies.
Cloud security
Apiiro
Country: USA
Founded date: 2018
Apiiro is a security provider for cloud-native application development. The platform enables the user to analyze code, detect vulnerabilities and assess risks, from the design stage to cloud deployment. One of the challenges in securing cloud applications is to constantly monitor the codebase and eliminate critical risks throughout the software supply chain, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud infrastructure. With Apiiro, developers and engineers can fix these issues before they become a problem.
Last year, Aiiro was named a Cool Vendor in DevSecOps by Gartner. Recently the company closed a $100 million Series B funding round. The company plans to advance and improve its platform.
Artificial Intelligence
V7 Labs
Country: UK
Founded date: 2018
V7 Labs has developed a platform that helps to train AI models by automating notations and other categorizing of data, and speed up the process. It works with documents, images, videos and other types of records. With V7, engineers don’t need to label objects manually, making the process more accurate, scalable and secure. The team says the platform requires only 100 human-annotated examples and can then work independently. Any data marked unclear goes through review.
The platform can be applied in many fields: healthcare, life sciences, biotech, automotive, construction, agriculture, manufacturing and other industries. Trained with V7, a model can, for example, detect cancer or other abnormalities on patients’ scans. The company has raised $33 million in a Series A funding round. V7 is planning to increase the size of its engineer team and further expand the market. Among its current clients are GE Healthcare, Paige AI, and Siemens.
Prisma Lab
Country: USA
Founded date: 2016
Mobile development company focused on deep learning–related products, a sub-organization of Palta.
Lensa App
Lensa is an app that offers standard photo and video editing services, including changing hair color and background, and stylizing photos. Recently the developers added features that gained a new wave of love from users, and the app has gone viral on social media. At the moment, according to Data.ai, Lensa is at the top of AppStore and Google Play downloads across a wide range of countries.
The Magic Avatars feature, a paid function, uses Stable Diffusion algorithms and neural network analysis to turn users’ portraits or selfies into AI images in ten styles. (Photos of children and naked pics aren’t allowed.) Users can get up to 200 avatars and download them to their devices.
RegTech
FrankieOne
Country: Australia
Founded date: 2017
FrankieOne is an API platform connecting banks, FinTech, crypto exchanges and gaming companies with data sources from multiple vendor partners, and makes it possible to verify identity and detect fraud. Vendors are established financial services companies, for example Equifax, Experian and Socure. Also, FrankieOne has a strategic partnership with Basiq that provides insights from a customer’s financial history. This combination of capabilities and single API will empower companies to perform required KYC/AML checks, verify bank account ownership, and obtain a complete financial view of individual consumers.
FrankieOne works across Australia, Singapore and the USA, with over 170 financial institutions. Among the company’s clients are Westpac, Shopify, Afterpay, Binance, Zipmex and PointsBet. Recently the company closed a Series A+ funding round with $15.5 million. Additional resources will be used for further, faster scaling and extending to new regions.
Clean energy
Swell Energy
Country: USA
Founded date: 2014
Swell Energy offers smart grid and energy management solutions for homeowners and businesses. In partnership with local solar utility providers and other solar companies, the company helps customers control energy use and costs and reach energy safety. To achieve that, the company has created Virtual Power Plant programs (VPP), which networks together smart-energy technology users to create reliable and carbon-neutral grid capabilities. Also, all customers gain access to the Compass platform, which connects to all energy devices and allows for monitoring consumption and generating reports.
Swell Energy already operates in California, Hawaii and New York State. It has raised $120 million in a Series B funding round. Resources will be used for further development of VPP programs, implementing 26,000 solar energy storage systems across the country.
E-learning, Finance
Female Invest
Country: Denmark
Founded date: 2019
Female Invest is a subscription-based education platform for women aimed at providing investment education. Content is presented in the form of courses, webinars, video tutorials, articles and live events, with the goal of helping women learn about money and investing and thereby filling a gender gap in financial literacy. At the moment, the platform has users from 89 countries, creating a global community of like-minded women.
Recently the company acquired Danish fintech company Gaia Investments. Gaia is a trading platform focused on investing in sustainable projects and businesses. In the near future, Female Invest students will be able to invest directly on the platform and apply their knowledge in practice.
E-learning, Artificial Intelligence
Obrizum
Country: UK
Founded date: 2015
Obrizum provides an adaptive learning platform for workers at companies and organizations. Most businesses are aware of the need to upskill and reskill staff, but creating learning programs and teaching processes takes time and money. Obrizum offers a “knowledge space” approach that encompasses the company’s existing training resources, webcasts, PDFs, slide decks and VR content. An AI engine makes it possible to create individual training experiences, reveal gaps in knowledge, and measure efficiency of training.
The company says it is currently working with about 20 enterprise clients, including government, aerospace and defense organizations. Recently, it raised $11.5 million in a Series A funding round. The aim is to bring the company’s adaptive learning technology to more companies and help shape a successful workforce.
