Investing in and going to market with startups spanning AI, data, cyber, ESG
Ìý
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Ventures invests in early-stage start-ups to deliver transformative solutions that empower clients to thrive. As the investor of choice for start-ups focused on driving enterprise innovation, the ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø U.S. Ventures team provides more than just capital â€� we offer a launchpad for growth, differentiation, and access to partnerships that catapult success. ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Ventures is part of ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹Ù꿉۪s Enterprise Innovation group, a firmwide initiative focused on investing in and incubating emerging technologies to enhance how we serve our clients and empower our people.
Ventures carefully selects and cultivates relationships with emerging companies developing technologies in areas including artificial intelligence (AI), data, cybersecurity, ESG, people analytics, and more. By bridging the gap between start-ups and established businesses, we enable ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø U.S. clients to continuously adopt new capabilities that fuel both ours and their competitive advantage.
"Disruption is accelerating â€� our clients need agile access to carefully vetted emerging technologies opportunities and deliver transformative growth," saidÌýCliff Justice, U.S. Leader for Enterprise Innovation at ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø.Ìý“By collaborating with the start-up ecosystem, we empower organizations to adopt trusted, cutting-edge capabilities that accelerate value and help them maintain their competitive edge with confidence."
Artificial Intelligence and Automation
In spring 2023,ÌýÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø announcedÌýan investment inÌý, a cutting edge software company that enables organizations to secure their artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Cranium was spun out from ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Studio â€� the firm’s internal incubator â€� and was developed in collaboration with AI Security experts in the firm’s Advisory practice based on real AI client challenges. As our clientsâ€� reliance on AI increases, so too has the need for identifying, securing, and protecting the AI and GenAI models and associated training data. Cranium provides the software platform to inventory AI components and drive visibility and compliance across the enterprise and third parties.Ìý Cranium was purpose built to help secure those AI and machine learning systems without interrupting how the company trains, tests, and deploys models.ÌýAfter providing initial seed funding, ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Ventures also most recently participated in Cranium'sÌý.
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø recently made a minority equity investment inÌý, a pioneer in automated, generative AI-powered intelligent applications for finance.ÌýUtilizing generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) and large language models (LLMs), Auditoria’s technology has the potential to reshape the corporate finance landscape. Auditoria is a Workday approved software partner, one of ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹Ù꿉۪s alliance partners, and processes ERP data to help organizations achieve greater cash position visibility by automating and orchestrating business processes.
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø most recently made an investment inÌý, a software testing solution start-up that helps organizations transition from legacy systems to new technologies. Opkey’s software solutions improve the quality of the test automation process, and its platform also makes it faster and more cost-effective. Opkey does this by removing many of the repetitive, manual tasks that often take significant time and can result in errors. With many of the firm’s clients looking for efficient solutions to help them upgrade to new applications and technologies, Opkey is positioned to create value for our clients by enhancing quality and accelerate deployment at lower cost.
Applying ML/AI to sustainability reporting
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø also invested in distributed ledger technology and climate data and analytics companyÌýÌýto help companies that are increasingly interested in better measuring, quantifying, and reducing their environmental footprints. Enabled by machine learning and AI, the collaboration between Context Labs and ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø U.S. is already demonstrating results with Williams, an energy company handling 30% of the natural gas in the United States. Williams is leveraging Context Labsâ€� Decarbonization-as-a-ServiceTM platform to track and measure emissions across the full energy value chain, executing the energy industry’s first end-to-end methane intensity certification, supported by ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø.
Leveraging the cloud safely and securely
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Ventures recently invested inÌý, a cybersecurityÌýstartup that provides data security, privacy, and resiliency solutions - three capabilities that will become increasingly critical as organizations become dependent on proprietary data to train ML models and harness the potential of AI. ShardSecure has developed a patented technology that splits sensitive data into small, byte-sized files and distributes them across multiple cloud providers. This "data sharding" approach enables secure data storage in the cloud, prevents cloud admins or providers from accessing the data set, and mitigates ransomware attacks.ÌýShardSecure allows companies to leverage the cloud's scalability and cost benefits for sensitive data while still maintaining complete security, privacy, resilience, and control.Ìý
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø U.S. has also entered an alliance with ShardSecure, providing their unique data solutions to clients who understand that keeping their data safe and secure is paramount to maintaining trust and success in the market.Ìý
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Ventures for startups
Download PDFÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø US and IBM Expand Alliance in Energy & Utilities
Expansion of current alliance to help enable business transformations for clients implementing SAP S/4HANA® across the energy and utilities industry
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Survey: Majority of US businesses say they have not seen an increase in performance or profitability from digital transformation investments
The majority of US businesses say they have not seen an increase in performance or profitability from digital transformation investments in the last two years, a new ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø survey has found.
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø Establishes New AI and Digital Innovation Group
ÀÖÓ㣨Leyu£©ÌåÓý¹ÙÍø LLP announced the establishment of an AI and Digital Innovation group led by a newly named Vice Chair, Steve Chase. Read more.