Primer Technologies, an AI/ML technology firm specializing in building and deploying decision-ready AI, today announced it has joined NVIDIA Inception, a program that nurtures startups revolutionizing industries with technological advancements. 

Primer offers trusted AI solutions to the U.S. government, strategic allies, and large enterprises. Powered by its proprietary natural language processing (NLP) technology, Primer's solutions enable leaders, operators, and analysts to access and analyze their unstructured data sources to make better-informed and more confident decisions faster.

By joining NVIDIA Inception, Primer will have access to NVIDIA's technology and technical expertise, including the latest GPUs to efficiently handle extensive language models, such as large language models (LLMs) and domain-specific models. This collaboration will help Primer rapidly deliver best-in-class AI solutions to customers and allow it to work with fellow industry-leading experts and companies.

"We are thrilled to join NVIDIA Inception. In collaboration with NVIDIA and other AI-centric companies, we plan to bring the power of AI-driven innovation to customers and help them stay competitive in dynamically changing global environments," said Sean Moriarty, CEO of Primer.

In June 2023, Primer announced it raised a Series D round with a first close of $69M to accelerate company growth. The collaboration with NVIDIA is one of many efforts to bring Primer's AI solutions, including its flagship platform, Primer Delta, to a larger audience.

Blues, a leader in IIoT technology enabling global connectivity solutions, today announced its partnership with industrial-focused connectivity and hardware manufacturer, RAKwireless. Blues' Notecard is now available across RAKwireless' extensive portfolio of WisBlock modules, sensors and enclosures, simplifying global cellular connectivity for IIoT solutions.

IIoT products are often stalled by complex physical design features and incompatibility between connectivity options. Together, Blues and RAKwireless will provide global customers with a simple and pre-configured cellular IIoT solution, Blues.ONE, and a composable WisBlock interface board, RAK13102. Interchangeable components make it easy to adjust, tailor and refine IIoT solutions and connectivity options, even for less technical users.

"Our partnership with RAKwireless is revolutionary for IIoT advancement, bringing together Blues' scalability, security and simplicity, and the unique modularity of the WisBlock ecosystem. With Blues' Notecard, RAKwireless' Blues.ONE and RAK13102 will simplify programming for engineers, allowing them to streamline IIoT product deployment," said Brandon Satrom, VP of Developer Experience and VP of Product at Blues. "It's now easier than ever to build cellular IIoT solutions using bundled coverage and data in over 139 countries."

The simplified IIoT development process enabled by Blues and RAKwireless will allow customers to quickly deploy devices for individual use cases including industrial equipment monitoring and asset tracking. With cellular and LoRa options, RAKwireless and Blues customers around the world can rapidly create IIoT solutions that support wireless harmonization. 

"Blues' Notecard and RAKwireless' WisBlock solutions offer a simplified and seamless IIoT connectivity solution that bypasses traditional complexities. This partnership accelerates prototyping and provides users with a holistic solution that enables smooth transitions across regions," said Ken Yu, CEO at RAKwireless. "The adaptability of Blues' technology and the assurance of backup connectivity ensures that our users can experience uninterrupted IIoT connectivity."

Digital medicine pioneer aims to revolutionize life sciences and healthcare data synthesis through AI-driven data connections and collaborations with clinical-grade compliance.

Betteromics which has developed a clinical-grade compliant Software-as-a-Service platform that empowers life sciences professionals with the latest AI and computational techniques, announced that it has raised $20 million in a Series A financing led by Sofinnova Partners and Triatomic Capital, with participation from SHAKTI.

The company's Omics AI Cloud platform, which can be deployed privately, eliminates data silos, allowing users to analyze multi-modal, multi-omics data in one place. It reduces risk and increases velocity from data generation to AI-powered insights.

The financing will expand the Betteromics team, and scale marketing and sales efforts to life science companies, ranging from startups to the largest enterprises.

The company’s top executives — Angela Lai as Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chetan Patel as Chief Technology Officer, and Jack Menzel as Chief Product Officer — were integral in building transformative infrastructure that powers products at Google and GRAIL.

Lai said, “The industry has succeeded in finding ways to measure every omic and every analyte, but traditional methods and legacy systems have kept that data in silos, failing to unlock its immense potential. We've solved that.”

Betteromics was founded in 2020 with a mission to enable scientists, researchers, and clinicians to understand and gain insights from massive amounts of data using advanced computation and AI techniques. The Omics AI Cloud streamlines the creation of knowledge graphs, integrating and connecting data with emerging standards and ontologies from disparate silos. The platform is tailored to a range of users: from diagnostic and therapeutic product developers to biotech manufacturers needing real-time quality monitoring.

Designed with compliance at its core, the Betteromics platform is certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, SOC2 Type II and HITRUST i1, so that from day 1 users can ensure traceability and reproducibility for all data and analysis performed, allowing clients to operate their data knowing there are rigorous protocols in place for their most valuable and sensitive data assets.

Jeff Huber, Partner at Triatomic Capital, said: "The most meaningful application of AI technology is in life sciences. The Betteromics team is uniquely positioned with their translational experience from building the lab, data, clinical, and machine learning platform that powered the largest clinical studies ever done to reduce risk and increase velocity from data generation to AI-powered insight for life sciences companies of all sizes."

Edward Kliphuis, Partner at Sofinnova Partners, said: "Betteromics uniquely merges data science and human expertise in life sciences. The team brings together a rare combination of outstanding developers, data experts, and AI mavens with deep experience in the life sciences. Their groundbreaking approach to leveraging computational techniques on multi-omics datasets promises to bring unprecedented new insights and is poised to transform healthcare as we know it."

• The company’s technology, which removes the engineering complexity around AI systems for image analysis, will initially assist medical professionals

• Founder co-created Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up that was acquired by Twitter

L’école AI, creator of ÉO, a “machine teaching” technology that removes the engineering complexity around deep-learning systems for computer vision, announced that it has raised 3 million USD in Seed funding from Sofinnova Partners. The funds will be used to develop the company’s proprietary technology, which will be rolled out to medical professionals and researchers, enabling them to create bespoke AI systems to assist in their area of expertise. In addition, the financing will fuel the expansion of the team, accelerate product development and structure business efforts. Also participating in the round are notable business angels including Preston-Werner Ventures, the fund started by co-founder and former CEO of GitHub, Tom Preston-Werner.

“We're building a user interface for AI so anyone can create and benefit from their own personalized AI assistant,” said Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari, Co-Founder and President of L’école AI, which means "AI school" in French. “We also are creating a system that will open possibilities for secure collaboration between organizations.”

Etezad-Heydari co-founded Madbits, a deep-learning image-analysis start-up, with Clément Farabet in 2013. A year after its founding, Madbits was acquired by Twitter, where the two entrepreneurs ran Twitter Cortex, an internal team that built a Deep Learning platform to power recommendation systems, search, ranking and filtering at Twitter.

Kim Nilsson and Jonathan Alexander Brown teamed up with Etezad-Heydari to perfect the AI development framework for computer vision that initially inspired Madbits, and the three founders set off with the goal to make creating computer vision models simple enough for non-engineers.

“L'école’s technology is designed to democratize machine learning by enabling life science researchers and other non-machine learning experts to utilize tailored computer vision systems, thus accelerating life sciences research,” said Edward Kliphuis, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. “The focus on digital medicine is a logical entry point,” he noted.

“We’re starting with a focus on health care and life sciences because we want to make a positive impact right away,” said Jonathan Alexander Brown, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer. “With Sofinnova's support, we are confident we have the right skills to partner with researchers and clinicians in these tightly regulated markets.”

Farabet, an investor in L’école, is an AI pioneer. Currently VP of Research at Google DeepMind, he spent six years as a senior executive at NVIDIA, working on its autonomous vehicles and the company's data science platform. Farabet is also famous in the AI world as one of the creators of Torch, a machine learning framework that provides a simple and flexible interface for building and training deep neural networks.

L’école AI counts a number of other AI pioneers among its investors, including Nicolas Pinto, head of Deep Learning at Apple, Clément Delangue, Co-Founder and CEO at Hugging Face.

A leading automation solutions provider for the dental industry to use IntelePeer’s AI-driven Communications Automation Platform to improve patient experience

IntelePeer, a leading provider of AI-powered communications automation solutions, has partnered with Dental Robot, the first intelligent automation platform designed for dental support organizations (DSO) to transform the $30B DSO marketplace where most calls and communications have changed very little in the last 20 years. Created initially to automate the insurance verification process, Dental Robot will now implement IntelePeer’s communications automation platform (CAP) to deliver an omni-channel, self-serve environment to its customers’ patients in order to improve data integrity within RCM (Revenue Cycle Management). To kick off the partnership, the two companies will be presenting at Becker’s Healthcare Future of Dentistry Roundtable.

“We’re excited to introduce the power of generative AI to the Dental Robot platform, taking the patient experience to the next level through the use of AI and automation,” commented Frank Fawzi, CEO at IntelePeer. “Working together, IntelePeer and Dental Robot solve two major pain points for the industry – insurance processing and the ability for patients to effectively self-serve without the need of costly human intervention. By using our communications automation platform, dental practices will be able to reduce labor costs, deliver personalized communications across channels, and see a return on their investment in a matter of weeks.”

Powered by AI, IntelePeer’s platform automates communications in a low-code and seamless manner. The platform leverages Azure’s OpenAI to enable users to build communications-enabled workflows that integrate seamlessly with existing processes. Moreover, users can create intelligent AI voice and messaging bots based on customer interactions, CRM information, and other data sources to enrich the patient experience. IntelePeer’s communications automation platform functionalities available to Dentist Robot customers include:

• True omnichannel experience automating messaging, chat, and email interactions.
• Virtual assistants harnessing built-in natural language processing and generative AI.
• Automated appointment scheduling, confirmation reminders, and rescheduling capabilities for both new and existing patients.
• Easy integration to CRM and other business applications.
• Self-serve data gathering capabilities and automated bill payment.
• Practice-specific Q&A database along with generative AI used to enable robust responses to thousands of questions.

“By partnering with IntelePeer, we’ll continue to improve both front- and back-office experiences for dental practices nationwide,” said Manuel Barroso, Chief Executive Officer, Dental Robot. “Together, we’re enabling practices to decrease manual processes, increase staff productivity, and save hundreds of hours a week by tapping into the power of AI and automation.”

As part of the partnership, IntelePeer will join forces with Dental Robot to present at industry events across the country. The first event, Becker’s Healthcare Future of Dentistry Roundtable, will feature Manuel Barroso and IntelePeer executives, Joe Galinanes and Corbin Fields, discussing how AI and automation can positively impact the patient experience in a session titled: Streamlining Customer Service and RCM with AI Automation. The presentation takes place on October 26, 2023, at 3:30 pm.

Arteria AI, the market-leading applied AI company building modern documentation infrastructure for institutional finance, today announced its oversubscribed $30 million Series B financing round led by GGV Capital U.S., with participation from all existing major investors, including Illuminate Financial, Information Venture Partners, BDC Capital and Citi. The round brings the company’s total funding to $50 million to date.

Arteria has been trusted by a multitude of premier financial institutions (including a number of global Tier 1 banks) to help them harness the power of AI to improve operational efficiency and enhance client experience. Documentation holds the key to capital markets transactions. Arteria’s AI-enabled software brings documentation to the digital age at an enterprise scale and unlocks speed and efficiency in areas like trading, lending and asset management, among others. Since launching in 2020, Arteria has experienced unprecedented momentum fueled by growing demand from banks, tripling its recurring revenue in the past year.

Shelby Austin, CEO and Co-Founder of Arteria AI, said, “We are thrilled to partner with GGV U.S. on our mission to address the documentation challenges in financial services. This milestone is proof positive that we are driving real and recognizable value throughout our customers.”

“Automation has come in waves to large financial institutions, but little has been done to effectively target documentation. It’s not just about cost and inefficiency – there are troves of valuable data that are just sitting idle,” said Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of GGV Capital U.S. “Arteria has built a powerful platform that is used across the leading financial services enterprises. We’re delighted to lead Arteria’s Series B and support the team’s vision to transform documentation in Financial Services.”

Chelcie Taylor, Investor at GGV Capital U.S., said: “We were immediately drawn to Shelby’s ability to communicate the scale—and opportunity—of the unstructured data problem. Her deep expertise and ability to attract incredible talent and drive growth, gave us confidence that Arteria could usher in a new AI-driven paradigm for how the modern financial institution engages with documentation.”

Citi backed Arteria through its strategic investments program by the Spread Products Investment Technologies (SPRINT) team, a group which invests in and incubates innovative, strategically relevant technology companies providing next-generation solutions to the financial markets. “We thrive on modernizing our franchise and delivering better services to our clients through digital innovation and partnership with industry-leading software providers such as Arteria AI,” said Mickey Bhatia, Head of Global Spread Products at Citi.

“Documentation is at the center of client experience, and there is significant value in getting it right,” said Fernando Dammert, COO of Financial Institutions Sales and Solutions at Citi. “Arteria AI enables us to collaborate more efficiently across functions and drive value for our clients.”

Arteria will use the funds to further accelerate go-to-market activities and continue to develop its market-leading artificial intelligence technology in financial services.

The Arteria AI Platform

The Arteria AI platform removes the need for legacy manual processes by structuring data at the onset of the documentation lifecycle. The platform then surfaces data and insights through intelligent workflow tools to speed up decision-making processes for all stakeholders with a highly intuitive front-end.

Built by subject matter experts, data scientists and technologists, the AI platform forms the documentation layer for banking processes and enables the real-time flow of data and analytics. By connecting documentation processes to the automation lifecycle, Arteria enables true straight-through-processing in core business activities across the enterprise.

High-growth field service management platform at the convergence of SaaS and payments helps customers simplify operations, streamline their sales processes, and improve collections

Complementary solutions align with current customer base’s needs, enhancing cross-sell opportunities and strengthening relationships

Further expands total addressable market

WEX, the global commerce platform that simplifies the business of running a business, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Payzer, a high-growth, cloud-based, field service management software provider. Upon expected completion, the acquisition will advance WEX’s growth strategy of expanding its product suite and creating additional cross-sell opportunities by providing a new, scalable SaaS solution for its approximately 150,000 small business customers who operate field service companies.

“We are thrilled at the prospect of providing an exciting new offering for our Mobility customers with the anticipated acquisition of Payzer,” said Melissa Smith, WEX’s Chair, Chief Executive Officer, and President. “Payzer's top-tier service offering and feature set is at the convergence of SaaS and payments. Payzer is an example of us finding a high-growth market with a customer base that overlaps with our current customer footprint, with a great product and service offering to address the needs of these customers.”

WEX is a leader in mobility solutions with more than 600,000 customers and approximately 19 million vehicles served on its Mobility platforms. Payzer is a full-featured field service management SaaS provider, offering scheduling, dispatching, customer communications, invoicing, sales proposals, supply ordering, and maintenance agreements. Payzer has initially focused on providing solutions to HVAC, plumbing, and roofing small businesses. These solutions are all woven together in an easy-to-use and intuitive software package available on both desktop and mobile applications. In addition, Payzer has deep relationships and distribution partnerships with key OEMs in the industries it serves, simplifying the relationship for customers with their upstream suppliers.

Transaction Details

Pursuant to the terms of the definitive agreement, WEX will acquire Payzer for total consideration of approximately $250 million, with additional contingent consideration of up to $11 million based on defined performance metrics, subject to certain working capital and other adjustments. WEX intends to finance the acquisition through its revolving credit facility and cash on hand.

The transaction is expected to be completed before the end of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions.

Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results

In a separate press release issued today, WEX announced its third quarter 2023 results and raised its full-year 2023 financial guidance.

As previously announced, WEX will host its third quarter earnings conference call today, October 26, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. (ET). The conference call will be webcast live on the Internet, and can be accessed along with the accompanying slides at the Investor Relations section of the WEX website, www.wexinc.com. The live conference call also can be accessed by dialing (888) 510-2008 or (646) 960-0306. The Conference ID number is 2237921. A replay of the webcast and the accompanying slides will be available on the Company's website.

Seasoned marketing veteran brings over 25 years of experience driving sales and marketing alignment

Xactly, the leader in intelligent revenue solutions, today announced that Jennifer McAdams is joining the organization as Chief Marketing Officer. With over two decades of experience leading marketing teams within the software industry, McAdams will partner with Xactly’s marketing and sales teams to create and execute integrated strategies that will accelerate growth and drive significant impact for Xactly.

McAdams has worked closely with Xactly over the past year, serving in an advisory CMO role as part of Vista Equity Partners’ Value Creation Team. Her partnership and the execution of a comprehensive marketing plan generated increased pipeline and higher quality leads for Xactly, inspiring the decision for McAdams to join permanently as a member of the senior leadership team.

“Jen’s comprehensive and inclusive approach is already paying dividends at Xactly,” said Arnab Mishra, Chief Operating Officer at Xactly. “Aligning Marketing with Product, Support, Customer Success and Renewals will propel the brand and pave the way for Xactly’s next stage of growth.” 

Prior to Vista Equity Partners, McAdams served in various marketing roles at Progress, SAP, Ixia and Kaseya, dedicating her career to implementing impactful marketing strategies that empower sales teams.

“Xactly is a proven category leader in sales technology, developed by salespeople and for salespeople,” said McAdams. “By rallying sales and marketing together under one umbrella with streamlined processes, common KPIs, and a shared sense of trust, we’re poised to help customers adopt a similar holistic approach and achieve even greater high-quality revenue in the future.”