• Open Scout
  • Posts
  • AI Content Moderation & Streamlined Cash Flow Management

AI Content Moderation & Streamlined Cash Flow Management

April 11, 2024

👋

Welcome to another edition of , where we showcase the most exciting early-stage startups, job openings, and valuable resources, all in a single newsletter.

Before we begin... a big thank you to this week's sponsor

Incogni is a personal data removal service that scrubs your information, such as SSN, DOB, addresses, health information, and contact details, from the web.

With Incogni, you'll worry less about ID theft, health insurers raising your rates based on information from data brokers, spam calls, and scammers taking out loans in your name.

Startup Spotlight

What? - A fully customizable AI-based content moderation platform

Intrinsic's platform is designed for moderating both user- and AI-generated content, providing infrastructure to empower customers—mainly social media companies and e-commerce marketplaces—to detect and take action on content that violates their policies. Intrinsic focuses on safety product integration, automatically orchestrating tasks such as banning users and flagging content for review.

Why? - Trust & Safety engineers need to combat evolving threats like fake accounts, illegal content, hate speech, and misinformation. However, they face two main challenges:

  1. Data Silos: Trust & Safety teams lack access to crucial data held by product and customer service teams.

  2. Costly Integration: Integrating data with detection services is expensive.

As a result, safety efforts are reactive and integration tasks are burdensome.

Intrinsic integrates policy management, data engineering, moderator workflow management, and content understanding under one platform.

Founded: 2023 in San Francisco, CA

By: Karine Mellata - ex-Data Engineer (Trust & Safety) @ Apple; Michael Lin - ex-Machine Learning Engineer (Safety Machine Learning) @ Discord and Apple

Funding: $3.1 million seed

Competitors: Spectrum Labs, Azure, Cinder

What? - A streamlined cash flow management platform.

Payable facilitates finance teams to:

  • Seamlessly connect, track, and analyze all cash flows in real-time.

  • Construct flexible forecasts, execute on-demand scenarios, and foresee future costs and revenue.

  • Automate cash reporting workflows from data access to detailed analysis and board updates.

Why? - In today's dynamic business landscape, effective cash flow management is essential for sustained success. With the global economy heavily reliant on digital transactions, seamless financial processes are crucial. However, manual intervention persists, causing delays and errors. Payable provides a modern solution, leveraging automation and real-time analysis to optimize cash flow management. Empowering finance teams to forecast, analyze, and automate cash flows.

Founded: 2022 in London, UK

By: Daniel Yubi (CEO) - ex-Senior Product Manager - Marketplaces, Platforms & Payfacs ; Razvan Musca (CTO) - ex-Engineering Director

Funding: $6.1 million seed

Which early-stage startup should we feature next? Send us a reply. (Criteria: Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A startups)

Venture Deals

  • Collaborative Robotics (Cobot), a Santa Clara, CA-based developer of practical collaborative robots for industries like manufacturing, healthcare, and retail/e-commerce, raised $100 million in Series B funding. General Catalyst led the round and was joined by Bison Ventures, Industry Ventures, Lux Capital, Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and others.

  • FloQast, a Los Angeles, CA-based financing and accounting operations platform, raised $100 million in Series E funding. ICONIQ Growth led the round and was joined by BDT & MSD Partners, WiL, Meritech Capital, and Sapphire Ventures.

  • Proxima Fusion, a Munich, Germany-based startup building fusion power plants, raised €20 million in seed funding. Redalpine led the round and was joined by Bayern Kapital, DeepTech & Climate Fonds, Max Planck Foundation, and others.

  • PeerDB, a San Francisco, CA-based data movement platform for PostgreSQL, raised $3.6 million in seed funding. 8VC and Y Combinator led the round and were joined by Wayfinder Ventures, Webb Investment Network, Flex Capital, Rogue Capital, Pioneer Fund, Orange Collective, and others.

  • Monad Labs, the NYC-based developer of the Monad blockchain, raised $225 million in Series A funding. Paradigm led the round and was joined by Electric Capital and Greenoaks.

  • Andesite, a Washington, D.C.-based AI-powered cybersecurity platform, raised $15.3 million in funding from Red Cell Partners and General Catalyst.

  • Symbolica, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of AI models capable of structured reasoning, raised $33 million in funding. Khosla Ventures led the round and was joined by Day One Ventures, General Catalyst, Abstract Ventures, and Buckley Ventures.

  • Guesty, a Covina, CA-based property management software platform designed for the short-term rental and hospitality industry, raised $130 million in Series F funding. KKR led the round and was joined by Inovia Capital and existing investors Apax, BDT & MSD, and Sixth Street.

  • Summer, a NYC-based platform designed to help employees manage their student loans, find forgiveness options, and lower their monthly payments, raised $9 million in funding. Rebalance Capital and Semper Virens led the round and were joined by General Catalyst, QED, Flourish Ventures, Partnership Fund for NYC, Fenway Summer, and Gaingels.

  • Sprinto, a San Francisco, CA-based automated risk and compliance platform, raised $20 million in funding. Accel led the round and was joined by existing investors Elevation Capital and Blume Ventures.

  • Varda Space Industries, a El Segundo, CA-based designer of in-space drug manufacturing infrastructure and Earth re-entry capsules, raised $90 million in Series B funding. Caffeinated Capital led the round and was joined by Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund, and Khosla Ventures.

  • Archetype AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based developer of an AI model designed to understand the physical world and answer open-ended questions about it, raised $13 million in seed funding. Venrock led the round and was joined by Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Hitachi Ventures, Buckley Ventures, Plug and Play Ventures, Earl Grey Capital, Strange Ventures, and others.

  • Pigment, a Paris, France-based business planning platform, raised $145 million in Series D funding. ICONIQ Growth led the round and was joined by Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, IVP, Meritech, and others.

  • SiMa.ai, a San Jose, CA-based developer of generative AI chips for edge computing devices like smartphones, autonomous vehicles, and smart appliances, raised $70 million in funding. Maverick Capital led the round and was joined by Point72, Jericho, Amplify Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and others.

  • Torus, a Salt Lake, UT-based manufacturer of energy storage and management products for the residential, commercial, and large-scale utility sectors, raised $67 million in funding. Origin Ventures led the round and was joined by EpicVentures, Cumming Capital, the Larry H. Miller Company, Zions Bank, Pelion, and ICONIQ.

  • SingleInterface, a Haryana, India-based provider of hyperlocal marketing-to-commerce software, raised $30 million in funding. Asia Partners led the round and was joined by PayPal Ventures.

  • Ellipsis Labs, the NYC-based developer of the Phoenix decentralized exchange, raised $20 million in Series A funding. Paradigm led the round and was joined by Electric Capital.

  • Manifold, a Newton, MA-based AI-powered clinical research platform, raised $15 million in Series A funding. TQ Ventures led the round and was joined by Calibrate Ventures, SK Ventures, and others.

  • Rally, the NYC-based user research CRM company, raised $8.8 million in seed funding. Stage 2 Capital led the round and was joined by Y Combinator and TIA Ventures.

Elsewhere

  • In Q1 2024, a16z led the pack in post-seed investments ($3M and above), participating in 27 rounds, according to Crunchbase. Y Combinator followed with 18 deals, and General Catalyst with 15.

  • Automattic, the owner of WordPress.com, is acquiring Beeper (the company behind the iMessage-on-Android solution that was referenced by the Department of Justice in its antitrust lawsuit against Apple) for $125 million, marking its second acquisition of a cross-platform messaging solution after Texts.com last October. Beeper's founder, Eric Migicovsky, will now lead Automattic's messaging division.

  • SpaceX’s prized Starlink satellite business is still burning through more cash than it brings in. Bloomberg has more here.

  • ByteDance Ltd., the parent company of TikTok, saw a 60% surge in profit to $40 billion in 2023, outpacing rivals like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. However, its US business faces challenges from lawmakers.

  • Both OpenAI and Meta are nearing the release of new AI models capable of ‘reasoning’ and ‘planning’. The FT has more here.

  • Uniswap, a peer-to-peer blockchain network, received notice from the U.S. SEC of its intention to pursue enforcement action against the company, resulting in a 20% decline in its token value.

  • Global equity supply is rapidly shrinking, marking the third straight year of decline. Economic uncertainty and extensive stock buybacks by companies are major factors. The global public stock universe has decreased by $120 billion in 2024, triple the reduction seen last year. In the U.S., listed companies have dropped from over 7,000 to under 4,000 since 2000, with fewer opting for public exits due to the appeal of alternatives like private equity.

New Job Openings

None of these a fit? Join our professional network — tech-savvy individuals welcome!

Thanks for reading.

If you enjoyed it, please forward it to a friend—it's quick and can make a real impact. If not, you can unsubscribe below.

See you next Thursday — Kenneth

P.S. Interested in sponsoring next week's issue? Shoot me an email.