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OctoML raises $28M Series B for its machine learning acceleration platform

Published March 17, 2021

OctoML, a Seattle-based startup that offers a machine learning acceleration platform built on top of the open-source Apache TVM compiler framework project, today announced that it has raised a $28 million Series B funding round led by Addition. Previous investors Madrona Venture Group and Amplify Partners also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $47 million. The company last raised in April 2020, when it announced its $15 million Series A round led by Amplify.

The promise of OctoML, which was founded by the team that also created TVM, is that developers can bring their models to its platform and the service will automatically optimize that model’s performance for any given cloud or edge device.

As Brazil-born OctoML co-founder and CEO Luis Ceze told me, since raising its Series A round, the company started onboarding some early adopters to its “Octomizer” SaaS platform.

Image Credits: OctoML

“It’s still in early access, but we are we have close to 1,000 early access sign-ups on the waitlist,” Ceze said. “That was a pretty strong signal for us to end up taking this [funding]. The Series B was pre-emptive. We were planning on starting to raise money right about now. We had barely started spending our Series A money — we still had a lot of that left. But since we saw this growth and we had more paying customers than we anticipated, there were a lot of signals like, ‘hey, now we can accelerate the go-to-market machinery, build a customer success team and continue expanding the engineering team to build new features.’ ”

Ceze tells me that the team also saw strong growth signals in the overall community around the TVM project (with about 1,000 people attending its virtual conference last year). As for its customer base (and companies on its waitlist), Ceze says it represents a wide range of verticals that range from defense contractors to financial services and life science companies, automotive firms and startups in a variety of fields.

Recently, OctoML also launched support for the Apple M1 chip — and saw very good performance from that.

The company has also formed partnerships with industry heavyweights like Microsoft (which is also a customer), Qualcomm and AMD to build out the open-source components and optimize its service for an even wider range of models (and larger ones, too).

Deep Science: Using machine learning to study anatomy, weather and earthquakes

On the engineering side, Ceze tells me that the team is looking at not just optimizing and tuning models but also the training process. Training ML models can quickly become costly and any service that can speed up that process leads to direct savings for its users — which in turn makes OctoML an easier sell. The plan here, Ceze tells me, is to offer an end-to-end solution where people can optimize their ML training and the resulting models and then push their models out to their preferred platform. Right now, its users still have to take the artifact that the Octomizer creates and deploy that themselves, but deployment support is on OctoML’s roadmap.

“When we first met Luis and the OctoML team, we knew they were poised to transform the way ML teams deploy their machine learning models,” said Lee Fixel, founder of Addition. “They have the vision, the talent and the technology to drive ML transformation across every major enterprise. They launched Octomizer six months ago and it’s already becoming the go-to solution developers and data scientists use to maximize ML model performance. We look forward to supporting the company’s continued growth.”

OctoML raises $15M to make optimizing ML models easier

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Strike Graph raises $3.9M to help automate security audits

Published October 5, 2020

Compliance automation isn’t exactly the most exciting topic, but security audits are big business and companies that aim to get a SOC 2, ISO 207001 or FedRamp certification can often spend six figures to get through the process with the help of an auditing service. Seattle-based Strike Graph, which is launching today and announcing a $3.9 million seed funding round, wants to automate as much of this process as possible.

The company’s funding round was led by Madrona Venture Group, with participation from Amplify.LA, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and Green D Ventures.

Strike Graph co-founder and CEO Justin Beals tells me that the idea for the company came to him during his time as CTO at machine learning startup Koru (which had a bit of an odd exit last year). To get enterprise adoption for that service, the company had to get a SOC 2 security certification. “It was a real challenge, especially for a small company. In talking to my colleagues, I just recognized how much of a challenge it was across the board. And so when it was time for the next startup, I was just really curious,” he told me.

Image Credits: Strike Graph

Together with his co-founder Brian Bero, he incubated the idea at Madrona Venture Labs, where he spent some time as Entrepreneur in Residence after Koru.

Beals argues that today’s process tends to be slow, inefficient and expensive. The idea behind Strike Graph, unsurprisingly, is to remove as many of these inefficiencies as is currently possible. The company itself, it is worth noting, doesn’t provide the actual audit service. Businesses will still need to hire an auditing service for that. But Beals also argues that the bulk of what companies are paying for today is pre-audit preparation.

“We do all that preparation work and preparing you and then, after your first audit, you have to go and renew every year. So there’s an important maintenance of that information.”

Image Credits: Strike Graph

When customers come to Strike Graph, they fill out a risk assessment. The company takes that and can then provide them with controls for how to improve their security posture — both to pass the audit and to secure their data. Beals also noted that soon, Strike Graph will be able to help businesses automate the collection of evidence for the audit (say your encryption settings) and can pull that in regularly. Certifications like SOC 2, after all, require companies to have ongoing security practices in place and get re-audited every 12 months. Automated evidence collection will launch in early 2021, once the team has built out the first set of its integrations to collect that data.

Taking on the perfect storm in cybersecurity

That’s also where the company, which mostly targets mid-size businesses, plans to spend a lot of its new funding. In addition, the company plans to focus on its marketing efforts, mostly around content marketing and educating its potential customers.

“Every company, big or small, that sells a software solution must address a broad set of compliance requirements in regards to security and privacy. Obtaining the certifications can be a burdensome, opaque and expensive process. Strike Graph is applying intelligent technology to this problem — they help the company identify the appropriate risks, enable the audit to run smoothly and then automate the compliance and testing going forward,” said Hope Cochran, managing director at Madrona Venture Group. “These audits were a necessary pain when I was a CFO, and Strike Graph’s elegant solution brings together teams across the company to move the business forward faster.”

Africa Roundup: Jumia files for IPO, OneFi acquires Amplify, FlexClub expands in Mexico

Published April 4, 2019

Less than a decade ago IPOs, acquisitions and global expansion by African startups were more possibility than reality. March saw all three from the continent’s tech scene.

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, per SEC documents and confirmation from chief executive Sacha Poignonnec.

In an updated filing, (since the March 12 original) Jumia indicated it will offer 13,500,000 ADR shares, for an offering price of $13 to $16 per share to trade under the ticker symbol “JMIA.” The IPO could raise up to $216 million for Jumia.

Since our first story (and reflected in the latest SEC docs), Mastercard Europe agreed upfront to buy $50 million in Jumia ordinary shares.

With a smooth filing process, Jumia will become the first African startup to list on a major global exchange. The company is incorporated in Germany, but maintains its headquarters in Nigeria, and operates exclusively in Africa, with 4,000 employees on the continent.

The pending IPO creates another milestone for Jumia. The venture became the first African startup unicorn in 2016, achieving a $1 billion valuation after a funding round that included Goldman Sachs, AXA and MTN.

Founded in Lagos in 2012 with Rocket Internet backing, Jumia now operates multiple online verticals in 14 African countries. Goods and services lines include Jumia Food (an online takeout service), Jumia Flights (for travel bookings) and Jumia Deals (for classifieds). Jumia processed more than 13 million packages in 2018, according to company data. The company has started to generate annual revenues over $100 million, but like many burn-rate startups, has done so while racking up big losses.

There’ll be a lot more to cover, analyze and debate pre and post Jumia’s NYSE bell toll — which could happen in coming weeks or months. For example, can Jumia generate a profit; is it really an African startup; will Jumia become an acquisition target for a big outside name or an acquirer of smaller startups in African e-commerce? Stay tuned for continuing TechCrunch coverage.

On the acquisition front, Lagos-based online lending startup OneFi bought Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify for an undisclosed amount.

OneFi is taking over Amplify’s IP, team and client network of more than 1,000 merchants to which Amplify provides payment processing services, OneFi CEO Chijioke Dozie told TechCrunch.

The purchase of Amplify caps off a busy period for OneFi. Over the last seven months the Nigerian venture secured a $5 million lending facility from Lendable, announced a payment partnership with Visa and became one of the first (known) African startups to receive a global credit rating. OneFi is also dropping the name of its signature product, Paylater, and will simply go by OneFi (for now).

Collectively, these moves represent a pivot for OneFi away from operating primarily as a digital lender, toward becoming an online consumer finance platform.

“We’re not a bank but we’re offering more banking services…Customers are now coming to us not just for loans but for cheaper funds transfer, more convenient bill payment, and to know their credit scores,” said Dozie.

OneFi will add payment options for clients on social media apps, including WhatsApp, this quarter — something in which Amplify already holds a specialization and client base. Through its Visa partnership, OneFi will also offer clients virtual Visa wallets on mobile phones and start providing QR code payment options at supermarkets, on public transit and across other POS points in Nigeria.

On the back of the acquisition, OneFi is in the process of raising a round and will look to expand internationally, considering Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Ghana and Egypt and Europe for Diaspora markets.

On African startups expanding globally, FlexClub — a South African venture that matches investors and drivers to cars for ride-hailing services — announced it will expand in Mexico in a partnership with Uber after closing a $1.2 million seed round led by CRE Venture Capital.

The move comes as Africa’s tech-transit space continues to produce unique mobility solutions shaped around local needs.

FlexClub touts itself as a “gig economy investment platform” that is creating new asset classes in emerging markets, according to chief executive and co-founder Tinashe Ruzane.

That asset class, for now, is ride-hail vehicles. FlexClub allows investors to go on the site and purchase a car (ultimately managed and serviced by FlexClub). The startup then connects that car to an Uber driver who uses earnings to pay a weekly rental charge.

Those fees generate monthly fixed-rate interest income for the investor. The driver has the option of buying the car after 12 months, with a descending purchase price over time.

FlexClub’s platform manages the investment, rental income and disbursement of funds across all parties. The startup also handles insurance, maintenance and upkeep of the cars.

Ruzane envisions this as a model to finance multiple asset classes in emerging markets — where lending options are fewer for individuals who may not have credit histories.

“Our goal is to make this completely passive… where investors can invest in different kinds of assets on our platform, login to a dash, and see this is how my five cars in South Africa are doing, my vans in Mexico, my motorbikes in Indonesia — with a diversified portfolio around the world,” he explained.

FlexClub will begin work matching investors to cars and Uber drivers in Mexico in April. The startup sees opportunities to move into other mobility classes, such as Africa’s ride-hail motorcycle taxi and three-wheel tuk-tuk market, CEO Tinashe Ruzane told TechCrunch in this feature.

And finally, francophone Africa will see a boost in funds and support for startups. The Dakar Network Angels group launched last month, making its first investment to cleantech venture Coliba — an Ivorian startup that uses a mobile app to coordinate waste recycling

The deal is part of Dakar Network Angels’ mission of convening experts and capital to bridge the resource gap for startups in French-speaking Africa — or 24 of the continent’s 54 countries.

The organization — which goes by DNA for short — will offer seed fund investments of between $25,000 to $100,000 to early-stage ventures with high growth potential. These rounds will come with the entrepreneurial guidance of DNA’s angel network.

Launched in Senegal, the organization’s founder Marieme Diop — a VC investor at Orange Digital Ventures — named the goal of bridging VC disparities between francophone and non-francophone Africa as the primary driver for DNA. She pointed to funding data by Partech, indicating that 76 percent of investment to African startups goes to three English-speaking countries — Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.

To gain consideration for DNA investment, startups must gain referral by a member. DNA will take a minority stake (less than 10 percent) in ventures that receive seed funds and provide program mentorship until exits, Diop told TechCrunch.

To become an angel, members must commit to investing a minimum of $10,000 a year (for those coming on as individuals), $20,000 (for corporates) and be on hand to support the portfolio startups, according to DNA’s Corporate Membership Charter.

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