Fermata Discovery Raises Seed Round, Fundings: Emrod, SiLC, Orbital Sidekick
19 October 2022 - A Weekly Publication by New North Ventures
We are proud to back the exceptional team at Fermata Discovery. Fermata recently raised their $3mm seed round with New North Ventures as the lead investor along with Bonfire Ventures, Good Growth Capital and Two Lanterns Venture Partners. The company was founded by Amanda von Goetz in 2019. Fermata is an AI-driven software development firm designed to automate and scale routine processes involved with investigative workflows.
"We are excited to partner with Fermata Discovery, a world-class female-founded company that is bringing a new level of innovation and creativity to technology solutions for the investigative community. Fermata is operating at the intersection of two powerful forces - exponential growth of data and increasing demands on investigative entities to more rapidly unlock connections and develop deep insights within that data. We believe Fermata's VIXN platform has the potential to transform and accelerate human engagement with both open-source and proprietary data, dramatically improving the quality and speed of investigations across key sectors ranging from law enforcement and the IC to financial institutions and non-profit organizations."
Founded: 2019
Key People: Founded by Greg Kushnir
Elevator Pitch: Energy technology designed to enable long-range wireless energy transmission.
Funding: The company raised NZD 3.3 million of seed funding from Powerco, Empire Group International and New Zealand Government on October 18, 2022. Other undisclosed investors also participated in the round. The funds will be used to provide the power beaming technology for the demonstration.
Founded: 2018
Key People: Co-founded by Mehdi Asghari Ph.D and Jonathan Luff Ph.D
Elevator Pitch: Photonic sensors and 3D imaging applications designed to address the growing needs of autonomous devices.
Funding: The company raised $18.5 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors on October 14, 2022.
Founded: 2016
Key People: Co-founded by Daniel Katz and Tushar Prabhakar.
Elevator Pitch: Hyperspectral data imaging technology designed to capture and send images and mapping data of the earth.
Funding: The company raised $7 million of venture funding from undisclosed investors on October 14, 2022.
Innovating the Profession of Arms: Education for Defense Innovation
Defense Innovation Unit notes: “we live in an era in which technology competition is the new global battleground. Our adversaries are investing heavily, acting nimbly, and building strategically. Therefore, speed in technology adoption and integration is critical.”
DoD leaders are not receiving the level of education necessary to adopt and implement new technologies that are changing the nature of modern warfare.
Those who work in procurement and acquisition for the DoD need adapted technology development to connect DIU and DAU to drive innovation adoption.
U.S. aims to hobble China's chip industry with sweeping new export rules
The Biden administration launched a broad set of export controls that will require many US companies to halt shipments of equipment to Chinese-owned factories that produce advanced logic chips and cut off China from US equipment made semiconductors.
These new regulations were made in order to slow Chinese technological and military advances in order to level the playing field.
The new rules will restrict shipments to China of chips used in supercomputing systems that are used to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies.
Gartner: Security Spending To Rise Despite Recession Fears
It is estimated that global spending on security and risk management will rise by about 11.3 percent to $188.3 billion in 2023 compared to a 7.2% increase in 2022.
Security spending is increasing due to a rise in cybersecurity threats, the shift to remote working since the beginning of the pandemic, and data being shifted to the cloud in organizations.
“The modern CISO needs to focus on an expanding attack surface created by digital transformation initiatives such as cloud adoption, IT/OT-IoT convergence, remote working and third-party infrastructure integration.”
Check out our Securing the Future Podcasts wherever you listen, or click to listen now on spotify below:
