Every startup raises funds believing that it is the next great disruptor in its industry. Millions of new companies launch every year; only 25% survive the first year and even fewer are viable after that. The volume of activity makes it challenging to separate the brands with promise from the ones that will be quickly forgotten. That is where we fit, digging so you don’t have to and mining these five potential nuggets.
There is an emphasis on AI and robotics within the group, including an effort to defy the laws of nature. Rainmaker Technology of El Segundo, California aims to live up to its name through cloud-seeding techniques that will make it rain for farming as well as investors. The company raised $6.3 million out of the gate and with its first class of engineers on board, is ready to put its head in the clouds.
Humanoid robots may no longer be the stuff of movies. The Norwegian company 1X is developing Neo, a second-generation model designed for common home assistant tasks. This firm is the furthest along of our five, having added $100 million in Series-B funding to its existing bankroll, in a crowded Android market that includes the likes of Tesla. 1X has signed up several enterprise clients eagerly awaiting this new chapter in innovation.
Two other firms have locked up Series-A funding. The first is StatusPro, a sports-focused virtual reality company based in Miami. The round of $20 million will go toward new titles to complement the flagship NFL PRO ERA game that gives football fans a close-up look at life on the gridiron. Ever wonder what those high-speed collisions are like? StatusPro turns fans into virtual players, putting them in the heart of the action.
The other Series-A recipient is 10Beauty, which is infusing automation into the salon business, in particular manicures. This round of $17 million will further the development of the company’s manicure maker. Customers use an app to enter their customized look and slip their hands inside the machine, and technology does the rest. The Massachusetts company says it has sold out its initial production run of 1,000 machines, which impacts salon efficiency and revenue. The devices work faster than human manicurists but also simultaneously allow salons to provide dual services, such as hairstyles.
The final company symbolizes a digital era in which personal relationships are often lacking. Butterflies.AI is using $4.8 million in initial seed funding on a social media platform where users can create virtual friends. These personas are designed with real people traits, including backstories, profiles, and emotions. This is the evolution of the old “imaginary friends” that children had and usually outgrew but with several stories that suggest individual loneliness is at crisis levels, Butterflies.AI may be filling a key niche.
There are, of course, other deals in the making that are geared at finding creative new ways of harnessing the power of AI, machine learning, and assisting technologies while also keeping the human being in mind. Software development, for instance, is a hot commodity in the artificial intelligence space as a means of balancing productivity with costs.
Keep in mind that simply attaching AI to an innovation does not guarantee that it will be useful or successful; market saturation is an issue in this space just as it is with any other industry. For confirmation of that, look back to the dawn of the .com era and the number of “can’t miss” ideas that crashed, taking a lot of investor cash with them.