Upland Software of Austin announced recently that it has acquired PostUp, an Austin-based email marketing company for $35 million.

Upland, which makes cloud-based enterprise work management software, reported that PostUp “is an important addition to Upland’s Customer Experience Management solution suite.” And the acquisition will add approximately $11 million in annual revenue to Upland.

Joshua Baer, founder of Capital Factory, originally founded what has come to be known as PostUp in 1996. Back then, the company was known as Skylist, an email service provider. Then PulsePoint, a digital marketing agency, acquired it, according to CrunchBase.

“At the beginning of 2014, PulseConnect and UnsubCentral were acquired by Transition Capital Partners and branded under the new name PostUp,” according to CrunchBase. “The founder, Joshua Baer, rejoined the company as board member and investor. The rebrand positions PostUp as an email marketing solutions provider that is focused and innovating around the needs of our customers.”

“PostUp adds deep market expertise, sophisticated audience development solutions, and an established customer base in media and publishing to our CXM solution suite,” Jack McDonald, chairman and CEO of Upland Software, said in a news release.

Also, McDonald said Upland is “actively pursuing additional opportunities to build out our solution suites.”

PostUp offers companies in the media and publishing sector drive customer engagement, grow their audiences and monetize their communications by generating new advertising and subscription revenue streams. Is customers include AdWeek, HBO, Clear Channel, and Univision.

Upland expects revenue of between $202.4 million and $206.4 million for the year ending Dec. 31, 2019.

Upland Software, which is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol UPLD, has more than 9,000 customers and one million users of its software.

KERV Interactive, an Austin-based video ad startup, has raised $11 million in funding.

Vestech Partners, a private equity group, led the investment.

KERV has created interactive video technology that helps brands engage with consumers. Its customers include eBay, Hewlett-Packard, LG Electronics, Fisher & Paykel, and Lamborghini.

“KERV represents the next generation of consumer experience in visual technology,” Riadh Fakhoury, founder and managing partner at Vestech Partners, said in a news release.  

Vestech Partners has led rounds in multiple technology companies and participates in high-end technology opportunities with huge institutional investors such as Lightspeed, Blume, Magma Ventures, Samsung and Bessemer.

KERV has created a digital video platform that uses its patented technology using Ai and machine learning techniques to recognize objects in a video and lets viewers click on them to learn more about products and services and other content.

“In 2018 and 2019, KERV was awarded for its technology, alongside other digital advertising wizards representing Hollywood’s elite, and received a Lumiere Award for “Best Interactive Brand Experience,” according to a news release.

Jon Flatt is the CEO of KERV Interactive. Previous to KERV, Flatt was the founder and former CEO of Red McCombs Media. In 2009, LIN Digital, an online advertising and media services company based in Austin,  acquired Red McCombs Media.

Atmosphere, a TV entertainment platform spun out of the Chive Media Group, announced this week that it has raised $10 million in funding.

The Austin-based startup plans to use the funding to further the distribution of its TV platform, on technology, data and monetization, according to a news release.

Atmosphere is like a Netflix-type platform offering different channels of entertainment programming to bars and restaurants and other establishments, said Charlie Plauche, partner with S3 Ventures. It curates, licenses and produces the videos from content creators.

S3 Ventures, based in Austin, led the Series A investment round with participation from Capstar Capital and other local angel investors. Plauche is also joining Atmosphere’s board of directors as part of the deal.

Resignation Media, which owns TheChive.com, moved to Austin in 2013 from California. Brothers Leo and John Resig founded the company in 2008. It has 113 employees, according to an interview with Entrepreneur Magazine in March.

“I was interested in them because I believe the current video options in bars and restaurants outside of live sports is often very limited with closed caption talking head video that is not engaging,” Plauche said. “I believe it’s the future of how restaurants will entertain their patrons.”

Atmosphere provides “ambient TV” or audio-optional content to businesses. Its Chive TV is currently streaming at more than 4,300 restaurants, bars, gyms and other venues. It is installed in hundreds of locations in Austin. The platform also lets businesses run promotions on their TVs to engage their customers. Chive TV launched in 2017 and has grown by 170 percent annually since then adding 450 new venues a month, according to a news release.

“As a society, people are migrating to urban areas and are growing increasingly mobile, with 70% of our waking hours now being spent outside the home,” Leo Resig, CEO of Atmosphere said in a news release. “There are screens everywhere with sub-par content. We are helping business establishments take control of their screens with content that’s superior to current programming options that are designed for in-home viewing with audio—leading to improved customer experience, increased visitors and dwell-time.”

Atmosphere gets revenue from subscription fees and advertisements.

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

Homes are increasingly becoming smarter with devices like Nest thermostats, Ring doorbells, voice-activated assistants and more connecting them to the Internet.

And Austin-based Affinegy, a 13-year-old company that creates software to manage Wi-Fi for the Internet of Things, has been at the forefront of the industry.

This week, Affinegy, a privately-held company, announced it has been acquired by National Information Solutions Cooperative, known as NISC, based in St. Louis.

Affinegy, founded in 2003 by Melissa Simpler and Art Lancaster, did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction. The company is based at 1705 S. Capital of Texas Highway and has about 20 employees.

 Affinegy raised a small Series A round of funding in 2007 from angel investors and later bought most of them out, said Simpler, Affinegy’s CEO. It has been bootstrapped and running on revenue since then, she said.

Affinegy will rebrand as NISC User Services and maintain its Austin office, Simpler said. In fact, NISC plans to add more employees in Austin as Pedernales Electric Coop., based in Johnson City, is one of its largest customers in Texas, she said.

Affinegy and NISC made the acquisition announcement in Chicago at the NTCA Technology and Business Conference.

“I’m really happy. It is such a good fit for our whole team. They bought us for very strategic reasons,” Simpler said in a phone interview.  “This is the way they define how they go forward in the marketplace. That’s how strategic they view what we do to their future.”

Affinegy provides connected device management and service enablement software for the home and small business to telecom and broadband providers. Its software offers seamless integration of video, data, voice over Wi-Fi for broadband, managed service and customer support providers. It also has an app for consumers to manage their connected devices in the home.

Affinegy’s CHARIOT software platform makes it easy to turn on  entertainment, internet, security, home automation, and wellness services, Simpler said.

NISC has launched the NISC User Services System which uses Affinegy’s software. NISC is offering it independently to its customers or part of its customer car and billing solutions along with NISC’s Smarthub web and mobile tools for payment processing and order management. NISC’s customers are primarily electric and telecom providers in rural communities.

NISC offers a product called iVUE which provides accounting, engineering and customer care functions. Affinegy’s products will be available across its platform and will allow its members to provide enhanced broadband services to its customers. NISC has 835 energy and telecommunications members in all 50 states, American Samoa, Palau and Canada. It has offices in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Lake Saint Louis, Mo., Mandan, North Dakota and Shawano, Wis.

 “The NISC User Services System offers fast, automated diagnostics and single-click repairs for the most common Wi-Fi connectivity and performance issues in broadband homes,”  David Bonnett, NISC vice president of product management, said in a news release. “It also provides consumers with all the self-care capabilities for managing their home Wi-Fi networks and adding new services.”

The NISC-Affinegy combined product also lets broadband providers file reports with the Federal Communications Commission to access funds set aside for providing high-speed Internet service to rural areas. Many electric utility providers have installed fiber cable to homes in rural areas and are now using those networks to provide Internet service, Simpler said.

Simpler graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in electrical engineering. She also later received an MBA from UT Austin. Before co-founding Affinegy, Simpler was a co-founder of Entregate. She has also served in corporate business and engineering management roles at Motorola, Dell and National Instruments.

Soon, OJO Labs, an artificial intelligence startup, will have one of the best views in Austin.

OJO Labs is moving to the top floor of CityView, a four-story building under construction at 1007 South Congress Ave. OJO’s outdoor terrace offers a stunning view of the Texas State Capitol and downtown Austin along Congress Ave.

The Austin-based company has hired Sixthriver as its interior architect to design the 12,500 square foot office with the benefits of an open floor plan featuring blue, teal accent colors along with elements of the outdoors like moss and wood. It will have an energetic and playful vibe, with all the amenities of a high-tech workplace like a coffee bar, ping pong table and game room said Laura Davis with Sixthriver.

OJO is building a world-class product, said John Berkowitz, CEO of OJO Labs.

“It’s nice to do it with a beautiful view,” he said during a hard hat tour of the building last Wednesday.

Lake Flato Architects, the same firm that designed the award-winning Austin Public Library Building downtown, is the building’s designer. Two floors of CityView will be occupied by the Equinox Gym. The bottom floor will feature a variety of restaurants and retailers. OJO is scheduled to move in this summer. It currently has leased space at Eighth and Brazos.

Turnbridge Equities is the developer of CityView, which is being leased by  the Endeavor Real Estate Group. It is adjacent to Music Lane, which will be home to the future Soho House Austin and will offer on-site dining, retail and entertainment.

“It’s definitely going to be fancy, but with an Austin vibe,” Berkowitz said.

It’s the perfect setting for a creative company like OJO, Berkowitz said. And it will have a distinctly OJO feel to the space, he said. For example, the entrance will feature Warren Platner Lounge Chairs. Warren Platner was an architect and interior designer known for his iconic 1960s furniture collection.  He was also Berkowitz’s grandfather.

“You will be welcomed by chairs that came from childhood,” Berkowitz said. “It’s always been my dream to have them in my office.”

OJO Labs has created a virtual assistant that helps homebuyers and sellers. Its AI agent uses natural conversations conducted via mobile messages to help a person find a house. OJO’s product is available in 12 markets in the U.S. and Toronto, Canada. OJO is rolling out the product nationwide. Its biggest customers are Realogy and the Royal Bank of Canada.

OJO Labs recently closed on its Series C funding of $45 million. It is using the funds to accelerate its product development and for market expansion. It plans to hire more employees in the areas of engineering, data science, product and design. OJO has 60 employees currently in Austin, but the new space can accommodate up to 128 employees.

To date, OJO Labs has raised $76 million. Last October, the company merged with real estate data giant, WolfNet Technologies, based in St. Paul, Minn. The combined company has about 350 employees. OJO also has offices in St. Paul, and on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean.

The new office will definitely help to attract top talent, Berkowitz said.

“You’ve got all of the benefits of being downtown without the traffic,” he said.

To attract top engineering talent in Austin’s competition market, it’s helpful to be downtown, Berkowitz said. And the CityView location offers access to all kinds of restaurants along South Congress Avenue like Hopdoddy, Guero’s, South Congress Café, Magnolias. It also has access to beautiful outdoor spaces like Lady Bird Lake Trail. And parking is more accessible with street parking as well as onsite parking, he said.

And OJO’s new offices will have a warm and inviting interior, said Davis with Sixthriver.

“You want an environment that is super functional, but you also want the space to feel connected and to bring people together,” Berkowitz said. OJO’s new office has about 15 what Berkowitz calls “pocket spaces” that allow people to get away from the openness if they need privacy.

“OJO’s work space being an environment that is inviting and encourages enjoyment and productivity will help us to achieve our mission of enabling millions of people to make better decisions,” Berkowitz said.

Slingshot Aerospace announced this week it has received $5 million in new seed stage funding.

ATX Venture Partners led the round with participation from new investor Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and previous investors Okapi Capital, Stage Venture Partners, Sway Ventures and Techstars Ventures.

Slingshot Aerospace is using artificial intelligence to provide detailed reports about the earth to industries such as defense, insurance, and energy. Its customers include BAE Systems, Boeing, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force.

“Slingshot is on the cutting edge of applying AI, ML and big data analytics to geospatial and orbital exploration at a time when insights are more needed than ever,” Colin Greenspon, Partner at Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, said in a news release. “The company is another great example of a company finding advantages in scaling outside of Silicon Valley, and we look forward to supporting them as government and defense and other arenas apply their technologies.”

To date, Slingshot Aerospace has raised $9.1 million. The company plans to use the latest funds on product development and to hire employees in finance, business development and software engineering and data sciences.

“Together, we created Slingshot to bring decision makers more complete and timely awareness in the orbital and geospatial arenas,”  David Godwin, CEO and Co-Founder of Slingshot Aerospace, said in a news release. “The market opportunity for Slingshot is vast, as we have become a leader in AI-driven space tech products across multiple domains – closing the gap between data analysis and critical decision making.”

U.S. Air Force veterans Melanie Stricklan and Thomas Ashman and Serial Entrepreneur David Godwin founded Slingshot Aerospace in June of 2017. The company was part of the Techstars LA inaugural class.

Slingshot Aerospace’s products include Orbital Atlas, a space situational awareness platform; Earth Portal, a geospatial visualization portal; and N2X, an edge-AI framework for drones and spacecraft.   

The company recently hired a new Vice President of Finance, Tom Inman, and a new Vice President of Technology, Dean Teffer, among other software engineering and strategic business development hires.

“As follow-on investors in Slingshot, we believe they will become the leaders in geospatial AI and edge technologies to make a true difference in our world,” Chris Shonk, Managing Partner at ATX Venture Partners, said in a news release. “There is no better combination of people than Slingshot’s founders to commercialize this frontier technology. From leaders in the military with expertise on geospatial and orbital applications, to a proven serial entrepreneur and strategist on bringing products to market, this team is positioned to propel the company forward beyond our wildest imagination.”

eRelevance, an online marketing platform targeted at healthcare providers and the mortgage industry, has shut down.

The Austin-based startup posted a notice on its Facebook page on Monday “Due to an unexpected situation, as of April 15, 2019, eRelevance Corporation has ceased its operations.”

Bob Fabbio, the company’s Co-founder and CEO, confirmed the shut down in an email. He said he couldn’t provide any further details and that the company had 56 employees.

In a podcast interview a year ago, Fabbio said he planned to build eRelevance into a $1 billion company. eRelevance provided a marketing platform for small businesses such as healthcare providers to better connect with their patients outside their practices.

And last year eRelevance expanded to offer marketing services to the mortgage market.

Fabbio co-founded eRelevance Corp. in 2013 with Tim Smith. The privately-held company reported it had increased its Annual Run Rate revenue to $7.5 million in 2017, up from $3.6 million in 2016 and it had more than 1,500 customers.

The company had raised $13.7 million in venture capital. from investors including Capital Factory.

Last year, the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce selected eRelevance as one of its 25 hottest startups in the growth category with less than $20 million in funding and $25 million in revenue.

And Entrepreneur Magazine also named the company one of the most entrepreneurial companies of 2017.

Fabbio previously founded Tivoli Systems, which went public in 1995 and IBM acquired the company a year later for $743 million. Next, he founded Dazel, which Hewlett-Packard bought in 1999 for $180 million. And then he founded White Glove Health, a subscription-based healthcare service that provided health and wellnesses services directly to patients.

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

In 2004, at the University of Texas at Austin, Denis Ignatovich and Grant Passmore met and became roommates soon after.

They both enjoyed mathematics and solving difficult problems. Passmore received a bachelor’s in mathematics and Ignatovich received his degree in computer science and finance.

“We spent a lot of time daydreaming and planning about wanting to change the world together,” Passmore said.

Ten years later in London, they founded Aesthetic Integration, now known as Imandra, an artificial intelligence company that analyzes algorithms.

“In an unexpected way, we both ended up in the U.K.,” Passmore said. And now they are both intentionally back in Austin working on their five-year-old startup.

They moved the company’s headquarters from London to Austin this year and Thursday announced Imandra has received $5 million in seed stage investment.

Imandra has created algorithms that ensure a company complies with regulations and is secure. It first applied its technology to the financial services industry but has since expanded into other industries.

AlbionVC, IQ Capital and LiveOak Venture Partners led the investment into Imandra. The company plans to use the funding to expand in both the United States and the United Kingdom and to hire AI, engineering and product talent in Austin, London and Edinburgh.

Imandra’s software platform has applications for autonomous vehicles, robotics and machine learning.

And even though Imandra started in London, the company has deep ties to Austin.

Early on, Bob Boyer, a UT professor of computer science, mathematics and philosophy, and J Strother Moore, a computer scientist, at the University of Edinburgh in the early ‘70s inspired and served as mentors to Passmore and Ignatovich. Boyer and Strother Moore invented the Boyer-Moore string search algorithm in 1977.

That research led Passmore to the University of Edinburg where he completed his Ph.D. in AI for algorithm safety in 2011. Shortly after that, Passmore moved to Cambridge to work on algorithm safety for autonomous vehicles at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. And in 2009, Ignatovich was working as a quant for Deutsche Bank in New York and moved to London for them. He was running a large trading desk and he worried constantly about something going wrong.

That’s where they came up with the idea to apply algorithms to the financial services industry. Its product, Imandra, is now the name of the company, Passmore said. In 2014, Passmore resigned from the University of Cambridge to work on Imandra full time. Shortly after that, Ignatovich left his position to join the company fulltime.

Coincidently, in 2015, UBS ran a Future of Finance Challenge that gave the company an incredible opportunity to demonstrate its technology, Ignatovich said. In that challenge, Imandra won first place out of more than 600 companies from 52 countries by using its AI technology to find a fundamental flaw in the design of the UBS dark pool previously undetected by the bank and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The timing was perfect because the SEC had just issued $14 million in fines in the U.S. for various rules on how algorithms in the dark pool were running, Ignatovich said.

And just like that algorithm found a flaw in the bank’s technology, Imandra’s platform can work with other industries like autonomous vehicles. The technology has its roots in the algorithm development for microchips in Austin, Passmore said.

Algorithms have been used to analyze hardware for a long time, now Imandra is using algorithms to analyze software for flaws, Ignatovich said.

The roots of the industry can be traced to the industrial use of AI algorithms by Intel in 1994, Passmore said. The microchip manufacturer had a bug in its Pentium computer processor that led to a massive recall and cost the company $470 million, he said. That’s when Austin-based chip maker, AMD, hired a group of mathematicians including Boyer and Moore to work with its designers to fix its chip design, he said. And it worked.

“Classically it’s just been so difficult to use this technology,” Passmore said. Intel has a big group of PhDs to do this analysis, he said.

Imandra has gone back to its roots by establishing its corporate headquarters in Austin, Passmore said. It is based at WeWork University Park and has three local employees and ten employees altogether. The next phase is to scale the company and hire key talent, Passmore said. It considered Silicon Valley and other places but chose Austin because it has the best access to the talent it needs through the University of Texas at Austin, Passmore said.

“The startup ecosystem has grown so much since we were undergrads,” he said. But Austin still has a small town feel to it, he said.

And LiveOak Venture Partners, based in Austin, is one of the three top VCs leading its round, Passmore said.

 “Our investment in Imandra embodies the core of our investment thesis to back Texas based top notch entrepreneurs that are disrupting large industry categories,” Krishna Srinivasan, founding partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, said in a news release. “We recognized quickly that Denis, Grant and team are amongst the best in the world at this emerging area of algorithm and application security testing and that their approach has the ability for multi-industry transformational impact. We are also super excited to welcome Denis and Grant back to their Texas roots, leverage the tremendous local computer science talent and build something significant from where it all began.”

Imandra received its first patent last October and has several more pending, Passmore said. It has several customers already including Goldman Sachs.

By LAURA LOREK, publisher of Silicon Hills News

Oracle held its inaugural U.S. Global Startup Ecosystem Showcase at its Austin Waterfront Campus on Tuesday.

The event featured pitches from startups selected to participate in Oracle’s Startup Cloud Accelerator program in Austin. The six-month accelerator took place at Capital Factory in downtown Austin.

Five of the six startups that Oracle selected to participate in the program pitched their ventures: data.world, Molecula, ROIKOI, Senseye, and Transmute. Eventador did not pitch.

Before the startups began, the event featured Oracle executives and other dignitaries including Austin Mayor Steve Adler.

J.D. Weinstein, the head of the Oracle Startup Ecosystem in Austin, oversaw the Austin accelerator and served as master of ceremonies at the event.

Jason Williamson, vice president of the Oracle Global Startup Ecosystem, the company’s startup program for entrepreneurs worldwide, kicked off the event by giving an overview of the program.

 “We are basically here to provide an open platform for startups of all sizes,” Williamson said. “We want to help you build stuff.”

Oracle’s accelerator is an opportunity to grow revenue for startups, Williamson said.

Oracle does not provide startups with funding and does not take an equity stake in the startups accepted into its program, Williamson said.

“We are interested in seeing you grow,” he said. “We win if you do.”

Oracle does provide startups with access to its portfolio of products, Williamson said. It also provides startups with access to global marketing, public relations resources, events and gives them engagement opportunities with Oracles’ 430,000 customers.

In addition, startups get Oracle cloud credits, migration credits and technical support, access to Oracle’s product and development teams, mentoring and curriculum resources, and other discounts.

Oracle is allowing startups to join its program year-round, Williamson said. The program is open to business to business and business to consumer companies of all sizes, he said.

Next up, Angelica Erazo, Oracle’s diversity and inclusion coordinator, said half of its companies have either a diverse founder or a diverse mission statement.

Then, Mayor Adler talked about the importance of Oracle and startups in Austin. He said the iterative process startups go through is part of what makes Austin special.

Next, Joshua Bear, founder of Capital Factory, said what Oracle is doing in Austin is unique because it is offering access to customers for startups.

Oracle’s Global Startup Ecosystem chose Capital Factory as the site to operate its accelerator.

“It has been a big success,” Baer said.

The following startups participated in the accelerator program:

Transmute – Karyl Fowler, Chief Executive Officer of Transmute, presented her startup which uses the cloud, public key cryptography and blockchain technology for identification purposes. It has created Transmute ID which is user-centric identity governance for efficiency, traceability and privacy. One of the industries the startup is focused on is healthcare. With Transmute ID, doctors can authenticate and share files with patients, Fowler said. And patients can selectively share data and revoke access to their own data, she said. Transmute also graduated from the Techstars Austin program last year. Transmute, founded in 2017, has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round.

data.world Matt Laessig, COO, and Co-founder of data.world, presented his startup which is a platform that allows companies to catalog data and analyze data across clouds, databases, warehouses, spreadsheets, and third-party services. “Technology alone does not create data-driven companies,” Laessig said. “People do.” data.world brings data, people, and analysis together in one place to create a data-driven culture, he said.  data.world has a growing ecosystem of 40 plus integrations with the data and analysis tools enterprises already use and a patented semantic foundation that allows people to easily search data. It’s being used within Oracle to teach data best practices. Overall, data.world is being used by 40 plus customers in the financial services, healthcare, professional services, and media industries. data.world, founded in 2015, has raised $44.7 million to date.

ROIKOI – The startup has created a talent acquisition platform for companies based on employee recommendations. Andy Wolfe, CEO of ROIKOI, called it the “talent recommendation graph.” Top companies like Google, Dropbox, Facebook, and Amazon build internal employee referral systems. ROIKOI is bringing that concept to all companies. Its talent recommendation graph helps companies hire better talent, cheaper and more efficiently, Wolfe said. ROIKOI combines the benefits of referrals, sourcing and job boards and improves sourcing efficiency by ten times, he said. Its system uses artificial intelligence to match existing referrals to available jobs and automatically sends out emails to the top candidates, he said. And it’s not just for technology jobs, but works to fill blue collar jobs in retail, healthcare, real estate, construction, trucking and more, Wolfe said. It also improves employee diversity because the system removes names and faces and does a blind screening. ROIKOI runs on the Oracle Cloud and the program gave ROIKOI access to top executives at Oracle, Wolfe said. ROIKOI, founded in 2013, has raised $1.7 million to date.

Senseye –  David Zakariaie, CEO of Senseye, founded his startup seven and a half years ago as his high school science fair project. He then went on to receive a Naval Science Award. With that grant, he began working on his company’s Human Interface Technology. Zakariaie said the eye is the window to the soul. It is also the key to reading a lot of data about a person.  “Iris’ muscles are linked to the brain through the nervous system, by monitoring muscle movements which represent brain activity, we can wirelessly read stress, cognitive load, executive function, hormones, memory,” according to Zakariaie. His company is building a direct link between humans and computers. Senseye’s customers include the United States Air Force which started using the technology a year ago to train pilots on virtual reality flight simulators. Senseye’s software receives data from a person’s eyes to gauge their state of mind and ability to handle stress and how it affects their performance. Lloyd’s Register is also using biometric scans and Senseye’s technology to test people for impairments such as sleep deprivation, drugs, and alcohol influence or emotional distress, prior to engaging in a task on an oil rig. Its technology has other applications in automotive, gaming, personalized health and deception detection, Zakariaie said. “If you can use the data out of the brain, you can use Senseye,” he said. Senseye, founded in 2015 in Los Angeles, has raised $450,000 in seed stage funding, according to CrunchBase.

Molecula – H.O. Maycotte, CEO of Molecula, formerly known as Pilosa, has created a streaming artificial intelligence platform that analyzes 100 percent of a company’s data instantly, so machines can make decisions in real time. Today, only one percent of the world’s data is being actively analyzed, according to Oracle. IDC predicts that in 10 years, four out of five of your decisions will be made by machines, Maycotte said. His startup is helping companies to access their data easily and quickly. During the Oracle program, Maycotte met dozens of teams at Oracle, attended 12 events including OpenWorld Singapore and generated more than 100 customer leads. “On top of it, they ask for nothing,” he said. ‘This is a lifetime relationship we are building with Oracle.” The company, founded in 2017, has raised $3.7 million to date, according to CrunchBase.

Following the pitches, Oracle hosted the startups and guests to a gathering featuring Texas barbecue, drinks, and networking.