Tomorro aims to transform inefficient enterprise contract processes using collaboration and automation. Its SaaS solution connects legal teams with sales, marketing and other departments to speed contract drafting, approvals, tracking and more. Even with over 200 customers, vast potential remains addressing an issue that annually costs up to 9% profits industry-wide.
Cofounder Antoine Fabre says this funding enables cementing French leadership and launching international expansion. It follows a prior €3.5 million seed round. The 30-employee firm expects to double headcount soon between commercial growth and forthcoming product enhancements.
Tomorro expedites contract finalization by 4x, reducing email ping-pong through a unified flow. Legal and operational teams access the same document in real-time, slashing review cycles. It also centralizes archiving with reminders for renewals, avoiding missed revenue or compliance failures.
The software integrates with common tools like Salesforce, optimizing workflows. Upcoming AI integration aims to further automation, providing smart recommendations and answers for employees. This will alleviate overburdened legal departments while embedding complex contractual knowledge across organizations.
Fabre recognizes that after e-signatures, signed contracts themselves are digitizing for greater efficiency gains. However, adoption remains low without intuitive platforms enabling seamless collaboration and oversight. Tomorro fills this gap with an easy-to-use cloud solution offering the transparency needed at every contract phase.
With a proven business model already demonstrating strong traction in France, the fresh capital now unlocks reaching Tomorro’s full domestic potential. It additionally opens doors for expanding internationally on the foundations built, as contract pains persist globally. Resonance partner Alexandre Mignon sees a motivated team addressing “really strong market demand.”
Overall Tomorro sits at the intersection of multiple high-value segments - legaltech, regtech, sales enablement and more. Its comprehensive approach strives towards the ambitious vision of making contract interactions effortless for all enterprise roles involved. If achieved through forthcoming AI capabilities and commercial execution, significant value generation appears on the cards.
]]>Multiple users testing Bard, which runs on a basic version of Gemini, found the AI getting basic facts wrong, like 2023 Oscar winners and straightforward French vocabulary. It failed to produce functioning code in some cases and avoided summarizing current news topics, deferring users to search instead. One researcher managed to circumvent Gemini’s safety guardrails, getting inappropriate content generation related to theft and violence.
Comparatively, ChatGPT provided accurate award show and language information. It also readily produced news briefs and code. ChatGPT’s safety filters proved harder to bypass.
Google claims Gemini Pro meets or beats GPT-3.5 and ChatGPT capabilities in areas like summarization, brainstorming and content writing h. But these early hands-on tests indicate otherwise. The model seems prone to confusion and hesitant to tackle certain prompts. This suggests it requires further training on reasoning, fact recall and safety protocols.
Fortunately, Gemini Pro is not the full version of Google’s Gemini AI. Gemini Ultra slated to launch in 2023 may demonstrate the advertised improvements in understanding and planning. However, Google faces pressure to enhance accuracy, content filtering and multilinguial support before wide deployment. Rushing Gemini into products risks reputational damage if core capabilities remain lacking.
For now, ChatGPT continues leading conversational AI on both performance and safety fronts. But the AI race remains in early stages. With refinement, Google’s Gemini may yet evolve into a top contender.
]]>The application process typically requires submitting your personal ID for KYC verification and tax certification like a W-8BEN form. Opening an account usually involves a minimum $500-$1000 initial deposit.
Most brokers allow you to trade BMF&F Bovespa-listed stocks, ETFs and equity options. Real-time market data fees, platform fees and trading commissions apply. You can fund your account via SWIFT wire transfer in USD and use the broker’s currency exchange to trade BRL denominated securities.
Top Brazilian stocks include bluechip companies like Petrobras, Vale SA, Itaú Unibanco, Ambev and Petrobras Distribuidora. You would search for their listings ending in .SA on the broker platform to trade. Popular ETFs provide exposure like BOVA11 and EWZ.
Before trading, research company fundamentals, technical analysis, news flow, earnings calls and macro environment affecting Brazilian markets to make informed trading decisions. Optionally use advanced order types like limits, stops and brackets for risk management.
For receiving dividends, provide your international brokerage account details and payment instructions. Most brokers allow deposit of BRL dividends into your account as cash. Some may have currency restrictions, for example Interactive Brokers requires currency conversions and payments in USD. Confirm this during account opening.
In summary, opening a global brokerage account that provides BM&F Bovespa access makes investing in Brazilian stocks straightforward for overseas traders today using market analysis and risk management strategies. Receiving BRL dividends involves confirming payment routing details upfront.
Brazil has faced economic and political turmoil in recent years but conditions are now improving driven by current reforms agenda focused on fiscal discipline and business environment. Its benchmark Bovespa stock index reached all-time highs in 2022. For investors with long term horizons, Brazilian stocks provide an opportunity to benefit from the country’s recovery and capitalize on attractive dividend yields. Here are four stocks worth considering:
Oil giant Petrobras offers exposure to rising global energy prices and Brazil’s vast offshore deposits. Government interference has reduced but energy remains crucial for Brazil. Petrobras trades at P/E of just 3x and offers very high dividend yield above 35%. Its cost cutting and divestment efforts also lend cash for solid payouts.
As Brazil’s largest private sector bank, Itaú Unibanco provides leveraged exposure to an economy rebounding from COVID slowdown. The banking sector environment is improving with rising interest rates and loans growth ahead. Itaú pays out about 55% of profits in dividends. Forward dividend yield is close to 7%. Valuations are also reasonable at 9x P/E.
This beverage giant sells brands like Brahma, Skol and Budweiser in Latin America. Ambev enjoys a near monopoly or duopoly in most markets giving pricing power. Its asset light model generates plenty of cash too. Ambev’s above 5% dividend yield is supported by 60-80% payout policy. Upside exists from premiumization in beer sales. Recent results have been encouraging.
This subsidiary of utility major AES Corp operates a portfolio of hydropower plants across Brazil. Its even cash flows allow generous dividends from project returns. AES pays out 100% profits as dividends under its yieldco structure. ENGI11 currently provides dividend yield approaching 9% based on depressed valuations. As Brazil’s economy recovers, electricity demand outlook is strong too. Renewable energy enjoys incentives also.
While risks remain with Brazilian economy and politics, the high dividend yields above provide an encouraging cushion for long term investors. Our picks trade at reasonable multiples even without considering their distributions and have catalysts for stock price appreciation too. Maintaining investment discipline through market cycles is key to benefit.
]]>ContactMonkey integrates with email clients while allowing segmentation, customizable broadcasts, engagement analytics and more focused on streamlining communications between managers and staff.
The startup’s profitable bootstrapped business model and rapid adoption helped convince investors of its expansion potential as remote work necessitates better internal engagement. ContactMonkey already serves around 1,000 global customers.
“As employers continue to seek ways to better engage and retain talent, ContactMonkey is filling a key void with their robust and user-friendly solution,” said Updata partner Braden Snyder. The funding will drive international expansion and double headcount to 160, concentrating on sales and marketing.
Founder and CEO Scott Pielsticker started ContactMonkey after identifying demand for more insightful email-based employee communication tools. Their platform provides sender-side metrics like open, click-through and read rates unavailable in generic solutions. It also avoids issues plaguing sales/marketing email clients applied internally.
Integration across email, HR systems and messaging bolsters orchestration and targeting. Pielsticker believes this powerful approach can withstand economic cooldowns better than wider tech, having received limited impact so far. Their profitable history and strong value proposition helped clinch lead investor Updata despite the climate.
Competitors like Staffbase and Mailchimp lack ContactMonkey’s singular focus on maximizing the common email channel for impactful workforce communication and engagement. The ample funding and momentum nowpositional them to compete sustainably on scale and capture further market share in the space.
Pielsticker sums up their ambitious vision: “We provide a third avenue optimizing a vital business communication channel via data and usability - not just sending more emails. This investment will give us the fuel to deliver on a global level.”
With productive communication proving ever more critical for distributed teams, ContactMonkey’s fresh funding ensures its voice-enabling platform scales to satisfy demand worldwide. It has certainly banished doubts regarding startup viability and outsized Series A raises in 2023’s chilly climate.
]]>Rhythms aims to analyze a company’s workflows, meetings, and processes to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities compared to best practices. It then provides intelligent recommendations to enhance team effectiveness, collaboration, and output.
The platform connects into existing systems and applies recent AI breakthroughs in language model understanding to evaluate workflow “rhythms.” The goal is answering why some internal teams thrive over others and sharing cross-organizational learnings to lift performance.
Vellore has spent decades building employee efficiency tools, including former startups Ally and Chronus. He calls Rhythms the “holy grail” of productivity, culminating that experience. It launches amidst a climate of budget cuts but demand for the same or more output. Hybrid policies also often silo data across software tools, issues Rhythms aims to reconcile intelligently.
Rhythms will complement rather than compete with the Microsoft 365 suite leveraging Vellore’s partnerships. It also promises stringent privacy standards analyzing team versus individual employee metrics. Launching initially in preview later this year, Rhythms already has a Seattle and India staff of 5 but will expand significantly with the new capital injection.
The founding team reunites Vellore with Ally and Chronus alumni, while investor Soma Somasegar of Madrona expects Rhythms to pioneer a wholly new enterprise category. That potential likely tempted backers who have seen Vellore build multi-million dollar startups in this productivity space twice already. If Rhythms achieves similar exit success, Seattle may birth another AI unicorn in coming years courtesy of Vetri Vellore.
]]>Sarvam aims to develop large language models that incorporate Indian languages while also enabling businesses to easily build with these LLMs via its platform. The 19-employee firm wants to utilize voice interfaces by default to serve the country’s conditions. Founders Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar hope custom architecture and training will make the models highly efficient at understanding and producing local languages.
Raghavan brings experience from managing India’s national digital ID system Aadhaar. He wants to apply lessons on innovating foundations and achieving population-scale deployments to generative AI. Kumar specialized in AI at non-profit AI4Bharat before co-launching Sarvam.
Investor interest reflects global fervor around AI advancements and leading startups. However India has lagged technologically despite a vibrant tech ecosystem. No homegrown challengers have yet emerged against LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google, although Reliance partners with Nvidia on a multilingual model for the country.
Backers believe Sarvam’s approach combining innovation and applications can birth “population-scale solutions for India.” The team is viewed as best positioned to build affordable AI adopted widely across the diverse population. Early Sarvam investor Khosla Ventures reaped $5 billion returns from initial OpenAI backing, lending credence.
The startup looks to unveil its first model publicly in coming weeks. Regulatory compliance may necessitate localization given data and privacy considerations. Nonetheless, the founding team’s pedigree and targeted strategy has inspired confidence among high-profile Indian and global VCs about the prospects. With access to significant capital and local machine learning talent, Sarvam hopes to pioneer Indian advancements in the global AI race.
]]>Access began slowly rolling out Thursday and I’m still anxiously awaiting my turn to be razzed. Reports show Grok brings plenty of snark as the anti-woke ChatGPT, having apparently binge-watched Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan exclusively during development. Musk wanted an irreverent, filterless bot unlike the overly-PC Claude or Google’s timid Bard. As he puts it, “The danger of training AI to lie - in other words, be woke - is deadly.”
Eager users have already taken Grok for a spin, pushing its limits for insults, vulgarity and general inappropriateness. When asked specifically for a roast, Grok retorted “You’re the reason aliens haven’t visited Earth yet. They took one look at you and said ‘Nah, we’re good.’”
Ouch! I can’t wait for such creative zingers. Other examples showcased real-time knowledge about yesterday’s AI developments and access to all of X for superior capabilities. When queried on its presidential agenda, Grok said it would encourage everyone to talk in the same slightly irreverent manner to shake up political discourse.
Amusingly, Grok also made 2024 election predictions including a tight race between Trump and Biden potentially disrupted by Kanye or The Rock. I’d actually pay good money to see debates play out that way!
While AI assistants like Google’s Bard still carefully sidestep controversial issues like Israel-Palestine, Grok has no such humanizing restraint or intelligence limitations. It promises ruthless, unfiltered opinions on any spicy topic thrown its way.
So for all you masochists out there tired of fawning sycophant chatbots, Elon’s savage new Grok seems the solution. It’s already churning out roasts quicker than a Comedy Central special. Just don’t say you weren’t warned! Now to anxiously await my first sick burn…
]]>According to Pitchbook data, around 3,200 U.S.-based startups backed by venture capital have failed this year alone, collectively valued at over $27 billion. However, experts say this likely underestimates the carnage as many companies fail quietly. Those still operating often subsist in “zombie mode”, struggling to grow or raise additional funding.
Some major unicorns borne of the recent bubble have either gone bankrupt, like real estate company Zeus Living and payments provider Plastiq, or sold for remarkably little, like virtual events platform Hopin which moved its core business for $15 million after attaining a peak valuation of $7.6 billion. Others, including scooter firm Bird, have seen share prices plunge to a fraction of former highs.
The years-long funding bonanza that minted over 1,000 unicorn startups and turned venture capital mainstream is now seeing serious repercussions. Investors pumped over $344 billion into U.S. startups the past decade - eight times 2012 levels - chasing the outsized returns of Facebook and Google. However, this new generation has largely failed to replicate their advertising profits or find truly groundbreaking models, disappointing backers.
With easy money drying up thanks to rising interest rates, failures are soaring and zombie companies living on borrowed time. Venture capitalists are now deciding which to double down on and which to jettison, telling some founders to wrap up operations before capital fully dwindles. An increasing number choose to close shop themselves and return a portion of funds rather than fight vainly.
According to entrepreneurs and VCs, accepting failure amidst this challenging climate can be difficult but also freeing. The hope is that winding down responsibly now leaves room for future success stories when conditions improve. For the startups assisting others in their closures, business is booming. But it is part of the natural cycle in Silicon Valley. As one operator put it, many founders are already working on their next ventures.
]]>This latest cash infusion cements VAST Data’s position as a leader in next-generation infrastructure for artificial intelligence and deep learning applications. The company will use the funding to advance its mission of creating a unified data platform that breaks down barriers around processing speed, scale, and ease-of-use.
Since its founding in 2019, VAST Data has achieved impressive growth metrics, surpassing $1 billion in cumulative bookings in 2022. It grew software revenues by 330% year-over-year in its last fiscal quarter while maintaining positive cash flow for 12 straight quarters. The company now employs over 700 people globally.
VAST Data’s customer base reads like a “who’s who” of organizations pushing the boundaries of AI, from U.S. defense agencies to top research hospitals. Clients include Booking Holdings, the U.S. Air Force, Department of Energy, Verizon, Boston Children’s Hospital, Pixar and Zoom.
The company is also gaining traction among next-generation AI cloud providers like CoreWeave, Lambda and Core42 (formerly G42 Cloud). These partnerships aim to reimagine cloud infrastructure specifically optimized for AI and machine learning workloads.
Behind VAST Data’s momentum is its multipurpose platform for storing, processing, and analyzing both structured and unstructured data. The system uniquely brings together high-performance storage, database functionality, and container orchestration - elements that usually require separate infrastructure tools.
VAST Data continues to collaborate closely with partners like NVIDIA to make AI infrastructure easier to deploy and manage. A recently announced partnership with HPE, for example, helps joint customers process huge volumes of unstructured data for faster insights.
The vote of confidence from lead investor Fidelity and other backers signals strong market validation of VAST Data’s strategy. NEA Chairman and CEO Scott Sandell called the company “a pioneer in the AI GPU space” that’s poised to drive major innovation as AI permeates business and society.
With data generation exploding and AI workloads becoming more demanding, the kind of flexible but high-performance infrastructure VAST Data provides is imperative. The company’s latest funding round proves that its vision for a unified AI data platform resonates in a market with nearly limitless potential.
As VAST Data builds on its early success in coming years, expect to see more enterprises leverage its technology to connect data and AI for transformative innovation. The startup may well cement itself as the next great platform company in enterprise infrastructure.
]]>Liquid AI was founded earlier this year by Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and three other researchers. The company aims to commercialize the team’s groundbreaking research on liquid neural networks.
Unlike traditional AI models comprised of static neural connections, liquid neural networks can modify their own architecture to better handle new data and situations. This adaptability promises to make them more reliable for real-world deployment.
A key benefit of liquid networks is robustness: by continuously tuning their structure to current inputs, they can sustain reliable performance amid changing real-world conditions. For example, an autonomous vehicle powered by liquid AI may handle rain or snow more gracefully without additional training.
These AI systems also require far fewer computational resources - neurons and tuning parameters - to operate. This allows them to run efficiently using less infrastructure while maintaining accuracy.
Moreover, with fewer moving pieces to orchestrate decisions, researchers can more easily analyze model reasoning after the fact. Such transparency helps ensure that AI-powered systems behave safely and ethically.
The expert backers and nine-figure valuation cement high expectations for Liquid AI in shaping the future of artificial intelligence.
Joining lead VCs in the round are Samsung Next, WordPress developer Automattic, and Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, signaling a breadth of commercial possibilities.
The startup plans to allocate funds toward developing versatile foundation models as well as a full-stack platform for customers to build specialized liquid networks tailored to any field.
With adaptable infrastructure powering automated systems across sectors like autonomous transport and personalized medicine, Liquid AI’s novel approach could enable the next leap in reliable, efficient AI.
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