Emergent Ventures

During this week’s roundtable, we had Anupam Rastogi, Managing Partner at Emergent Ventures, discussing his firm’s AI investment thesis. #entrepreneurship #startups #ai #venturecapital #pitch #mentoring

Today T-robotics announced it’s $5.4M seed round, co-led by Emergent Ventures and Engine Ventures with participation from Berkeley SkyDeck and Raisewell Ventures. This milestone comes alongside being named the winner of the 2024 ABB AI Robotics Challenge. Why This Matters? The 4.3 million industrial robots already in use today—and the half million deployed annually need a software that brings them pre-trained skills to handle real-world complexity and a completely new agent-led way to program. We can already see the difference we are making. There is machine tending done today by robots and then there is machine tending done with T-robotics software. Those who got our software can not go to anything else. It’s been the most intense year of my life that required a lot of character and grit. The same is true about the entire T-robotics team. In February, it was an idea. Today it is a reality that is deployed at end users with a vast pipeline of customers and partners to deliver to next year. These funds will allow us to expand operations across the US and EU from our offices in San Francisco and Trondheim, Norway, and hire a very few but extremely talented people. We are thrilled that in the form of Emergent Ventures, Engine Ventures, and University of Berkeley, we have a dream syndicate to help us create a generational company that will define automation. It is a humbling moment for me as a founder. It’s a day to cherish all that this team has done but the road ahead is long. What was once an idea, is now a grade-A team’s mission. In a few hours we’ll be back to work with the same zeal, discipline, and speed that has defined us till now. A heartfelt thank you to all our customers, partners, and investors. ?? Read more in the press release here

Join us for?Funding Fridays?on?December 20, 2024, and get the unique opportunity to meet 1:1 with?Anupam Rastogi, Managing Partner at?Emergent Ventures. Here’s what you can look forward to: -Pitch Your Ideas: Present your startup to a leading venture capitalist. -Get Feedback: Gain actionable insights to refine your funding approach. -Network: Build a meaningful connection with investors and fellow entrepreneurs. Register now -?https://lu.ma/017ijrjs #FundingFridays #StartupPitch #VentureCapital #Entrepreneurship #NetworkingEven Anita Manwani Anand Jagannathan Andy Tsao Preetha Ram Tushar Kant Mini Suri Uday Bellary Dheeraj Pandey Kanwal Rekhi Suhas Patil Venktesh Shukla Vinita Gupta Vish Mishra Ajay Manglani Patricia Acosta VANI SURESH Isha Thakkar Sheena Khara

2024 has been a remarkable year for Prezent with new funding, record growth, and the addition of new leadership. As the year comes to an end, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you to our customers. You believed in us.? Today, we serve 100+ F2000 companies redefining the efficiency and effectiveness of enterprise business communication. 70+ NPS, 100%+ user growth and 1000%+ increase in ASTRID Gen AI features. Thank you to our investors. We appreciate the renewed trust in Prezent with this new funding round. Existing investors like Mark Terbeek at Greycroft, Anupam Rastogi at Emergent Ventures, Ricardo Anzaldua at Zoom and Gaurav Manglik at WestWave Capital who have been with us through “ZIRP” and “Sassacre” and everything in between. Welcome to Frank DESVIGNES at True Global Ventures and Alumni Ventures. Thank you to the amazing Prezent team. The Product/ML/Engineering teams push the envelope of what is possible with AI. GTM and Ops teams deliver the value we promise to our customers everyday. This is just the beginning. I am excited for 2025 and beyond … … for the launch of ASTRID—the first contextually intelligent AI for business communication. Industry-specific AI models that tailor presentations by industry, company, team, and individual—ASTRID is creating ripple effects across BioPharma, Tech-Telecom, Banking and Manufacturing. … for the new leaders who have joined the team to combine forces with the existing leaders. Welcome Maeva Riley (VP Global Marketing), Michael Lam (GM US West), Brad Evans (GM US Commercial), and ?? ?? Alex Hann (GM Europe). To my team, partners, and customers—thank you for being part of this journey. Here is to another record year in 2025! https://lnkd.in/egGxdUxM

AI is finally making services businesses scalable—and—exciting to VCs. The global services market is in the trillions of??s, far larger than today’s software market. Yet, services businesses haven’t been the darlings of venture capital, as they were perceived to lack rapid scaling potential. ???? ???? ???????????????? ????????. By blending AI seamlessly with human expertise, there is an opportunity to get into much larger markets with models that have the potential to scale in ways services - or even SaaS businesses - can't. For example, instead of offering a marketing SaaS, an AI-powered Service-as-Software business can deliver what the customer really wants: high-quality leads or compelling content. We’ve seen this potential firsthand through Emergent Ventures’ investments in multiple AI-powered companies that leverage humans-in-the-loop. These models resonate with B2B customers because they offer faster, clearer paths to value—reliable outcomes delivered with greater efficiency. For many customers, it’s a significant upgrade over traditional agency or service-provider relationships. While the potential is huge, only a fraction of AI-powered services startups will scale. ?????????????? ?????????????? ???? ???????????????????? ?????????? ?????????????? ?????? ?????????????????????? ??????????????????. Here’s what we have learned works well: ??. ????-?????????? ??????????????: AI and software should do the heavy lifting, with humans involved strategically— e.g. for validating AI output, edge cases, enabling adoption, or acting on AI insights. Over time, reduce human input as the AI learns, and models improve. Target 60%+ initial gross margins, with a path to SaaS-like 75%+ margins over time. ??. ???????????????? ?????????? ??????????????????????: The dependency on hiring & training humans should not constrain scale and economics. Have a path to tapping into freelancers or agency partners. Leverage human experts in a high-talent location such as India. ??. ?????????????????? ??????????????: Focus on high-value, recurring use-cases to ensure subscription-based revenue with strong net revenue retention (NRR). ??. ?????????????? ??????????: Iterate to a solution that can command higher pricing, and a model that aligns incentives with customers, e.g. based on outcomes. ??. ???????? ??????????: Build solutions that improve with use, creating compounding competitive advantages over time. ??. ?????????????? ????????: Architect a stack that can evolve with AI advancements. ??. ????????-?????????? ????????: A founding team that has the technical expertise to build and rapidly improve complex AI-powered solutions, and deep operational acumen. A rare combination. These are complex businesses to build, and the right playbooks are yet to be perfected. But where this works, ????????????????-????-???????????????? ???? ???????????????????? ???????? ???????????????? ???????? ?????? ???????????????????? ?? #EnterpriseAI #startups #vc #SaaS

Emergent Ventures is excited to host a mixer for early-stage enterprise AI founders and GTM experts during #SFTechWeek! On October 8th, join us for an evening dedicated to connecting founders with experienced professionals who know what it takes to scale early-stage companies. This is a unique opportunity to gain insights, share challenges, and build relationships with those who have successfully navigated the path from startup to scale. Apply to join us here: https://lnkd.in/geCgasJY. For the full #SFTechWeek calendar, visit?tech-week.com. TECH WEEK by a16z

Congratulations Ankur Jain for being featured in Business Insider's Top #Seed Investor list for 3 years in a row! https://lnkd.in/gcCnTM5P

Congratulations Ankur Jain for being featured in Business Insider's Top #Seed Investor list for 3 years in a row! https://lnkd.in/gcCnTM5P

All of these statements about enterprise AI could simultaneously be true, even if they seem somewhat contradictory: ?? Hype will come and go, but GenAI will be a game changer for automating mundane parts of numerous enterprise workflows ??? Making GenAI work within core workflows in the enterprise takes tremendous hard work beyond getting the tech to work - meticulous data pipelines, ensuring accuracy across real-life scenarios, safeguards against hallucination, robust guardrails, on-prem deployment capabilities where needed, change management and more, all while ensuring predictable and acceptable costs. Once done successfully, all this effort creates moats ?? Large models may work out-of-the-box for some basic horizontal business tasks. Applications built around domain-specific models will work much better for many other tasks. Agentic workflows are one likely path to broader automation ???? Human Augmentation and Human-in-the-loop automation is what is here-and-now. Full automation solutions - outside of simple, low consequence tasks - will take time to perfect and be sufficiently trusted in the enterprise ???? Enterprises will not buy “GenAI”. They will buy solutions and outcomes. If a GenAI-powered solution is the optimal one for their needs, then that will be bought ?? GenAI has opened tremendous opportunities for enterprise software startups that do other adjacent things to make their products more relevant, usable or actionable, and ‘close the loop’ ?? Many “GenAI for X” startups will fail to deliver value in the enterprise. Many GenAI-native startups with the right solution and approach will be massive home runs. Success comes from focusing on the entire solution you are delivering, not just the technology that enabled it ??? Some Enterprise AI startups will need to become services companies in order to deliver value ??? Some Enterprise AI startups will succeed without becoming services companies ?? Both open source and proprietary foundation models will be used in enterprise AI deployments - several models may get used within the same application. The best model will win - on a per API call basis For many things being talked about enterprise AI, the claim and counterclaim could both be simultaneously true. Augmentation and automation of enterprise workflows is a massive undertaking that is broad, wide, deep and extremely bespoke. AI-fication of work and workflows is one of the biggest opportunities in our lifetimes. Things are just getting started!

Generative AI and Robotics – A tipping point? Robotics has been a promising field for many years, steadily adding value across various industries by improving processes and outcomes. Despite its progress and the substantive promise, the technology has remained in early stages of adoption. There are considerable opportunities for growth and innovation that could drive the impact of robotics to the next level - and help address labor shortages, do dangerous jobs safely, and ultimately make goods and services more accessible to users. GenAI has the potential to be particularly transformative, streamlining the programming of robots to an extent not possible before. It is enabling the development of intuitive, natural language programming interfaces and sophisticated algorithms that can learn and optimize tasks on their own. This can not only reduce the barrier to entry for utilizing robotics technology but also accelerate the pace of innovation within the sector. Supporting software advancements are hardware breakthroughs, particularly in GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units).? And the shift towards a Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) model represents a significant evolution in how robotics solutions are delivered and monetized. Link in first comment below to thoughts from our Emergent Ventures team on the opportunities (and challenges) we are seeing in this space. If you building something new in this space, please reach out to my colleague Niha Gottiparthy, who is driving our enquiry into the opportunities at the intersection of robotics and modern AI. #startups #robotics #venturecapital #genAI