Tech News of the Month: The Robot Apocalypse?
The current trend of industrial automation and data analytics is advancing faster than most large industrial corporations are ready for. Called the fourth industrial revolution or "Factory 4.0", it brings everything from AI, to robotics, IOT, and AR/VR, to the industrial floor (whether general managers are ready for it or not).
One company leading the way is China-based phone part maker Changying Precision Technology Company. In a great summary, CB Insights talks about Changying's unmanned factory and describes the areas of the manufacturing process ripe for disruption.
Changying used to require 650 workers to keep the factory running. Now robot arms have cut Changying's human workforce down to just 60 workers. Read more in this post.
Not to be outdone, Zume Pizza has put into production what it calls the first pizza making robot.
Our Friends’ Funding Successes
It makes sense. Congratulations to Melissa Kargiannakis, Skritswap's CEO, and her team for raising their first round of US $500,000. Skritswap uses machine learning to make complicated content more readable so anyone can truly understand anything, no matter how complex.
Back to the factory floor. Speaking of Factory 4.0, Canvass Analytics, an AI-based analytics platform helping manufacturers anticipate process inefficiencies, predict equipment failures, and foresee energy usage in real-time, raised $5M this summer.
Tribal Investment News
We're excited to announce that Tribal Investments has made an investment in AIKON. AIKON is a blockchain platform removing barriers that make it difficult for companies to offer their SAAS service to other businesses and consumers. SAAS companies can offload identity management and rights management to the AIKON platform and sell across geographies without the challenge of managing different fiat currencies.
Segment News - The Driver’s Seat
Whether you are in the autonomous vehicle market segment or not, it's a segment worth paying attention to because it's going to change the world...unless it doesn't. Will one of these newly funded companies be part of the change?
Three million is a magic number. WaveSense, Fleetonomy and Perceptive Automata, each raised $3 million for their self-driving vehicle solutions.
WaveSense is a Massachusetts-based company offering ground penetrating radar to map subsurface landscapes to help autonomous vehicles to navigate.
Fleetonomy hails from Israel and offers AI-based fleet management solutions.
Perceptive Automata, another Massachusetts startup, builds software that teaches autonomous vehicles to watch humans as other humans would.
Lifting off beyond the magic number. SkyX, builds vertical take off and landing unmanned vehicles for monitoring and inspecting over long distances. They raised $9.5 million in a Series B funding.
Featured Events
Webinar: Scale or Sale: Optimizing Your Exit Opportunities
Date & Time: Thursday, October 11, 2018 11:00 am PT
Hosting by: Boast AI and Connections Silicon Valley
Jory Des Jardins will be at
NPR's How I Built This Summit
on Tuesday, October 16
offering her expertise to attendees as one of the Summit's select Mentors
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