Beyond Limits, a Glendale, Calif.-based company that builds human-like reasoning into its artificial intelligence, has taken its tech from outer space onto factory floors and to hospitals.
Now as it seeks to expand its global footprint, the company said it raised $133 million in Series C funding. In addition to an expansion of its services, it hopes to build up its software platforms.
The round was led by Group 42, an artificial intelligence and cloud computing company in Abu Dhabi, and its longtime and ongoing partner bp ventures, an investment arm of the British energy group. Founded in 2014, Beyond Limits is based on technologies developed at Caltech and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and funded by NASA and the Department of Defense.
<p>"We are seeing unprecedented, world-wide demand for systems that go beyond the limitations of conventional AI," said AJ Abdallat, CEO and co-founder of Beyond Limits, in a statement. "Our cognitive software has the ability to understand situations and place problems in real-world contexts as well as to learn over time."</p><p>The company joined up with bp ventures early on when BP was looking for technological ways to prevent another industrial disaster like Deepwater Horizon, the largest recorded marine oil spill. The explosion and spill from an oil rig leased by BP killed 11 people and devastated sea and avian life in the Gulf of Mexico.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDQyODg0Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NzYzMzMzMX0.VG6Sk1y1R4yQjc00wG5nri3T-rrbtyGie3qJBbole90/image.png?width=980" id="c58d1" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d932eaadcced7d7d22daee20060d9b12" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption..."> Beyond Limits co-founders AJ Abdallat (L) and Mark James (R). </small></p><p>Beyond Limits' technology uses bio-inspired algorithms that attempt to imitate how the human brain works and provide explainable, transparent data rather than conventional "black box" AI results.<br/></p><p>Beyond Limits has worked with a giant energy production company to help expand and increase their production in mature subsurface reservoirs to lower the cost of production. It's also worked with healthcare providers to accurately diagnose patient conditions and major financial institutions on applying cognitive reasoning to fintech. </p><p>Beyond Limits said Tuesday it plans to use the Series C raise to launch Beyond Limits Asia, regionally based in Singapore and operating in Hong Kong, Taipei and Tokyo as it develops AI software that mimics human deduction and reasoning. The company also plans to expand into advanced manufacturing and financial services, a representative told dot.LA.</p><p>In 2019, the company received $25 million in financing from Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy to build an AI-controlled power plant.</p>
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I deeply appreciate David's approach to life and work. On this episode of LA Venture, hear Fleck talk about founding FreeFlow in order to invest in startups coming out of Caltech that have the potential to improve our world.
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The California Institute of Technology ranks as one of the top universities in the world when it comes to receiving patents. But more of those inventions should successfully be making it to market, at least according to the investment thesis of Freeflow, a new pre-seed and seed stage venture firm that exclusively backs Caltech startups focused on human and planetary health.
"The people there are amazing scientists who are not afraid to tackle the hard problems," said Freeflow founder and managing partner David Fleck, who was an early Google employee who has spent the last 20 years tackling big data. "But as I started to spend more time there I realized the ecosystem was somewhat underdeveloped. They needed investors that could help them with capital and help them develop a company."
<p>Fleck wants to be that investor. "We're the only one that we know of having this approach," he added. </p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzU4MjA1NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1Mzg1NDg2OH0.L3SwtZvoF4qzeTz4A3o6AxQ21wS93D0W0fcHAnyRIQI/img.jpg?width=980" id="49803" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8bc7a1cf35a7a48110f0f3142777acc5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
David Fleck, who started Freeflow after he sold his online commenting service, Disqus, for a reported $90 million in 2017, hopes to broaden the perception of Los Angeles from a consumer tech hub to a place with the sorts of deep tech companies more commonly associated with where he spent most of his career, Silicon Valley.
<p>Fleck, who started Freeflow after he <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/05/zeta-global-acquires-commenting-service-disqus/" target="_blank">sold his online commenting service, Disqus</a>, for a reported $90 million in 2017, hopes to broaden the perception of Los Angeles from a consumer tech hub to a place with the sorts of deep tech companies more commonly associated with where he spent most of his career, Silicon Valley. He believes most L.A. VC firms, clustered in Santa Monica, neglect what they view as the hinterlands of Pasadena, where Caltech is based.</p><p>"It's very hard to go from west to east," Fleck said. "We made a conscious decision to say we are a Pasadena firm."</p><p>Freeflow has raised $8 million of capital so far and is aiming to close a $30 million fund by the end of the year with the help of the heavy hitters on its advisory board who are also serving as limited partners; Fred Wilson, founder of Union Square Ventures, Chris Farmer founder of SignalFire, and Chris Douvos, founder of Ahoy Capital.</p>
<p>Wilson, an early investor in Twitter, Tumblr and Etsy, is based in New York but spends several months every winter in L.A. "He became a good friend and mentor and encouraged us to go after the thesis," Fleck said.<br></p><p>Freeflow is fully independent of Caltech. That differs from the approach of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which launched its own venture fund as a public benefit corporation in 2016, <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2019/the-engine-tough-tech-1213" target="_blank">The Engine,</a> focusing on "tough tech." Stanford University backed an accelerator starting in 2013, StartX, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/01/22/stanford-to-end-fund-that-backs-startx-accelerator.html" target="_blank">though the university ended funding last year. </a></p><p>Caltech has had some notable success. Earlier this year, a federal jury in Los Angeles <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/caltech-wins-1-1-billion-patent-award-against-apple-and-broadcom/" target="_blank">ruled Apple owed Caltech $837 million for selling WiFi chips that infringed on the school's patents</a> and Broadcom, which sold the chips to Apple, owed Caltech another $270 million. (The companies are planning to appeal.)</p><p>Freeflow is aiming to back 20 startups over the next 18 months with check sizes averaging around half a million dollars and recently announced its first four investments:</p><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>Appia Bio</strong>: Developing a stem cell therapy platform for the development of new drugs to treat cancer, which was initially developed in the Caltech lab of professor and Nobel laureate Dr. David Baltimore. </li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>Entos</strong>: Making physics-based machine learning software that maps chemical space to discover promising new molecules for therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics through a SaaS model. </li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>Molecular Instruments</strong>: Designs and synthesizes kits for quantitative bio-imaging in drug development, clinical pathology and diagnostics and academic research. </li></ul><ul class="ee-ul"></ul><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>Toofon</strong>: Developing an autonomous, heavy lift drone for last-mile delivery and emergency response, which came out of Caltech's Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies (CAST).</li></ul>From Your Site Articles
- Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Startups and technology - dot.LA ›
- A New VC Hopes to Unlock the Potential in Caltech's Patents - dot.LA ›
- A New VC Hopes to Unlock the Potential in Caltech's Patents - dot.LA ›
- David Fleck Of FreeFlow Invests In Caltech Startups - dot.LA ›
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