Portfolio
Founders: Jason Gulbinas & Matt Kowalczyk
About: Aila’s platform of software-based scanning and customer-facing hardware enables superior self-service experiences at scale, improving customer-facing operations and enhancing the customer experience.
Why we invested: We were drawn to the company’s superior engineering and design skills, which allowed Aila to pivot from a simple enclosures company to a leading provider of industry-leading scanning software and hardware platforms that both enterprises and end customers prefer.
Founders: Dr. Shantanu Gaur & Dr. Samuel Levy
About: Allurion offers frictionless, supportive weight-loss solutions that focus on patients’ wants and needs. Its flagship product, the Elipse Gastric Balloon, has helped patients all over the world lose millions of pounds.
Why we invested: Obesity is one of the world’s biggest problems, and its solutions are all invasive or impractical. We were excited by the company’s unique position at the intersection of medical and cosmetic value, and the founders’ desire to build a massive, impactful global business.
Founders: Ian Seiferling, Moe Vazifeh, and Julian Ortiz
About: Adaviv creates AI-driven tools that detect plant stress, disease, and vigor, so indoor farmers can improve the cultivation, growth, and yield of their crops.
Why we invested: Supporting companies using technology to transform longstanding industries, such as agriculture, is a key part of our investment thesis. The indoor agriculture industry is growing rapidly around the world. We were drawn to the team’s extensive grounding in MIT’s Senseable City Lab and its complementary nature: CEO Ian focuses on plants and sensing, CTO Moe is an exceptional technologist, and Julian brings both family farming and operational experience.
Founders: Shiladitya Sengupta
About: Akamara is a biotechnology company pioneering exciting new types of cancer treatment by developing supramolecular structures that target B-cell immunotherapy. With a lead molecule focused on triple negative breast cancer, Akamara aims to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to research with the ultimate goal of a paradigm shift in cancer care.
Why we invested: Immuno-oncology is rapidly transforming the way cancer is treated, and Akamara’s focus on B-cells will set it apart. We believe B-cells could become very important complements to T-cells, which are already demonstrating efficacy only in certain patient populations.
Founder: Jon Radoff
About: Beamable helps game developers run a successful game business. The company enables Unity developers to easily add social, commerce, and content management features to their games.
Why we invested: We invested in Beamable when it was known as Disruptor Beam, a developer of games based on well-loved literary and television series. We appreciate the company’s deep understanding of the game industry and its agility – over a decade, it has continued to architect its own unique trajectory with a conviction that is rare for the industry.
Founder: Ashwin Madgavkar
About: Ceres is an aerial spectral imaging and analytics company that provides imagery-based intelligence and analytics solutions to farmers. With Ceres’ best-in-class technology, growers can detect and fix water, fertilizer, and pest disease problems weeks before the naked eye.
Why we invested: When we invested in Ceres, we had been investigating the AgTech space for 2-3 years. Ceres has a unique approach that mixes cutting-edge imaging technology, an army of agronomists, and empathy for its customer base – the farmers. We believe computer vision like Ceres’ is an increasingly valuable technology for real-world use cases.
Founder: Payal Kadakia
About: ClassPass is a monthly membership that allows users to experiment with different types of fitness classes via in-studio or at-home workouts. Since launching in 2013, ClassPass has revolutionized the on-demand approach to fitness and grown a loyal follower base in 80+ cities around the world.
Why we invested: One of ClassPass’s first institutional investors, we invested in the company while it was in TechStars. We were drawn to founder Payal Kadakia’s creativity and perseverance.
Founders: Josh Feast & Sandy Pentland
About: A spinout of the MIT Media Lab, Cogito creates AI-driven behavioral analytics software that provides real-time emotional intelligence support for sales, service, and care management professionals.
Why we invested: Cogito’s expertise in behavioral analysis of voice using ‘honest signals’ stood out to us, and we believed it would be one of the first successful and scalable examples of artificial intelligence to be applied in large enterprises.
Founders: Brett Reed & Michael Slocombe
About: Cohealo helps health systems save money by facilitating the sharing of equipment between facilities. This sharing approach maximizes access for patients, generates cost-savings, and enables more agile, data-driven decision-making.
Why we invested: Cohealo is an early example of a company using technology to disrupt a traditional industry. Bringing the sharing economy to archaic healthcare systems could generate massive value.
Founders: Anmol Madan & Karan Singh
About: A spinout of the MIT Media Lab, Ginger provides on-demand access to behavioral health coaching, video therapy, and video psychiatry that’s clinically proven to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression.
Why we invested: Ginger provided an early introduction to some of the most interesting machine learning work coming out of MIT. Our investment in the company paved the way for our investments in other Media Lab spinouts, including Cogito and Humanyze.
Founders: Ben Waber, Daniel Olguin, and Taemie Kim
About: A spinout of the MIT Media Lab, Humanyze uses AI-powered tools to help companies make better, more agile business decisions that improve performance and the employee experience. Humanyze applies unique analytics to measure leading indicators of Organizational Health, including employee engagement, team productivity, and organizational adaptability.
Why we invested: Having worked at consulting firms, we knew that enterprises make very valuable people-related decisions without great data or analytics. Humanyze can change that paradigm using its 15 years of research out of MIT.
Founders: Dan Greenfield & Vaughan Wittorff
About: Founded by a University of Cambridge PhD, PetaGene is a bioinformatics company that has created a novel, best-in-class method to compress and manage genomic data. PetaGene decreases the size of genomic data, reducing storage costs and data transfer times without compromising quality.
Why we invested: Before investing in PetaGene, we had been exploring the genomic data space for several years. PetaGene was different from most other companies in the space, which were targeting more downstream applications of genomic data. PetaGene is solving a more immediate problem as the genomics revolution expands.
Founders: Matthew Barba & Frederick Townes
About: Placester is an intelligent digital marketing platform for real estate professionals. The company’s software allows agents and brokers to easily create attractive websites and gather more accurate feedback from their customers, as the real estate industry gradually moves online.
Why we invested: We were attracted by Placester’s approach to the massive residential real estate industry and the founders’ long-term vision.
Founder: Raj Suri
About: Presto is a platform technology company for the restaurant industry. The company offers a comprehensive suite of technology solutions that increase staff productivity, improve the guest experience, and deliver actionable insights to managers.
Why we invested: Presto was the first check we wrote back in 2008. We were attracted by the focus on an industry and consumer experience that hadn’t changed for decades, as well as the engineering prowess and hunger of the company’s founder.
Founders: Scott Montgomerie, David Nedohin, and Graham Melley
About: Scope AR is a next-generation augmented reality platform for enterprise customers in industrial and manufacturing settings. Its AR knowledge platform enables any technician of any skill to conduct field maintenance, precision manufacturing, and training using instructions delivered via augmented reality.
Why we invested: Our investment in Scope represents our larger interest in building companies that can transform traditional sectors and taps into a Future of Work theme we’ve observed across multiple industrial sectors. Although consumer-facing augmented reality (AR) hasn’t really panned out, Scope seemed to have found an enterprise use case that made sense.
Founders: Michael Guirguis and Jordan Taylor
About: SESO is a labor marketplace for agriculture that connects farms with qualified workers and supports agribusiness with an end-to-end HR solution. SESO’s mission is to provide workers meaningful, safe employment while driving efficiency in the agricultural supply chain through technology.
Why we invested: We understand the agriculture industry and appreciate the scope of the labor problem. SESO’s founders are very well-suited to attack the issue.
Founders: Robert Fryers & Neil D’Souza Matthew
About: Spotta’s technology automatically identifies and quantifies pest infestations, allowing hotel customers to resolve problems earlier and more cost-effectively.
Why we invested: Spotta’s founders – who have known each other since their engineering education at Cambridge – have deep expertise at the intersection of low power devices and artificial intelligence, and they have applied it to a massive industry that has been relatively untouched by technology.
Founders: Shiladitya Sengupta & N. Venkat
About: A leading Indian biotech company, Vyome develops topical antibiotics for acne, particularly for patients demonstrating resistance to existing first-line antibiotics.
Why we invested: Vyome represents our interest in the intersection of medical needs and cosmetic wants. Vyome has demonstrated great potential in its clever, scientific approach to solving a clear unmet need in the market.
Founder: Arram Sabeti
About: ZeroCater provides an end-to-end, tech-enabled catering solution for enterprise businesses. ZeroCater aggregates demand for meals, snacks, and drinks from its customers, then fulfills orders using its marketplace of certified vendors.
Why we invested: We were struck by ZeroCater’s incredible operational efficiency, which had allowed it to achieve $100M in sales after raising only $1.5M. We partnered with the company to help take it to the next stage of growth.
Founder: Quincy Edmund Lee
About: Electric Era builds end-to-end battery solutions to make EV fast charging ubiquitous and affordable.
Founders: Eric Adamson, Tim Brackbill
About: Torguga builds robotics for the agriculture industry, focused primarily on harvesting, to help augment the farm’s labor force.
Founder: Anmol Madan
About: Radiantgraph’s platform helps healthcare organizations bring AI and ML to their members; to drive growth and better care.
Founders: Anirudh Joshi, Viswesh Krishna, Damir Vrabac
About: Valar Labs builds clinical-grade ML to augment oncologist decision-making.
Founders: Karan Kashyap, Matt McEachern
About: Posh builds AI conversational tools for banks and credit unions.
