Thursday, 23 September 2021

VB Daily | September 23 - Google lends nonprofits a hand

Daily Roundup
The Lead
[1] Google expands Cloud research credits to nonprofits
[2] 1Password brings on a CTO to unlock growth 
[3] The enterprise data stack shines in LinkedIn's Top Startups of 2021
The Follow
[1] Google today announced that Google Cloud research credits, which give researchers access to computing resources via Google Cloud, are expanding to researchers at nonprofit institutions. Previously, only researchers at government and academic research institutions were eligible, limiting the scope of work that could be managed and analyzed using Google Cloud services. With the announcement, Google Cloud joins the handful of tech giants extending cloud compute resources to nonprofits, including Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The use of big data and analytics is increasing across organizations, including those in the nonprofit sector. According to a PwrdBy survey, 73% of nonprofits believe AI innovation aligns with their missions and 75% believe AI makes their lives easier, particularly in areas like donor categorization, routine back-office tasks, and "mission-driven" initiatives. But there remain significant barriers for nonprofits looking to build their own AI solutions or adopt third-party products – chiefly cost, resources, and time. "Most nonprofits struggle with small budgets and inadequate staffing, and they fall behind the cutting edge of new technologies [like AI]," reads a recent Brookings Institution study. "This limits their group's efficiency and effectiveness and makes it difficult to have the kind of impact they would like."
According to Google, centers including New York Genome Center, Scripps Research Institute, the Vector Institute in Toronto, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, and the Allen Institute for AI are already using Google Cloud for big data and analytics workloads. >> Read more here
[2] 1Password has hired its first chief technology officer (CTO). The Canadian company has come a long way since it launched its first password manager for consumers some 15 years ago, and has since increasingly chased the enterprise dollar, doubling its number of paying business customers to more than 90,000 in the past two years and hitting annual recovering revenue (ARR) of $120 million. So why hire a CTO now? "In a word? growth," 1Password CEO Jeff Shiner told VentureBeat. 
The password management and credentials security platform looks to double-down on its enterprise growth that has garnered big-name customers including Slack, IBM, Shopify, and GitLab. Although 1Password had grown organically and been profitable since its inception, the company's decision to accelerate its enterprise push was enabled in large part by its gargantuan $200 million series A round back in 2019, representing its first ever institutional investment. Off the back of this, 1Password expanded into secrets management to help companies secure their infrastructure; launched a new API for security teams to funnel 1Password sign-in data directly into their cybersecurity applications; and introduced a new Linux desktop app for DevOps teams. A few months back, 1Password raised another $100 million and announced its first CFO, chief product officer (CPO), chief marketing officer, and — now – its first CTO, early Facebook engineer and VP Pedro Canahuati.
It's important to note that while 1Password does toot its enterprise horn, it's still very much a consumer service too. This presents an extra challenge, as the company has to deal with myriad expectations and requirements spanning individual users and families, to small businesses and enterprises. A 1Password product roadmap has the potential to get messy without due care. >> Read more here.
[3] Startups are capitalizing on the growing gaps across enterprise data stacks as the stresses of keeping customers loyal, keeping infrastructure secure, and keeping virtual teams collaborative force rapid change throughout the industry. Sixty percent of LinkedIn's Top Startups of 2021 see enterprises as the key to the future.
Four of the top 10 startups of 2021 focus on improving the future of enterprise work, including Gong (No. 2), Attentive (No. 7), Outreach (No. 9), and MikMak (No. 10). Startups concentrating on improving the way enterprises work include GitLab (No. 20); Scale AI (No. 29); task management platform ClickUp (No. 42); email platform provider Superhuman (No. 44); and SaaS startup Innovaccer (No. 46), who is creating unified health care data. LinkedIn says nearly all honorees are hiring now, and more than half of the available jobs are for remote roles. Among the top 50 startups, Attentive is a pacesetter in remote hiring. Throughout the past 18 months, its remote-first team has grown 375% from 200 employees to more than 950.
 Cybersecurity startups show momentum. Four of the top-ranked startups are concentrating on security and cybersecurity. OneTrust (No. 49) and Rubrik (No. 40) are two startups worth watching as the companies' pace and scale of innovation define the markets in which they compete. Samsara (No. 15) is a leader in industrial IoT whose portfolio of internet of things (IoT) solutions combines hardware, software, and cloud technology to bring real-time visibility, analytics, and AI to its operations. There's also Verkada (No. 16), a cloud-managed enterprise building security leader whose platform provides real-time video data streams integrated into enterprise cybersecurity systems. >> Read more here.
The Funding Breakdown
  • Panorays raises $42M - Investments in cyber risk mitigation technologies continue to grow as cyberattacks proliferate during the pandemic. Tel Aviv-based Panorays is one company offering monitoring and alert systems designed to map a company's cyber posture, and it plans to spend the capital on product R&D and hiring as it looks to expand the size of its platform.
  • Sternum nabs $27M - Sternum, an IoT security and visibility company, says its software sensors embed inside devices, enabling them to become "self-securing." It claims its technology is already in over 100,000 devices across "a number" of Fortune 500 businesses, including those in medical, manufacturing, and communications industries. 
  • Bigeye lands $45M - As the pandemic accelerates digital transformation and the data management stakes rise, data observability and monitoring tools have come into vogue. Eighty percent of teams within organizations are practicing, or intend to practice, observability within two years. Bigeye, a data observability platform, is one of many startups tackling the problem.
  • Turtl raises $17M - There's a growing desire across the enterprise to scale, personalize, and automate marketing, sales, and post-sales and customer activity tasks – 70% of B2B marketers plan to increase their spend on content creation in 2021. Turtl, a content automation platform based in London, aims to meet this demand and already counts companies like Nike and Cisco as its customers.
Hear from CIOs, CTOs, and other C-level execs on data and AI strategies
 
The Buzz
Sean McDonald
We will (if you don't already) regret allowing the term "AI" to mean so much with so little interrogation.
mike cook
As a reminder, military interest in AI is spreading fast, and into less obvious fields like games research, too. https://t.co/DpTzEYeTof
ICYMI
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