Menlo Ventures

Higgsfield AI Secures $8M in Seed Funding to Unlock Personalized AI Video Creation

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Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Mobile, Wireless, Technology, Finance, Other Technology, Communications, Professional Services, Software, Social Media, Data Management, Artificial Intelligence, Snapchat, Life, Social media, Menlo Ventures, Creativity, Diffusion, Video game

Higgsfield AI , a startup focused on democratizing social media video creation, today announced $8 million seed funding led by Menlo Ventures.

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Higgsfield AI , a startup focused on democratizing social media video creation, today announced $8 million seed funding led by Menlo Ventures.
And the reality is, most of the time this is happening on our phones,” said Alex Mashrabov, co-founder & CEO, Higgsfield AI.
The new funding round marks a significant milestone in Higgsfield AI's mission to bring video AI generation and editing into the mainstream with its proprietary video model.
"Higgsfield AI is bringing video AI to the masses, by making it possible for virtually anyone to be a creator and easily produce engaging, personalized, and sharable videos," said Amy Wu, Partner, Menlo Ventures.

Unstructured Raises $40M Series B From Menlo Ventures, Databricks Ventures, IBM Ventures and NVIDIA to Make Enterprise Data LLM-ready

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Thursday, March 14, 2024

Tim Tully of Menlo Ventures joined the board of directors as part of the investment, which brings the company’s total capital raised to $65 million.

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Tim Tully of Menlo Ventures joined the board of directors as part of the investment, which brings the company’s total capital raised to $65 million.
Unstructured will leverage this new injection of capital to grow its team and accelerate its development of data preprocessing tooling for LLMs.
This includes files such as emails, documents, images, videos, and other data organizations historically haven’t been able to use at scale, in conjunction with machine learning.
Addressing this critical gap, Unstructured is the first and only company that can ingest and pre-process all unstructured data into formats ready for use with foundation models.

Clarifai Hires Amith Nair as President and COO

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Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Cloud, Amit, ROI, Marketing, Government, Cohesity, Synthetic media, HashiCorp, Humana, Lowe's, Microsoft, Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, Customer service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarifai, a global leader in AI development and a pioneer of the full-stack AI platform, today announced that Amith Nair will join as President and COO, guiding enterprise customers through the shift from AI exploration to building AI faster and realizing meaningful value.

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"We're thrilled to add Amith to our team and the timing is perfect," said Matt Zeiler, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Clarifai.
Clarifai was built to deliver and Amith will ensure we are best supporting developers and teams in running AI at scale in minutes, not months."
Prior to Clarifai, Nair served in senior leadership positions in product, operations and marketing strategy at Cohesity, HashiCorp and Microsoft.
"Adding Amith to Clarifai as COO is a game changer!

Clarifai Hires Amith Nair as President and COO

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Cloud, Amit, ROI, Marketing, Government, Cohesity, Synthetic media, HashiCorp, Humana, Lowe's, Microsoft, Menlo Ventures, NVIDIA, Customer service

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarifai, a global leader in AI development and a pioneer of the full-stack AI platform, today announced that Amith Nair will join as President and COO, guiding enterprise customers through the shift from AI exploration to building AI faster and realizing meaningful value.

Key Points:

"We're thrilled to add Amith to our team and the timing is perfect," said Matt Zeiler, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Clarifai.
Clarifai was built to deliver and Amith will ensure we are best supporting developers and teams in running AI at scale in minutes, not months."
Prior to Clarifai, Nair served in senior leadership positions in product, operations and marketing strategy at Cohesity, HashiCorp and Microsoft.
"Adding Amith to Clarifai as COO is a game changer!

Restaurant365 Names Jessica Lanier Chief Financial Officer

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Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Menlo Ventures, Growth, CFO, MBA, Economics, Lanier, Sale, University, Software as a service, Silver, Business, Management

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Restaurant365, the leading all-in-one restaurant enterprise management platform, today named Jessica Lanier chief financial officer, effective immediately.

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IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Restaurant365, the leading all-in-one restaurant enterprise management platform, today named Jessica Lanier chief financial officer, effective immediately.
Lanier most recently served as vice president of finance at Qualtrics.
"Jessica is a world-class finance leader, and we're grateful to add her to our talented team.
"I'm excited to join Restaurant365 at a pivotal moment in the company's story," Lanier said.

Menlo Ventures Hires Rama Sekhar as Partner

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Wednesday, January 24, 2024

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MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Menlo Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, announced its newest partner, Rama Sekhar.

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MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 24, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Menlo Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, announced its newest partner, Rama Sekhar.
Rama also previously held positions at Comcast Ventures and Cisco Systems, where he held roles as a systems engineer and product manager.
“We are thrilled to welcome Rama to the Menlo Ventures team,” said Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures.
It's a fantastic time for him to be joining Menlo Ventures to help us double down on our AI-based cybersecurity and infrastructure investing.”
“Menlo Ventures has a phenomenal track record, and this is a particularly exciting time to join, as they have truly solidified their reputation in both cybersecurity and AI infrastructure with investments in companies like Abnormal, Anthropic, and Pinecone,” said Rama Sekhar, partner at Menlo Ventures.

Menlo Ventures Closes $1.35 Billion to Invest in Companies Leading the AI Transformation

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Thursday, November 16, 2023

Human, Generative, CPO, Investment, Anthropization, Siri, Uber, Ecosystem, Harness, Menlo Ventures, AI, Roku, Name, Enterprise, Cryptocurrency, Sales, Atlassian, Conifer cone

MENLO PARK, Calif., Nov. 16, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Menlo Ventures , a leading venture capital firm, announced the firm has raised $1.35 billion in new capital that will be invested by Menlo’s flagship venture fund Menlo XVI and Menlo Inflection III and their affiliated funds, with a mandate to invest in promising technology companies leading the AI transformation.

Key Points:

MENLO PARK, Calif., Nov. 16, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Menlo Ventures , a leading venture capital firm, announced the firm has raised $1.35 billion in new capital that will be invested by Menlo’s flagship venture fund Menlo XVI and Menlo Inflection III and their affiliated funds, with a mandate to invest in promising technology companies leading the AI transformation.
“With this $1.35 billion in new capital, we’re making a commitment to support the forthcoming generation of AI startups,” said Venky Ganesan.
Menlo Ventures will help write the next chapter,” said Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures.
The potential is profound.”
To learn more about Menlo Ventures, please visit www.menlovc.com
For detail on Menlo Ventures’ perspective on AI, visit https://menlovc.com/focus-areas/ai/
To read Menlo Venture’s newest report, The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise visit mnlo.vc/Ent_AI_Report

Menlo Ventures’ State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Reveals New Data on Sentiment and Adoption Rates, Highlighting Opportunities for Startups

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Monday, November 13, 2023

Generative, Engineering, Eating, Traction, Learning, Enterprise report management, Research, Marketing, Horizontal, Human, Menlo Ventures, AI, Enterprise, LLM, Customer service, Dairy, Medical device

According to the report, enterprise investment in generative AI remains surprisingly small, totaling $2.5 billion this year–significantly less than the $70 billion invested in traditional AI and the $400 billion spent on cloud software.

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According to the report, enterprise investment in generative AI remains surprisingly small, totaling $2.5 billion this year–significantly less than the $70 billion invested in traditional AI and the $400 billion spent on cloud software.
The report identifies three areas that offer enormous potential for startups to break out:
Vertical AI: Research shows that the marketing and legal industries currently lead the way in vertical generative AI adoption.
The modern AI stack: New generative capabilities require new tools for building LLM apps, including databases, serving infrastructure, data orchestration, and pipelines.
Although still a “work in progress,” the modern AI stack attracts the largest percentage of enterprise AI investment, making it the biggest new market in the generative AI domain and an attractive focus for startups.

Announcing Barnyard Games: a New Breed of AAA Developers Making Epic Games on Unreal Engine for Fortnite (UEFN)

Retrieved on:

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Barnyard Games is composed of Matthew Armstrong (creator of Borderlands), John Blakely (Sony Online, Zynga), Mark Cieslar (Sony Online, Daybreak Studios), and Christopher Sturr (THQ, Sony Online).

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Barnyard Games is composed of Matthew Armstrong (creator of Borderlands), John Blakely (Sony Online, Zynga), Mark Cieslar (Sony Online, Daybreak Studios), and Christopher Sturr (THQ, Sony Online).
Together they will use their storied expertise to create innovative, fun, and high-quality social game experiences starting on the UEFN Platform.
"The Barnyard team has both a successful track record of building franchises from 0 to 1 and scaling games.
For more information about Barnyard Games, follow us on Discord , LinkedIn , X , TikTok , Twitch and YouTube .

Obsidian Security Recognized as Strong Performer by Independent Research Firm

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Monday, December 11, 2023

Additionally, the Obsidian Integration Risk Management module received the highest possible score in the connected apps criterion.

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Additionally, the Obsidian Integration Risk Management module received the highest possible score in the connected apps criterion.
Forrester also gave Obsidian the highest score possible in the IAM administration criterion supported by Obsidian Advanced Threat Mitigation module.
The Forrester report recognized Obsidian as a vendor providing “a single, modular platform” for SaaS Security and Posture Management.
With a focus on tangible capabilities and robust security measures, Obsidian remains a trusted partner for organizations seeking top-tier SSPM solutions.