*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* Meet Captur Rakesh's AI Thoughts New Associate Joins Ascension Fund III Team Launch of Ascension Syndicate Marketing Seminar & Founder's Pub Club Portfolio in the News Open Roles
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As we step into the festive season, we want to thank our community. Thank you for your commitment and collaboration throughout the year! Meet Captur, the latest investment from our Knowledge Intensive EIS Fund In a business landscape increasingly reliant on real-time customer interaction and accurate data analysis, Captur emerges as a game-changer. Focused initially on the mobility industry (e.g. bikes and scooters), it responds to the crucial need for showcasing service completion and delivery validation.
Captur's AI-driven platform streamlines these processes, offering customisable rules and real-time image evaluation. Beyond immediate industry needs, Captur's vision extends to becoming a pivotal tool for operations across diverse sectors.
Existing investors MMC Ventures and Ascension provided additional capital. Operator angels also participated in the round, along with Concept Ventures and Two Culture Capital. How does it work? Captur streamlines data integration by enabling effortless image uploads without mandating a minimum dataset or data labelling. This accessibility allows for a seamless start, catering to users regardless of their data volume. The platform empowers users to tailor image recognition rules based on their specific policies and service level agreements, ensuring a personalised approach. Leveraging AI, Captur swiftly evaluates uploaded images in real-time, delivering prompt results that can be easily accessed and audited by the user's team.
Why did we invest? Charlotte Bax, CEO and Founder of Captur, leverages her experience in scaling operations and commercialising technologies at Trendalytics, positioning her effectively for Captur's growth. The roadmap demonstrates a strategic expansion plan from Transportation and Logistics to Retail and E-commerce industries, aiming to become the AI Autopilot for Operations. Captur's unique selling points, such as leveraging network effects to improve its AI models, solidify its market advantage.
To learn more about our other Knowledge Intensive Fund click here.
| Rakesh's AI Thoughts🎙️ In this month's spotlight, Rakesh’s favourite pick is AI legend Andrej Karpathy’s 1 hour talk on an introduction to large language models. It’s at the more technical end of the spectrum but Andrej does such a wonderful job in concepts such as pre-training, finetuning, and how models can be hacked / jailbroken. The most exciting news for Rakesh of the last few weeks (excluding the soap opera) was Google Deepmind’s AI materials science research which has uncovered over two million potential new crystal materials, with about 400,000 of which are stable materials similar to graphene which could unlock new possibilities in battery and conductor technology. This was the equivalent of about 800 years of research effort. Rakesh is also doing a webinar (for investors, founders, financial advisors) on AI and its implications, register your interest here.
Freya Joins Ascension 👏 We are pleased to announce that Freya joins our Fund III team as an Associate. She brings with her a wealth of experience having previously worked at Regionally as the Head of investor Relations and Marketing and Deazy as a Partnerships Manager. When not in work mode, Freya can be found cooking up a storm for her friends, trying to improve at life drawing or painting and looking for her next travelling adventure.
Welcome Freya, we are excited to have you onboard!
Official Launch of the Ascension Syndicate 🎉 We are pleased to announce the official launch of the Ascension Syndicate! The Syndicate has been operating in stealth mode and has invested in 14 companies so far this year, ranging from fraud detection technology to synthetic DNA. The Syndicate gives investors the chance to co-invest with Ascension into hand-picked, high potential businesses from the 3,000+ opportunities we review every year. We’re building a community of the UK’s leading angels and are keen for the deal-flow to go both ways, so please also share investment opportunities that you’re excited about and we can work together on getting the round closed (either in partnership with Ascension’s funds or Syndicate). Please register here to join if you’d like to hear more about our upcoming deals.
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Marketing Seminar and Founder’s Pub Club We recently partnered with MNC Ltd to deliver a focused seminar on consumer marketing. This event offered valuable strategies and insights for startups looking to enhance their brand identity and increase revenue. A big thank you to the MNC team and our insightful speakers: Polly Gilbert (Tembo), George Rawlings (Thursday), and John De Pree (GetAgent), for sharing their experiences.
The event concluded with a networking session at our Pub Club, providing a great opportunity for our founders to connect and strengthen the Ascension community. Portfolio In The News
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| | | About Ascension Ascension is an early-stage venture capital firm built by exited entrepreneurs to back the next generation of tech and impact founders. Since 2015, Ascension has invested in 150+ start-ups across its (S)EIS & Institutional funds - our specialist approach and extensive sector reach allow us to identify and scale pioneering tech enterprises.
With over £80m under management, Ascension has been London's most active VC over the past decade (Beauhurst data), with a particular focus on backing impact businesses leveraging the power of technology to solve some of the world's biggest problems. For more information, see ascension.vc.
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