The Hive Raises $26.5 Million to Encourage Growth of AI Startups

Special Co-Creation Studio Works Actively With Entrepreneurs To Fund, Create And Launch Start-Ups

The Hive, is a venture fund and co-creation studio which actively builds and fosters start-ups that focus on AI-powered applications in the enterprise. It announced its closing of the third-fund (The Hive III) at $26.5 Million in capital investments. The investment earned would help The Hive co-create more than seven start-ups in the next three years.

The Hive III fund is focused on early-stage companies which help in creating value and driving disruption using AI in the enterprise and other key indicators. Until date, The Hive III has co-created two startups, Decision Engines, and Live Objects.

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The Hive’s USP

Hive has co-created and invested in 24 companies, with six of those companies having been acquired: Nurego co-created with EMC & Paul Maritz by GE, Kosei by Pinterest, Perspica by Cisco, Jobr by Monster Worldwide, Deep Forest Media by Rakuten and E8 Security by VMware.

The Hive’s unique equity value creation structure for creating and launching startups is highly differentiated from VCs and incubators. It employs a high-touch model that applies its deep business and entrepreneurial expertise to start companies with entrepreneurs.

Since late 2012, the team provides initial capital of $1.5 million to $2 million. It provides follow-on capital, and helps organize future rounds of financing with venture capitalists. In addition to funding, The Hive guides entrepreneurs to help early startups move through company building, business design, introduction to early customers and partners along with go-to-market strategy.

“We are excited to expand our relationship with The Hive with a new investment in The Hive III. This will offer Verizon an opportunity to support crucial enabling technologies and application ecosystems in AI, Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation and other areas. We believe The Hive, utilizing its growing entrepreneurial network and innovation track record, will offer Verizon unique value as we build the next-generation network economy,” said Vijay Doradla, Director at Verizon Ventures.

“The Hive’s vision of the future of the enterprise is an AI-based autonomous enterprise. The Hive is leveraging its vast experience in machine learning and deep learning to launch the next wave of AI powered companies that will transform the enterprise and disrupt every industry.,” said The Hive Co-Founder and Managing Director, T.M. Ravi.

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What is in focus?

The Hive is focusing its vision on the autonomous enterprise by re-building business processes to function smoothly with AI. The firm is creating specific AI-enterprises which target business purposes like CRM, ITSM and ESM, along with business process transformation, automation and data center management and security.

The startups that shall apply AI in their transformations will wholly transform human-centric processes into spirited machine and human collaborations. These business operations will thus be unparalleled in fluidity and expertise. The Hive startups are focusing on applications of blockchain in mediums of trade instruments, shared asset tokens and trusted service operations. In addition to functional areas in the general enterprise, The Hive addresses specific areas such as industrials, logistics, health, financial services and retail. The industrial Internet of Things (IoT) is also a key indicator in the enterprise for Hive.

The Hive partners work closely with corporations including Verizon, Cisco, SAP and eBay to build and launch startups. The Hive has a set of advisors who help with the co-creation and launch of startups that includes important people from AI in the tech industry, inclusive from Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Stanford, Salesforce, Microsoft, Cloudera, and O’Reilly.

The Hive will be hosting its Annual Summit later this week that will be on the theme of “AI in the Enterprise”. 150 to 800 individuals meet to participate in interactive sessions and panel discussions focused on AI. It consists of courses on AI, Enterprise, Blockchain, FinTech, InsureTech, IoT, Health and Entrepreneurship.

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