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  • Autonomous driving with end-to-end Machine Learning

    Wayve is pioneering a new approach to autonomous driving that leverages end-to-end deep learning and computer vision. Co-founders Alex Kendall and Amar Shah started the company to enable AVs on a larger scale by bringing a greater focus on safety and data-driven solutions.

    Both Cambridge University graduates, Amar received a PhD in machine learning in 2016 while Alex followed a year later with a PhD in deep learning, computer vision, and robotics. They decided to pool their expertise and launched Wayve in 2017. Since Fly invested in Wayve’s Seed Round in 2017, the company has raised a total of USD 258M across its Series A and B, including money from such top-tier investors as Balderton, Eclipse, Baillie Gifford, and Microsoft, as well as prominent business angels Virgin’s Richard Branson, Meta’s Yann LeCunn, and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever.

  • Generative AI for material discovery

    Orbital Materials is building Alphafold for chemistry. They harness the transformative power of foundational AI models to generate and synthesize breakthrough materials. Co-founders Jonathan Godwin, James Gin, and Daniel Miodovnik created Orbital Materials in 2022 to discover breakthrough substances that will provide the foundation of next-generation products.

    Jonathan spent four years at DeepMind as a research engineer where he led the team working on AI-driven materials design and has had his work published in prestigious journals like Nature. James has a degrees in Machine Learning from UCL and Physics from Oxford. As co-founder of Datasine, he applied his expertise in large datasets and modeling and the startup was later acquired by Shutterstock. Daniel was previously Co-Founder of Social Finance Digital Labs and is currently an advisor to the UNESCO center on AI Policy.

  • Revamped source code management and concierge

    GitButler is developing a new, revamped, source code management and code concierge. An intelligent, context aware helper that continuously learns and adjusts to individuals and teams. Kiril Videlov, Anne Leuschner, and Scott Chacon co-founded the company in early 2023 to modernize how developers work with Git and with the goal to reinvent the entire concept of source code management. Scott co-founded GitHub, which has become a critical resource for developers around the world

    and in the process made him an influential figure in the software development space. He later co-founded language-learning service Chatterbug and the SCNE Accelerator in Berlin. Anne founded Delinero, a German e-commerce food company that was acquired by Bertelsmann (G&J), and later joined Chatterbug and SCNE. Kiril co-founded Sturdy, a Y Combinator company that developed a code management system and later became Codeball.

  • Observability for machine learning models

    Evidently AI has created an open-source software tool that tests, monitors, and evaluates machine learning models in production. Elena Samuylova and Emeli Dral co-founded the company in 2021 to create a better interface for machine learning that makes it easier for companies to trust and improve the performance of their AI solutions.

    The co-founders originally connected while working at Yandex Data Factory where Emeli was Chief Data Scientist and Elena was Director of Business Development. In 2018, they co- founded their first company together, Mechanica AI, which used AI to optimize industrial production. Since they launched Evidently AI they remain the most popular open source solution for in production monitoring.

  • Enabling dronized and autonomous trucks

    Fernride is building a platform for autonomous, electric trucking. Initially focussing on yards, the company takes a gradual autonomy approach with the help of teleoperations. Co-founders Hendrik Kramer, Max Fisser, and Jean-Michael Georg leveraged more than a decade of research on autonomy and tele ops at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

    The founders met at TUM where Kramer and Fisser were pursuing their master’s degrees while Georg was a research associate. In 2019, they spun out and quickly attracted such major customers as Volkswagen, DB Schenker and HHLA. The two latter were so impressed with Fernride’s technology that they invested in the USD 50M Series A round in June 2023.

  • Connecting PLCs to the cloud

    Software Defined Automation is a platform that delivers industrial control as a service. Josef Waltl founded the company in 2021 to bring modern version control and cloud based PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) to the factory automation market.

    Josef brought a rich manufacturing background to SDA that included almost a decade at Siemens, followed by overseeing industrial software for Amazon Web Services, and then as product manager for Microsoft Azure’s industrial and IOT business unit. Not long after launching SDA, the company has already expanded to the US. Its Seed round was led by Insight Partners.

  • Data driven patient recruitment for clinical trials

    Inato has created an AI-powered platform for pharmaceutical companies that collects and analyzes data from clinical trials. Kourosh Davarpanah and Liz Beatty co-founded the company in 2016 to accelerate drug testing so companies can develop new therapies faster and at lower prices.

    Liz spent almost 15 years at Bristol Myers Squibb where she was most recently head of digital clinical trials. Kouroush had previously founded a first company right after graduating from Polytechnique and Columbia. Inato has now raised USD 49.1M from investors such as Obvious Ventures, and Cathay Innovation. Its customers now include ten of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies working across 60 countries.

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Fly Ventures is supported by InnovFin Equity, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020 Financial Instruments and the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) set up under the Investment Plan for Europe. The purpose of EFSI is to help support financing and implementing productive investments in the European Union and to ensure increased access to financing.

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