The funding round was led by GV and will be used to expand the company assurance platform and launch insurance products.
"At a time of ongoing uncertainty, our goal is to provide confidence in a sector notorious for struggling to stick to deadlines or budgets. By using some of the most powerful machine learning capabilities in the world to analyse what worked and what didn’t in past projects, we can help our customers work out what’s going to derail their own initiatives, and stop problems happening before they even appear."
LocalGlobe led the seed investment in the virtual venue platform, with participation from several prominent angels and firms.
"Once the pandemic hit, we both saw productivity surge in our respective teams but at the same time, people were missing the in-office culture. Video conferencing platforms provide a great service when it comes to meetings, but they lack the spontaneity and fun that form the basis of our relationships. Cosmos is a way to bring back that human connection that we’re lacking when we spend all day online, by providing a virtual world where you can play a game of Pictionary after work with colleagues or gather round a table to celebrate a friend’s birthday."
LocalGlobe has led a £3.7m seed round for quantum software developer Phasecraft, with participation from Episode1 and previous backers.
"Already in the past two years quantum hardware has surpassed expectations, achieving milestones that seemed decades away. By pioneering new advances in quantum software, Phasecraft can take quantum theory from research to reality, faster. With new funding and supporters, we can be part of building the foundations of the quantum computing industry, making useful applications available quicker than ever thought."
LocalGlobe and Sands Capital Ventures led the financing round, which will fund research and quality control expansion.
"Most of the world’s videos – billions of hours of content – are shackled to a single language. And that’s for a simple reason – quality dubbing is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, so current solutions only work for a select group of deep-pocketed content owners. Speech translation technology fundamentally changes the dynamics of how content is distributed and monetised. The technology we created will level the playing field – allowing all forms of video and audio to be consumed in any language, therefore vastly multiplying the potential reach for all content creators."
