YOUR EYE ON INNOVATIVE MACHINE LEARNING SOLVING REAL WORLD PROBLEMS
Azafran Capital Partners
INSIGHTS CES 2020 - It’s a Wrap! Cutting through the noise, team Azafran hit the ground running @ CES - hosting panels, meeting new startups and updating with our Fund One portfolio companies Whew. That’s about all our team had left after a full week at CES. In between meetings with partners, existing portfolio companies and just taking in as much as possible of the new and emerging tech, a highlight for us and our main reason for being at the show, centered around Eureka Park. In addition to being one of the world’s largest conferences, CES also happens to be the world’s largest startup event, with more than 1,200 companies from 46 countries featured within Eureka Park. Our team spent a full two days in EP, combing the floor for disruptive innovations, founders, and companies that fall into the Azafran Investment Thesis. While we might be biased, Eureka Park is the true heartbeat of the conference. The floor at Eureka was divided a good part by host country, with France being the obvious winner in terms of companies brought and overall footprint & a number of the companies we are adding to our consideration are based in France. In addition to meeting new startups, we were excited to spend time getting updates from and making connections for some of our key Seed Fund portfolio companies like Yobe and Aspinity as well.
Azafran Partners, Martin Fisher (left) and James Kenefick, getting a demo of latest robotics and AI tech in the Eureka Park startup pavilion at CES 2020
One of the larger “booths” @ CES 2020 was the Google Pavillion, which mostly showcased their in home array of products integrated with Google Voice - another leading proof point of the Azafran Thesis.
Overall, from our time spent in other parts of the show, we saw a maturation of many technologies but not many game changing, or new innovations from the incumbents or larger, more established companies. As it relates to the Azafran Thesis, focused on voice, acoustics and imagery as the inputs and modalities of the future, it is clear the world of technology has moved this way, from automobiles to homes and the enterprise, it was hard to find one major product in the hall that is not or has not incorporated one or more of these modalities.
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issue TEN issue ten FOCUS At Azafran Capital Partners, we are an early stage venture fund investing in companies ($2M to $8M) that are using deep learning and machine learning, emphasizing voice, acoustics and imagery datasets in the health, wellness, IoT / automation and enterprise spaces. Issue Ten of INSIGHTS focuses on this year’s CES conference - with over 20,000 product debuts unveiling the future of technology. More than 4,400 exhibiting companies launched their latest tech products to some 170,000 attendees across more than 2.9 million net square feet of exhibit space. From global tech brands to pioneering startups, the innovation at CES 2020
We see 2020 as the year that AI goes mainstream in business. We fundamentally believe AI is about augmenting intelligence and making human decision-making more efficient and effective.” -
Bob Lord, Senior Vice President of IBM’s cognitive applications and developer ecosystems division
“CES has the unique ability for startups and young companies to get exposure to major global brands. The opportunities for venture funding and growth are incredible here.” -
Mara Lewis, Co-Founder and CEO, ID8 Innovation; member, CTA Board of Industry Leaders
Volume 1 Issue 10 - Page One