Nathan Benaich, Partner, Playfair Capital plus a bunch of upstarts
There are now around 900 companies operating in the AI field and, during 2016, we’ve seen a flurry of investment activity. There’ll be winners and losers no doubt, but the successful will irrevocably change the way we live, work and do business. So, when you’re looking for innovative AI suppliers to take your business forward, how do you spot the good bets? And how do you get the best out of the partners you choose? Nathan, who’s worked with more than two-dozen start-ups, describes the AI landscape and how to shop in it.
• Why it’s safe to shop in the AI market – reliability vs hype
• Working with start-ups – why ‘business as usual’ procurement just won’t work
• Oldguard, newguard – why powerful technology incumbents and AI-driven competitors are investing heavily to re-invent the market
Nathan introduces three AI Upstart businesses who tell us how they’re providing intelligent answers to today’s business problems.
Gluru: Personal effectiveness and collaboration
A predictive technology that get things done. Think of it as an AI-enabled personal assistant. In the workplace it’s changing the way people manage work – boosting their effectiveness, fostering collaboration and driving productivity.
Ravelin: Online fraud prevention
There are now around 900 companies operating in the AI field and, during 2016, we’ve seen a flurry of investment activity. There’ll be winners and losers…..
Seldon: open-source machine learning
An enterprise machine learning and predictive analytics platform that helps financial, media and e-commerce businesses build smarter apps and services that boost customer experience, engagement and sales.
At Playfair Nathan seeks out new technology businesses that are re-imagining our world, then invests in them and helps them grow. His interest is piqued by companies that are using AI to solve complex problems or create compelling user experiences, and have data and engineering at their core. He serves on the board of several start-ups
and has taken part in Seed, Series A and Series B funding rounds. He also has a PhD in computational and experimental cancer research and has published widely on that subject.
