Three Pioneering Smart Hardware Startups Secure Fortune 500 Companies as Customers to Help Power America with Backing From Ubiquity Ventures
"Software Beyond the Screen" Technology is the Future and Provides Tangible ROI for Large Companies Across the U.S.
PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ubiquity Ventures, a $70 million seed-stage institutional venture capital firm that invests in "software beyond the screen" technology, announced today that three of the firm's portfolio companies are working with Fortune 500 companies to use ubiquitous software to solve real-world physical problems.
In the past, large legacy and Fortune 500 companies shied away from adopting new and emerging technologies because of the perceived disruption to their existing business operations. With software's recent jump beyond the screen of computers and smartphones into the real physical world, established businesses are seeing the upside and urgency in adopting new and emerging technologies in order to succeed.
"Software Beyond the Screen"
"Software Beyond the Screen" startups solve real-world physical problems by utilizing smart hardware or machine learning to provide their enterprise customers with solutions that are more effective, easier to adopt, and offer more rapid payback. Now that software can run anywhere -- in space (Loft Orbital), in cars (Parallel Domain), and even on cows (Halter) -- its advantages of rich analytics and over-the-air updates are being used to tune and improve the real physical world. Not only does this ubiquitous approach create a myriad of opportunities for software to impact and accelerate more of our world, but it also creates massive economic opportunities for entrepreneurs and VCs.
"Software Beyond the Screen" is Powering America
Here is how three Ubiquity Ventures portfolio companies are working with large Fortune 500 companies to help power America:
Kinetic is a New York City-based startup that aims to measure and improve industrial and warehouse workplace safety. With their smart hardware wearable device fastened to a worker's waistband, Kinetic can help to warn a worker of bad lifting posture in the moment and provide analytics over time. Their solution has driven a 53% reduction in injuries and recently began to include COVID-related contact tracing and social distancing enforcement. Just this year, Kinetic added PepsiCo Frito-Lay to its roster of customers that also includes Iron Mountain, Nationwide, and others. Kinetic co-founder/CEO Haytham Elhawary said, "We're seeing our business accelerate with Fortune 500 companies as they increasingly adopt our Kinetic wearable because it's a form factor that doesn't require a computer screen. They are excited to bring technology to areas of their business previously untouched by it."
SafeHub has a smart hardware-powered solution for building-specific damage assessment and risk. They help large organizations understand and manage their portfolio of real estate and the impact on employee safety during earthquakes and other scenarios. Fedex is now using SafeHub to assess damages in real-time and provide management with actionable information. Previously Fedex relied on physical inspections and/or generic data from publicly available sources.
Loft Orbital has an end-to-end service for getting customer payloads to orbit around Earth. In much the same way that Amazon Web Services provides infrastructure to a software developer, Loft Orbital provides the space infrastructure to bring a customer's payload to orbit in space via their smart hardware-powered platform. The company recently announced that Honeywell is now a paying customer to get the Canadian Space Agency's Quantum EncrYption and Science Satellite mission to orbit on Loft Orbital's flexible space technology.
These companies share a common theme as well as a common investor who has a mission of investing beyond the screen. "It's been amazing to see how many of America's largest organizations rely on companies that Ubiquity invests in," said Sunil Nagaraj, Founding Partner at Ubiquity Ventures. "The future looks very bright given how many more problems software can solve now that it has moved beyond the screen."
About Ubiquity Ventures
Ubiquity Ventures is a seed-stage institutional venture capital firm that invests in "software beyond the screen" startups. This includes companies leveraging smart hardware and machine intelligence to move real world physical problems into the domain of software where they can be solved much more effectively. Leveraging a decade of institutional venture capital experience, Sunil Nagaraj leads Ubiquity Ventures along with an extended team of 50 experts with a range of technical and marketing expertise. See more details on the Ubiquity Ventures website at http://www.ubiquity.vc.
SOURCE Ubiquity Ventures
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