BCV's strategy is to take a research-first approach and invest in hyper-specialized models on the infrastructure side and inefficient processes where there are no incumbents. The firm is also an investor in Unstructured Technologies, a company that extracts textual information from various sources to get clean data for a database or for pre-training or fine-tuning data. Other notable BCV portfolio companies in AI include Moveworks, Poolside, and Cleanlab.
Key takeaways:
- Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) companies from its 10th flagship fund of $1.9 billion, despite the new set of risks and a highly competitive funding environment.
- BCV set up a lab in Palo Alto, California, to support promising researchers and incubate companies in the AI sector. The lab has made four seed investments since its launch.
- The first company to publicly launch from the lab was Contextual AI, a startup that raised a $20 million seed funding led by BCV. The second company is Prophet Security, which raised $11 million in seed funding.
- BCV is focused on investing in hyper-specialized models on the infrastructure side and inefficient processes for which there are no incumbents. Other notable BCV portfolio companies in AI are Moveworks, Poolside, and Cleanlab.