HyperScience, the machine learning startup that helps businesses automate office work, landed $30 million in venture funding led by Stripes Group, the New York growth equity firm.
The Series B round of funding also included participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures and new investors Battery Ventures, Global Founders Fund, TD Ameritrade and QBE. To date, the New York-based startup has raised $50 million in funding.
The company said in a press release earlier in January that the latest round will enable it to add more engineering and product development, sales and marketing and a rapid expansion of its headcount across all business functions. The company helps big enterprises in the insurance, financial services, healthcare, and government markets reduce their reliance on manual data operations, which are prone to human errors.
"A lot of people aren't aware of just how expensive and time intensive it is for businesses to collect the information they need, and how prohibitive that can be for the data they'd like to be capturing," said HyperScience CEO Peter Brodsky in announcing the investment round. "Whether it's a 300- or 3,000-person team, it's remarkable how manual most of this work has remained, and how understaffed these teams can be as a result. By automating data entry, we help our customers in Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, and Government extract data better, faster and cheaper.” He went on to say that by working with Stripes HyperScience will be able to build out its team and product offering so that it can automate more types of work.
For Stripes Group leading the investment in HyperScience meshes with its overall strategy when it comes to investing in its focus areas which include Internet, software, healthcare IT and branded consumer products businesses. Not only does it invests $10 to $150 million in startups but it also plays a role in developing the business. Core to is approach is having a passion for the businesses it invests in, a desire to help scale strong brands, provide support to help build networks, recruit talent, provide M&A advice and support other operational aspects of the companies it invests in. Stripes has invested in a number of advanced software, data analytics and enterprise technology companies, including Flatiron Health, Sift Science, SPINS, and Upwork.
"We are very excited to be partnering with Peter and the entire HyperScience team," said Stripes Group Partner Ron Shah. "We believe that there is substantial opportunity to disrupt the large and highly inefficient data entry market with high-powered automation tools that leverage recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence in a practical, applied fashion and deliver a clear ROI for some of the world's most complex enterprises.”
