Temasek is hoping their ability to “collapse the traditional diligence business” will be a fruitful investment

CircleUp, a San Francisco-based investment platform, announced today a new US$125 million fund that wants to use machine learning to pinpoint early-stage consumer and retail companies.

One of the Limited Partners for the fund was Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. Other LPs included:

  • Euclidean Capital
  • Annie’s Homegrown Cofounder John Foraker
  • Ken Kroner, who used to work at Blackrock as an executive of Scientific Active Equity
  • Gigi Lee Chang, the Founder of Plum Organics
  • Deva and Tevya Finger, the Co-founders of Luxury Brand Partners

The fund, called CircleUp Growth Partners, uses a proprietary technology named Helio to bring data science into the investment lifecycle. It plans on using the technology from start to finish — this includes deal sourcing, decision making and post-investment support.

Also Read: Sir Christopher Pissarides on AI, fintech, and national economic policies

Helio is capable of aggregating and analysing billions of data points for over 1.2 million companies in an effort to predict their future success.

The company says the value is that it “collapses the traditional diligence business” to improve efficiency.

“The scalability and conviction that Helio provides introduces a different kind of investment model. Typically, investing is constrained by the high operating costs and biases inherent to manual sourcing, evaluation and support of companies,” said Ryan Caldbeck the CEO and co-founder of CircleUp in a statement.

“CircleUp Growth Partners uses data science at the core of all three stages of the process, defining a new model with broad applicability to the future of private investing.”

Caldbeck said he anticipates CircleUp will eventually grow into a public product. He also said that while the VC industry has been instrumental in driving technology advancements, the industry itself

The firm has already invested in two companies through the fund. The first is a beauty supplements brand called HUM Nutrition while the second is a snacks company called 4505 Chicharrones.

Also Read: Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India closes its third fund at US$210M

In early October, Temasek’s VC Fund Vertex Ventures closed its third fund at US$210 million.

—
Copyright: doe5999 / 123RF Stock Photo

The post Temasek named as LP in a new fund using AI to find early-stage companies appeared first on e27.