Volpara Health Technologies (“Volpara,” “the Group,” or “the Company”; ASX:VHT), a global health technology software leader providing an integrated platform for personalised breast care, today announced that it has commenced a collaboration with Ohio-based Riverain Technologies as part of an expansion plan into the lung cancer screening market.
Volpara Lung software—an advanced, integrated, and adaptable reporting, tracking, and risk assessment solution for lung cancer screening—enables patient management from scheduling to diagnosis. The software offers structured reporting, customisable reminders, and more than 40 statistical reports to monitor and track patients—critical for outreach to patients overdue for their screening or follow-up exams. Volpara Lung automatically collects and validates all the required data elements for successful submission to the American College of Radiology Lung Cancer Screening Registry® for reimbursement.
Riverain Technologies offers ClearRead™ solutions that provide intelligent, enterprise-wide, standard-of-care AI tools for early, efficient detection of lung nodules. Their ClearRead suite significantly improves a clinician’s ability to accurately and efficiently detect disease using patented suppression technology in thoracic CT and X-ray images—for earlier, more efficient detection of lung abnormalities.
“The updated guidelines for CT lung cancer screening recently released by the US Preventive Services Task Force were an important step to improve eligibility and access to screening,” said Mark Koeniguer, Chief Commercial Officer of Riverain Technologies. “However, with a larger patient population, the guidelines also increase the need to track patients over time to ensure that they receive screening and follow-up exams in a timely manner. Volpara Lung software builds on our ability to help clinicians efficiently detect lung nodules and track patients throughout the screening and diagnostic process.”
Ralph Highnam, PhD, Group CEO of Volpara, said: “Riverain’s robust AI solution is a tremendous complement to our lung reporting and tracking capabilities. We are pleased to collaborate with them to improve access to accurate and efficient lung nodule detection among our Volpara Lung users, particularly across the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN), where we both provide services for a number of these sites.”
Source: https://www.volparahealth.com/
More than two dozen New Zealand firms, many startups, have set up shop in metro Denver and Boulder in recent years, making the region a launching pad for their American ambitions.
New Zealand has about 900,000 fewer residents than Colorado, leaving it with a limited domestic market even when adding in customers from nearby Australia. Though small, the country is a hotbed for innovations with a global reach. Increasingly, those startups are choosing Denver over Silicon Valley and other rivals when it comes to setting up U.S. operations.
“The mindset in Colorado suits New Zealanders very well,” said Andy Burner, vice president of people and business operations at Xero, a provider of cloud-based business accounting software. “I was blown away by how welcoming and open the city is.”
Xero, a rapidly growing competitor to QuickBooks, relocated its Americas headquarters from San Francisco to metro Denver in 2017. From about 80 local employees before the move, Denver is now home to more than 200 of the company’s 300 U.S. workers.
The company is a leader in New Zealand’s tech community, and its decision to leave northern California, the typical landing spot for tech transplants, helped put Colorado on the map. Burner and other Xero executives actively promote Denver, making their compatriots more comfortable with landing here.
Most of the New Zealand companies coming to Colorado are tech-focused, and some focus on aerospace, an industry where Colorado is a leader. Agriculture and energy are other areas of overlap. Among the Kiwi companies setting up operations in Colorado are AD Instruments, Adeption, Auror, Cin7, FileInvite, Fingermark, Holmes Solutions, Medtech Global, TracPlus and Vend.
Burner and other New Zealand executives listed similar reasons for why they chose Denver over northern California, and why Denver beat out rivals like Salt Lake City, Austin and Chicago.
Access to capital, clients and talent are the fundamental reasons why Denver won out over the alternatives, said Ky Hacker, vice president of revenue and operations at FileInvite, a document sharing platform that chose Denver for its North American base in June, a decision that should eventually bring about 140 jobs to Denver.
Denver and Boulder have a strong base of tech expertise, and skilled workers are willing to move here, which is helpful to foreign companies trying to figure out U.S. labor markets. Denver’s interior location and the variety of domestic flights make it easy to reach other markets.
When it comes to connecting with the home office in New Zealand, the Mountain time zone also works. And entry costs are lower than in more expensive coastal markets.
“What really sealed the deal for Denver for us was a quality of life and a culture that meshes well with our business and with New Zealand culture,” Hacker said. “We both want to work hard and grow things fast, but do it in a human way.”
Although recruitment efforts have now gained a momentum of their own, a key accelerator was an active outreach by Denver Economic Development and Opportunity and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, which led a trade mission to New Zealand and Australia two years ago.
Stephanie Garnica, global business development director at DEDO, said Denver recruited foreign companies via trade offices until the Great Recession forced it to scale back. In 2018, the city relaunched its international outreach with Garnica and two other employees, reaping a big payback in interest and relocations.
“New Zealand and Australia are big standouts. They are two of our target markets because of the success we have had and because of the existing community here,” she said.
Programs like Denver Startup Week and Global Landing Pad help both established and startup companies from other countries get connected to the local business community. New Zealand and Australia have become so important as sending countries that DEDO dedicated an entire Global Landing Pad program to them in the spring.
“We also know that a positive experience with Colorado, starting with a company’s early investigation and continuing through groundbreaking and hiring here in the state will lead to introductions to other companies. We’ve seen a good deal of that recently with companies from New Zealand and Australia referring companies in their networks to us to explore how they too can successfully grow their business in the state,” said Michelle Hadwiger, the state’s deputy director of global business development, in an email.
Hadwiger said Australia ranks as the third-largest source of foreign direct investment in Colorado, tied with Germany. Despite its small size, New Zealand is the sixth-largest provider of foreign direct investment, alongside France and Switzerland.
Although the Bay Area represents a mecca for technology startups, doing business there is expensive and the competition for talent is fierce, Garnica said. And with so many options available, employees tend to be less loyal.
“You want to do interesting work and you want to work hard, but you want to enjoy the outdoors too,” said Tom Batterbury, co-founder and co-CEO of Auror, pronounced “ora,” of the shared ethic that aligns New Zealand more closely with Colorado than the hard-driving Silicon Valley culture.
Oceans aside, New Zealand and Colorado both share majestic landscapes and plenty of opportunities for recreation.
“There is the cliché location, San Francisco, and we quickly ruled that out. We had looked at Portland, (Ore.) but it didn’t feel right for us,” he added. Chicago, another city on the shortlist, lacked the outdoor vibe, leaving Denver and Austin.
Auror provides crime intelligence software that helps retailers track and report cases of theft to authorities, leaving them better equipped to capture repeat offenders and bust up crime rings. Early on the company realized it needed to work with retailers globally to succeed. Although the Denver operations consist of six people right now, including Batterbury, the expectation is for rapid growth as the North American market opens up.
“Realistically, 90% of our business is likely to be out of North America over the new few years, and we will expect we will have over 100 people on that team,” he said.
One thing that helped sway Batterbury was a conversation he had with Burner about the merits of Denver over other cities. Now Batterbury recruits other executives from New Zealand. And there are small changes he is noticing that have made life more comfortable here.
“There are a few places that serve New Zealand and Aussie style meat pies and there are now two New Zealand-style ice cream shops, including one next to Sloans Lake,” he said, noting that English meat pies are no substitute. “It makes you feel close to home.”
Another confirmation he made the right choice came when he and his wife had their second child and neighbors came out to support them, acting as surrogates for the family and friends they had left behind.
For Hacker, the presence of other New Zealand companies wasn’t as big a factor as the welcome he found from the Denver business community.
“We could tell when we were having conversations we could tell there as a sense of welcoming and a tight-knit community. People were comfortable making referrals,” he said, adding one hope FileInvite has is to access local venture capital sources to help fund its growth.
The New Zealand Office of Trade and Enterprise, the country’s economic development agency, has a representative in Denver, marking the importance of the connection. And in another sign, New Zealand named Burner as honorary consul for Colorado this summer.
“Colorado is an increasingly important market and growing U.S. hub for New Zealand businesses, especially those in the information technology and aerospace sectors,” said New Zealand’s Consul-General to the U.S., Jeremy Clarke-Watson, in announcing Burner’s appointment.
More so than restaurants serving their favorite cuisine, one thing New Zealanders who have relocated to the state said could cement the relationship would be a nonstop air link between Denver and Auckland. The route of more than 7,200 miles could shave two or three hours off current connections through Los Angeles and align better with sleep schedules, Batterbury said.
For him, confirmation that Denver could support a nonstop flight came when he saw many of the people flying with him between Auckland and Los Angeles jump onto the flight he was taking to Denver.
Laura Jackson, the airport’s vice president of air service development, said Auckland is a target market for future nonstop service.
“The fundamentals of our business case are strong, supported by continued corporate investment between Colorado and New Zealand, and we expect efforts will regain momentum as travel restrictions ease,” she said.
Source: https://www.denverpost.com/
New Zealand-based medtech startup HeartLab has raised $2.45 million in seed funding that it says will help the company expand its AI-powered heart scanning and reporting platform to cardiologists in the United States by early next year.
HeartLab provides an end-to-end solution for echocardiograms, the ultrasound tests that doctors use to examine a patient’s heart structure and function. Not only does the software help sort and analyze ultrasound images to help doctors diagnose cardiovascular disease, but it also streamlines the workflow by generating patient reports for doctors that can then be added to a patient’s health record.
Will Hewitt, 21, started HeartLab when he was 18 years old studying applied mathematics and statistics at the University of Auckland and working as a researcher at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute. The idea for the startup came to him as he listened to cardiologist, and now co-founder, Patrick Gladding explain how time-consuming and potentially inaccurate it is for doctors to have to review multiple scans manually everyday.
“You’ve got a really repetitive manual task done by a highly trained professional,” Hewitt told TechCrunch. “To start with, we just decided to train the AI to do one really small part of the doctor’s job, which was to look at these scans and generate a couple of different measurements that normally the doctor would have to do themselves,” said Hewitt.
In order to replicate the tedious process that doctors were doing, HeartLab built its own in-house labeling tool with sonographers that includes step-by-step guides and prompts to collect data on a range of different measurements. Hewitt said this initiative was one of the most valuable efforts of engineering the company has invested in to date because it has lead to cross validation, which is used to test the ability of the machine learning model to predict new data, as well as flag problems like selection bias and overfitting.
Once HeartLab was able to successfully replicate the scanning process, the company worked to expand its services in a way that would relieve doctors of further admin minutiae so they could spend more time actually treating their patients. Usually, doctors use a software tool that analyzes the images, another that visualizes patterns and another that actually writes up the report, says Hewitt. HeartLab’s platform, called Pulse, can now condense those processes into one software.
Cardiologists and sonographers at four different sites in New Zealand are trialing HeartLab’s tech now, which is also awaiting regulatory approval from the U.S.’s Food and Drug Administration. HeartLab anticipates FDA approval of Pulse by the first quarter of 2022, which is when the startup can begin selling the SaaS product.
“To begin with we want to talk to small and medium clinics over in the U.S.,” said Hewitt. “We’ve actually found that our products are most popular at those clinics because it replaces more software than at a larger clinic. At a larger clinic some of these bits of software they’ve already had to purchase, versus a smaller clinic, it’s stuff that they couldn’t access anyway. So when we get to the states, we want to start shipping mostly to those sorts of users while we work out how to best pitch our value proposition to the larger clinics.”
Hewitt says the funds from this round will also help the startup hire 10 more staff members to join the existing 13-member team based in Auckland. Having more tech talent on board will help HeartLab advance its product offering. At the moment, Pulse is at the point where it sees so many scans and takes so many measurements that it can get through the process quicker than a doctor could on their own and actually pick out patterns that a doctor wouldn’t see, according to Hewitt. The next step, which a good chunk of the seed funding is going toward, is how to be diagnostic about disease rather than just being able to indicate it.
“How do we actually provide something that normally doctors would have to order another scan for?” said Hewitt. “One of the key ideas with AI is you can create mappings from low-resolution images like ultrasounds. How can we try to learn a pattern from an ultrasound that’s similar to what you might see from an MRI, for example?”
If HeartLab can figure out how to glean advanced information from an echocardiogram instead of an MRI, it would be able to save hospitals, clinics and patients a lot of money. Each cardiac MRI can cost about $1,000 to $5,000, which is about five times the price of an echocardiogram.
“I’d say the biggest challenge for us is, how can we transform from a company that at the moment can deliver products to a few local clinics successfully to actually building a product that scales and delivers a really good experience to lots of users and different hospitals?” said Hewitt.
Advancements in early diagnostics and imaging tech like HeartLabs’ is causing an increased demand for such tools. As a result, the global AI-enabled medical imaging solutions market is expected to reach $4.7 billion by 2027. By extending its reach to the U.S., where heart disease is the leading cause of death, HeartLab is poised to take a big piece of that pie.
In total, HeartLab has publicly raised about $3.2 million in funding, which includes a pre-seed last October of about $800,000 led by Icehouse Ventures with support from Founders Fund, the San Francisco-based VC firm that led the round announced on Thursday. Icehouse Ventures also contributed to the oversubscribed seed round, along with another New Zealand firm Outset Ventures and private investor and CEO of design platform Figma, Dylan Field.
“The use of AI in medicine is reducing pressures on health systems and ultimately saving lives,” said Founders Fund partner Scott Nolan, who has led investment rounds for three other New Zealand startups, in a statement. “The HeartLab team has built a really compelling AI-powered platform that doctors love to use.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/
NZTE is pleased to organise an Exporter MIQ Allocation pilot, to enable a small number of export representatives to gain access to MIQ places in November and December.
The Government has approved the pilot, to be administered by NZTE, which will allow 50 export representatives to secure MIQ places in November and December (25 each month), without having to go through the general public MIQ booking process.
The programme is open to all exporters, not just NZTE customers, but applicants must be an established New Zealand-based business entity that is actively exporting goods or services internationally.
Please note this is only a pilot scheme, with an extremely limited number of MIQ positions available. As such, we expect that demand will significantly outstrip supply for this pilot phase. The focus for the pilot is therefore to test the approach and process; it will only meet the immediate travel needs of 50 exporters.
For details see https://www.nzte.govt.nz/page/exporter-miq-allocation-pilot
Comvita, global market leaders in Mānuka Honey, are delighted to announce a strategic partnership with Caravan, a Joint Venture with entertainment and sports agency, Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Central to this partnership is the formation of a celebrity-backed lifestyle brand, using the natural healing properties of Mānuka Honey and Propolis for topical use. Commenting, Comvita Group CEO David Banfield said, “At Comvita, we are relentless in looking for opportunities to extend our global leadership. Our partnership with Caravan, and its celebrity reach, has some significant and far-reaching benefits for Comvita. Despite the progress we have made recently, the benefits of Mānuka Honey and Propolis are relatively unknown in North America. Our partnership with Caravan will amplify the awareness and benefits of Mānuka Honey and Propolis through the eyes of celebrities who turn to Comvita for solutions. At this point, exact details of timing and products are commercially sensitive, but we look forward to sharing more details in due course.”
https://www.comvita.co.nz/
WASHINGTON – Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) today was joined by SFRC Ranking Member Jim Risch (R-Idaho) in addition to Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) in introducing a Senate Resolution to honor the 70th anniversary (September 1) of the signing of the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, known as the ANZUS Treaty. In addition to celebrating the countries’ history of cooperation rooted in shared values of democracy, respect for human rights, and adherence to the rule of law, the bipartisan legislation also reaffirms Congressional support for expanded opportunities that strengthen military, security, and economic relations among the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
“Today we introduce this bipartisan Resolution not only to honor the U.S.’ enduring partnership with Australia and New Zealand, but to celebrate our longstanding dedication to foster economic prosperity and safeguard our collective security,” Chairman Menendez said. “As we seek to confront current challenges to regional and global stability, public health, free and fair trade, and our ability to address climate change, we must continue to build upon our countries’ shared commitment to diplomatic, security, and scientific cooperation. I look forward to our future multilateral engagement to boost respective competitiveness on the world stage and support a free, open, and booming Indo-Pacific, unimpeded by economic coercion.”
“The 70th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty is a fitting time to recognize the United States-Australia alliance is a force for good in the Indo-Pacific and around the world. The United States remains committed to this alliance,” said Ranking Member Risch. “Over the last century, the armed forces of both Australia and New Zealand have made significant contributions to peace and security across the globe. We look forward to strengthening security collaboration among the United States, Australia, and New Zealand in the years ahead.”
“For the last 70 years, Australia and New Zealand have been trustworthy and valuable allies to the U.S. This year, we commemorate this long-lasting partnership and look forward to a shared bright future thanks to the continuation of the ANZUS treaty,” said Senator Durbin.
“The 70th anniversary of the ANZUS treaty is an opportunity to reflect on the shared victories and sacrifices the United States, Australia, and New Zealand have experienced as allies,” said Senator Blunt. “This resolution marks an important milestone as we continue building on the foundation the treaty has provided for the strong and enduring friendship between our countries. Together we will continue working to advance security and prosperity in each of our nations and throughout the Indo-Pacific region.”
Click here to see the resolution.
ModuSense's SaaS software complements FreeWave's IoT and wireless hardware.
Colorado developer of industrial wireless machine-to-machine systems FreeWave Technologies has bought a controlling 51 per cent stake in Waikato-based ModuSense.
FreeWave offers an ecosystem of edge intelligent radios and solutions to optimise the extreme edge of remote industrial operations and create more connected enterprises.
However, to transform geographically dispersed industrial operations, visibility to intelligent data at the edge was required as well as the ability to manipulate it and make it actionable.
That's where ModuSense came in, adding its full-stack of off-the-shelf software-as-a-service (SaaS) systems and more flexible, agile gateway sensing.
“Our combined portfolio delivers a super powerhouse of capabilities to customers who are hungry for integrated solutions designed to make industrial remote operations more efficient, make critical data more intelligent and help save money to make money," ModuSense CEO Bruce Trevarthen said.
The combination of both companies’, which they described as a joint venture, also promised to deliver accelerated global hardware and software IIoT development capabilities.
Founded in 1993, FreeWave brought decades of manufacturing discipline, governance and due-diligence to ModuSense's agile innovation process.
FreeWave Technologies CEO Kirk Byles said the joint venture expanded the company's portfolio and accelerated its ability to bring fully integrated, "game-changing" IIoT solutions to market quickly.
“Their entrepreneurial model will ultimately provide us access to a flexible, agile innovation centre allowing us to respond to both customer and market needs faster with both off-the-shelf and fully customised IIoT solutions," he said.
"We are energised by the possibilities and work has already begun on our integrated solution roadmap.”
ModuSense, a Reseller News Innovation Award winner, is perhaps best know for its "internet of bees" IoT platform for the honey industry.
Both FreeWave and ModuSense are private companies and the terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Source: https://www.reseller.co.nz/
Iconic New Zealand bus company Ritchies is to be sold to US global investment firm KKR, pending Overseas Investment Office approval.
Founded in Temuka in 1935, Ritchies is one of the largest public transport companies in the country with a fleet of more than 1600 vehicles and 42 depots.
Contracting to government, local councils and private customers, it operates in Auckland, Christchurch, Timaru, Dunedin, Queenstown and Whangarei. The company employs 1800 staff. It runs nationwide school bus services in urban and rural areas and operates inter-region, long haul charter and tour bus services.
It is a major local employer in regions, with administrators, drivers, mechanics and cleaners on its payroll. The company has a driver training facility in Auckland.
The sale price is not disclosed.
New York-based KKR said it was the firm's first infrastructure investment in New Zealand.
The Ritchie family will continue to hold a stake in the 86 year old company, with Andrew Ritchie to be appointed chief executive, as managing director Glenn Ritchie retires.
KKR in a statement said it saw continued demand "for high quality, greener public transport solutions in New Zealand".
"Buses account for 75 per cent of total public transport trips made in the country and play a critical role in connecting people to places," it said.
"Our investment also reiterates KKR's strong commitment to investing in critical infrastructure assets in New Zealand and globally through our expanding portfolio."
The NYSE-listed investor said it looked forward to working closely with the Ritchie family and in partnership with the Government to deliver safe, reliable and sustainable public transport services.
KKR was making the investment from its Asia Pacific Infrastructure Fund.
Founded in 1976 by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, the firm had US$429 billion ($617b) of assets under management as at June 30. It has 109 portfolio companies in its private equity funds. They generated US$244b in annual revenues as at March this year.
The deal was subject to customary closing conditions and OIO approval, which was expected within four to five months.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/
Agribusiness mobile app developer Hot Mustard’s Sales App Centre’s mobile app development business will be acquired by software specialist Company-X on September 1.
The acquisition comes after Sales App Centre managing director Paul Bell sought Company-X out.
“We were a specialist software company focused on agribusiness with a small team looking for an opportunity to work with a larger development company with more expertise and resources,” Bell said.
“One of the reasons we approached Company-X is that it has some agribusiness clients, and a very good understanding of the agribusiness sector.”
DeLaval, the worldwide leader in milking equipment and solutions, is a long-term Company-X client. Company-X built a global e-learning solution for DeLaval. Company-X used the text to voice editor it built, Voxcoda, to provide narration in multiple languages.
Sales App Centre was incorporated in March 2012 and developed the first mobile apps for Ballance Agri Nutrients, DairyNZ and Zespri International.
“We specialise in apps for agribusiness, ” Bell said. “Including a lot of farmer-facing apps that need to work in the field where there is no internet connectivity.”
Other Sales App Centre clients include CRV Ambreed, Farmlands Co-Op Society, Giltrap Engineering and Primary ITO.
Company-X will assume responsibility for app and systems development, including the associated databases and application programming interface (APIs). Hot Mustard’s new business unit Hum will retain responsibility for website development.
Bell said Sales App Centre clients could only benefit from the acquisition, as they will be working with a larger, better resourced, broadly experienced team, with a proven software development track record. Company-X also had comprehensive testing and support services.
Sales App Centre business analyst Adrian Searle, who has worked on almost every project in the last seven years, joined Company-X in the acquisition and will continue to support clients.
Bell said he was “pretty excited and energised” by the acquisition.
Company-X co-founder and director Jeremy Hughes said: “We recognise that Hot Mustard’s key strength is media and design and having Company-X own the software development space lets the two companies work to their respective strengths.”
Company-X co-founder David Hallett said: “Company-X is looking forward to partnering with our new clients and providing them with superlative service.”
Hot Mustard will continue to work with Sales App Centre through Company-X.
Company-X offers software savvy delivered with a Kiwi can-do attitude.
Founded in 2012 by software specialists David Hallett and Jeremy Hughes, Company-X immediately won contracts with New Zealand government departments and a US multinational.
The Company-X team has grown to nearly 60 New Zealand-based software specialists, with only the best and brightest passing the Company-X interview and assessment process. The team prides itself with experience in a wide range of technologies and languages and loves challenging problems.
Company-X is the first Australasian reseller of RealWear head-mounted tablets.
Company-X ranked on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™ Asia Pacific, a list of the fastest-growing technology companies in the Asia Pacific region, in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Hot Mustard is a combination of an experienced advertising team with an experienced digital team with a reputation for producing great integrated campaigns across social, digital and traditional media. Hot Mustard has creative, media, design and tech all under one roof, making them agile, efficient and accountable. Collaborative, informed, focused. Hot Mustard is a small but highly specialised team developing new ways of working to meet the demands of an ever-changing world.
Sales App Centre was formed a decade ago by Hot Mustard to specialise in the development of agribusiness applications for mobile devices. Sales App Centre took its understanding of the industry’s business processes, to produce leading edge business apps.
Auckland software startup Portainer has a Forbes' ranking of the hottest cloud companies.
The Hobsonville Pt firm was named as one of 20 Rising Stars in cloud software - an adjunct to the iconic American business title's annual "The Cloud 100" list of the top privately-held companies in internet-based software.
Forbes says its top 100 list was ranked by growth, sales, valuation and culture criteria, plus a reputation score derived in consultation with 34 CEO judges and executives from their public-cloud-company peers.
The Rising Stars were defined as a weight-class as cloud software companies that had raised less than US$25 million.
Online payments platform Stripe is at No 1 on the 100 list - and is also the highest-valued startup in the US full-stop with its worth of some US$95 billion, Forbes says. No 2, Databricks, is valued at US$28b, which would place it about halfway down the S&P 500 if it were public.
No 3 is Australian online content creation firm Canva - one of only six companies of the 100 run by a woman). One of Canva's key backers, Sydney-based Blackbird Ventures, now has an office in New Zealand, and an NZ-focused fund backed by a $21.5m million contribution from Crown agency NZ Growth Capital Partners.
Canva's private-equity valuation has grown from US$6b to US$15b over the past year.
Portainer - at a much earlier stage of its life - has yet to reach those kinds of dizzying heights - but did recently raise $10m in a round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (best known in NZ has an early supporter of Rocket Lab) and supported by local VC outfit Movac.
The young firm, founded by Neil Cresswell, makes "container" software that allows an app to be developed once, then ran anywhere, from a desktop to a server hosted in the cloud.
Cresswell earmarked funds from the raise, in part, for expanding staff from 30 to 50. Highly-skilled Kiwis returning home amid the pandemic are one of his key targets (read more about Portainer here).
Meanwhile, Bessemer now has its hands in another Kiwi pie. A firm backed by the Silicon Valley VC firm, DroneDeploy, revealed today it has taken over Auckland robotics specialist Rocos.
Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/
© American Chamber of Commerce in New Zealand Inc • Site by HighlandCreative.com.au
