AI/ML continues to dominate Emerging Tech
AI/ML continues to dominate Emerging Tech
Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash
Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.
As part of our Series of looking at what we are investing into in 2022, AI/ML features heavily in our focus and where we continue to see interesting investment opportunities in the future.
Why AI/ML?
Current Investments include:Ambisense, Buymie, Cameramatics
Exited Investments include: Artomatix
There has been a step change in the pace of automation by large organisations as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Long seen as an emerging technology, the pandemic highlighted the benefits of AI to organisations as they looked to automate their processes and as technology becomes increasingly part of their daily lives. AI and ML can change how organisations operate and how employees will work in the near future. According to a Stanford University report, spending on AI and ML will increase to $97.9 billion by 2023 and is expected to reach $299 billion in 2026.
In comparison to other emerging technology areas such as cloud and IoT, AI technologies have the second-highest reported mean funding allocation. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that rapidly evolving, diverse AI technologies will impact a higher proportion of industries than other emerging technologies.
However, the increased attention on the AI sector overall has meant that there has been cases of commonly available tech being overhyped as AI/ML to generate marketing buzz this has also been compounded by use of open source tools making it difficult to identify truly groundbreaking AI applications and products from more commoditised less impactful solutions for industries.
However, that being said investors are still seeing huge opportunity in certain areas and trends that are further augmenting the need for AI.
Some of the top trends for AI include: AI in Cybersecurity
The pandemic has meant that large organisations have had to adapt very quickly to enable their employees to work from home in accordance with lockdown conditions across the globe. This resulted in some of the largest organisations in the world having to enable their systems, processes, and technologies to be accessed by employees and partners in a manner they have never before been accustomed to. While most organisations have adapted very well to this and have been able to change their infrastructure, it has also brought with it some risks to originations as a result of the threat of cyber security attacks that are more and more prevalent as there are weaknesses in the system.
As a result organisations see the importance of effective cybersecurity safeguards, as these organisations seek new ways to protect their assets both physical and digital, AI can play a big role as it has the power to resolve critical safety issues and malfunctions and identify cyber threats that may set business at hight risk. AI can also be used to do data classification and data loss prevention for sensitive data within an organisational enabling organisation to identify and avoid suspicious activity by both external and internal stakeholders.
Automation
AI can be used to augment the automation process and serve the purpose of improving decision making and organisational efficiency, organisations are also seeing that they no longer need to invest into expensive data science resources due to the availability of automated platforms. Robotic Process Automation powered by AI and ML can automate repetitive tasks and processes and is becoming more and more prevalent in an organisational setting.
Democratisation of AI with No-code/low code
We are seeing a wave of democratisation of AI with the No-code/Low code movement. For organisations that lack development talent these platforms are very attractive as they require little programming skills and are more plug and play. Platforms can significantly automate and accelerate the digital journey. Low code provides an easily visual model driven environment for professional and non-professional developers, to facilitate and accelerate the development of advanced AI/ML models.
Augmented Analytics
This comes from the combo of ML with human thinking and turns perception into conclusions and actions. It uses ML and NLP to perform large scale data analysis as humans would do.
AI Enabled Chatbots
The market for Chatbots and conversational AI was estimated to be is $4.5billion by 202 and continues to grow. This technology is proving very useful in customer experience by offering quick answers and fixing customer issues. The benefits for business are very obvious and the implementation of chatbots will create a certain amount of cost reductions.
Investment Outlook
Overall investment in the AI sector through mid-July was $2.2 billion, according to PitchBook and the sector has shown that there continues to be great investment opportunities in both new markets and existing markets ripe for automation.
About Sure Valley Ventures:
Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) is a VC firm which invests in software start-ups that are developing innovations designed to disrupt industries and which exhibit the exciting potential to become one of the unicorns of tomorrow.
In doing so, we aim to deliver robust returns to the founders and their teams, our investors, and society and the economy at large.
We have a great track record of accelerating start-ups from Seed to Scale-up in key high growth tech market sectors, at the frontiers of innovation. As well as equity, we provide entrepreneurs with access to a flexible, value add Platform, drawing on the team’s experience as founders to develop a programme which is tailored to each company’s individual needs. SVV’s platform also features a global network of advisors, based in leading innovation hubs across the globe, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and other key innovation centres in the USA as well as leading European and Asian hubs.
