Intel Capital Marches Into AI and Cloud Innovation; Invests $30 Million in Three Startups

Intel Capital announced an investment in Catalytic, a four-year-old company that helps enterprise customers process data faster and more accurately by coordinating people, bots and AI. The news follows investments announced last week in Fortanix and Pliops. These newest members of Intel Capital’s portfolio are advancing innovation through intelligent automation, data security and storage processor technology – all critical areas to the growth of cloud computing. Intel Capital invested a collective $30 million in the three companies.

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“The cloud has been one of the most transformative trends in enterprise computing – boosting productivity, cutting costs and creating flexible environments. But cloud adoption still faces momentous challenges, including security risks and an exponential rise in computing complexity. That’s why we’re pleased to announce new investments in three exceptional companies that will help overcome these challenges.”
— Mauro D’Amato and Sunil Kurkure, investment directors at Intel Capital

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Why It Matters: Software as a service (SaaS) applications and cloud platforms will continue to drive benefits for companies of all types and sizes. The future of SaaS applications will include AI-powered automation software to streamline workflow by automating common tasks. Additionally, wider adoption of the cloud will also require enhanced security protections and next-generation flash storage processors.

• Catalytic (Chicago) is a SaaS intelligent automation platform that can remove many of a business’ manual data processing tasks. The platform has more than 200 actions that enable users to rapidly build an intelligent automation layer to process data, documents, emails, websites, and systems. In addition to reducing manual effort, Catalytic shortens cycle time and improves accuracy.
• Fortanix (Mountain View, California) allows customers to more securely operate even the most sensitive applications without having to trust the cloud. The company provides unique deterministic security by encrypting applications and data everywhere – at rest, in motion and in use – with its Runtime Encryption* technology built upon Intel® SGX.
• Pliops (Ramat Gan, Israel) is creating a new category of product that enables cloud and enterprise data centers to access data up to 50x faster with 1/10th of the computational load and power consumption. Its technology collapses multiple inefficient layers into one ultra-fast device based on a patent-pending approach.

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