Field Reports

Leawood, Kan.
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Torch.AI — a leading global artificial intelligence (AI) firm that uses machine learning to enable massively scaled, ultra high performance data processing, today announced it raised $30 million in Series A funding to accelerate its overall growth strategy. The funding, led by Laurence Tosi’s WestCap Group, a prominent San Francisco-based investment firm, will enable the company to rapidly scale its Nexus™ AI platform to meet increasing demand from clients including Fortune 100 companies and U.S. federal agencies charged with protecting national security.

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“Torch.AI’s philosophy embraces more open and adaptable architectures, allowing us to provide lower cost, future-proof solutions offering a dramatic departure from the monolithic black boxes and complex middleware that are the norm in the machine learning and data management landscape,”

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- Brian Weaver, Torch.AI CEO.
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“This new funding and our partnership with WestCap Group provides welcome resources to further our marketplace disruption and accelerate the growth of our team to keep up with demand.”

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Founded in 2017, Torch.AI created a next-generation AI platform that instantaneously understands and richly describes any data in atomic detail, both in memory and in motion. The Nexus™ software creates an intelligent Synaptic Mesh™ across an organization’s data and systems, increasing the surface area of data for discovery and action. Data is unified to address even the most vexing challenges for how data fuels operations and critical decisions in high-risk environments.

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The new Series A funding – the firm’s first institutional investment – allows Torch.AI to enhance its proprietary technology, product design, and user experience, while continuing to aggressively expand in the U.S.

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Companies including Microsoft, H&R Block, General Electric, the U.S. Air Force, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Defense, have already benefitted from the Nexus™ platform’s ability to put data to work to improve decision making. In 2018, the firm was tapped to help transform how data can be leveraged to improve security clearance decisions and diagnostics across 95% of the federal government’s employee and contractor workforce. By mid-2020, the platform spanned data and business systems across more than a dozen federal agencies, providing the capacity for billions of real time data processing computations.

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WestCap’s Tosi will join the Torch.AI board of directors, whose members include Weaver; William Beyer, founding member of Deloitte Consulting’s federal practice; and WestCap Principal Christian Schnedler.

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“Over the past 20 years, we at WestCap have founded, operated and invested in more than 15 multi-billion-dollar companies including Airbnb, Ipreo, Skillz and iCapital, as well as cyber-security unicorns such as CarbonBlack and Cylance,” said Westcap Partner Kevin Marcus. “In Brian Weaver and the team at Torch.AI, we recognize the leadership, competitive advantage and innovative spirit they share with those great companies. WestCap is thrilled to be part of the growth and development of Torch.AI as it redefines the data infrastructure marketplace.“

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Said Beyer: “We are proud to welcome WestCap to the Torch.AI family, and Laurence Tosi to our board of directors. Torch.AI is already an outlier – a fully U.S.-owned company, it’s profitable, and one of the only AI firms with federal certifications at the highest levels. Now, with the backing of one of the smartest investment firms in the country, Torch.AI will accelerate its growth and more rapidly scale to meet increasing customer demand.”

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Prior to the investment, Torch.AI launched a strategic employee recruitment effort, adding executives and software developers in both Washington, D.C., and its engineering center in suburban Kansas City.

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About WestCap

The WestCap Group is a growth equity firm founded by Laurence A. Tosi, who, together with the WestCap team, has founded, capitalized, and operated tech-enabled, asset-light marketplaces for over 20 years. With over $2 billion of assets under management, WestCap has made notable investments in technology businesses such as Airbnb, StubHub, iPreo, Skillz, Sonder, Addepar, Hopper, iCapital and Bolt. To learn more about WestCap, please visit WestCap.com.

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