Cape Town-based Stone Three, an industrial internet of things (IoT) firm, has secured funding from venture capital firm Knife Capital to enhance its enterprise product offerings.
Stone Three, which develops artificial intelligence-augmented solutions within the digital productivity, workplace safety and employee healthcare sectors, didn’t disclose the amount it raised but it is likely in the range of $500,000 and $2 million.
Derick Moolman, Stone Three’s CEO, said the company partners with the firms to leverage the benefits buried in their industrial data. “Actionable insights and sustainable business value from data help fuel the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said.
Moolman had worked with Knife Capital’s founders in a previous venture. He had earlier co-founded CSense Systems, which secured funding from a venture capital fund managed by Knife Capital.
CSense was a process analytics startup that developed rapid process troubleshooting and process improvement software solutions for industrial applications. In 2011, US-based GE Intelligent Platforms acquired the assets of CSense.
Keet van Zyl, partner and co-founder at Knife Capital, said the VC firm knew Moolman through its investment and exit from CSense and that it built a relationship of trust with him.
“It is a tough challenge to successfully blend data analytics with invaluable human experience and institutional knowledge to achieve measurable results in increasing operational productivity,” said van Zyl.
Stone Three was founded in 2000 by Francois Swanepoel and Dave Weber to create high-end signal processing solutions required to solve real-world engineering problems. Moolman and his business partners invested in, and partnered with the Stone Three team, in 2017.
Crypto exchange Bitmama has raised pre-seed funding of $350,000 as it looks to expand its product offerings into other African countries, grow its operational presence and expand the team.
San Francisco-based Flori Ventures led the funding round. Nigeria-based VCs, Emergence Capital and Fedha Capital, besides a string of other angels and VCs took part in the round.
Founded in 2019 by Ruth Iselema, Bitmama is one of the prominent crypto exchanges in West Africa—especially Nigeria and Ghana.
It enables the exchange and sale of cryptocurrencies and cross-border payments transactions. Its cross-border payment option, Changera, allows users to send and receive money internationally, purchase airtime and data, and pay utility bills.
– CapitalQuest