– Deep North, a Foster City, California-based startup applying computer vision to security camera footage, announced that it raised $16.7 million in a series A-1 round.
– Led by Celesta Capital and Yobi Partners, with participation from Conviction Investment Partners, Deep North plans to use the funds to make hires and expand its services “at scale,” according to CEO Rohan Sanil.
– Deep North, previously known as Vmaxx, claims its platform can help brick-and-mortar retailers “embrace digital” and protect against COVID-19 by retrofitting security systems to track purchases and ensure compliance with masking rules.
– But the company’s system, which relies on algorithms with potential flaws, raises concerns about both privacy and bias.

– Pyxis One closed $17M in Series B funding.
– With total funding of $24M, the tech startup plans to use this round of capital for investments in product development, and to expand to new markets.
– Celesta Capital and Premji Invest co-led the round with participation from previous investors Chiratae Ventures, pi Ventures, and Exfinity Venture Partners.
– Pyxis One enables enterprises to scale accurate data-driven marketing.
– The startup’s codeless AI ecosystem comprises dozens of AI models deployed across different aspects such as targeting, optimization, creative recommendation, and consumer research, enabling a complete ecosystem that can help teams collaborate, and leverage capabilities enabled by the adoption of AI.

– Brilliant, the leading innovator in smart home control, lighting, and home automation systems, today announced a $40m Series B financing round.
– The round was led by Next47 and Celesta Capital with participation by Resideo Technologies, August Capital, Peak State Ventures, Gaingels, and Miramar Ventures.
– Founded in 2015, Brilliant’s mission is to accelerate mainstream adoption of smart home living with affordable and user-friendly home control and automation systems.

– Baffle, Inc. announced that it has raised $20m in Series B funding led by new investor Celesta Capital, with contributions from National Grid Partners, Lytical Ventures and Nepenthe Capital, and follow-on investments from True Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Clearvision Ventures, Engineering Capital and Triphammer Ventures.
– Baffle’s no-code, simple-to-deploy security mesh takes a data-centric approach at cloud scale without a performance impact or changes to applications. Baffle is the only data-centric security solution that universally protects data as it’s created, stored and processed, from any source to any destination, on premises or in the cloud, no matter where it lives.

– SambaNova Systems from Palo Alto develops a software, hardware and services to run AI applications.
– The company raised $676m in Series D funding.
– The round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from new investors Temasek and GIC, plus existing backers including funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Intel Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Walden International and WRVI.
– The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand its business reach and development efforts.

– Platform9 raised an additional $12.5m Series D funding for a total of $37.5m.
– The round was led by WRVI Capital, with participation from all existing venture investors including NGP Capital, Mubadala Ventures, Canvas Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures.
– Platform9 also reported an industry-leading NPS (Net Promoter Score) of 71 and a customer satisfaction score of 99% for 2020.
– The company’s Managed Kubernetes deployments have become a critical part of many large-scale and complex 5G infrastructure roll outs, hybrid cloud containers-as-a-service, and Edge use cases in the retail, media, and entertainment market segments.