Startup News: EquipmentShare raises $290M for U.S. expansion
EquipmentShare raises $290 million for U.S. expansion
Even a traditional business like construction equipment has startup companies providing technological innovation.
Take Columbia, Mo.-based EquipmentShare. The company, an equipment and digital solutions provider serving the construction industry, announced last week that it had completed a $290 million funding round led by BDT Capital Partners. This round also included investments from past backers including RedBird Capital Partners, Tru Arrow Partners, and Sound Ventures.
Trevor Schauenberg, the CFO of EquipmentShare, said that the funding would allow the company to expand its US footprint, continue to invest in its cloud-connected T3 technology platform that helps clients manage workflows as well as strengthen the company’s balance sheet for future opportunities.
Since its founding in 2014, EquipmentShare, whose last known valuation was $3.89 billion as of May 2022, has experienced rapid growth, spurred in part by the demand for its fleet management technology.
Dialpad and Stability AI announced new AI initiatives
Meanwhile, two startups making use of artificial intelligence have announced developments in the past week.
Dialpad, which bills itself as an industry-leading AI-powered customer intelligence platform, announced that it has surpassed $200 million in annual recurring revenue. It also announced a series of generative artificial intelligence advancements, which will roll out over the next year and, according to the company, transform how companies communicate, collaborate, and sell products and services. According to the company, its AI-Powered customer intelligence platform combines the industry’s most advanced AI Contact Center, AI Sales, AI Voice, and AI Meetings with AI Messaging.
In its next phase of development, Dialpad customers will be equipped with new generative AI-powered features that will enable business outcomes such as recaps of missed meetings, and the ability to analyze customer interactions with a scorecard system. The company’s last known valuation, as of December 2021, was $2.2 billion.
Meanwhile, Stability AI, the startup behind the generative AI art tool Stable Diffusion, has created a suite of text-generating AI models intended to compete with systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Stability AI says that the models can generate both code and text and “demonstrate how small and efficient models can deliver high performance with appropriate training.”
