Supply Chain Unicorn Built on Spencer Trask & Co. AI Venture

Female-led Operational Resilience Firm Closes $100 Million Funding

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Jul 27, 2021, 13:53 ET

GREENWICH, Conn., July 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a 2018 merger with Spencer Trask & Co. venture Trensant, Inc., operational resilience firm Interos, a rare female-led unicorn, closed its $100 million Series C funding led by NightDragon with Kleiner Perkins and Venrock participation. This marks the 12th venture the advanced technology development firm has co-founded or first funded to reach a $1 billion valuation.

The Spencer Trask & Co. team built the Trensant AI engine from principles of chaos physics, conceived of and designed by co-founder, Dr. Minh Duong-van, a pioneer in "Chaos Physics." A Vietnamese immigrant, he grew up in "crushing poverty" and yet received his PhD in Quantum Physics from Cornell University, and worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator and Lawrence Livermore Labs. Along with founding advisor Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Prize winner and co-founder of the Santa Fe Institute, Dr. Minh established a machine learning platform and later, with Trensant CEO Manu Chatterjee, developed a proprietary knowledge graph for tracking connections between companies and their suppliers in near real-time.

The Trensant platform, its patents, machine learning technology and data analytics team became the foundation of Interos' supply chain risk monitoring AI capability. Kleiner Perkins Partner Ted Schlein explained their 2019 investment in stating, "I guarantee that by the time you're in the second and third tier in that supply chain, you don't know who you are doing business with anymore…It's been impossible before Interos…I'm not so sure if anyone is thinking this way yet."

"Now, everyone sees the critical importance of supply chains. Having witnessed the physical and cyber security shocks from Covid-19, Solar Winds, the Suez Canal blockage and uncertainty about China, 2020 is on par with 1945 as a seismic change in the world economic order," commented Spencer Trask & Co. Chairman Kevin Kimberlin. "In this chaotic time, every organization needs AI-enhanced continuous monitoring to see supply chain risks more clearly."

CEO Jennifer Bisceglie is driving the explosive growth of Interos; she hired an outstanding team, attracted $125 million in venture capital, and scaled her firm rapidly to help government and Fortune 500 businesses maintain operational resilience. In addition to these resources, she has developed Interos' next-gen platform into the most highly connected, multi-dimensional network of business relationships in existence.

ABOUT SPENCER TRASK & CO
Spencer Trask & Co. is an advanced technology development firm that starts, banks and builds new ventures taking them from the idea stage to the world stage. The firm and its principals have co-founded or first-funded world leaders in genomics, the Internet, mobile communications, healthcare and artificial intelligence. By networking with smart entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and obsessive missionaries, Spencer Trask & Co. helps create one-of-a-kind opportunities to make the world a better place. www.spencertraskco.com.

SOURCE Spencer Trask & Co.