Mindflair expands AI portfolio as Sure Valley Ventures leads £1.5m investment in Ittybit
() , an AI-focused tech investment company, noted an announcement by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) regarding a new investment by its Sure Valley Ventures 2 fund (SVV2). SVV is 25.9%-owned by Sure Ventures, in which Mindflair has a 21.3% shareholding. () is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage software companies in the areas of AI, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and Internet of Things (IoT).
Mindflair noted that SVV and Mercuri - another early-stage venture capital firm - have led a £1.5m funding round for Ittybit, a pioneering developer tools company. The funding round was also supported by Oxford Capital, angel investors, and Baltic Ventures.
The funding will enable Ittybit to expand its engineering and enterprise sales team, and advance product development to make its APIs and media management tools more widely accessible to developers worldwide.
Nicholas Lee, Director of Mindflair, commenting: "We are pleased to see another exciting investment being made by SVV in order to further develop our AI-focused investment portfolio. An investment in an innovative company like Ittybit underscores our commitment to advancing AI technology and supporting high-growth enterprises."
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Mindflair notes another exciting AI investment by SVV, only a day after the firm's SVV3 fund led a US$1.1m funding round for Inspeq AI. This time, it is the SVV2 fund that is investing $1.5m in the pioneering API developer Ittybit, alongside Mercuri and other leading venture capital firms.
Ittybit develops cutting-edge APIs and tools designed to simplify media management eg uploading, storing, and delivery of large video, image, and audio files. The technology has shown impressive results, including an 80% reduction in bandwidth costs for Strength:Lab, and enhanced search functionality for a large podcast client.
Specifically, Ittybit's computer vision models enable developers to filter unsafe uploads, enhance content search, automate tagging and transcription, among other advanced functions. Ittybit's signature feature is its AI-based compression tool, similar to what is used by Netflix and Meta, that enables faster downloads and reduced storage costs without compromising apparent visual quality.
The SVV2 fund is managed by SVV, which recently reported impressive portfolio performance of its first SVV fund, with multiple realised cash and liquidity events and upward revaluations, in addition to launching the £85m Sure Valley Ventures UK Software Technology Fund, backed by British Business Bank.
The SVV2 fund invests in UK-based software companies with a focus on the AI and ML, immersive tech, metaverse, and cybersecurity sectors, and is also backed by a cornerstone £50m investment from British Business Bank through its Enterprise Capital Funds programme, launched in March 2022. The Mindflair commitment to SVV2 is 6%.
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