Introducing, Mawson. Turning AI research into products people love.*
It is peculiar to be introducing oneself while wrapping up the end of the year. But we’ve always been one to do things differently.
2019 was both an exciting and intriguing year for Mawson, as we saw the first results of an experiment we started three years ago. Our theory was whether we could transform Australia’s most elite emerging software engineers into founders of global AI startups and we rolled out a plan to do so.*
Now it’s about time we share what’s been happening at Mawson and our results to date.
Why we started all of this..
Australia has a history of producing some of the worlds brightest, talented and creative inventors of groundbreaking technologies. Though many of our best and brightest scientists and engineers end up working in academia or large corporations. These options are limited and challenging for new technologies with long and complex paths to market, and job uncertainty with $328.5m cuts to grant funding from Australian universities happening between 2018 and 2022.
At a time when Australia is looking for future industry to produce the next wave of productivity and economic growth, we believe more of our scientists and engineers should be problem solving by starting new tech companies. It is technology, particularly artificial intelligence, that will be the primary driver of innovation in all industries as we move into a new decade.
Globally, we see an opportunity to drive more translation of AI research into commercially useful products, faster. And we’re not the only ones that think this — AI research giants also acknowledge this including Facebook’s VP of Artificial Intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, and Google’s AI Chief, Jeff Dean.
How it began..
In 2016 our founders Graeme Wood and Stephen Phillips committed to hand-selecting, training and investing in Australia’s elite emerging software engineers in order to offer them a pathway to entrepreneurship. As tech entrepreneurs fortunate enough to have founded, built and exited successful software companies to Twitter and Expedia, they are no strangers to the existential challenges all early stage tech founders face.
Ever since, we’ve continued to shape the optimal conditions for technical founders to thrive at our AI venture studio. We invest in top software engineering talent to solve the latest AI challenges and surround them with experienced technical, design and product talent to come up with new products in industries we and our network of investors think will have a huge impact in.
So far, here are the results:
- Built and invested in 3 artificial intelligence companies — Popgun, Replica and VAUX
- Portfolio companies have raised US$8.45m in external private funding
- Portfolio companies employ 33 people
- Trained 34 machine learning engineers — Half are employed by our portfolio companies, and we’ve helped others find roles at machine learning companies
This year’s look inside our portfolio
Validation of our model came when our second portfolio company, Replica, raised a US$2.5m seed round in mid-2019 from Silicon Valley based Virtual Reality Fund and Australian venture capital firm Carthona Capital among others. Having a shared belief in our portfolio companies with local and international venture capitalists, proved our model was repeatable after our first funding success with our first spin out, Popgun.
Meanwhile our other portfolio companies have also taken great strides forward this year.
Popgun shipped three new music AI products for consumers (Splash, SplashPro and Gloss) and raised an additional US$1.5m from their existing seed investor Khosla Ventures to scale their products to the next level.
Our latest spinout VAUX, achieved technical breakthroughs with their new voice infrastructure technology. They’ve also raised additional pre-seed funding of US$150k before their seed round opening in early 2020.
There’s still a lot to do, and our portfolio companies are just getting started. Nonetheless we are excited and proud to see our portfolio companies hit their goals and release new products people love, powered by the latest AI our teams have developed.
With a strong finish to 2019, we’ve never been more energised and ready for a promising 2020. Keep an eye out for our new teams, more portfolio companies and lots of opportunities to engage and be part of the Mawson family.
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