BeyondMinds, an Israeli provider of an AI platform for production environments, on Sunday informed its 65 employees at the Alon Towers headquarters in Tel Aviv about their layoffs and the company’s closure, Calcalist reported.
In 2020, Grove Ventures, a leading Israeli early-stage venture capital-focused on cutting-edge deep technology Israeli startups recommended investing in BeyondMinds to its clients, calling it “the story of how a team of brilliant minds convinced us they have the AI skills needed to allow large companies to make a leap forward and overcome the challenges of deploying and scaling AI.”
Grove Ventures co-led a $15M Round A in BeyondMinds, alongside private investor Marius Nacht. They reported: “When we met BeyondMinds, we were convinced that their ideas will shape the future of AI adoption for large companies. This has led us to write one of our largest ‘first checks’ to date.”
BeyondMinds focused on the difficulty of companies in developing, implementing, and maintaining artificial intelligence solutions. The platform it developed solves the emerging problems of using AI systems in the production environment, such as working with small amounts of tagged information, noisy and dynamic information, regulatory compliance, monitoring capabilities, and efficient maintenance.
About six months ago, when the markets for IA were starting to cool down, the company’s board of directors urged CEO Rotem Alaluf to sell the company, as the board did not believe that BeyondMinds could succeed in another round of raising investments to continue to grow.
According to Calcalist, Alaluf did not agree with the board and left the company, taking with him key team members to a new startup he named Wand – The Power in AI Creation, which to date features only a cover page online, announcing “Coming soon,” and a linked page offering a sketchy description of the venture.
Those Alaluf had left behind tried for a while to keep the company above water to avoid firing the people who have been there for four years, but at some point, Grove Ventures lost its appetite for risk and pulled whatever funds remained in the cash register.
