A San Francisco venture capital firm has added the U.S. government's first chief data scientist to its team.
DJ Patil has joined GreatPoint Ventures as a general partner, he announced Wednesday on LinkedIn. His focus will be on investing in companies that are working on what he calls "Massively Multi/Interdisciplinary Problems," or MMIPs. Solutions for such problems require expertise from numerous fields or branches of knowledge, he said.
"The challenges facing us as a country and as a species are massive and require a fundamentally multi/interdisciplinary approach," Patil said in his post.
Patil, who served as the chief data scientist under President Obama, plans to zero in on startups that are working on MMIPs in the health care and life sciences, national security, enterprise software and data science sectors, he said. In the life sciences area, solving such problems might require combining knowledge of traditional biology with expertise in data, computing and artificial intelligence, he said.
Patil was most recently the chief technology officer at Devoted Health Inc., a Massachusetts startup that offers Medicare Advantage plans. Prior to his time in the Obama White House, Patil served as an executive at eBay Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. and was a data scientist in residence at Greylock Partners.
Here is other Bay Area venture and startup news from midweek:
Fundings
- Magical Tome Inc. (dba Tome), San Francisco, $43 million, Series B: Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round for this provider of artificial intelligence-powered software that automatically generates presentations. Coatue Management, Greylock Partners, Audacious Ventures, Wing Venture Capital, 8VC, Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Stability AI Ltd. CEO Emad Mostaque, Adept CEO David Luan and Rubrik Inc. CEO Bipul Sinha also invested.
- Replicate Inc., Berkeley, $12.5 million, Series A: Andreessen Horowitz led the round for this provider of a service that allows developers to test machine learning models. Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital also participated.
- Polyhedra Network, Berkeley, $10 million: Binance Labs and Polychain Capital led the round for this provider of Web3 infrastructure software. Animoca Brands Corp. Ltd. and dao5 also invested.
- Riversys Technologies Private Limited (dba Scrut Automation), Milpitas, $7.5 million: MassMutual Ventures led the round for this provider of automated cybersecurity risk assessment and management software. Lightspeed India Partners and Endiya Partners also invested.
- Nestment Inc., San Francisco, $3.5 million, pre-seed: Protofund and IDEA Fund Partners led the round for this provider of a service that helps groups of people find and buy homes.
- Curio Research, San Francisco, $2.9 million, seed: Bain Capital Crypto led the round for this developer of blockchain-based games. TCG Crypto, Formless Capital and Robot Ventures also participated.
Funders in the news
- DCVC promoted Rachel Slaybaugh to partner. Slaybaugh joined the Palo Alto- and San Francisco-based venture firm as a principal a year ago.
