Startup Exit Awards Finalist - Top Equity Funding Transaction
Supercomputer startup SimpleRose raised $23 million in a Series C round led by Pelion Venture Partners. Other investors in the startup include NEA, Cultivation Capital and Lightchain Capital. SimpleRose has developed a supercomputer designed to help customers "solve large, complex business optimization problems" like with financial portfolios, scheduling and logistics. SimpleRose, with 28 employees, has its headquarters at 1017 Olive St. and is led by co-founders Marti Martindale and Carl Ledbetter, the latter of whom answered questions about the company.
What made this year the right time for SimpleRose to raise its Series C financing? We remained in stealth mode during our development cycle, but at the end of last year we were ready to use (our technology) Rose live, and we raised the financing to start that process by building a go-to-market team and to fund our own account for certain financial applications. We had an enthusiastic reception to the round from our existing investors and a new lead investor, Pelion, so the round came together very quickly.
How is the company using its Series C financing? The Series C financing proceeds have been and will be used for two things: building up a go-to-market team (prior to March we were almost entirely an R&D company while we built the technology) and funding for our own financial optimization applications.
Is SimpleRose currently hiring? If so, for what roles? We are currently at full strength on our headcount plan, but will grow slightly late this year and next year as our execution warrants. At that point we'll be looking for specialists with a decade or more experience in mathematical optimization and massive parallelism, which would typically require a master's degree or Ph. D. in mathematics, operations research, computer science, or related areas.
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