Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. This brings the total funds managed to eight with the assets under management reaching about $325 million. Institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals pumped $102 million into the firm's fifth seed fund, which targets startups focused on data science, AI, software automation, APIs and Web 2.5. The second is $36 million into a third opportunity fund that invests in mid-stage financings of seed-stage companies from prior seed funds. Naik is a solo general partner who started Streamlined Ventures in 2011, but prior to starting his own firm, had been in both angel investing and venture capital for more than 25 years.

ExLattice, Inc, a manufacturing AI company, has received a Phase I award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program for developing its accelerated simulation engine dedicated to additive manufacturing. The Phase I SBIR grant, valued at over $250,000, will be used to develop and validate ultrafast manufacturing simulation solutions in collaboration with multiple universities. The goal is to cut the time-consuming steps in computation and deliver real-time engineering solutions for users to understand, control and improve additive manufacturing systems and outcomes. "Receiving the SBIR award from NSF is another proof of our vision in engineering software for digital manufacturing," says Dr. Runze Huang, CEO, ExLattice. "The NSF SBIR grant not only provides us the resources, but a platform to collaborate with leading experts in academia and great business partners in bringing AI to manufacturing."

Leo Polovets of Susa Ventures recently sat down with Machine Learnings for a chat about machine learning, data moats, and artificial intelligence ethics. Sam: Leo! It's great to meet you. Can you introduce yourself and context for the work you've done that our audience may be unaware of? Leo: It's nice to meet you too, Sam. I'm 1 of 3 partners at a $50 million seed fund called Susa Ventures. I've invested in companies like Flexport, Robinhood, and LendUp to name a few.

Seeing a tremendous opportunity to leverage machine learning technologies in the healthcare industry, Bessemer Venture Partners is launching a $10 million early-stage seed program to back new startups. Led by the firm's celebrity healthcare investor, Steve Kraus (seriously: the guy has his own podcast), and its head of investments in Israel, Adam Fisher, the Deep Health Seed Program will place bets of anywhere between $100,000 and $2 million into early-stage companies using machine learning to solve problems in healthcare. It's no exaggeration to say that machine learning can transform the healthcare industry entirely. The proliferation of data brought on by the increasing digitization of workflows in hospitals, patient information, the popularization of wearables and mapping of the human genome means that everything from the health of populations to the genetic composition of our cells can be monitored -- and potentially managed through the application of data. Bessemer has already placed several bets on this hypothesis, including its investment in Qventus (a hospital management service that we'd covered last month).