PE Fund Investments
AI infra firm Pixis raises $100-M from SoftBank, GA, others; Exfinity makes part exit
San Jose, CA (US)- and Bengaluru-based Pixis (operated by Aiquire Inc), a provider of contextual codeless AI infrastructure for marketing optimization, has raised USD 100 million in Series C funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from new investor General Atlantic. Existing investors Celesta Capital, Premji Invest, and Chiratae Ventures also participated in the round. With the close of its USD 17 million Series B round four months ago, Pixis has raised a total of USD 124 million to date since its founding in 2018. It will leverage the primary proceeds of the new investments to help the company rapidly scale its AI platforms and plugins, as well as accelerate expansions across North America, Europe, and APAC. Pixis' early investor Exfinity Venture Partners has sold a partial stake, constituting a 2.54% holding in Pixis, to incoming investors. Exfinity has earned a multiple of 37x from Pixis and is returning close to 30% of the total corpus of the fund from which the investment was made. Editor's Note: Pyxis is co-founded by Shubham A Mishra (Founder & CEO, Global) and Hari Valiyath (Founder & Chief Business Officer) - who are currently based in the US - and Bangalore-based Vrushali Prasade (Founder & Chief Technology Officer). The trio had earlier (in 2015) co-founded Bangalore-based Virtual Reality Headgear startup Absentia Virtual Reality Private Limited (which, since 2018, has presumably continued operations via the new US-based entity, Pyxis).
From the Venture Intelligence PE-VC Deal Database: Between Nov-2015 and Mar-2020, Absentia VR had raised about USD 8.5 M from Pi Ventures, Exfinity Fund, Chiratae Ventures, Astarc Ventures and Others. (Subscribers to the database can login to view the valuation, deal structuring and other transaction details.)
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