Over the next five years, the amount of data created globally is expected to exceed 180 zettabytes. 99.5% of collected data never gets used or analyzed partly because the volume of unstructured data is increasing 35% year-over-year, leaving this data, much of it valuable, in a void. Businesses must devise solutions to streamline the collection, retention, and use of data so that it’s secure, efficient, and cost-effective. Hyperscience is an intelligent automation platform for document processing that’s centered around a human approach. By focusing both on the machine layer and human layer, the platform is able to not only introduce the efficiency of technology but also allow the technology to become more intelligent with human intervention guiding the machine learning, creating more time and capabilities both for humans and the tech. Hyperscience ensures that users are able to access machine-readable data throughout the organization to more effectively leverage their resources, adapt to changing circumstances, and accelerate digital transformation in a structured, unprecedented manner to have critical information at their fingertips.
AlleyWatch caught up with Hyperscience COO Charlie Newark-French to learn more about the company’s impressive traction, strategic growth plans including acquisitions, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $288.9M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Investors include Global Founders Capital, Tiger, Stripes, and Bessemer Venture Partners. $100M Series E.
Tell us about the product or service that Hyperscience offers.
Hyperscience is transforming the future of work to elevate human potential. Our human-centered approach to automation enables a new era of human and machine collaboration that delivers dramatically improved organizational agility, without the legacy cost and burden of change management. By combining data, people, and processes into digital assembly lines, the Hyperscience Platform turns complex processes into simple, configurable workflows. Our industry-leading machine learning technology continuously learns and evolves, to involve humans only when needed.
What inspired the start of Hyperscience?
Our founding team, including our CEO and cofounder Peter Brodsky, were all software engineers looking to apply cutting-edge machine learning and artificial intelligence to the enterprise.
There were two key insights that drove the early creation of Hyperscience and remain key to the way we build products today. The first was that data entry is a messy and overlooked step. At the time, everyone was talking about the “data deluge” and how better data meant better decisions. But that was not the reality for big enterprises. Data was stuck in formats that were easily readable by a person but not readable by machines. Hyperscience’s first step was to automate as much of the manual data entry processes as possible. The second insight was that people and software needed to work alongside one another. Hyperscience developed the human-in-the-loop approach rapidly becoming a core tenant for today’s automation solutions. Software can do part of the work, but much of it will still need people. Eight years later, this has evolved into what we now call Human-Centered Automation.
How is Hyperscience different?
Hyperscience creates a truly unique platform in the marketplace. Customers benefit from a single platform consisting of configurable blocks and flows to process, understand, and take action on unstructured data. Underpinning the platform is proprietary machine learning, built-in human-in-the-loop, and graph technology.
Today, our machine-centric competitors fall into two categories: Companies that provide retrofit automation, layering automation on top of business processes they take from existing technologies, and companies that try to deal with human content using legacy technologies like OCR and speech recognition, to get out of the human layer and immediately back into the machine layer. While there are a number of platforms that fit into both, none approach automation like we do—we are a new class of automation software.
Hyperscience automates tasks and also automates the identification of tasks that require human intervention, which augments humans with time and higher quality data. The work done by machines fundamentally complements and enhances the skills and abilities of humans and vice versa.
What market does Hyperscience target and how big is it?
We target and serve some of the world’s leading organizations spanning the government and public sector, financial services, healthcare, insurance, and transportation and logistics.
What are your post-COVID office plans?
When it is safe to do so, we are big believers in the importance of human interactions. Understanding customer issues, brainstorming new product ideas and working through challenges are always easier when you can get together in person—with a whiteboard, if possible! The future of in-person work at Hyperscience will focus a lot on group work and communal experiences. Employees will likely do some of the more individually-focused work remotely. Our overarching strategy is to invest in more office space globally, but for that space to be heavily oriented towards working together.
When it is safe to do so, we are big believers in the importance of human interactions. Understanding customer issues, brainstorming new product ideas and working through challenges are always easier when you can get together in person—with a whiteboard, if possible! The future of in-person work at Hyperscience will focus a lot on group work and communal experiences. Employees will likely do some of the more individually-focused work remotely. Our overarching strategy is to invest in more office space globally, but for that space to be heavily oriented towards working together.
With our employee base growing, our leadership team wanted to enable safe, in-person collaboration if people strongly prefer to do so or if their home workplace set-up is not ideal. That’s why we’ve been expanding our global office footprint, including the recent expansion of our One World Trade Center space. We have leased the entire 88th floor, which is much larger, and accounts for a hybrid model where employees can be interactive in the office. This new space will allow our continued company growth.
What was the funding process like?
The latest round of funding was insider-led. By participating in the Series E round, the investors continue to back Hyperscience’s vision to be the leader in Human Centered Automation.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our investors view Hyperscience as a company that creates a truly unique platform in the marketplace. Customers benefit from a single platform consisting of configurable blocks and flows to process, understand, and take action on unstructured data. Underpinning the platform is proprietary machine learning, built-in human-in-the-loop, and graph technology.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We hope to invest in talent and R&D in the next six months. In addition to our new and expanded presence at One World Trade Center in New York City, we are also expanding our presence in London with the opening of new offices in the financial heart of the City.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Raising capital allows companies like Hyperscience to double down on proven areas and make bets on new innovations. On the former side, we’ve become the best-in-class solution for automating data entry in the market. On the latter side of innovation, earlier this year, we launched the Hyperscience Platform to allow for data processing and recently acquired Boxplot in Germany several weeks ago. Much like our own company history, Boxplot has been bootstrapped—finding customers who were willing to embrace a solution and closely build and shape a solution alongside them. This approach provides flexibility to get things right before putting your foot on the accelerator and raising capital to fuel growth.
Raising capital allows companies like Hyperscience to double down on proven areas and make bets on new innovations. On the former side, we’ve become the best-in-class solution for automating data entry in the market. On the latter side of innovation, earlier this year, we launched the Hyperscience Platform to allow for data processing and recently acquired Boxplot in Germany several weeks ago. Much like our own company history, Boxplot has been bootstrapped—finding customers who were willing to embrace a solution and closely build and shape a solution alongside them. This approach provides flexibility to get things right before putting your foot on the accelerator and raising capital to fuel growth.
My recommendation is to build something valuable that works in real-life settings first. When the fundamentals of the business and product are sound, you have the option of raising capital to fuel fast growth if you want to.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Right now we are hyper-focused on helping companies turn antiquated business processes into modern, highly automated, flexible digital assembly lines that are deeply human-centric and elevate organizational agility to improve the employee and customer experience across enterprises.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
During the summer and fall, I loved the West Village’s energy. Unfortunately, it is not currently as safe to be eating inside as it was a few months ago. It feels like coming out of the pandemic, we will experience a culinary renaissance in New York.
For me, however, at the heart of good food is people. The meal table has been the heart of social life for centuries. The restaurant’s ambiance is just as important as the quality of the food—the sound of laughter, the smiles on people’s faces, and so forth. The best of both worlds I experienced this summer was Saint Theo’s restaurant in the West Village. Let’s hope case rates come down and we can all get there!
