In 2022, global research and development (R&D) expenditure reached an estimated $2.5 trillion, fueling the creation of new services, products, and technologies. Research, whether broad or focused, is a crucial yet often time-intensive process for organizations pursuing innovation. Cypris is an AI-powered research platform designed for R&D and innovation teams. It serves as a comprehensive source of innovation insights by analyzing over 500 million data points from both private and public sources. This analysis generates actionable, in-depth intelligence for users. Cypris goes beyond static information by providing real-time tracking of innovation activities. This feature ensures that innovation teams always have access to the most current data and trends. Cypris can condense two weeks’ worth of research into just 15 minutes, significantly reducing both time and costs for R&D teams.
AlleyWatch caught up with Cypris CEO Steve Hafif to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the company’s total funding raised to $10.8M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We completed a $5.3M Series A venture funding round. The financing was led by Vocap Partners, with co-investors Activate VP and BlueTree Capital.
Tell us about the product or service that Cypris offers.
Cypris is an AI powered research platform for R&D and innovation teams. Designed to serve as a single ecosystem for global innovation data, our platform allows users to gain unique insights from over 500M data points to answer key questions about their market, competitors, new technologies, and more to support product development, commercial strategy, and ultimately accelerate global innovation.
What inspired the start of Cypris?
We recognized that U.S. R&D teams spend billions of dollars annually on research but still struggle to keep up with the constant flood of information on global innovation activity.
Other markets like finance & venture capital have robust market intelligence tooling like the Bloomberg Terminal & Pitchbook, but the same cannot be said for R&D, even though they’re spending more money on research than those two markets combined.
Current research tools and services leave R&D teams trying to find a needle in a haystack, resulting in wasted time, money or missed critical information with millions of dollars in impact. Cypris is meant to be the single datasource for R&D and innovation focused insights, so product development teams can focus on strategy instead of data accumulation.
How is Cypris different?
While other platforms focus on one narrow dataset, Cypris consolidates multiple innovation focused datasets into one platform. Through Cypris’ AI and growing database, organizations can access a single source for critical strategic and technical questions, get immediately to what’s relevant, monitor key topics and competition, and gain powerful insights that others may miss.
In addition, our team of analysts can deliver hyper-specific content to users that traditional dashboards cannot, including prior art searches, market landscaping reports, competitive intelligence profiling & more. Through both our AI platform and analysts R&D teams can come to one source to empower their strategic and technical research.
What market does Cypris target and how big is it?
Cypris targets R&D and innovation teams, business development and market intelligence professionals, and technology transfer departments. In the US alone, R&D teams spent over $130B on applied research.
What’s your business model?
We sell annual subscriptions to our software and analyst services. Pricing is based on factors like seat volume or which modules of the product a company purchases. We most typically sell subscriptions to companies however we do have a growing base of government and university tech transfer subscribers.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We originally launched our business during COVID, and then had to navigate the high interest rate environment over these last few years, so we’re no stranger to unpredictable economic scenarios. For us, we like to focus our go to market on spaces that are investing in long term R&D initiatives and are well capitalized to stick to those investments, even through turbulent environments. Additionally depending on the scenario there will be different shifts in R&D investments, which is where we also shift our approach. For example, during COVID life sciences and research into remote work saw an increase in R&D investments which is where we focused our time. Today that might look more like semiconductors and AI.
What was the funding process like?
We were able to leverage our existing investor’s relationships to get introductions to different funds that would be a good fit for our stage. Ultimately, we chose to partner with Vocap due to their strong alignment with our long-term strategic focus.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Like most others, it was difficult to find funds that were willing to make new investments vs. back their existing portfolio companies in this high interest rate environment. On top of that, funds were being incredibly selective about when and where they made those new investments.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our rapid & consistent growth in a short time frame, coupled with strong growth unit economics helped get us in the door with new funds. Then once the market opportunity became clear to the investors in our pipeline, it was easy for us to drive momentum through their evaluation process.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We have plans to grow our team on the go to market and product side, and ultimately invest deeper into delivering strong value to our customers.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
There are abundant opportunities in NYC, especially in tech, to raise capital. If you’re driving value to your customers and are building in a large market, securing funds shouldn’t be a challenge. Always remember that raising capital is a milestone & not the goal. The more difficult and worthwhile pursuit is building a valuable product that makes customers happy in a large market. If you do that, all else will come.
There are abundant opportunities in NYC, especially in tech, to raise capital. If you’re driving value to your customers and are building in a large market, securing funds shouldn’t be a challenge. Always remember that raising capital is a milestone & not the goal. The more difficult and worthwhile pursuit is building a valuable product that makes customers happy in a large market. If you do that, all else will come.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our team has high but focused ambitions to be a leader within our market. Right now we’re taking a disciplined approach of investing in our product and exploring creative solutions for addressing customer pain points. As we continue to do that we’re going to methodically grow our market share and the Cypris brand.
What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
I love the Hudson River Greenway & its tennis courts, running path etc., they’ve done a beautiful job there. Our office is in Battery Park, so after work, it’s great to take a stroll there. It’s a fantastic way for our employees to get outdoors and enjoy the city.
