Ambient Intelligence and IoT platform startup Thoughtwire closes $20 million for software that can help save lives and predict heart failure

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) revolution is here and some forward-looking startups are already ahead of the game. Ambient intelligence (AmI) is is a concept of electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. Ambient intelligence is a vision on the future of consumer electronics, telecommunications and computing. The concept was originally developed in the late 1990s by Eli Zelkha and his team at Palo Alto Ventures. There is already a convergence of Ambient Intelligence and IoT. A Canadian-based company, Thoughtwire, is one of the companies in this space.  ThoughtWire develops and markets an application platform for enterprise and cloud applications. It enables organizations to become smarter, safer and more energy efficient with Ambiant IoT platform that interconnects and orchestrates people, workflows, data and things. Smart cities and buildings, advanced manufacturers and healthcare providers use Ambiant’s platform to achieve intelligent automation and provide real-time guidance to staff so they can predict and resolve issues, ensure safety, achieve energy efficiency and deliver optimal experiences to citizens, patients, customers and tenants.

Today, the company announced the closing of a combined $20 million debt and Series A financing to further the company’s geographic growth using Ambiant to make cities smarter, buildings more automated and energy efficient, and hospitals and workplaces safer, by interconnecting and orchestrating people, workflows, data and things in real-time.. The current investment round includeds participation from new and current investors: Yaletown Partners, BDC Capital, Round13 Capital, Epic Capital and Comerica.

“We are proud to have new partners who are invested in our vision and mission to orchestrate a healthier, safer and cleaner world, and the enormous market opportunity that lies ahead for ThoughtWire.” says Michael Monteith, CEO of ThoughtWire. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to apply this latest investment to grow our team and expand the impact of our forward-thinking technology on Smart Cities and buildings, better healthcare and advanced manufacturing.”

Back in February, ThoughtWire also teamed up with Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) to test an app that can help predict heart failure. HHS has been working since 2010 to eliminate Code Blue alarms from their acute care facilities. Clinical research shows that there are early indicators of a patient’s declining health that could be used to predict and prevent adverse events from happening. The strategic collaboration between HHS, ThoughtWire and IBM Canada will ensure that HHS could leverage new and emerging technologies to reduce the number of deaths from “code blue” cardiac-arrest emergencies in hospitals.

Over the last two years, after attracting worldwide recognition from both Gartner and Frost & Sullivan for Ambiant’s use in healthcare, the Ambiant IIoT platform is now being applied across diverse industries to deliver intelligent automation and provide real-time guidance to machines and staff to predict and resolve issues, ensure safety, and achieve energy efficiency. Originally utilized in Smart Healthcare, Ambiant applies real-time machine intelligence to improve operations, care delivery and the patient experience. For smarter buildings and cities, Ambiant is used to guide proactive maintenance, improve cost and energy efficiency, and deliver a more personalized tenant experience. In manufacturing, Ambiant is being applied to develop self-optimizing production lines to reduce downtime and prevent component failures, for advanced efficiency and clean operations.

“ThoughtWire holds the promise of our earlier IIoT investment, Bit Stew, which we successfully helped to scale into Canada’s largest venture financed exit of 2016, and today is part of GE,” says Salil Munjal, Managing Partner at Yaletown Partners the firm leading the funding round. “ThoughtWire is on a growth path to be the next great Canadian IIoT success story and we’re excited to be making this first investment in Ontario from our new Innovation Growth Fund.”

“With capital-efficient initial growth, ThoughtWire has demonstrated the market appeal of a technology platform that equips businesses to enhance resource productivity,” commented Tony Van Bommel, BDC Senior Managing Partner, Industrial, Clean and Energy (ICE) Technology Venture Fund. “We see great potential for the Ambiant platform to lead in the high-growth IIoT global market.”

“Round13’s focus is on investing in technology businesses that are already on a path to becoming a breakout success, giving them the capital to scale,” says Bruce Croxon, Round13 Capital.

With Ambient Intelligence, environments are integrated with sensors and intelligent systems. The environments will exhibit the following properties:

• Awareness of the presence of individuals
• Recognition of the individual’s identities
• Awareness of the contexts (e.g. weather, traffic, news)
• Recognition of activities
• Adaptation to changing needs of individuals

AmI is able to deliver personalized services automatically in anticipation of the needs of the inhabitants and visitors. The ambient intelligence paradigm builds upon pervasive computing, ubiquitous computing, profiling, context awareness, and human-centric computer interaction design.