“The new GRL-C3 is an important addition to both GRL’s and Xentris Wireless’ test solution portfolios for wired and wireless technologies. By increasing confidence and capability, it will help us to reduce costs, accelerate R&D, and get products to market faster.”

GRL-C3 offers features such as Qi Exerciser, Protocol & Trace Viewer, and detailed CTS-mapped test execution that provide flexibility for optimal test coverage and design confidence. GRL-C3 automates all required Qi Base Station tests, enabling product developers to quickly run full compliance and validation test suites at the push of a button, making it ideal for Qi-related R&D and compliance testing.

Python is one of the top programming languages used among artificial intelligence and machine learning developers and data scientists, but as Behzad Nasre, co-founder and CEO of Bodo.ai, points out, it is challenging to use when handling large-scale data.

Bodo does this via a compiler technology that automates the parallelization so that data and ML developers don’t have to use new libraries, APIs or rewrite Python into other programming languages or graphics processing unit code to achieve scalability. Its technology is being used to make data analytics tools in real time and is being used across industries like financial, telecommunications, retail and manufacturing. Bodo.ai, headquartered in San Francisco, was founded in 2019 by Nasre and Ehsan Totoni, CTO, to make Python higher performing and production ready Totoni said:

“For the AI revolution to happen, developers have to be able to write code in simple Python, and that high-performance capability will open new doors. Right now, they rely on specialists to rewrite them, and that is not efficient.”

Daniel Docter, managing director at Dell Technologies, heard about Bodo from a data scientist friend who told Docter that Bodo’s preliminary results “were amazing.”

Much of Dell’s investments are in the early-stage and in deep tech founders that understand the problem. Docter puts Totoni and Nasre in that category. He said:

“Ehsan fits this perfectly, he has super deep technology knowledge and went out specifically to solve the problem. Behzad, being from Intel, saw and lived with the problem, especially seeing Hadoop fail and Spark take its place.”

Meanwhile, with the new funding, Nasre intends to triple the size of the team and invest in R&D to build and scale the company. It will also be developing a marketing and sales team.

“We are really excited about joining forces with Google, the leading tech company when it comes to quantum computing,” says Michael Schmelmer, Member of the Board of Managing Directors of Boehringer Ingelheim with responsibility for Finance and Corporate Functions. “Quantum computing has the potential to significantly accelerate and enhance R&D processes in our industry. Quantum computing is still very much an emerging technology. However, we are convinced that this technology could help us to provide even more humans and animals with innovative and groundbreaking medicines in the future.”

The new collaboration is part of Boehringer Ingelheim’s comprehensive digital transformation strategy with the aim to better leverage and accelerate the company’s promising pipeline and ultimately bringing more medical breakthroughs to patients in need. Boehringer Ingelheim is significantly increasing its investment in a broad range of digital technologies, encompassing key areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data science to better understand diseases, their drivers and biomarkers, and digital therapeutics.

“Extremely accurate modelling of molecular systems is widely anticipated as among the most natural and potentially transformative applications of quantum computing. Therefore, Google is excited to partner with Boehringer Ingelheim to explore use cases and methods for quantum simulations of chemistry. Boehringer Ingelheim brings both an impressive quantum computing team and deep expertise in real world applications of these capabilities in the pharmaceuticals space,” says Ryan Babbush, Head of Quantum Algorithms at Google.

Computational approaches are already a cornerstone in the design and development of innovative new medicines, making a significant contribution to improving the health of humans and animals. However, given their algorithm structure, today’s computers are not able to solve many of the real complex challenges which are essential for the early stages of pharmaceutical R&D, most importantly simulating and analyzing molecules related to disease mechanisms. Quantum computing has the potential to accurately simulate and compare much larger molecules than currently possible, creating new opportunities for pharmaceutical innovation and therapies for a range of diseases.

“Researching and developing new, groundbreaking therapies for diseases with high unmet medical need is what our work at Boehringer Ingelheim is all about,” says Michel Pairet, Member of the Board of Managing Directors of Boehringer Ingelheim with responsibility for the company’s Innovation Unit. “Together with Google, our goal is to apply the use of quantum computing in biopharmaceutical R&D and thus continue to make a decisive contribution to medical progress for patients around the world.”

 

“The thought leadership of Boehringer Ingelheim’s quantum research effort is very impressive. This is reflected in the quick turnaround time that their strong quantum research team got assembled, and their commitment to open research. We are looking forward to jointly working on the field with fundamental research and a joint vision for solving relevant pharma problems in the beyond-classical regime over the next decade,” says Markus Hoffmann, Google Quantum AI Partnerships.

Boehringer Ingelheim will invest significantly in the coming years to realize the full potential of quantum computing. The company has already set up a dedicated Quantum Lab and hired outstanding experts in the field of quantum computing from academia, industry, and quantum providers. Partnerships from Industry and Academia will complement the respective teams. Colleagues mainly from the Boehringer Ingelheim’s Innovation Unit and IT support these experts in their work.

Under the agreement, DARPA and the LF will create a broad collaboration umbrella US Government Open Programmable Secure (US GOV OPS) that allows United States Government projects, their ecosystem, and open community to participate in accelerating innovation and security in the areas of 5G, Edge, AI, Standards, Programmability, and IOT among other technologies. The project formation encourages ecosystem players to support US Government initiatives to create the latest in technology software.

The project will launch as a standard open source project with neutral governance and a charter similar to other projects within the Linux Foundation. Additionally, the agreement enables collaboration with upstream and downstream communities such as LF Networking, LF Edge, and Zephyr, among others, to build on a secure code base for use by the US Government.

“DARPA’s use of open source software in the Open Programmable Secure 5G (OPS-5G) program leverages transparency, portability and open access inherent in this distribution model,” said Dr. Jonathan Smith, DARPA Information Innovation Office Program Manager. “Transparency enables advanced software tools and systems to be applied to the code base, while portability and open access will result in decoupling hardware and software ecosystems, enabling innovations by more entities across more technology areas.”

 

“We are eager to ally with DARPA and its intent to accelerate secure, open source innovation and US competitiveness across breakthrough technologies,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge, & IOT, the Linux Foundation. “This partnership enables transformational change across open software and systems, leveraging the best shared resources across the ecosystem.”

The new US GOV OPS umbrella will include the Open Programmable Secure- 5G (OPS-5G) program as its first project, currently in formation with the help of DARPA, the US Navy and additional performers. The goal of OPS-5G is to create open source software and systems enabling secure end to end 5G and follow-on mobile networks. OPS-5G will create capabilities to address feature velocity in open source software, mitigating large scale Botnet of Things (BoT), network slicing on suspect gear, and adaptive adversaries operating at scale.

DARPA’s Dr. Jonathan Smith will be presenting at the upcoming Open Networking and Edge Executive Forum (ONEEF) a virtual event taking place March 10-12. This special Executive Edition of Open Networking & Edge Summit, the industry’s premier open networking & edge computing event, will feature executive leadership across the networking and edge ecosystems sharing their visions with a global audience in the Telco, Cloud and Enterprise verticals.

This new financing is in addition to Boast.ai’s $30M Series A led by Radian Capital that was announced last December. Announcing the deal today, Boast.ai said the novel financing vehicle would simplify the R&D credit process and fuel innovation.

This financing will enable Boast.ai to help startups recognize immediate cash benefits from R&D tax credits, which now exceed $15 billion a year between the U.S. and Canada, and $200 Billion globally but can take as long as 16 months to get since companies need to wait for tax filing season and government processing times. In Canada, the SR&ED program is the lifeblood of the innovation ecosystem, providing upwards of 60% cashback to small businesses investing in R&D. Startups will be able to leverage their R&D refund eligibility to receive financing on a predictable monthly or quarterly basis, enabling them to grow their business without delay and without surrendering equity.

Boast.ai has helped more than 1,000 innovative companies to recover R&D costs from the U.S. and Canadian government, streamlining the process and reducing the risk of costly audits. Boast.ai’s R&D tax credit software gathers data from a company’s existing technical and financial systems to identify, categorize, and time-track eligible projects, ensuring nothing is missed and all the supporting documentation is in place, leading to larger refunds with less investment of time and resources.

The breakthrough financing tool comes as startups increasingly look to alternative funding solutions to fuel their growth, particularly during the pandemic. Boast.ai is uniquely positioned to support R&D-based financing, serving both as a unified system of record for R&D data and as a sophisticated financing platform enabling companies to leverage their R&D as an asset to fund their business without giving up equity and dealing with paperwork.

Boast.ai’s team has extensive expertise in the technology and tax-credit space. Co-founder and CEO Alex Popa previously managed the R&D tax practice for large accounting firms, while co-founder and President Lloyed Lobo formerly ran product and growth for a number of venture-backed tech startups.  Brevet Capital, meanwhile, has handled more than $20 billion of transactions since its founding over 20 years ago.

Alex Popa, Co-founder and CEO at Boast.ai

“R&D is the engine of the modern economy, and innovative companies should be able to access the tax credits they’re entitled to,” said Popa “We’ve spent almost a decade honing our craft to help customers get more money, faster and with less risk, compared to any other solution in the market. We empower companies from startups to large enterprises to quantify the value of their R&D efforts, then leverage that asset through a successful R&D tax credit application which allows them to grow their business without unnecessary outside capital.”

According to Douglas Monticciolo, CEO and Co-Founder of Brevet Capital, R&D tax credits are a huge untapped resource for companies looking to invest in and accelerate innovation.

“R&D tax credits are a valuable form of capital — but the delays can be extremely challenging for early-stage companies. Boast.ai’s AI-powered financing platform eliminates those delays and allows startups to focus on creating new solutions and products while immediately reaping the benefits of their hard-earned R&D efforts”, said Monticciolo.