Appentra, a spin-off of La Coruña University, has raised 1.8 millions of euro in a new investment round led by Armilar Venture Partners and K Fund, also joined by Caixa Capital Risc, Xesgalicia and Unirisco, the investors that had already trusted the company since its very early stages. The new investors will bring a strong expertise as international VCs specialized in B2B software companies, and will help to fully realize Appentra’s vision.
Since its foundation, Appentra has become a reliable partner and software supplier among its customers in the United States, Saudi Arabia and Europe. Closing this round of investment successfully contributes to improve the confidence and trust of its main stakeholders.
Pedro Ribeiro Santos, a Partner at Armilar Venture Partners, noted that: “Over the course of the last decade we have been watching how computing architectures are incorporating more (and different) parallel processing units, and yet the vast majority of applications are still being developed under a “standard” sequential coding approach. Parallel code can truly potentiate real-time systems and faster or more elaborate decision models but it is a complex discipline and there is a shortage of skilled parallel developers”.
Appentra has the potential to be in the driver’s seat of this huge opportunity, helping developers build bug-free parallel code. It is a great example of a unique technology with roots in academia, shaped over more than ten years of research by a great team of founders, addressing a key market need, and backed by a very strong group of investors. “It’s with great enthusiasm that we join this journey”, pointed Ribeiro Santos.
Xavier Álvarez, ICT Director at Caixa Capital Risc, also noted that “this deal is an example of our commitment with companies with a promising future and innovative solutions based on technology.” Álvarez added that “Appentra is a project that perfectly matches the spirit we’re looking for in companies when it comes to investing. It has a solid project and a very attractive product which makes it a company with a high potential growth “.
Parallelware Analyzer, Appentra’s software
The boost in Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Big Data, the development of multicore hardware, along with the democratization of supercomputing capabilities have turned parallel computing into almost the only option to cope with the increasing demand of intensive computing anywhere and anytime. The benefits for our society are clear, for example, in tackling infectious and top prevalence diseases such as cancer, or in the realization of autonomous cars in the future. And now in the COVID-19 era, parallel computing is already playing a key role in the global race towards finding a vaccine to effectively combat the virus and fight against the pandemic worldwide.
Creating high-performance bug-free parallel software that runs 10x to 100x faster is key (even urgent) for companies that today must adopt parallel computing to defend their competitive advantages or create new ones. But, accelerating the software runtime through code parallelization and detecting and generating bug-free parallel code is very challenging and time consuming even for developers highly skilled in tools, application program interfaces and parallel programming standards.
Parallelware Analyzer –the Appentra’s software– is the only static code analysis tool in the market that helps to enforce parallel programming best practice recommendations in order to prepare the code. Parallelware Analyzer is designed to seamlessly integrate into DevOps, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery environments.
As with many other Deep Tech start-ups and early-stage companies, Appentra’s team biggest upcoming goals are to conduct demonstration pilots with corporations in high-growth IT sectors in specific market segments, and promote the use of Parallelware Analyzer worldwide in Life Sciences, Consumer Electronics, Electronic Design Automation, Oil & Gas and Automotive.