Hearst’s Financial Venture Fund

Cognitive Credit combines data and develops tailored solutions for institutional credit investors. Its cutting-edge, data-driven software combines modern productivity tools with analytical features for more efficient and precise corporate credit analysis. Its proprietary data extraction pipeline is quick, accurate, and transparent. To support cross-team collaboration and on-the-go connectivity, the company designs with the entire investment team in mind. It enables its clients to be as productive and insightful as possible by combining the most accurate fundamental data in the market with real-time updates and a suite of advanced analytics.

SecurityScorecard, Inc. is a cybersecurity firm that specializes in providing a comprehensive rating and continuous monitoring platform to assess the cybersecurity strength of businesses and their third-party vendors. Established in 2013 by experts in security and risk, the company offers a range of solutions, including ThreatMarket, a cloud-based vulnerability search engine that identifies and correlates security-risk indicators across multiple categories such as application security and network vulnerabilities. Its services support vendor risk management, board reporting, and cyber insurance underwriting for over 1,000 organizations, including Fortune 1000 companies globally. SecurityScorecard's innovative approach includes interactive tools like Score Planner for remediation planning, Scorecard Event Log for transparent score tracking, and Atlas for managing cybersecurity questionnaires and controls at scale. By providing real-time risk ratings that align with vendor cybersecurity assessments, SecurityScorecard enhances organizational resilience and improves communication of cybersecurity risks to stakeholders. The company is headquartered in New York, New York.

Sigma360 is a risk decisioning software platform developed at MIT, designed to assist firms in identifying, screening, monitoring, and reviewing clients and their relationships using a comprehensive cloud-native risk intelligence database. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Manhattan, New York, Sigma360 leverages artificial intelligence to optimize screening and monitoring processes across various external data sources. The platform provides automated multi-variable screening, categorization, and monitoring, allowing compliance teams and investigation firms to efficiently assess risk with a holistic perspective. The leadership team boasts over 50 years of combined experience, encompassing expertise in computer science, law, and government, further enhancing the effectiveness of the platform's solutions in adverse media screening, sanctions and watchlist screening, and enhanced due diligence.

Acin is a market-defining fintech company that is on a mission to make banks safer and transform the financial industry’s approach to non-financial risk, through the use of data.

GeoQuant is a New York-based company founded in 2016 that specializes in real-time political risk management. By integrating political science with computer science, GeoQuant addresses inefficiencies in identifying, tracking, and measuring political risks for global investors and business leaders. The platform utilizes machine learning algorithms to analyze vast amounts of reputable data from news sources and social media, producing objective and actionable political risk scores. The company’s engineering team, based in Tel Aviv, focuses on data science and database architecture to enhance the platform's capabilities. GeoQuant’s political risk assessments are designed to help decision-makers effectively navigate the complexities of political environments, with its data streams for G20 countries also accessible via the Bloomberg Terminal.

Symbiont.io, Inc. is a financial technology company that specializes in developing a smart contracts platform tailored for institutional applications of blockchain technology. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York City, with an additional office in Amsterdam, the company provides a comprehensive infrastructure for capital markets. This includes a unified ledger for sharing business logic and market data, as well as the Symbiont Assembly platform, which facilitates the issuance, tracking, and management of financial instruments such as loans, securities, and commodities. By enabling complex financial instruments to exist within a decentralized blockchain network, Symbiont aims to enhance transparency, reduce risk, and lower costs for financial institutions and government entities. The company has established partnerships with industry leaders, including Vanguard and the State of Delaware, to drive innovation and improve operational efficiency in the capital markets sector.

Cortera, Inc. is a provider of business-to-business analytics and cloud-based risk management solutions, specializing in payment and purchase behavior data for both public and private companies. The company tracks $1.6 trillion in business-to-business purchases across 45 spend categories, delivering insights on 20 million U.S. business locations. Its offerings include Cortera Pulse, which monitors credit risk and key events; Boost, which appends scores and insights about customers and suppliers; and Cortera Decisions, an automated scorecard platform. Additionally, Cortera provides eCredit for credit scoring and collections automation, Cortera Traits for real-time statistical modeling, and Connect, an XML web service for accessing proprietary data. With a focus on helping companies understand their customers and partners, Cortera’s solutions enhance revenue generation, improve sales and marketing effectiveness, and mitigate risk. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the company also has offices in Quincy, Massachusetts, and Bengaluru and Coimbatore, India.

TruValue Labs, Inc. is a technology company based in San Francisco that specializes in providing real-time sustainability data analytics for investors, financial institutions, and corporations globally. The company offers a range of products, including the INSIGHT360 APP, which evaluates sustainability performance and provides insights on environmental, social, and governance factors for public companies and industry sectors. Other offerings include INSIGHT360 ON EIKON, which highlights sustainability risks and opportunities within client portfolios, and the Insight360 ESG Data API, which utilizes real-time data for similar assessments. Additionally, the Insight360 Data Service employs artificial intelligence and big data to deliver alternative datasets based on recognized sustainability standards. By leveraging natural language processing and machine learning, TruValue Labs delivers actionable insights that enhance transparency for portfolio managers, analysts, sustainability managers, and executives, helping them make informed investment decisions in a landscape where sustainability issues are increasingly significant. The company was incorporated in 2013.

PeerIQ is a New York-based financial information services company that is creating tools to analyze, access, and manage risk in the peer-to-peer lending sector. We pool detailed loan data to provide authoritative, independent analytics and benchmarks that our institutional clients use to price instruments, value loan portfolios, develop investment views, and manage risk. PeerIQ aims to strengthen the P2P sector by increasing transparency, enabling efficient risk management, and providing analytics that support better investment decision-making.