Calgary-based Lightstrike, which provides an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool to map the connections between enterprise applications, has raised $1.1 million CAD in pre-seed funding as it looks to expand its North American presence.
The all-equity round closed on Halloween and was led by Edmonton-based Sprout Fund with participation from Connecticut-based The Binnacle Group, Weave VC, and two Alberta-based family offices. A number of angel investors also participated, including founding team members from RobinHood, EY Comply, and ACT Airlines CEO and chairman Daglar Çizmeci.
“They helped us nail a truly differentiated product market fit in a very complex and competitive market.”
Vernon Briggs
Lightstrike
Lightstrike was founded earlier this year by CTO James Cuff and CEO Vernon Briggs, both leaders of Calgary-based IT services company Fliwheel.
Briggs told BetaKit in an email statement that Fliwheel created the opportunity for Lightstrike, and as the co-founders take its product “out into the world in earnest,” the startup will be acquiring the duo’s former company and incorporating its tech team into Lightstrike.
Lightstrike “ingests” the source code of corporate applications, labels inter-app interactions, and then maps them. Briggs explained that this map displays the dependencies between applications to help prevent cascading application and system failures.
“Application and Platform failures are increasing in size, magnitude, complexity, and economic impact on customers and (in the case of CrowdStrikes failures) economies,” Briggs said in an email statement.
Users can also prompt Lightstrike’s large language model, which leverages AWS and Azure, in plain English to find or modify certain parts of the application code.
Briggs said that Lightstrike is already generating revenue with a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model and has customers that include “some of the largest supply chain and financial services companies in North America,” but said confidentiality agreements prevent him from disclosing who those customers are. He added that, while Lightstrike has seen “remarkable results,” the company has high expectations from a market and revenue perspective and needs to execute within the next 12 to 18 months.
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Sprout Fund invested from its second seed-stage venture capital fund, which completed an initial $10 million CAD close in 2022. Sprout partner Kristina Milke, who coached Lightstrike’s founders through the Alberta Innovates GrowthX Revenue Accelerator, led the investment effort.
According to Briggs, Milke and Sprout partner Shaheel Hooda’s mentorship helped the founders “mature at a breakneck pace” by refining their customer approach, value proposition, and challenging them to better share insights with customers and prospects.
“They helped us nail a truly differentiated product market fit in a very complex and competitive market,” Briggs said in the email statement. “Once this happened, they decided to lead this investment round and gave us the confidence and stamp of approval to close our round in 70 days.”
“This happened in a VERY challenging Capital-raising environment,” Briggs added. “How often do you get the chance to work with great investors who take the time to cultivate your business and invest in you and your idea?”
Feature image courtesy Ilya Pavlov via Unsplash.
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