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Hello and welcome back to Last Week In Venture, Crunchbase News鈥檚 weekly roundup of venture deals that may have flown under your radar.

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Before getting to those, a quick re-cap of the week. The Crunchbase News team covered, most notably, Lyft鈥檚 S-1 filing and some of the business numbers disclosed in that paperwork. We looked at the new crop of VC funds announced so far in 2019 and new funds raised by Scaleworks, Sorenson Ventures, and Austin, TX-based firms ATX Seed and Quake Capital. We also covered supergiant deals announced by Horizon Robotics, Chehaoduo, and the untapped opportunity to invest in minority founders who鈥檝e historically been overlooked by the VC industry.

Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty of companies around the world outside the unicorn spotlight, and their stories are worth sharing too.

So, without further ado, let鈥檚 dive into the week that was in venture-land.

Modulate

New techniques in machine learning and AI are beginning to blur the lines of reality. So-called 鈥渄eep fakes鈥� transpose the face of one person onto the body of another person, either in video or still images. (A recent, safe-for-work example is the , except software has mapped actor Steve Buscemi鈥檚 face onto Lawrence鈥檚. It鈥檚 a surreal watch if you haven鈥檛 seen it yet.)

is doing something similar, but for voice. The company raised co-led by and .

There are other companies, like , operating in the speech-shifting space, but Modulate is focused on a specific vertical: video game voice chat. The Cambridge, MA-based company says on its website that it gives people 鈥渢he freedom to sound however [they] want, wherever [they] want, online.鈥� Modulate highlights a couple of use-cases, ranging from the superfluous (transforming your voice to sound kinda-sorta like Barack Obama) to the serious (鈥淛oin a conversation without worry of discrimination or harassment.鈥�)

The tech is still a little rough around the edges (i.e. it鈥檚 pretty easy to tell there is a filter being applied), but that鈥檚 seemingly by design. In an ethics , the company acknowledges that 鈥渟ome users will attempt to misuse this technology, and believe it’s our responsibility to make this as difficult as possible.鈥� The company is limiting the voice 鈥渟kins鈥� it creates and includes a digital audio watermark in all its transformed speech output to ensure content created through Modulate can be readily identified as synthetic.

Aerobotics

Based in Cape Town, South Africa, is a company which aggregates and analyzes aerial imagery using machine learning models to detect crop disease and pest infestations early. Using regularly updated satellite imagery and drone flyovers of orchards, the company is able to pinpoint problems down to individual trees and show how surrounding trees may be affected.

This week, Aerobotics announced a ZAR 29 million (approximately $2.04 million USD) , with the capital coming from Johannesburg-based . This deal follows , announced in mid-July 2018. To date, the company has in total funding, which includes from the .

In January, the company with a major South African farming co-op which will make 鈥淎erobotics鈥� leading tree crop analytics technology and software available to 1,300 farms in the Eastern Cape,鈥� according to the company. Aerobotics recently opened a U.S. office in Los Angeles, which will 鈥渟erve largely as a sales office targeting among others fruit and wine farmers.鈥�

Other Interesting Rounds

• In this economic cycle, a company is worth its weight in data. New York-based aims to build the marketplace where that data is traded between companies which have specific data needs and, well, the data they need. Beyond acting as a broker for these transactions, though, the company has expanded its offerings to include tools for companies which sell or licence data to manage those customer relationships and resulting transactions. Narrative that it has raised 鈥渢o help build out its product team.鈥� , , , and invested in the deal, which brought Narrative鈥檚 , according to the company.
• The future of work is collaborative, and, increasingly, distributed. There鈥檚 workplace chat apps, shared to-do鈥檚, and task management. is a San Francisco-based startup building a different kind of platform, one focused on collaborative decision-making for teams of all sizes and setups. This week, the company emerged from stealth mode and announced it鈥檚 raised led by .
• , an intelligent identity protection company based in Newport Beach, CA, raised led by . (formerly known as Google Ventures) participated in the round as a new investor. , which led the company鈥檚 , also joined in the round. 鈥淓ven companies that have successfully adopted single sign-on and multi-factor authentication technologies are scrambling to understand and secure what employees do after they log in,鈥� Obsidian Security co-founder and CEO told . He added that the company offers 鈥減owerful centralized visibility and monitoring of user identities across enterprise applications.鈥�

And with that, we鈥檙e done for the week! We hope your weekend is full of quality time with friends, family, or just yourself. Regardless of how you spend it, here鈥檚 to hoping it鈥檚 enjoyable. See you again on Monday!

Image Credits: Last Week In Venture graphic created by聽聽Photo by Sime Basioli, via Unsplash.