2023 was a remarkable year for Marathon portfolio companies, with teams growing fast, getting acquired by industry leaders, raising up rounds, and leaving their footprints in some of the most pressing world problems.

Augmenta was acquired for $110 million by CNH Industrial, the second-largest tractor manufacturer in the world. Marathon served as the first and largest investor in the company. We were fortunate to take a back seat from very early on in the team’s journey to automate sustainable farming while also returning the full Marathon Fund I back to our investors.

The #1 cybersecurity upskilling platform in the world, Hack The Box, raised a $55m Series B round led by The Carlyle Group to offer individuals, businesses and universities the tools they need to improve their cybersecurity capabilities. This round was also paired with a secondary transaction, which gave us the opportunity to return to our backers in one go the full Marathon I plus more while providing our limited partners the opportunity to invest directly in the company.

Causaly raised a $60 million Series B round led by ICONIQ Growth to help the world's leading pharma and life sciences institutions achieve preclinical discoveries at a pace never experienced before with AI. We have been privileged to serve as the first institutional investor in the company by leading its Seed round and doubling down in all consecutive rounds ever since.

Cisco acquired Code BGP, enabling its ThousandEyes business to expand its BGP monitoring capabilities and enhance its global view of Internet health. We did a Seed round for Code BGP in June 2021, and two years later, we were excited to see the digital communications technology conglomerate acquire Code BGP's expertise and IP, with the entire team joining its ThousandEyes team.

Connectly raised a $7.85 million Series A round to accelerate AI-powered conversational commerce. This brings the total amount the company has raised to $17.25 million. Already, Connectly’s personalized AI-generated marketing campaigns have generated upwards of 30x returns for its customers.

We led Ariadne’s $7 million Series A to build the operating system for commercial real estate. Some of the most prominent real estate operators globally use Ariadne to capture their visitors' behaviour with industry-leading accuracy, reporting double-digit improvements in sales, cost savings and net promoter score. In a rare decision for us, we decided to lead a consecutive round for a company. 

Lambda Automata raised a €6 million Seed round to develop AI-first hardware and software for the age of autonomous defence and help build Europe's Strategic Autonomy. We have been day one partners in the team, leading their first round, and decided to double down by co-investing with funds from the UK, France, and Spain.

This year, we also welcomed new companies to our portfolio:

We led a $2 million Seed investment in the leading drone helicopter manufacturer, Velos Rotors, to accelerate the adoption of its pioneering industrial-grade UAVs. Velos Rotors’ helicopters open up new possibilities for fulfilling critical missions with valuable payloads further and faster than ever before.

We led SMPnet's $1.4m Seed round to enable software-defined power grids. There is no green future without an upgraded power grid, and SMPnet allows for adaptive optimization and real-time control of energy assets, ensuring increased security and cost-effectiveness of supply.

We led a $2.5m Seed investment in Bota Systems. Bota Systems creates a key component for the modern robotics stack, bringing together advanced in-house developed force torque sensors, built-in electronics and AI to give robots the sense of touch.

Last but not least, we continue to bring our community together through meet-ups, and this year, we travelled to Zurich, London, Munich, Stockholm, Luxembourg and New York City to host our Greeks In Tech events and meet our peers.

That’s a wrap for 2023. We look forward to 2024 and cannot wait to see what our fellow Greeks in tech build next!