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Edge Executive Interview – Blaine Mathieu, Pratexo

In the lead up to Edge Computing World, we’re taking some time to speak to key Executives from the leading companies supporting the show. Today we’re talking to Blaine Mathieu, Chief Executive Officer at Pratexo

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Tell us a bit about yourself – what led you to get involved in the edge computing market and Pratexo?

BM:

I’m Blaine Mathieu, CEO of Pratexo. I’ve been in enterprise software for over 30 years (actually started my first enterprise software company as a teenager). Fast-forwarding to more recent times, I first experienced big-data/analytics solutions as CMO/CPO of GoodData. From there I joined Vantiq (also as CMO/CPO) and began to immerse myself in IoT, AI/ML, and real-time systems. After leaving Vantiq I joined Momenta Partners, a VC focused entirely on early-stage AI, IoT, and Edge Computing startups. That’s where I first met Pratexo, which takes a lot of what I was doing at Vantiq but moves it to the edge.

What is it you & your company are uniquely bringing to the edge market?

BM: We describe Pratexo as the intelligent edge innovation platform that dramatically accelerates the time to design, test, and provision next-generation architectures and applications, especially those related to the applications of edge computing in conjunction with AI, IoT, and Industry 4.0.

What makes Pratexo especially unique is that it is not based around a pre-set edge platform but, rather, a ‘configurator’ that enables a company to configure (obviously), simulate, provision, and then monitor and optimize precisely the edge compute ecosystem that is appropriate for their use cases. The configurator generates systems that do basic edge processing, along with distributed computing at the edge, and even swarm computing.

Tell us more about the company, what’s your advantages compared to others on the market, who is involved, and what are your major milestones so far?

BM: Pratexo is an early-stage company and growing quickly. We recently closed a $3.5M seed round and brought on board an amazing Advisory Board.  Please see the link below for more info. We have also recently engaged with the Google Coral Edge AI business unit in a deep strategic partnership and will soon be announcing joint clients. 

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210630005072/en/Pratexo-Completes-Seed-Round-to-Take-Distributed-Computing-and-AI-to-the-Edge

https://pratexo.com/ai-at-the-edge/ 

How do you see the edge market developing over the next few years?

BM: It reminds me a lot of where industrial IoT and AI/ML were five or six years ago: just on the cusp of coming out of the innovation groups and into the true mainstream. Of course, this also means there is a lot of noise in the market. Just as every company was an ‘AI company’ a few years ago, now every company supposedly has an edge solution. It’s hard for buyers to sort it all out.

What are the main trends you see about integrating edge computing into different verticals?

BM: Just as IoT and AI are now becoming present in every single vertical, the same thing is happening with edge computing. The trend is about a constant evolution to more advanced, interesting, and valuable use cases.  What originally started as basic dashboards and alerts are now becoming applications that can take truly complex actions in real time. That’s powerful!

Thanks Blaine – Looking forward to hearing more from Pratexo at the event !