Prometric LLC acquires MVF portfolio company, Finetune Learning

August 4, 2022 - Prometric announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Finetune, a Maine Venture Fund portfolio company and leading innovator in Artificial Intelligence-assisted education and workforce software tools.

Finetune, originally founded as Academic Merit, LLC by educator and serial entrepreneur Ogden Morse and his father in Falmouth, Maine, has been developing innovative solutions in learning, instruction, and assessment for more than a decade. The company expanded in recent years, with the hiring of CEO Steve Shapiro, into proprietary AI-assisted technology, targeting the growing demand among organizations and companies for the ability to create a high-quality assessment and other learning content with greater time- and cost-efficiency than traditional approaches.

Finetune's flagship products, Generate™ and Catalog™, are the world's first commercially available products to use state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) transformer models to power AI-driven content generation and classification, increasing the productivity and creativity of item-authoring and classification, in tandem with subject matter experts, while significantly improving quality.

Steve Shapiro of Finetune, said, "We are grateful for the early foundational support from the Maine startup ecosystem, including Maine Venture Fund and several Maine-based individual investors. This next phase of growth with Prometric allows us to further build on our success, taking these solutions to market at scale and continuing to invest in emerging technologies that address the needs of  the wide cross section of markets we serve."

Dr. Brien Walton, Board Chair of Maine Venture Fund, said, “Finetune is a great example of the type of success we work towards with each one of our portfolio companies. Given our unique structure as a state-sponsored fund, MVF serves as a critical economic development tool within Maine for supporting entrepreneurial activity and job growth. MVF first invested in Finetune in 2015, and as a result of this positive return of capital, we’ll be able to recycle these funds into many more investments in other Maine-based companies.”

About Finetune

Finetune is a leading innovator in the education sector, specializing in the development of hybrid AI-human-solutions that address some of the most challenging problems including automated content generation and AI-powered learning-resource classification. For more information, please visit Finetune - Creating AI-Human hybrid solutions for learning (finetunelearning.com).

About Prometric LLC

Prometric is a leading provider of technology-enabled testing and assessment solutions. Our integrated, end-to-end solutions provide exam development, management, and distribution that set the industry standard in quality, security, and service excellence. Today, we are paving the industry's path forward with new solutions and innovation to ensure reliable access to secure assessments anytime, anywhere. For more information, visit Prometric or follow us on Twitter at @PrometricGlobal and www.linkedin.com/company/prometric/.

About Maine Venture Fund

Maine Venture Fund invests in dynamic businesses that have the potential for significant growth and impact in Maine. For more information, visit maineventurefund.com. 

Inquiries:
Terri Wark
Maine Venture Fund
(207) 924.3800
terri@maineventurefund.com