AWS Partner PTP Eyeing Acquisitions, Boosting AI And ML After 424 Capital Investment

‘Even though there has been some turndown in sort of the overall [venture capital] activity in this early stage life sciences space, we’re still seeing net-new business creation happening every single day,’ says Ethan Simmons, managing partner at PTP.

AWS partner and life sciences star PTP is eyeing acquisitions and boosting its artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities after receiving a “significant investment” from venture capital firm 424 Capital.

“We just had our best month ever in January. We are firing on all cylinders,” Ethan Simmons, managing partner at PTP, told CRN. “Even though there has been some turndown in the overall VC [venture capital] activity, in this early stage life sciences space, we’re still seeing net-new business creation happening every single day.”

Simmons’ plan is to use the investment dollars from 424 Capital to “organically grow into new geographies to grow the business, but also keep an eye out for the right acquisition targets to grow” PTP faster than ever before.

“Our goal is to stay AWS-focused and life-sciences-focused,” Simmons said.

[Related: Triumph Tech CEO: AWS Will Win ‘AI War’ Vs. Google, Microsoft]

AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Life Sciences M&A

PTP is a Norwood, Mass.-based AWS Advanced Consulting channel partner with AWS’ Life Sciences and Managed Security Services competencies.

The AWS partner provides strategic consulting and IT managed services specifically to biotechnology companies. PTP has a track record of successfully guiding biotechnology companies through the complex landscape of pipeline workflows for drug discovery and development.

In terms of potential acquisitions, PTP is looking at life sciences companies that can extend its customer reach into new U.S. regions, including California, Texas and New York.

“We’re seeing a ton of activity outside of the Boston area from a life sciences standpoint,” said Simmons. “So we’re looking to expand into those new geographic areas, but from a capability standpoint really adding on more capabilities around AI, machine learning [ML] and analytics.”

PTP will invest in innovative AI and ML solutions that “our customers and AWS are asking us to provide,” he said.

AWS’ Generative AI Push

While PTP is receiving investment dollars from 424 Capital, AWS is pouring millions into creating new AI solutions in 2023 with a focus on generative AI.

Ruba Borno, AWS’ worldwide partner leader, told CRN last month that AWS is “democratizing access” to AI for customers.

“We’re really excited about how AWS is now democratizing access to foundational models and generative AI for customers,” said Borno, vice president and head of worldwide channels and alliances for AWS. “The key outcomes we’re helping customers with is giving them the flexibility to choose the way they want to build with generative AI.”

For example, the cloud giant recently unveiled Amazon Bedrock, a new AWS service for building and scaling generative AI applications that provides customers with easy access to innovative foundational models.

AWS also recently made generally available Amazon EC2 Inf2 instances powered by AWS’ own Inferentia2 chips, which aims to lower the cost of running generative AI workloads. In addition, AWS is now offering free access to Amazon CodeWhisperer, which is an AI coding companion that generates whole-line and full-function-code suggestions.

PTP’s ‘Bullish’ Future Ahead

Simmons said he’s “bullish” about PTP’s future thanks in part to 424 Capital’s new investment.

“We’ve navigated COVID and we’ve managed through that. We have a strong team in place that can really leverage what 424 is bringing to the table from an investment standpoint. Also, having them believing in the overall thesis around life sciences and cloud is important,” said Simmons.

Even as venture capitalist firms and investment bankers are lowering the number of investment deals they are making this year, Simmons said the new investment proves that PTP is offering differentiated and critical value to customers.

“If we were just a standard IT managed service provider, that’s not going to get it done these days. You need to really bring more value to the conversation than just doing IT services. That’s what makes us special and what’s made this whole process interesting,” said Simmons.