#4: (5/6/24) Early & Growth Stage Tech Startup Funding Recap!
Check Out This Week's Venture Capital Investment Summary Spanning Early & Growth-Stage US Based Environmental Technology & Enterprise Software Startups!
Every Monday, the team here at Bearhug Recruiting aggregates, researches, and publishes a recap of the prior week's fundraising activity within the early and growth-stage Environmental Technology & Enterprise Software startup ecosystem.
This research not only allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of the markets we serve, but also benefits others who, like us, enjoy analyzing the latest trends that signal investor confidence AND startup growth within what we believe are the most exciting and impactful segments!
We also hope the people and companies we feature enjoy both a virtual fist bump from the team at Bearhug, plus benefit from some additional free market exposure to amplify their mission. So, make sure to give each one a look!
Here’s this week’s startup funding recap:
Backflip, led by Josh Ernst, has raised a $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by FirstMark Capital (Adam Nelson). Backflip is a real estate financial technology company that supports entrepreneurs to acquire and renovate single family homes, thereby reinvigorating the housing supply and their local communities. The company offers purpose-built technology and capital products to source, analyze and finance residential real estate investments. Backflip is an all-in-one platform providing entrepreneurs with the technology, data, and financing strategies that allows them to scale their businesses. [Link] #PropTech #FinTech #Real Estate Tech
Mimic, led by Derek Smith, has raised a $27 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Ballistic Ventures (Ted Schlein), with participation from Menlo Ventures, Team8, Wing Venture Capital and Shield Capital. Mimic's SaaS platform provides enterprises with detection, deflection, and rapid recovery from ransomware attacks, preventing infrastructure damage or data theft. [Link] #Computer and Network Security #Cyber Security #Cyber Threat Intelligence #Ransomware Defense #Incident Response
Arbol, led by Sid Jha, has raised a $60 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Giant Ventures (Cameron McLain) and Opera Tech Ventures with participation from Mubadala Capital. Arbol provides climate risk management solutions which combine Its technology ecosystem with automated structuring, AI-powered underwriting, pricing tools, and platforms for agents and brokers. Through leveraging global datasets for objective loss triggers, the company aims to broaden the adoption of parametric products and pioneer the concept of climate risk as a tangible, investable asset class. Arbol plans to deepen its work with entities in the financial sector, such as banks, which are facing new challenges with climate risks, both for their internal risks and client needs. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Marketplace #AgTech #InsurTech #ClimateTech #Climate Risk #Blockchain #Environmental Technology
Trovo Health, led by Niren Gandra, has raised a $15 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Oak HC/FT (Andrew Adams and Vig Chandramouli). Trovo uses an AI-powered platform backed by a multidisciplinary care team to help providers extend their capabilities. Leveraging specialty-specific AI workflow technology and expert care team members, providers can deliver new capabilities for patients, improve outcomes and operate more efficiently. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Digital Health #Healthcare #MedTech #Health Tech
Invent Analytics, led by Gurhan Kok, has raised a $17 million Series B funding round. The round was led by LFX Venture Partners (John Seung) with participation from existing investors European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Collective Spark. Invent is a provider of advanced analytics solutions for retailers and FMCG companies. Invent's products and services enable companies to achieve maximum profitability with data-driven inventory and pricing decisions. Retailers using Invent’s proprietary solutions have seen 2-6% increase in profitability and an unmatched ROI, proven for each case with live large-scale A/B testing. Their SaaS solutions offer agility and scalability, requiring zero capital investment due to the pay-as-you-go subscription model. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Retail Tech #Demand Forecasting #Predictive Analytics #Inventory & Price Optimization #Supply Chain & Logistics
Thintronics, led by Stefan Pastine, has raised a $23 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Maverick Capital (Kenneth Safar) and Translink Capital. Thintronics supplies high-performance insulators for emerging AI datacenter, networking, and RF/millimeter-wave (mmW) applications. Its novel materials enable wider bandwidths, increased power efficiency, and highly integrated form factors for advanced computing and communication systems. [Link] #Computers and Electronics Manufacturing #Artificial Intelligence #Computer Networking #RF Wireless Technology #Environmental Technology
Peregrine, led by Nick Noone, has raised a $30 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Friends & Family Capital (Colin Anderson) and Fifth Down Capital with participation from existing investors Goldcrest Capital, Craft Ventures, Godfrey Capital. Peregrine an advanced data integration platform that improves emergency response efforts and reduces violent crime by making existing data more accessible, understandable, and actionable. The technology is deployed to solve citywide, regional, or statewide priorities and challenges. [Link] #Data Integration Platform #Public Safety #Data Visualization
Inhabitr, led by Ankur Agrawal, has raised a $27 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Hamilton Ventures (Prashant Kothari), with participation from Great North Ventures. Inhabitr provides an AI-powered commercial real estate furnishing platform that offers an end-to-end solution covering design, procurement, installation, and financing. Leveraging AI technology in combination with an extensive network of suppliers and factory partners, the company delivers high-quality, commercial-grade furniture solutions characterized by flexibility, speed, cost-efficiency, and sustainability. With a proven track record of furnishing over 20,000 units across the United States, Inhabitr serves a diverse spectrum of commercial real estate sectors, including hospitality, multifamily, and student housing assets, catering to both independent and branded properties across budget to luxury segments. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI #FinTech #Next-Gen Commerce #Procurement #Sustainability
Danti, led by Jesse Kallman, has raised a $5 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Shield Capital (David Rothzeid) with participation from Tech Square Ventures, Humba Ventures and Leo Polovets, Space.VC, and Radius Capital. Danti provides an Earth data search engine to enable expert and non-expert users to pose simple questions about physical places on the planet to access the information generated daily by satellites, drones, analytics firms, social media, news and more. By incorporating AI tools and experience in different data types, the company offers real-time information. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Drone Data #Geospatial #Drone Management #Satellite Imagery #Search Engine
Log10, led by Arjun Bansal, has raised a $7.2 million Seed funding round. The round was led by TQ Ventures and Quiet Capital (David Greenbaum) with participation from Essence Venture Capital. Log10 has built a platform for developers to build and scale LLM-powered applications by employing AI and synthetic data to mimic human review. The system measures and improves accuracy rates while decreasing the time and expense required for manual review and debugging. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Developer Platform #LLMOps Platform #ML Ops #AI Model Training #Generative AI
Shinkei Systems, led by Saif Khawaja, has raised a $6 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Cantos (Ian Rountree), with additional participation by 8VC, Impatient Ventures, Susa/Humba Ventures, Carya Venture Partners, Ravelin Capital, Red & Blue Ventures, Undeterred Capital. Shinkei has developed a system that combines machine learning, robotics, and centuries-old fish harvesting techniques into a robotic process producing a sustainable product by eliminating waste and the stress on each fish. With built-in analytics, the system is scalable and can be optimized for any fishing operation. The hardware can be fitted and integrated into most fishing gear. In addition to wild-caught fish, Shinkei is also used in commercial fish farming, and the company is presently engaged with suppliers including Local Coho, who sells to Yama Seafood. [Link] #Supply Chain & Logistics #Food & Beverage #Food Processing #Food Tech #Robotics Engineering #Fish Harvesting #Autonomous Systems #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #ClimateTech
ChurnKey, led by Nick Fogle, has raised a $1.5 million Seed funding round. The round was led by CreativeCo (Travis Pearson). Churnkey provides a platform that gives a wide range of retention products, including personalized cancellation flows, failed payment recovery, precision credit card retries, and host of customer-centric subscription optimizations. [Link] #Business Intelligence #Predictive Analytics
Seam AI, led by Nicholas Scavone, has raised a $5 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners (Amit Karp) with participation from Colle Capital, F7 Ventures, Ritual Capital and Umami Capital. Seam AI is an AI interface for customer data where “business users” can get questions answered, get summaries, and sync information across GTM tools. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Customer Data Platform #Generative AI #MarTech #SalesTech
Lamini, led by Sharon Zhou, has raised a $25 million Seed and Series A funding round. The Series A was led by Amplify Partners (Mike Dauber), and the Seed was led by First Round Capital, with participation from Andrew Ng, Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI Co-Founder), Bernard Arnault, Pierre Lamond, Sarah Guo, Dylan Field (Figma CEO), Lip-Bu Tan, Drew Houston (Dropbox CEO), AMD Ventures, and others. Lamini makes it possible for enterprises to turn proprietary data into the next generation of LLM capabilities, by offering a platform for in-house software teams to uplevel to OpenAI-level AI teams and to build within the security of their existing infrastructure. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #LLMOps Platform #ML Ops #Developer Platform #Data Infrastructure #AI Model Training
*Note: The companies we feature in our weekly recap are a very small subset of a much larger batch, carefully chosen based on our team's assessment of how each company aligns with our GTM search practice. It’s worth noting that most startups raise funding rounds privately, often long before the news is announced publicly!