#9: (6/10/24) 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. Make sure you reach out to any that are interesting/relevant that you might be able to help!
Here’s this week’s startup funding recap:
Caju AI, led by Otavio Freire, has raised a $3 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Grotech Ventures (Steve Fredrick), Felton Group, the family office of Charlottesville, VA based hedge fund manager Jaffray Woodriff, and angel investors. Caju AI provides a platform, renowned for its Generative AI capabilities, that captures and analyzes customer communications across all messaging channels as well as customer engagement data to deliver advanced analytics for conversation intelligence, call summaries, regional activity monitoring, key trend analysis, and actionable business intelligence, all designed to accelerate field engagement and enhance customer satisfaction across the enterprise. At the same time, Caju AI ensures regulatory compliance, prevents data loss, and mitigates other risk concerns. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Conversational AI #Generative AI #Customer Engagement Software #Workforce Management Software #Business Intelligence Tools
WindBorne, led by John Dean, has raised a $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Khosla Ventures (Sven Strohband). Existing investors Footwork VC (Nikhil Basu Trivedi), Jetstream (Tommy Leep), Pear VC, and Convective Capital also participated. WindBorne designs, manufactures, and operates the constellation of smart, long-duration sensing balloons and empowers AI global weather forecasts. Each balloon weighs a few pounds, most of which is sand ballast. The balloons are equipped with proprietary sensors and customized avionics that enable real-time communication and navigation. [Link] #Weather Models #Smart Weather Balloons #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #Energy Tech #Hard Tech #Deep Tech
Xcimer Energy, led by Conner Galloway, has raised a $100 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Hedosophia, with participation from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Prelude Ventures (Mark Cupta), Emerson Collective, Gigascale Capital and Starlight Ventures. Xcimer is an inertial fusion company that combines novel laser technology with science to accelerate the commercial deployment of fusion energy. [Link] #Climate Tech #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #Energy Tech #Deep Tech #Inertial Fusion #High-Temperature Superconductors #Advanced Materials #Artificial Intelligence #Fusion Energy.
SiTration, led by Dr. Brendan Smith, has raised a $11.8 million Seed funding round. The round was led by 2150 with participation from BHP Ventures, Extantia, and Orion Industrial Ventures. Previous investors Azolla Ventures (Matthew Nordan) and MIT-affiliated E14 Fund also participated. SiTration is a spin-out of MIT that has created a patented porous silicon membrane technology that provides a combination of ultra-durability, highly tunable pore structure, and electrical conductivity enabling efficient and low-cost materials recovery. Its technology can replace traditional resource-intensive mining processes and can be deployed to recover materials from traditionally inaccessible sources, including waste. The company has received grants from the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and the National Science Foundation, and is working to implement their membrane platform in mining, metals refining, and lithium-ion battery recycling. [Link] #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #Recycling Tech #ClimateTech #Nanotechnology #Mining #Metals Refining #Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling #Silicon Membrane Technology
Rising Team, led by Jennifer Dulski, has raised a $8 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Zeal Capital Partners (Nasir Qadree) alongside previous investors including Peterson Ventures, Roble Ventures, Female Founders Fund, Burst Capital, and Supernode Ventures. Rising Team provides a team performance platform whose software enables companies to increase employee engagement and retention, scale talent development, and improve culture and connection. Covering leadership topics that drive high-performing teams, the software equips managers with everything they need to run connecting and interactive team-building sessions, remotely or in-person, without needing an outside facilitator. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #HRTech #AI Leadership Coach #Employee Engagement Software
Whizz, led by Mike Peregudov, has raised a $20 million Series A funding round. The round was led by LETA Capital (Sergey Toporov), with participation from Flashpoint, and others. Whizz is an e-bike subscription service for delivery drivers in the US. It aims to provide safe and affordable electric bike transportation to every delivery worker in the US. The company partners with DoorDash, Grubhub, and other delivery enterprises, offering $159/month rental subscriptions to independent delivery workers on these platforms. [Link] #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #E-Bike #Electric Vehicle #Last-Mile Transportation Software
OneScreen, led by Alex Ewing, has raised a $4.7 million Seed funding round. Backers included Asymmetric Capital Partners, Techstars, and Impellent Ventures (Philip Beauregard). OneScreen.ai acts as a software-enabled intermediary, connecting startups with OOH advertising opportunities (e.g., billboards, subway ads). Its platform matches ad placements with potential customer demographics and historical data, utilizing anonymized location data to track campaign success. OneScreen’s tech helps target specific audiences by placing ads near target companies’ locations and using anonymized data to measure response. [Link] #Internet of Things #Outdoor Advertising #AdTech #OOH Advertising #Location Intelligence Software #Global Point Of Interest Data
HyperSpectral, led by Matt Theurer, has raised a $8.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by RRE Ventures (Will Porteous) and Kibo Ventures (Juan L. Santamaría) with participation from Correlation Ventures and GC&H Investments. HyperSpectral combines spectroscopy, AI, and machine learning to detect and recognize particle signatures, aiming to provide agricultural and medical technology companies with real-time intelligence on product safety and protect people from invisible threats. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Spectral Intelligence #AgTech #MedTech #Product Safety Software #Smart Agriculture #Healthcare #Sustainability
Understory, led by Alex Kubicek and Neil Irwin, has raised a $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by True Ventures (Puneet Agarwal) and Prelude Ventures (Tim Woodward). Understory provides an insurance platform protecting climate-vulnerable industries from severe weather risk, using a global network of weather stations and sophisticated risk models. The company plans to use the funds to expand into the renewable energy sector. [Link] #InsurTech #ClimateTech #Renewable Energy #WeatherRiskModels #EnvironmentalTechnology #Sustainability #GreenTech #Climate Risk Software
Sixfold, led by Alex Schmelkin, has raised a $15 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Scale Venture Partners and previous investors including Bessemer Venture Partners (Charles Birnbaum & Jeremy Levine) and Crystal Venture Partners. Sixfold empowers underwriters with a generative AI solution for end-to-end risk analysis, streamlining the underwriting process and enabling underwriters to focus on decision-making. The funds will be used to expand the team of AI/ML engineers, enhance product capabilities, and accelerate R&D efforts. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI #InsurTech #Risk Management Platform
Tobiko, led by Tyson Mao, has raised $21.8 million in funding. This includes a $4.5 million Seed round from Unusual Ventures (Wei Lien Dang) and a $17.3 million Series A led by Theory Ventures, with participation from 20Sales, Fivetran CEO George Fraser, Census CEO Boris Jabes, and MotherDuck CEO Jordan Tigani. Tobiko is the creator of open-source projects SQLMesh and SQLGlot, which streamline data wrangling and enhance warehouse efficiency by automating data pipeline construction. The funds will be used to invest in these projects and the company’s managed cloud and enterprise version. [Link] #Data Infrastructure #Open Source Software #Artificial Intelligence #Data Transformation #Developer Platform #Data Ops Software
*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!
