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:

1. Niva, led by Abhinav Rai, has raised a $3.3 million Seed funding round. Niva provides a global business identity platform that builds trust in businesses worldwide. By leveraging its compliance and fraud AI agents, businesses can reduce onboarding cycles to minutes and eliminate the need for training ops teams in multiple languages, regional laws, and fraud tactics. The round was led by Gradient Ventures (Darian Shirazi), Google’s AI-focused venture fund, with participation from Picus Capital (Julian Roeoes), Canary, Gilgamesh Ventures, and executives from Chime, Deel, Enigma, and Faire. [Link] #Know Your Business #Identity Management #Identity Authentication #Artificial Intelligence #Fraud Detection #Compliance Software

2. nodaFi, led by Jacob Pandl, has raised a $3.5 million Seed funding round. NodaFi provides a cloud-based facility operations platform that optimizes facility management across diverse industries such as self storage, health and wellness, biotechnology, manufacturing, and healthcare. By integrating preventive maintenance, work order management, and asset tracking, the software provides a real-time overview of facility issues, reduces operational costs, and ensures adherence to safety protocols. The round was led by Base10 Partners (Caroline Broder), with additional support from Stage 2 Capital, MKT1, and FJ Labs. [Link] #Facility Management Software #Predictive Maintenance #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #Biotech #Healthcare #Manufacturing

3. Gymdesk, led by Eran Galperin, has raised a $32 million Private Equity funding round. Gymdesk provides management software designed to simplify and enhance operations for gyms, martial arts schools, yoga studios, membership clubs, and more. Offering management solutions, it helps boutique fitness businesses manage their memberships, billing, marketing, and attendance tracking, allowing them to focus on delivering fitness experiences for their clients. The round was led by Five Elms Capital (Austin Gideon). The company will use the funds to expand and strengthen its solutions for the fitness industry and widen its customer base across new verticals. [Link] #Member Management Software #Boutique Fitness Software #FitnessTech #Billing Software #Attendance Tracking #Health Tech

4. ZwitterCo, led by Alex Rappaport, has raised a $58.4 million Series B funding round. ZwitterCo aims to solve water problems with its zwitterionic membranes that combat organic fouling. Its technology enhances membrane life and performance in high-strength industrial wastewater, surface water, and food process streams, driving sustainable water reuse and reducing chemical use. The funds will be used to strategically invest in international expansion and the rapid advancement of its technology platform. The round was led by Evok Innovations (Naynika Chaubey) with participation from DCVC (Jason Pontin), BHP, Munich Re Ventures, Siteground, HG Ventures, and Blue Horizon Advisors. [Link] #Water Treatment #Advanced Filtration #Water Purification #Water Tech #Sustainability #Environmental Technology

5. Scaler, led by Zlatan Menkovic, has raised a $10 million Series A funding round. Scaler specializes in ESG decision-making, providing real estate investors and asset managers with machine learning, ESG monitoring, and reporting tools to decarbonize the industry at scale. Customers can model the impact of decisions and their overall portfolio to asset-level footprint, and generate reports for different disclosure and regulatory requirements. The funds will be used to further develop the product, grow the engineering team, and expand to new markets beyond Europe. The round was led by Plural (Khaled Helioui) with participation from Base10. [Link] #ESG Data Platform #Real Estate Tech #Machine Learning #Compliance Software #Environmental Technology #Sustainability

6. Skild AI, led by Deepak Pathak, has raised a $300 million Series A funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation. Skild AI is building a scalable foundation model for robotics that serves as a shared, general-purpose brain across diverse robot embodiments and a variety of real-world applications. Its model serves as a shared, general-purpose brain for diverse robots, scenarios, and tasks, including manipulation, locomotion, and navigation. The funds will be used to continue scaling its model and training datasets for future commercial deployment, in addition to hiring for roles across AI, robotics, engineering, operations, and security. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (Raviraj Jain), Coatue (Sri Viswanath), SoftBank Group, and Jeff Bezos (through Bezos Expeditions), with participation from Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, Amazon, SV Angel, and Carnegie Mellon University. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #General Purpose Robots #Robotics #Industrial Automation #Environmental Technology

7. Standard Bots, led by Evan Beard, has raised a $63 million Series B funding round. Standard Bots is on a mission to transform robotics with AI-driven systems, making automation accessible to businesses of all sizes without requiring advanced technical skills. They have developed a revolutionary way to program robots through demonstration, allowing quick and versatile deployment. The funds will be used to accelerate their mission, support the development of their AI-powered robot, and extend the line of RO3 robotic arms. The round was led by General Catalyst (Max Rimpel, Quentin Clark), with participation from Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Next, and additional support from Presight Capital (Fabian Hansen). [Link] #Collaborative Robotics #Robotics Engineering #Mobile Robotics #Robotic Arm #Automated Machine Tending #Artificial Intelligence #Industrial Automation #Advanced Manufacturing #Environmental Technology

8. Fireworks AI, led by Lin Qiao, has raised a $52 million Series B funding round, valued at $552 million. Fireworks AI provides an inference engine to build production-ready, compound AI systems. Using minimal human-curated data, ultra-fast LoRA fine-tuning allows developers to quickly customize models to their specific needs, transitioning from dataset preparation to querying a fine-tuned model in minutes. The funds will be used to expand the team and enhance its platform, enabling developers to quickly move AI applications from prototype to production. The round was led by Sequoia Capital (Sonya Huang), with participation from NVIDIA, AMD, and MongoDB. [Link] #AI Infrastructure #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI #PaaS #Machine Learning #Deep Tech

9. Soda, led by Maarten Masschelein, has raised a $14 million Series B funding round. Soda is the AI-enabled data quality platform that delivers end-to-end data quality management to test, debug, and prevent data issues, empowering everyone to share and use reliable, high-quality data to improve decision-making. The funds will be used to further build its global team, expanding its headquarters with experienced go-to-market talent to continue its growth in North America. The round was backed by Singular (Raffi Kamber) and Point Nine (Louis Coppey). [Link] #Data Monitoring Platform #Machine Learning #Data Testing #Data Observability Platform #Data Quality Platform #Data Management Platform #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI #Anomaly Detection #AI Assistants

10. Kuva Systems, led by Stefan Bokaemper, has raised an $8.7 million Venture (B) funding round. Kuva Systems makes camera-based methane emissions monitoring for the oil and gas industry, providing clear, irrefutable gas plume images for operators to see, size, and solve their emissions challenges. The round was led by PrairiesCan and prior investors, with additional support from Climate Innovation Capital (Paul Atkinson). [Link] #Methane Emissions Monitoring #Industrial Automation #Industrial IoT #Internet of Things #Environmental Engineering #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #ClimateTech #CleanTech

*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!