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. Uncaged Innovations, led by Stephanie Downs, has raised a $5.6 million Seed funding round. The round was co-led by Green Circle Capital Partners (Stu Strumwasser) and Fall Line Capital (Eric O'Brien, Yanniv Dorone), with participation from Ponderosa Ventures, Golden Seeds, and existing investor InMotion Ventures, the investment arm of JLR (Jaguar Land Rover). Uncaged Innovations creates sustainable leather from grains at scale using its proprietary technology platform, BioFuze, combined with roll-to-roll manufacturing. Their animal-free leather product mimics the texture and performance of traditional leather while emitting less greenhouse gasses and using less water and energy. The funds will be used to support the commercial launch, increase production, and expand the team. [Link] #Biomaterials #BioTech #Sustainable Textiles #Fashion Tech #Sustainability #Advanced Materials #Advanced Manufacturing #Environmental Technology #Home Goods Tech

2. Phaidra, led by Jim Gao, has raised a $12 million funding round. The round was led by Index Ventures (Martin Mignot). Phaidra provides an AI-powered virtual plant operator that helps mission-critical facilities like data centers improve energy efficiency, plant stability, and sustainability. Its autonomous control systems use reinforcement learning to make real-time decisions to optimize energy usage and improve over time. The funds will be used for continued investment in research and development, implementation, customer success, and expanded go-to-market efforts. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Energy Efficiency #Reinforcement Learning #Data Center Management #Environmental Technology #Sustainability #Energy Management #Industrial Automation #Machine Learning #Process Controls & Optimization

3. Pieces, led by Tsavo Knott, has raised a $13.5 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Drive Capital (Mark Kvamme, Chris Olsen) with participation from Cincinnati’s Cintrifuse Capital, Miami University’s RedHawk Ventures, and local high-net-worth investors. Pieces provides a developer productivity tool that allows developers to save and store code, links, text, images, and more. The startup is introducing Live Context in Pieces Copilot+, a feature that provides real-time, on-device contextual assistance for developers. The funds will be used to roll out the next phases of its product. [Link] #Developer Platform #Productivity Tools #Artificial Intelligence #DevTools #AI Copilot

4. Prodia, led by Shawn Wilkinson, Mikhail Avady, has raised a $15 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Dragonfly Capital (Anirudh Pai), with participation from HashKey, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, EV3, Artichoke, TRGC, Folius, Tangent Capital, Southern Equity, Balaji Srinivasan, Sandeep Nailwal (founder of Polygon), Matthew Roszak, Jeremy Voss (Director of Gen AI at Meta), Amit Vasudev (founder of Clearbit), Thomas France (founder of Ledger), Leon Marshall (CEO of Galaxy Europe), Nicolas Pinto, Kenzi Wang, Jermaine Brown, and others. Prodia provides a distributed GPU cloud specifically designed for AI inference, reducing costs by 50%–90% and accelerating generation speeds while offering a Rest API for effortless integration. The funds will be used to accelerate growth, expand into generative video, support more LLMs, and grow its network to support more types of GPU hardware and providers. [Link] #AI Model Inference #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI #Artificial Intelligence API #AI Infrastructure

5. Vida, led by Lyle Pratt, has raised a $3 million Seed funding round. The round was led by Stillmark (Alyse Killeen). Vida provides enterprise-grade AI voice solutions for telecom service providers and small to medium-sized businesses. Its AI voice agents automate key business functions such as customer service, lead qualification, scheduling, and sales. The company’s proprietary voice stack integrates with existing telecom networks and business phone systems over SIP for smooth deployment. The funds will be used to accelerate the deployment of its innovative AI voice solutions. [Link] #CX Tech #Customer Experience Software #Customer Support Software #Conversational AI #Artificial Intelligence #Generative AI

6. Tembo, led by Ry Walker, has raised a $14 million Series A funding round. The round was led by GreatPoint Ventures (DJ Patil) with participation from Venrock, Grand Ventures, Wireframe Ventures, Defined Capital, Cintrifuse Capital, and Angels. Tembo provides a managed service that enables organizations, from Fortune 500 to startups, to leverage the open-source database Postgres for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads across any cloud. The funds will be used to expand operations and development efforts. [Link] #Artificial Intelligence #Data Infrastructure #Developer Platform #DataOps 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!