Boston Tech Raised $230M+ Last Week
Let's Chat Tech Deals
Let’s Chat Tech Deals
Happy Monday!
Last week, Brian Fakhoury and I hopped on Clubhouse to experiment with a weekly live discussion on the Boston tech scene — sort of “TechMeme Ride Home” style. It ended up going pretty well! We had a handful of people stick around to listen and a few founders and community members share thoughts about trends they’re seeing and companies they’re working on. If you can make it tomorrow at 7PM EST, come join!
Stuff I’m Reading:
Spark Capital Severs All Ties With David Dobrik’s Dispo App — TechCrunch
List of All VC-Backed Companies SPACing This Year — Crunchbase
Boston Tech Financing Deals:
Appfire 🔥
TA Associates just led a $100M growth equity investment into Appfire. The company acquires and operates a suite of Atlassian apps for makers in a sort of “rollup” strategy fashion. The 15-year-old (profitable!) company was bootstrapped up until last May and apparently saw 103% ARR growth in 2020!
Filebase 💾
A Form D shows blockchain-based storage network Filebase just closed a $2M round. They provide backup and recovery, Kubernetes, content delivery, and DevOps solutions that are all Amazon S3 compatible. Similar to work being done at Boston-based Sia.
SmartKargo ✈️
An end-to-end air cargo eCommerce software solution called SmartKargo just raised a growth equity round from M33 Growth. Their software helps airlines spin up eCommerce logistics offerings as a new revenue stream. Interesting considering Amazon has now purchased over 80 planes to reduce its reliance on third party air freight. Maybe now airlines will see Amazon as a competitor instead of a customer?
SeaTrac Systems ⛵
A four year old crewless autonomous marine surveying company called SeaTrac Systems raised $1M according to a new filing. I last wrote about them in March’20 when they raised $900K from the LA CleanTech Incubator. The SeaTrac system allows researchers to collect data at sea for several months at a time using wireless communications and manual controls if necessary.
Alloy Enterprises 🏗️
Metal additive manufacturing company Alloy Enterprises just announced the close of a $4.3M seed round led by Congruent Ventures, with participation from Riot Ventures. The year-old Greentown Labs company claims their processes can print high strength aluminum alloys that are more efficient and 20x cheaper than powders.
Surround Insurance 🛡️
Surround Insurance, which offers modern insurance policies for renting, driving, biking, and freelancing, just raised a $3.6M seed round according to BostInno. Participating investors included Sure Ventures, Cameron Ventures, Newark Venture Partners, and Plug & Play Ventures.
ZwitterCo 🚰
Three-year-old nanofiltration company ZwitterCo just raised $5.9M its first official seed round led by Mann+Hummel Corporate Ventures, with participation from R-Cubed Capital Partners and Burnt Island Ventures. I’ve covered the company’s incremental funding various times on this newsletter, most recently in Oct’20 when they raised $1.9M. They use zwitterionic copolymers to cheaply and efficiently filter things like industrial wastewater.
Fortify 🖨️
Another additive manufacturing company, Fortify, just raised $20M led by Cota Capital, with participation from Accel, Neotribe Ventures, and Prelude Ventures. They specialize in printers for high-performance applications like injection mold tools.
FiVerity 🕵️♂️
Cyber fraud detection company FiVerity just raised $2M led by Mendoza Ventures and several angels including Doug Levin. The company uses AI to help financial institutions like banks and credit unions fight back against Synthetic Identity Fraud, which is when a fraudster combines real and fake data to make a new identity instead of a stolen one.
DepositLink 🏘️
Two-year-old real estate fintech company DepositLink just raised a $3.5M seed round from several angel investors. The company’s payments platform lets real estate and title companies transact payments through the ACH network in under 24 hours, compared to slower traditional payment methods like wires and paper checks.
Databento 📊
A new Form D shows that alternative data company Databento just raised $4.2M. According to Crunchbase, this latest investment includes a check from seed fund 2.12 Angels. They offer institutional-quality live/historical market and alternative data for customers including high frequency traders. It’s founded by Christina Qi, who was a founding partner at one of the largest HFT firms in New England. They’re hiring for various engineer roles.
Basil Systems 🧬
Healthcare analytics firm Basil Systems just launched and raised a $1.5M seed round led by Looking Glass Capital and Golden Ventures. Their SaaS product uses Natural Language Processing and Big Data help drive product development decisions at medical and pharmaceutical companies.
Slightly related, but check out this company Viable. They utilize GPT-3 to turn customer feedback into actionable product development suggestions in a pretty cool way.
HaulHub 🚚
An amended Form D shows that construction technology company HaulHub just raised an additional $10M in a $30M round. They last raised a $30M Series B in March’20 from Durable Capital and T. Rowe Price. Their platform helps construction companies manage vehicle fleets and provide supply chain visibility.
Via ⚡
Via, a five-year-old startup that is helping multiple energy companies combine data for AI training purposes, just raised $7.3M according to a new filing. They’ve developed a blockchain application that makes it easy for energy companies to prepare and share data with others in a way that is private and in compliance with various regulations.
Well Dot ⚕️
A new Form D shows that mobile health guide startup Well Dot just raised $51M. The North Carolina and Boston-based company has developed a personalized, concierge-style application for actionable health guidance. Previous backers include General Catalyst, Mosaic Health Solutions, and John Doerr. They have several Boston-based engineering roles open.
TetraScience 🧪
TetraScience, a cloud-native data platform for pharmaceutical R&D, just raised $11M led by Underscore VC. Their customers include 12 of the top 40 pharmaceutical companies and they’ve seen ARR growth 10x since 2019.
Monitaur 🔍
Monitaur, which is providing assurance software to AI companies to make their algorithms auditable, just raised $2.1M according to a new filing. The Techstars’20 company wants to make it easy for humans to audit the machine learning algorithms that make key decisions about our lives.
Kimble Applications 📈
Kimble Applications, a ten-year-old Professional Services Automation (PSA) software provider, just announced a growth investment from Accel-KKR.