Last Week in Boston Tech Deals

$288M Raised by Ten Companies

Aug 24, 2021

I’ve been caught up with the new job over the last few weeks and haven’t been able to do as many deep dives. But I will say, it’s pretty striking to see how many companies have raised recently that are sustainability/ESG focused. Last week, of the $288M+ in capital raised, $277M went towards sustainable energy, farming, investing, or governance solutions.

Stuff I’m Reading:

Boston Tech Financing Announcements:

Nexamp ⚡

Community solar company Nexamp raised a $240M private equity round led by Generate Capital. They’re a full-stack provider of solar project developments covering building, designing, financing, and maintenance of massive community solar projects across the US.

Regrow 🪴

New Hampshire-based, but one of the larger Series A rounds I’ve seen on the seacoast in a while — AgTech software maker Regrow just closed a $17M Series A from Ajax Strategies, Tenacious Ventures, and Cargill.

WeSpire 💥

Employee engagement software company WeSpire announced a $13M Series B led by Level Structured Capital. The 11-year-old company helps employees engage in social causes through the workplace to drive impact.

Capshift 💰

Newton-based Capshift, which operates an impact investing platform, announced a $5M Series A last week from a group of investors including Bain Capital Europe, Aperio, Addepar, Brazen Impact, Gratitude Railroad, Jesse Fink, Heron Foundation, Spring Point Partners, and Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. They help mid-sized companies access advisors, funding endowments, and business solutions for impact investing.

Absurd:Joy 🥽

On the heels of Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms launch, a stealth VR communications startup called Absurd:Joy has raised $5.3M, per a new filing. The team, which is “bringing joy to remote communication,” includes several ex-Owlchemy Labs (Acq’d by Google) folks (their former Studio Director Cy Wise and former CEO Alex Schwartz). The filing lists Louis Gresham of March Capital and Amy LaMeyer of The WXR Fund, while Linkedin shows Galaxy Interactive’s Zhong Liu Michael Fan as an investor as well as Bad Robot Games CEO Anna Sweet as an advisor.

The most interesting part of this stealth company is its decision to make a public wiki of internal projects and thoughts.

Cytrio ☑️

Automated CCPA compliance platform Cytrio closed a $2M round, according to a recent filing. The two-year-old company helps platforms easily implement data privacy rights management for their users (right to know, right to access, right to delete, etc).

Gaiascope 🔋

Gaiascope, a YC S21 “energy quant fund,” just announced a $2M seed round led by VoLo Earth Ventures, with participation from Khosla Ventures and YC. They use machine learning models to forecast wholesale electricity prices and trade them more efficiently. It’s led by Jess Stiles and Lauren Kuntz.

ReElivate 🎉

Remote team event marketplace ReElivate raised a $1.6M Seed Round led by Lightbank, with participation from Service Provider Capital and Verissimo Ventures — according to Crunchbase, but unconfirmed elsewhere.

Consensus 🧪

Only confirmed on Crunchbase, but Boston-based Consensus seems to have raised a $1.3M pre-seed round from investors including Winklevoss Capital, Laurence Capital, Bettor Capital, Permit Ventures, and several angels. They’re building an ad-free search engine for the everyday person to access scientific information. Notably a non-crypto investment by Winklevoss Capital.

Meetcaregivers 🧓🏼

Newton-based Meetcaregivers announced a $1M round from the MM Catalyst Fund, 37Angels, Golden Seeds, and TiE-Boston Angels, and Kachuwa Impact. They’re developing a marketplace for caregivers to meet seniors that already boasts 10K+ HHA's, CNA's, and LPN's.

Tech Deals by Nick Stuart

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