Last Week in Boston Tech Deals and Happenings (11/3-11/11)
November is off to a roaring start
Welcome Back!
I’m posting this a little late because I was traveling this weekend and all of my many other staffers are unavailable for backup. Happy Veteran’s day to any of my readers who have served.
Just over a week into November and plenty of action is already happening in the Boston tech ecosystem. This week, 14 startups closed $185M in funding and eight M&A deals occurred.
M&A Deals
Per Bostinno, Boston-based Carbonite has been acquired by OpenText in a deal worth $1.42 billion. At a $1.42B price tag, this is the 12th largest tech exit in Boston history. Carbonite had previously entered into an agreement to be acquired by j2 Global for $366M in 2014, but the deal was called off in March of 2015.
Per Crunchbase, Boston-based cybersecurity firm ObserveIT has been acquired by ProofPoint in a deal worth $225M. Prior to the acquisition, ObserveIT raised $53M from their Series A through Series B. Former investors include MDI Ventures, NightDragon Security, Spring Lake Equity Partners, USAA Corporate Development, and Bain Capital Ventures.
Turbonomic has purchased Boston-based SevOne for an undisclosed sum. SevOne’s valuation was almost $1B at $840M after their 2015 Series C. They raised a total of $203M.
RealPage has acquired Boston-based real estate property management service Buildium. The deal was worth a reported $580M. Not bad for a company that raised $65M, according to Crunchbase.
Cambridge-based HubSpot has purchased PieSync, the “highest-reviewed data synching IPaasS,” enabling them to consistently view customers across hundreds of different technologies.
Per Bostinno, “Richmond-based estate management startup WayForth added to its acquisition streak with the purchase of Home Transition Resource, a provider of move management services in Andover. Financial terms were not disclosed.”
Akamai is expanding its LatAm presence with the purchase of Brazil-based Exceda.
Boston-based BlueSnap has purchased Armatic for an undisclosed sum.
VC Financing Deals
Inkbit, which has created a platform that combines AI and additive manufacturing, has raised $12M from Stratasys, DSM Manufacturing, Ocado, 2M, and Saint-Gobain. This brings their total raised to $14.8M (BusinessWire).
Image: Shows the actual scan data captured by Inkbit’s scanner during a print.
Cocoon Biotech sold $4M in a debt offering, per an SEC Form D amendment. The company is developing a “silk fibroin as a material science platform that it believes offers the potential to change the ability to formulate, deliver and stabilize molecules.”
LogRocket has raised a $15M Series B led by Battery Ventures with participation from Matrix Partners. LogRocket, based out of Cambridge, “Provides software development tools intended to record videos of user sessions with logs and network data, identifying UX problems and revealing the root cause of every bug.” Their post-money valuation is now $39M.
Per TechCrunch, MIT-based Neural Magic has raised a $15M Series A. The company has figured out a way to “run machine learning models on commodity CPUs.” The round was led by Comcast Ventures, and had participation from New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz, Pillar, and Amdocs.
Inrupt, which has created an “open-source platform that uses a set of modular requirements to decentralize the web,” has raised a £5M Seed Round from Octopus Ventures. Octopus is a London-based VC that has dabbled in Boston tech in the past. In 2017, they lead Medisafe’s $14.5M Series B. More importantly, one of Inrupt’s co-founders is none other than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, widely known for inventing the World Wide Web in 1989.
PathAI, the Boston-based digital pathology startup that I see hundreds of t-shirts of every time I walk through Fenway, has closed a $75M Series B. The strategic investors included Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. According to MedCityNews, the close of this round comes after $60M in capital from General Atlantic, LabCorp, and General Catalyst in the spring.
Per BostInno and an SEC filing, OpenExchange raised $13.4M. OpenExchange is a “global video solution that offers live, broad video interoperability, supported by seasoned meeting specialists, to provide virtual experiences that actually work.”
Per Bostinno, “U.K.- and Boston-based Immersive Labs, a gamified cyber skills platform, closed $40M in funding led by global growth equity investor Summit Partners, with participation from existing investor Goldman Sachs.”
One we missed from last week; Candibell raised a $250K pre-seed. Candibell is a “one-stop commerce platform for usage-based reorder and commerce automation, specifically medication. They can track daily usage of drug, nutrition, personal care, and food products.
Per Bostinno and SEC filings, SidelineSwap has raised an additional $1.6M in equity. This comes week’s after SidelineSwap’s ex-CTO raised $3M for his new venture, Mable. SidelineSwap is the “provider of an online sports marketplace intended to trade sporting goods.” Their marketplace currently has 27 categories.
Accusonus, which builds “human-friendly” software for beat production, raised a $3.3M Series A, bringing their total raised to $3.9M. Investors included Big Pi, Enterprise Mates, IQbility, PJ Tech Catalyst, and VentureFriends. Accusonus got their first break in 2014 when they released the world’s first drum bleed suppression tool called Drumatom. Since then, they have released a variety of digital audio workstation products for audio repair, beat making, and drum mixing.
Image: Screenshots of Accusonus’ ERA4 Pro Bundle
Authess, which uses machine learning to measure job candidate competency, raised $560k. The company administers tests to users and tracks not just their answers, but their underlying behavior to generate insights on their competency. Investors included the ECMC Foundation and the Michelson 20MM Foundation. Check out their whitepaper here.
Raise Green, a sustainable crowdfunding platform that wants to “democratize impact investing,” secured $100K in an Angel Round last week. They’re backed by CTNext, Greentown Labs, reSET Impact Accelerator, and Tsai City.
Speaking of green, Freshly Baked is the newest DTC cannabis edibles company to raise funding in Massachusetts. They raised a $50K Angel Round last week.
That’s all for last week in Tech & VC deals — thanks for reading and for sharing with your friends and colleagues!
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