Last Week in Boston Tech Deals
Fourteen Companies Raised $250M+
A Big Week for Equity Management
Locally in the Boston area, our friends at Shoobx just announced an exciting partnership with Fidelity Investments to strengthen their equity management offerings at all stages of private company growth. If you’re unfamiliar with Shoobx, they’re simplifying every aspect of a startup’s equity lifecycle from incorporation to IPO. It marks a pretty exciting partnership with a massive Boston company and a Boston startup.
Out West, Carta is reportedly working on a $500M-$600M round led by Silver Lake at a valuation of $7.4B. This valuation is about $500M higher than where secondary transactions valued the company back in February of this year. That transaction was done with the company’s own service, CartaX.
Now it’s looking like CartaX will have some real competition for secondary stock exchanges. Last week, financial firms including SVB, Citi, Nasdaq, Goldman, and Morgan Stanely partnered to launch a private stock exchange spun off from Nasdaq’s internal offering that they launched in 2014.
The leaps in equity management and secondary market liquidity come at an important time. As Fred Wilson wrote last week, the shift to virtual fundraising, compression of financing process timelines (popularized by the “Tiger Cubs"), and explosion of available capital could create lots of “bad marriage problems.” If the new normal for equity financing becomes shotgun weddings, then better cap table management, a vibrant secondary market, and more independent boards may keep things sustainable.
Stuff I’m Reading:
+Microacquire inks partnership with Capchase for micro startup financing
Investigation: How TikTok’s Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires
Boston Tech Financing News:
Form Energy 🔋
After a $70M Series C back in November 2020, Somerville-based Form Energy has announced a $200M Series D led by one of the largest iron-ore producers, ArcelorMittal. The round comes alongside news that they have achieved a breakthrough development in creating long-duration batteries. They’re using cheap, non-polluting, and non-flammable iron pebbles to create “iron air” battery cells that can store runoff energy from renewable sources for weeks. The company claims that, if all goes according to plan, they’ll be able to offer these batteries to the mass market by as early as 2025.
“Form Energy’s iron-air battery breathes in oxygen and converts iron to rust, then turns the rust back into iron and breathes out oxygen, discharging and charging the battery in the process.”
Accion Systems 🚀
Following a $20M Series B back in February 2020, Accion Systems has announced a $42M Series C led by Tracker Capital. They’re working on in-space propulsion technology — tiny thrusters that can help satellites re-orient themselves in space. What makes their approach different from existing thrusters is the energy source? They use electricity from the sun to ionize neutral gasses in a chamber of salty liquid. Once ionized, these chambers produce thrust in the form of electrospray droplets that help yeet them across space.
Activ Surgical ✂️
Per a new filing, surgical technology company Activ Surgical has raised $40.6M. The five-year-old company is developing a platform called ActiveEdge™ for both collaborative and fully autonomous surgical procedures. In 2016, they performed the world’s first autonomous suturing procedure on a live pig and are now working to commercialize the process. Their goal is to use AI to supplement surgeons to cut down on the number of preventable surgical errors that happen each year.
XYZ Robotics 🤖
Boston and Shanghai-based XYZ Robotics just raised $35M in Series B funding from Gaorong Capital, 5Y Capital, and Source Code Capital. The company is building robotic solutions for sorting unorganized warehouse goods using computer vision — much like other local players including Pickle Robot and RightHand Robotics.
Inkbit 🖨️
MIT CSAIL spinout Inkbit just raised a $30M Series B led by Phoenix Venture Partners with participation from Stratasys, DSM Venturing, Ocado, 3M, IMA, and Saint-Gobain. They use AI to make additive manufacturing far more accurate, conducting real-time error corrections during printing procedures.
Julia Computing 🖥️
Julia Computing just raised a $24M Series A led by Dorilton Ventures, with support from Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and HIghSage Ventures. The company was founded by the creators of the Julia programming language, a high-performance general-purpose language well suited for computational science. The company offers a cloud platform for deploying Julia-based programs at scale.
Venti Technologies 🚚
Autonomous logistics company Venti Technologies has raised $8M in seed funding led by LDV Partners and Alpha JWC Ventures. The Boston Globe did a write-up on the MIT spinoff last week. Although they power autonomous tech for 15 different vehicle classes, they focus on yard trucks, which move freight within seaports, rail yards, etc.
CloudTruth ☁️
CloudTruth just announced a $5.25M seed round led by Glasswing Ventures and Gutbrain Ventures, with participation from Stage 1 Ventures and York IE. They also disclosed their acquisition of cloud automation company Tuono. They’re a unified cloud configuration management company.
Nano-C 🤏
Nano-C, which creates nanostructured carbon materials for energy and electronic applications, just raised $5.1M — according to a new filing. The materials are a mix of fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and fullerene derivatives. They’re used for tech including touch screens, semiconductors, various sensors, and more.
Plannuh📅
Per a new filing, MarTech company Plannuh has raised $4.1M — with Gradient Ventures partner Zachary Bratun-Glennon and Glasswing Ventures partner Rudina Siseri listed on the filing. Back in February of 2020, they raised $4M from the same investors. The company offers a marketing planning and budgeting system driven by AI.
Cake 🎂
Six-year-old “Tripadvisor for death” startup Cake has raised $3.7M from a host of new investors including AARP, InHealth Ventures, Longevity Fund, Scrum Ventures, and others — with continued backing from GoAhead Ventures, Pillar VC, and OCA Ventures. They offer a collection resources to simplify end-of-life planning and let users host important estate-related documents in a centralized place that’s accessible to loved ones. Here’s their pitch deck.
AdaViv 🌿
AdaViv, a plant intelligence platform that uses AI to improve crop yields, just announced a $2.3M seed round. It was led by Delta Emerald Ventures, with additional support from Poseidon Asset Management and the SOJE Fund.
Syrg 👷
Syrg, which helps businesses rehire former hourly-based workers, has raised $1.3M according to a new filing. The Wall Street Journal just published a piece on the exact workforce that Syrg is helping companies tap into: “Now Hiring: White Castle—Four Years After You Applied.”
Prezence 🧘
A new filing shows that meditation app Prezence has raised $250K. It’s run by HubSpot employee and fitness instructor Colleen Hayes. They sell a mobile meditation application directly to consumers for $55/yr and to businesses as an employee benefit.