Microsoft and Capital One swept into Austin and acquired two promising local startups in November. Meanwhile, a health care tech and consulting firm secured $65 million and data startup Pilosa locked in millions more, including backing from Tony Robbins.
That’s just a glimpse at all the activity from last month. Below, we’ll find all the local tech startup funding announcements, mergers, acquisitions and venture capital fund activity from November 2018.
We cover funding rounds, acquisitions and other deals in our daily newsletter, The Beat. You can sign up to get that here.
Funding
Grid4C, an Austin company providing AI-powered analytics for the energy industry, announced it raised $5 million. The strategic investment was led by ICV, a VC firm backed by ENGIE, a French energy company. Also in on the round were Tel Aviv-based iAngels and AxessVentures. Grid4C is led by CEO and founder Noa Ruschin-Rimini.
Austin Cryo Ventures, a cryotherapy startup that is better known as Restore, reported raising about $624,000 in new equity funding. The company is led by founder and CEO Jim Donnelly, a former college athlete and co-founder of IgoUgo.com. The company previously reported raising about $785,000 in equity funding in 2017 and $150,000 in debt funding in 2015.
We previously reported RF Code, an Austin-based data center management company, had raised $6.6 million in equity funding. In November, the company issued a news release with new details. In addition to the funding, the company, which was founded in 1997 and makes real-time data sensors and IoT platforms, has appointed Dale Quayle as its new CEO. Quayle is the former CEO of Digital Fuel, which spun out of VMware and later acquired by Apptio. The company’s recent funding came from existing investors, which include Moshe Azoulay, Hunt Companies, Charline Capital Partners and Intel Capital. Crunchbase shows the company has raised $69 million in total, including this recent round. But a spokesperson told the Austin American-Statesman the company has raised about $20 million total.
Quansight Futures, an Austin open source machine learning startup founded by Anaconda founder Travis Oliphant, reported raising about $605,000 in equity and other options. The company has for months now been conducting workshops and creating web episodes about open source applications. The startup is the latest chapter for Oliphant, who left Anaconda (AKA Continuum Analytics) earlier this year.
Coder, a cloud-based development platform, today announce it has raised a $4.5 million seed round. The round, disclosed in a blog post, was led by Uncork Capital and Redpoint Ventures. Others in on the round include Founders Fund, Capital Factory, John Kodumal, Quinn Slack, Grant Gregory, Alec Guettel, David Rosenblatt, and Gregory Kennedy from Advection Growth Capital.
Billd, a stealthy payments tech company in Austin, reported raising $8.4 million in equity funding and other options. The company noted on its Form D that the funding is made in connection with acquisition of assets of Atlas44, which is an Arizona-based credit supplier for the construction industry. According to LinkedIn and its website, Billd is a fintech company working on supply chain finance in the construction industry. It offers short-term loans to help contractors get materials. It is led by CEO Christopher Doyle.
Zilker Technology, an Austin digital consulting firm, landed a strategic investment led by Len Pagon of Cleveland-based private investment firm Next Sparc, according to a news release. Pagon will join Zilker’s board of directors as part of the deal. No word on the total amount of funding. Zilker was founded in 2014 by CEO Rob Thomas and the leadership team of Ascendant Technology (acquired by Avnet, Inc. in 2011).
Pilosa, an open source index that speeds up data analysis and transfers, reported raising $3.6 million in new equity funding. The startup was spun out of Umbel by Umble founder Higinio (H.O.) Maycotte after being incubated there for three years. It is available on GitHub, and it’s designed to help people quickly query massive databases to accelerate a variety of work that relies on pulling insights from huge piles of information. This new filing appears to be part of the $5.4 million seed round the company reported earlier this month. The round was led by Skylark Partners. It also included investment from Hypergiant, Ben Lamm, Andrew Busey and Tony Robbins. Pilosa is also one of the six startups in Oracle‘s new startup program.
CrowdOut Capital, an Austin lending startup that was founded in 2015, announced it locked in $2.5 million in growth capital. The round was led by its co-founder and CEO Alexander Schoenbaum — with participation by investors in CrowdOut’s network for debt offerings. CrowdOut says it will use the money to expand its tech and expand its team.
Self Lender, an Austin fintech startup that helps people build credit, has raised $10 million in new funding. The Series B round was led by Silicon Valley-based Altos Ventures. Silverton Partners, Accion Venture Lab and other prior investors also joined the round. The new money will help Self Lender expand its team and marketing efforts. The company reports it has reached 175,000 consumers and facilitated $140 million in CD-secured loan originations.
Houston-based Zdaly announced it has raised new funding from Austin’s S3 Ventures and Moneta Ventures, a California firm with an Austin office. The company and firms haven’t disclosed the size of the investment. Along with the funding news, Zdaly announced it’s moving its headquarters from Houston to Austin to put it closer to Austin’s strong tech and data talent pool.
ClearData, an Austin startup helping hospitals transition to cloud-based IT systems, landed $26 million in new funding. The round was led by strategic investors Humana, a health insurance giant, and Health Care Service Corporation, which operates Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Texas and several other states. Returning investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Merck GHIF, Excel Venture Management, Heritage Group, HLM Venture Partner and Flare Capital Partners. The ABJ reported that ClearData, founded in 2011, had previously raised about $70 million. It plans to use the new money to hire for sales and marketing positions.
Living Security, an Austin cybersecurity training startup, announced it has closed a $1.25 million seed round led by Active Capital, a San Antonio venture capital firm founded former Rackspace leaders. Other investors included Cathexis Ventures, a Houston- and Boston-based firm, and Austin startup accelerator and investor Capital Factory. Living Security also noted that it is joining Capital Factory’s accelerator. And Pat Matthews, founder and CEO of Active Capital, is joining Living Security’s board of directors.
Lawgix Inc., an Austin startup that makes software for real-time oversight and collaboration at law firms, reported raising $4.2 million in equity and other securities. The startup makes a cloud-based app for that banks, insurers and legal professionals use to collaborate.
Austin-based HNI Healthcare, which offers hospitals software to get real-time analytics and reporting on clinical decisions, as well as consulting and management services, announced it has secured a $65 million commitment from CRG, a health care-focused investment firm with offices in Boulder, New York and Houston. The investment follows HNI’s acquisition of Martin Healthcare Group earlier this month. It also comes just 10 months after HNI raised a $32.6 million Series E round led by California-based Bison Capital Asset Management and Austin-based Spindletop Capital.
Mergers, Acquisitions & IPOs
Javelin Networks, an Austin cybersecurity company, was acquired by cybersecurity giant Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC). Javelin was founded in Israel and relocated its HQ from Palo Alto, where it still has offices, to Austin in 2014. The companies didn’t provide financial terms of the deal. Javelin has raised $5 million in venture funding, according to Crunchbase. Its investors have included RSL Capital, Hillsven Capital, UpWest Labs, Tomer Weingarten, CEO of SentinelOne and others.
Medici, an Austin telehealth startup that raised $22 million earlier this year, announced it is acquiring DocbookMD, an Austin startup founded in 2008 that was previously acquired by Scrypts. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. DocbookMD’s app provides secure texting between medical professionals, and it has more than 25,000 active doctors on its network and is distributed by 42 state medical associations.
Welcome Commerce, an Austin chat technology startup that helps brands connect with consumers, was acquired by Salsify, a product experience management platform with 250 employees. The deal includes all assets and talent from Welcome. Their Austin headquarters will now be a Salsify office, while the company’s co-founder and president, Dan Herman, is joining Salsify as vice president. Moving forward, Welcome’s technology will be known as ‘Salsify Chat.’
Geospace Technologies GEOS has acquired all intellectual property and related assets of a fiber optic sensing technology previously owned by Austin-based PGS Americas, Inc. Geospace intends to retain each of the PGS’s employees that work on the OptoSeis business and will keep them in Austin. The deal includes an initial $1.8 million cash payment and other payments up to $23.3 million over the next 5.5 years.
XOXCO, the Austin-based creator of the Howdy app, is being acquired by Microsoft. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it’s likely this wasn’t a super massive deal given that XOXCO appears to have raised only one round of funding — a 2015 infusion of $1.5 million from Bloomberg Beta, True Ventures and Outlier — as well as angel investors. XOXCO was co-founded by Ben Brown and Katie Spence, who have played a big role in Austin's bot creation space through the creation of Talkabot and its associated meetups.
Wikibuy, an Austin startup that makes online price comparison tools, has been acquired by banking giant Capital One, the companies announced today. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Wikibuy was founded in 2014 by 1-800-Contacts founder Jonathan Coon and Walt Roloson, whose career includes stints in investment banking and mergers in New York and a stint at senior manager of business operations at LinkedIn. Coon and Roloson also work together at Impossible Ventures, an Austin product lab and investment firm. Wikibuy doesn’t appear to have reported raising any venture capital investment. But in their blog, the founders thanked investors for believing in Wikibuy when it was just an idea. Read more.
