February seemed to start a bit slow, but it fired up with funding announcements as March approached.
A few top deals included Pinpoint's $13.5 million Series A, SpyCloud's $21 million Series B and Datical's $10 million Series C.
But pay special attention to all the venture capital firm activity. Springdale Ventures emerged with plans for a $20 million fund for consumer packaged good startups, and Quake Capital, which recently moved to Austin, said it's planning to raise a $100 million fund.
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Now, let’s get to it.
Fundings
CesiumAstro Inc., an Austin-based space communications company reported raising $8.5 million in new equity funding. The startup is led by founder and CEO Shey Sabripour, a former Firefly Space Systems CTO and former Lockheed Martin Space Systemsengineer and director of spacecraft design. Among customers CesiumAstro lists on its homepage are NASA, the United States Navy, the Missile Defence Agency and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, which is part of the Navy.
Telestax, an Austin-based company that makes real-time messaging, voice and video apps, reported raising just under $2.4 million in new equity funding. That follows a July 2017 round of $4.7 million, which was led by LiveOak Venture Partners. It also raised about $810,000 in seed funding in a 2015 round led by Pinnacle Ventures. The startup was founded in Palo Alto in 2011.
Aeglea BioTherapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company working on cures for genetic disease and cancer, was aiming to raise $60 million in a public offering that priced 3.75 million shares at $8 per share.
Richard’s Rainwater, a company that is filtering and bottling rainwater in Dripping Springs, reported raising $1 million in equity funding from one investor. The company was founded byRichard Heinichen, and it appears to be the first company to legally bottle and sell rainwater in this format.
In February, RapidDeploy, which makes cloud-based dispatch solutions for emergency officials, revealed that it would moving its headquarters from Cape Town to Austin, saying that it’d be bringing 25 employees to 119 Nueces by the end of March. It followed that by announcing it raised $12 million in Series A financing from GreatPoint Ventures and Samsung NEXT. The company says that it’ll use the funding to accelerate the development and deployment of its Cloud Aided Dispatch platform.
Pinpoint, an Austin startup that makes a data analytics platform to help businesses get insights into how their dev and engineering teams are doing, secured a $13.5 million Series A round of funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Seed investors Storm Ventures, Boldstart Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Slack Fund, Social Capital and Cherubic Ventures also got in on the round, which brings the startup’s total funding to $16.5 million.
Austin’s NarrativeDx, which uses AI to pull insights out of patient and provider feedback channels, announced it closed a new round of strategic funding led by Christiana Care Health System, Summation Health Ventures and The Texas Medical Center. MedCityNews reported the the round totaled $3 million, bringing the startup’s total funding to $7.1 million. The startup was founded in 2014 by Kyle Robertson and Senem Guney.
Octavo Systems, a system-in-package startup, raised $3.6 million in equity funding, a new SEC filing shows. The startup was founded in 2013 by four former Texas Instruments employees and fellows — Bill Heye, Gene Frantz, Masood Murtuza and Joe Brennan. In January 2018, the company reported a $2.5 million round of equity funding.
Austin-based Rabbet (pictured at the top), which has an automation platform that uses machine learning to simplify document sharing and administrative duties tied to financing big construction projects, raised $8 million in new funding. The investment round was led by Virginia-based venture capital firm QED Investors. Goldman Sachs’ Principal Strategic Investments group and Washington, D.C.-based Camber Creek also contributed to the round. With the new funds, Rabbet plans to invest in its platform, expand offerings and add new software engineers and sales leaders to its team in Austin.
Firefly Aerospace announced that its plans to bring satellites to orbit and supplies to the moon are getting closer to liftoff. The Cedar Park-based rocket company said that it signed a new term sheet with Space Florida to set up launch equipment and manufacturing facilities at Cape Canaveral Spaceportin Florida. Under the deal, Firefly will invest $52 million in its operations, set up the launch site and add 200+ high-paying jobs in Florida. Space Florida, which is the spaceport’s development authority, will match up to $18.9 million of Firefly’s infrastructure investments.
EXTEN Technologies, which makes a software platform for data centers, reported raising $5.3 million in equity funding and other securities. The company, previously known as Mangstor, previously raised about $24 million, according to SEC filings.
SpyCloud, an Austin cybersecurity startup, is quickly amping up its role in this fight. And it just announced $21 million in Series B funding led by Microsoft‘s venture fund M12 to hire new security researchers and expand sales. The company, founded in 2016 by Ted Ross and Dave Endler, has all the makings of a powerful cybersecurity startup.
Datical, a database release automation company, raised a $10 million Series C funding round led by Cincinnati-based River Cities Capital Funds, a new investor. It appears to be the first Austin investment for the investment firm, according to the portfolio on its website. Existing investors S3 Ventures and Mercury Fund also pitched into the new round.
Mergers & Acquisitions
Strive Logistics, which has offices in both Chicago and Austin, was acquired by Redwood Logistics, a third party logistic co. with over $1 billion in freight under management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed and Strive is backed by private equity firm CI Capital Partners.
VC & PE Firm Activity
Active Capital, a San Antonio VC firm that has invested in several Austin startups, closed its first fund at $21.5 million. The firm, led by formerRackspace Hosting execs Pat Matthews, Cat Dizon and Pat Condon, was backed by 67 investors, the San Antonio Business Journal reported.
Scaleworks, a San Antonio-based venture capital/private equity firm, raised $80 million in new funding to acquire tech startups. The raise follows a $60 million fund that added eight companies to its portfolio through 2017. Scaleworks tends to target SaaS companies and aims to invest with venture capital and private equity.
Strattam Capital, which has offices in Austin and San Francisco, closed on its second fund with $230 million. It follows the organization’s $109 million fund launched in 2015. The firm targets software as a service companies with $10M to $30 million in revenue. With the new fund, Strattam Capital plans to make seven to nine majority equity investments. The deals are expected to range from $20 million to $50 million.
Quake Capital, a startup accelerator and venture capital firm that operates in Austin, New York, Los Angeles and Seattle, announced it’s raising a new, $100 million fund to invest in early-stage startups in Austin and beyond. The forthcoming fund follows two priors — a $15 million fund that recently closed and an initial $18 million round that got Quake started after its 2016 launch. It’s not yet certain how long Quake will need to fulfill the new fund, but it’s poised to fuel dozens of startups in Quake’s future cohorts. Each startup accepted into the program gets a $150,000 note, which is supplemented later with an additional $50,000 in seed money.
ATX Seed Ventures, which backs early-stage startups, announced it closed its second fund with $32 million. ATX Seed Ventures, founded in 2014, has more than $60 million in assets under management, and has invested in 26 companies since its founding in 2014. That’s certain to help fuel more local entrepreneurs.
Springdale Ventures, a new venture fund for consumer packaged goods, is launching today with plans to raise $20 million. The fund, founded by Notley founder and former BuildaSign.com CEO and founder Dan Graham and former SKU managing director Genevieve Gilbreath, will back about 25 early-stage consumer companies. The ABJ reports [subscriber content] Springdale Ventures has already secured about $5 million of the fund and plans to have it all in hand in the second quarter. The firm already backed Mosie, a home fertility insemination syringe; Literati, a children’s book-club company; and Veggie Noodle Co.
