Get details below on recent funding deals. Last week, seven Austin companies reported a combined total of nearly $122 million in funding secured. These kinds of deals are a useful gauge of a company's evolution, and are sources of leads for real estate pros and other service providers. Plus, two new investment funds totaling $500 million were announced.
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Startups
Colossal Biosciences Inc. announced a $60 million series A round, boosting its funding haul to $75 million in just six months as a company. Led by CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm, Colossal emerged from stealth in 2021 with a vision to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction within the next four to six years. It will also apply its genetics research to fields such as human health, food production and environmental impact reduction.
The new round was led by billionaire businessman Thomas Tull, CEO of Tulco LLC and the former CEO of Legendary Entertainment and a producer on Hollywood films such as "Inception" and "The Dark Knight." Other investors included At One Ventures, Untamed Planet, Animoca Brands, Breyer Capital, Animal Capital, Arch Ventures co-founder Robert Nelsen, Paris Hilton, Bold Capital, Boost VC, Jazz Ventures, Builders VC, Green Sands Equity, Draper Associates and Charles Hoskinson.
Slingshot Aerospace Inc. is gearing up to hire 40 new employees over 12 months with the backing of a new $25 million series A-1 funding round co-led by Draper Associates and ATX Venture Partners. Other investors included Edison Partners, Embedded Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Fund and Okapi Venture Capital.
The deal brings Slingshot's total funding to $42 million.
Led by CEO Melanie Stricklan, the company last year debuted a product called Beacon to help various space-faring operators communicate to avoid collisions with satellites and other known objects in orbit. Slingshot is based in Austin and El Segundo, California.
The new funding comes as the race to place satellites large and small in space picks up speed. Slingshot noted that roughly 115,000 satellites are expected to be deployed by 2030, ramping up the chances of collisions.
"Data trust and transparency are imperative for humanity to continue operating in space,” Stricklan said in a statement. “The opportunities are endless in space but we must unlock a digital revolution to optimize spaceflight operations and orbital asset management. Real-time coordination is necessary to provide more accessible, timely and accurate risk mitigation across all space faring organizations. Earth’s orbits should be considered critical infrastructure as humanity and our global economy depend heavily on it for safety and security."
Also last year, the company launched an interactive space simulation tool to assist in training and giving educators and students a cutting edge platform to experience the basics of astrodynamics. For that project, Slingshot partnered with Hollywood visualization studio The Third Floor.
Waste Repurposing International Inc., better known as Smarter Sorting, reported in a March 8 securities filing raising about $14 million in new equity funding and other securities. The startup, led by CEO Jacqueline Claudia, helps retailers and suppliers make and market regulated consumer products with its product intelligence platform. The company, founded in 2015 by Charlie Vallely and Chris Ripley, has now raised about $31.6 million, according to Crunchbase. The startup was one of Fast Company's 10 most innovative companies in data science for 2022.
Maxwell Biosciences Inc. has snagged $10.8 million in seed funding to fight the spread of viruses. The Austin-based company, which was launched in 2016 and is led by CEO Josh McClure, said the round was oversubscribed and that it was led by DecentraNet, an early-stage venture fund with offices in Austin and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Others investing included Star Lake Bioventures, Joseph Ventures, Keiretsu Forum and members of Harvard Business School Angels.
Maxwell is a pre-clinical biomedical company developing drugs “that mimic the germ-fighting properties of the innate immune system,” which can then be turned on harmful, widespread viruses. It said the new money will be used to accelerate development of its drug platform, and to recruit, pursue clinical trials and scale up manufacturing. For more on the capital raise and the science behind the company, check out the March 10 announcement, and for a 2020 chat with McClure when Maxwell Biosciences appeared in the retired Office Hours series, click here.
MDisrupt Inc., a digital health company with a platform to connect industry experts, said March 7 it has raised $6 million of seed funding. Investors in the round included Bren Investments, Matthew Holt, Chantell Preston, Grail co-founder Jessica Owens and AKESOgen co-founders Mark Bouzyk and Robert Boisjoli. The startup was founded in San Jose in 2019 by Ruby Gadelrab, and it was bootstrapped until now. Gadelrab moved the startup to Austin last fall for its digital health tech talent, to be closer to local partners including Everly Health and for Austin's quality of life, Gadelrab wrote last year in a Medium post.
Marqii, a startup with a presence in Austin and New York, said March 10 it closed a $4.1 million seed round led by Acronym Venture Capital. Other investors included Highgate Technology Ventures, CEAS Investments and Green Egg Ventures. The startup, founded in 2020, is led by co-founders Avi Goren, Evan Perlmutter and Bryan Rutcofsky. The company is focused on product innovations and support, such as search visibility and online operations, for ghost kitchens and virtual brands.
Legion Health Inc., an Austin health-technology startup, said March 10 it raised $2 million in seed funding for its B2B mental health marketplace. The list of early investors included Y Combinator, UpHonest Capital, Soma Capital and several angel investors, including Modern Health co-founder Erica Johnson, Columbia Psychiatry CIO Ravi Shah and former PatientPing CEO Jay Desai. Legion Health was co-founded by CEO Yash Patel, President Arthur MacWaters and COO Daniel Wilson. The trio were roommates at Princeton University. The startup's platform has 800-plus mental health professionals across the nation.
Investment firms
S3 Ventures LLC announced March 9 a new $250 million fund. It is the firm's seventh fund, and it follows one announced in 2016 that grew to about $200 million. It's a huge war chest to invest in Texas companies. S3 has dedicated itself to investing almost purely in Texas-based technology companies. S3 plans to write initial checks of $500,000 to $10 million in early-stage funding rounds. It invests up to $20 million throughout the life of a company, and said it has latitude to go beyond that if warranted.
The firm now has more than $900 million in assets under management across 50-plus deals. It has also logged 20 exits, including a 2021 initial public offering by Plano-based financial technology company Alkami Technology and last fall's $500 million acquisition of Austin- and New Orleans-based construction payment company Levelset by publicly traded construction software maker Procore Technologies Inc.
A new Austin-based venture capital firm emerged March 9, and it has the backing of prominent Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel. The new firm, called Tacora Capital Management LP, is led by Keri Findley, who is an advisor to Joe Lonsdale's Austin-based firm 8VC and a former partner at hedge fund Third Point LLC.
The firm announced a $250 million first close on its first fund, which has a target size of $300 million. The firm, which will utilize venture, debt and other funding instruments, is focused on fintech, insurtech, proptech, logistics and transportation, of which there is plenty in Austin. The firm said it's also interested in founders "whose current inflection point doesn’t fit the risk-return profile of traditional venture equity investment."
Get ABJ's latest list of local venture capital firms here, and see the list of angel investors here. A list of local startup incubators can be found here.
ABJ's Will Anderson contributed reporting.
