Get details below on recent funding deals: In the past week-plus, two Austin-area companies reported a combined total of roughly $76 million in funding deals. Plus, a venture capital firm closed a $175 million fund.
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• Mothership — a short-haul, same-day freight logistics software startup — has moved its headquarters to Austin and raised $76 million in funding from several well-known venture capital firms. The funding, collected from a series of investments in the past year or so, came from Benchmark, WestCap, Bow Capital, former Con-way Freight CEO Douglas Stotlar and others.
The startup, which is technically Mothership Technologies Inc., quietly made Austin its HQ when co-founder and CEO Aaron Peck moved here from Los Angeles last year. It doesn't have an office in Austin, although it maintains one in Los Angeles. About 30 of the company's 70 employees are in Austin. Get more on the company's strategy and funding here.
• Austin-based autonomous submarine and data startup Terradepth Inc. was one of eight companies to land $100,000 in non-dilutive funding and join a 13-week accelerator at NGA Accelerator, a St. Louis-based program designed to incubate geospatial technology startups.
The NGA Accelerator, launched in 2020, is a partnership between the Missouri Technology Corporation and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The program is operated by St. Louis-based startup accelerator Capital Innovators. The accelerator selected startups that "focus on government and industry opportunities in alignment with the NGA's technology focus areas, including data management and artificial intelligence."
Terradepth was one of Austin Inno's Startups to Watch in 2022.
Investment firms
• Austin-based venture capital firm Elsewhere Partners said May 12 it closed on its second fund with $175 million. The firm, launched in 2016 by founder Chris Pacitti and John Thornton, invests largely in business-to-business software startups that are headquartered outside of traditional VC hubs. It has already made a few investments from the new fund, including deals with Austin-based Portnox and Sellers Shield, as well as BackBox and Greymatter.io.
This follows a $70 million first fund the firm raised in 2019. Other Austin startups in Elsewhere's portfolio include Vyopta and ActivTrak.
Along with the new funds, the firm said it promoted Sloane Child and Nick Stoffregen from their roles as vice president to principals.
"Not every B2B software founder subscribes to the hyper-growth mentality that tends to run rampant in traditional investment circles," Pacitti stated. "Investing, both our capital and our network, in companies that don't always get the attention they deserve from the startup funding ecosystem at large, we've been able to make deeper connections and partner with founders on the path toward a meaningful exit."
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.
