Last week, five Austin-area companies reported more than $116 million in venture capital, government contracts and equity funding.
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Cedar Park-based rocket company Firefly Aerospace Inc. is headed to the dark side of the moon as part of a new $112 million contract with NASA to carry research payloads in 2026. It's a big win for the company's Blue Ghost spacecraft, which is supposed to put a satellite into lunar orbit and make its drops on the surface.
It's part of NASA's broader Moon-to-Mars roadmap, and it will bring a new level of communications to our moon. Firefly’s Blue Ghost transfer vehicle and its propellant reserves will also set us up for future missions, including returning lunar samples to Earth and, someday, exploration of nearby planets like Mars and Venus.
Firefly’s first mission, Blue Ghost Mission 1, is on track for launch in 2024 and will deliver 10 NASA-sponsored payloads and two commercial payloads to a low-lying basin on the moon’s near side.
Captain Experiences Inc., an Austin-based startup that's created software used to book fishing trips online, said March 15 it landed $2 million to help it expand.
The new funding was led by New York-based Bullish. Others investing include TechNexus Venture Collaborative, Cartograph Ventures, Carnrite Ventures, Victorum Capital, Ryan Merket and Casey Winters.
CEO Jonathan Newar told me the startup currently has 10 employees, with eight of them working in-person at an office space in East Austin on Webberville Road. The company launched in 2020 and has booked more than 47,000 hours of outdoor activities, mostly for fishing charters in places like Galveston, Port Aransas, Destin and Key West. And it's also building up hunting guides.
"This financing allows our team to double down on growth within fishing across the U.S. and beyond, while also building upon our recent success launching hunting in Texas this past fall," Newar stated.
An Austin startup taking on the likes of LinkedIn has secured seed capital to expand its reach. Entre Corp., which has developed a professional networking platform focused on tech/Web3 professionals, said March 14 it secured $1.6 million. The funding was led by Octane Fund, and included backers such as Service Provider Capital, CreatorLed Ventures, Kube VC, Umami Capital, Hubspot Chief Technology Officer Dharmesh Shah and other angel investors. The startup was founded in 2019 by CEO Michael Marra, who says it has more than 70,000 users and integrates with many major crypto wallets, such as Coinbase.
Fieldcraft Inc., a local company with a vertical marketplace and digital supply chain for agriculture, reported in a March 13 securities filing raising about $827,000 in new equity funding. The startup was founded in 2020 by CEO Michael Chapman and Chief Technology Officer Kristy Flynn. Chapman previously led special operations teams in the CIA. It wasn't immediately clear who invested, but in an early March LinkedIn post, Chapman said he was excited to start a journey with Tom Williams and Heron Rock Fund.
Georgetown-based Equalize Digital Inc. said it's landed pre-seed funding from Emilia Capital, an investment company owned by the founders of Yoast, Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt. The amount of funding was not disclosed. The company said the investment will help it continue on its mission to make websites more accessible, especially within the WordPress content management system. The company plans to hire a senior plugin developer and expand its educational content around accessibility.
For more local deals, check out another recent funding wrap. And subscribe to Austin Business Journal for startup resources such as lists of venture capital and private equity firms, incubators and accelerators, angel investors and coworking providers.
