After a day off for Juneteenth, we're back with a wrap-up of the latest Austin-area startup funding news. Last week, five companies reported more than $138 million in funding, both in announcements and filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Dive into the details below.
A drone startup that recently made Austin its global headquarters said June 12 it landed $67 million in new funding. Equity backing constituted $50 million of that total, while the remainder was debt financing.
Percepto Robotics Ltd. — which uses drones, robotics and software to monitor and assess critical infrastructure such as oil and gas pipelines — said its series C round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, a venture capital arm of Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc. New investor Zimmer Partners and an unnamed large U.S. energy company also chipped in, as did early backers U.S. Venture Partners, Delek US Holdings, Atento Capital, Spider Capital and Arkin Holdings.
The company, led by co-founder and CEO Dor Abuhasira, has now raised a total of $120 million since its founding in Israel in 2014. Its previous round was a $45 million series B infusion in 2020.
Verifiable Inc., an Austin startup with automated credential verification software, reported June 12 raising $27 million in new equity funding.
The new funding came from seven investors, but I wasn't able to connect with the company to learn more about who its new backers may be.
Verifiable launched out of Y Combinator in 2020 and raised $3 million later that year from investors including Tiger Global, Liquid2 Ventures, Struck Capital, Soma Capital, Jack Altman, Max Mullen and Sahil Lavingia. Then, in 2021, it raised $19.9 million.
The startup is led by CEO and co-founder Nick Macario, who previously co-founded blockchain startup Dock, as well as Remote and Branded.me.
The company's application programming interface (API) platform is used by the health care industry to automate the verification of provider data, including credentialing, payer enrollment and network management.
Verifiable recently teamed up with fellow Austin startup Wheel to provide real-time source verifications and streamline provider network operations.
Mach Industries, an Austin-based defense techology startup, has secured $5.7 million in new funding led by one of the nation's largest VC firms, Sequoia Capital. They say its Sequoia's first investment in defense hardware. Specifically, Mach is focused on new ways of using hydrogen in the field, using some basic components like electricity, aluminum and water. That can be used as fuel and give better range and power to missiles and drones.
The company couldn't be reached for comment. But its website says it was founded in a Texas garage and built in an MIT dorm room. It's led by founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, who previously founded Blue Oak Ironworks in Boerne, outside San Antonio.
Its initial focus is on oxyhydrogen defense platforms for drones, but it has aims to develop hypersonic defense systems.
"Since witnessing the test flight of hypersonic vehicle 2 in 2011 while at DARPA, I've been enamored with hypersonic defense technology," Sequoia Partner Shaun Maguire stated. "Historically, this has been a hard problem to solve due to the extreme velocities and nonlinearities involved, yet Mach is paving the first legitimate technical pathway to overcome these challenges."
An Austin startup that specializes in helping people buy new construction homes has raised early-stage funding to help it expand.
Propertymate Inc., which has rebranded and is now doing business as NewHomesMate, said June 14 it raised a seed round of $5.5 million. Investors included Gaingels, Geek Ventures, Asymmetry Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, Flyer One Ventures, U.Ventures, Verras Capital, SID Venture Partners and Pragmatech Ventures. Angel investors, including former Oliver Wyman CEO David Morrison and SquareFoot founder Jonathan Wasserstrum, also joined the round.
NewHomesMate was launched in 2020 by Ukraine-born co-founders Dan Hnatkovskyy, who previously founded real estate sales automation company Brainify B.V., and Sofia Vyshnevska, who was previously head of customer success at Brainify.
The company's platform helps prospective new homebuyers with personalized filters, virtual walk-throughs and resources for each listed property.
The startup, which was part of the Techstars Austin 2020 cohort, operates in Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, San Antonio, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Raleigh-Durham and Ocala-Gainesville. With the new money, it plans to expand its team from its current headcount of 91 and launch in new markets such as Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, Charleston and Denver.
Last week, we noted that Striveworks Inc., a machine learning startup focused on highly regulated industries, filed securities paperwork indicating it raised $32 million in equity funding. Now we have some new details. In a June 13 announcement, the company said the new round was actually $33 million and was led by Centana Growth Partners.
The company plans to expand its team with new engineers, salespeople and marketing professionals.
"At the end of the day, decision makers need to make timely, data-driven decisions. Analytics, sitting under the hood, make that possible, but those decisions and the analytics they draw from need to be measurable, observable, and ethical," Striveworks CEO Jim Rebesco stated. "At Striveworks, we strongly believe these MLOps processes that keep those analytics performant can and should be done at high speed, behind the scenes and with the lowest user impact possible."
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.
