From left, CloudHealth''s Eric Shoemaker, Joe Kinsella, Dan Phillips, Dave Eicher and Melodye Mueller. Photo courtesy Sigma Prime
New Money is BostInno's report on all the tech funding deals this week. Check back for updates, or get a daily dose of Boston startup funding news in The BostInno Beat: Sign up here.
1366 Technologies, Bedford
- Amount: $10 million
- Investors: Hanwha Investment Corp., a large private equity/VC firm in South Korea.
- Details: 1366 Technologies is a GE Ventures-backed company that's developing and manufacturing a low-cost, high-efficiency silicon wafer for solar panels. The company said the new investment, announced on Thursday, will be used to build its first large-scale commercial factory, which is scheduled to go online next year. "Hanwha Investment Corporation actively seeks out companies with groundbreaking technologies that transform industries," Woojae Hahn, Hanwha's president and CEO, said in a statement. "In just a short period of time, 1366 has moved from proof of concept to commercial-ready technology, achieving technical milestones steadily and rapidly."
Humanyze, Boston
- Amount: $4 million Series A
- Investors: Romulus Capital.
- Details: The MIT Media Lab spinout announced its $4 million Series A round on Thursday as the company rolled out its "first of its kind" Wyze people analytics platform to its Fortune 500 customers. In a statement, CEO Ben Waber said the new funds will be used to "support new customers and grow with them over the long term." The company's data-driven Wyze platform can be used for improving teamwork and engagement, process improvement and space planning. "We believe the future of the organization and its employees is agile, which inherently means you need novel data inputs and sophisticated machine learning." Romulus founder Krishna K. Gupta said in a statement. "... You have 5 of the roughly 20 people in the world who can do this - all in one company, all at Humanyze."
Vee24, Boston
- Amount: $8.5 million Series B
- Investors: Led by by new investor Ascent Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Data Point Capital and Point Judith Capital.
- Details: Vee24, which provides live video assistance products for companies like Comcast and Samsung, announced on Wednesday that it had raised the $8.5 million Series B round. In addition, it announced that Priya Iyer, previously CEO and co-founder of Anaqua, has joined as the company's chairman and CEO. "Enhancing the live customer experience is essential for any organization with an online interaction channel," Geoff Oblak, general partner of Ascent, said in a statement. "[...] With Priya at the helm we are ideally positioned to seize this market opportunity, grow our client base, further develop our world-class technology and provide online organizations with a true commercial advantage."
EverPresent, Newton
- Amount: $800,000
- Investors: Boston-based venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli, former Reebok CEO Frank O’Connell, former Facebook executive Chris Kelly, and former Los Angeles Dodgers CEO Jamie McCourt, among others.
- Details: EverPresent digitizes and organizes millions of photos and videos. Their angel-led announcement today is meant to support the company’s continued growth both online and in key retail markets. The new round of funding brings EverPresent’s total fundraising to $2 million since the company’s founding in 2012.
CloudHealth Technologies, Boston
- Amount: $20 million
- Investors: Sapphire Ventures, .406 Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Sigma Prime
- Details: Jai Das of Sapphire Ventures joins the board of CloudHealth with this Series C round, which Sapphire is leading as a new investor. Scale, Sigma and .406 joined as return investors. CloudHealth provides IT service management software for cloud-based services, with a customer list that includes Amtrak and Dow Jones. Last month, we talked to .406 co-founder Larry Begley as he was leaving the Boston venture firm to become CloudHealth's CFO. CloudHealth ended 2015 with a 400 percent increase in revenue over the previous year and 69 employees. He wouldn't disclose revenue figures, but said Cloudhealth had grown to 90 employees in the first quarter of 2016 and plans for a headcount of 150 by end of year, with new offices in San Francisco, Seattle and London. The latest round brings CloudHealth's total funding to $39.7 million, the company noted in a press release it issued Tuesday morning announcing the funding. Last week, .406 disclosed it's raising an $80 million opportunity fund. The firm is keeping mum, but a source said it's a plain vanilla opportunity fund aimed to bolster the company's position in portfolio companies that are raising large later stage rounds.
