Everything is public today.
Companies advertise, share behind-the-scenes footage and release personal news on the internet. This content reaches an exorbitant amount of people: Twitter boasts 126 million everyday "monetizable" users, Snapchat tops it off at 186 million each day and Facebook surpasses all its competitors.
But today, more companies are vying to keep their silence. Startups choose to operate silently, in stealth—at least for a little while. Going into stealth mode is a growth strategy. It stops founders from expressing bragging rights, but it secures the future of the startup and its profits. When a company emerges from stealth, often with hefty funding, they already have a leg up on the competition.
Here are the startups that exited stealth this year and made a particularly big impact.
Tranquil Data
The data protection startup exited stealth in late October—over a year after securing $1.8 million in seed funding. Founded by two former classmates at Brown University, Tranquil Data runs software to safeguard private data that lives in the hands of corporations. It effectively prevents data misuse in a time when companies like Equifax and Facebook have experienced high profile breaches.
Conduit
The Cambridge-based startup Conduit, founded by a group of MIT graduates, came out of stealth in March. The company uses a collective grid solution to redirect computing power to where it’s needed—acting as an Airbnb of sorts, but for supercomputing. After operating in stealth for two years, Conduit aims to bring the online power available to universities to pharma and biotech companies.
Petri
This year, biotech veterans Brian Baynes and Tony Kulesa launched a 5,000-sq.-ft. startup accelerator that exited stealth in September. Funded primarily by Pillar VC, the accelerator’s 12-month program gives participants access to the Seaport lab space and $250,000 to put toward their projects. Baynes and Kulesa began meeting with applicants for Petri’s first cohort in October.
Figur8
Created in MIT’s Media Lab, this health tech startup tracks muscle movement using precise biomarkers for imbalance, posture, gait, and more. In August, the company emerged from stealth with $7.5 million in seed funding. Users slip on Dr. Nan-Wei Gong’s wearable device for 10 minutes to find out a wealth of information about their bodies. Read up on how it went when we recently tried it for ourselves.
Alaka’i Technologies
After 12 years in stealth mode, Alaka’i Technologies came out of stealth with the launch of Skai, a futuristic electric flying taxi. The Hopkinton-based startup began working on the hydrogen-powered shuttle two years ago alongside its designer partner, Designworks. The taxi awaits FAA approval, but if you’re lucky and in the Stowe area, look up. You may just see the vehicle flying overhead.
Sonrai Security
We are taking it all the way back for Sonrai Security. Headed by former IBM executives, the startup was one of the first to exit stealth in early January. The company’s software solution provides data security on cloud platforms including Google Cloud and Azure. In a Series A funding round closed right before Sonrai emerged out of stealth, the startup raised $18.5 million with investments from Mass.-based Polaris Partners and TenEleven Ventures.
PickleRobot
Following a $3.7 million seed funding round led by Hyperlane Ventures, the robotics startup exited stealth in May. PickleRobot builds automated robots that mirror people’s actions with little to no verbal commands or direct assistance. LeafLab founder Andrew Meyer launched PickleRobot in 2018 where it operated underground until months ago. Most recently, the company launched “Dill,” an aptly named robot that sorts and stacks boxes in warehouses.
Carbon Relay
The energy-focused artificial intelligence startup emerged from stealth in January with $5 million in Series A funding. Carbon Relay created a “digital agent” equipped to reduce energy use in data centers by controlling humidity, electricity consumption and more. The work of the startup’s 20-person team is primarily financed by the Taiwanese manufacturing Company, Foxconn Technology Group.
Goodpath
The Cambridge-based wellness company came out of stealth in January. With the goal to become the “Earth’s largest wellness company,” Goodpath creates personalized, self-care kits for its customers. In the last eleven months, the serial entrepreneurs behind the startup have named the company (it was previously reffered to as “Pineapple”) which is now preparing to come out of beta at the end of Q1, according to an email from founder Bill Gianoukos.
Ribon Therapeutics
Biotech startup Ribon Therapeautics emerged from stealth with $65 million in Series B funding this January. The company is fighting to defeat lung cancer using an enzyme activated by stressful conditions like cigarette smoking. The enyzme makes it difficult for cancerous cells to evade the body’s immune system. Led by Novaratis Venture Fund, the financing will help the startup expand their drug discovery and experimental therapuetic options.
Cellarity
In an attempt to steer drug discovery and development to target cell behavior, Flagship Pioneering, the Cambridge-based VC firm focused on life sciences, has created a company designed to do just that. Cellarity exited from stealth on Tuesday. Founded in 2017 in Flagship Labs, Cellarity claims to be the "first of its kind" therapeutics company to harness single-cell technologies and machine learning to identify and understand the "network state" of a cell, which defines cell behavior.
Booster
Booster, a software company that enables political campaigns to crowdfund their social media advertising efforts, launched from stealth in December. Based in Boston, with offices in New York and Washington, the startup allows individuals to make small-dollar contributions specifically to let campaigns “boost” political ads on Facebook. Boosted ads have a stronger chance of appearing on users’ News Feeds. Booster’s team has also created what it calls the “2020 Social Spend Presidential Tracker,” a tool that shows spending trends on a weekly basis.
