New Money is BostInno's report on all the funding deals out of Boston tech companies this week. As more news comes out, this post will be updated.
Thursday, August 6
Ditto Labs (Cambridge)
- Deal: $4 million
- Investors: Stage 1 Ventures, MDC-Partners, Wavemaker Partners, The Whittemore Collection
- What they do: Developer of software that scours photos on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr to identify consumer brand logos; enables brands to connect with "an otherwise invisible population of consumers," according to the company
- Other details: Ditto Labs was founded in 2012 and previously had raised $3.6 million in funding
Wednesday, August 5
Kensho (Cambridge)
- Deal: $47.8 million, according to an SEC filing -- primarily consisting of secondary stock sales and money from convertible notes, some of which was previously disclosed (see below)
- Investors: Not disclosed
- What they do: Artificially intelligent software for answering finance industry questions
- Other details: Most of the money is not new funding for use by the company—$24.9 million out of this amount was actually for repurchasing shares from existing holders. Another $18.5 million is from convertible promissory notes converted into equity in the financing, $13.7 million of which was previously reported to the SEC.
Jibo (Weston)
- Deal: $11 million Series A extension
- Investors: Acer (Taiwan), Dentsu Ventures (Japan), KDDI (Japan), LG Uplus (Korea) and NetPosa (China).
- What they do: Jibo built the first social robot for the home, which is designed to help families stay connected and improve household communication. As a companion, Jibo can get to know its family, learning from each member and adapting to their preferences overtime. With the Jibo SDK, developers can create a range of Jibo Skills (application) that extend the robot's personality and capabilities.
- Other details: The company was founded by Cynthia Breazeal, a social robotics and human robot interaction pioneer hailing from the MIT Media Lab. Back in January of this year, Jibo banked $25.3 million in Series A financing. Capital from this extension round will be used to accelerate Jibo operations, product enhancements, partner content integrations and Jibo's market introduction. Before this investment round, Jibo's Indiegogo and InDemand campaigns raised approximately $4 million combined, with more than 6,500 Jibos sold.
Tuesday, August 4
Panorama Education (Boston)
- Deal: $12 million Series A
- Investors: Owl Ventures and Spark Capital.
- What they do: Panorama Education partners with K-12 schools to collect and analyze feedback from teachers, parents and students, with the aim of addressing common issues such as parent involvement, bullying prevention, school safety and student engagement. The company currently serves more than three million students across 40 states. Of America’s Top 100 largest school districts, 14 have already adopted Panorama.
- Other details: This round of funding will enable Panorama to expand its platform with new data collection and analytics tools for educators. Additionally, the company plans to use the new capital to grow the Boston-based team, specifically in sales, research, engineering, and customer success. Jed Smith, Co-Founder and Partner at Owl Ventures, and Andrew Parker, General Partner at Spark Capital, have joined Panorama’s board in conjunction with this funding round.
- Prior to the Series A, Panorama Education participated in Y Combinator and raised $4 million from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s Startup:Education, Google Ventures, among others.
Monday, August 3
Smartvid.io (Cambridge)
- Deal: $3.4 million seed round
- Investors: CommonAngels Ventures led the financing, with participation from Launchpad Venture Group and other individual unnamed angels.
- What they do: Smartvid.io is developing a cloud-based enterprise platform for managing, collaborating on and analyzing video and photo content from a variety of sources—including mobile devices, GoProTM cameras and drones. The company already has five charter customers in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Smartvid.io’s founding team members previously worked together to build the Autodesk product Vela Systems, now known as BIM 360 Field.
- Other details: The startup plans to use the capital to accelerate its product development process, launch a broader private Beta program this fall and ultimately, accrue additional customers. There are 10 people on Smartvid.io’s extended team, and the company is currently actively looking for front end developers.
Photo courtesy of Panorama Education.
