TVision CEO and co-founder Yan Liu
Get a daily dose of Boston startup funding news in The Beat. Sign up here. New Money is BostInno's report on all the tech funding deals this week. Check back for updates with more new money.
Soft Robotics (Cambridge)
- Amount: $3 million, according to BetaBoston
- Investors: Material Impact Fund, Haiyin Capital
- Details: Founded out of the Harvard lab of George Whitesides, Soft Robotics says it is developing grippers and control systems “that can manipulate items of varying size, shape and weight with a single device.” The grippers are inspired by the flexibility of an octopus, and are focused on uses for manufacturing and food processing, according to BetaBoston.
TVision Insights (Boston)
- Amount: $2.5 million seed round
- Investors: BOSS Syndicate, Project 11 Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, Sigma Prime Ventures
- Details: As we reported in September, TVision has a Nielsen-like system that uses machine vision to track not only what's on the screen, but who's in the room and whether they're paying attention. (In August we reported in the Beat that TVision was out raising a seed round.) TVision’s CEO and co-founder is Yan Liu, a graduate of MIT Sloan. The startup is also now announcing the general availability of product for “second-by-second data insight” into viewer behavior toward TV programming and ads. TVision had previously raised $400,000 from a friends, family and small angel round in 2014, a spokesperson said. Other investors in TVision include Clypd CEO/co-founder Joshua Summers, and the company took home a $50,000 award in October as a one of the winners of this year’s MassChallenge accelerator.
Digital Guardian (Waltham)
- Amount: $66 million
- Investors: Previous investors: GE Pension Trust (advised by GE Asset Management), Fairhaven Capital Partners, Loring Wolcott & Coolidge, Special Situation Funds and Brookline Venture Partners. New investors: LLR Partners, Mass Mutual Ventures LLC (corporate venture capital arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company) and the venture capital unit of Siemens Financial Services.
- Details: Digital Guardian (formerly Verdasys) specializes in what’s known as “data loss prevention”—which involves protecting against data being copied off of a computer by a hacker who’s made it into the system (or an outgoing employee that still has access). The new funding will go toward areas including hiring in product development and sales. The company has now raised $127.5 million since its founding in 2003. Revenue for 2015 is expected to cross $50 million and is up about 50 percent compared to last year, CEO Ken Levine told BostInno.
Aila Technologies (Natick)
- Amount: $4.5 million
- Investor: Romulus Capital
- Details: The company was formerly known as Padloc and has just now changed its name to Aila Technologies. The firm is a provider of custom retailer technology installations—specifically, they install technology in stores that can "transform tablets and other mobile devices into interactive kiosks, associate handhelds, point-of-sale terminals, and digital advertising portals." In a news release, Romulus Capital's Krishna Gupta said that “the best brick-and-mortar retailers won't disappear, but they are adapting and looking to leverage a suite of mobile technologies. Aila is the glue that holds that hardware and software suite together."
- News release.
Content Raven (Hopkinton)
- Amount: $2.2 million
- Investors: Nauta Capital (new investor), MassVentures (existing investor)
- Details: The funding is an extension for the startup's Series A funding round, bringing the round to $4.2 million in total. Content Raven offers software that lets companies securely deliver content—such as videos and PDFs—to other users’ devices. The software allows for distribution of the content and tracking of how the content is used after it’s delivered. Customers include EMC, Mondelez International and VMWare.
- News release.
WHOOP (Boston)
- Amount: $3 million
- Investor: India-based IT consulting firm Infosys
- Details: WHOOP, maker of wearable tech for sports, had raised a $12 million round in September from venture firms including Accomplice and NextView. WHOOP's smart wristband is an attempt at measuring the human body in a way that can help to forecast sports performance. Developed by three former Harvard students – Will Ahmed, John Capodilupo and Aurelian Nicolae – the product aims to tell athletes and coaches information about themselves that was not previously known. Advisors to the company include Mike Mancias, who' is LeBron James' personal trainer, and Keenan Robinson, Michael Phelps' personal trainer.
- News release.
Photo courtesy of Content Raven.
