We began with 50 companies that are changing Chicago's tech scene for the better.
Those ventures, this year's Fire Awards honorees, collectively have raised millions of dollars, expanded their portfolios, launched venture funds and received recognition across the tech space.
Now it's time to reveal the winners of this year's Blazer awards, the ventures in each of the five Fire Awards categories truly shaping Chicago tech this year.
The five categories are:
- The builders: The accelerators, VCs, incubators and programs building better startups for Chicago.
- The growers: The startups expanding their footprints or teams.
- The helpers: Businesses that are helping other businesses grow.
- Food, health and medtech ventures: Startups making the food, health-care and medical industries better.
- Innovative consumer tech: Businesses building products you love.
The Blazer award winners, like the full list of Fire Awards honorees, were selected by Inno staff with input from the local tech community.
Here are the 2023 Fire Awards Blazer winners.
The builders
Blazer Award winner: Portal Innovations
In March 2020, John Flavin launched a seed fund and accelerator program to invest in the area's life sciences, medtech and bioinformatics startups. In the years since, it has invested in Chicago ventures like Cardiosense, Dimension Inx and Rhaeos as the venture firm continues to build and scale early-stage companies out of academic laboratories and innovation hubs. Now, Portal Innovations is expanding its presence beyond Chicago, to Boston and to Texas. Far from done with Chicago, however, the firm raised $100 million to fund life sciences startups in Chicago, Atlanta and other biomedical hubs and has tripled the size of its operating space in Fulton Market.
The growers
Blazer Award winner: NanoGraf
Battery tech startup NanoGraf pulled in one of the largest funding rounds for any Chicago startup in the first quarter of 2023 with a $65 million Series B financing at a $108 million post-funding valuation. That injection came at a time when local startups raised around 63% less from VCs in the first quarter of 2023 than they did the prior year.
The Chicago startup that's building longer-lasting, higher-energy and higher-power lithium-ion batteries using patented silicon-anode technology will use the funding to help scale North American production at its new West Loop facility. It will be the nation's first large-volume manufacturing facility for silicon anode, a key component in batteries.
The helpers
Blazer Award winner: Hunt Club
A year that has been filled with tech layoffs has kept recruiting startup Hunt Club busy. The company closed a $40 million Series B funding round to end 2022 to help it modernize the recruiting process and help companies around the world hire top-tier talent leaders.
Founded in 2014, Hunt Club has developed a community of more than 8 million candidates to help some of the fastest growing companies build their best teams.
Food, health and medtech ventures
Blazer Award winner: Augmedics
Augmedics first received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2019 for its new tech to be used in spinal surgeries. In 2020, the company's xvision Spine System — a device that surgeons wear on their heads during spinal operations that uses augmented reality to see patients better — was first used in a spinal surgery by Johns Hopkins University surgeons. The tech has since been used to treat more than 4,000 patients and implant more than 20,000 pedicle screws across 21 U.S. states.
With one of the largest funding rounds secured by a Chicago startup in Q2 2023, Augmedics plans to continue to advance its patented tech and expand its U.S. commercial footprint.
Innovative consumer tech
Blazer Award winner: Stigma
After launching last August, Chicago mental health app Stigma has caught the eye of some of the biggest giants in tech. The company ended last year being named one of Google's Best Apps for Good, a program that recognizes apps that aim to uplift, empower and create positive change. Stigma more recently was one of 20 startups selected for the Amazon Web Services Impact Accelerator for Latino founders.
Founder Ariana Vargas launched Stigma as an app for people struggling with mental illness to discover they are not alone. Users can crowdsource videos from people battling a range of conditions using the app to find others who may be struggling with the same things they are.
