Stemloop hopes to help solve a problem plaguing Chicago and other American cities: unsafe drinking water.
The Chicago-based biosensor company recently got backing from TitletownTech, a venture capital firm formed out of a partnership between the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft, to help launch its first product, which is a home test to detect lead in drinking water.
Stemloop aims to leverage biology to sense and respond to challenges in biomanufacturing, the environment and human health.
Founder and CEO Khalid Alam first began working on Evanston-based StemLoop as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University at the Center for Synthetic Biology.
After securing government funding early on from various sources including the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense, Alam said he’s excited to start commercializing Stemloop’s Lead-In-Water Test and scaling up the product with the help of Titletown.
The Wisconsin-based seed-stage venture capital firm’s investment comes at a time when fundraising is down for Chicago startups after a record-setting 2021. The dropoff was felt especially hard in the biotech space.
“I think, even in down markets, when there are great opportunities to invest in, that's the prime time that venture capital should be coming in and going to work,” TitletownTech Managing Director Jill Enos told Chicago Inno.
She said Stemloop is an “interesting play” for the venture fund because the company is leveraging biotech tools to solve industry problems.
“Spun out of Northwestern, Stemloop has so many different applications for the future,” she added.
After launching in July 2019, TitletownTech completed its first fund this year — investing in 23 startups — with plans to launch a second fund, targeted at $80 million, according to Wisconsin Inno.
Enos declined to discuss the terms of the Stemloop deal.
