Despite a busy year for funding in Colorado's tech and startup ecosystem, capital totals took a sharp decline in August.
We tracked nearly $44 million in funding from nine deals last month, which marked a severe drop from July's activity of eight deals totaling $273 million.
Prior to August, the lowest monthly funding total we tracked came in May, with $260 million raised across 14 deals. A primary driver of the low total from August was the lack of big fundings we've become accustomed to seeing across the state. We tracked only one deal above $6 million in August.
We cover funding rounds, acquisitions and other transactions in our daily newsletter, The Beat. You can sign up for that here. We gathered some of the state’s top fundings from August in a roundup below:
Whimsical, a Denver startup building collaborative documents, flowcharts and more, has raised $28 million in equity funding from four investors, according to a Form D filing.
OneClick Data, a Denver technology company that is automating building code data for roofing projects, announced the closing of a $1.28 million funding round. The investment will help build out OneClick's products as it serves over 15,000 users. The company is also eyeing a Series A raise in 2022.
Denver-based Urban Sky, a high-altitude balloon startup, announced an oversubscribed $4.1 million seed financing round co-led by Catapult Ventures and Union Labs, with participation from TenOneTen Ventures, New Stack Ventures and Techstars. For the past two years, the stealthy startup has developed a reusable and rapidly deployable remote sensing balloon.
Accenture has made an investment through its venture arm in Denver-based Pipeline, a startup that uses AI to help companies close the gender equity gap. By analyzing hiring, pay, performance, potential and promotion data, Pipeline helps organizations identify internal areas of unconscious bias. From there, they offer recommendations on how to remedy those issues. The company's founder, Katica Roy, landed on our Inno on Fire list in 2019.
Denver-based Vendavo, an AI-enabled SaaS pricing and sales company, announced that it has secured a "major round of strategic investment" from Accel-KKR, along with a re-investment by current owner Francisco Partners. With this undisclosed investment, Vendavo said it will scale product development to keep up with client demand and accelerate partnership and M&A opportunities.
In August, Best Shot and The Fertility Tribe announced the launch of Rescripted, a merger between the two brands. The direct-to-consumer company blends Best Shot’s tech-enabled care platform with The Fertility Tribe’s community and digital publishing platform. As the company builds its platform, Rescripted announced the close of an oversubscribed $1.65 million financing round that was solely backed by angel investors.
Colorado-based Fabric RQ, a stealthy startup providing risk management software to individual investors, announced it has closed a seed round. The round was led by Pandeavor Ventures and John P. Arnhold, managing member of Arnhold LLC. The company, founded by veteran risk manager Richard Bookstaber, has been developing its software for more than a year and did not release the terms of the investment.
Fort Collins-based Prieto Battery announced that it has closed on the first portion of its $5.7 million Series C Round financing. The investment is set to accelerate the development of Prieto's 3D solid-state rechargeable lithium-ion battery. New investor Pilatus Capital led the round with participation from existing investors including Stanley Ventures.
Denver's DealerPeak, a CRM startup for care sales, raised $3.075 million in an oversubscribed financing round and introduced two new board members to its team. The round was led by California's Geweke Auto Group and prepares the company for an upcoming Series A in the coming months. In addition to announcing the raise, DealerPeak introduced Zach Ferres, an investor in the round, as the executive chairman of the board, and Michael Ashbaugh as an operating partner.
