Colorado startups had a busy year of raising capital in 2019, with companies big and small -- and representing a variety of industries -- attracting large investments.
We welcomed new tech unicorns to the state's startup ecosystem and covered a handful of rounds that topped the $100 million mark.
As the year comes to a close, we tracked 10 of the biggest tech and startup funding rounds from Colorado in 2019.
- San Francisco and Denver-based Gusto, a startup offering payroll, benefits and HR solutions, raised a $200 million Series D. The round was led by Fidelity and Generation Investment Management, which was founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The full story from TechCrunch is here.
- Denver’s Guild Education closed a $157 million Series D round that vaults it into unicorn status. Guild works with large companies, including Walmart and Chipotle, to offer debt-free education as a company benefit. The round was led by General Catalyst’s Ken Chenault, former chairman and CEO of American Express, who will join Guild’s board. This round establishes Guild, now valued at $1 billion, as one of a few female-led companies this year to earn the unicorn valuation. More on the funding round and the company’s future from the Denver Biz Journal here. [Subscriber Content]
- Boulder biotech company Inscripta raised a $125 million Series D round led by Paladin Capital Group, bringing the total amount raised by the company to $259.5 million. The new funds will be used to accelerate expansion and commercialization of the company’s Onyx Digital Genome Engineering platform. The Onyx platform is a fully-automated benchtop instrument for genome-scale engineering. More from the Denver Business Journal here. [Subscriber Content]
- Denver's Boom Supersonic, a company building a radically faster commercial aircraft, closed a $100 million Series B investment round, bringing total funding to over $141 million. Now just how fast is Boom? A flight from NYC to London typically takes 7 hours. On the supersonic Overture aircraft, the trip only takes 3 hours and 15 minutes. The 55-seat aircraft is set to fly later this year. The investment round was led by Emerson Collective, Y Combinator Continuity, Caffeinated Capital, and SV Angel as well as founders and early backers of Google, Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox.
Honorable Mention
Ibotta, the Denver-based mobile rewards platform, raised a Series D at a $1 billion valuation, becoming the state’s latest private company to reach a ten digit valuation. This would've ranked near the top of the list, but the value of the Series D was not disclosed. The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), a Wichita-based investment firm headed by Chase Koch, son of billionaire Charles Koch. A subsidiary of Koch Industries, KDT focuses on investments that support Koch’s core capabilities, as well as companies that create entirely new platforms.
