Here's the recent L.A. startup and innovation news you need to know.
PATIENT SERVICES: Renee has officially launched on the heels of raising $8.2 million in a seed round. The health care assistant/concierge uses AI and human customer support to create a personal health assistant for users.The founders are husband-and-wife Renee Dua and Nick Desai. Dua is a physician, specializing in internal medicine. The previous company they co-founded is Heal, which provides in-home primary care, mainly to seniors on Medicare.
Some of the investors in Renee's seed round include the AARP, Quiet Capital, Mucker Capital and Fika Ventures. Renee plans to use these funds to build out its product and engineering teams, among other things.
ANIMATION: Invisible Universe, an internet-first animation studio, announced that Nerissa Holder Hall has been named head of franchise. Hall joins Invisible Universe with almost two decades of experience in children’s media and production for several entertainment corporations, including Nickelodeon and PBS/WNET. She will focus on commercializing Invisible Universe’s suite of IP, identifying new opportunities and expanding the characters to new media formats, including movies and consumer products.
BILLING PLATFORM: Chargezoom, headquartered in Irvine, has raised $10 million in Series A funding, led by Panoramic Ventures, with participation from existing investors SaaS Venture Capital and Stout Street Capital. Existing investor Okapi Venture Capital also increased its investment.
Chargezoom is a B2B invoicing and payments platform with a patent-pending integration to QuickBooks, FreshBooks and Xero. With this latest round, Chargezoom plans to focus on product expansion and continue to hire more employees, with plans to double staff size by the end of 2022.
INDOOR FARMING: Plenty announced it will be expanding to SoCal, in partnership with Bristol Farms, a specialty gourmet grocer. Plenty developed an indoor farm. It says its platform uses a fraction of land and water to produce up to 350-times more produce per acre than conventional farms.
For the remainder of the year, Plenty leafy greens will be available in SoCal exclusively at Bristol Farms. They will come from Plenty's farm in South San Francisco, where its HQ is located. This marks the first time Bristol Farms will carry indoor, vertically-grown produce. The leafy greens are pesticide-free. In January, Plenty plans to open a farm in Compton to serve SoCal.
VIRTUAL REALITY: AmazeVR has reportedly raised $17 million to create immersive music experiences through virtual reality concerts, according to TechCrunch.
Mirae Asset Capital led the Series B round, along with returning investors, including another Mirae Asset Financial Group subsidiary (Mirae Asset Venture Investment), CJ Investment, Smilegate Investment, GS Futures and LG Technology Ventures.
New strategic investors — Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM and mobile game maker Krafton — also participated in the latest round.
