Green Bay venture capital firm TitletownTech's latest investment is in Chicago-area biosensor company Stemloop Inc., which aims to solve the problem of unsafe drinking water.
The financing from TitletownTech, a partnership between the Green Bay Packers and Microsoft, will help Stemloop launch its first product: A home test to detect lead in drinking water.
Stemloop was spun out of Northwestern University and aims to leverage biology to sense and respond to challenges in biomanufacturing, the environment and human health, according to an Oct. 18 press release from TitletownTech. Stemloop founder and CEO Khalid Alam first began working on the startup as a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern's 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 TitletownTech.
The 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.
Stemloop is an “interesting play” for the venture fund because the company is leveraging biotech tools to solve industry problems, Enos said. She declined to discuss the terms of the Stemloop deal.
TitletownTech launched in 2019 and invested in 23 companies as part of its first fund of $25 million. It's looking to raise $80 million for its second fund.
"Agriculture, water and the environment" is one of TitletownTech's six industry focus areas. The seed-stage venture firm invests nationwide with a focus on Midwest companies.
Wauwatosa startup NanoAffix Science is also in the water sector technology space. The company has a portable device that can quickly detect lead in tap water via a hand-held sensor that connects to a mobile app. It's backed by water industry corporations including A.O. Smith Corp. and Badger Meter Inc., both in the Milwaukee area.
