As part of this year's Sacramento Inno Awards coverage, the Business Journal has recognized some of this year's top-funded startups in the region.
The biggest venture capital fundings of Sacramento region startups over the last year were led by:
- Unstructured.io, which raised $25 million in July in a round led by Madrona Venture Group. Sacramento-based Unstructured, founded in 2022, is developing technology to make it easier to access data from different document types, data locations and layouts to make it easier for customers to use artificial intelligence. Along with Seattle-base Madrona, investors in Unstructured's funding round included New York-based Bain Capital Ventures, San Francisco-based M12 Ventures (formerly known as Microsoft Ventures), Los Altos-based Mango Capital, New York-based MongoDB Ventures and San Francisco-based Shield Capital.
- Oobli, which raised $25 million in May, in a round led by San Francisco-based Piva Capital. Oobli, based in Davis, recently began commercializing the research it's done over more than a decade to create a sweet protein to replace sugar in food and beverages.
- Aro Homes, which raised $21 million in November 2022, in a round led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's venture capital firm, Innovation Endeavors. Aro, which is based in Mountain View, builds carbon-negative manufactured homes at a factory in McClellan Park. Portola-based Western Technology Investment and Stanford University also participated in the funding round.
- InnerPlant, which raised $16 million in a September 2022 funding round led by farm equipment giant John Deere. Davis-based InnerPlant is developing crop strains that fluoresce in different shades when viewed through filters in satellite and drone images to signal when they need water, nutrients or protection from pests. Along with John Deere, investors included Menlo Park-based MS&AD Ventures, TAU Ventures of Tel Aviv, Israel, San Francisco-based Bee Partners and Palo Alto-based Upwest.
- BioConsortia Inc., which raised $15 million in April in a funding led by Otter Capital LLC, based in Woodside. BioConsortia, based in Davis, is pioneering the use of soil and plant microbes as biostimulants and biopesticides.
Azra Games Inc., which raised $10 million in February from Menlo Park-based Andreessen Horowitz. The $10 million investment followed a $15 million seed round of funding into Azra that Andreessen Horowitz led in May 2022. Azra is a Sacramento-based gaming studio developing immersive science fiction fantasy role playing games for mobile devices and PCs. Its CEO Mark Otero previously developed the mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes and founded KlickNation, which he sold to Electronic Arts Inc.
