Winter is coming and while it might be hibernation season for some earthly creatures, funding rounds don't appear to be slowing down.
This is especially true for a couple of Bay Area startups that each raised $50 million Series B rounds this week.
San Francisco-based TrueNorth, founded in 2019 by Jin Stedge and Sanjaya Wijeratne, provides logistics support to independent truckers including finding loads, getting paid, insurance and trailer leasing. The company said its $50 million Series B will allow it to "make it even easier to coordinate loads and get paid, and begin to support truckers on everything from banking and lending to hauling more lucrative types of freight," according to a Wednesday blog post.
Investors in the round include Lachy Groom, a former Stripe executive, and the Altman brothers: Sam, Jack and Max. Additional investors include Flexport Fund, Tribe Capital, Original Capital, K5 Global, 137 Ventures, and Fifth Down Capital. The Series B brings its total funding to $61.8 million which includes a previously unannounced $8.5 million Series A, according to a press release.
CEO Stedge also previously worked for Scotty Labs, an autonomous vehicle startup acquired by DoorDash in 2019. Scotty Labs was co-founded by Tobenna Arodiogbu who subsequently started another S.F.-based trucking logistics company that same year: CloudTrucks. Last month, CloudTrucks announced a $115 million Series B.
Across the bay in Berkeley, Robin Healthcare, a startup founded by Emilio Galán and Noah Auerhahn in 2017, has created a voice assistant for health care workers that aims to cut down on paperwork and data entry. The team has designed a smart device that sits in the exam room and generates the documentation required to meet complex rules needed for insurers, compliance, and liability, which saves clinicians 90 minutes of manual documentation daily, the company said.
The company on Wednesday announced a $50 million round that will help it expand into new markets and grow its engineering, product and sales teams. Scale Venture Partners led the round and Khosla Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Social Leverage, Meridian Street Capital and IA Ventures have also participated. This brings its total funding to nearly $65 million, according to Crunchbase.
In 2019 the company announced that Tom Gruber was joining as an adviser. Gruber worked at Apple for eight years after the tech giant bought his voice recognition startup, Siri, in 2010. According to Gruber's LinkedIn, he's still an active adviser.
